Agent for a day…
Today I’m responding to a question posed by YA Misfits here:
The question for today is: If you were an agent for a day, what would be on your wish list?
This is a good question because it draws me out of the constant quest of perfecting my query and trying to find the right agent. I now get to look at the issue from the other side of the coin, so to speak. What would I be looking for if I was an agent? These are the first answers that came to mind:
- Science Fiction– I love this genre and, not surprisingly, my YA novel is light science fiction. I like dystopian, futuristic, end of the world type stuff. I loved The Hunger Games Trilogy (all images courtesy of Amazon).
- Fantasy– I sometimes confuse this with science fiction but when I say fantasy I’m thinking of the Kristin Cashore books (Graceling, Fire, Bitterblue). I also LOVED the book ‘The Hero and the Crown’ by Robin McKinley.
- Historical Fiction– I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this for the YA genre. If it exists, which it must, I’m not aware of it. I loved Phillipa Gregory’s ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, but that book is definitely not YA. I remember loving the book ‘Johnny Tremain’ by Esther Forbes back when I was a ‘young adult’ myself.
How fun would it be to look through queries and read all the wonderful ideas out there? It might not be as fun as it appears, especially after doing it for a long period of time, but still, I’d love to give it a try. Thanks to YA Misfits for posing the question. If you feel like commenting, let me know what you would want to see if you were an agent.
noblevalerie.com 
I posted on the blog itself but YES to historical fiction, which I left off my list because frankly, I’ve been so underwhelmed by whatever I’ve read in that genre for YA; it’s the only genre where I really, really prefer adult, I think. Of course, I still haven’t read CODE NAME VERITY or BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY so maybe that would change my mind on the subject?
Otherwise, we have basically exact opposite taste, which I kind of love!
I LOVE that you commented and you don’t necessarily agree!! Very cool. I’ll check out your answers. I haven’t read the ones you mentioned either but I agree about historical fiction probably being better in the ‘adult’ versions.
Yes, we are opposites but I like that. I loved your post 🙂
I’d love to see more excellent YA historicals, too. A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly is a lovely one. 🙂
Fantastic! Thank you very much for the suggestion. I will check it out for sure.
As a historian, I’d ALWAYS love more excellent YA historicals! For the same reason I always have a hard time getting into it, because it needs to be well-researched to convince me, but books like CODE NAME VERITY? Yes puhlease!
I was going to mention ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins’ too. I love the genre but, yes, must be well-researched. I don’t know what CODE NAME VERITY is??? If you have any good suggestions, I’ll gladly take them.
CNV is about two girls in the middle of WWII. It’s, above all, a story about friendship. (And it pretty much ripped my heart out and then danced on it. So yeah, there’s that.) If you haven’t read it yet, definitely do!
Same holds true for THE BOOK THIEF, which is *fantastic* too.
Thank you so much for the suggestion!
And I have read ‘The Book Thief’ and I agree, great book.