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In the immortal words of Charlotte in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

I was privileged to have Deborah Halverson edit my Harcourt picture book, Searching for Oliver K. Woodman. When we met at a retreat, it was instant friendship, and anytime we talk, it feels like we’ve been friends forever. That’s why I am so excited about this new book. Well, I’m excited because it’s Deborah’s book, but also because it’s the first book I’ve seen to explain the latest fiction genre, New Adult. In Deborah’s capable hands, the topic comes alive and I’ve already got tons of ideas for stories. Here, she answers a basic question; but if you want more, you’ve got to buy her book!

YA writers often ask me to explain the difference between Young Adult fiction and New Adult fiction when the story’s main character is 18 or 19 years old. Some of those writers are curious about this new fiction category that brushes up against their own, but others are trying to noodle out whether that upper YA story they’re working on is really NA. “Tell me what NA is, Deborah, and then I’ll know what I’ve got.” Happy to help! Here are three ways to determine if you’re writing a story about a young adult or a new adult.

DearEditor.com Deborah Halverson is doing a special giveaway for the blog tour for the kickoff of this book. Enter to win “One Free Full Manuscript Edit!“

Pin Down Your Protagonist’s Mind-set

How does your character process the world and her place in it? Teens are typically starting to look outward as they try to find their places in the world and realize that their actions have consequences in the grander scheme of life, and they yearn to live unfettered by the rules, structure, and identities that have defined their lives until now. New adults finally get to live that free life they dreamed of—for better or worse. They move forward with the self-exploration they began in their adolescence, going big on personal exploration and experimentation and expanding their worldview. They get to build identities that reflect who they’ve become rather than who they grew up with, and they get to try things out before settling into a final Life Plan. All of this can be overwhelming even when it goes well—after all, even good change is stressful, and “change” is new adulthood in a nutshell. For some, though, the instability is a total freak-out. The clash of ideal vs. reality can shock their system. They’re gaining experience and wisdom hand over fist, but yikes. Luckily, new adults tend to brim with personal optimism, and their explorations and experimentations—both dangerous and beneficial—are endearingly earnest.

If this sounds like your protagonist and her circle of friends, you might have an NA on your hands. You can use this knowledge to give your story a solidly NA sensibility by exposing your character’s inexperience in her decision-making, by imbuing the narrative with a sense of defiance, by conveying stress, by conveying self-focus (not selfishness), by lacing the exposition with personal optimism, and by showing the character’s awareness of her growing maturity. YA characters who are overly analytical about themselves and others risk sounding too mature, but NA character journeys ooze with self-assessment no matter the individual details of their journeys.

Assess Your Circumstances

In fiction, the plot exists to push the protagonist through some kind of personal growth. Thus, our character’s mind-set and the plot are interdependent. Whether your character is a young adult or new adult, the circumstances of your story—the events, problems, places, and roles—should sync with that character. New adults tackle their problems with their new adult filters in place, whether the story is a contemporary one set in college, or a historical one, or a fantastical one. Self-actualization is an essential growth process whether you’re at a college kegger or battling evil overlords.

Once you’ve pinpointed whether your protagonist’s mindset feels YA or NA, consider if your plot events and the circumstances of your protagonist’s life jive with her concerns, fears, coping skills, maturity, and wisdom level. NA story lines tend to remove structure and accountability, tweak the characters’ stress levels by playing musical careers and homes, make money an issue, force the characters to establish new social circles at play and at work, show characters exhibiting ambivalence to adult responsibilities, show characters divorcing from teenhood, show characters striving to “move on from trauma” rather than to “survive trauma”, deny the characters the “ideal” NA life of carefree self-indulgence, put characters in situations that clash their high expectations for independent life against a harsh reality, and show the process of evaluation, of trial-and-error, of weighing exploration and experimentation against consequences, at least by the end of the story.

Deal with the “Sexed-Up YA” Thing

Romance is part of almost any older YA story, and certainly all NA. As it should be—romance is one of the three main areas of identity exploration after puberty, along with career and worldview (think politics, faith, and personal well-being and outlook). The difference is that teens are very solidly in the “what is love, what does it feel like?” realm, whereas new adults are generally working on who they want to be in a relationship, what they want from their partner, what they want from the relationship in general. That doesn’t mean they’re actively searching for Mr./Mrs. Right—there’s plenty of time for that!—but it does mean they want a satisfying, meaningful relationship. Where is your character on that romance spectrum?

Of course, romance isn’t really what people focus on when comparing YA and NA relationships, is it? Nope: it’s sex. So let’s talk about sex. In its early days, NA was accused of being “sexed-up YA”, but after reviewing numbers 1 and 2 above, you’ll see that the differences between YA and NA are more substantial than simply how explicitly you describe two bodies connecting sans clothing. Ask yourself your goal with the romance, and what level of sexual detail is necessary for that goal. Then consider your audience: NA readers are mostly adults of the same 20- to 44-year-old “crossover reader” demographic that shot YA into the publishing stratosphere. (A Digital Book World study reported 2013’s dominant YA crossover readership as being 20- to 29-year-olds; compare that to the 18- to 25-year-old age range of new adulthood). Those grownups can handle—and often flat-out want—explicit sex scenes. Some teens will read NA, but mostly they’re not into that mind-set yet so the stories don’t resonate with them, making them plenty happy to stick with the many great YA stories out there that reflect their current time in life.

