YA Guy Presents... His 2019 Top 10!

Confession time: YA Guy didn't read as much YA this year as usual. There's a long story behind that, but here's the short version:

1. I was working on two distinct book-length manuscripts, which cut into my reading time.
2. In honor of my dad, who died in November 2018, I decided to read some of the books he'd loved. He tended toward epic-scale historical novels, so that left less time for YA.

But there's a happy ending to both of these stories: I did complete both manuscripts (one of which will be published in 2020, the other in 2021), and I felt closer to my dad after reading Giants in the Earth, Doctor Zhivago, and other similar classics.

And there's even more good news--I did read enough YA (and MG) in 2019 to compile a Top 10 list. In no particular order, here goes!

Jonathan Auxier, Sweep. The story of a girl who works as a chimney sweep in London, this multi-award-winning book showcases Pittsburgh author Auxier at his magical, whimsical best.

Jamie Beth Cohen, Wasted Pretty. A YA novel for the #MeToo generation, this book tells the story of a teenage girl's sexual assault by a family friend. The voice of the protagonist glows with honesty, authenticity, and acerbic wit.

Jim and Stephanie Kroepfl, Merged. What could possibly go wrong when the minds of dying geniuses are merged with those of teen hosts? (Hint: a lot!)

Clare Di Liscia, Neliem. A swashbuckling fantasy romance with a kick-butt heroine who, unlike so many in the sub-genre, genuinely merits the title.

Nick Courage, Storm Blown. Another Pittsburgh author (born and raised in New Orleans), Courage delivers a pulse-pounding hurricane saga told from the perspectives of the children--and animals--caught up in the storm.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer. Not exactly YA though narrated by a teenage slave, this meticulously crafted debut novel by the National Book Award winner is slow but exquisite and powerful.

Cadwell Turnbull, The Lesson. Another not-really-YA with several YA-aged characters, this debut science fiction novel set in the U.S. Virgin Islands during an alien invasion features a wonderful sense of place along with a historically rich examination of slavery and colonialism.

Mindy McGinnis, Heroine. "Harrowing" doesn't begin to do justice to this novel about an injured high school athlete's descent into opioid addiction.

Jessica Khoury, Last of Her Name. An outer-space retelling of the Anastasia story, with a cast of humanoid species, romance aplenty, and one of the most mind-blowing alien intelligences you'll find in all of sci-fi, YA or otherwise.

Joshua David Bellin, House of Earth, House of Stone. Book Three in the Ecosystem Trilogy. Soon to be Book Three in the four-part Ecosystem Cycle!

That's all for now, folks. I look forward to more great books in 2020!

YA Guy Reveals... The Cover to the Final Book in the Ecosystem Cycle!

YA Guy's initial conception for the Ecosystem series was to wrap it up in three books. But Book 3 didn't quite conclude the series to my satisfaction, so I decided to add a fourth and final installment (thus transforming the series into a "cycle" instead of a mere "trilogy"). Titled The Last Sensor, it's due to come out early next year (by my birthday, February 5, if I can swing it).

Today, though, I'm ready to reveal the cover, which is (if possible) my favorite in the entire series.

Pretty cool, huh? Here's the blurb:

Fifteen years ago, war nearly destroyed the City of the Queens. In the time since, Queen Rebecca’s reign has been marked by reconciliation between the Ecosystem and its people. With the aid of Chief Sensor Miriam and her husband Isaac, an era of peace and prosperity seems to have been assured at last.

But then a new and unparalleled threat arises: the Ecosystem itself is dying, and Rebecca is powerless to restore it. Joining the Queen’s guard in their search for a cure to this mysterious malady is teenage apprentice Hadassah, daughter of Miriam and Isaac. For her, the quest is deeply personal: she seeks word of her friend and guardian Sarah, the former queen of the city who has been missing for years. Hadassah’s journey will take her to the ends of the earth, to a place of legendary wonder, beauty, and danger. And it will require her to tap a source of power even the queens have never imagined if she is to save her family and heal her world.

So enjoy the cover, and let me know what you think! I'm really excited to bring this series to a close; it's been near and dear to my heart for many years, and I hope readers will be as pleased as I am with the places the final book takes them!

YA Guy Participates in .... The Fall 2019 YA Scavenger Hunt!

