Why I write YA

WHY I WRITE YA

As an avid reader, I will pretty much read any genre that comes my way. I don't discriminate against genres.

When I started reading as a child, I was obsessed with R.L. Stine. My parents had a clothing store at the mall and I would spend hours at the bookstore, sprawled all over the floor reading Goosebumps. Whenever I came across any kind of money at all, it would go toward a book, which at that age felt like such a mature thing to do. As I started growing up, and although I kept reading Stine’s books, my taste became a little bit broader. Now, however, whenever I had money I spent it on clothes or going out with my friends, and that is why I began reading my Mom’s books. She, like I, has to go to sleep with a book in hand. And so there were plenty for me to choose from, however her genre was a little different that mine, she loved romance novels. Think Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele. And so I began daydreaming of handsome and romantic men that would come sweep me off my feet; that's when the romantic in me was born. I went on, for years reading anything my mom purchased. The DaVinci code drove me wild!

But it wasn’t until I was told about Twilight that I became a DIE HARD reader. I was working at the hospital at the time. I had taken a very lunch break and so I was completely alone in our break room. On the table was a paperback of Twilight. The TV wasn’t working and so I picked it up, after all, I had half an hour to kill. OH MY GOD, the half an hour disappeared. I don’t know how it is possible, but time fast forwarded! I had gotten so into the story that by the time I came up for air it had been an hour! I was so busted. Reluctantly I put it down and headed back to work. I couldn’t concentrate, I had Meyer’s story engraved in my mind. 7pm came around and I bolted to my car. I didn’t go home, I told my Mom I would pick up the kids a little bit later and drove like a maniac to the bookstore. By then, the first three were already out, so I bought them all. It might have taken me a week before I had read them all. I was ADDICTED. Since then I have read all four about 10 times each, and every time, it’s like the very first.

It was because of the Twilight saga that I decided to become a writer. I wanted readers to feel the way Meyers had made me feel. To become the character and have a break from our everyday lives. I wanted to create an escape that readers would want to escape to.
And so my genre of choice was easy, Young Adult. It is the genre I like reading most.
How many of you were told by a parent, aunt, grandmother how we would one day miss our teenage years? How we would one day want to turn back time and be in high school again? Everything my Mom has ever said to me and was brushed off as “Yeah, right. Whatever” has come true. And so, what better way to re-live those days than by creating my own?

The Young Adult genre is not just for teenagers, it is for everybody that misses those days and wants to, even if for a few hours a day, go back and reminisce. YA is also for the teenagers dealing with the realistic issues sometimes mingled in the stories, in the case of Feathermore, bullying. I was bullied when I was younger and I completely stand against it. It breaks people and scars them for life in one way or another. For adults, as I said before, YA is a getaway to times already passed.

What is your genre and why?