Young Adult Award (not a Hugo) Ratified!

Those who have followed this blog over the years know that I’ve been pushing for a YA Award to be a part of the Hugo Awards for a few years. Previous reports about it can be found via the links at the bottom of this post.

During Worldcon 75 this year in Helsinki, Finland, the question of a YA Award came up again at the business meeting. The previous year's YA Award Committee report was to cover its decisions on the following questions:

Will the award be named for a person? Will the award be called ‘YA’, ‘teen lit’, or some other such thing?

Alex Acks reported on the Hugo Awards rules changes at the Business Meeting – nominations, Best Series, and, most importantly, the Young Adult Award.

The committee report given last year at Sasquan had a good breakdown on how various other awards determined what was YA, what was middle grade, and the pros and cons of using marketing categories. The YA Committee decided that the Award should be treated like the Campbell Award (not a Hugo), so that a strict definition of what constitutes YA wouldn't be needed, nor would a word limit (which is what determines several of the categories of the Hugos).

However, the Committee couldn't decide on a name for the award. They created a committee to collect and evaluate name ideas.

The report from the YA Award Study Committee listed the names they collected via several surveys. It went into their naming considerations: should the award be named for a person or an idea, were there other awards already using the proposed name, and several other points. One point that a few people missed at the Business Meeting was that, if a personal name of an author was suggested, the committee also looked at whether the author's other works would somehow reflect negatively on the award. They eventually decided against personal names for the award.

The Committee came up with ten names on their shortlist. Those ten names were run past a group of people knowlegeable in cultural diversity and cross-cultural sensitivity. Those ten names were then put on a Public Shortlist Voting Survey which people could vote on from January 15 through March 15, 2017. They had both a Facebook and a Twittter page from which they promoted the survey, and those of us following the whole award debate also passed on the news about the survey. The final name chosen by the Committee after all that was Lodestar.

I recommend that anyone interested check out the Committee's report. There were quite a few names suggested by people and the Committee did a fantastic job checking and evaluating each one.

The name will be ratified at the 2018 Business Meeting in San Jose. The Business Meeting in Helsinki (after a lot of procedural backs and forths*) voted to ratify the Young Adult Award (Not A Hugo) 65-27. And there was much cheering. The Young Adult Award will be on the Hugo nomination form for the 2018 Hugos. Yayy!

Hopefully the Business Meeting in 2018 in San Jose will ratify the name as the Lodestar Award. Which will work out nicely for the 2019 Worldcon, which will be held in Dublin, Ireland. The Guest of Honor for that Worldcon has already been announced, and the GOH will be Diane Duane! (I highly recommend her YA Young Wizards series)

What do you think of the YA Award (not a Hugo)?

* Seriously, a lot of back and forths. If you really want all the details, Alex Acks detailed it in a liveblog starting at 1116. And running until 1245 (whew).

Sherlock Holmes in High School

A guest post by my friend Tammy Garrison about her new YA book:

***********

As a kid, I picked up a hefty volume called The Boy’s Sherlock Holmes from a grade school that was closing, and was liquidating its library. It looked like something I would be interested in, despite being obviously labeled as being ‘for boys.’ But that was the way of most things I liked; Batman, Star Wars, hockey, you name it. I know now that this was not my experience alone, that girls and women felt alienated from geek culture, and before the Internet, there wasn’t an easy way for a teen of limited means to meet up with like minds.

I didn’t pick up this book just because it was ‘for boys.’ I had a genuine interest. I’d spent my fair share of Sundays watching old Rathbone movies, not to mention various cartoon incarnations of Sherlock Holmes that I had a fair idea of what I was getting myself into. But going back even further, my first and formative introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes was a CBS movie of the week entitled The Return of Sherlock Holmes that aired when I was seven years old. It took place in the modern day, and Watson was a woman. It was an accessible gateway for a grade schooler who always had to be He-Man when we played after school.

The stories held my fickle attention from cover to cover, but there was really one thing missing from most of those tales: women. I was hardly a child feminist, in fact I had grown up in a confusing era where Barbie could be an astronaut, but women were still continually implied to be lesser than men, and the male experience to be superior to the things women were supposed to like and do and be.

