What's Next…

It's funny to be thinking about what's next in my publishing career when my first book hasn't even gone to print yet. But that's what I did early this morning in talking to my agent about post-"Totally Wired" projects. It's funny — I didn't realize that YA books and children's books are completely separate divisions and that basically you have to write for one or the other or at least that's how you have to pitch your book. Tweens appear to fall more into children's books, while 17-year-olds should be able to relate to YA fiction. I'm sure successful authors [think: the Judy Blume's] can write books for kids like Superfudge and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and then write books like Tiger Eyes and Forever. What was so cool about her books was that you literally grew up reading them or grew into reading all of them. And now with multi-book series being so popular, you can't write just one, or at least make as much money up front off just one.

I learned this because initially I thought I could parlay my summer camp obsession into a series that started with a character who was 9 or 10 and literally grew up a little more each summer until she was about C.I.T.-age (15). I don't think my agent was telling me I couldn't do this, but was just explaining how many editors think and the marketing challenges of selling an age range vs. books for one age or the other.

My other idea is to write a book (or maybe a series!) that would essentially be fictionalized memoir — I don't know if this is just fiction for writers with limited imagination or who are too chicken to write a memoir, but it feels safe, familiar and doable since I've never really written fiction — you know, like a good place to start. I've blogged here before about growing up in Nashville and about my mom being a Jew who became an evangelical Christian. I think this theme: Growing up with a very religious parent as an adolescent could be a really cool theme to explore in a YA novel. Looks like it's time to rejoin my writing group again to see what evolves….

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