Lost in Translation

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll dance, you'll sing — but you'll never forget your days lost in translation with Xeep and Avery.

"I'm nearly to Roswell when the sky splits open. Not metaphorically — actually splits, with fireball brilliance, a trail of fire cutting across the dawn like a jagged scar. Two more zig-zagging arcs chase something. Blossoms of flame catch it. The booms rumble down and shake the desert floor. Whatever it is, it screeches and spins out of control, trailing smoke and flame, disappearing among the rocks about half a mile ahead."

A comedy romp wrapped in a not-now dystopia. In the Federated Kingdom, seventeen-year-old Avery Reyes escapes being shipped off by Pa to the Royal Rehabilitation Academy to be "fixed." When a mysterious craft is shot from the sky by Pa's Golden Dome missiles, all Avery wants is to steal some tech and run to Pacifica. Yet Avery can't leave behind Xeep, the strange, injured interstellar teen who stole the ship on a dare — even if saving an alien means surviving every mortifying indignity of growing up.

Pursued by drones and diesel-belching goons, and haunted by echoes of the past, the two fugitives race across the desert on a cobbled-together, perpetually farting 'lectric bike — bargaining with impeccably mannered rattlesnakes, weathering Xeep's mortal terror of butterflies, and bridging the gap with a musical xlator, a fragile span between silence and trust. What begins as a search for safety becomes a journey toward understanding, where every word carries the power to heal or destroy.

Equal parts laugh-out-loud adventure and quiet reflection, Lost in Translation explores the hardest language to learn: empathy itself. Deeply satirical yet woven with humor, emotional honesty, and cinematic vision, this story invites readers to see that every connection — no matter how alien — begins with listening.

Perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Neal Shusterman, and Adam Silvera, Lost in Translation is a story for anyone who has ever felt out of place in their own world.