Show Your Face? (Sometimes a Pose Is Just a Pose Part 1)

So I came across an interesting article about book cover trends a little while back and read through it, and one of the points sort of surprised and actually disturbed me.

Now, one of the first things that attracts someone to a book usually is the cover. Does the cover look interesting? And of course we have a lot of covers with pictures of people on them. The Once Upon a Time YA novel series from Simon and Schuster actually revamped their covers from illustrated to photographic, rereleasing every book in the series so far except two (Scarlet Moon and Spirited) and I actually like these covers a lot better. They're beautiful. I'm a big fan of photographic covers.

But the point that was made by this article was that a certain trend in photographic covers is having a negative impact on feminine identity among teens. This trend is the image of a girl whose face is hidden in some way from the camera. You see this in the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie (Cassia is always looking away from the reader), in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (you see Cinder's foot, Scarlet's arm and part of her upper body but no face, Cress's back and her hair), The Mortal Instruments (hard to see any faces), and in a lot of other books. Then there are the books where only part of the face is revealed (Kiera Cass's The Selection, where part of America Singer's face is hidden by her arm).

According to this article, the trend of hiding a girl's face from view somehow takes away from her strength, from the strength of her identity as a strong character, and from her ability to be viewed as a role model by the reader. I find this interesting, since a lot of novels with strong female leads (The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) don't even have images of their stars on the cover at all.

This reminds me of something my sister once told me. Now, I'm biracial. My father is African-American, my mother is Caucasian. When I was little, I had this idea (not because of my parents) that I couldn’t do anything that a biracial person hadn’t done before. As an example, I would play A Little Princess with a friend of mine from down the street, and I was always Sara and she was always Becky, because I had lighter skin than she did and I thought that was how it was supposed to be (in the 1993 film, Sara is white and Becky is black). It wasn’t until I got older (say, eight or nine instead of four or five) that I realized that wasn’t necessarily the way things had to be, and I learned it was acceptable to put myself in the shoes of a character who didn’t necessarily look like me.

What does this have to do with this book cover trend?

A lot of readers will take in the text description of the main character when they first come across it, but then they'll push it aside and put themselves in the situation instead. It's one of the fun things about reading. This lack of facial imagery on the cover is actually rather conducive to doing that, since the reader isn't stuck with a fully realized image of what the main character is supposed to look like.

I know that when I'm reading a really good book, I have a hard time slowing down enough to visualize everything, so if I don't have an established picture in my head, the MC looks like me, even if she's black or Greek or blond or red-headed or a green Martian with no hair. It's just easier to insert yourself into that character because the physical characteristics are less prominent. Which is probably one of the reasons the publishing companies do it so often.

The other reason? It looks pretty. One of the most beautiful trio of book covers I've seen is for the Matched Trilogy and what the poses tell us about the state of mind of the main character. They're gorgeous. Sometimes a pose is just a pose. Sometimes it's purely aesthetic.

But I doubt the industry is trying to weaken the feminine identity of the female teen masses. At least not most of them. I'm not worried, and I hope that when I'm published, I can have a cover as beautiful as the ones I've listed here.

- LA Knight

What's Apparently Hot

So I'm here to talk about trends right now, and how they're affecting me.

Retellings are apparently hot right now (although "Cinderella" is being done a lot - case en point, the sci-fi novel Cinder and the ABC Family film, A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song or something like that; a good one, however, is April Lindner's Jane, a modern adaptation of Jane Eyre). So is steampunk. Steampunk is supposedly on the rise (and with it comes clockpunk). Although dystopias are kind of waning, truly original ones are still being gobbled. Also, to quote literary agent Mandy Hubbard, "Edgar Allen Poe is the new black." Can we say Nevermore/Enshadowed? Awesome sauce right there.

Paranormal romance is crowded, unfortunately, and so has to be something super amazing. Hopefully Bones is that. I don't think anyone has done a book about the supernatural creature that Violet is. And it's rare to see the kind of gender reversal I'm using in the story as well.

