Here are some of the ways that young adult authors can get themselves in trouble. There's the endless repetition of tropes—the clever line on repeat. There's the fuzzy hey-I-can't-really-explain-this-implausible-plot-so-I'll smudge-the-language-into-lazy-ambiguity-and-hope-it-all-looks-like-part-of-an-actual-master-plan. There's the Valley Girl/Guy voice and the untrusting over explaining and the shying away from big themes with the hope that a familiar plot—or a cinematic a-ha ending—will be enough.
As the category becomes ever more popular, as it sells increasing numbers of books (according to
Shelf Awareness, "children's/YA continued to soar this year, with sales up 30.5%, to $695.9 million (while) sales of adult fiction and nonfiction fell 3.6%, to $1.726 billion), as it permeates the culture in dissings and debates, it is, I think, increasingly important, to look at and learn from those who do YA well.
A.S. King is one such author. Her
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, launching on October 14, is, once again, a brave and elastic plot that gives King room to ruminate on big themes and agitations. Yesterday afternoon, I read the first 67 pages, and discovered, again, just how particular King's language is, how capable of building characters, stretching worlds, and conversing with mechanical and natural phenomena.
For example: King, a photographer herself, has made her narrator a photographer. It's not a casual choice. It's both plot and metaphor. And it's instruction of the sort that is real and meaningful. Read the passage below. Check out its specificity and its ease (not at all simple to achieve both at once, I assure you). Then look at the words "max black." King, being King, will not leave that alone. She'll soon capitalize the M and the B and make Max Black a character. It is of a whole. It is considered. This is how fine YA gets done.
A light meter could tell you what zone everything in a scene fell into. Bright spots—waterfall foam, reflections, a polar bear—were high numbers. Shadows—holes, dark still water, eels beneath the surface—were low numbers. You had to let the light into the camera in just the right way. You had to meter: find the dark and light spots in your subject. You had to bracket: manually change your shutter speed or aperture to adjust the amount of light hitting the film—or, in my case, for the yearbook, the microchip. You didn't want to blow out the highlights, and you had to give the shadows all the detail you could by finding the darkest max black areas and then shooting them three zones lighter.
You can download the first 67 pages of
Glory O'Brien for
free here. In two weeks, you can buy the book itself. I hope you'll do both. In the meantime, congratulations to A.S. King.
& Book Giveaway Comments Contest
For many authors writing a novel means months, even years of research. They interview people who lived lives similar to their characters', they visit places that play a key element in their book, and they research traditions, language, and events. They have to get it just right! For Amira Aly, author of the YA novel
Egypt: The Uprising, research was a little simpler. Amira lived through the world changing event--
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011--just as her characters did. As a resident of Cairo she is as familiar with the shadows of the pyramids and the movement of the Nile as she is with the faces of her loved ones.
But Egypt: The Uprising offers The Egyptian Revolution with a twist. It is a fascinating combination of modern events, historical figures, secret organizations with magical powers, and adventure that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Aya, a teenage girl living with her aunt and brother, tries to live through the Revolution without getting swept up into the demonstrations and violence. But fate has something else in mind. What starts out as an attempt by Aya to drag her brother and his friends away from the demonstrations transforms into a battle with ancient Egyptian figures who have returned from the past to take control of modern Egypt. Can Aya learn enough about her mysterious past and powers in time to save her world from the evil threatening it?
ISBN: 1461195481
Format: Paperback, 178 pages, and e-book
Be transported back to a time when Egyptian gods and goddesses roamed the world with the book trailer for Egypt: The Uprising below. This is the most exciting book trailer I've seen in a while! When I asked Amira about which trailer production company created it, she modestly replied that she did, herself! Bravo, Amira. Bravo!
Book Giveaway Contest: If you would like to win an e-copy of Egypt: The Uprising, please leave a comment at the end of this post to be entered in a random drawing. The giveaway contest
closes this Thursday, August 4 at 11:59 PM, PST. For an extra entry, link to this post on Twitter with the hashtag #ETUAly, then come back and leave us a link to your tweet. We will announce the winner in the comments section of this post on the following day Friday, August 5. Good luck!
About the Author:
Don’t Be A Geezer
by Julie Lindsey
There seems to be a common misconception out there among YA writers who are well beyond their college years. What misconception you ask? The notion that a good YA writer needs only to be young at heart. W.R.O.N.G-O. Before you start shaking your wrinkly writing fists and waving your false teeth, please read on.
YA is a very specific voice, and if you can’t make your MC believable then no one will read it. Your target audience will toss it on a pile with all the other crappy adult garbage and adults who prefer YA will pass because well, they wanted to read YA. Not some convoluted memoir from 1993.
Suggestions for creating an authentic YA voice from a YA lover:
• Watch Mtv.
• Devour magazines like Seventeen (especially if your MC is like 14, if she’s older, move on to Cosmo).
• Skip Borders and head over to the mall, then eavesdrop. Listen to your babysitter, your neighbors, and your kids.
• Go to local high school sports events.
• FIND SOME TEENS AND SPY. *Do not be creepy. It’s easy to spy because old folks blend into the wall to most teens.
• Shop where they shop, do what they do, listen to them. That gets double emphasis, LISTEN TO THEM.
• DO NOT put teens in a box. End stereotyping.
If you are trying to polish a YA manuscript, please re-read ONE more time and promptly delete any and all signs that you need a walker and sleep in curlers, or own a “housecoat.”
• Do not say anything you said as a teen unless that was five minutes ago.
• Do not quote or reference sitcoms that are not on the air, ex: that Full House baby(ies) is like 20, so your audience has only ever seen that show as a rerun.
