You'll find the links for the print and digital version of this book of holiday stories and yummy recipes below. Meanwhile, I happily welcome Barb Caffrey, one of the other twenty authors in
Exquisite Christmas, to my blog this week! I think you'll enjoy her explanation of the difference between writing for grown ups and young adults. Dee Ann
When Dee Ann
Palmer agreed to allow me to write a guest blog for her, I wasn't sure what to
write about. Surely you've read her excellent books and stories, which are full
of realistic romance – including her two short stories in the Exquisite Christmas anthology. (I have
to admit to a partiality for her characters in "Snowfall," myself.)
Then she said
she'd not written any young adult stories. And as I have, why not talk about
the difference between writing young adult novels with romance included as part
of the story, and my stories in Exquisite
Christmas, which deal with a long-term adult romance?
The main
difference I've found in writing romance in my novels AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE and A
LITTLE ELFY IN BIG TROUBLE, which features a teenage couple in Bruno the
Elfy and Sarah, his mostly human teenage girlfriend, and the stories
"Marja's Victory" and "To Hunt the Hunter" in Exquisite Christmas, is that teen
characters don't exactly know what it is that they want. Everything is ahead of
them. They are experiencing love for the very first time, and aren't sure what
they're supposed to be doing – or when they're supposed to be doing it. Whereas
adult characters know exactly what they are doing and why they're doing it, but
don't always know if their wishes are going to be reciprocated.
Anyway, as to
Bruno and Sarah's story…Bruno, you see, isn't from our
Earth at all. (He's from the Elfy Realm, which is in a parallel universe.) He
isn't used to humans or our culture, and comes from a much more rigid type of
upbringing. Where he's from, people are usually introduced to prospective
partners, and Bruno's been told he's too young to start looking. And because
he's an orphan and what amounts to a ward of the state back in the Elfy Realm,
he never thought he had much to give anyone anyway.
And then we have
Sarah, whose situation isn't what it seems. She's been told she's younger than
she actually is, because her parents wanted to keep her inheritance from
themselves. And she doesn't know at this point that she's not completely
human…she just knows she's short, very smart, and is gifted at understanding
other people's emotions. And she, too, has never thought about romance before.
So this is all
new to both of them, and getting to know each other during a crisis situation
(Bruno's mentor, Roberto, has been taken captive by a Dark Elf, who in turn is
being aided by Sarah's parents) has added a great deal of complexity to their
nascent romance.
Clear as mud,
right? So perhaps I should just show you instead…
From AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, page 265-6:
“Now
that you’re comfortable, will you please tell me what upset you so much?” Sarah
asked.
“I
will, dear,” he said. “But it won’t be easy. Will you sit beside me?”
She
sat next to him on the side of the bed, midway down, and timidly took his right
hand in her own. Bruno tried not to shake at the unexpected contact. He reached
out for her left hand and held it, too. She let him, giving him a soft smile
that told him as no words ever could that he was doing the right thing.
“Roberto
told me what Lady Keisha withheld from you,” he said. “And it’s painful. I
don’t want to hurt you.” He tried to pull his hands away, but Sarah tightened
her grip instead.
“Ignorance
is never good,” she said crisply, showing that uncommon maturity again. Then,
in a different tone of voice, she said, “Look, Bruno, I don’t see how it’s
going to help anything for me not to know. So please tell me?”
~*~
See, when I
wrote all this, I needed to show that Bruno and Sarah were both innocents,
falling in love, uncertain as to what was happening but wishing for it to
continue. They aren't sure what they want, except each other; they'll fight to
the death if they must for one another, and in this situation it may well come
to that.
Note that Bruno
does not take advantage of Sarah. He only goes as far as she'll allow. He is an
extremely polite young man—er, Elfy.
So, from two
youngsters just trying to figure out where their love fits into a crisis
situation and behaving in an age-appropriate way, we move to my adult
characters Marja and Tomas, the protagonists of "Marja's Victory" and
"To Hunt the Hunter." Marja is a shapeshifter and a woman of size;
she is not young, and she doesn't care who knows it. And her lover, Tomas, is a
telepathic mountain Troll, eight feet tall…both of them have found one another
congenial in both the business aspect (they are bounty hunters and detectives,
of sorts) and of course as romantic partners.
Because I'm
dealing with two mature individuals who've known each other for quite some time,
different elements come into play. Marja can be anything she wants, and can
take any form she wants – but I have a hunch that before she met Tomas, she
wasn't accepted much for herself or her talents.
For example, after
Marja and Tomas find a thief in "To Hunt the Hunter," Marja says
this:
"She doesn't love you,
Stefan." I couldn't afford to show him any empathy—the man was a thief—but
inside, I understood. It hurt to be rejected by someone you thought you loved.
::I'm here now, and I love you. Those other fools who passed on you do
not matter anymore. So who cares about them?:: Tomas's voice whispered into
my mind.
~*~
While this is a
very brief excerpt, it gets across the point that Marja knows how it feels to
be rejected. And Tomas tells her, "It doesn't matter anymore," and
calls the people who treated her ill "fools."
Isn't that what
we want, as adults? Someone who understands us, and will buck us up when we're
feeling down?
But that's not
the end of the story with Marja and Tomas…oh, no. Because you see, Tomas wants
to make it legal with Marja, and he's not above a wee bit of trickery in how
he's going to go about doing it. (Further author sayeth not…at least, not about
this.)
To my mind,
writing about adults in love is a little different than writing about teens.
Adults know exactly what they're after, while teens are still figuring it all
out. But when love strikes, it's all new to the protagonists, regardless of
age…the trick is in finding that newness, that special feeling, and making
other people feel it, too.
The Exquisite Christmas e-book is available now at:
Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B018F4ACSC
Barnes & Noble,
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/exquisite-christmas-victoria-adams/1123051071
Kobo
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/exquisite-christmas
and coming soon to
iBooks and other retailers.
