How YA doing?

I admit it.

I'm thinking of taking a walk on the wild side... or the YA side.

Young adult.

Actually, I'm doing more than thinking about it... I'm going forward with it.

I'm about 15% into my next venture, a YA humor/vampire book, and before I get too deep, I thought I should make sure that since my book is about teens, for teens and, um... other teen-stuff, I figured that I should make sure the characters are believable, the plot engaging enough to suck in a mind numbed by Playstation, the POV true and addicting.

So I was driving along the other day, and spied two neighborhood girls who had learned that a writer lived in the neighborhood, and ventured one day to come find me.

This time I went to them and asked them if they would mind reading the first pages and let me know what they thought.

Well, one thing led to another, and now I'm going to spend an entire day in their junior high as a guest of the school. I'm going to talk to classes, eat lunch with them, catch myself a couple detentions, and plan on having a rip-roaring time. The teacher who is coordinating everything even said she'd bring in some subs for lunch or something, and I said, "no way. I'm going to sit with the critters."

I'm hoping that sharing this time with them will help them get excited about writing, while helping my own meager attempts to humor, educate and entertain.

Then I'm going to take a page out of Joe Konrath's book, and will name every kid by first name and last initial in the acknowledgements ... can you say 'automatic sales'?

I'll let you know how it goes.

Norm

www.normcowie.com
The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness

(look for me at the Baltimore Book Festival Sept 28 and the Midwest Literary Festival (Aurora Il.) the first weekend of Oct.)