Ghost stories are big, too. Apparently not necessarily romance ghost stories, where someone falls in love with a ghost (although there's a interesting-looking one I wanna check out from the library, about the ghost of a cheerleader and this goth boy that can see her), although those might have more of a chance than the standard shifter/vamp/demon/angel/warlock romance. Also, scary creepy ghost stories are big. To that end, I'm reserving Anna Dressed in Blood from the library to see if that's what that's about. It might be the first kind of ghost story, though. And I've started reading the Name of the Star, which is about the ghost of Jack the Ripper (I think; I'm only on the second chapter). Hopefully Destiny falls into this category. There's ghosts in it, and the ghost is not the love interest or the MC, so... yeah. Here's hoping.

There's room for the standard horror novel - more psychological thriller, not slasher scary, but both are under-represented. I'm wondering if Bones works for that, as well. Especially because of the prologue. But we'll see.

Fantasy (not paranormal, but fantasy) is still of interest apparently. That's good for The Shepherd's Daughter.

Apparently, though, sci-fi is the next big thing, probably because there's not much of it (and most of it is dystopic). Do I do sci-fi? Well, "Switchblade and the Burn Man" was science fiction, but that was bad, so... yeah. Not badly written. It was epically written, to quote one of my readers. It's just that I wrote it when I was like... 15, back when I was okay with having my MC be a sociopath. I'm not okay with that anymore. So I don't know how I feel about the science fiction thing. I like Star Wars (although that's not sci-fi, it's space opera) and I was raised on Anne McCaffrey and Star Trek, so... we'll see.

And realistic/contemporary is a tough sell, but apparently a lot of editors want it to come back in a big way. Unfortunately, it's hard to compete in that area, I feel. Either the girls are bimbos, which drives me nuts, or they're obnoxious evil little twits (a la Mean Girls and Pretty Little Liars). And that seems to be what most people want, which disturbs me, honestly.

The only realistic contemporary YA I've read recently that wasn't horrendously gross, didn't emphasize physical attraction without substance, or didn't have bimbos/twits, were the first four retold faerie tales by Catholic writer Regina Doman. Her realistic adaptations of "Snow White & Rose Red," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Sleeping Beauty," and "the Twelve Dancing Princesses" are amazing (the titles are The Shadow of the Bear, Black as Night, Waking Rose, and the Midnight Dancers). Everyone should read them.

I'm tempted to read the novel Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles because it, too, is supposed to be an epic example of r/c fiction, but I reserve judgment because I'm concerned by the title and the implications it has on the storyline. They say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. I can't really agree. If I see a book with a gratuitously naked chick on the cover and the word "slut" is in the title, I'm probably not going to read it. Just as an example.

Apparently historical fiction is hard, but if there's a hook, that will help you out a lot. Apparently, though, according to one literary agent, "editors are definitely looking for the modern, scandalous, steamy kind of historical...." This disturbs me as well. This was in reference to books written in the style of Luxe. I'm just worried in general about the publishing industry's focus on the sexy scandalous novel and the seductive power of evil (books like Sweet Evil, Another Faust, Jekkyl Loves Hyde). I realize Latter-Day Saints are a minority, technically - there's only 14.5 million of us scattered across the world - but still. It can't just be the Mormons who are sick of reading about bad girls with their bad boys (or worse, their clueless good boys).

So it looks like I've got my work cut out for me. If I want Glass to be published, I need a following first. And the way to do that is to hit up some trends. Is that selling out? Nah. I like these things, these trends. Well, most of them. As for the rest, I'll just have to break them to little pieces, is all. Start my own trends. Be a trendsetter.

Look at Dystopics (that's what I like to call them; I don't actually know if that's a word). I'm currently reading Matched by Ally Condie, for example. The book that I thought would totally suck, not because I dislike the genre, but because I thought the plot was just really weak and flimsy. Turns out I was wrong. I started it this morning and I'm almost half-way through it. I also just finished Wither by Lauren Destefano. I'm putting this book called Delirium on reserve at the library, and books like Blood Red Roads. I've also checked out books like Eve and Enclave. I've read the Hunger Games, the book that started the craze, as well as some old-school works, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Ayn Rand's Anthem.

