What exactly is "Young Adult" anyway?

So, my fantasy novel INK MAGE is still going strong, a steady seller for the Kindle.  Pick it up HERE if you haven't already.

At the time of this blog post, there are 246 reviews for the novel.  Most of them are positive, a fact for which I'm grateful.  Once a book starts getting a lot of reviews, you can start to see trends.  Something that confuses me slightly is the whole notion of "young adult" or YA.  I mean, what exactly makes a book YA?  Is it the fact that it is marketed toward a certain age group?  Or is it simply that some of the characters in the novel are of a certain age?

In INK MAGE our protagonist is 19 and a few of the other main characters are of a similar age.  I specifically wanted to make these characters young, but in no way was I setting out to write a YA novel, and frankly I don't think I did.  But if you read only the reviews, you might get confused.  One reader cautions, "this is a good read but there is a lot of sex and violence and this is definitely not a YA novel." (In spite of the quotation marks, I am paraphrasing.)  Well, uh ... who the heck ever claimed it was a YA novel?  Not me.  Other reviews say something along the lines of "Obviously more for the YA crowd."  Really?  So which is it?  Definitely YA or Definitely not?

You see my confusion.  Both can't be true.  Right?

Possibly some of the confusion stems from the fact that "coming of age" is one of the categories Amazon has used to market INK MAGE.  I don't know.  All I know is that I am curious about how people categorize things and how they arrive at my novel being YA or not.  I don't think it is.  My wife is an associate professor at a large university and YA literature is one of her areas.  You'd think some of her knowledge would have rubbed off on me. It didn't.

So I ask ... what the heck is YA anyway?  Not the most original question, but since I am now applying it to my novel specifically I am at last paying attention.  If you know anything about YA then chime in.  And if you happened to read INK MAGE, let me know your opinion.  YA or not YA?

SALLY OF THE WASTELAND

                                                        (click image to embiggen.)

Gischler likes getting good things in the mail ... as opposed to bills and anthrax-laced letters.

Above, we see the two covers for issue #1 of Sally of the Wasteland, an irreverent B-movie style post-apocalypse tale set in Southern Louisiana.  It's chock full of wisecracks and mutant monsters.

On the left is the variant cover by Tim Seeley.  On the right is the cover by Tazio Bettin who is also in charge of interior art and colors.

Big thanks to Titan Comics for risking their reputation to publish this thing.

It comes out in July, so there's still plenty of time to harass your local comic shop into ordering you some!

A glimpse of life as a freelancer.

I write for a living.  I am a fortunate guy.  But freelancers are not on what you might call a regular schedule.  Oh, there might be some in our midst who are organized enough to keep to some kind of regular routine, but most of the other freelancers I know often pull second shifts as night.  We pick up the slack on weekends.  Sometimes we even have our vacations interrupted.  Thus do I offer the following image ...

I found this picture while looking through old photos on my Droid.  Those who know me know that I am a fan of Disney.  On a trip a while back, my family and I woke up, bright eyed, ready to ride the rides at a Disney theme park.  As usual I checked my email while drinking my first cup of morning mud.  And there it was.  An email from an editor.  A script needed tweaks.  Now.

So I grabbed my laptop and headed to the park.  Once inside, I bid my family farewell and told them I would catch up with them later.  I found the above spot, plugged in, sat on the ground and tweaked my tweaks.

90 minutes later I was back to my vacation.

Some day I'll tell you which issue of what comic was written entirely on a cruise ship.

Maybe, in the distant future I will have the opportunity to take a vacation and leave my laptop at home. Maybe.

FOR BONUS POINTS: Which Disney theme park am I in in the above pic, and where in the park am I?

It's not that I want all the trees dead ... however ...

When my epic fantasy novel INK MAGE came out last October, it was only available as an eBook on Kindle.  A lot of folks expressed they didn't do the e-thing and would hang around and wait for the paperback.






Now you can get it in paperback RIGHT HERE.

This is how I earn a living ... so , yeah sales pitch time.

Okay, if your the sort of comic reader that waits for the trades, then there are a few coming soon and you need to bug your local comic shop to order a big fat box of these things. (Or at least one for yourself.)

So you like Werewolves with mini-guns, right?

Then order yourself a trade of KISS ME, SATAN!

What?  You say you prefer deadly female circus clowns.  Then throw your money at CLOWN FATALE!

So those are the trade, but we have a NEW one coming out soon from our pals at TITAN with up-n-comer Tazio Bettin on art duties.  Hey just give issue one a try ...

(Don't worry.  The comic is in color.  Just thought I'd share one of Tazio's pencil-n-ink pages.)

So ... get yourself a bank loan and get to your local comic shop and drop your wad of cash on the counter and yell, "Gischler me up!"

What, you don't like pictures with your stories?  Then you should know the paperback of my fantasy novel INK MAGE comes out at the end of the month.

But you can still get the Kindle copy for pretty darn cheap right HERE.

Okay ... sales pitch concluded.

What's all this then?

Tell your local comic shop ...

... you want SALLY OF THE WASTELAND!

(Click image to make big.)


Preview HERE.