Fall for the new NA Campaign!

Fall for the new New Adult: a campaign to spread the word that New Adult is expanding into new and exciting categories like Historical, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Gothic, and more! Follow along to find out why best-selling NA authors & NA bloggers are excited to see New Adult expand outside of contemporary. (Full schedule can be found here.) And as an incentive to give the new NA a try, the Fall for New Adult bundle set will be available for a limited time. Set includes 4 great non-contemporary NA novels for only $3.99!

So at the risk of admitting how incredibly old I am, when I was a member of the YA target audience, there was no such thing as Young Adult. We pretty much went from The Babysitters' Club to Flowers in the Attic (which is now shelved in YA anyway, but that's a debate for a different post.) And as far as reading genre fiction with teen protagonists? Forget it. There was no Twilight. There was no such thing as Harry Potter. 

It was a deprived childhood. 

Fast forward to college, and Harry Potter became a thing. It wasn't a THING yet, but it was a thing. I gobbled it up, SO excited to re-embrace my love of reading, but all the while wishing I'd had something like Harry to grow up with.

And yearning for a college-age equivalent I could relate to now. 

While I was in love with Harry, it was really the only source of pleasure-reading I was interested in. I was still missing a *me* from the books I liked to read. I'm still not a fan of bodice-rippers or chick lit that publishers seemed to think I *should* be reading at my age, but back then, those were my only options if I didn't want to read "kids books." And let's be real, people. The grownup sci-fi section of Barnes & Noble can be Creeperville for a cute college girl. 

In my day job, we call this sort of thing a "service gap": a need that's not being met in the mental health agencies that serve a community. For a long time, I've felt there was a service gap in fiction--books for and about the lives of older teens and early twenty-somethings. I've been lucky enough to be a big fan of contemporary fiction, so I've been one of the first to benefit from the New Adult category. Until recently, though, that's been the only option. In a time when genre fiction seems to know no bounds, there haven't been a lot of books outside of contemporary in New Adult. 

It's an interesting conundrum. We want girls to be into science and math, but we don't always see a lot of books that engage teen and college women in the pursuit of science. 

Until now. 

Take Kimberly P. Chase's THE APOLLO ACADEMY series. When I first read Book 1, I said it would blaze a trail for New Adult genre fic, and I'm so excited to see NA expanding its horizons. Not because it means I was right. Well, not only because it means I was right. 

So here's to New Adult genre fiction closing that service gap. And to twenty-something characters reaching for the stars. 






Purchase the Fall for New Adult bundle set here! 

We want to know why YOU want to see NA expand too! Join the campaign by grabbing the gif. above and blogging/tweeting about why YOU want to see NA expand! #NACampaign