Writing Romance in Young Adult

It's Valentine's Day and what better day to chat about writing romance in young adult books. One of the big areas that editors were asking for in the last three conferences I have been to is more romance in YA.

I think it's important for us writers to remember that there should only be romance in the story if it's needed. It has to have an integral part of the plot and character development.

The romance should have a plot arc of it's own. This can be tricky to not fall into the cliche relationship.

Books that I love and give a shout out to the romance are:

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Jane by April Lindner
An Infidel in Paradise by S.J. Laidlaw
Reboot by Amy Tintera
Sanctum by Sarah Fine

Here's a vlog I made for you on tips for writing romance in YA:

Congratulations to My Crit Partners!

This has been a BIG week in my world because amazing things are happening to my very dear writing friends. I am so excited to announce:

Beth Revis' released SHADES OF EARTH this week. Her final book in an incredible trilogy.

And due to her amazing pre-order sales, as promised, Penguin sent SHADES OF EARTH into space! Check out the Entertainment Weekly video clip here.

Beth's got more incredibleness up her sleeve. But that's all still super secret stuff right now.

Debbie Ridpath Ohi announced the next book she will be illustrating with Michael Black called NAKED. Oh what a title! I can't wait to see how this book comes out. Here's the Entertainment Weekly announcement. Many of you are familiar with I'M BORED, her last project that she worked with him on and received that won the Notable Children's Book Award for 2012 .

Carmella Van Vleet also announced her first middle grade book sale of ELIZA BING IS NOT A BIG FAT QUITTER to Holiday House. This is such a great book and the main character takes a taekwondo class. As soon as the pre-order link is up on Amazon, you'll be the first to know.

Finally, Susan Laidlaw's YA, INFIDEL IN PARADISE, will be launched into the world in less than a month! I can hardly believe it. If you haven't preordered it, do so here.

So as you can see, lots of amazingness all around. I'm thrilled to be working with such an amazing and talented group of writers.

My Book Sold!

Finally, finally I can scream from my rooftop that I've got a book deal! I've been keeping this little secret for a hundred years now. (Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration).

I am so pleased to announce that my young adult paranormal, GILDED, sold to Amazon Children's Publishing (formally Marshall Cavendish)!

Here's the blurb from Publisher's Marketplace:

Christina Farley's GILDED, in which a 16-year-old Korean-American girl with a black belt and a deadly proclivity with steel-tipped arrows discovers an ancient Korean god has been kidnapping the first-born daughters of her family for generations, to Miriam Frank at Amazon Children's, in a nice deal, for publication in Fall 2013, by Jeff Ourvan at Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency (world).

I know you're waiting for all the gossip on how it happened. So...

Let's rewind back to January, when on Martin Luther King's birthday I got this stop-your-heart kind of email from Margery Cuyler, Publisher of Marshall Cavendish, saying she loved my book and was taking it to acquisitions. (Wow!!!!! She loved my book!!!!!!)

For the next week I was on pins and needles. Waiting, staring at my phone, waiting and staring at my phone some more. Then I got the call from Jeff, my agent. THE CALL. It was during my school day and I'm not allowed to answer my phone so he sent me a quick email first. Amazon Children's had offered to buy my book. Squeal!

Somehow I got through the school day. I have no idea what I told my students or if I even taught the math lesson correctly. All I know is that I had this huge smile plastered across my face. As soon as I herded my students out the door, I was dialing Jeff to talk about all the juicy details.

 

Signing my contract

 

I am just so thankful to my agent who knew how to navigate through the whole submitting maze because the next few months after that were a bit insane. And he put up with my bizarre emails that looked something like this:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I know, who sends crazy emails like that?)

Yes, he's totally a black belt in agenting.

I am thrilled to be working with my editor, Miriam Frank, who said she fell head-over-heels in love with GILDED (I can't help but love her already).

Below you will find a short video I made that highlights my journey in writing this book. If you have read my blog over the years, these pictures will be familiar to you. Most of the pictures my husband or myself took while living in Korea.



Thanks as always to my crit buds who have endured emails and reading too many versions of this manuscript among others: Casey McCormick, Beth Revis, Larissa Hardesty, Ellen Oh and the amazing girls from the MiGs!

I hope you will stop by later this week to celebrate with me because I'm holding an EPIC contest giving away books, critiques, gift cards, and jewelry based on GILDED.

SCBWI Young Adult Workshop

During the SCBWI conference in Orlando, FL, I also attended the Young Adult workshop. This was led by Noa Wheeler, editor for Henry Holt, and Nancy Werlin, bestselling author of numerous books including Extraordinary. These two ladies did an excellent job exploring ways to tackle issues we face as young adult authors.

Noa Wheeler talked about how to deepen our characters by asking questions about them. One of the best questions she asked was “Is my character active?” She says we should be asking ourselves this question all through the book.

She also had us create 100 questions for our characters. I was really excited after I finished because these questions helped me build a more three dimensional character for my current WIP.

In the afternoon, Noa discussed how to write a flap copy and gave us specific examples from the books she’s edited. She said that usually the assistant editor writes these for the books, but they are a great exercise to find what the big issues of our stories are about.

Nancy is currently revising the third book that will come after Extraordinary. She broke down the revision process she is undertaking right now which I found fascinating in how she tackled her revisions. She also explained how she used the feedback from her critique partners to write another revision.

Overall, I came away with some new ways to revise and a stack of answered questions I hadn’t known about my main character.

Have you ever interviewed your characters? Did you find that helpful and if so, which questions did you find to be the most helpful?