Books make the world better.
This week I'll be posting about some of my favorite books YA, their covers and their fabulous opening lines.
“The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards”
-A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Holy shit, I think I've finished final edits on my new book 'Migration', an indigenous-scifi YA novel. It's been months since I got changes back from my editor at Huia Publishers and even longer since I first started writing the damn thing, back in 2017??
I've been working on it off and on in between other projects, and it's almost done, fucking yay me!!
The world is a strange mix of space-faring and Victorian, but not steampunk. The plot twists were actually pretty surprising and more macabre than I was expecting, even given the name of the book is Revenger. The book was creative, and it was delightful to read YA without a romance involved and to just see this young woman grow into who she needed to be. That woman is quite engaging and powerful.
Nie spodziewałem się za wiele rozpoczynając lekturę i może dlatego ta książka kopnęła mnie między oczy - to topka powieści, które czytałem w tym roku (a przeczytałem więcej niż jedną).
Co prawda, im dalej w las, tym bardziej czuć, że to jednak "młodzieżówka", ale tutaj nie należy tym się kierować - to futurystyczna fantastyka, lekko cyberpunkowa, która nie tylko dostarcza fajną historię, ale też pokazuje, do czego ludzkość może doprowadzić eliminując choroby, wprowadzając wszechwładne AI (które jest tutaj pokazane nawet w pozytywny sposób) i mając pełnię władzy. Polecam gorąco, bo zaskoczeń też jest tutaj sporo.
I need to rewrite my subs package for 'The Journeyman' as my current package is getting very little response but it's an awesome book that needs to be seen. I also might change the title if I think I can get away with calling it 'In The Valley Of The Wind'. #Solarpunk#YA
I keep dusting off a story I originally started as a short when I was in high school. I’ve rewritten the easiest completed parts a couple of times, and continue to add to it over time. I was fully planning on diving in to finally finish it this summer. Now I’m thinking once again about putting it on the back burner. I’ve got 2 competing ideas floating in my heads. One I know I can wait on. The other is what’s intriguing me. /thread #writingcommunity#authorsofmastodon
My New Roommate is a #NewAdult book, and has some heavy and graphic sex scenes, including with April. The Challenges of Being Me is #youngadult and Lauren is very wholesome, which she also was in the first book. April’s story will have to be sex-heavy too, as that was a plot point of the first book. In your opinion, is it ok to have 1 #YA story sandwiched between 2 more explicit stories? #writingcommunity#authorsofmastodon@bookstodon@mastodonbooks
If I've written a novella set a "high school" level academy, but the character is older than her classmates due to health issues keeping her out of school (so she's 17 and her classmates are 14/15)
To save money for the house move I've been cutting down on the type of fiction I usually read and trying to get by on cheap crime paperbacks, and I'm sure you're just gasping to know how that's been working out for me.
Well, so far I've read "The Only Suspect" by Louise Candlish, which is a thriller about a murderer who, twenty years on, is threatened with discovery when the neighbors create a Nature Trail near the grave he dug for the victim. I quite liked it - the style is nothing fancy, and the editing is predictably bad, but it's fast moving and has a certain amount of psychological depth. And although some of the twists and turns are predictable, others are much less so, and the dozens of plot elements are fitted together cleverly.
I also read The Haven by Amanda Jennings, about a gaggle of posh Oxford students who enlist a bunch of like-minded souls and start a commune on Bodmin Moor. Needless to say they get a real Cornish welcome, but the real enemy is within the gates. This wasn't very good - too many details about sustainable living and not enough thrills until the end, and bad pacing and plotting (which ends up forcing a really horrible offstage ending for the novel's most likeable character). But the worst weakness is the poor characterization of the cult leader himself, who remains little more than a stick figure throughout.
I also tried to read Brotherhood of Shades by Dawn Finch, because the owners of that gite we rented were giving it away. It's a young adult fantasy novel from 2012, and it's wretched. I don't know how it got published, even when you consider the frenzy for YA at the time of its publication. One cliche after another, just a bunch of toxic shite about a Chosen One being inducted into yet another privileged supernatural bureaucracy to govern the souls of boring ordinary people. The modern-day tech worldbuilding is shit on toast and the bits set in the past are ruined by info dumping and terrible olde-worlde dialogue. The style is generally bad, but the most egregious thing about this novel, given that Finch is meant to come from a childrens' libraries background, is how pisspoor the children's dialogue is. Some of the adult characters speak OK but the hero, Adam, sounds like a robot impersonating a middle-aged man. It's actually quite concerning that somebody that deaf to real kids' voices and behaviour is even working in that sector, let alone getting published again and again by a Big 4 publisher.
Anyway, this was just another reminder that crime fiction has a higher overall standard than fantasy nowadays. On the plus side I scored an Amazing Free Gift of a Graham Green novel today, The Heart Of The Matter, at a brocante! I'm overdue a bit of quality, that's for sure.
THE ACCURSED is my first ever solidly YA fantasy novel & I am SO excited to share this adventure with you!
Teen heroine Elfled is the only "unBlessed" member of her family--never a problem until they flee political persecution. Without magical skills to see her through, Elfled has only wits & hopes in her fight to resist the forces driving her squarely into Evil's lair.
The latest free reviews on Bogi Reads the World: a fantasy graphic novel that was a pleasant surprise, a small volume of queer prose poetry, and a vintage YA science fiction book!
Do you have a 10 - 15 year old in your family who would want to try out my new, unpublished young adult sci-fi novel? I'm trying to see if the intended audience likes it or if I need to do major re-work. It's a complex, nonviolent story involving time travel, different dimensions, unicorns, fairies ... and snails who can type. It's filled with word-play, has a gender non-conforming main character, as well as a character with a lot of OCD.
I can send you a printed author's proof of the book. #YA
On August 4, 2151, the world will end. It's been a long time coming: climate disasters brewing conflict, conflict breeding chaos. But on that fateful day, someone will set off the nukes. On August 4, 2151, human civilization on Earth will fall silent.
From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Jennifer Donnelly comes a revolutionary, gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will forever change how you think about beauty, power, and what it really means to follow your heart.
A bisexual teen girl tries to make her ex jealous by faking an Instagram romance that leads to surprisingly real feelings in this hijinks-filled rom-com perfect for fans of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and She Gets the Girl .
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe meets The Sun is Also a Star in this YA contemporary love story from Jonny Garza Villa, Ander & Santi Were Here, about a nonbinary Mexican American teen falling for the shy new waiter at their family’s taqueria.
When a Mariachi star transfers schools, he expects to be handed his new group's lead vocalist spot—what he gets instead is a tenacious current lead with a very familiar, very kissable face.
#WordWeavers 2024-05-17 Have you ever written for other age groups?
I don't write for children, but preventing children from reading my stuff isn't my problem; that's their parents' job.
Besides, when I was 10 my idea of light reading was Stephen King, Anne Rice, Michael Moorcock, and Clive Barker. I sure as hell wasn't reading what passed for #YA fiction in the 1980s and 1990s; once you got past Judy Blume & Beverly Cleary YA was nothing but the print equivalent of ABC AfterSchool Specials. 🤮