Jill Williamson – Excerpt – Part 3 of 3

Shannon here: Young Adult/Speculative Fiction author, Jill Williamson shares an excerpt from her latest release, Replication: The Jason Experiment. Every time you comment (US only for this drawing), your name goes in the drawing for a copy. Deadline: June 2, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Jill:

Martyr is a young man who has never seen the sky. He grew up in an underground lab, raised by the scientist “doctors.” He’s never seen a teenage girl. So when he escapes from the lab and meets Abby, he’s pretty much mesmerized. Abby is so colorful, with her curly orange hair and eyes the color of peas. She’s confident and seems to know everything important. Martyr likes how she tries to keep him safe and takes care of him by giving him colorful socks to wear and food to eat.
Abby is sometimes too smart for her own good. She overthinks everything, which is sometimes good where boys are concerned. She’s tired of the same old thing with guys: the lame pick-up lines, guys who don’t really want to get to know her, who just like how she looks, who only want one thing. 
But then she meets Marty. And Marty is different because he grew up in a different world. A wrong world. She can’t let him go back to that place, but the more time they spend together, the more Marty depends on her and seems to like her in a more-than-friends kind of way. And even though Abby kind of likes that, she’s not so sure it’s a good thing. 
Here is a short excerpt from Replication: The Jason Experiment: 
     “My name is Abby.”
     “Abby.” Martyr felt taller just knowing her name.
      “How old are you?” she asked, so calm and confident, like she spoke to Jasons every day.
     She probably did.
      “I am seventeen years, eleven months, and twelve days old.”
     One of her eyebrows arched up, wrinkling part of her forehead. He grinned and tried to mimic her expression.
      “That’s pretty accurate.” She scowled. “Stop that.”
     He relaxed his face immediately and waited for her next words.
      “You lived all those years on the Farm? Even as a baby?”
      “Yes.”
      “Why do you look like JD Kane?”
     Dr. Kane? The question was so ridiculous, Martyr laughed. “Dr. Kane is in charge of the Farm. I don’t look like him.”
     They sat silently again, looking into each other’s eyes. Martyr did not mind. He could look at Daughter Abby all day long.
     She broke the silence. “What about your parents?”
      “What are parents?”
     She breathed out a laugh. “Are you for real?”
     Martyr did not know what this question meant either.
      “You know, a mom and a dad? Did they die? Are you an orphan?”
     Ah. Mom and dad were slang for mother and father. Children who lived outside had these special adults to care for them. “Only children who live outside have mothers and fathers.”
      “Everyone has a mother and a father—at some point, anyway.”
      “We don’t.” 
About Jill: Jill Williamson is the Christy-Award winning young adult author of the Blood of Kings trilogy and Replication: The Jason Experiment. Visit Jill online at www.jillwilliamson.com, where adventure comes to life, or on her Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/jwilliamsonwrites.
About the book: Abby Goyer is forced to move to rural Alaska when her father takes a job in a laboratory called Jason Farms. Suspicious of her father’s decisions, she investigates and finds more than what she was looking for when a strange boy shows up at her door. Martyr, one of fifty-five identical clones, escaped from Jason Farms with one wish: to see the sky before he fulfills his purpose and “expires” on his eighteenth birthday. Abby tries to help Martyr see that God has a purpose for his life, different from the one the scientists originally planned for him.
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