We here at The Paperback Princesses often receive emails from Indie authors requesting reviews and are blessed with free book copies. Often we are unable to get to so many titles before our mass market published books take over our TBR shelves. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of great reads though! We want to give back to those Indie authors and are declaring EVERY SECOND SUNDAY our SHOUT OUT TO INDIES MEME. For those of fellow bloggers, please feel free to add our meme to your regular schedule. We only ask that you quote and link back to us as a courtesy. For all of you Indie authors, we invite you to contact us at the contact link to your top left. We will select 1 - 3 titles (each time we post) that sound interesting.
This week's selection is:
Ever found yourself dropped into a room where everything is trying to kill you, only to escape into the streets of Boston and have the first person you meet turn out to be a reverse cyborg?
My name is Claire Jemima Stevens, and this is just one of those days. I’m not sure who I am or how I got here, but that’s going to change. I have a name, a recording of the man who stole my life, and the memory of a boy with a kind, jagged face.
All I have to do is find him.
We asked S J why he likes to write for a YA audience:
A common opinion of the YA genre seems to be that it’s a washed-out, dumbed-down version of real literature, with forced love triangles and petty drama taking precedence over story and genuine emotion. I would liken this opinion to the belief that every dog exists with the sole purpose of attacking small children. The ability to provide an example or three to support an argument does not grant said argument infallibility in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The Young Adult genre, as I see it, merely encompasses stories and topics most directly geared toward people of a rather…peculiar age. Drastic changes often accompany this stage in life: personal beliefs are constructed; the comfort of childhood is left behind; and love—true, unapologetic intimacy with another human being—enters the realm of possibility for the first time. There is perhaps no time in a person’s life riper to be scrutinized for the rawest of emotions, and placing a protagonist faced with the tsunami of hormones and responsibility of young adulthood in an atypically dire circumstance can add a layer of complexity to a story already thick with intrigue.
Perhaps the greatest appeal of the Young Adult genre, however, is that it speaks of a time in our lives never quite left behind. No matter a person’s age, he or she has been shaped by their past, and the time of self-discovery and angst portrayed in YA literature is, perhaps, the most formative of all. And so, with a genre of such far-reaching appeal at my disposal, the question shouldn’t be why I choose to write YA. We should, instead, pursue answers to the real questions in life, such as, “Who decided that bell peppers belong in every vegetable medley ever medley’d?” or, “Shouldn’t it really be called a baseball square?”
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/
About the Author
S.J. Saunders doesn’t have a celebrity lookalike, but spending a good chunk of his time making up stories helps him come to terms with that. He also has a peculiar imagination, but, thankfully, he’s learned to filter it into something vaguely coherent. And he lives in Oregon. He’s not sure why that matters, but an author’s general location typically seems to sneak its way into this kind of thing, so he’s decided not to diverge from that trend. Perhaps it’s supposed to make him more relatable? Whatever the case, now you know.
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