It's Getting Hot

Summer is slowly but surely descending down on us. We've had some 90+ degree days, and I'm already missing the cooler weather. Our air conditioner is running regularly in the afternoon now, and I'm dreading the high utility bills that will start coming up.

On the plus side, that means we're not outside as much, and I've spent more time writing. I'm plugging away, and Terra's final story is starting to come together. It's been bittersweet, especially since I've known the end from the beginning. It's just interesting to see the twists and turns along the way. Terra is really growing up, and even now I feel like I'm going to miss her once this is all done.

I've also been able to get some reading squeezed in here and there. Before I had kids, I could sit down and read for hours on end. That rarely happens these days, so I've been trying to make time for more reading. After all, reading is one of the best ways to become a better writer. What have I read in the past month? Life of Pi (I forgot how much I love the ending), The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimeaus is a great character), and Beautiful Creatures (I hope I don't offend any Twihards by saying the angst is just so much better written!). I just started Beautiful Darkness last night, and Days of Blood and Starlight (I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone, so I have high expectations for this one) is next in line.

Have you read anything good lately?

3 Main Character Types That Drive Me Nuts

As I've been working on several projects these days, I've been contemplating the female protagonist, because--let's face it--the main character in every one of my books thus far has been a girl. Probably because males are a mystery to me. I'm married to one, I have a father, I have a brother, I interact with guys, but they're just not what I know. And a rule of writing? Write what you know. I definitely know about being a girl :)

So many books I read these days (and I'm applying this general stereotype to YA fiction since I don't read a lot else) have flawed female protagonists. I'm fine with flawed. After all, I've never met a person who's perfect. But there are some female protagonists that just drive me nuts. Absolutely and completely. For example:

The Robot Warrior. See Amanda Hocking's Hollowland (if you're not too squeamish about the zombie violence, because it's pretty gory). Remy is so tough and so driven that I had a hard time relating to her. Especially when she decides to abandon a friend who had been attacked by zombies and barely gave it a second thought, but then two seconds later decides to adopt a lion she finds along the way. Because, you know, lions are basically great big kittens and she couldn't bear to leave it behind. Wait, what? Sure, the lion makes a great sidekick, so I could look past it. But Remy hardly gets a tender moment.

The Damsel in Distress. See Twilight. Sure I got sucked into these books and couldn't put them down for days. They're entertaining and Stephenie Meyer tells a great story. But when it was all said and done, I thought, "Good thing Edward/Jacob are there. Bella would be toast a thousand times over." She was a moper and pretty much helpless.

The Indecisive Girl. See The Hunger Games. Sure, Katniss could fire an arrow and outwit/outlast/outplay an arena full of blood-thirsty kids, but could she pick a boy to save her life? I know it was all in the name of the "love triangle." Peeta and Gale were both such great characters. They should have run as far as they could when they saw her coming. It was like a train wreck and they just couldn't look away.

The funny thing about these books? I really enjoyed them. They were entertaining to read. So it's a tribute to the authors that they could make highly readable books.

What kinds of characters drive you crazy?

It Raises My Hackles

So a recent article--"article" is a little generous here; it's more like an editorial rant--has been flying around Twitter, the blogosphere, etc. It's right here, if you'd like to take a read. And boy oh boy is it a doozy. And being a YA author, you can imagine how I feel about it. Oh, and Mr. Stein freely admits he hasn't read any of the books he mentions in his article. How's that for being uninformed?

Have you read a YA book that makes you think, that challenges the way you feel about life, that brings deeper meaning, that has characters and a story you can really connect to? Yes? So have I. Quite a few, in fact.

The biggest distinction between YA lit and adult lit is the age of the main character(s). YA books typically deal with character 14-17 years old. Adult lit is from there up. And to say that adults reading YA lit is embarrassing, is like saying that you're ashamed and embarrassed of your own adolescence, which maybe Joel Stein is. But those few years of my life helped determine who I am today. They don't shame me; they define me.

If I can't reach back and embrace that, then how will I find value from books written for the adult life I'm living now?

It's the Little Things

My sister-in-law sent me a text message last night. Apparently she had to tell one of her students to put my book away because he wasn't paying attention in class. It's small things like this that completely send me over the edge smiling. I love that people respond to my books that way. I sent her back a text saying about as much. I love my sister-in-law. She sends me these texts every once in a while, and they're the world's best therapy. Then she sent me a text back. The gist:

The boy had already read the book. And still he couldn't put it down.

Does it get any better than that?

I'll apologize to her, though, for distracting her kids from class. But secretly, I really don't feel too bad :)

For the Love of Reading and Writing

I was recently contacted by Cassandra Day, a young fan and aspiring writer, for an interview. You can check out said interview here.