YA Guy loves Fall, and YA Guy especially loves the Fall YA Scavenger Hunt!

As you can probably tell by all the blue lettering in this post (not to mention the banner at the top), I'm on the BLUE TEAM this year, along with the other awesome authors you see below:

The YA Scavenger Hunt is a bi-annual event first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! Add up the clues on each BLUE TEAM page, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on our team! There are four contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! But don't delay: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will be online only until noon Pacific time on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6! (I'm also running a personal giveaway during the same period of time.)

HOW IT WORKS

Directions: In the author biography below, you'll notice I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the Blue Team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you follow this link and fill out the form to qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally. Anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, October 6, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered. For more information, follow this link to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

Personal Giveaway: In addition to the prizes named above, readers who enter my personal giveaway will have a chance to win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series! Like the Hunt itself, the personal giveaway is open internationally. See below on how to enter!

Got all that? Then let's meet the author I'm hosting, C. Lee McKenzie!

C. Lee McKenzie loves to write for young readers. Mostly she writes contemporary/realistic Young Adult novels, but when she writes Middle Grade, they’re all about fantasy and adventure.

Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative, and Sudden Secrets are four of her published YA novels. Her next YA book, Not Guilty, will soon be released by Evernight Teen. She has an MG trilogy: Alligators Overhead, The Great Time Lock Disaster, and Some Very Messy Medieval Magic. She also has a stand alone MG called Sign of the Green Dragon. Add them all up, and though it's not quite 22 novels, it's pretty close!

To find out more about the author, follow this link to her website or visit her favorite social media hangouts:

Twitter: @cleemckenzie
FB: https://www.facebook.com/cleemckenzie

About DOUBLE NEGATIVE: "My life was going, going, gone, and I hadn't been laid yet. I couldn't go into the slammer before that happened." —Hutch McQueen.

Sixteen-year-old Hutchinson McQueen is a big time loser. Trapped in a dysfunctional family, his one thought is escape, but everything he does to get away lands him in trouble.

Shackled by poor reading skills, he squeaks through classes with his talent for eavesdropping and memorizing what he hears. When he shoplifts and lands in juvenile detention, the court sentences him to a county youth program. There he meets the priest and Maggie, a retired teacher. They’re determined to set Hutch on a path leading away from trouble. Hutch is determined not to cooperate.

It isn’t until he’s facing serious charges that he confronts the truth—his own bad choices are trapping him. When he's offered the freedom he craves, all he has to do is take it.

To buy the book, follow this link!


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But wait, there's more! I'm also running a personal giveaway, in which one reader will win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series: ECOSYSTEM, THE DEVOURING LAND, and HOUSE of EARTH, HOUSE of STONE!

On a future Earth, Nature has evolved into a planet-wide predator, and only those with the psychic power known as the Sense can survive. When seventeen-year-old Sarah sets out into the Ecosystem on a mission of vengeance, she must face the Ecosystem's deadliest creatures and travel to its most terrifying places. And she must decide whether to save the boy she loves at the cost of losing everything else she holds dear.

You can enter my personal giveaway by using the Rafflecopter form below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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The Fall 2019 Hunt is over, but there are still a few hours to enter my personal giveaway. I'll announce the winner soon!

YA Guy Reads... Classic Plague Novels!

YA Guy will admit that the title to this post is perhaps the weirdest I've ever written. But as I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm not only a YA writer; I also have a doctorate in American literature and teach at the university level. What this means is that I read a lot of non-YA literature, and sometimes, I find that it dovetails with the YA I read (and write).

That seems to be the case now, though I'm not sure exactly how or why I started reading the genre I'm currently reading: classic novels about plague. Plague novels are super-popular right now, in both YA and non-YA: we have zombie plagues, hot zone plagues, superbug plagues, and so on and so forth. No doubt this plague craze has to do not only with actual medical threats but with generalized anxiety about the state of the world.

And I suppose, though I've never written (and have no plan to write) a novel specifically about plague, all of my novels are similar to plague novels in that they're about people surviving against hostile environments: the desert-plus-monsters environment of the Survival Colony novels, the sentient, predatory Nature of the Ecosystem trilogy, the threatening exoplanet of Freefall. Come to think of it, the draft novel I just completed does feature a disease as one key plot element. So when I started reading plague novels, maybe I was preparing for my own next book.

