Y or Y not YA

Years ago, back in the days of my first blogging attempts (I think it was 1873), I’d asked someone to read the sample from Chapter One of House Valerius. They very kindly did and gave me some feedback. Now because I can’t locate the email at the moment, I can’t recall the exact wording but the gist of it was whether or not I should consider trying to market towards the Young Adult audience.

While I appreciate that there is a large potential readership out there for YA material, ultimately I made the decision not to.

My main reasoning at the time, and now, ties in a little with what I said last week. I’m honestly not sure I could write in the YA field. Not because I don’t read it. It may not be one I come to a lot but I have read some of the more famous examples as well as some YA material I’ve found through my Twitter peoples. This may sound a little patronizing, (and if it does, please be assured I don’t intend it that way) but if I was trying to write for that audience, I’d be worried about striking the right tone and keeping things appropriate.

When I’m writing, I tend to stray towards what I consider to be more adult material. Part of it is that I swear a lot, and so my characters do too. There’s also a fair degree of violence and (not a lot, but some) sexual references. Based on what I’ve read, I think it’s probably the first and last items there that would disqualify me. Strange as it may seem, I do often worry about offending people. Case in point was my most recent short story post.

I do think there’s a lot of good things about YA novels. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed the ones that I’ve read and I’m certainly in favour of anything that gets people reading. Like I said, I’m just not sure I could do it myself.