Showing posts with label Thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thoughts. Show all posts

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Sunday Wrap-UP

Today is the first scheduled break from the A to Z challenge. I've decided that today's post will be to talk about other things going on this past week that may have been missed while posting selections from The Dragon's Circle.

1. THS Rocks Detention:The Series My students have completed the second episode of their webseries. I'm really happy with how this is turning out. They are motivated and involved in all aspects of production in spite of certain technical difficulties. Episode 2 is influenced Casablanca which I completely encouraged since I think more high school students should watch the classics.

2. Nunset Boulevard - The show goes up in two weeks. I'm rather excited about it but I do have to admit I will be happy once the run is over. It's been a lot of work especially since I'm co-producing as well as playing Sr. Amnesia.  Once it's over I will be happy to have my evenings back, well, at least until auditions for Trailer Park in June.

3. CampNaNo - Slow goings. I wish I could report that I was on track to finishing 65,000 words by April 30th but it may take longer than that. The good news is my word count continues to  increase (3476 and counting) and I have ideas for where the story is going to go next. No matter where I end up at the end of the month it will be more than what I started with March 31st.

4. School - I don't think my students are the only ones who are counting down the days until summer vacation. I am so ready. Even the little things are starting to bug me, such as their questions dealing with information they were taught first semester (What's an Ion? Really, friend?). I just have to remind myself to take a deep breath, the year is almost over and then I can start fresh with (hopefully) a better game plan in place so that I don't end up with the end of the year slump of forgetfulness (Electrons are in the nucleus? Did you truly just tell me that?)

I think that about wraps it up for this week. I'm looking forward to tomorrows post for the A to Z challenge. It's G day and I've got a good bit for it.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Thoughts on Genre Switching

I've done some research into YA Literary magazines and it's finally dawned on me: the thing that my work is lacking is romance. Most YA titles, fantasy or otherwise, are heavy in romance. It becomes an integral part of the story: Divergent, The Hunger Games, and Twilight all center around the main love story. I think what's put me off this entire time is Harry Potter. Harry's central theme wasn't about romance, even though it was in the story, and I would consider Harry Potter Young Adult. Of course, those books follow Harry through school whereas my novel doesn't have school in the equation at all.

So, perhaps I've been approaching the genre all wrong. Maybe all this time I've been sending Query Letters to agents who are looking for YA novels when really I should be focusing on Fantasy. Not High Fantasy, but perhaps more urban Fantasy.

I will have to send my query letter out to a few Fantasy agents and see if that makes a difference.