UKYA
Hundreds of years into the future, wars, riots, resource crises and rising sea-levels have destroyed the old civilisations. Only one city has survived: Neo-Babel, a city full of cultures – and racial tension.
Fifteen-year-old Silver is an Elite, a citizen of Neo-Babel chosen to guard the city due to her superior
DNA. She’d never dream of leaving – but then she fails to prevent the assassination of Neo Babel’s president, setting off a chain of events more shocking and devastating than she could ever have imagined. Forced to flee the city with her best friend Butterfly (a boy with genetically-enhanced wings), Silver will have to fight to find her family, uncover the truth about Neo-Babel and come to terms with her complicated feelings for Butterfly.
There is a world where gods you’ve never heard of have wound themselves into hearts, and choice has led its history down a different path.
This is a world where France made a small, downtrodden island called England part of its vast and bloated empire.
There are people here who can cross a thousand miles with their minds. There are rarer people still who can move between continents in the blink of an eye.
These people are dangerous.
And wanted. Desperately wanted.
Apprentice hedgewitch Vela Rue knows that she is destined for more. She knows being whisked off from a dull country life to a city full of mystery and intrigue is meant to be. She knows she has something her government wants, a talent so rare and precious and new that they will do anything to train her in it.But she doesn’t know that she is being lied to. She doesn’t know that the man teaching her about her talent is becoming obsessed by her, and considered by some to be the most dangerous man alive …
Every so often, two people are born who are the perfect matches for each other. Soulmates. But while the odds of this happening are about as likely as being struck by lightning, when these people do meet and fall in love…thunderstorms, lightning strikes and lashings of rain are only the beginning of their problems.
Enter Poppy, the 17-year-old cynic with a serious addiction to banana milk, and Noah, the heart-throb guitarist; residents of mediocre Middletown, sometime students, and…soulmates. After a chance meeting at a local band night, Poppy and Noah find themselves swept up in a whirlwind romance unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before. But with a secret international agency preparing to separate them, a trail of destruction rumbling in their wake, (and a looming psychology coursework deadline), they are left with an impossible choice between the end of the world, or a life without love…
16-year-old Sia only has 15 days to live.
A New World has been created, a place that is highly selective of its citizens and welcomes only the most extraordinary people. Its creators believe they’re putting the world to rights and moving towards a perfect future. They’ve divided society into sectors, with a metal wall surrounding each one. There’s no way in, no way out. A clock tower ticks down the days until a cyborg army penetrates the sector walls, and when they do, nothing will remain of the sector and its citizens but blood, fire and ash.Sia and her family are far too ordinary to be chosen, so they’re left in their sector to die at the hands of machines. Sia accepts her fate, knowing she can’t escape it. Then she meets Mace, a dangerous and attractive boy, who refuses to give up life without a fight…
About me: I’m totally disaster prone. I like goats and guinea pigs. My favourite place to read is in the bath (with water in, obvs). If I could only eat one food forever it would be potatoes. I have brown hair and my eyes change colour.
Yes, haha! I’m completely disaster prone, just like Suzy is, so I thought it would be funny to write about someone else who constantly embarrasses themselves. I’ve had my nose broken in a tickling fight, ended up with my arm in a plaster cast after opening a window and given myself concussion falling off a sofa!
I also use funny things that have happened to my friends. The scene where Suzy goes shopping for
bridesmaid dresses in the book is based on a real shopping trip I took with one of my best mates. Real life is definitely the best source of novel inspiration, I’m always bugging people to tell me their embarrassing stories!
JK Rowling, Harry Potter
Louise Rennison, Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging
Marie-Louise Jensen, The Lady in the Tower
Alison Rattle, The Quietness
HM Castor, Henry VIII
I enjoy a lot of historical novels, and I think UK authors do that particularly well as our countries have such a long, rich history of characters and events to draw upon. British humour is fantastic, we do funny books really well here.
Most of the YA novels I’ve read from other countries have been American, I guess the main thing that’s different is the school setting. I’ve read so many books with jocks, and cheerleaders, and a homecoming and important football matches which I don’t have any experience of. I think UKYA is more relevant to my own life and is easier for me to relate to.
I’d like to see more contemporary stuff being picked up and enjoyed – it feels like the paranormal has dominated for a very long time! I’d also like to see UKYA authors continuing to get support from readers, bookshops and libraries. Considering how small the UK is, we have so much talent here.
Suzy’s best friend Millie, because she’s loads of fun, she’d dye my hair for me and she’s always got sweets with her. Win!
Favourite place to write? On the PC at my desk in my study.
Favourite TV show? Just one?! I can’t. I can never pick one thing, I’ll warn you now. Friends. Grey’s Anatomy. Homeland. Modern Family. Scrubs.
