I am extremeley pleased and excited to welcome today:
4 incredible Male YA Authors at the Bookworms
for the All Male Review Challenge! Plus, stay tuned, we have an awesome giveaway for you too!
This reading and reviewing challenge, co-hosted by Bewitched Bookworms, Books and Things, Supernatural Snark, In the Closet with a Bibliophile and The Unread Reader, will run the entire month of JULY.
And now, please welcome:
Dan Wells Author of Partials – YA Dystopian
Jeff Hirsch Author of Magisterium – YA Fantasy (Dystopian)
Robison Wells Author of Variant – YA Mystery (SciFi)
Tom Pollock Author of City’s Son – YA Fantasy
Let’s jump directly into the discussion!
You all write Young Adult fiction, I guess that the majority of your fans are female, right? Do boys and girls (men and women) approach you differently?
Jeff: Not so much really. By and large boys this age (12-15 or so) are a bit shyer than the girls. The girls seem to be a bit more confident and able to articulate their feelings about the book. Outside of that we pretty much talk about the same kinds of things when we talk about the book.
Tom: Well, the book’s not out yet, so ask me again in a couple of months, but I meet early readers at events, and I haven’t noticed much of a difference. Both genders seem as interested in the monsters as the relationships and vice versa.
Rob: I hear more often from girls than I do from boys, but I think that’s just because more girls read YA overall. Even though my book is routinely referred to as a “boy book”, I’ve never received any feedback from female readers that it was TOO masculine, or that they wanted something more girly. What I usually hear instead is that girls find it refreshing to read something with a male protagonist.
DAN: By the time a fan is brave enough to approach me at all, they’re usually pretty articulate and ready to have a good discussion. Having written books for both teens and adults, I actually find that a lot of teens, of both genders, are even better at talking to authors than a lot of adults.
In this regard, as a male YA author you are clearly the minority. Why do you think this is the case?
Jeff: Hard to say. But if I had to guess I’d say it has something to do with a lot of YA writers coming out of teaching which has traditionally been a female dominated industry.
Tom: Can’t be sure without researching it, but my gut says everything stems from the reading, and the stats tell us more girls read more fiction than boys do. Now, just because that’s the way it is, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the way it has to be, but there are powerful forces (like the publishing tendency to make book covers aimed at girls, because that’s their core market) that reinforce the status quo.
Rob : I agree with what Jeff and Tom both said, but I’d also posit that the YA category is heavily tilted toward romantic fiction. I’m not saying that guys can’t write romance–I personally think almost every book needs at least a little romance–but that genre has been traditionally dominated by female authors. That will probably change; more men are getting into YA fiction all the time.
DAN: That’s actually not my experience at all, I know plenty of YA authors of both genders.
Some of you both have female protagonists, or include female POV’s in your story! Was it a distinct decision to write your story from a girl’s POV and how do you get into a “female” mind frame? ( this sounds a little weird, but I think you get my point..)
Jeff: Magisterium has a female protagonist because when the first scene popped into my head it involved a young woman named Glenn who was bringing her Dad dinner. I just went with it from there and it felt right, maybe because Glenn being a girl, along with other traits like her prickly selfishness and her science nerdhood, makes her seem like the kind of person we think is not “supposed” to have an adventure. Hopefully that makes it more fun when she does.
As to the female frame of mind. I don’t know. Honestly I’m not even sure I know what that means, just like I’m not sure what the male frame of mind would mean. I try to focus on the Glenn frame of mind and leave it at that. The book isn’t really about her “femaleness” or the struggles that come along with it. She’s not meant to be representative.
Tom: I’m with Jeff on this one. The City’s Son has both male and female POVs, and Fil and Beth are completely distinct personalities, but I don’t think much of what separates them stems from their genders. I don’t buy into the idea that boys’ and girls’ minds are uniformly, and innately different from each other. They’re treated differently by society, sure, and that has an impact, but so do a million other things: Beth’s skill with graffiti, say, or Fil’s fear of his inheritance. They’re a product of all those, and I try to write characters who are themselves, rather than just a patchwork of the boxes they’d have to check on a passport application.
