Edit: To those answering ‘Crossover’ please clarify if it should be best targetted as Adult crossing down or Childrens’ crossing up…
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Edit: To those answering ‘Crossover’ please clarify if it should be best targetted as Adult crossing down or Childrens’ crossing up…
A general rule of thumb with children and YA fiction is that people like to read about characters who are a couple of years older than they are. So with my seapeople novel, e.g., my main characters are 16, therefore it’s aimed at people 13+, roughly.
Your main characters are almost-adult/adult, and you deal with some fairly sophisticated themes (e.g. climate change) so I’d probably say yours was adult crossover rather than children’s crossover. The tone of your book seems to me much more adult than, say, the Harry Potter books.
I think you are proably right, thanks! 🙂
With this in mind, and thinking about my next submission to CritiqueCircle, which cue do you think I should plop it into?
I think you have to put at least your first two subs into the ‘Newbie’ queue, but after that I would probably put yours in the general Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror queue if I were you – you can always add an author’s note to the effect that it’s a YA/crossover 🙂
I’d agree with Helen – not that I’ve read the book, but I’ve read parts of it! I’d say it would be more likely to be marketed as a genre novel than general fiction, though.
What do you actually mean by genre novel and which genre would you say it is (from what you know of it, that is…)?
It’s hard to say! I think it would probably be marketed in the SF&F section, although it’s certainly not your classic SF&F novel.
It depends on what you call a classic SF&F novel – if you’re talking sword’n’scorcery or sci-fi, then no, no it isn’t.
But if you take Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Penelope Lively, Philip Pullman then yes it is…
Which I guess that’s why I always placed it in the YA catagory…?!!
I agree with both Helen and Rachel!
It’s definitely a crossover. I’d have to read more of it before deciding which direction the crossover takes!
It’s not in the general run of fiction, having such a strong element of fantasy – plus having the eco storyline concurrent with that. It’s a very interesting premise and, of course, very topical.
I think that this could be a good moment for your book, if you can just get it to an interested agent who has a bit of imagination.