Perhaps you determine that your character’s mind-set and story circumstances are solidly YA but you want/need to include some sex scenes in your story because the theme or plot of the story calls for it. In that case, maybe you have a solid YA that requires a “Mature YA” categorization to let readers know that there’s sexual content between those covers. Those scenes will be tamer than the full-on explicitness of NA—your are writing/positioning this story primarily for and about young readers after all, and there are gatekeepers involved—but the sexual content is there and readers are warned. Weigh your goals with your romance, your story’s scene needs, and your audience’s expectations and sensibilities as you make the NA/YA determination on this aspect of your WIP.

So there you have it. Three ways to know if that story you’re writing is Young Adult fiction or New Adult fiction. Good luck with your WIP, and with all your publishing endeavors.

What’s this? A new graphic novel illustrated by the amazing Nathan Fox and written by M.F. Wilson?

Why, yes! Or at least a collection of “Fluorescent Black,” their story that has been running in HEAVY METAL for the last three years. Fox writes “We are really proud of how it turned out and it features a TON of new content including guest pinups, additional narrative pages and more.”

An 8-page preview can be seen here.

And the PR:

Heavy Metal Magazine will publish and distribute the graphic novel Fluorescent Black in July of 2010. A hardbound limited edition will be sold at San Diego and New York Comic Con. The novel is nearly 200 pages long and was written by MF Wilson, illustrated by Nathan Fox and colored by Jeromy Cox. Fluorescent Black is one of the most popular stories featured in the adult illustrated magazine and has a massive cult following. “We are very excited to be publishing Fluorescent Black. This book is like nothing else out there! It’s crazy, original and totally punk,” says Kevin Eastman, Editor-in-Chief of Heavy Metal Magazine.

The novel takes the reader into the hard-hitting dark future of South East Asia where gene-tech has divided the human race into two races. A particularily unique element of the story is the way in which a utopian and dystopian future exist in near proximity; it seems to draw inspiration from a lot of the border disputes going on in politics today. The story plays with other hot-button themes like public healthcare, gene patenting, eugenics, the dangers of bio-artistry, and the limits of body modification. Known for it provocative ideas and scientific accuracy, Fluorescent Black has been praised by biotechnology web rings and counter-culture magazines as a seminal “bio-punk” novel, a relatively new genre which has been slowly working it’s way into the literary and cinematic marketplace. MF says, “I wanted to write this story for all the things it is guilty of; it’s hard-core, violent, sexual and frightening. It’s venereal horror, bio-punk and psychadelic science fiction all rolled into one.” It seems to be the perfect material for an illustrator like Nathan Fox who has built a fan base out of his featured work in rock-and-roll magazines and adult comic books, and who is known for his kinetic freehand and raucus style. Every panel is a work of art, with hidden (sometimes blush-worthy) details that only become apparent on a second or third read. “I wanted this book to be wild and colorful; it had to be a living, moving thing.” The collaboration between these artists has produced a one-of-a-kind novel that is well worth the pricetag. It is available through heavymetal.com, amazon.com and will be on comic book shelves everywhere later this year. For more information, visit freethegene.com

Hey, guys, 'tis I, the Great and Powerful CARLMAN, back and blogging after a week away from the library. I had to take a week off because my wife fell and broke an ankle last Monday defending the city against a crime wave. She's OK now--or as well as you can be with a broken ankle!

Well, Labor Day is coming up soon (a welcome relief after the start of school!) and a lot of you will probably go somewhere over the long weekend. Here are some good audiobooks for the trip:

The Alvin Ho Collection: Books 1 and 2

These books are really funny and the audio version is just as good. In fact, you'll laugh out loud. Alvin Ho is a second-grade kid who's scared of everything--school, piano teachers, wild animals in the woods, tornadoes on camping trips, and more. This audiobook is especially funny because it's read by a real kid, a guy probably about the same age as you! It's extra funny when the boy tries to sound like Alvin's dad!

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

All the Narnia books have a lot of action, but this one has more than most. Two school kids, trying to escape from bullies, find a door that leads into Narnia. Aslan, the great Lion, gives them the assignment to find the lost prince who was enchanted and stolen from Narnia ten years before. The actor who reads it is very good and holds your attention from beginning to end.

The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli

A fascinating look at what life was really like in the Middle Ages. A young boy, whose father is off at the wars and mother is in London attending to the Queen, contracts the plague and is crippled. The servants leave him by himself, alone in bed and unable to walk! Does he ever get rescued? Does he ever recover? And what happens when the hostile Welsh surround the castle? You've got to listen to find out!

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

I'm cheating a little bit here because I've listened only to the first disc but it's alrerady funny! Ramona Quimby is one of the greatest pains you'll ever meet and here she starts kindergarten. You'll laugh when tries to "sit here for the present" or asks a question about Mike Mulligan.

These books are great for the car or if you have a personal CD player. Nothing better to make the miles fly by! Hit the "audiobooks" tab below if you want to find out about more good reads--I mean "listens"!