Most girls just accepted that we’d never be Luke Skywalker, that regardless of how cool his lightsaber was, we’d be better off liking Princess Leia with her many hair and costume changes. I just barely managed to hold onto my dream of being Batman, regardless of my youthful crush on Tim Drake’s Robin, and the existence of Batgirl. I didn’t want to be the lesser spin-off character. I wanted to be The Main Guy. Since, y’know. Guys were more important than girls.

Everything comes back around again, and at a low point in my adult life, battling severe and debilitating mental health issues and the crushing self-esteem blow of unemployment, I sat down on a warm and sunny November 1st, at the start of National Novel Writing Month with only one goal in mind: to write the most self-soothing, self-serving thing I could possibly produce. If the world didn’t care about me, then I didn’t care about the world.

I decided to write not the story that I wanted to read, but the story that I had needed growing up, and still needed now: the story of a girl Sherlock Holmes, brilliant but alienated, surviving the ins and outs of high school with her best friend, a Watson who was athletic and smart, but maybe less noticeable than she thought she should be.

Over thirty days, I came up with a story that was exactly what I needed in high school to tell me that I was ok the way I was, that my interests weren’t wrong or weird and that, in fact, there is nothing lesser about girls and that they can do anything, even be self-involved detectives. It became a bit like shojo manga, but without the love interest, since one of my peeves is every young adult story needing to have some sort of romantic plot, preferably the dreaded triangle. It was all of the elements I wanted in a story involving one of my childhood heroes, and I was absolutely certain no one would ever read it.

It took me forever to edit it and get through two more drafts. Years, even. Due to this terrible fear that I was somehow wrong for writing it, and anyway, who would publish an alternate universe Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock Holmes is a teenage girl in modern America?

Eventually you get sick of looking at a story. You want to murder it, or burn every copy and chastise yourself for ever wanting to write the thing. That is the point where you send it to others. After the usual rounds of reading, typo fixing and comments, I decided to pull the trigger and fire it off to MX Publishing, a house I was familiar with, due to the number of pastiches I had read over the years. Crazily enough, they also decided that shojo teenage Sherlock Holmes was something they wanted to add to their catalog.

And that, my friends, is how the story of an awkward girl who grew into an awkward adult who wrote the book she needed to read.

The Twisted Blackmailer: Watson & Holmes Book 1 is available directly from the publisher: http://www.mxpublishing.com/brand/Tammy+Garrison

Or from Amazon as a paperback and Kindle book: https://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Blackmailer-Watson-Holmes-Book/dp/1787050246

The e-book is available now, and the paperback is available December 9th.

From the back of the book:

Nothing's ever easy when Sherlock Holmes is involved. Joanna Watson needs sports and academic scholarships if she is going to make it all the way to med school. That means keeping out of trouble, and her school record squeaky clean. But upon befriending the mysterious New Girl, Joanna has her perfect record ruined, skips school for the first time in her life, and finds a blackmailer aiming a gun in her direction. All she knows is that she's going to get grounded... if they get out of this alive.

For more information
http://tammygarrison.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4050764.Tammy_Garrison

Young Adult Award (not a Hugo)

During WorldCon (MidAmeriCon II) this year the question of a YA Hugo came up again at the business meeting. The previous year's YA Award Committee as per the 2015 report was due to report on its decisions on the following questions:

Will the award be sponsored like the Campbell’s? Will the award be named for a person? How will the votes be tallied? How will the category be defined? By age, by marketing category, or by general ‘teen’ designation? Will the award be for science fiction/fantasy or speculative fiction? Will the award be called ‘YA’, ‘teen lit’, or some other such thing? Will there be a word length limit, such as 40,000 words? Details of the sunset clause? The issue of dual eligibility?

The Sasquan report has a good breakdown on how various other awards determined what was YA, what was middle grade, and the pros and cons of using marketing categories.