Anyway, here are the top three classic plague novels I've read, in order of the date of publication. I wish I could say "enjoy," but like all books of this sort, these three are pretty grim.

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). Written by the author of Robinson Crusoe, this is a fictionalized account of the 1665 plague in London that killed nearly 100,000 people. Defoe's book relies on archival research, testimony from survivors, and other sources, but its narrator is pure invention, as are some of the incidents. That makes it an early example of experimental, hybrid fiction (or creative nonfiction). Coincidentally, the novel I wrote my senior year in college was titled after Defoe's work, which I'd heard of but hadn't read as of then.

Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826). Almost one hundred and fifty years before Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend, Shelley wrote this novel of a worldwide plague that leaves no one but the narrator alive. Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is sometimes considered the first science fiction novel, and you could call this book the first post-apocalyptic novel (unless you think of the Book of Revelation that way). It's nowhere near as influential as Frankenstein--and, truth be told, it's nowhere near as well written, with the first 100 pages in particular being full of turgid prose and Romantic excess--but it's still quite an accomplishment.

Albert Camus, The Plague (1947). Originally published as La Peste, this novel tells the tale of plague descending on a twentieth-century city in French Algeria. Narrated by one of the town's doctors--who avoids death himself but loses his wife, ironically, from an unrelated illness she's escaped the city to cure--the book can be seen as an allegory of the German occupation of France or, more generally, as a work of existential philosophy, with the plague standing for the human condition of inevitable death and capricious fate. Either way, it's beautifully written, focusing much more on people's diverse reactions to the pestilence than to the graphic details of plague itself.

YA Guy Reviews... NELIEM by Clare Di Liscia and WASTED PRETTY by Jamie Beth Cohen!

YA Guy has a confession: I haven’t read much YA this year. There are lots of reasons for that, starting with the fact that I’ve been catching up on some literature I want to teach (and alas, I don’t have the opportunity to teach YA). But since I am YA Guy, I did read two really great debuts/new releases that I want to recommend. Both are similar in being the stories of young women growing to maturity during difficult times, though one is cast in the fantasy mode and the other in contemporary realism.

The first is Neliem, a YA fantasy by debut author Clare Di Liscia. This action/romance is very much in the “kick-butt heroine” vein, which I don’t always enjoy; at times, I feel that the character of the strong, capable, physically active YA heroine has become a mere reflex on the author’s part without context or nuance. Happily, that’s not the case with Neliem, which offers a fully realized, flesh-and-blood main character who kicks her share of butt while remaining complex and convincing.

The narrator and protagonist of Neliem is Oriana, a teenage girl living in squalid poverty on an island nation that’s fallen under the control of the mainland conquerors her people name Untouchables. Her prospects are bleak; many of her fellow islanders have died of the plague that almost took her, and those who survive eke out an existence of penury, servitude, and near-starvation. Oriana draws strength by imagining herself as the legendary hero Neliem, a savior of the poor and unprotected. But when Ezra, an Untouchable boy possessed of all the wealth and power Oriana can only dream of, unexpectedly chooses her as his bride in a coercive ceremony she has little choice but to obey, she’s whisked away to an alien world and forced to live in the household of a husband she can’t trust. Whether she can become the hero she longs to be drives the action of this novel, as Oriana uncovers the truth of the Untouchable culture and of the boy who claims to love her.

I won’t give away whether Ezra truly loves Oriana, but I will give away that I did. She’s a remarkable character, fiercely drawn and richly layered, provided with a credible personal and social history that makes her thoughts, feelings, and actions utterly believable. She can be scared and overwhelmed one minute, risk-taking and bold the next—but she’s never, from first page to last, anything less than fully real. The world she inhabits took me a bit longer to settle into, probably because Di Liscia doesn’t rush the world-building but lets the details emerge gradually. This approach makes sense, inasmuch as we’re discovering the world through the relatively inexperienced Oriana’s eyes, learning it as she does. The result is a fascinating plunge into an alternative reality that feels both fantastic and familiar, which is what the best fantasy novels achieve.

