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TimeRiders - YA series

Streamers Book1 - complete

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scarrow
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588 Posts

Posted - 03 December 2008 : 10:12:06 AM

1st draft was completed three weeks ago, and I've been through and edited and tidied up...and now it sits with my editor at Puffin.

So, what can I tell you about it?

Well, for starters, I wanted to write something that would appeal to youngsters who are advanced readers, and adults alike. Getting that balance right is critical, imho, to getting a YA (young adult) book out of the kid's section of a bookstore, and onto the centre-of-store tables. More importantly, it's about letting a potential adult reader know it's okay to be seen holding a book that is deemed 'for kids'.

I think I've got the formula right. And it's no big secret. It boils down to two things.

Firstly, not 'talking down' to a younger audience - or 'kiddie-fying' the novel. There're some pretty mature themes in Streamers; religion, faith, fascism, consumerism, ecological issues. And many, many moments that are morally ambiguous ('good guy' does a very questionable thing, 'bad guys' demonstrating kindness, humanity).

Surprisingly, younger readers can handle this kind of stuff. In fact, it might be argued that younger readers brought up in a more cynical, questioning world, have a greater propensity to understand a world of 'grey areas' than an older generation brought up on absolutes and old Westerns that featured cowboys wearing black and white stetsons (just in case it wasn't obvious enough who the bad fella was).

The other thing to get right, is pace. Keep things moving. No padding. No asides, sub-quests or chapters where you're left thinking 'and this advances the story, how?'.

So what is Streamers about? Well, it's the story of several teenaged protagonists who died. More precisely, should have died...but were plucked at the very last moment out of time and recruited by a nascent agency. It's an agency attempting to keep a lid on a growing tsunami of time contamination from those in the future who've gained access to time travel and are either looking to rewrite history for nefarious reasons, or simply want to observe it - joyride it, even. And as we all know...one tiny change in the past - say...a crushed butterfly - can cause immense change in the present.

The fantastic joy of working this concept is that I have all of history to play with, and better still, all the parallel histories that could be if, say, Jesus had escaped the cross, the Nazis had won the war, the confederates had won at Gettysburg...or Lee Oswald fired and missed.

This first book has been bloody good fun to write and next year, I'll be laying the groundwork for the next book and the entire series. You see, one thing I've discovered with plotting out a time-travel series, is that you really need to know how it all comes to a grisly end, before you can even start.

That's pretty much true to the last five words of Streamers; 'what goes around, comes around.'

AndyCanty
Homosapien

United Kingdom
6782 Posts

Posted - 03 December 2008 : 10:27:24 AM

Congrats mate, fingers crossed for you to have created the next best selling YA series.!
We really must hook up for a coffee sometime soon.

_____________________________________
If all the worlds a stage?
Where's my script???
http://andycanty.blogspot.com/