Karen Sandler

Tag: young adult

  • New Website! A Solution for the Genre-Conflicted

    Home Page Screen ShotSo what do you do to promote yourself when your published work spans three genres (romance, speculative fiction, mystery) and two markets (adult and young adult)? This wasn’t a huge issue when I initially sold my first YA science fiction book, Tankborn, to Lee and Low/Tu Books after publishing adult romances for a dozen years. At that point, I had changed my focus from romance to young adult, and didn’t feel obligated to heavily promo my ten Harlequin books.

    But in addition to those Harlequin books, I had the rights back to seven romances and a middle-grade time travel. I finally decided to dip my toe into indie publishing and put the romances and MG book up on Amazon. At that point, I chose to use a pen name for my romances to keep them separate from my children’s books. It was slow going, but I finally had the middle grade book published under Karen Sandler and six of the seven romances up under the pen name Kayla Russo. The seventh book needed some re-write, so it hasn’t yet been published (although it will be soon).

    Full CoverBut then something somewhat unexpected happened. I had an unsold mystery novel, Clean Burn, tucked away in my figurative drawer. I found out about a new mystery imprint (Exhibit A, a part of Angry Robot Books) and alerted my agents. Long story short, Clean Burn sold to Exhibit A and will be released August 27, 2013. A second Janelle Watkins mystery will greet the world in Summer 2014.

    My predicament clarified in October 2012 during a Novelists, Inc. conference. I had my Karen Sandler Harlequin author identity,my Kayla Russo indie-pubbed romance author identity, I had my Karen Sandler YA author identity, and I was about to have my Karen Sandler mystery author identity. Keeping all those identities juggled, trying to appropriately promote all of them, was madness.

    My first step toward simplification was to drop my Kayla Russo identity. My original rationale for creating the pen name had been to separate my sexy adult romances from my teen-safe YA books. But that was silly because there were still those ten sexy Harlequin books for sale with Karen Sandler squarely on their covers. So I killed Kayla Russo off (so to speak) like the next murder victim in a Janelle Watkins mystery novel.

    With the same name on all my books, I decided that the variety of genres/markets I offered were a feature, not a bug. Instead of keeping the genres separate, I would promote them side-by-side. Instead of seeing my multi-genre approach as a problem, I used it to brand myself. I am now proudly Genre-Conflicted on my blog, two Twitter identities, and Facebook.

    KSA FacebookIn fact Facebook is where I started this process, with a Karen Sandler Author page. The banner for the page prominently displays book covers from each of the three genres, romance, science fiction, and mystery. Book tabs take the reader to pages where they can purchase any and all of my books at the click of a button.

    My webmaster (i.e., husband) and I took the same approach with my website. The landing page features the same three choices–explore my YA SF books, my romances, or my mysteries. The same buy links are available on the book pages for each genre.

    There are still a few tweaks needed on the website, but I really like the solution. It’s still a challenge to promote to three different audiences, but having that one-stop-shop takes some of the load off. So for both the focused genre reader and the more omnivorous book lovers who enjoy a variety of story types, I like to think my work offers something for nearly every taste.

  • Stick to One Genre, Or, Ignoring Perfectly Good Writing Advice

    Original Cover-sBack when I was starting out as a novelist and I was flitting around from genre to genre, I was told to pick one and stick to it. I was told I shouldn’t write one book that’s romance, another that’s science fiction, or God forbid, a romance science fiction novel (which, sigh, I did write). I found that advice irritating because I wanted to write all over the place. In fact, I wanted to write not only novels, but also screenplays and the occasional article and short story.

    Eventually I did settle on romance novels, and then narrowed that down even more to category romances. I still wrote the occasional screenplay in between book contracts, but those scripts didn’t go anywhere (the movie business is really, really hard to break into), so I felt I could really only call myself a romance novelist.

    Awakening Final cover-sAfter 17 romance novels, I got kind of burnt out. I decided to try my hand at young adult fiction. Since I’m not one to waste good material, I decided to take one of my screenplays (a sci-fi thriller) and adapt the story into a YA novel. This eventually became the Tankborn trilogy (I got a lot of mileage out of that one script).

    This is all fine and dandy, you’re probably thinking. I wrote in one genre for a while (romance), then switched to another (YA science fiction).

    Well, yes, except…I got the rights back to 7 of my romance novels. And with the brave new world of indie publishing, I started re-releasing my romances as e-books, under the pen name, Kayla Russo.

    This all worked fairly well. My sexy romances were published as Kayla Russo books, and the YA as Karen Sandler books. There was a squidge of confusion there, what with my Harlequin books still published under Karen Sandler. But since I’m letting Harlequin do the work of promoting those, I didn’t worry my pretty little writer head about it.

    Then I sold Clean Burn to Exhibit A Books. Clean Burn is not a romance and not a YA SF. It’s an adult mystery. It’s–ack!–a third genre. So how was I supposed to market three genres worth of books?

    ARe Sweet Dream LoverFirst, I dropped the pen name. That’s the miracle of indie publishing for you. I had my cover artist revamp the covers with Karen Sandler as author, touched up the files and re-published them. I created another Twitter identity, @karensandler, for the adult stuff and continued using @karensandlerYA for my YA stuff. I am now in the process of splitting out my website (which currently only promotes my YA books) into three choices–YA, Romance, Mystery.

    So, do I regret ignoring the “Stick to One Genre” advice? No. I really wanted to write all the books I’ve written, genre be damned. I do wish it wasn’t so hard to keep all those balls (books?) in the air at one time. I wish every reader loved reading all three genres I’m published in (side note: I recently found out it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition).