From YA fantasy, I turn to YA contemporary realism with Jamie Beth Cohen’s debut novel Wasted Pretty. I’ll admit I was sold on this book from the first page, which opens on a summertime film screening at Flagstaff Hill in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park, circa 1992. Yes, these screenings are real—they’ve been going on for years, and in fact my first date with my wife was at one such event! So as a lifelong Pittsburgh resident, I had an immediate connection to the world Cohen recreates.

That wouldn’t have been enough to hold my interest, though, if the main character's story weren’t equally strong. Cohen’s narrator is sixteen-year-old Alice Burton, daughter of a radio DJ and a mother who’s developed a line of health foods (and tested them on her daughter, enabling Alice to shed pounds and show the world a newly curvy body). That’s good in one respect—it attracts the attention of college student and aspiring grunge rocker Chris Thompson—but it also garners the unwanted advances of professional baseball player and family friend Karl Bell. An act of sexual assault traumatizes Alice just as other parts of her life seem to be falling apart as well: her dad’s gambling addiction is preventing him from keeping up with tuition payments to her private high school, her relationship with her best friend is feeling the strain of boyfriends and beer bashes, and the enigmatic Chris Thompson clearly likes her but won’t fully commit to her. Spanning a turbulent summer, Wasted Pretty paints an unsparing portrait of a young woman coming to terms with who she is and what she wants from life.

The disturbing scene in which Karl Bell assaults Alice is the novel’s centerpiece, with everything else connected to it in some way. But there’s no shortage of marvelously realized scenes to choose from in this novel (perhaps my favorite being the nicely understated scene in which Alice and her father overcome their estrangement to share a meal at the neighborhood Friendly’s). Cohen gets the local and period details right, delving into the music groups, hair and clothing styles, and high school party culture of the day; she also gets the interior details right, with Alice’s pain, confusion, hopes, and anger coming through with perfect timing and clarity. The butterfly on the book’s cover becomes a multilayered symbol for the transformation Alice undergoes, with all its struggles, possibilities, and triumphs intact.

You don’t need to know Pittsburgh to love Wasted Pretty. You just need to know someone like Alice—and we all do.

YA Guy Shares... Artwork from HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

If you've read HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, the final novel in YA Guy's Ecosystem Trilogy, you know that there's an illustration at the end representing the family tree of the Queens who are featured in the trilogy. The artist, Jessica Khoury of Lizard Ink Maps, produced the stunning line drawing, and I couldn't be more thrilled with the results.

Or, then again, maybe I could--because as a special favor, she produced a mind-blowing full-color version of the illustration, using a technique that simulates the look of stained glass. Here it is in all its glory!

Nice, huh?

This is, by the way, one of the pleasures of self-publishing; though I enjoy publishing books the traditional way as well, it's unlikely I could have convinced a publisher to include an extra illustration in my book. With self-publishing, it's all up to me!

Enjoy the artwork, and let me know what you think!

YA Guy Hosts... Malayna Evans, Author of JAGGER JONES AND THE MUMMY'S ANKH!

YA Guy is excited to introduce debut author, friend, and agency sibling Malayna Evans, whose middle grade novel JAGGER JONES AND THE MUMMY'S ANKH comes out on May 28! To me, this historical fantasy-adventure, first in a series set in ancient Egypt, sounds like it rivals the Kane Chronicles series by Rick Riordan, so I can't wait to read it. I asked Malayna to talk about her path to publication, and she responded with a story that's both bittersweet and empowering for aspiring authors everywhere!
I always wanted to be a writer … in the same way my eleven-year-old daughter wants to be a mermaid. It’s not that I didn’t mean it. I did. I even went back to school to earn grad degrees in ancient history, in part because I thought a few fancy pieces of paper might magically transform me into the next Margaret George or Madeline Miller.

Then life happened. And believe it or not, my mermaid job never magically materialized.

And then, life happened some more. In the midst of a family crisis, I took my son, then nine, to lunch one day for a heart-to-heart. I don’t know how we ended up talking about ancient Egypt. At the time, we both adored the topic. (Sadly, one of us--now sixteen--has outgrown it). After a depressing debrief, perhaps we just wanted to lighten the mood. It’s the following moments that are still clear in my mind. He asked me what ancient Egyptians looked like. I told my beautiful, biracial son he’d fit in well. And he said someone should write a book about a kid who looked like him in ancient Egypt.