Now what does that mean for me? I have no idea. I don't have any dystopian concepts floating around in my brain. I've got, like, post-apocalyptic dystopia, I guess, maybe. But I'm not entirely sure. I don't know if zombie apocalypse novels count as dystopics. Do they? If so, Dear Laura is my dystopic. Now I just have to finish it. I think out of all my books, that one will be the easiest to finish because of the format. Hopefully. I can't spend too much time working on it or I'll freak myself out. Zombies scare the heck out of me.

And there will be more to this, but I'm running a bit late with everything, so I really must dash. Ta-ta!

The Insta-Connect

There is a trend out there in YA works. A trend that is so common and (sometimes) so heinous, that even I, Captain Oblivious, have noticed it. I must comment, because it must be addressed. This trend is the insta-connect. It breeds in the wilds of YA romance. It hunts in fantasy territories both urban and high, in the world of sci-fi and dystopics, in paranormal universes and even beyond the grave and the stars. It comes in two species - the domesticated insta, and the feral insta.

Believe it or not, the feral one is the one you want in your novel (if you're gonna have them at all).

The insta-connect. That spark between the main character and their love interest, that instant of "Whoa. It's you. The person I'm gonna share the rest of this book with." The moment of eye-lock (usually) or just a quick moment of seeing that person, even if they don't notice being seen by the MC. Symptoms include sweating, dizziness, tummy trouble, distraction, mood swings, disorientation, increased heart rate, hyperventilation, and increased blood pressure.

That is the insta-connect. It works. But it must be done right. Seriously, that kind of craving/need/desire/love/passion/almost-obsession doesn't just happen right away. It must build. But it all starts with a single beautiful tense and possibly disconcerting moment (the disconcerting moments are the best, in my opinion).

Take Radiant Darkness for example (Emily Whitman's lovely adaptation of the story of Hades and Persephone, with a sprinkling of Rapunzel thrown in for kiggles). Persephone sees Hades, the first male she's ever even seen in person, so yeah, she's all, "Whoa." And she thinks about him, even though they don't even talk or even meet each other's eyes. I actually haven't even figured out if he knew she was there the first time.

But she's thinking about him because for the first time in her life, she's seen someone other than her mother or the various nymphs that live in the vale she's never set foot outside of. For the first time, she's seen a guy. And the mystery of it is driving her bonkers. Our little MC doesn't know who this guy is (Hades, we the reader know, but she doesn't yet). She doesn't know why he was there or whether he'll be back, and she's torn between wanting him to stay away so she doesn't get in trouble with her overprotective man-hating mother and wanting him to come back so she can solve the mystery.

Also, seeing as how he's Hades, he's a bit... intimidating? Awe-inspiring? Disney says "tiny," if you ask Eddie Murphy, but we'll go with the first two instead. Right there is a good example of the feral insta-connect and how to make it work without it being pathetic, cookie-cutter, or just plain creepy.

Another example of the feral insta-connect, a great "whoa" moment, is in Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. The love interest in Sisters Red has known both female MCs nearly all their lives. Then he goes away for like, 2 years, and comes back on his twenty-first birthday. He left as the boy they (Rose and Scarlet) had always known, and came back as this oddly studly guy. He and Rose have a "whoa" moment, fueled by his newly-acquired hotness as well as the nearly life-or-death situation they'd just escaped and the familiarity he still possessed because it was still that old friend of theirs, even if he did look and seem different. The connect is there from the get-go, but it's not the panting-gasping-slobbering-craving insta-connect of so many YA novels. It has to develop.

Basically what I'm saying is, writers - please give your MC and the love interest something other than that "oh my gosh it's you I need you I crave your blood and want your demon babies" connection. Some of you might think I'm taking a crack at Twilight with the crave-your-blood thing, but actually, Twilight is one of those novels that in fact doesn't have the bane of my existence, the domesticated insta-connect. Bella has a good reason for her swift attraction to Edward.