The report of this year's YA Award Committe doesn't have a direct link (yet). It can be found starting on page 37 of the pdf of the WSFS Agenda for the Business Meeting. If you don't want to read through the pdf, the good news is that the YA Award Committee decided that the Award should be treated like the Campbell Award (not a Hugo), so that a strict definition of what constitutes YA wouldn't be needed, nor would a word limit (which is what determines several of the categories of the Hugos).

The bad news is that the Committee couldn't decide on a name for the award. The report goes into their decisions against naming the award after any one particular author. Instead, they recommended, if the award proposal passed, to create a committee to collect and evaluate name ideas. Which means an actual award would be delayed at least another year.

The Facebook page for YA Hugo Proposal posted that the YA Award proposal passed. That page will also put up links to where you can submit suggestions for the name of the award once links or an email is announced.

For those interested in the procedure of the meeting, Rachael Acks Liveblogged from the Business Meeting on August 19, 2016. The section on the YA Award is 1015-1029. The August 20 meeting covered the YA Award from 1144-1201 (there's also a quick summary).

Here's hoping next year's WorldCon in Helsinki will finally see the creation of a Young Adult Award!

Friends

Friends and friendship are usually an important part of middle grade and YA books, no matter what genre.

Making friends, keeping friends, helping friends (or being helped by them), singling out a best friend - if these aren't the main focus of the story, they're usually a subtheme.

With most of the middle grade stories I've read recently, the friendships are always centered around school.

How well does that reflect real life? Even keeping in mind the real life changes among generations?

I'm of the generation that was shooed outside to play on our own. Friendships developed around kids in the neighborhood, no matter what age. We didn't all go to the same schools, though, so most kids had a different set of friends at school. And then came home to play with the neighborhood friends.

Nowadays, parents arrange playgroups of kids around the same age, who may or may not live within a few blocks. Next is preschool, so another set of friends, again of the same age. School may separate out some friends and add new friends.

If books are to be believed, once you start school, you leave all your other friends behind and focus only on school friends. Is that the case in real life? Or is this just for the convenience of the story?

At what stage do friends become friends because of shared interests, rather than because of location? When I was in elementary and high school, I was the only one of my friends who read science fiction. I didn't make friends who shared my interests until long after I had graduated.

Some middle grade and YA stories list friends by their characteristics, rather than as a person. One friend is fashion-savvy, another is the sports expert, yet another is bookish while one likes to cook, etc. Just writing that sentence reminded me of the ponies in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Though I guess friends can be friends because they like each other, not for what they can do for each other or what interests they have in common.

What have you noticed about friends and friendships in middle grade and/or YA stories? What ones do you like?

Emotions!

Everyone has emotions! Even Vulcans, though they try to suppress them.

And yet, I remember when growing up that my favorite stories were ones where the main character remained calm no matter how desperate the situation was. My favorite television characters were Mr. Spock in Star Trek and Illya Kuryakin in Man From U.N.C.L.E., both very good at hiding their emotions.

That might have been the writing style of the time. I might have been drawn to those books either because as a middle child I had learned that only the youngest child was taken seriously for over-reacting, or because I had been told that the only way to survive a bully (not referring to my youngest sister there) was not to react to them.

When the style changed so that "teen angst" became a thing, some authors seemed to go a bit overboard. Characters came across all sounding the same, like a spoiled youngest child, even if he or she was the eldest.

MG and YA changed again, and so did what was popular. First person POV could allow a reader to feel the character's emotions while the character could tell themselves to try to hide what they felt, to be cool.

Which style appeals to you?

I'm looking forward to seeing "Inside Out" Friday. I'm writing this blog on Thursday, so my reactions will be added late on Friday after the matinee. (For those looking for a review, Gloria Oliver will probably have a link on the Facebook page for YA Authors You've Never Heard Of to her review at some point).

Just from looking at the first trailer, I liked the idea that the emotions were broken down to five - Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, and Sadness - with all others being some variation of degree of those five. What's cute is that each of the emotions for each person has something identifying the person - the mother's hair style and glasses, the father's mustache. Interesting that the mother's emotions are depicted as all female, the father's are all male, yet Riley's are male and female. Maybe that will change as Riley grows older. Sadness seems to be in the lead for the mother, while Anger seems to be in charge for the father's emotions. But perhaps I'm over-analyzing too much from just the first trailer.

