Hello to you all,
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Today I’m talking to two girls, Sue and Verity. Welcome and thank you for sharing your thoughts on YA books with us. You told me you’re both avid readers.
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Sue: Yes, we are. We both get through about three books a week.
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Verity: That’s right. We spend a lot of our spare time reading and talking to each other about the books we have read.
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Sue: Mmm, it’s all to do with our Great Plan!
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Trish: That sounds intriguing! Can you tell us more about your Great Plan?
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Verity: It all started when we went on a holiday last summer…
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Sue: We’d both brought several paperbacks with us and I had my Kindle loaded with new reading material.
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Verity: For the first three days we swam in the pool, sunbathed and read. And then we started talking about the books we were reading. We had similar tastes – contemporary YA romance.
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Sue: We were getting in a bit of a rut with our reading material actually, so we decided to read a wider range of books to see what other genres we might enjoy. I downloaded a thriller and Verity started to read a Sci Fi book that someone had left in the hotel lounge.
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Verity: Yes, then we compared them. I didn’t really enjoy the Sci Fi book – it was all about a pretty grim future world. Everyone seemed depressed.
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Sue: The thriller wasn’t all that good either – the ending was predictable.
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Trish: Oh dear. Did those two books put you off those genres?
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Verity: Not quite. To make it fair, we decided to read three books of each of those genres before we made up our minds.
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Sue: Yes, and I enjoyed one of the mysteries, it was full of twists and turns. I liked two of the Sci Fi books I read.
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Verity: I enjoyed the thriller and one of the Sci Fi books Sue liked.
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Sue: By this time, we were back home and back at school. We decided to continue our research into books for YA readers. We each chose two more genres and read a book in that genre and made notes and compared them.
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Verity: So we could get through more books, we decided that if we didn’t like a particular book, we’d make a note of why not and move on to something else.
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Verity: Then we formulated the Great Plan!
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Sue: We are going to invent a new genre of YA fiction that hasn’t been covered up to now! So, we’ve set ourselves the task of finding out about as many genres as we can to make sure we’re not copying someone else’s idea.
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Verity: Once we’ve completed our reading target, we’re going to co-write a novel that will be absolutely unique! And we’ll be famous authors!
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Sue: The setback to all this is that other writers may copy our style, so we’ll have to make sure we copyright our genre idea before we go public to make sure that we get the credit for it.
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Trish: I’m very impressed! I haven’t heard of this idea before! You’ve given yourself a quite a challenge. I hope you enjoy researching all the different genres - reading lots of books is a nice way to pass the time. You’ll have to keep us posted on how you are getting on!
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In the meantime, can you recommend any of the books you have read so far in your research for YA readers?
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Verity: I’d recommend This Lie Will Kill you by Chelsea Pitcher. It’s a thriller. A boy gets mysteriously killed at a party, then a year later five of the teenagers that seemed to be involved in his death are invited to a contest in a deserted mansion. The prize is a load of money, so they don’t stop to think, ‘Hey, this is a bit suspicious!’ When they get there, they begin to realise what it’s all about and that at least one of them is in danger and may end up dead, too!
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Sue: I really enjoyed Lord of the Abyss by Nick Caiman, a fantasy novel. It’s about Henry, a normal teenage boy, who suddenly finds his life turned upside down when his father is sent into another dimension. With the help of some mystical creatures, he sets out to find his father.
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Well, thank you for sharing your ideas with us today, Sue and Verity! I wonder how many different genres there are out there? Can anyone give us an answer? What is the most unusual genre you have heard of?
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Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to share your ideas with us. I'm always lining up new readers and writers to appear on the blog. Please email me if you'd like to be included. Or if you'd like to comment on any of the interviews.
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(Don't forget, I change the names of all the readers I speak to, to protect your privacy.)
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Until the next blog, Bye for now,
Trish
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