There’s MORE:
• Shorts just aren’t “fingertip” length.
• Cheerleaders are not “the pep squad.”
• Girls wear skinny jeans not slacks – PLEASE Google for actual brands and do not ever say Gloria Vanderbelt or Z Cavaricci. Dear Heavens, Do Not.
• Don’t reference music that isn’t on the popular college station near your home. You may think it’s “classic rock,” but they may think you are their great-great- grandma.
And MORE:
• People don’t get perms
• Body Piercing IS cool. Smoking is NOT.
• Do not say “the bomb” or “hunk or fox”
FINALLY:
Please, I beg you not to say pocketbook , or try to fit what being a teen was like for YOU into your MCs world, unless you’re writing a period piece throw back to the 80′s or whatever. Teens today live in and react to TODAY’S reality. Please get in touch with today’s reality before an unsuspecting reader skips home from the bookstore carrying your book and then throws it dramatically at the wall when they read about how your MC ordered a Gone with the Wind style prom dress & matching gloves for the Under the Sea themed dance. *Ugh*
End Rant.
* * *
.jpg)
Julie Anne Lindsey is a wife, a homeschooling mother of 3, and all around caffeine addict. She is an unpublished author, avid reader and obsessive writer. Julie is blogging her journey to publication at Musings from the Slush Pile, where she also shares personal experience, book reviews and opening chapters from her works.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 50
.jpeg?picon=893)
By: Wow!,
on 3/1/2010
Blog:
WOW! Women on Writing Blog (The Muffin)
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Aries Rising,
Gemini Night,
Bonnie Hearn Hill,
Taurus Eyes,
young adult novel,
book giveaway contest,
author blog tour,
YA writing,
Star Crossed series,
Add a tag
& Book Giveaway Comments Contest!
Bonnie Hearn Hill worked as a newspaper editor for 22 years, a job that, along with her natural nosiness, increased her interest in contemporary culture. Prior to her new Star Crossed series from Running Press/Perseus Books, she wrote six thrillers for MIRA Books, as well as numerous short stories, nonfiction books and articles.
An interest in astrology along with her close friendship with Cosmo Magazine Astrologer Hazel Dixon-Cooper inspired the Star Crossed series: Aries Rising, Taurus Eyes, and Gemini Night.
A national conference speaker, Bonnie founded The Tuesdays, a bonded and successful writing workshop in Fresno, California, and she also teaches an occasional online class. On Fridays she meets with her private critique group (humorous astrology author Hazel Dixon-Cooper, prescriptive nonfiction writer Dennis C. Lewis, mystery novelist Sheree Petree, and musician/thriller novelist Christopher Allen Poe). What happens in those groups ranges from spontaneous applause to "getting filleted," as Bonnie's students and colleagues call it.
You can find out more about Bonnie by visiting her websites:
Bonnie's website www.BonnieHearnHill.com
Facebook Fan Page www.facebook.com/StarCrossedseries
Aries Rising
By Bonnie Hearn Hill
Aquarius Logan McRae is a high school sophomore in Terra Bella Beach, CA and has been working all semester to impress her teachers in order to get into the summer writing camp she desperately wants to attend. But when this ordinary girl finds an extraordinary book, Fearless Astrology, her life is changed forever. Applying what she's learned about the zodiac, she lands her own column in the school paper and a date with the hottest guy in school!
But when Logan threatens to catch the members of a secret society called The Gears, who have been vandalizing school property by reading the stars, she quickly learns that she is in over her head. Will Logan be able to catch The Gears, save her love life, keep her newspaper column, and get into the writing camp of her dreams all through the use of astrology?
Genre: Young Adult
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Running Press Kids (March 2010)
ISBN#: 0762436700
Book Giveaway Comments Contest!
If you received our Events Newsletter, remember, we are holding a contest to win a copy of Bonnie Hearn Hill's novel Aries Rising to those that comment. So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and enjoy the chat, and share your though
.jpg)
Sounds like a fascinating book! Egypt is on my list of places to visit, so a book that mixes fiction with a basis in reality so that I learn something new is very intruiging. Congratulations on publication!
Marlene
Congrats on publication! I think its wonderful that you drew from current events for this book, especially since its going to the hands of YA. Its a way of making them realize the world around us, without force feeding them. Brilliant!
How interesting to read about your fiction response to a recent event!
Question:
As a parent of a young child, do you find it difficult to find time to write?
Hello all,
Thank you for stopping by :)
@Marlene Thank you. Don't forget to give me a shout out if you ever come to Egypt ;)
@Kelly Thanks :)) This is exactly what I thought when I was writing the book. It's always difficult for a writer to find that balance between entertaining the reader and trying to tell them something you think is worthy. I love it when I reader tells me that they did not know much about Egypt but the book sparked their interest, or that they were not following the events in Egypt but now they do.
@Patricia In all honesty, it's a living hell trying to find time when my mind is lucid enough to write! I have to day that I would not have been able to finish the book so quickly if it weren't for my husband taking the kids on day trips to free up the house for me.
First of all, I have to say it is amazing to me when people can write something so interesting so quickly. Congrats on that! I wish I could do that. It's great that you have a supportive husband! Did you find writing about the Egyptian Revolution was hard because you are kind of close to it? I always find subjects I am close to more difficult to write. I don't think I could ever write a memoir!
Thank you for intrevyu
Egypt is one of my dream places to visit, and this book sounds so intriguing! I've actually done a bit of research on Egypt, but at a more ancient history angle. Congrats on the publishing of your book! :)