Favourite comfort food? Potatoes, with more potatoes on the side. Or a bag of Minstrels.
Favourite non-UKYA novel? I loved The Hunger Games and The Princess Diaries. I’ve read Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin zillions of times. I also adored Judy Blume’s books when I was a teenager.
Thanks so much for inviting me onto your blog! If you’d like to find out more, do come visit me
I’m Holly Smale: writer, dreamer and pat-ter of other people’s kittens. GEEK GIRL was my debut novel, and featured my eponymous fifteen year old geek, Harriet Manners. She’s clumsy, socially challenged and extremely unpopular. When she’s unexpectedly spotted by a model agency on a school trip, she decides it’s her chance to transform herself and maybe make life a little easier while she’s at it. She doesn’t get quite the journey she’s expecting, because in real life we rarely do.
The Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 – Sue Townsend
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Infinite Sky – CJ Flood
Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman
I think young people today feel quite a lot of pressure to be the best at everything: the prettiest, the smartest, the funniest, the most popular, the bravest, the coolest, the cutest dressed. To some extent it’s always been like that, but for the last few years we’ve been surrounded by a plethora of uber-alpha heroes and heroines in fiction, film and media and I really wanted to move away from that with GEEK GIRL. I wanted to write a teenager I recognised, who was flawed and self-critical and massively imperfect and sometimes very irritating, and who struggled with that on a daily basis. I wanted to show young people that you don’t have to be the best to be worth something, and I guess I did that with Harriet.
I also wanted to write comedy, because… Well, we’re super funny in Britain, right? And I honestly think that people should laugh as much and as often as physically possible. It gives life light.
In your opinion, how do you think UKYA novels differ from novels written by foreign authors?
It’s hard to generalise as every book and author is different, but – using VERY broad strokes – Brits in general tend to have a very dry and self-effacing sense of humour: if you look at any of our big comedies and compare them to their foreign equivalents or remakes, we do tend to attack ourselves a lot more. The laughs generally come from pointing out the flaws and weaknesses in ourselves and encouraging other people to poke fun at us. Because we are so hard on ourselves, I think that often comes across in the characters we create and in the way we write our books. I personally love it: I think it makes the UKYA voice unique, even when it varies massively from author to author.
Why do you think it’s important to support the UKYA community and can you give a few tips on how people can help?
UKYA has produced some of the best ever books in the English language canon. The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lord of the Flies, Harry Potter… I could keep going. We have a unique literary history, and we should be proud of that. I think it’s also important to remember that although there are a handful of “Literary Rockstars” in YA (John Green, Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling to name a few) there are great debuts from unknowns coming out all the time, so people should venture outside of their normal genres or favourites. You never know what you could end up connecting with, or what could have an unexpected impact.
If you could bring one of your characters to life for the day, who would you choose and why?
This feels like Sophie’s Choice: what happens to the characters I don’t choose? Where do they go? I’m not sure I can pick a favourite without hurting the others!
I love them all to pieces, but I’d probably choose Annabel. She’s so warm and strong and kind, and every chapter I write with her in it is so comforting: I can sort of hand it over to her and let her take control for me. I love her sense of humour too. Of the whole book, it’s probably the closest to mine in real life.
I’d also like to meet a (much) older version of Nick, but who on earth wouldn’t?!
What’s next for you?
I’m tying up Geek Girl: Model Misfit right now, (otherwise known as GG2), and then I’ll be starting on the plan and research for GG3. I “have” to travel abroad for it, which means: I have itchy feet so I’m going to whether or not it’s actually strictly necessary.
Favourite non-UKYA book? To Kill a Mockingbird.
Favourite TV show? Peep Show.
Favourite comfort food? Cheese. On anything, under anything. Or just cheese. I love cheese.
Holly fell in love with writing at five years old, when she realised that books didn’t grow on trees like apples. She completed her first rhyming couplet poem – “The Unicorn” – at the age of seven, and still brings it out at dinner parties. A passion for travel, adventure and wearing no shoes has since led her all over the world: she has visited 21 countries, spent two years working as an English teacher in Japan, volunteered in Nepal, been bartered for in Jamaica and had a number of ear-plugs stolen in Australia, Indonesia and India. As a teenager, she also did a little modelling in the hope that eventually she would be sent somewhere exciting. She wasn’t. Holly has a BA in English Literature, an MA in Shakespeare, and currently lives in London with a very chatty but totally imaginary cat.