Rob: VARIANT and FEEDBACK are both from a single, male POV, but both books have strong female main characters. I think the key to writing fully-realized female (or male) characters is to avoid stereotypes. For example, Becky, the lead girl in my books, was never intended to be “The Love Interest” or “The Damsel in Distress”. Instead, I had a great character idea for her as an administrator who worked in the grey areas between right and wrong. In other words, her gender didn’t define her role in the world; her background and personality did.
DAN: My first attempts to write a female POV didn’t work, because I was trying to write ‘female’ instead of ‘person.’ I don’t go out of my way to write boys as ‘male,’ so why do it for girls? Our gender affects us, but it doesn’t define us. After that I started writing Kira, the heroine of PARTIALS, as just a ‘person,’ and it worked perfectly.
Do you do .. uhm… research to write female POV’s?
Jeff:Are you asking if we all hang out at the school yard and chat up tweens? Outside of Rob, I am pretty sure none of us do that. But seriously, I definitely run things by my wife and other women in my life and tell them to call me out on anything that sounds untrue.
Rob: Jeff, you promised not to tell!
No, for me the biggest help has been my writing group. There are seven of us, and five are women. I do the best I can trying to capture the female voice and perspective, and then the women in my writing group help me tweak and revise where needed.
Tom: Nah, apart from anything else, to research Beth’s POV properly I’d need to pop on a hoodie and break back into my old school in the middle of the night to graffiti it. But my agent, my editor and most of my first readers are women. If anything snags with them, I’ll hear about it.
DAN: Nope.
Readers, and especially girls can be very passionate about male characters in books. Even more, they are often considered as the bad-boys, yet Girls fall head over heels about these characters. Is this something you as a writer are aware of and maybe shape your characters to appeal more to the female audience?
Jeff: I try not to let it shape things. There are plenty of people out there who write great bad boy characters. Don’t think I’m one of them. Besides, YA lit desperately needs a greater diversity of character types for both boys and girls.
Tom: *Quickly adds leather jacket, shades and a cigarette to cover art brief* Sorry what was that? But in all seriousness, no. I try to keep my characters balanced, and honest. I have faith that the book’s readers will go for that. Sometimes it leads to moments of surprising badass-ness, but it also yields boys, who like the girls in the book, are struggling with stuff that feels too big for them, who screw it up and are awkward as well as nailing it and being cool.
Rob: Yeah, I think the “Bad Boy” is just another gender-based stereotype, and it’s just as bland as the “Damsel in Distress” or the “Generic Love Interest”. I don’t think real people fit so neatly into boxes, so characters shouldn’t be crammed into those boxes, either.
As for whether I purposely tailor my characters to be appealing to readers: definitely. I want readers to be engaged with the characters, to be rooting for them, to be falling in love with them. But I think that can be done much more effectively by creating vivid, realistic people than by simply relying on old tropes.
DAN: I don’t write for a female audience, or even a male one–I just write what I think is awesome, and hope other people like it. I can’t imagine thinking ‘I’ll put in some of X or Y because I bet the women will eat it up;’ it sounds too much like pandering or writing down. Good characters are good characters, no matter what your gender is.
Dan and Jeff – you both wrote stories with female as well as boy POV – funny enough you both started with the boy POV (“I am not a killer” and “11th Plaque” and switched to a girls POV “Partials and Magisterium”. Is there any connection, or is it just a coincidence? 🙂
Jeff: No connection as far as I know. Maybe there’s a kind of natural desire to not get stuck doing one sort of thing so you switch things up from project to project.
DAN: I still write both; my next book after PARTIALS was THE HOLLOW CITY, which was back to a male protagonist again.
Did you read a lot as a Teenager? And what kind of stories did you read?
Jeff: Since middle school, yeah. The first book I have a clear memory of reading was “How to Eat Fried Worms” sometime in early middle school. If I had to be honest I’d say I probably started reading it because I was extremely shy and it was a great way to , you know, avoid human contact. Luckily my shyness lessened but my love of reading didn’t. Later, the all time biggest series of books for me was The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Other than that it was huge doses of comic books and Stephen King.
Tom: Constantly, to the profound irritation of my parents whenever we were on holiday.
‘Tom, look out of the window, it’s Niagara Falls! You’ll probably never see this again!’