When my son and I drafted chapter one, it was a parenting exercise, something for us to work on together during a rough spot.

When I kept writing, it was a hobby to spend time on as I found myself with a lot more free time on my hands than I was accustomed to.

When I finished a full draft, tracked down real feedback, tossed the first manuscript in the trash, and started again, I began to wonder: could I really land a job as a mermaid?

I didn’t know at the time how hard it is for unpublished authors to get an agent, or find a publisher, or actually launch a book into the world. In retrospect, my naivete might have been a blessing.

I did know I wanted to write a book that featured bright, creative kids--kids like my two little people--on a memorable adventure in ancient Egypt. And I wanted to share my passion for history with middle school kids, and make it fun enough that they’d enjoy learning, or, better, not even realize there was learning involved.

When I landed an agent, I thought my big mermaid-break was just around the corner. Turns out, as hard as that was, it was only the start. Fortunately, my fabulous agent, Liza Fleissig, has the patience of a mollusk. She stuck with me, helping me improve the work until it was good enough to send out. It took a minute (okay, a few billion minutes), but eventually she found my series a home.

Book one, Jagger Jones and the Mummy’s Ankh, is scheduled to be released on May 28th from Month9Books. And no, it doesn’t mean I’m a professional mermaid now. Turns out, most authors need regular-old-human day jobs. But it’s a start. And the goals that animated my pursuit are in sight. If kids read this book and see themselves in Jagger and Aria, or discover an interest in the ancient world, I’ll coin myself a successful mermaid … and quite possibly track down a seashell-drenched tiara to don. Because mermaids may not be real, but celebrating life’s accomplishments should be!

About the Book: Jagger Jones is a whiz kid from Chicago's South Side. Ask him anything about Ancient Egypt, and Jagger can fill hours describing all that he knows. But when he and his precocious little sister Aria fall more than three thousand years back in time to the court of Amarna, Egypt, Jagger discovers a truth that rocks his world: books don't teach you everything there is to know. Mummies, pyramids, and cool hieroglyphics make awesome movie props, but the ancient court of Amarna is full of over-sized scorpions, magical amulets, and evil deities determined to scare unwanted visitors away. If Jagger and Aria are to return safely home, they must find nine soul-infested gemstones, defeat an evil general, save the royal family, and figure out how to rescue themselves! Armed only with Jagger's knowledge of history and a few modern objects mined from his pockets and Aria's sparkly purse, the siblings have exactly one week to solve supernatural riddles and rescue the royal family. If they can pull it off, Jagger Jones just might return to Chicago a hero.

About the Author: Malayna Evans, author of Jagger Jones and the Mummy’s Ankh, earned her Ph.D. in ancient Egyptian history from the University of Chicago. She’s used her education to craft a magical time-travel tale set in ancient Egypt for middle graders. Malayna lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with her two kids, a rescue dog, and a hamster named Pedicure.

You can learn more about Malayna on her website: http://malaynaevans.com
Or you can follow her on social media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Malayna
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malaynaevans/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/MalaynaEvans

To preorder JAGGER JONES, go here:
https://www.amazon.com/Jagger-Jones-Mummys-Malayna-Evans/dp/194867162X/

YA Guy Proudly Presents... The Ecosystem Trilogy!

Well, it's finally done. The Ecosystem Trilogy, a project YA Guy's been dreaming about and working on for years, is completed, released, and launched. The three books are out there in the world, and I hope readers enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

To celebrate the completion of the series, I'm running a promotion for the Kindle e-books, each of which is on sale from May 2 through May 6 for only $0.99. By my calculations, that means you can buy the whole series for a mere $2.97. If you're interested, here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/Ecosystem-Trilogy-3-Book-Series/dp/B07Q3YN7QB

Thanks for tagging along with me on this journey. Traveling through the Ecosystem with you has been one of the best adventures of my life.

YA Guy Launches... HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

YA Guy was happy to find a big box o' books on his doorstep a week ago, heralding the arrival of copies of HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, the third (and hence final) book in the Ecosystem Trilogy.

That's a lotta books, isn't it?

