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Writing for the Young Adult Audience

#Why I Write and #Why YA?


#WhyYA? Does the sleeper awaken? Does the awakened one, rousing, notice--?

                  The challenge, the quest, the hidden key.                  

                  The ally, the heroic and improbable act.

                  The power awaiting, the rite of passage, the fearful initiation?

#WhyIWrite: To scatter breadcrumbs marking my way through the deep wood. 

#WhyYA? In wiser times and cultures, the adolescent was given a powerful rite of passage:

                  a ritual separation from childhood and everything known,

                  a state of ambiguity, openness, and uncertainty,

                  often with a heroic task to perform,

                  and supportive integration back into the community.

 

#WhyIWrite: To remember the way. To recover the lost mappings of our capacity for awakening. 

#WhyYA? What is the narrative here? We barely know.

                

#WhyIWrite: The human species itself is experiencing a rite of passage out of our long, fateful adolescence. 


#WhyYA? The themes of YA are lifelong maps.

About THE THIN DOOR

The Thin Door is a contemporary retelling of our oldest story—
The rite of passage, the transformative power of initiation.
The epic journey of coming home to oneself.

In this version, Little Red Riding Hood enters The Matrix, where real is not always true.
 
Shadow with sunhat, July 2020_edited.jpg
Late sun, setting west of me, Hello back east_edited_edited.jpg

There's NORML, which leaks into everyone's head from the daily opinion. Not Only Real, Mostly Lies.

NORML is bearable in a dull way. 

Then there's the memory hole of that day when the world opened up for her, luminous and glad. It's a thin, Thin Door,

and it opens to a world with a logic of its own. 

EERF KNIHT

SPOILERS IN 140 CHARACTERS

So exciting to be here on the #Show, blah blah, even if someone else is hoggin the mic, and the spotlight just catches you for the laughs. 

The Quest is never what it appears on the surface. That search for the one perfect solacing donut never leads you to the donut anyway--and it wasn't even what you were looking for.

 

She’s so outgrown, so last-year, just the babysitter. But will she still show up when you need her? 

 

This curious card of unanswerable riddles—this thin paper scrunched in a forgotten pocket—is a tease of questions when all you want are the answers, straight and simple. 

 

Who is that wild-haired woman Willa, that desk-drummer, that scat singer, that space changer, and why do the Shelter Rocks lead to her door?

 

Crow cuts off the path with a black winging of air.  Crow turns back to perch with a loud fierce caw caw caw to attention.     

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