Some of the trailers raised other questions. For one, I do wonder how Disgust knows what broccoli is before the infant Riley (or even the other emotions) learns even the name of the vegetable. And, since baby Riley had a positive experience (after Disgust and Anger had their say), why is Anger so upset years later that broccoli is on pizza? I'm not hunting down other trailers or the website, though, until after I see the movie, as I want to see the movie without being spoiled.

UPDATE:

I'm still processing my reactions. Gloria Oliver's review is here, for those looking for a review. I didn't get any answers to the questions I had coming in to the movie, and the writer in me has a few more "Why?" questions coming out. But I did like it - the artwork is great and the world inside the characters' heads has been well-built.

What do others think?

Middle Grade and Young Adult

At this blog we tend to use terms like "middle grade" and "YA", with the assumption being that the readers will understand them. I've been on a number of panels lately at science fiction conventions where questions from the audience demonstrated that people don't always understand the difference between the two labels. Even what YA is has been a major source of disagreements in discussions about whether there should be a YA Hugo Award. So this post will be an attempt to break those groups down and perhaps other posters to the blog will add their points of view as well.

Short history lesson. Back when I was growing up, there was no label for YA or middle grade. You started with children's books, and then at some point you, your parent, or perhaps a librarian knew you were ready for the adult collection. "Ready" didn't always mean "emotionally mature" - it might be because that's where all the good fantasy/science fiction was shelved or it might be because you had already devoured all the books in the children's collection and your parent/librarian was tired of hand-picking books from the adult collection. (Interlibrary loan was only for adults back then.) Publishers did have some authors who wrote 'juvenile' (I do remember the Heinlein Juveniles were a thing at one point) and those would be shelved in the children's collection. Sometimes.

YA emerged as a label in the mid-70s (some will say 1950s or 1960s, but not where I was) and at that point it was thought to cover ages 10 through 18. Middle grade as an age range for books started about the time midde schools/junior highs became the fashion in the US - around the late 80s in some areas, early 1990s in others. Why and how have some classics have been relabeled as YA even though the term never existed when the book was written? It's all about the protagonist.

In panel discussions, several points have been repeated over and over. Age of the protagonist is one factor in the split between MG and YA. Middle grade has the protagonist aged between eight to twelve years old. In YA, the protagonist is older, usually thirteen and up. New Adult is a new term for the college-aged protagonist, which up to now was covered (sometimes) under YA. Classics - those books published before these terms came into use - often are relabeled YA if the protagonist fits in that age range, even if the main character is actually an adult reflecting on their childhood/young adulthood (Jane Eyre and To Kill A Mockingbird). Tamora Pierce's Circle series starts with her young mages around 10 years old. That was considered YA when the series first appeared, so her books might be considered MG by some and YA by others.

Middle grade readers have gatekeepers - parents and librarians who evaluate the books before purchase. So panelists often agree that swearing and sex is a dividing line between middle grade and young adult, no matter the age of the protagonist. Violence isn't always an issue with some gatekeepers.

Other dividing points (and there are always exceptions): middle grade covers external situations and adventures while YA is more introspective. Middle grade is more optimistic, while YA can be more edgy with uncertain endings. Middle grade focuses more on friends and family, while YA focuses on society. Before Harry Potter, middle grade books had a low word count, but that's not always true now.

Some other websites and blogs that discuss the definitions and distinctions:

• https://www.sfwa.org/2013/02/an-introduction-to-middle-grade-and-young-adult-fiction-part-1-definitions/
• http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-key-differences-between-middle-grade-vs-young-adult
• http://migwriters.blogspot.com/2010/06/mg-vs-ya-fiction-whats-difference-by.html
• http://www.dystel.com/2012/03/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-middle-gradeand-were-willing-to-ask/

How does the proposal for a Hugo for Best YA stand? There was supposedly a committee set up at the last Worldcon to look into it. There is still a Facebook group for the YA Hugo Proposal, but it's been quiet since 2014, and with the latest uproar about the 2015 Hugo nominations I'm not sure if there will even be any discussion about the topic at the business meeting at this year's Worldcon. We shall see.

