Colleen Gleason doesn’t like being branded as a YA author. The author of “The Clockwork Scarab” and “The Spiritglass Charade” hopes her audience isn’t limited to teens.
“I actually hope to be writing for everyone who is capable of reading my book, and that the audience isn’t limited to teens,” Colleen told Cracking the Cover. “I try to make my stories about issues and covering themes that both the youth and adults can relate to, and therefore my audience is very flexible and fluid and vast. My hope is that the topics in my stories — loyalty, friendship, sacrifice, responsibility, love — not only resonate with teens, who are at the stage in their lives where they are experiencing all sorts of growth and challenge and identity crises — but that adults find these themes compelling as well.”
Colleen writes YA because there are fewer restrictions and genre expectations. Books aren’t necessarily categorized by genre and Colleen can write a story that crosses over, mixing mystery with science fiction and romance, adding in fantasy and adventure, without having the book be pigeonholed into a specific section of the bookstore.
“This flexibility allows me to simply write the story I want to tell without worrying about making it fit,” she said. “That’s the beauty of writing for young people — they don’t have any other expectation besides a great story, which is what I try to give them.”
Colleen’s Stoker & Holmes series is a good example of how crossover works. The second book in the series, “The Spiritglass Charade,” features Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes as detectives. This time, what seems like a case of spiritualist fraud quickly devolves into something far more menacing. Among the clues the girls must follow — an unexpected murder, a gang of pickpockets, and the return of vampires to London.
All told, the book features mystery, steampunk, vampires and more. Colleen says it’s a blast to have so many moving parts. “I can let the story evolve,” she said. “But in my mind, these all knit together into my steampunk world and we couldn’t have one without the other. They are a natural recipe, if you will, of elements that complement and support each other.”
Another part of that recipe is incorporating beloved characters into new fiction. Mina’s uncle Sherlock is a literary rockstar. “I tried very hard to remain true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Holmes character (and Miss Adler, Mycroft, and Watson as well), without being influenced by other versions of those characters,” Colleen said. “Because I love these characters so much, and I have such admiration for Doyle’s creation, the last thing I want to do is not do them justice.”
Colleen hopes that readers will be drawn to her two diverse main characters, which she hopes at least one of whom is relatable to the reader — along with the humor, the world, the mystery, and the romantic elements.
“I hope they relate to the challenges and difficulties Mina and Evaline face, not only in the mysteries and the decisions they make while solving them, but also in the more mundane and ‘normal’ elements of their lives: their relationships, partnerships, family, and society.”
Colleen read Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie when she was younger, and says that’s where her love of mysteries developed further. She is currently working on the third book in the Stoker & Holmes series, “The Chess Queen Enigma.” The first two books, “The Clockwork Scarab” and “The Spiritglass Charade” are available now.
Learn more about Colleen Gleason, including her ideas come from in this complete transcript of her interview with Cracking the Cover.
Follow all the stops on Colleen’s blog tour!
10/7/2014 — Esther’s Ever After
10/8/2014 — Chronicle Books Blog
10/9/2014 — Anna’s Book Blog
10/10/2014 — Kid Lit Frenzy
10/11/2014 — Caught Between the Pages
10/12/2014 — Mother Daughter Book Club
10/13/2014 — Cracking the Cover
10/14/2014 — The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia
10/15/2014 — Forever Young Adult
10/16/2014 — SciFiChick.com
10/17/2014 — On Emily’s Bookshelf
