Techno Fleur

When your brain scatters a bit like mine does, it’s important to set goals. I have annual goals, monthly goals, weekly goals. It’s nice to have a list you can check. Makes you feel productive.

Part of my list of goals this year is to stop being such a bleemin’ dinosaur. I know how to wire the electrical system and fix the plumbing in my house, but when it comes to computers and related technology, I tune out. When stuff breaks, I sheepishly get the scowling geeks at my computer repair shop to fix it.

No more. I’m learning how to download stuff, go on Facebook, blog, etc. My hope is to eventually figure out how to have my writing available for readers to download. Because that’s where the future’s at, right?

I find it fascinating to read how innovative authors find ways to get their work out there, like M.J. Rose’s blog, and the past few posts on J.A. Konrath’s blog. Check it out, if you’re in publishing. It's the future.

A Wish List

I was browsing Amazon the other day, searching for some good YA mysteries. And after a little aimless searching (okay, a lot of aimless searching), I always wind up looking for new books by my favorite authors. Favorite authors who, for some reason or another, haven’t published anything new of late. Authors I wish would get crackin’ already. Warranted or not (Laurie Halse Anderson seems to be crackin’ all the time, for instance).

Here’s my wish list. If you’re any of these authors: please, get writing. On a mystery, to be exact. I’ll send you a steady supply of peanut M&Ms, whatever it takes to get you to sit your talented rear in the seat and get your fingers a-dancing on the keyboard.

Here ‘tis:

Gail Giles
Laurie Halse Anderson (a follow-up to Chains, to be exact)
Nancy Werlin (a mystery, please)
Marcus Zusak
Tedd Arnold (your kids books look nifty, Mr. Arnold, but I would love to see another YA mystery by your hand…)
S.A. Harazin

Who’s on your list?

Echo

I spent the weekend cleaning house, and getting my to-read pile prioritized, looking for YA mysteries. I managed to read Echo by Kate Morgenroth, which was pretty good, and just the right size at 137 pages.

Meet Justin, who’s starting to lose his marbles a little. His brother Mark died last year, leaving Justin to pick up the pieces. Justin loses his best friend, girlfriend, jock status, and general stature in high school. We’re along for this dark ride into the abyss of his life, trying to figure out along the way how brother Mark wound up getting shot, and whether this was really Justin’s fault, or if Justin’s just going crazy.

Echo gets to be quite the mind trip, which I really loved. And there was no fluff here either—something I really appreciate. There’s been plenty of opinionated bloggery about the right length of a manuscript, and I’ve had my own work rejected because it was too short. Echo proves that economy in words is a craft, not a liability.

Nice read.

But not a mystery, unfortunately, since our lead is not solving a crime—it’s happening to him, more than anything else. This is YA crime fiction, I would say. A worthy read, but alas, not a mystery.

Still, I’ll be looking for more of Ms. Morgenroth’s work. If you have a free afternoon or evening, read this one. It has all the quality of short fiction, with the emotional challenge of a YA. And does it get much better than that?

I think not.

Friday Links

I’ve been a good girl this week: I actually edited a manuscript I’d been avoiding. Bad news is, that means not so many links for your Friday. But I did find a few:

Hey kids! Want to read books about difficult topics? YPulse has an article on Point of View, Penguin’s department for novels covering ‘difficult topics.’ This would be teen pregnancy, anorexia, suicide—the fun stuff.
In all fairness, some of my favorite authors (Laurie Halse Anderson and John Green, for instance) are part of this new Point of View marketing effort, so I’ll give it some benefit of the doubt.

I actually went to Borders and their new Teen Ink (see previous blog post) department—was pleasantly impressed with this dedicated teen area. Lots of books, only one wall dedicated to Twilighty things, and easy layout for browsing the stacks. The benches were a little uncomfortable, but I’ll take them over beanbags any day. Kudos to Borders. May you make lots of money off your teen readers with disposable income.

For you YA writers: send your shorts to YA Literature Review for their mag, and Rebel Books for their upcoming anthologies. I can’t take credit for finding these markets though; I found them on the brilliant Sandra Seamans’ blog—this girl is very serious about keeping up on short story markets. If you’re a writer, I suggest you bookmark her page.

More linkage for you YA writers: check out the Springfield Library’s links page. Some good stuff there.

Have you written a fabulous mystery novel? Enter the 2010 St. Martin’s Minotaur/MWA First Novel Contest. Lotsa rules, so do your homework.

