A Salute to Mother-Daughter Writing Teams

Mother's Day is coming, and it always has a bittersweet quality for me because my mother died right after Mother's Day 16 years ago. My mother was not a writer, but she was well-read and critically observant, and I'm sure she could give me valuable advice on my writing if she were still here. So I am naturally envious of the successful mother-daughter writing duos out there. For example, in the mystery fiction arena, there are the equally well-known Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, authors of books together and separately. Their first collaboration was Deck the Halls, described by Publishers Weekly as a "amiably lighthearted Christmas ornament of a book," in which Regan Reilly, the dynamic young sleuth from Carol Higgins Clark's novels, accidentally meets Alvirah Meehan, Mary Higgins Clark’s amateur detective, and they team up to solve a Reilly family-linked kidnapping. Another mystery writing duo operates under the pseudonym P. J. Tracy for mother-daughter team Patricia (P. J.) and Traci Lambrecht. Their debut Monkeewrench, which won a Barry Award as Best First Mystery Novel, is a tale of serial killings inspired by the new computer game of software company Monkeewrench, whose eccentric partners have a secret past that may link to the crimes. In the Young Adult space, New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann teamed up with her daughter Melanie Brockmann to write the paranormal Night Sky series about Skylar Reid, a teenage girl who discovers that she is a Greater-Than, meaning she has scary super-powers. Bestseller Jodi Picoult also collaborated with her daughter, Samantha van Leer, to produce Young Adult fare, starting with Between the Lines, a fairy tale-styled teen romance. Sometimes the mothers and daughters who share writing talent work best as mutual inspirations rather than as co-authors, as seen with the late award-winning writer Carolyn See and her best-seller daughter Lisa See (who also has mystery chops via her Red Princess series). Carolyn and Lisa did share the pen name Monica Highland, too. For more about mothers and daughters in publishing, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jocelyn-kelley/moms-write_b_1510114.html

Books for Young Sleuths, From Toddler to Teen

Mystery fiction is not just an adult pleasure. Holiday book gifts can deliver the joys of detection and puzzle-solving to young people from teen down to toddler. Yes, there's even something for 3- to 5-year-old sleuths this year--appropriately titled Who Done It? by Olivier Tallec. On each page of the picture book, young readers are asked to choose a culprit from a lineup of human and animal characters in response to questions such as "Who ate all the jam?" Spotting the guilty party is not always clear-cut; maybe it's the fox with jam on his face or maybe the rabbit with the upset tummy. Children are exposed to concepts that even trip up adults, such as judging expressions and postures, and avoiding quick assumptions. Of course, some answers are easy and designed to get a giggle from small readers, such as "Who couldn't hold it?" Moving on to readers aged 10 to 12, check out Greenglass House by Kate Milford, a 2015 Edgar Award winner for Best Juvenile Mystery. Twelve-year-old Milo, adopted son of innkeepers of a spooky smuggler's inn called Greenglass House, is spending his winter holidays there when an odd assortment of visitors arrive in the middle of a blizzard. Soon objects have gone missing and secrets abound, and Milo joins the cook's daughter Meddy to follow the clues. For teens, The Art of Secrets by James Klise, 2015 Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Novel, provides a more complex and thought-provoking view of the modern world and human character. Muslim immigrant Saba Khan's family apartment burns down, perhaps due to a hate crime, but her high school and community rally to aid with fundraising. Soon she is living in a rent-free luxury apartment, enjoying Facebook fame and even being secretly romanced by a popular boy. The good feelings turn ugly, however, when a piece of "found" art donated to a school fundraiser turns out to be worth a half million dollars, and is later stolen from the school. A web of greed, jealousy, shocking accusations, hidden motives, lies and secrets enmeshes the characters. Check out the other nominees in the Juvenile and YA categories of the 2015 Edgar Awards: http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html

Modern Echoes of the 'Penny Dreadful'

The term "Penny Dreadful" has been revived by the recent Showtime horror-thriller series. "Penny dreadful" refers to cheap and lurid British publications catering to the newly literate youth of the late 19th century. Thanks to increased public education, a growing number of English working class adolescents had learned to read at a basic level, and had income for inexpensive escapist entertainment. An American parallel would be the "dime novel." Aimed mainly at young adult males, the "penny dreadful" began as serialized stories on cheap pulp paper (costing a penny per installment). They offered sensational tales of paranormal chills, violent crime and youthful adventurers. For example, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who has been recently reincarnated as a Broadway and film star, was a penny dreadful invention. Other series featured "Varney the Vampire" and "Wagner the Wehr-Wolf." Actually, the penny dreadful tales don't sound that different from current best sellers in the Young Adult genre. Clearly, the teen taste for horror-thriller adventure is unabated. But I wonder if the penny dreadful content has modern-day parallels because the elementary literacy of Victorian youth--who demanded short-attention-span excitement devoid of literary and historical allusions and difficult vocabulary--is also still with us. A 2012 study of reading trends among high school students found that the average student reads at the 5th grade level--the reading level of the Hunger Games and Twilight series. For more on penny dreadful history, see http://vichist.blogspot.com/2008/11/penny-dreadfuls.html

Young Adult Fiction's Star Keeps Rising

Young Adult literature is experiencing a new golden age. Just consider the impact on popular culture, including movies spawned, of the Harry Potter series, the Twilight novels, the Hunger Games books, and Markus Zusak's award-winning The Book Thief. As YA and children's fiction crosses over to generate adult fans and purchasers, watch for adult fiction writers to follow and adapt/adopt these popular YA trends, as identified by Millhouse Press: dystopian tales (The Hunger Games); special needs protagonists (My Brother Charlie is an example); paranormal romance with vampires and more (such as Beautiful Creatures, a 2013 movie, too); mythology-based fantasy (see the Goddess Girls series); return of the venerable diary/journal format (such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid); and multimedia (exemplified by the Skeleton Creek series). But what's coming next? Writers want to strike gold with the next hot trend, not mine an exhausted vein. A recent story by Husna Haq in The Christian Science Monitor suggests that vampire-zombie-werewolf romance, Potteresque magical fantasy and dystopian adventure all may be running out of steam at last, and cites these hot new YA content predictions courtesy of Bookish.com editors: novels about a "loveless future," where teens struggle against societies seeking to eradicate love; modernized fairy tales, perhaps with a cyborg Cinderella or an unusual viewpoint, such as the not-so-wicked witch or stepmother (Disney seems to be tapping into that with its Maleficent film); a rise in male protagonists to end the long reign of girl power a la Katniss Everdeen; and a melding of YA with cyberpunk virtual reality and AI villainy (James Dashner's The Eye of Minds is an example). Some of the 2014 YA debuts certainly fit those new categories. For a list of the best YA of 2014, see the Young Adult Library Services Association's picks at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/2014-best-fiction-young-adults