My Guest this week caused people throughout the World to succumb to attacks of hysterical laughter when last on this blog. Today she's going to reveal the secret... No wait, I'll let her tell you. Ladies and Gentlemen...
Barb Taub
Want to write that next Young
Adult Dystopian
Paranormal Urban
Fantasy Romance blockbuster?
Who
doesn’t? Of course you might be worried about all the YA tropes that have
become cliches. Or not. (Certainly the writers who have been flooding my
inbox with their latest YA opus are not the least bit concerned with
cliches…)
But
that gave me an idea. Why shouldn’t I be the one to pen that next
best-seller and get the TV and licensing deals? I already know most of the
tropes involved. I’d just have to be careful to avoid a couple (okay, a lot) of
YA cliches.
I’ve
totally got this one!
My de-Clichéd YA Paranormal Urban
Fantasy Novel – Draft 1
Susie
Smith is a sixteen-year-old girl whose family disappears for
two months. Nobody notices because it’s summer and school is out and
she isn’t really all that popular.
Tragically,
her parents don’t die and leave her an orphan compelled to excel at
martial arts while concealing her dark secret identity. (Heartlessly, her
parents even make their mortgage payments, hold down normal jobs, and
contribute regularly to her college fund, making it impossible for her to
take on the adult role of paying bills and taking care of the house
and her younger siblings.) Instead they all go on vacation together to her
grandparents’ house, where Susie does not meet a sexy boy with a
devastating secret and bizarrely pale skin. She has a good time, and
comes back at the end of the summer with her virginity and all her blood volume
intact. Oh, and she still has her soul. Plus she is not secretly
revealed to be the love child of a powerful member of the fey domain. Or a
princess.
She
catches sight of herself in the mirror and instead of spending the next few
minutes cataloging the ways she is a totally and completely normal girl (who
happens to have long red hair, big green eyes, pouty lips, and black
hole of darkness within her very soul), she leans in to plop some
Clearasil on a couple of pimples, pulls her shoulder-length brown hair
into a ponytail, and then heads off to school, surreptitiously humming Abba
songs along with her phone.
There is
a sexy new guy with a devastating secret sitting behind her in class. They pay
no attention to each other, and she sits with her best friend, who is gay, but
isn’t a fashion expert or a good cook. Neither one of them flips their
hair. That night, Susie wakes up to find the sexy guy watching her
from the rocking chair in the corner of her bedroom. He whispers that he’s been
in love with her all his life, or at least since he saw her in third
period history class. She screams, and her father runs in and beats the
hell out of him.
At
school, the head cheerleader and sexy captain of the football team break up
because of his devastating secret. He tells Susie he’s always noticed
her and thinks she would be stunningly beautiful if she let her hair
down, stopped wearing baggy jeans, and took off her glasses. But since Susie is
not preternaturally intelligent and thus has to work hard for her
grades, she doesn’t want to be late for biology class. She
leaves, and they never speak again. In class, she practices her DNA testing and
discovers that she is, in fact, the biological child of both her parents and
not the offspring of a god or paranormal creature.
In
calculus class, a sexy boy with a devastating secret tells Susie that she
has been chosen to help him save the universe and that she’s going to get some
secret powers any time now, so she must reject the advances of his rival,
the sexy captain of the football team. Further, he tells her their last
calculus test was really The Test and they are now the Chosen Ones and must
forever more wear only their team’s Chosen Colors (him: purple and red,
her: blue and silver). She tells him that her only secret powers are
a double-jointed right thumb that allows her to scoop ice cream really
quickly, and the scary ability to memorize Abba lyrics. She’s late for her
part-time job at the ice cream store, so she takes a raincheck on
universe-saving. He decides that it doesn’t make sense for the universe to
depend on a couple of teenagers (plus the thought of a lifetime of wearing
purple and red makes him slightly nauseous), so he joins Susie’s
study group instead.
They
get into the same University and occasionally share a ride home for the
holidays. She heads back east for graduate school, and he ends up taking over
his family’s business, a small group of painting & decorating stores,
which he sees as a brave stand against a gloomy dystopian future, plus it’s
free. She gets tenure. He gets a boat. The Universe doesn’t end.
They meet
again at their tenth high school reunion, and she introduces him to her
partner, a woman from the Classics department. He’s married to the former
head cheerleader from their high school, and they have three
daughters, the youngest of whom occasionally turns into an owl and flies
around the house. Someone else saves the universe. Probably.
The
end? Oh, please. This is just Book One. Of at least a 28-book series… We
haven’t mentioned sexy vampires with a devastating secret. Or alien
mind-control. Or even were-badgers.
While
you’re waiting for me to finish my YA opus, why not take a look at my other
books?
Null City Series—Urban Fantasy with humor, romance, a sentient
train, a great dog, and a seriously big cat
In
the world of Null City ‑
Superpowers
suck. If you just want to live a normal life, Null City is only a Metro ride
away. After one day there, imps become baristas, and hellhounds become poodles.
Demons settle down, become parents, join the PTA, and worry about their taxes.
In a dangerous game that pits heaven against hell, the three Parker siblings
each hold a key to Null City’s survival. And outside of Null City, an uneasy
peace is policed by Wardens under the command of the Accords Agency.
 |
| Click for preview, reviews & a free copy from Amazon! |
One
Way Fare: Gaby
Parker and Leila Rice: two young women confronting cataclysmic forces waging an
unseen war between Heaven and Hell. Someone should have told them the angels
were all on the other side.
 |
NEW!
Round Trip Fare: Warden
Carey Parker’s to-do list is already long enough: find her brother and sister,
rescue her roommate, save Null City, and castrate her ex-boyfriend. Preferably
with a dull-edged garden tool. A rusty one.
 |
| Click for preview, reviews & buy links from Amazon |
Don’t
Touch: Hope
flares each morning in the tiny flash of a second before Lette touches that
first thing. And destroys it.
 |
| Click for preview, reviews & buy links from Amazon |
Tales
from Null City: Two
novellas from the Null City world. Now that the century-long secret Nonwars
between Gifts and Haven are over and the Accords Treaty is signed, an uneasy
peace is policed by Wardens under the command of the Accords Agency.
§ Just for the Spell of It:
They’ve worked cases for the Accords Agency before, but with war between realms
looming and her baby sister as bargaining chip, partnering just got personal.
§ Payback is a Witch: Claire
Danielsen is a young witch whose goddess is house cat of unusual size. Peter
Oshiro is a Warden policing a delicate truce between those who are human and those
who… aren’t.
Bio:
In
halcyon days BC (before children), Barb Taub wrote a humor column for several
Midwest newspapers. With the arrival of Child #4, she veered toward the dark
side and an HR career. Following a daring daytime escape to England, she’s
lived in a medieval castle and a hobbit house with her prince-of-a-guy and the
World’s Most Spoiled Aussie Dog. Now all her days are Saturdays, and she spends
them traveling around the world, plus consulting with her daughter on Marvel
heroes, Null City, and translating from British to American.
Here is where she hangs out, and she’d love to hear from you!
Blog:
http://barbtaub.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NullCityNovel
Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00EZP9BS8
Thank you, Barb, for a wonderful post. It's so motivated me, I'm going to start my own YA dystopian whatnot immediately. Watch out world... By the way, you win the prize for the longest Guest post title since I created this blog!
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
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