In which Amy can't come up with a witty title.

I'm in writing mode, working on the sequel to Cold Kiss (Fall 2011 from HarperTeen, and I should be able to share the cover soon, wheee!), and I'm also sick as a dog*. So blogging has fallen by the wayside again. Sigh.

In the meantime, though, I saw this post on io9, about YA dystopian fiction and why adults aren't so much on board (with adult books, anyway -- they're certainly reading the YA stuff happily).

I love dystopian fiction. LOVE. One of the books listed in the link to dystopian children's classics in the article is The Girl Who Owned a City, which I read when I was ten or eleven, and it  fascinated me. A virus has killed everyone over the age of twelve, and the protagonist has to figure out how to keep herself and her little brother safe (and fed and sheltered).

We don't have to talk about how I sort of viewed it as a survivor manual, right? I was a slightly morbid kid, apparently.

But I think it's true that it might be easier to read a YA book about taking on The Man and changing a crappy, gone-to-hell world than it would be to read an adult version of the same thing. Or maybe not. I haven't read many adult takes on the trope ... which is the point of the article.

I do know that dystopias have figured in some of my favorite books lately, including The Hunger Games trilogy. (Katniss! Peeta! Gale! They got harder and harder to read because the stakes were so. incredibly. high. all the time, but for me the payoff at the end of Mockinjay was completely worth it.)

The nice thing is, I don't have to look for adult dystopias right this minute, because there are so many promising ones coming out, or out already, including Lauren Oliver's Delirium and Ally Condie's Matched and Lauren DeStefano's Wither.

But before I can read those, more writing! And more cough medicine. Yum.

* I've never understood that phrase. Dogs aren't usually sick! This is clearly one of those things I should look up.