Love Bytes is welcoming to their blog author Eli Easton talking to us about new release “Boy Shattered”.

Welcome Eli 🙂

Welcome to the blog tour to celebrate the release of “Boy Shattered”! This is my first full-on Young Adult book since “Superhero.” It’s set in a high school and features a romance between an openly gay valedictorian type student (Landon) and the school quarterback (Brian). When Brian is shot during a shooting at their high school, Landon saves his life and the two become inseparable. It’s an enemies-to friends-to lovers story.

I did something in this book I’ve never done before in my novels. Brian writes poetry, and there are a handful of “his” poems in this book. This aspect of the book is a bit biographical. I wrote poems throughout high school. It was the first type of creative writing I ever did. There’s so much emotion in “Boy Shattered” with the school shooting, the growing love between Landon and Brian, and difficulties with Brian’s recovery, that I felt like poems would be a good way to express that in a new format.

One challenge was to try to write a poem, not as I would write it now, but as I would have written it in high school. Yet it also needed to be, not from my younger-self POV, but from my character Brian’s point-of-view. That was interesting!

Here’s one of the poems in Boy Shattered.

Lion by Brian Marshall

You smile at me

and I can move mountains,

dive to the bottom of the sea

just to bring you a pearl.

I keep my admiration inside my coat pocket

buried deep with my other secrets

with the things I fear to say

and the things too dangerous to feel.

My friend.

Barely older than me, you have

the heart of a lion.

Generosity, kindness, wisdom, humility, fire.

The spirt of an ancient oak.

But I don’t give you that praise.

Those words are in the box with my secrets.

To say them would reveal too much of me,

and the stars are too far away

to care for my compliments.

You smile at me

and I think: Wow. I could love you.

But those words, and that bit of terror-joy,

are also locked away.

Turn the key.

Shhhh.

How can I give you those words when my own fire is barely alight?

My heart is not a lion’s.

I fear everything.

Especially the truth.

Maybe a day will come when I can tell you:

this frightened heart is yours.

For this blog post, I thought I’d share a bit of my own poem-writing teenage self. Here’s a photo of the book I still have with poems from that period (this was the late 70’s to early 80’s).

 

For this blog post I wanted to share one poem with you from then. Reading them today to pick one, I realized they are all so, so bad. Oh my God! I haven’t looked at this notebook in thirty years. But the poem below made me howl with laughter. So, without further ado, here it is. Eli Easton aka Jane Smith aka “Sabrina Ray”, circa 1978 probably (10th grade). Also an object lesson in the concept that if you keep writing you will eventually improve. And, perhaps, in the dangers of rhyming.

SUMMER DAYS AND MEMORIES

By Sabrina Ray

Summer days and memories
Of laughing on the shore
Photographs and souvenirs
But alas those days are ‘ore.

Alaska’s cold wind touches me
And chills my very soul.
Longing for the warming sun
And to ride upon a foal.

Empty days and lonely nights
Filled with dreams of home.
If I had a chance to go back now
I never more would roam.

Warming blue hands by a fire
Such an imposter for the sun
Everything comes in black and white
Of greens and blues tis none.

Oh California, your warming tan
Has turned like the ground to white
Cause I killed a man and fled up north
On a lost and lonely night.

Summer days are fading through
As I plunge on through the snow
I miss my friends. I miss my girl
How I hate the cold wind’s blow.

THE END.

Of greens and blues tis none, guys. Tis none. I might point out that I grew up in the Midwest, and never killed anyone, so I guess I was writing characters back then too. In retrospect, Brian is a MUCH better poet than I was in high school. 😊

I hope you give Boy Shattered a chance. It’s angstier than the usual Eli Easton fare, but it’s got a lot of sweet and loving scenes as well.

Eli Easton