‘Sorry dad, but if it’s not cooler than a fell-beast mounted Nazgul, it’s going to have to wait.’
I read all kinds of stuff, but there was a bias to SF and fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, Belgariad, Dune. The Alderley Edge Books by Alan Garner were massive for me, and (a little younger) but *anything* by Roald Dahl.
Rob: I’m the opposite: since my older brother (Dan) always wanted to be a writer, I purposely tried to stay out of his shadow and to be as different from him as possible: he was the reader and writer, so I wanted to be something else. Consequently, I never actually developed a real passion for reading until I was in college.
I think this still influences what I choose to read: I probably read five times as much non-fiction as fiction, even now, because I grew up hating English classes but loved history and math.
DAN: I read everything: fantasy, SF, historical fiction, true crime, fairy tales, and everything else I could get my hands on.
Last but not least, please describe your male and female protagonists with 3 words!
Glenn in Magisterium – Angry. Selfish. Heroic.
Fil in THE CITY’S SON – Proud, scared and lethal.
Beth in THE CITY’S SON – Rash, furious, loving
Benson in VARIANT – Independent, Untrusting, Persistent
Becky in VARIANT – Scared, Scrupulous, Resolute
Kira in Partials-Smart, Determined, Hot-tempered.
John Cleaver in The Hollow City–Sacrificing, Observant, Dangerous.
That.Was.Awesome!!! I hope you had as much as I had reading it and I want to thank all of those amazing Authors to agree to this very special Interview and Discussion!
We were lucky enough to chat with Jeff, Tom, Rob and Dan at BEA and we have a book from each of them signed for you to grab!
The Giveaway is US/Can and all you have to do is full out the Rafflecopter!
Much Love and as Jeff said:
“Dudes Rule!!”
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LOVE the interview! Thank you so much! I especially liked hearing from Dan because I adored Partials so much and I’ll actually be meeting him on Tuesday (Dark Days Tour stop)! I can seriously barely contain my excitement!
Ashley recently posted..The Wand-Maker’s Debate by Jack D. Albrecht and Ashley Delay
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Awesome roundtable Danny! I think they’re on to something here…that we don’t really care if the protagonist is a boy or a girl, so long as they are a fully rounded out “person” there is always something to relate to.
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Haha this interview was hilarious, I LOVED it:)) It was awesome:)
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Great interview! Isn’t Tom the one you said was super cool and nice at BEA? And I loved Dan. It’s interesting that girls are usually more willing to approach authors. I was just like Tom as a kid – Niagara Falls would pass right by as I had my nose in a book.
Alison (AlisonCanRead) recently posted..Bookish Recap
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What an awesome post! I loved Variant (fab ending!!) and I can’t wait to read Magisterium, Feedback and Partials. I’ve never heard of The City’s Son. Looks good! I’m so glad to see male authors in YA. I’m going to come back to enter! Thanks for the giveaway 🙂
Julie recently posted..Kismet Book Touring: Interview with Elyse Mady, Author of The White Swan Affair + Giveaway!
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Please do call me slow! I had no idea Dan and Rob were brothers. Someone hit me with a book please, preferably paperback!
What a totally awesome interview!!! I loved that! This needs to be done more often. I’m seeing more and more books with male POV’s in them if not solely then shared and I love it. I’m making a list of these books because I have a reluctant reader,I know how could I possibly, but I do. And I’m going to make him read this interview and pick which book he wants to read first.
Thanks for the fantastic giveaway and that great interview!
Heather
hrose2931 recently posted..Wild Ink Author Victoria Hanley Guest Post
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I love hearing from the guy authors!
Love how they all got into reading and how they’re approached by readers:)
Thanks so much:)
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That’s an awesome post, Danny.
It’s really interesting that they say there’s no such thing as a female mind frame. I’ve always thought that men and women approach things and think very differently, especially when I read books, but maybe that’s just me. The authors made some interesting points though ! 🙂
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“What I usually hear instead is that girls find it refreshing to read something with a male protagonist.” That’s definitely true! We don’t get many books told from a guy’s point of view, so it’s always so refreshing when we do! LOL and this interview/discussion/talk-of-coolness was just too awesome!! I love hearing from guy authors, especially since they totally admitted that the leather jacket, shades and cigarette are bad boy trademarks, even to them :’)
Love love LOVE this interview, Danny!! This is why guy authors rock x) <3
Mimi Valentine recently posted..Review: From What I Remember
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OH MY GOSH DANNY THIS POST IS AMAZING! Love hearing from so many authors at once and seeing how their experiences as authors compare and contrast. I’m dying to read all of their books, even more so now that I’ve gotten a little taste of their individual personalities.
