cornerofmadness

As always Jana has some accomplishments here. and she's the only one as I did not touch Splinters or Torn Sky this week (mostly because I was whipping through stuff I'm fairly sure is publishable and so far no one has interest in my non-M/M stuff).

Today I wanted to ~~avoid cleaning house~~ talk about sexual situations in YA. This came up on Queer SF a little while ago and I didn't do much with the topic because I was wondering just how much control the author actually had about this. After listening to Maggie Stiefvater I had my suspicions borne out: the publisher has more control. I got the impression that she wanted maybe to do a wee bit more with her YA's and Scholastic was like no.

And keep in mind here, I do mean YA as in the 16-18 age group not the what we're calling middle grade group (where Percy Jackson and Harry Potter started in, the 12-15 year old group). I'm sure the newest subgenre of 'new adult' 18+ will let you do whatever.

I can tell Holly Black's publisher (I think it's Simon or is it Signet...) allows more because in every book I've struggled (and usually failed) to get through there is sex (usually bored/angry/unwanted) and drug use.

I guess my question is, as it has been for a while now ironically, is sex necessary at all in fiction? I mean on-page sex. I'm not going to argue it doesn't need to be there at all in YA, the idea that teens have sex. We know this to be true. On the other hand I'm perfectly content with leaving that up to the imagination of the reader. If we know Dick and Jane are in a relationship do we need more if it doesn't directly relate to the story? I argue, no we don't. If the reader wants to think they're having sex, great. If not, fine.

Sometimes the story IS about sex (or rape or abuse etc) and needs to be shown more directly. This is where I am in Splinters. Killian has been sexually abused his entire life. There is no doubt that his guardians are raping him. Later in the story when he tries to start a more normal, healthy relationship with Taz, this will be an issue for him. They don't do more than kiss in book one. I DO plan a sequel (it might be this year's nano) and in it Taz might want more (being 17 and thinking she can handle it, is the last virgin in h.s etc). So I would need to be frank.

It's interesting in my writers group where at least two of the men reading are insistent I can't possibly put that in a YA. It's obvious they haven't read many (and maybe don't grasp there is now a subdivision between YA and Middle Grade). I keep pointing out Holly Black's stuff. Because also in my story with Makai there is sexual connotations and I'm like yes, I CAN get away with this stuff. Seriously.

How do you all feel about it?

My friend ES sent along her weekly mass of writing links as usual and I picked us a couple.

Don’t hate the query letter. Oh please, I'll always hate it BUT this is so important and this link has good tips. Because some places ask you to help with the blurbs and if you think blurbs aren't important, go to Goodreads giveaways and prove yourself wrong.

the magic of TK. I use this all the time without knowing it had a name. I usually use ZZZ or XXX because it makes global searches easier and as

evil_little_dog will tell you, I don't always remember to go fix it!

Yearly word count -

30186 / 115000 words. 26% done!

Behind Blue eyes - I wrote over 2,500 words this week and I'm hosed. Seriously look where I'm at and I feel like this is only half way. It CAN'T be half way. If I made this a trilogy I wouldn't know where to break this story and start the next....

70057 / 100000 words. 70% done!

Splinters - Did diddly

SF short - did less than diddly