Responsible Writing

Right now, in 2012, we are in a time when anyone can publish a book.  Many, if not all of us authors on this blog write young adult books.  Each of us take it seriously, and we've made our mission to write quality books that will entertain our audience.  The Indie author is taking the Kindle/Nook world by storm.  Our books are affordable, especially to the teens that have limited income.  Teens have access to us via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogs and email and they use all of it.  I love that one click contact and I take it seriously.

I write under a pen-name, so I have a private Facebook account and I have an author account.  On my author account I never post anything to do with religion or politics and the biggest cuss-word is ass.  Recently, an author of adult books sent me an email and asked me to promote her book on my wall.  I replied and explained that I have a lot of young people that follow me, and I don't feel comfortable posting their book.  The author was gracious and understood why I turned her down.

Last week a fifteen year old girl contacted me for some writing advice.  She told me that her book is YA and her main character wants to kill himself.  She asked me if she should kill off the character.  I replied and told her that suicide is a heavy subject and she has to think about the age of her audience.  I suggested that if she goes that direction that she shouldn't romanticize it and keep details to the minimum.  My final suggestion would be to add the number to the suicide hotline following her story.  (it is a paranormal book and her mom knew she was emailing me with the question...so I didn't feel that she was talking about herself)

The majority of us have read Twilight, and I know, there are a lot of haters...there's lovers of the saga too.  I mean seriously, look how successful it is.  Many of us were adults when we read Twilight for the first time, and it took us four books to have them consummate the relationship.  Stephenie Meyer was aware of her audience though.  She put in an old fashion twist to a modern story...wait until you're married to have sex.    She never mentioned religious purpose, just an old fashioned belief system.  There are a lot of adult books out there if you're wanting an adult theme (50 Shades).

My advise would be to remember that kids want to escape their everyday life - they want the stress of everything off of them - keep kids, kids.... all of the adult stuff happens soon enough.  Be a role model.

PS - I have a werewolf series that is a mature teen series.  I had one reviewer say, it was nice to read a book where the teen respects their parents.  That was amazing, because that is what I want kids to take from the book.... I smiled for a week =)

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