Falling between the cracks

[scalem X]

No reason I should "remember" that. But perhaps you should.

extremely funny, but totally irrelevant.

It's interesting that you say 12-14, Teresa. So the audience of say: 16-17 is the part that is left out? The part that reads either adult novels or nothing at the moment. The question is though; is there a way to reach those and fill up that hole in the market?

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think some of the packaged series books based on TV programs etc. probably appeal to teenagers in that group -- the ones who aren't avid readers ready to move on to adult books. The books aren't very challenging (on any level), but the characters and their situations are more mature, even if the writing isn't.

The thing is, that segment of the market is irrelevant for writers trying to sell their own original works.

[scalem X]

Maybe you're right and isn't there really a gap. If you use RL Stine as the example for YA, then I fear that once you his barrier, you'll be in the adult market anyway.

[Paramour]

I based my other novel series on RL Stine age group - readers market - and its in the process for Wendy Lamb Publishing. I've never struggled writing for children, since my nieces and nephews are so quick to offer advice and want to listen. "No, auntie, that just doesn't work. She needs to be sadder, not thinking so much. That's how I'd feel" I love my little gremlins, they're cute AND useful. It's a wonderful thing.


Thanks for the feedback, guys. I thought I'd give a bit more to go on, since the chopped up snippets don't really collectively show anything in particular. How about this? I think my style is YA, for the most part, but then again, I wrote this book based on the thought ' I'll write a book that I would want to read'. Not thickened with backstory or stuffed with fluffy descriptions. Its an easier read, but does that always make it YA? I wonder...

Here's that other scene, a whole one, perhaps that makes a bit of difference in the judgement?


_________________

“Draeden, give me the pack.”

Draeden’s lean strides faltered then stopped. Pivoting slowly on heel, he turned upon the parched dirt to face Hazin. The vampire had previously been trailing listlessly behind he and Moesin, spontaneously breaking into speech only to propagate an alternate route that had nothing to do with the glossy black dome that simpered on the desert soil ahead of them. Both Moesin and Draeden brushed off his ridiculous proposals, for both were brimming too high with anxious enthusiasm about plundering the exploits of the infamous Ebon Barb. The tone in Hazin’s voice as he demanded the pack, however, was enough to give Draeden and Moesin pause in their approach of the great dome.

“Why?” Draeden questioned. Subconsciously, he fingered the strap of the pack that lay strung over his shoulder.

“Just give it to me.” Hazin ordered again. His hand was offered out in demanding expectation, and, somewhat apprehensively, Draeden slipped the bag from his shoulder and transferred it into Hazin’s expectant hand. Quickly, Hazin snatched the loose strap and on the same momentum he swung the pack to his left and shoved it against Moesin’s chest.

“Put it on,” Hazin commanded. Moesin simply gaped back at Hazin.

“Are you—“

“Don’t talk to me,” Hazin snapped. “From this point on you do not speak to anyone, you do not respond to anyone nor do you address anyone, and you do not lift your eyes off the dirt beneath your boots the whole while we are in that dome. You are a pack mule slave and nothing more. Got it?”

In the silence Hazin offered to Moesin for his response, both Moesin and Draeden stared in open speculation at Hazin. Though they could not see it beneath his cloak, Hazin’s sharp features were twisted into irritated resignation, and the thin lines of impatience that furrowed his brow only settled more deeply into his expression as neither Draeden nor Moesin made a response.

“Look, you brainless pixie,” Hazin snarled at Moesin. “I know about this place. The vampires here hate wizards. More than that, they enslave them. Wizards are no better than dirt. They cannot make eye contact with a superior—which is any vampire—and you cannot speak unless I—who will be playing your master and don’t you dare argue—give you permission to speak. If another vampire speaks to you, hits you, spits at you, insults you, or so much as looks at you, you do NOT react. You keep your eyes down and your mouth shut. Wizard slaves do not go anywhere on their own, and almost all of them are collared. You do not leave my side, though you must follow a step or so behind me on principle. Understood?”