Loved this interview. Love these authors. Love you:)
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Awesome interview! And thanks for the awesome giveaway!
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This is going to souns mean… but sometimes (most of the time) male authors are a lot cooler than female authors. They don’t, for example, squeal about nonsense (even though sometimes nonsense is good). And yay for Dan!!! I’m reading Partials now. Exciting! I’ll have to add the other three books to my list.
Alyssa <3
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These authors are real rock stars!!! We need more! Such a riot 🙂
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That was a really fun interview!
Becki @ TheFlutterbyRoom recently posted..Review: Exodus by Julie Bertagna
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All these books sound so good!!! I especially can’t wait for The City’s Son. Thanks so much for the giveaway! 🙂
Maria @ Fantasy’s Ink recently posted..Review: False Covenant
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Dan and Rob are brothers? I didn’t even realize they had the same last name… until I went back and read their names. Great post! I loved being able to read about the different experiences authors have and how some of them are the same.
Tabitha recently posted..Review: For Always by Danielle Sibarium
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Loved the interview!! All the books look incredible~ 😮 Thank you for the giveaway!
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I loved Partials and have been dying to get Variant! Thanks for the intro to The City’s Son and Magisterium! They both sound promising!
Thanks,
Leanne
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Hi! Thanks for this giveaway and awesome blog hop, I didn’t realize how much ”male” authors were writing YA!
Proserpine recently posted..The Catalyst by Zoe Winters Book Tour! Excerpt!
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Thank you for this great roundtable interview and for the giveaway
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Now there’s something you never see. All guys getting together for a bull session. That’s the most original blog post I’ve seen in ages. Great roundtable and great giveaway. I’d love to win this prize package.
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Lots of awesome books to read. I can’t wait.
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All of these look so good. I’m especially excited for Partials. Great interview too!
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you guys rock! I can’t wait to read them all. 😀
TayteH recently posted..Giveaway Alert! Embrace & Entice giveaway
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Fantastic interviews! Those guys were too funny. “How to Eat Fried Worms” was one of my favorite books as a kid–I thought it was so gross yet awesome. I tried to get my brother to eat some but he didn’t go for it. Alas.
m recently posted..Awesomely Epic Romance: PUSHING THE LIMITS by Katie McGarry
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Awesome post! I haven’t heard of a lot of these books actually. But I’ve been kind of out of the book loop for the past month. haha I do REALLY want to read Partials though. It sounds so good. I’ve had it on hold at my library forever! lol
♥ Sarah @ I’m Loving Books
Sarah recently posted..Review: Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
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great interview! All of their books look so awesome. Nice to see more male authors!
Kristen recently posted..The Monster Report
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Interesting interview, my reading tastes have always slanted me towards “boy books” because they tend to be more adventure based, while the “girlier” ones focus more on romance. I can often tell if the author is male or female by how the romance is portrayed: most guys just don’t write about “beautiful blue eyes that reflect the dazzling blue oceans.” Just Sayin’
Coincidently I’m currently reading Rob Wells’s Variant, and I’m liking it so far (though I am only 100 pages in) I already read Partials, and I liked Kira–even though she doesn’t think before she acts half the time.
Lilian @ A Novel Toybox
Lilian recently posted..[review] I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (2012)
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Thanks for the interviews and the giveaway. I’m really excited about Partials and Magisterium!
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What an awesome interview! I totally agree about how the mindset of males and females aren’t too different. I just finished Partials this week and loved it!! It really is refreshing sometimes to read a book that isn’t focused on the romance. (: More male authors/protaganists please! (:
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Wow so many male authors out there. Here I thought they only write about adventures I sure was wrong, because their books sound really interesting.
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Hi guys! What a fun post. I am sad that I have only read Dan’s book and not the others, but now I am adding the others to my list. I love male protagonists and male authors. We need more of both. Thanks so much for sharing and especially for the awesome giveaway!
