Monday, July 9, 2012

Mythical- YA or Pulp?

I clearly didn't do enough research when I started on "Mythical". I designed it first as a screenplay to fit in with the whole Percy Jackson, Harry Potter etc genre. Then I adapted it into a novel since it turned out so well. And I listed it as Young Adult.
 
Argh. Now that it's uploaded and propping up the leg of a virtual table somewhere on the internet, I think I have chosen the wrong genre to list it in.
 
I chose this category as the main character is an 18 year old girl, Josie Winters. She has graduated High School and is about to start her adult life. But instead of going off to college, she finds a dead super soldier in the desert, Mark Kenslir, who comes back to life and gets her help completing his last mission- stopping a shapeshifting giant who rips out people's hearts and eats them to steal their stength, identity and even memories.
 
I was sure this sounded YA, it had a teen, facing an important issue: the change from childhood to adulthood. I even threw in the girl having a life-long best friend- a boy (Jimmy Kane) who had unrequited love for her, and therefore was all angsty about Josie helping out the super soldier (the older, mysterious man).
 
Now I'm starting to think it's more pulp.
 
I've done more reading, and I'm now seeing that YA seems to be a female genre. Which is odd, because the fast flowing writing style and the shorter novel lengths really remind me of the pulps I grew up reading (Doc Savage, Tarzan, etc.)
 
This makes me wonder- YA for girls or is it the new Pulp, with a bit of teenage drama thrown in for good measure? Should I list "Mythical" under a new genre to bring it out of internet ebook obscurity? Or do I hang in there and see if Month #2, and a sequel in the works will do better?

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