Running in Slow-Mo

Some days I zip along in my penning of Sapphire Reign and get so much accomplished and then other days writing 500 words is a tremendous effort. I wonder if picking a more simplistic storyline would have helped instead of going for something so bizarre and creepy. :)

Editing Kings & Queens, the book I'm close to shopping, is taking me forever. I keep thinking about audience and itch to tweak the narrative to make it sound less YA-ish. All but one of the POV characters are teens, and I write subjectively, with a close, deeply penetrating narrator, so the novel sounds youthful as a result. I wrote it for anyone who enjoys a story with well-rounded characters and a twisty plot, not just for teens.

I consider my audience to be both older teen girls and young women under thirty, and a sliver of teenage guys because I have an intriguing male protagonist, action, baseball and violence. But is it YA or adult? Publishers like you to choose one side or the other because they need to know how best to position it. The complexity and intricacy bring it right up to the crossover line, and I'm just not sure which side it will land on first. Most likely YA, with crossover appeal, so all my painstaking tweaking will be for naught. I can hear the Q & A now. Q. What made you decide to write for teens? And how did you adapt your style when you switched to adult fiction? A. ?????...I'm sorry, folks, our interviewee has left the building.

I'm just about finished, as my critique group has reached the end of my book, then I'll give it to my husband to proof my edits. So I'll be emailing queries very soon. Wish me luck.

Back to Sapphire Reign, my sequel to the aforementioned YA-ish book, which has three twenty-something adults, one preteen and one teen as POVCs. This one is definitely not YA. The tone is much darker, the narrative has greater breadth, the world is grittier, the killers are more vicious, and everything is askew. If my first book goes YA, do I shelve the sequel until I develop a readership? I'm not sure. They're both stand-alone works, but the second picks up threads from the first. I definitely want to hover in my suspenseful-mysterious-weird niche for a while. And my first book's positioning will determine what I work on next.

Ever feel like you're running in sludge because of certain details that are killing your creative drive? I love writing, it's all the extra things like finding a perfect tag for my works that boggle my mind, stress me out and slow me down.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.