1) He's being a complete jerk for some unknown reason, the mystery of which is driving her mad. In fact, the mystery of a person does a lot for the attraction of a female lead to said person. Examples of this are Nevermore, City of Bones, and Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. Although annoying in real life, the whole "come-hither/stay-away" schtick done by male love interests in some YA novels does intrigue the reader and also gives a valid reason for the female lead to think about this person.

An interesting televised gender-reversed version of this is Puck and... that one big girl that he absolutely adores on the show Glee. The one girl who's the State Champion for Greco-Roman Wrestling and is actually kind of mean to him. Because she does that, he's totally besotted. And he's not the chump type, either. He's the love-em-and-leave-em bad boy. So that should say something about the efficacy of this method.

2) Physiologically, not a lot of difference between loving and loathing. To quote the musical Wicked, "What is this feeling, so sudden and new? I felt it the moment I laid eyes on you. My pulse is rushing; my head is reeling; my face is flushing. What is this feeling? Turbid as a flame, does it have a name? Yeeeeeeeeeeesssss...."

Now, when I first heard that song when I was fifteen, my first thought was, "I thought the name of this song was 'Loathing.' Why are they talking about love?" Does that tell you anything? A famous proverb is "there's a fine line between love and hate." A lot of books and movies use that to their advantage.

Twilight, of course. In Nevermore, by Kelly Creagh, Isobel and Varen start off loathing each other. The titular character of Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side thinks Lucius or Lucian (I can never remember which), the male lead, is a freak and a whack-job and is only putting up with him because after he's there for... I forget how many weeks, if she doesn't believe everything he's telling her by then, he's going to leave and never bother her again. Princess Diaries 2, Mia goes from kinda liking Nicholas to hating him when she finds out exactly what his plan is, to falling for him over the course of the film. Biologically, this makes perfect sense, since the physical response to seeing someone we dislike and are nervous around (a la Edward and Bella) is pretty much the same as seeing someone we love.

And if you think this is just in romance, think again. In one of Piers Anthony's fantasy novels about the mixed-up world of Xanth, there's a character who sort-of sees how he was conceived, and the whole time his parents are making out and stuff, they're growling at each other about how they hate each other and once they get away from what are basically the cops (they're bad guys) they'll kill each other and yet not only do they conceive a baby, they end up married for years and years. So... yeah. =)

Anyway, my point is, if you see the domesticated insta-connect anywhere - shoot it. Kill it with fire. If you want to use the insta-connect, call Animal Control and find out if they have any feral ones on hand. Use those. Or, go the Wither/Romiette & Julio/Beauty and the Beast/Hunger Games/Glass route and let the connection build slowly over time. That actually does work. =)

- LA Knight

Gimme Something More

For the love of macaroni and cheese!!!

*bangs head against desk*

Why oh why does everything have to be about demons, fallen angels, sex, or bad people these days? I don't want to read about bad people doing bad things. Or, if I do, I want them to feel bad about it! Find redemption! Not laugh behind their perfumed fingers and say "oops." Novels like Pretty Little Liars, Fallen, Angel Burn, Luxe, Another Faust, Falling Under, or Sweet Evil - I'm just so sick of it! The only novels so far that have done the demons/angels thing without it being ridiculous or offensive (yeah, I don't like that kind of thing - I'm LDS; sue me) is Cassandra Clare's work.

I love you, Cassandra Clare. You are a Mormon girl's friend.

Anyways, almost done ranting now. I just need to ask, how many different ways can anyone do the "hot demon/fallen angel boy falls for mortal girl who's the love of his life even though it breaks all the rules?" Because it's everywhere. Or it's a girl angel/demon, but I haven't seen that except in Halo. So seriously... I mean... really? Help a girl out here. Yeah, I've got my new dystopia craze, but I would like to have new material for my paranormal section besides the sequels to things I already have (Enshadowed for Nevermore, the Nightmare Garden for the Iron Thorn, City of Lost Souls for City of Fallen Angels). Seriously. I'm a HUGE reader. Three books of paranormal fantasy/romance are just not enough. How am I supposed to fill out my Christmas list?