Anyway, today--Earth Day, 2019--is the book's release date. (The first book in the series, Ecosystem, released on Earth Day last year, with the second book, The Devouring Land, tucked in between.) I'm personally very proud of this series, into which I poured a lot of my heart and soul, and I hope readers will enjoy its futuristic vision of an Earth in which the natural environment has become a collective sentience bent on humankind's destruction--and of the brave people who try to come to some sort of reconciliation with Nature. Yes, it's an allegory for our times--but even more, it's an exciting adventure story with a fiery protagonist, tons of action, and really cool monsters. So check it out and order a copy today!

Or, if you're in the Pittsburgh area and would like a signed copy, you can check out the book's launch party, which takes place next Tuesday, April 30. Here's all the information you need:

I hope to see some of you at the party, and I look forward to hearing from you about your reaction to the Ecosystem Trilogy!

YA Guy... Reveals All!

Okay, YA Guy admits right up front that the title of this blog post is misleading. I'm not revealing ALL (because trust me, you don't want to know!). But I am revealing the cover to the third book in the Ecosystem Trilogy, HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, which releases April 22 of this year (Earth Day, of course). Here it is, in all its glory:

Two notes about this cover.

First, though I love all of the covers my design team produced for the Ecosystem series, I love this one the most. Something about the colors, the layout, and the totally cool circlet they created based on my description in the book--perfect! I hope you like it too.

Second note: this is yet another thing I love about self-publishing. I woke up this morning and said, "Gosh, I feel like revealing the cover to my book," and so I did it. No permission needed. No hoops to jump through. Just me, on my own, doing my thing. Nice!

Let me know what you think about the cover, and I look forward to releasing HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE to the world!

YA Guy Can't Wait for.. These 2019 Books!

YA Guy's always on the lookout for great books. Here are five from the first half of 2019--all but one of them for young readers--that I'm particularly excited about. I'll freely admit that I have a personal connection to each of the five authors (heck, I'll even tell you what that connection is), but at the same time, no one's paying or even prompting me to promote their books. I've listed them in order of release date--and the first one on the list comes out a mere week from today!

Louise Cypress, NARCOSIS ROOM (February 19). We share an agent and (sort of) a moniker--she's the YA Gal, I'm YA Guy--but one other thing we share is a love of twisty, creepy sci-fi stories. Her latest, set in a world where one's looks and identity can be surgically enhanced--or destroyed--will definitely freak you out in the best possible way.

Jessica Khoury, LAST OF HER NAME (February 26). I've loved Khoury's books since her debut, ORIGIN, and I love space operas. (I also love the artwork she drew for two of my own recent novels.) Her latest is a sci-fi retelling of the Anastasia story set in a distant galaxy, and it's just what I need to get through the wintertime.

Kat Ross, INFERNO (March 15). Way back in 2014, Ross and I met as members of a debut YA novelists' group. Since that time, she's put out some of the highest quality fantasy novels I've read, including two series that span the centuries and are linked by common characters. INFERNO, the final book in the Fourth Talisman series, promises to be yet another wickedly fun adventure into the worlds of the weird, the monstrous, and the undead.

Cadwell Turnbull, THE LESSON (June 18). Currently one of the rising young stars in science fiction, Turnbull was once a student of mine at the college where I teach. But trust me, I didn't teach him how to write this novel, a wildly imaginative tale of an alien race that settles for unknown purposes in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Nick Courage, STORM BLOWN (July 16). Pittsburgh author Courage writes the kind of books my kids loved when they were still kids. (Now the one in high school reads ancient history, and the one in college reads what she has to read for her classes.) His latest, which focuses on children battling a hurricane, sounds like a high-energy thrill ride.

YA Guy Has... Trilogy Fever!

The final book in YA Guy's Ecosystem Trilogy is due out in April (on Earth Day, of course). Titled HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, it completes a series I first dreamed up in 2011 and have been working on pretty much nonstop for the past two years.

So I figured, while we're waiting for Book Three, what better time than now to offer readers a discount on Books One and Two? From today (which also happens to be my birthday!) through February 11, you can purchase the e-books of ECOSYSTEM (Book 1) and THE DEVOURING LAND (Book 2) for only 99 cents each. That way, you'll be all caught up on the adventures of Sarah, Isaac, Miriam, Leah, and the rest as they battle the Ecosystem, search for love, and defend the City of the Queens--just in time for the release of HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

Here are the links. Enjoy, and let me know what you think about the Ecosystem Trilogy!