The astonished silence plaguing Draeden and Moesin fortified stronger in the wake of Hazin’s previous monologue. Moesin’s pale lips were slack and gaping as shock rendered him dumb.

“What…?” He swallowed and had to pause to shake his head as if the physical motion could expel the stunned stupidity from his mind. “Hazin? What the HELL? How in all the fires of Brimstone do you know all this?

“Never mind how I know,” Hazin growled in exasperation. “Just listen to me unless you want to get yourself maimed. That’s the general punishment for deviant wizard slaves: mutilation. So just do what I told you so you don’t walk out of there with half a face. It’s bad enough having to listen to you now. I don’t want it to be hard to look at you then.”

Moesin’s mouth dropped open as an angry retaliation, though Hazin immediately cut him off.

“Starting now,” He said. “You will not react to anything but an order that I give you. Look down now and don’t look up for anything. There are guards stationed at the dome’s entrance so you will need to look the part of a slave before we get there.”

Forsaking Moesin, Hazin wheeled on Draeden. “The vampires of Ebon Barb don’t give a damn one way or another about shifters. You’re just there. They won’t react to you but be damn sure that you don’t give them reason to dislike you. One wrong word from you could damn their opinion of your entire race forever. Oh, and don’t pay any heed to Moesin,”

Hazin added as he turned and began walking toward the dome. “From now on he’s the scum on your boot. Now let’s get this over with.”

Despite Hazin’s instruction to disregard Moesin, Draeden pivoted his attention back to the silent wizard. Moesin’s fists were clenched, his spine ridged with clenched muscles, and his expression pulled firmly downward into a drawling sizzle of pure, seething wrath. The narrow slots of heated fury that took the place of his eyes were fuming steadily after Hazin. It was at that moment, when Draeden had just noted that Moesin was glaring a sweltering hole into the back of Hazin’s departing head and not keeping them centered on the ground, that Hazin’s sharp voice floated back to them.

“Eyes down, slave.”

Moesin seemed to swell, as if his raw, indignant fury was straining against the seams of his flesh and bloating him with its inability to escape his physical prison. His silver eyes snapped to Draeden, and, for a moment, he held the shifter’s unsettled gaze. Then, he seemed to deflate in a sigh in spiritual relent. With an elaborate sweep of his upper torso and arms into a bow, he gestured Draeden on after Hazin in an ‘after you’ motion and dropped his eyes humbly to the ground.

Draeden’s lips toyed up into a smirk as he hurried to level his strides with Hazin’s. The vampire was moving swiftly, and already he had consumed a generous distance toward the dome. Ridge tension stiffened his spine. Draeden raised a brow in silent regard of Hazin, though a growl shot his way by Hazin sufficiently stilled his voice in his throat.

A resentfully appeasing silence weighed down above their heads the remainder of the way to the dome. Hazin and Moesin were both thoughtful in their lack of words, and Draeden was occupying himself with calculating the odd architecture of the nearing obsidian dome. Perfectly oval all around save for a smooth appendage, like a muzzle, that jut out on the side facing them. Built low, it was high enough to allow a man at average height to pass beneath just without brushing his head against the top. Beneath its ample shade, Draeden could just make out the pair of figures stationed precisely beneath the blackness just before the tunnel’s conclusion.

Moesin was simpering the entire approach, though he made a point to do everything Hazin instructed exactly. He was determined to follow-through with the slave semblance with a seething efficiency and was prepared to accept no nonsense from Hazin at the same time. Wondering if the other two had even noted his downcast eyes and obedient stance, he flicked his eyes up from the ground. The tunnel, now almost directly before them, startled him with its sudden proximity, and he just bit back a reflexive flinch. When a voice rang out from the shadowy depths, however, it was all he could do to grapple down a cry of surprise.