From Patricia Abbott’s great blog: if you’re in Ann Arbor this Friday, go see Megan Abbott, Theresa Schwegel, and Tasha Alexander talk about their books at the Aunt Agatha Bookstore.

And check it out: they’re building a Harry Potter theme park in Florida. Sounds like fun.

Check It: The YA Mystery Checklist

Now that I got my Edgar rant off my chest, and my soapbox has been reinstated as a coffee table, I thought I should think about criteria for my list of YA mysteries. Since everyone else seems to be so liberal with their interpretation of the genre.

So here are my four must-haves:

1. Must have a mystery as the central plot. This means the solving of the mystery has to be at the front of the story, and at the top of lead character’s list. Navel-gazing and peer pressure allowed, but it had better while on the way to catch a bad guy. Or while washing the blood off your hands, or something equally mystery-worthy.

2. Must contain a crime, punishable by law. This was a tough one to add, but in light of recent crimeless ‘mysteries,’ I want to add this clause. Puzzles are cool, but crimes are better.

3. Must be YA.

4. Must have been first published within the last five years. The Face on the Milk Carton was a great book, but it’s about time we found some new YA mysteries to talk about. And no reprinted 'classics' either.

That’s it. I’m off to my bookstore.

Game on.

The 2009 YA Edgar Nominees, or Fleur Found Her Soapbox

I’ve now read all the 2009 YA Edgar nominees, in case you’ve been hanging around the blog long enough to remember when I started this exercise. The point, for me anyway, was to see what’s happening in YA mystery today—what does it take to make the YA Edgar shortlist in 2009? I wanted to know.

And I was kind of… well, disappointed, if you want to know the truth. Don’t get me wrong: all of these books are worth reading—some should even be required reading, I think. But out of all of these, only one was a mystery. In my opinion.

Two of the nominees’ sole crime was a case of peer pressure/bullying-gone-wild (Getting the Girl and The Big Splash—though extra points for this one’s originality), one was a chase for a girl who was not really missing, so no real crime there either (Paper Towns), however nice the writing. One was a literary masterpiece (Bog Child), but not a book where the protagonist is solving a mystery—he’s just surviving his environment. There was no chase, no detective work. The only book that made the cut, or my cut anyway, was Torn to Pieces. And it didn’t even win—but let’s forget that for the moment.

I’ve spent a lot of time arguing the point that every book is a mystery, that all books have unanswered questions, so mysteries in them.

But I was wrong.

There is a distinct difference between the definition of a mystery in general, and a book that is labeled a mystery. I won’t go into label/genre definitions, because we could be here all day (and nobody wants that). I’ll put it this way: if these books weren’t written for teens, they wouldn’t be filed under mystery (with Torn to Pieces as the exception). Simple as that. They don’t explore human nature through crime, they don’t have the mystery or crime as a central plot element, and would be filed under general fiction if you took out the YA component.

So what’s the big whoop, you say. They’re good books, you said so yourself.

But these are Edgar nominees! These are supposed to be the year's best in mystery YA—what gives? Where are the YA mysteries?

Why, if mystery and suspense is one of the bestselling categories in fiction written for adults, is the genre so sadly represented in YA? Plenty of mystery and crime on TV. Why not in YA fiction? Are we afraid the kids might get squeamish? Or is it really the parents and librarians we worry about? Plenty of librarians who love mystery, I meet them all the time at fan conferences. So why so few mysteries in YA?

I want to know. Because I love mysteries. Mysteries explore human nature in an ultimate show-don’t-tell fashion. The best literary novels I’ve read are filed under mystery. The genre has merit, dangit. And I’m convinced that this category is neglected in YA. Just look at the Edgars this year, if you don’t believe me.

So what to do, Fleur? Well, I’m changing my blog description: I’m no longer finding the mystery in YA, I’m just looking for mystery books in YA. And every time I find one, a bonafide, true mystery with a crime in it that someone is solving YA-style, I’ll list it here.

I’m a little ticked off by how lousy mystery is represented in YA, if you haven’t figured it out yet. And I found my soapbox again. Lucky me.

Buzzin'

Some books get all the publicity, marketing money—you know how this works. And I certainly have nothing against Dan Brown. The man worked hard to get where he is.

But to even out the odds a little, buy something else, M.J. Rose said in her cool blog. So for me #buy+brown: Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd.

Pass it on. Share a book you’re excited about.