Buy ECOSYSTEM here

Buy THE DEVOURING LAND here

YA Guy Defines... Success!

What does it mean to be a successful writer?

For many writers--and, perhaps, for the general public--"success" means six-figure advances, bestseller status, big-ticket awards (including those just announced for this year's very deserving Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz Award winners).

By that definition, most of us--including YA Guy--are abysmal failures. Given the very nature of publishing, the very nature of any business venture, most people don't achieve that kind of success. Most of us plug along somewhere in the middle, perhaps making some money, perhaps not, perhaps making a career of it, more likely not, perhaps winning an award or two, perhaps not, but never becoming household names.

I've been writing since I was about eight years old. (Actually, earlier than that, but it was around age eight that I tried to write my first novel--on my mom's manual typewriter. After a page of typos and frustration, I gave up.) Since that time, and with increasing frequency from the year I started college (1983) to the present, I've produced numerous creative nonfiction essays, short stories, academic books and articles, and partial or completed novels. Some of the above has been published, some of it hasn't. None of it has skyrocketed to fame. But all of it, even the things I didn't finish for one reason or another (because the idea wasn't as good as I first thought, because I ran out of steam, whatever), has been written.

So I decided to pursue a different definition of "success," one based purely on page totals. In my calculations, I ruled out academic books and articles, as well as short pieces (fiction and nonfiction), and focused on novels. The numbers are skewed downward by that decision, considerably so, but since novel-writing was and is my highest aspiration (as it is for many writers), it made sense to me to narrow my output in that way.

For purposes of this quantitative analysis, I estimated a completed novel (whether published or unpublished) at 300 manuscript pages (except for my earliest novels, written in the years 1981-1987, which tended to be shorter, so I averaged those at 250 pages per novel). An unfinished novel--either one that I've discarded permanently or that I'm still working on--I assigned an average of 100 pages. With those estimates, here's what I came up with:

In total from the years 1981 (when I completed my first novel at age 16) to the present, I've written roughly 4,750 manuscript pages of novel-length works. This breaks down as follows:

• On average, I've written 125 pages worth of novels per year over a period of 38 years, or about a page every three days.
• Narrowed down to the years of my greatest productivity, from 2010 to the present, I've written about 3,900 pages, for an average of 433 pages per year. That's over a page a day for almost 10 years.
• Limited to completed novels, it works out to approximately 3,300 pages or 366 pages per year.
• Confined further to completed and published novels, it drops to about 2,100 pages or 233 pages per year. However, that number is unacceptably low--because, of the seven novels I've started but not finished, only three of them have been completely abandoned, so the other four might be considered "on their way" to completion and, hopefully, publication. Ditto with the four novels from 2010-2019 that are completed but unpublished; two of them will never see the light of day, but one is currently being shopped by my agent and the other I plan to self-publish.

The point is, any way you slice it, I've been pretty productive as a writer of novels throughout my life, and especially in the past decade.

Dare I say I've been successful?

Maybe yes, maybe no. If the almost 5,000 pages of novel-material I've produced in my lifetime have been complete and utter garbage, then maybe I'm less successful than delusional. But on the other hand, even if those pages have been junk, I've written them, and writing counts for something in and of itself. I like to think my success as a writer has been like my career as a writer: somewhere in the middle. No, I'm not one of the great writers of my own or any time, but I'm not a hack either. I'm a writer like most writers, producing as much work as I can that's as good as I can make it.

I hope this exercise doesn't seem merely a pep talk to myself. My purpose in conducting it was to offer words of encouragement to the many writers who are in the same place that I am: people who've been writing for years without the obvious signs of "success" that some writers have achieved. I'm thinking it would be a good idea for those writers to take the time, now and again, to redefine "success." You can do it quantitatively as I've done, or you can find some other qualitative measure: satisfaction, personal growth, positive reviews, the stranger on the street who recognized you. All of those measures (and many more) are valid, and validating.

So be a successful writer. Your own kind of successful writer.

YA Guy Hosts... Erica George, author of WORDS COMPOSED OF SEA AND SKY!

