J. Adams Oaks's gritty debut novel, WHY I FIGHT, straddles the line between YA and adult fiction, as he tells the story of a 12 year old on the run from his dark, violent, and unstable past. In today's guest blog, he recalls his struggles in trying to find the right audience for his book, and shares his surprise over the unexpected response he received from an unlikely group of readers.
Okay, so I’m pretty stumped. My very first novel, WHY I FIGHT, just came out this past spring and the target audience, according to the publishing company and all the media, was supposed to be 14 to 20 year olds. The book has sold over 10,000 copies (which is awesome), yet I haven’t met one single young adult who’s read it. I’ve had readings and book signings, and I’ve gotten emails from people who liked it or had questions, but every single one of them has been an adult. What’s up with that?
It’s kind of ironic really, because when I wrote the first draft of WHY I FIGHT, I really had no idea who the audience was. Oh, sure, I could talk a good game about Wyatt's --- the main character’s --- voice, but I had no idea who would read my book. So when Richard Jackson, my amazing editor at Simon and Schuster, bought the book back in 2005, he told me it’d be published as Young Adult fiction. Then he asked me one seemingly simple question:
“Who is Wyatt telling his story to?”
That means ‘who is the audience?’ and, man on man, now I was caught. I couldn’t avoid answering this question any longer. Plus, what I really wanted to say was, "I just want people to read my book! Everybody! Anybody!"
But instead I said, “Well, I always imagined Wyatt on a bus talking to a stranger.” Usually, that answer got people off my back, even though there was no stranger in the book and there was no bus.
“Well,” Dick said to me, “if that is what you intended to do, then you haven’t written that novel.”
And so the rewriting began, imagining the reader, through numerous drafts. Remembering someone was sitting there, listening, and making sure the story was being told to them.
Once the book came out this past spring, with the publishing company focusing on fourteen to twenty year olds, and the bookstores and libraries shelving it in the YA section, it surprised the heck out of me that the people showing up my readings and the people getting in touch were all adults.
The audiences I get all seem to be moms and dads who are worried about Wyatt and feel bad for him. Sure, they ask some good intelligent questions. And, man, I’m just glad people are interested. But some people freak out that Wyatt kills a fish and bird and that he fights and, truthfully, I think they’ve either forgotten what it’s like (or never experience what it’s like) to be a kid, much less a boy becoming a man.
Kids kill stuff. They wreck stuff and mess up. They do things that they don’t think is right because someone tells them to. And still, look at how many of them out there turn out to be perfectly awesome human beings. That is what I hope for Wyatt in the end. And it’s what I hope for the young readers who connect with him, that maybe they understand that life moves on and things ain’t so bad. It’s simple, I know, but important.
Anyway, if you read the book and you are younger, I’d love to hear from you. I’m always up to a chat.
-- J. Adams Oaks
