Fans of Interracial Romance discussion

I'm a new writer, well Ive been writing for a while, my family keeps suggesting i publish my work but i don't know where to even start, can someone give me a hand, the reason i posted my question here is because most of my work is bw/wm

Oooh, you've come to the right place. What questions do you have? You can email me dierectly with specifics. And welcome. :)

Like Stephanie said, there are lot of folks on here who can give you good advice. Welcome, Dana.

Welcome Dana. :-)

It can definitely be a bit daunting since publishing is a big world. Do feel free to toss out some questions!

Okay I recently started a high school paranormal IR series, um feeling really good about it but there's one thing I'm not so sure about. Okay what age is too young for sex, while with these books I don't plan to go into specific details. My characters are 17, I know most kids have had sex by then. Is it too young for books, should I change the character to being college students?

YA has gotten pretty edgy these days (and some would say controversial) so you can push the envelope with it as far as publishing goes. 17 would probably work if you were going to send it out to publishers. If you were to go younger, I would say unless you were going to make the books a commentary on such issues (like Justine Larbalestier's Liar or Kody Keplinger's The DUFF, younger would probably deter from the story and make many parents iffy. Since this is a high school PR IR, is this going to be aimed at Teens? If so, will the sexual content be detailed or just referred to?

Also, as with anything in writing, think about how the content fits in the story and how necessary it is. If it is put in there, does it advance the story or just show the characters becoming intimate? Although Liar had such a scene in there it wasn't as detailed and still it went a long way in showcasing the intimacy of the characters. On the flip side, Twilight (I'm not a fan myself but judging from reader's response to this HS PR series) was pretty chaste but what got readers' attention was the sexual tension rather than the act itself in the first book. A little goes a long way in some cases and can be more memorable than the act itself. If you send this out to mainstream publishers, they may want to cut the sexual aspect out to mirror Twilight (mainstream publishers are very scared of trying something new and if it has worked before, they will try to replicate it at all costs). Plus you will be tapping into that readership of teens where they haven't had sex yet and in a culture and society which is very sex saturated, that can be pretty refreshing for a teen to find in a book.

One thing you can do is go ahead and write the story out (you can always change it later and in many cases, it's easier when you have it written out) as your gut is telling you. Keep that draft, then go back and read it as a reader to see what is extraneous and doesn't work and what does work. You can also keep this draft when you get to the final one and start submitting the book out to publishers. 9 times out of 10, they will want you want to revise the book and if you change it significantly but wish you kept some aspects of the earlier draft before the changes, you can go back and grab what you need from the other drafts. Not sure if you already do this but I wanted to toss that out for general advice. I wish I had done this with some of my earlier works but ended up losing some good story stuff in the process (argh!).

In any event, keep in mind the overall story you are trying to tell and from what viewpoint (high school kids or college kids) that story will best be told from. See if this aspect of their lives fits into strengthening the telling that story or if it's just filler/shock/background. Trust your characters and story theme. They won't steer ya wrong. :-)

Welcome!

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