Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I must be honest here; I don't think there's such a thing as 'unconventional' when it comes to YA. YA readers are the most open-minded in the literary world. They'll read anything.
Ever since I worked on 'Buffy', it's always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, 'Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It's gone to YA.'
I've always liked long hair. My dad's always had long hair, but he always tells me, 'I never had it in a ponytail.' And I say to him, 'You weren't an England goalie either, were ya.'
I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA.
At his heart, Shakespeare was a YA author. So many of his plays are set with high school-aged characters. He understood the passion, the confusion and drama that marks that life stage.
I installed anti-rust roofing into homes in Cairns. I packed boxes at Baby Barn. I was even a Manny! Mate, I know more about braiding hair and My Little Pony than most men, I can tell ya.
And I tell ya, when I sit in that sound booth and started reading the script and starting to get into the character, man, it's an easy jump for me, because I understand what it's all about.
It wasn't until I hit 20 that I became an obsessive reader, I think, which feels a little funny considering I was a bookseller for five years and have been reviewing YA novels for four years.
But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.
What's interesting about Stephen Baldwin is that me and Dana Gould were originally cast for 'Bio-Dome' - but Pauly Shore and Baldwin ended up doing it. So there's a little movie trivia for ya.
The minute you start getting down about how your life is panned out - I'm not a religious person, but how God made ya - the minute you get down about that, it's gonna eat at you and eat at you.
When I played, a pitcher could throw at you any time he wanted to. In fact, he could tell you he was going to throw at you, and there was nothing said. You had to take it. If he hit ya, he hit ya.
What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children's or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.
I'll tell ya, I'm a pro-Second Amendment person, I'm a gun owner. I went to combat with a 9 millimeter strapped to my chest and a 20 millimeter cannon on the front of my jet. I'm no stranger to weapons.
That's something - you laugh about Eminem... It's funny, man, because I didn't like him when he first came out, ya know. It seemed like a big joke. But I think the guy's for real, and I like his lyrics!
But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.
I watch a lot of teen TV and read a lot of YA novels. I also talk to teens whenever I can. There are cultural differences between when I was a teen and now, but emotions - anger, angst, love - are the same.
And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya!
When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.
But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing - I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know?
I think the paparazzi is a necessary evil... and if ya don't like it, and ya don't want to do this, go to Iowa and do some community theatre. It's all about self-promotion, and it's not always the fun part of it.
I had something to prove and went in the studio and started writing. I got into fitness and style and learned the whole craft. That was when I wrote everything on the album. I put out 'Don't Ya,' and it took off.
It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.
Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW.
I'll tell ya this: I come from an educated family. My father was an attorney representing blue collar workers, and my uncle was a chemical engineer... on my mom's side, all my uncles were engineers - all ten of them.
I think that's what distinguishes YA from adult fiction - it's not just the age of the characters, but it's the sense of hope. Because I don't think I've ever read a YA book that feels completely hopeless at the end.
Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.
I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series.
There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups... but they're coming for ya. It's a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.
People say, 'He doesn't want to be a spokesperson for the gay community.' I do, of course I do, but I want to be a spokesperson for everyone. Ya know, straight people, gay people, bisexual. I don't want it to be limited.
I met Jim Jarmusch when I started recording my album 'Ya Nass.' He was writing the script for 'Only Lovers Left Alive.' Jarmusch was always a great inspiration to me, way before meeting him. Working with him was fantastic.
But, I swear, they're turning Donna into Annie Hall this season. More ties. More suits. But they're also keeping her really motivated, ya know? Like, wanting to be a rock journalist. Wanting to be the first woman president.
We all make judgments on people, but some are much more brutal than others. It's easy to say, 'Ya know, I'm not crazy about what she's wearing,' but you don't have to be nasty about it, and you don't have to be public about it.
I've always wondered what it would be like if somebody from outer space landed with three heads. Then all of a sudden everybody else wouldn't look so bad, huh? Well, OK you're a little different from me but, hey, ya got one head.
It's liberating to wear clothes that are outside the boundaries of what I'm supposed to wear, ya know, based on the traditional model, whether that be a country music singer, or being from the country. It's not a rebellious thing.
I will say I love competing, and I was in a great era of playing with young Phil Mickelson and older Greg Norman and Nick Price. I don't know if YA Title could throw the ball these days, but you can play golf for a long, long time.
I try to be measured and thoughtful about what I put out there because I know a lot of young people follow me on Twitter, and I take that seriously - which is why I don't exclusively tweet about cookies and 'Game of Thrones' and YA.
And I know this happens because I took economics, and I'd explain it to ya, but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bloodshot eye.
Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.
I love YA, and it's been a really good fit for me. But at some point, I would like to try something else: a collection of short stories, or writing about something other than high school. A lot has happened to me since I was eighteen.
One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet a lot of great children's and YA authors at events all over the country. So I figured it might be fun to interview some of them and turn the interviews into short online comics.
When I was a kid, we had this great advantage of there being no YA books. You read kid books and then went on to adult books. When I was 12 or 13, I read all of Steinbeck and Hemingway. I thought I should read everything a writer writes.
But, Eminem... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.
In my work at 'Entertainment Weekly,' I had written reviews and news stories about YA books and film franchises and was always moved by how smart and voracious and loyal the readers were. Everything we did got lots of attention and reaction.
In the YA community, we are fighting for you and alongside you. When you make your voice heard, we're gonna be even louder on your behalf. That's definitely what I would like for teenagers to know. We've got you. We got you. I promise we do.
I'm free of stress and worries now because if I don't like something I'm doing, I just find the fun in it instead of being miserable. Let me have fun with the people I work with, let me have fun making money - when I grew up so poor, ya know?
I came up with my natural logo and ya know, just dealing with Nike I was like can y'all put my logo on the shoes and, you know. At that time I think other guys had logos or specific names on the shoe. So they was like yeah - let's rock and roll.
The YA category is an entirely new one, and seems to have more to do with readability than with age group or theme. The adult YA readers I know do actually consistently say that they are looking for an easy read, a fun read, an unchallenging read.
The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA.
I really find that when I get on an airplane, I never drink anything but water, and I drink a ton of it. I like to sit in the window, but I'm always climbing over people to go to the bathroom. I'm that seatmate. But ya gotta do it. All about the water.