MathiasCavanaugh.com

Here are some recent reviews from my friends on Goodreads for books they have read. Read more…

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am really frustrated by the category Young Adult, aka YA, in fiction. I swear, if you ask ten different people to define “young adult” you get ten different answers.

The basis is usually the same and the actual definition is that the story must appeal to a teenage audience and be marketed towards them. But then things diverge quickly from there. Some people claim that the main characters themselves must been teenagers (i.e. Young Adults). Some people claim that the characters don’t need to teenagers, but that they must deal with the problems teens face. Some claim that it is ONLY a distinction in how the book is marketed, i.e. to Young Adults as previously stated. Some people even claim that a story being written in cinema style third person omniscient POV makes a story YA.

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Just giving a shout out my my buddy J.R. Fitch who has been giving me some great leads on literary agents to submit my novel to.  Ok, some of them don’t look like good fits but some of them do and I always appreciate the help.

I’ve started to construct an agent contact database to help track my submissions even though I am not quite there yet.  I like being organized though.

My database looks like this:

The categories are:

• Agent Name
• Agency
• Interests
• Recent Relevant Sales
• Send (Y/N)
• Date Sent
• Heard Back (Y/N)
• Interested (Y/N)
• Followup

The list contains both loose and hard matches.  If an agent says generically that they accept “Fiction” they go on the list.  They might not be among the first few batches of queries to go out unless I see that they have recently sold something in the Fantasy genre however.  The category that agents through around that bugs me however is “YA Fantasy”.  This field is so poorly and broadly defined that I have come to realize that no one really knows what it means and every one seems to have different definitions they opt to go by.  But I will still target them as well as Under the Darkened Moon can easily fit into that category under many of the available definitions.

I think that this sort of a list will help me keep track of where my submissions have gone and see if there are any trends in terms of out right rejections versus interest.