Loving That Teen Spirit/Angst

OK, I seriously think I may have been misguided all this time. I’ve been focusing on writing about interracial LOVE when all along I should have been focusing on INTERSPECIES PARANORMAL LOVE, for kids at that! (For any teens reading this who get offended at being called a kid, tough titties. Wait til you hit your mid-30s. It won’t bother you a bit.)

All I had to do for people to pay attention was tell everyone of my intention to write about a high school-aged vampire and a witch and suddenly a bunch of folks are interested. I mean, call me stupid – it’s ok, I don’t care – but what on earth took me so long to figure this out? I LOVE vampire movies and paranormal romance. Kresley Cole and Nalini Singh are two of my absolute faves in this genre. Both have excelled at creating entire WORLDS of made up, beautiful creatures that bear enough of a resemblance to human for you to relate, but not enough for you to lose interest – you know, the way you do with ordinary people. LOL

I mean, I read the Twilight series long before the idea of writing a YA vampire book even crossed my mind just ’cause it fit my two criteria: vampires and love story. I was silly, I tell you. Silly.

It pays to keep an open mind. To open the mind to possibilities, rather. There are so many ways to accomplish an objective. If you’re a vampire you have a few options. You can bite someone and either kill them, make them fall in love with you using your likely unfair hinky vampire mojo, or you otherwise bamboozle their mind post-blood exchange, since your blood is like super control agent orange no. 5.

If you’re a writer, you follow your passion in a stubbornly one track direction that either will or will not hit upon a large readership – and let’s face it, readers to a writer is like crack to an addict, utterly necessary – or you follow your OTHER passion toward a readership base that not only appreciates angst and well written, adjective laden prose about creatures that don’t exist, they CRAVE it because they think their lives would be better if they were inside your book. Hell, I think my life would be better if I were inside my book. LOL

Since Saturday I’m 7,000+ words into the story. And if you want a taste I’m willing to share but you have to leave me a comment or send me a tweet so I feel loved and appreciated. Keep in mind this is totally begining stuff. The story is just getting started. If I feel enough love, though, I’ll let you get a peek, but I refuse to tell you the title. Don’t even bother to ask. Not gonna happen!

I’m really enjoying conveying the emotions these kids are having. They’re FREE and expected to ruminate ad nauseum, which is a luxury most adults just don’t have because they have to pay bills – note to kids: be rich when you grow up so you can focus on dream fulfillment – I’m a dialogue and action girl usually. My first book Fiona Love was totally dialogue driven, but I think teen angst is the way to go to appeal to the YA crowd. What I don’t want to do – ’cause I think it’s disrespectful not to mention unbelievably annoying – is to create some pouty characters who whine about how hard everything is just because they have pimples.

I want to give my characters REAL problems. For example, my heroine is literally starving because she doesn’t know she’s a vampire – and a vampires’ food is blood – and her body is starting to reject real food. Later I’m gonna give them some badies to run from and start flinging spells around. It should be a good time.

I know I love stories like that. Do you?