    So, what about you? If you’re a writer, are you doing the genre-flit like me? If you’re a reader, to you love reading a multitude of genres? If you do, thank you from the bottom of my genre-confused heart. You are my kind of reader.

  • RTW — My YA Buddy IRL

    This week’s YA Highway prompt is What IRL people can you talk to about YA? I confess it took some head-scratching to figure out what IRL meant. Yes, I’m an old fogey (hah! how many of you even know the word fogey?) and sometimes I have to look up those Internet acrynyms. For those as fogeyish as me, it means In Real Life.

    After figuring that out, it took a little more cogitation to come up with an answer. My hubby might read YA if I told him it was a fab book. He read my book TANKBORN (and even got annoyed with me when I interrupted him while he was reading it), so why not other recommended YA books? Well, you should see this guy’s TBR pile (hah again! see, I do know some Internet acronyms). He’s got books piled everywhere and he often only has time to read late evenings (when he promptly falls asleep) and weekends (when he sometimes falls asleep). Plus most of my YA books are on my Kindle and he likes reading paper.

    My younger son reads some YA (Neil Gaiman for example), but he’s often the one giving  me recs for books. Also, he’s got his own eclectic tastes and I’m pretty sure the YA books I’ve been swooning over wouldn’t be to his liking.

    Then there’s older son. Since he lives in Osaka, Japan, we bought him a Kindle so he could buy and read new books without having to have them shipped at great expense. I have lent him nearly every lending enabled YA Kindle book I own and have strongly recommended he buy others if I’m not able to lend. I lent him The Hunger Games after I read it, and when I didn’t get around to buying the other two books, he told me he would if I didn’t. So I got him somewhat hooked on YA.

    So I guess he’s my YA buddy IRL. I look forward to sharing many more books with him in the future.

  • The Right to Choose What I Read

    I’m new to young adult literature. That is, I’m new as an author. Of course I read YA books as a kid, pretty much picking and choosing at will from the school library. That’s how I ended up reading decidedly non-YA books like Kafka’s Metamophosis and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring when I was 14. Thank God for a mom who didn’t fear provocative literature.

    Since I’m such a newbie on the block (my first YA, the dystopian Tankborn, comes out in September 2011), I’ve sat back a bit regarding the “kerfluffle” over an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Meghan Cox Gurdon. In her editorial, Ms. Gurdon declares, among other things, that today’s young adult books are dark and depraved. I’ve been unsure how to respond since I’m still working hard to get up-to-speed in YA. I’m learning as fast as I can, reading almost exclusively YA at this point, looking for the best, but also picking and choosing the books that most appeal to me.

    And here is my first quibble with Ms. Gurdon. Not every book is going to appeal to every reader. I’m okay with dark as long as there’s a wonderful character arc and there’s a sense of hopefulness at the end of the book. That’s why, although I voraciously read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and am half-way through Catching Fire, I’m thinking long and hard about whether I will read the third book or even finish the second. I can be an emotional wimp and based on what I’ve heard of book 3, I might not want to go there. It’s a fantastic series, and I’m sure I’ll miss a lot by not reading all three, but I might just exercise that freedom of choice I have and put the book aside. Does that mean the books should be banned from schools or that teens shouldn’t read them because I choose not to? Of course not. That would be silly.

    Should a young adult have that same freedom to choose as I do as an adult? For the most part, yes. A teen reading is a wonderful thing. Yes, some books might not be age appropriate, depending on the teen. When I was writing romance, my love scenes were fairly explicit. If a mom at a signing asked if my books were suitable for her daughter, I usually suggested they might be okay for a mature 15 or 16 year old, but I made it clear how “fleshed out” the love scenes were. The mom and the teen could make a choice based on that.

    That’s not to say the daughter might not find and decide to read my sexy books herself. Is that a problem? It might be if the son or daughter felt uncomfortable with what they read AND didn’t feel they could talk it over with their parent. But if a parent and child have an open and free flowing relationship, Mom or Dad can talk over the content of a book with their teen, both before he or she reads it and after.

    The thing is, so many of the YA books I’ve been reading in my effort to become more educated in the genre are tremendously thought-provoking. Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series and the issues of beauty and obsession with fame that it raises. The Hunger Games‘s treatment of not only oppression and insurrection but our fascination with reality TV. Neal Shusterman’s Unwind‘s handling of the dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice and where it could lead. These books are the Faranheit 451 and 1984 of our day.

    Who wouldn’t want their teens reading these books, considering these issues, critically analyzing these metaphoric stories? Teens are already thinking about these and even weightier issues, considering the world they live in. A novel can be a safe place to explore the darker side because it is fiction.

    Just my humble opinion.

  • #ArmchairBEA Intro

    I’m a latecomer to ArmchairBEA, so I have some catching up to do. I would have loved to attend BEA this year because I love NYC. Yes, very corny and cliche, but for me ’tis true.

    I was lucky enough to attend one BEA when it was in Los Angeles. It’s a short flight for me from Northern California and since my mom-in-law lives in L.A., I got to stay with her. The convention floor was pretty overwhelming, even though I only attended one day. I did get to sign one of my romance novels, which was fun. It’s always great to meet readers.

    Now I’m writing YA rather than romance (TANKBORN, my dystopian YA, is due out in Sept. 2011). Since I’m so into reading YA now, it would have been fabulous to check out all the new books and scoop up some freebies from the convention floor. To meet the authors and check out all the publishers. But since I can’t be there at BEA NYC this year, ArmchairBEA is the next best thing.