Meredith Mansfield, Author

The realization that my voice as a writer is a better fit for the young adult market has me doing some reassessment.

MAGE STORM, which I thought was young adult, is probably actually middle grade.  I’d already made plans to rewrite DREAMER’S ROSE as young adult, which I think fits the story much better.  Now, I realize that BLOOD WILL TELL is probably young adult, too.  That’s three fifths of my completed work.

That leaves me in something of a quandary on my planned work, though.

I plan to write SEVEN STARS (I really need to find a new title for this) as young adult anyway.  The only obstacle there is that so far my main character’s voice is sounding a little too old and experienced to me.  But I’ve only written a little over 4000 words, barely enough to really start getting into his head.  I’ll find his insecurities and things will fall into place. 

The two possible sequels to BLOOD WILL TELL pose an interesting problem.  I married the main character off in the first book.  I’m not sure how that would impact the second and third books from a young adult perspective.  Of course, I could find a reason to torture them some more and force them to wait, but the plot of the first sequel sort of depends on their being married unless I think of a way to change the inciting incident and main conflict.  That’s a pretty major change.

THE SHAMAN’S CURSE is probably pretty close to young adult, too, except the pacing is way off.  Too slow.  But I was going to have to fix that anyway.  But then there’s the problem of three more book in that series with a progressively older, more adult protagonist.  Crossover?

I need to spend some time considering the implications.