Talking about YA fiction.

When I was young, the television shows I watched would be about saving the planet (Captain Planet, Widget the World Watcher) and young adult fiction was either about the finding a real life threat inside your video games (Space Demons, Skymaze), running off into some wonderful fantasy world where young women could be heroes with a sword too (Songs of the Lioness, The Blue Sword) or finding romance (The Vampire Diaries).

There's still a lot of interest in the latter, as evidenced by the television show The Vampire Diaries. You might even recognise this handsome man as the visual inspiration for one of my own characters. :)

There has also been the popularity of such series' as Cassie Clare's The Mortal Instruments, which I believe they are making into a series of movies due to come out later this year. I've also been a long time fan of Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series, which I've made no bones about loving and having almost a whole shelf dedicated to in my bedroom.



There's also the retold fairy tale genre which is really big at the moment, and includes novelists like Sarah Cross, Alex Flinn, Robin McKinley, Juliet Marillier, Francesca Lia Block and Malinda Lo.

However, there's another kind of genre within the young adult umbrella that has been pushing itself forward. We saw it in The Hunger Games novels (and movie). Marie Lu's novel Legend was another good example of it. Instead of the worries about the environment that categorised the 90s, the media aimed at young adults seems to hold a message that is: don't be so complacent that the government can rule you. Sort of a 1984 for kids, just like Space Demons might have been a good early read for people who would go on to love Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.


Two months ago, I read a book called Delirium by Lauren Oliver and read the follow up sequel Pandemonium this month. Lauren's main character, Lena, lives in a world where love has been labelled a disease for which a cure has been found. (For the full review, click here.) What I thought was amazing was how little the love angle would have mattered at all if not for the backing plot of the story. The same scenario was offered in The Hunger Games; Katniss simply couldn't spend any real number of pages simply falling in love with either of the guys. She was too busy fighting just to stay alive.

I love coming back again and again to the books in this genre. It feels as though there is so much more in YA to read today than there was 10 or even 15 years ago. Subjects like loneliness and alienation are still being tackled, but are now widening to include stories told about interracial and gay, lesbian or bisexual minorities. I read this really interesting interview by two of my favourite young adult writers recently that made me feel really proud to be reading this genre I love so much.

"Both Holly and Sarah are not shy about discussing the difficulties of promoting diversity in Young Adult literature. And they were willing to discuss their experiences in crafting their own works as a way of offering advice to other authors who are seeking to do the opposite of what has been the advice offered time after time to write what they know rather than what they may imagine." (read more)

This interview opens with questions like what advice they would give for writers who want to write outside of their own experiences with gender, race and sexual orientation and goes on through some interesting observations on the way race is depicted both on screen and by readers of these novels, including a quick look at Katniss' depiction in the recent movie The Hunger Games.

New Realease - "Gothic"

I come to you today, fresh from my first day at a new job, thinking that I will have a couple of weeks away from my writing to recharge and re-energise after the last week of restructuring one novel, editing another and beginning two new ones.

Here I am, ready to take the world by storm. 

(in a couple of weeks)

Then today, I get an email from my friendly, neighbourhood publisher.

"Erm, ehm, promotion, promotion, promotion!"

Imagine me headdesking at this moment as I scratch my head and utter, 'I knew I forgot something...'

So!

Leap of Faith LLC have been kind enough to take a ... leap of faith :D ... with my new novel Gothic, which is in final stages of editing and awaiting cover art.

Gothic is the first in a new paranormal romance series sketched together in the middle of my Honours year last year (much less stressful than the writing I was actually researching and getting marked on, I tell you! (Anyone who has ever done an Honours year can tell you this is true.)) Of course, then I talked to my partner about this book I had just written and he said, 'So what happens if you did this next...?' and so a series was born.

But Gothic... I have had so much fun writing this story. 

It's a story of a human girl, Dahlia, who's mother died when she was eight. After her father ran away with grief, she was taken in by her vampire godmother and the rest of the werewolf pack of which her father had been a part. When the story starts, Dahlia has just moved out of home and wants to live the 'normal' life, i.e. a life without quite so much vampire and werewolf influence. In the first few weeks of class, she finds out that her godmother has contacted one of her vampire friends to watch over her. He, Elliott, ends up being one of her confidants. Another student, and human girl, Renee ends up being another close friend.

Hijinx ensue! Time for some more visual assist:

Elliot is another supernatural featuring in Dahlia's full supernatural dance card. He is of the mild snark and general hilarity, and claims at times to have brushed elbows with such popular figures as Lord Byron and Bram Stoker.


Renee meets our girl Dahlia through her normal university boyfriend. She's super cute and acts about half her age because she wants to get the university experience "just right".

One of the best parts of this story is that I have clear images for both of these characters. The lovely actors who are acting as muses in my head right now are none other than the lovely Ms Ksenia Solo from Lost Girl and Mr Ian Somerhalder (nicknamed 'Smoulderhalder' with good reason by fellow cast mate AND GIRLFRIEND Nina Dobrev) from The Vampire Diaries. Say what you will about these shows, but these two people are gorgous. Anyone who knows me will know I shamelessly fangirl this TV series that is based on the L. J. Smith series of books from my childhood.

So that's me and mine for in the last little while. More news and excerpts to come next time I get a chance to be on the computer.