A touch of frost …

• Posted in On Writing

In addition to finishing the revisions on Elemental Assassin #4, I’ve also written a young adult book. I’m calling it A Touch of Frost, and it focuses on Gwen Frost, a Gypsy girl with the gift of psychometry — or the ability to know an object’s history just by touching it.

After her mom’s death, Gwen gets shipped off to Mythos Academy, a school for the descendants of ancient warriors, like Spartans, Amazons, Valkyries, and more. When a student is murdered, Gwen decides to use her Gypsy gift to find out who killed the other girl and why. I’m pitching the book as Veronica Mars meets the movie 300 (but without Gerard Butler’s man-abs, unfortunately.)

I’m not sure what, if anything, will happen with this book. There’s always a chance that my agent could hate the book, or that she could submit it to editors and no one will buy it. That’s a very real threat these days, since editors/publishers are cutting back, just like everyone else is. It’s always a little scary being an author, since it’s not a secure job at all and so many things are out of your control. But it’s even more so now, given the crappy economy.

It seems to me like the young adult market is still heavily focused on vampires and werewolves these days, so I’m not sure where a mythology book like mine would fit in. I know that the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan has been wildly successful, so that gives me some hope.

Regardless, if nothing else, finishing A Touch of Frost has proved to me that I can write a young adult book. It’s not as easy as it looks. Especially after writing five Gin Blanco books. Let’s just say that I had to tone the sex, violence, and language way down from the Elemental Assassin series. But in some ways, Gwen Frost is just as kick-butt as Gin is. And hey, there’s a magic sword named Vic in the book. Because you can’t write a mythology book without having some kind of sword or magical weapon in there. 😉

Anyway, we shall see what happens …

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10 Responses to “A touch of frost …”

  1. Jennifer Rayment says:

    Crossing my fingers for you, sounds like it would be good read and the YA market seems to really happening – especially with tons of adults reading it as well

  2. Jennifer Estep says:

    Thanks, I appreciate that. 😉

    I know what you mean. Some of my favorite reads last year were YA books, like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Graecling by Kristin Cashore. If you haven’t read those, I highly recommend them.

  3. Amy says:

    My YAs are reading anything they can get their hands on in the fantasy genre. I think what you’ve written is something just different enough from the vampires and werewolves that it could really take off. (Because, my goodness, we have to be getting tired of all the vampires and werewolves by now, don’t we?? I know I’m sick of buying them!)

  4. Jennifer Estep says:

    Heh. Apparently not. I was looking at the YA section at B&N the other night — lots and lots of vampires and werewolves looking back at me.

    But we’ll see what happens with my book. Fingers crossed! 😉

  6. Jennifer Estep says:

    Hi, Kate! Thanks. I appreciate that. 😉

    I know what you mean. I’d forgotten just how good YA could be, but I’m getting more and more into it. Just what I need — more books to add to the TBR pile!

  7. Jennifer Rayment says:

    I loved Hunger Games, I have a relationship with some of the people at Scholastics so she sends me tons of YA stuff and picture books to review. So far she has given me Hunger Games and she is sending me out the 2nd book in the series today. Fantastic writing in that one. She also sent me Shiver which I thought was quite good too. I will try your suggestion of Kristin Cashore. BTW, finally got to finish Spider’s Bite (It’s signed so I had to be careful where I read it — since I do a lot of reading in the bath or at breakfast) Posted a review of it on my blog. In order to be a little different and since I am not the best writer in the world, I do a point form review. It was fantastic and I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the series.

  8. Jennifer Estep says:

    Jennifer — Hunger Games was excellent. But I hear book 2 ends on a cliffhanger, so I’m going to wait until book 3 comes out later this summer before I read them. Graceling is excellent, especially if you like books with more of an epic fantasy feel.

    I also really enjoyed Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead and am looking forward to reading the rest of that YA series.

    Cool. Glad that you enjoyed the book. And thanks for the review! 😉

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