YA: On the Fringe of Adulthood, On the Fringe of a Genre

I was given the opportunity to write about a YA topic of my choice for a guest blog post on All-Consuming Media, and boy, I had so much to say. The whole genre classification thing is a bit limiting to me, and sub genres can get a little out there too, unless we're talking SciFi. The books I tend to enjoy the most are the ones that don't quite fit into any one genre, they're the misfits on the bookshelf. On a multiple choice test, they're "D. None of the Above". If I had to put Celia on the Run in between two books on a bookshelf (imagine for a moment the ebook was a real book and please know I wouldn't dream of comparing my writing to these awe-inspiring authors), I would put it in between In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith, and Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson. I remember when I first began shopping my manuscript around in the summer of 2010, I purposefully left out the genre from my query letters because I was quite concerned with misleading anyone into thinking my writing was suitable for children. Celia on the Run is a story about young adults, and is appropriate for SOME young adults, but not all. I searched the web, looking for a simple tag for a not-so-simple book, and kept getting similar information, saying YA is classified as fiction FOR young adults or ABOUT young adults, so that's the route I ended up going.

In the end, once I had finished writing the guest blog post for All-Consuming Media, I finally figured out how to describe the genre of my debut novel: It's YA with a slap in the face.

Read the whole article here: http://tigersallconsumingbooks.blogspot.com/2012/07/guest-post-ya-on-fringe-of-adulthood-on.html