I think it's awesome that tweens and teenagers get so into reading and so into writing. They're developing amazing talents and creating a lifelong friend in reading. My love of reading has been such a gift to me ever since I was little. I loved reading Berenstein Bears and Dr. Seuss and Amelia Bedelia. I could read them for hours. I remember when I was "too old" for those books and raiding my younger siblings' shelves for my old books, just for the nostalgia and pleasure of reading them again.

I devoured Walter Farley and Lloyd Alexander and choose-your-own-adventure stories when I got a little older.

I devoured just about anything I could get my hands on when I got a little older than that.

Today I devour whatever I can when I get a few minutes.

So when a young fan emails me and asks if they can interview me? Of course. If I can do anything to encourage their love of reading and writing, you better believe I'm going to say yes. Because I was one of those kids.

Reading: Elevation vs. Entertainment

I came across this article today, and the further into it I got, the more I couldn't believe what I was reading. Read for yourself and see what you think about it. And please leave a comment. I'm interested to get other people's takes on this.

I had several issues with this article. But the issue I want to address in this post is this: reading is either for elevation or entertainment. It can't be both (which is false in and of itself). And what really bothered me about it was the context: teens who are reading.

Maybe I'm more sensitive to this because I write YA novels, and teens are my audience. But I would argue (forcefully) that teens need to read for entertainment. Not just should, but need. Teens are at that wonderfully beautiful, awkward stage where they aren't children and they aren't adults. They're figuring out what it means to live and they're starting to figure out just who they might want to become. But they're not ready to become it yet. They're still growing up, and having fun doing it.

And it's in these years that they need to develop a love of reading.

Do you think that forcing on teens the classics: Homer, Shakespeare, the other long-dead authors named in the article, is going to teach them a love of reading? I'd say no. There were some classics that I enjoyed in my teen years, but most of the ones forced upon me in school made me gag. I've come to love them now, but back then? I think part of why I hated them was because I had to read them for school.

I'm not saying classics don't have a place in schools. They must. Using the classics helps teenagers learn to dissect books, find the themes and deeper meanings they might not have seen themselves, learn to delve deeper into what they're reading so they're not just passive participants.

But should we go so far as to say they can only read for elevation and not entertainment? No. If they're trained to think that the only books worth reading are those that "elevate," then they will never develop a life-long love of reading. I think that life-long love is a thousand times more important than to say you read the Odyssey. I mean honestly, who cares? The life-long love is what will allow that teenager, when he grows up, to be able to read just about anything he comes across and understand it and learn from it.

Oh, and Shakespeare wasn't writing to elevate. He was writing to entertain the masses. Just saying.

YA love

So I've loved to read YA fiction for as long as I can remember. Well, once I got past picture books and easy readers and middle grade stuff. Once I hit the YA shelves as a tween, I never looked back. I'd be hard-pressed to name ten adult books I've read. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. There was all of that literature (those italics are there to indicate that this was said with a snooty voice) I read in high school and college. And they're classics. They're amazing books. I do feel like they have rightly earned their places, and there is still amazing writing being done in the area of literature.

But YA fiction just grabs me.

I mean honestly, will I ever do a reread on Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina or Don Quijote again? No. Resounding no. And they were incredible books that touched me.

So what is it about YA fiction that I love? I was pondering this as I was looking through some friends' reviews on goodreads that were firmly in the adult literature category. And I came up with a short (but sweet) list. I realize that there are some huge generalizations here, but it's usually true. The list:

1. First love. There's nothing like the anxious, nerve-wracking, self-deprecating, fluttery feeling of the first time you liked someone. No, not just liked someone. Like liked someone. You know what I mean. And YA fiction is full of the stuff.
2. The creativity. It seems like just about anything goes in YA fiction. Wizards and witches fighting a wizard-gone-bad and who shall-not-be-named? Check. An International Paranormal Control Agency because paranormals are running amok? Check. Kids who have to fight to the death just because their power-hungry government says so? Check. Not to mention the mermaids, trolls, vampires, werewolves, and then the amazing more real-life situations added to books.
3. The conflicts. This is part of #2. Because of the range of topics, there are crazy, fun conflicts. There are plenty of the teenage-angsty kind of conflicts, but how about teen angst combined with a dystopian society that chooses everything for you? It's just delicious!
4. Fun. Sure, there are some YA books that are just heavy. But even serious YA books are more fun (to me, at least) than serious adult books. Something in the writing style, or something in the characters, or something in the plot that just leaves me more entertained than their "grown-up" counterparts.

Would I ever want to relive my teenage years? Not a chance! Too much braces, bad hair, awkward situations, and social craziness. But do I love reading it? Yes. Now excuse me while I go read about a girl who is in love with a fallen angel, has broken up with him, is seeing hallucinations of her dead father, and is feeling the teen-angst to the extreme.