Tag: Young Adult Fiction

Young Adult vs. New Adult – What’s the real difference?

young adult or new adult on blackboardAll these categories: Young Adult, New Adult, Adult… it can get confusing. Some may have graphic sex, some don’t, some shouldn’t. They all target different age groups. How can someone tell the difference?

Because of all the confusion, there have been many articles written about this and there’s even a Wiki page explaining what the New Adult genre actually is. Since I’ve written in both genres, I’m going to give you my own take on what I think YA vs. NA really means. Continue reading “Young Adult vs. New Adult – What’s the real difference?”

How Kids Make Books Their Own

Author Jacqueline DooleyGuest post
by Jacqueline Dooley

When I started writing my first book, Doorways to Arkomo, I knew I wanted to reach readers around age 10 through about 13 or 14 – an age where kids still believe in magic (I hope), but are old enough to crave a story with real depth and breadth.

My own experience as a young reader was constantly on my mind. I used to get so obsessed with books that I’d read them again and again. It was kind of personal – the experience of reading and loving a book. But this is an old fashioned notion in today’s world of oversharing.

As an author, I didn’t (at first) fully appreciate how much things have changed for young readers since the days I’d quietly obsessed over my favorite books – graduating from Roald Dahl to Terry Brooks to Stephen King as the eighties turned into the nineties. Continue reading “How Kids Make Books Their Own”

Why Write YA?

Back in the misty reaches of time, books came in two types: fiction and non-fiction. It was usually pretty easy to tell the two apart. Fiction was a story someone made up. Non-fiction was supposed to be the opposite.

Then, in 1876, a guy named Melvil Dewey invented a system to organize and categorize every type of non-fiction book. Not long after, the concept of genre fiction was born – although we can blame Aristotle for the idea, as his Poetics was (apparently) the first attempt to categorize dramatic works as either comedy or tragedy.

Regardless, by the early 1900s – aided and abetted by marketers – fiction was being sliced and diced into ever more numerous categories. Wikipedia’s entry on genre fiction lists nine genres, each with corresponding subgenres. The entry on fantasy subgenres, for example, lists ten categories when sorted by theme, or five when sorted by setting. Several of these subgenres have sub-subgenres, and many overlap with subgenres of other genres. Paranormal romance falls into both the fantasy and the romance genres. Or sci-fi, if the magic happens on another planet. Or historical, if the magic happens in the past. Or young adult, if the magic happens to teenagers. Continue reading “Why Write YA?”

Meet the Author: T.J. Perkins

Author T.J. Perkins

T.J. says her writing style is fun and imaginative. She says, “I write with such vivid imagery that the reader can’t help but to see the scenes unfold in their minds. You can’t help but put yourself in the main character’s shoes.”

She finds her inspiration in bits and pieces from every day happenings in her life or from others. She then twists them, shapes them and bends them into something so unreal that she says it could be real. That sounds like a typical Saturday night for me.

T.J. says the hardest part of writing is starting a story and ending a story. She says she will go walk and exercise to work out a situation and find a resolution. Continue reading “Meet the Author: T.J. Perkins”