What do you think are the differences between middle grade and young adult?

CLIFFHANGERS: LOVE 'EM OR HATE 'EM

Writers talk a lot about beginnings. The beginning of a story. The beginning of a scene. Yes, the beginning is very important. A good beginning draws the reader in, makes the reader want to know more about the characters and their problems. The reader wants to feel like they’re right there with the character(s) feeling their emotions and trying to figure out what to do about their troubles.

Then comes the ending, of a story, a scene, or a chapter. The ending is what I love, especially a cliffhanger ending. According to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, a cliffhanger is: “… a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction. A cliffhanger is hoped to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma. The two main ways for cliffhangers to keep readers coming back is to either involve characters in a suspenseful, possibly life-threatening situation, or to feature a sudden shocking revelation.”

I love to read a book with cliffhanger endings for the chapters. When I’m dying to see what happens next, I’ll read one more chapter, even though it’s way past midnight and I can barely keep my eyes open. This is the way I hope readers will feel about my stories. They just want to read one more chapter, then the next, and the next. Here are some of my favorite cliffhanger chapter endings from my novels.


From SECRETS I HAVE KEPT, ya mystery:


“In here,” Casey whispered, and nudged Jen into the coat closet. He squeezed in beside her. The dog scampered between her legs.

Casey hauled the closet door shut at the exact instant she heard the outer door open.

From JUST BREEZE, tween contemporary:


I crossed my heart. I’d never squeal on my sister. The car would speak for itself, however. Noah was good, but it would take a lot of hammering to hide those dents.

From CAVES, CANNONS, AND CRINOLINES, ya historical


The iron gate at the end of the sidewalk squeaked as Nat pushed through it. My greeting never passed my lips, for he laid his head on my lap. He said only one word: “Lizzie.”

Do you have favorite cliffhangers? If so, tell us about them.

Happy Reading. And remember, keep the reader guessing what happens next.

 

The Poisoned Pencil – new YA mystery imprint

 

Poisoned Pen Press is launching a new imprint The Poisoned Pencil, which will publish YA mysteries. Jessica Tribble was named publisher last year and said the press aims to publish YA mysteries that are "fast-paced and relevant to today's teens--books that adults will also want to read."

Ellen Larson will serve as editor of The Poisoned Pencil. She said she is "particularly keen" to receive submissions from young adult writers, adding, "Anything goes. As long as the protagonist is between the ages of 12 and 18, it's young adult. I'm excited to begin reviewing submissions, seeing what's out there, and building our list."

Now accepting submissions of YA mysteries between 45,000 and 90,000 words. The protagonist must be between the ages of 12 and 18.

The Poisoned Pencil Submission Guidelines

The Poisoned Pencil uses an online submissions manager to review materials from both authors and agents. Please do not query or submit your MS by email or snail mail. No simultaneous submissions; one submission per author at a time. You will be able to check the status of your MS using the submissions manager. Response time is currently 4-6 weeks.

For more news and updates follow Editor Ellen Larson: @poisonedpencil

Peggy Tibbetts

Now available at Amazon
PFC Liberty Stryker
Letters to Juniper – 2012 Colorado Book Award Finalist

Become a Facebook fan

The Vlog Experience Continues

I finally got down to making a video reading, one of the original ideas I'd had as to why I might want to vlog.

Below is the finished product - a reading of the first chapter of the YA Fantasy novel Willing Sacrifice.

As you'll note, I tried to add some extra bling to the reading. Editing the thing caused me all sorts of issues. Mostly during the conversion phase. But perseverance has its rewards. :P And I was finally able to find some advice on how to help with all the extra noise I kept picking up during previous recordings. (Having vents and air-conditioning going is not conducive to good sound recording, but in Texas there's little choice. Doh!)