Thanks for having me Lucy! I’m a half-Chinese, half-English girl who grew up living between Malaysia and England. I studied Geography at university as I’m fascinated by cultures, and so many of my story ideas have come from my course studies. I currently work as a freelance social media consultant in London, a blogger (I run fashion and lifestyle blog Girl in the Lens with my boyfriend), and of course an author! The last is obviously my favourite 😉
The Elites is my debut novel, a standalone YA sci-fi. In a city in the future where no one ever enters, and no one leaves, Silver, a fifteen-year old girl who works as an Elite to guard the city’s leaders, is about to discover just what is outside the city’s walls. And as the dirty truths about her city begin to reveal themselves, she has to search deep within herself for the strength to fight against all she has ever known …
There are hundreds, but here are the first five that came to my mind – the entire Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve, The Nation by Terry Pratchett, everything Patrick Ness, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, and of course, Harry Potter.
I think that coming from such a small, intensely multicultural and socially diverse country, our books tend to be more diverse, challenging, and sometimes downright weird than those from across the pond. There’s often a quirky streak running through our YA novels that I don’t see in US YA, for example (see Philip Reeve and Patrick Ness, and even Harry Potter), and our characters can be very conflicted, very flawed.
The city in which The Elites is set in, Neo-Babel, is intensely multicultural, and I think that although my own background as being mixed-race and living between two countries definitely contributed to that, a large part of my interest in how cultures interact in a small space comes from living in the UK. There’s also a touch of whimsy and weirdness to some of the settings and characters in The Elites, which I like to think is influenced by my Britishness! We are a funny bunch.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is just astounding, so I’d have to go for that. How so much emotion and power can be packed into so few words, I’ll never know.
Intelligent, quirky, diverse, challenging, underappreciated.
I’m really excited about The Memory Keepers. It’s set in a futuristic London, which will be a wonderful setting to share with readers, especially those unfamiliar with the UK. I’m also working on another novel, the start of a YA urban fantasy series, and that takes place in Cambridge, so there’s loads of exciting UK settings in my novels to come 🙂
Favourite non-UKYA novel? Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Favourite TV show? I’m a sucker for US prime time – Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, Homeland etc.
Favourite comfort food? Popcorn. No, chocolate. No, crisps. How about all three at once?
Favourite place to write? Anywhere that’s quiet and comfy. But if I could afford to, I’d get a pretty little villa in Ibiza or southern France as an office.
Natasha Ngan was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and spent her childhood in both the UK and Malaysia, where the Chinese side of her family is from. She also spent it living in two other worlds – reality, and her imagination. As an only child, books were her best friends, and though she now has real, physical, human friends, books are still every bit as important to her.
Natasha has always (only) wanted to be an author. THE ELITES is her first novel, and she regularly blogs about her experiences of being a debut author. Outside of writing YA fiction, Natasha works as a freelance social media consultant and runs a fashion and photography blog with her boyfriend Callum (www.girlinthelens.com). Follow Natasha at: http://natashangan.com or on Twitter: @girlinthelens
UKYA FORTNIGHT: Guest Post by Keris Stainton, Author of Jessie Hearts NYC
Posted on 16 July, 2013Following a Twitter discussion about the above (these days, most things in my life happen as a result of Twitter discussions) – and the wonderful UKYA author Keren David finding a GoodReads featuring someone looking for UK-set YA novels and being recommended Swallows & Amazons and Harry Potter –
I set up UKYA, a blog to celebrate and catalogue (sort of) UKYA books.
I wanted to have a central hub where people could go to find UKYA books by theme and location. Keren and Susie Day, another wonderful UKYA author, help me set it up and now I mix posting details of UKYA books new and old (in no particular order, just those I happen to come across) and guest posts from authors and bloggers.
I’d actually really like to expand the guest posts and have the site be more active – the UKYA community is so vibrant and diverse, I’d love the site to reflect that – so if anyone reading this post would like to write something for us, we’d love to have you!
Keris Stainton is the author of three UKYA novels – Della Says OMG!, Jessie Hearts NYC, Emma Hearts LA – with (she hopes) more coming soon. She’s addicted to tea, American TV, and Twitter.
I don’t post a lot about UKYA books here on the blog because the majority of the books that I read are US YA. Of the 92 books I’ve read so far this year at the time of writing this post, only 33 of these books have been UKYA; only one third. That is a dramatic improvement from last year when I probably didn’t read over 15 UKYA books. I’d like to start improving this and I’d like to start getting more people reading UKYA because it does get pushed out quite a lot.
I’ll be posting a lot about how you can support the UKYA community next week, so keep an eye out for all of the posts.
Enjoy UKYA Fortnight!
2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID – the most brutal, controlling police force in history – rule supreme. No throwaway comment or muttered dissent goes unnoticed – or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a bloody crime she struggles to remember.
The only female inmate in a violent high-security prison, Jenna has learned to survive by any means necessary. And when a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID – and to uncover the truth about what really happened on that dark night two years ago.