It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’ve been deep in well, Internet writing and getting some other projects off the ground. Unfortunately, life has a way of keeping you from that vital bit of telling people what you need to tell them. Hopefully, I’ll be a little more proactive now. I also have google alerts to poke me. 🙂

 

Good news, one of  my stories is about to go live, possibly in the next week on Amazon Kindle.  Here’s a quick look at the initial cover, though I may be adjusting it a bit in the near future.  Ah, the joys of self-publishing, you get to do everything, in between glaring at George R.R. Martin and J.K. Rowling and their hoity-toity covers that have professionals designing them…

 

I may be putting some snippets of the story up in the near future, so stay tuned!

 

 

Young Adult writing, guns, racism…. and Boobs.

Stephanie Faris makes a very good point in her post about sex in Young Adult books.  It’s well written and I think points out a fact that all writers need to consider– target audiences are shifting.  As a substitute teacher, I’ve seen kids reading Twilight at age 10, and Lewis and Clancy at not much older.  Equally, in a changing market it’s important to avoid limiting the audience.

But there’s another factor here, one that goes beyond sex, and it’s the simple fact that children, even facing children, to say nothing of teenagers, have far more access to the world around them than we do.  Some teens have video and internet pals across the world– I know one girl who talks via internet and video chat with friends in Israel– and the West Bank.  She is, far more than I ever was, aware of the problems of the Middle East, whenever her Palestinian friend speaks of problems with the settlers, or her Israeli friend speaks of the tensions and fear she experiences whenever a rocket comes sailing over the  border– her contact is personal.

We get the same today when you can watch youtube video’s or face book postings about the tsunami in Japan, or more locally about someone being bullied via the internet.  Like it or not, children and teens are exposed to, and aware of far more than we were, and that includes sex.  Go to deviant art, and you’ll see examples of artwork and images that not too long ago would have been, if a teen had them at all, a deeply hidden (or at least we hoped they were hidden) cache in the bedroom.  Today, you can get it on the internet, and I’m picking DA for a reason- it’s actually quite mild compared to what else you can find.

Now, this doesn’t mean that YA writers should cheer and start writing sentences that start with “His pulsating Piston of Power,”  but you’ll have to accept that in the modern world of youtube and texting, kids, some of them quite young, may know a lot more about the world, and the dark places of the world, then earlier generations may have.  They may be more willing to talk about it, at least to their friends, and that means that the books they read had better talk about it as well.

 

 

A Green Sun has sold some copies!

A Green Sun, my fusion age novel, has sold a few copies. I won’t be threatening J.K. Rowling anytime soon, or Isaac Asimov…or well any author, but it is still a nice feel that someone out there felt eager enough to buy my book.

 

It’s an interesting feeling when a book sells.  A Green Sun was my first attempt at writing for publication, and writing a science fiction novel. So we’ll see what happens later.  Also, the link above goes to Smashwords– I know a lot of people go for kindle, so here’s the link for the Amazon Kindle Store: A Green Sun.

 

For those reading this who also published books in the past, what was your feeling when the ‘books sold” counter incremented +1?  Happy, Ecstatic?  Terrified that you were going to find out the reader thought your book was so bad it melted his face off?