However, this did not mean some unwanted sounds didn't make it through. Listen carefully for our dog - she's chewing on something somewhere. You might even catch a glimpse of Serenity flashing past in the background. Might see one of the cats, too! (Yeah, they weren't helping.)

Again I must ask myself if I'm insane. Having done just audio recordings before, I'm not sure why I thought this would be easier. Oi! But I am a sucker for playing with software, tech toys, and trying out new things. Heh heh.

Oh and if you want to read along and see how badly I butchered this, here's a link for Chapter 1.

Enjoy!

New book trailer!

Happy Twenty Twelve!

It’s a brand new year, and for me another book release. My next book, PFC Liberty Stryker is coming soon from Sisterhood Publications. I can hardly wait.

Read more about PFC Liberty Stryker

Check out the book trailer –



An amazing amount of time and effort goes into the making of a book trailer. My thanks to Brian Thornton and Ema Tibbetts for doing a brilliant job of bringing my vision to life.

Peggy Tibbetts

Letters to Juniper now available in ebook & paperback at Amazon.com

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First Day of School

Ah, the first day of school. Most readers can relate to this, either via memories or experiencing it first hand. You meet new people, learn a new routine of classes and a daily schedule of buses, classes, study time and possibly sports or band or choir. For this reason, it's not uncommon for a number of young adult or middle grade stories to start with the first day of school. This is a convenient way for the reader to learn about this new world along with the character.

The experience isn't limited to only elementary and high school, though. For example, this week has been Welcome Week at Winona State University. It's the week when first year students (freshmen) move into their dorm rooms and figure out the various buildings on campus before the rest of the students arrive next week for the first day of classes.

Establishing when the first day of school is is something that can be played with. Elementary and high schools in the Midwest US often start in late August/early September after Labor Day. But the start of school can be different in other parts of the country, not to mention the world. But what if your character is home-schooled? Or attends a year-round school?

When would the first day of school be in the early colonies? Or on the frontier (and which frontier - the Appalachians, the Mississippi River or beyond)? If you're writing a science fiction story, what would the first day of school be like on a space station, a generation ship or on a colony planet?

We've seen one version of a magical school in the Harry Potter books. But there have been many other schools of wizardry and magic in books before then, as well as after. Rowling's books had mostly human students. In other schools your classmates could be elves or vampires or even griffins.

Patricia Wrede's Frontier Magic series has a fascinating mixture of frontier (where the frontier is the Mississippi River in an alternate Minnesota) school and magic classes. Jennifer St. Clair's Jacob Lane series is set in present day (the school library just got computers) and humans, elves, Hounds of the Wild Hunt, dragons, ghosts and vampires are classmates and friends.

What are some of your favorite school-based books? If you write school-based stories, do you like starting with the first day of school, the holidays, or when?

April Fool!

April Fools' Day is a big deal to a kid. It's the one time you're allowed to play pranks on your friends, your parents and sometimes complete strangers.

I remember when I was young that the prank-playing was only supposed to be part of the day. But that could have been a regional thing, as nowadays one has to be on guard throughout the whole day, rather than just until noon.

Most of the time the pranks were good-natured, such as the false stories newspapers might print on that day, or, for a kid, telling a friend her shoelace was untied or telling a parent that your younger sister was stuck in a tree (make sure said sister doesn't follow you into the room when you try that).

Of course, there are always those that go too far with their "humor". I don't remember what grade it was when things shifted from planning jokes for the day to just trying to survive the day. Taped signs, water fountain mishaps, deliberate trips or shoves, all excused with an "April Fool!"

At least it was only one day out of the year. Unfortunately, some people try to continue throughout the year, excusing their behavior with a "Psych!" or "Just kidding!" and progressing on to "It's just a joke! Can't you take a joke?" I was reminded of that when watching "Tangled" and realizing the emotional abuse the young Rapunzel suffered with the continual "teasing" excused with "Just kidding."

Of course, this provides plenty of material for YA stories. Do you have a continual prankster that, for April Fools' Day, plays no jokes at all? Do you have a young child as a point of view character that likes playing pranks and can't stop? What about a prank-playing cat?

What are some of your memories of the best or worst April Fools' Day?