YA Guy is delighted to introduce my friend and agency sibling, Erica George, whose debut YA novel, WORDS COMPOSED OF SEA AND SKY, will be published in 2021. That seems like a long way away--but as Erica so eloquently narrates in the following post, her writing journey, like so many others', has been long and unpredictable. (I can relate: though I've wanted to be a writer since age eight, I didn't publish my first novel until age forty-nine.) For all of us who dream of publishing novels, Erica's story is a true inspiration.

So enjoy the post, and make sure to follow Erica on Instagram and Twitter so you can keep track of her as she continues her journey!

Benjamin Churchill first appeared to me when I was thirteen years old. It was a rainy December night, and my family and I were driving home from having seen a production of A Christmas Carol put on in Princeton. I was consumed by the concept of change, whether we were all capable of change, or if, for some of us, it was too late.

I think that’s why he materialized that night, riding a horse, keeping pace with the car—to help me explore this question.

When I got home, I crawled into bed, pulled out my trusty notebook from the nightstand (I still keep one there, by the way), and wrote down everything I knew about Benjamin Churchill, a character that would stay with me for twenty years.

He’s changed a lot since then. He’s been British, he’s been American, he’s been in the Navy, the Army, and then finally I decided he was going to be a whaler. He’s been surrounded by multiple casts of characters, he’s been the main character, and now he’s a supporting character. He’s also been shelved for most of this time.

I’ve always been a writer, a teller of stories, but I didn’t think I was capable of being published until after college. I had just completed my teaching degree and was working with a group of fifth graders. We were reading a fairy tale retelling (that no one was particularly fond of), and one of the students said, “You know, I think you could write a better version of this.”

It was a challenge, but I did it. Having no idea what to do with a completed manuscript (well, at least I thought it was completed), I sought the advice of my neighbor who I knew was a writer as well. She invited me to join her writer’s group, and that’s where everything really started coming together for me.

Writing is a fairly solitary occupation, and it’s easy to be intimidated and keep your work to yourself. This was the first time I was sharing my writing with a group of like-minded people. I received feedback (some positive, some constructive—mostly constructive), and I kept working. Finally, when I felt like I had polished my fairy tale retelling, I decided to attend the New Jersey conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Something must have possessed me, because I also signed up to pitch my book to an agent.

As I waited in line for my turn, I kept rereading my pitch, trying to memorize every word. I was shaking. I was sweating. I could just picture myself trying to describe my book, something so personal and close to me, to someone who just wouldn’t be interested or see my vision. Finally, I sat down in front of Liza Fleissig, took a deep breath, and got halfway through my pitch before she stopped me and said, “I want you to send me the whole thing.”

You’d think the shaking would stop there, but no. Cue more incessant nerves.

Liza signed me as an author at the Liza Royce Agency in 2014, and I was positive, absolutely certain, that it would be smooth sailing from that point forward.

Only no one can truly prepare you for your personal voyage to publication. I figured that because it had been so easy to secure an agent, my book would obviously be snapped up in a second by an editor. That book ultimately didn’t go anywhere. My next two made it farther than that, but ultimately went nowhere as well.

Writing is hard, and giving up is so much easier. But I’ve wanted to be an author since I was little, since I sat in the children’s section of my local library, piling up books to bring home and devour. Books were my constant, and I knew that simply reading stories wouldn’t satisfy me forever. I had to write them. I had to hold my own book in my hands.

It was only this past year that Benjamin Churchill resurfaced for me, and this time, he took the form of a Yankee whaler. He was always tied to the sea, but I finally realized where he belonged, what his story actually was.

My Young Adult novel, Words Composed of Sea and Sky, debuts in Summer 2021 from Running Press Kids/Hachette. It’s told in two alternating points of view, one of Michaela, a girl living on present-day Cape Cod, writing poems in an effort to escape her home life, and the other of Leta, a girl living in the same town but during the height of Yankee whaling, who also uses poetry to escape the social conformities of her time.

You’ll find Benjamin Churchill among the pages, too.

About Erica: Erica George is a writer of Young Adult fiction and a graduate of The College of New Jersey with degrees in both English and education. She resides in scenic Hunterdon County, New Jersey, but spends her summers soaking up the salty sea air of Cape Cod. Many themes of Erica's writing rotate around environmental activism and helping young people discover their voices. You can find her writing, whale watching, or engrossed in quality British drama with her dog at her side.

Twitter/Instagram: @theericageorge

Website: www.ericageorgewrites.com