In response to this piece in the New York Times -- a particularly fun addition to a growing list of major newspaper pieces by people who don't read young adult fiction but publicly disparage it anyway.

Dear Mr. Stein,

You're a humorist, yes?   Your books (and possibly this column) are meant to be funny?  That's just ducky:  good for you!

I don't ( Read more... )

 Me, and just about every other YA author I know, am grumbling about this WSJ article/opinion piece.  In the piece, the reviwer today's "brutal" and "violent" Young Adult fiction as "book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young." All hope is not lost, ( Read more... )

Hey, fellow young adult writers -- want to storm off righteously?  Then read this New Yorker article, in which several book reviewers read and discuss a single YA book, share their astonishment about its (presumed atypical) good qualities and ascribe its shortcomings to the genre as a whole.

I don't usually feel undervalued as a children's writer ( Read more... )

It's been a whole two weeks since I sold my book, and I am firmly entrenched in post-book blues.  This happens to me whenever I finish a book or a major draft of one, and is part post-partum depression, part caffeine withdrawal, and part me being a twit.  It's complicated this time by the two weeks of unbearable excitement while my book was at ( Read more... )