*grumble-grumble-grumble*

You know what I'm looking forward to? Reading Entwined by Heather Dixon. Dark fantasy with some romance, based on "the 12 Dancing Princesses." And reading Cinder, a sci-fi retelling of "Cinderella." I'm excited about those. But is that really all I have to look forward to? Editors! Publishers! Agents! Help me out here!

- LA Knight

Wither - Lauren Destefano (Something There...)

(Author's Note: this is a more loose and informal book review than I usually tend to write, since it ties in with a point I wish to make)

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

I feel I need to make a comment on the current publishing trends here, and a great tool is a novel I read recently.

I've just finished the YA dystopian novel Wither by Lauren Destefano. I didn't expect to like it, because I'm not huge on science-fiction, especially bio-punk and its cohorts, with their genetic anomalies and horrible diseases and breeding issues. Not usually my thing. Especially because a lot of dystopian sci-fi isn't very funny. Not that it needs to be a comedy, because I don't actually like those either, most of the time, but I like some hilarious one-liners and such every now and then. So I didn't expect Wither to do much for me. I only read it because I wanted to see a) what all the fuss was about and b) what the fuss about dystopias in general was about.

I loved it. I found myself creating a team (egads, yes, I did - I'm so ashamed). I was Team Linden. Which is probably gross, since he's got 4 wives and one of them was 13 when she got knocked up with his kid, but in a world where girls die by age 20, that's not so squicky to me. Anyway, I found myself wishing Rhine and Linden could be together. I found myself snarling at Vaughn. Gabriel, I was kind of meh about, but I found myself loving Jenna and Cecily. I actually enjoyed the book. Which completely shocked me because the end was not what I wanted, and there are no funny parts in this novel seemingly at all. So what happened?

Lauren Destefano must have some weird supernatural powers because everything that turns me off about a novel - an ending I don't like, a wimpy love interest (Gabriel is so wimpy, it's like... is this even a romance at all? Why is this love story even in here? And Linden is kind of a wimp too), and a distinct lack of humor - is in this book, and I want to own the thing. Considering my incredibly crummy bank account, and how broke I am, this is huge. I will never buy a book without reading it first, and I have to LOVE it to want to buy it (case en point, Nevermore by Kelly Creagh - best book EVER).

Lately the YA market has been flooded with things that I thought were just ridiculous (Another Pan by Dan and Dina Niyeri), derivative (Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick), or about things that for personal reasons I couldn't read (Falling Under by Gwen Hayes). I was getting so frustrated because I was missing the electric sizzle spark of romance and danger that I found in novels like Daughters of Darkness by LJ Smith, Twilight (yeah, yeah), Nevermore, the Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, and the Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge. Only two of those books have come out recently - 2011, or thereabouts. All of them are paranormal or fantasy, which is apparently waning. So I was getting antsy. I was getting frustrated. I was getting annoyed. It seemed like none of the books being published had what I wanted without having other things that made them sooooo lame.

Wither doesn't have that, either. Which is annoying. But it is still amazing. Even The Hunger Games (the book, not the trilogy) is amazing. So I went to my local library (thanks for the recommendation, Reading Rainbow) and reserved books like Vanessa Roth's Divergent, and other dystopias like Eve, Blood Red Roads, Uglies, Legend, Enclave, and even Matched, which didn't seem like it had a really strong conflict to me, but it has a sequel, so maybe I'm missing something. Over the next week or two I'm going to delve into the world of the modern YA dystopias and see what's to be seen. Maybe I'll learn something. Maybe Wither is the rule, not the exception. I don't know. But at least now I've got more stuff to read. Yay!

Still... we need more humor in the modern YA novel, no matter what the genre. For examples of this rare phenomenon, check out Cassandra Clare's works (specifically, Will and Jace's dialogue in the Infernal Devices and Mortal Instruments), Varen and Danny in Kelly Creagh's Nevermore, and Glass by yours truly (which still needs to get picked up, le sigh).

- LA Knight