Heidi recently posted..Married with Zombies (Living with Dead #1) by Jesse Petersen
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Great selection of books! I love dystopians and scifi so most of these are on my TBR list and I can’t wait to read them! Thanks for this amazing giveaway – I would love to win!
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Awesome roundtable! I’m really interested in all of these authors! Also, thank you for the giveaway!
Lili recently posted..Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
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Thanks for the EPIC giveaway!! These all sound like awesome books!
Stephanie W. recently posted..The Seduction of Phaeton Black Tour: Review, Excerpt & Giveaway!
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Best. Roundtable. Ever! I love getting into a male author’s mind and knowing more about how they create females. I think Dan’s idea of just writing a person makes total sense. All of these books are on my TBR. Now I’m looking forward to reading them even more. 🙂
Thanks so much for getting this together and sharing it with us. Of course the giveaway is epic!
Missie, The Unread Reader recently posted..Fairy Metal Thunder Read-Along & Scavenger Hunt: Week One
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I just read Partials and loved it, and I’m getting more and more into male YA authors since I’ve been trying to branch out. Thanks for the giveaway and for posting this awesome interview–it’s great to hear from different types of authors and get their individual perspectives!
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I love this event. It’s such an awesome idea!
Laura Ashlee recently posted..Manga Mondays: Ai Ore! Volume 1 by Mayu Shinjo
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Terrific theme today! I enjoyed these interviews, and heck, who doesn’t love a giveaway! Thanks!
– lavendersbluegreen(at)yahoo(dot)com
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Love this multi-author review format – these guys are a blast!
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ALL of these are on my TBR list! I def need to pick these up asap!
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Partials is SOOOO good! I can’t wait for the next one!!
Ange/Libby Blog recently posted..Book Trailer Thursday #25 – So Close to You & The Forsaken
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OMG!! Danny, what amazing post!!
I’d love to hear what these wonderful authors have to say about their writing process, writing female pov, talking to female readers, etc!
Thank you so much for this interview! I haven read any of this authors (shame on me) but I definitely will!
thanks for the awesome giveaway too! holy cow!! that’s quiet a treasure!! <3
Natalia Belikov recently posted..Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
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Thanks so much for this interview, I haven’t read any of these but they all sound amazing. Can’t wait to dive in!
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Great interviews! Thanx for sharing! I
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Im excited to read Partials and Variant. I hadnt heard of the others, but quickly ::running:: to add them to my goodreads TBR 😀
cass recently posted..100 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY!!!
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thx 4 the giveaway…is this internation ?
if so…please count me in 🙂
thx u for the interviews….i’d like to read their books..especially PARTIALS…
-nurma-
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This is a power give-away and the authors are so great! I want to win 🙂
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Tom Pollock is amazing!! I can’t wait to read The City’s Son! Awesome interviews too! I really loved how you color coded everything and laid it out like this!
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Great interview! I love their answers. I’m also excited about all of these books, I haven’t read any of them yet! Thanks for the great giveaway!
Lori recently posted..Top Ten Tuesday (16)
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These books look gorgeous and I would love to add them to my collection. Thanks for such a great giveaway. Signed books are fabulous!
Zara Alexis recently posted..Thirst: A Review
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I am so excited about all of these books. All of them. Partials is on my shelf, and after all of the great reviews, I cannot wait to read it. Feedback is going to kick booty if it is half as good as Variant. I love reading books by male authors. I love the perspective they write from. Thanks so much for this post!
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Wow, I’m hyperventilating a little here, because I would seriously love to have each and every one of these books!!!! Which is saying a lot because I really do tend to read books by women more than men. But this was a great interview and is an amazing giveaway!!! I would absolutely love to win!
PS – I just “found” y’all via a link from Melissa’s Eclectic Bookshelf, wondering how you escaped me for so long 🙂 but I just wanted to tell you that I think you 100% hands down have the most visually gorgeous blog of any that I follow!!! (which is way too many) WOW – I’m seriously amazed by what you’ve got going on here. I’m looking forward to reading more!
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I cannot wait for Feedback. Variant is such an awesome read I really liked it. I can’t wait for the other books as well! Thanks for the chance!
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