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YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores. In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well. The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. YA PIONEERS Sinclair Smith's career began with a contribution of the story Hacker to 13 Tales of Horror , an anthology edited by T. Pines, and released through Scholastic's Point Horror line of young adult horror.  Point Horror was a notable imprint in its day for heralding the rise of many big names in the YA scene at the time, including the first book published by R.L. Stine, helping to launch the career of one of YA's most beloved, and well-known, authors.  Among the other authors whom Smith was in the company of in this anthology include Ch...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of the bookstore.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those books were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. YA Pioneers Lael Littke was born on December 2, 1929, and worked secretarial jobs between 1952 and 1963.  She was Mormon, attending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Denver, Colorado, where she would meet her husband, before moving to New York, and finally to California to settle down with their daughter.  Littke began her education by diving into journalism, but changed her focus, majoring in English and taking every writing course available at Utah State University (and eventually City College of New York). While in New York, she...

YA Pioneers Richie Tankersley Cusick was a staple of the YA boom of the late 80's/early 90's.  A new book was constantly coming out from the author with eye-catching slasher titles that propelled several of her books to the bestseller lists.  According to her author site , Cusick grew up in the South and was inspired by the Gothic environment to write horror.  She worked for Hallmark until her first book was published, Evil on the Bayou , which was published in 1984 by Laurel Leaf, as book 21 in the Twilight: Where Darkness Begins series. Cusick really took off when she began publishing books for Scholastic's Point Horror line, a hugely popular YA line that is known for launching the career of R.L. Stine.  When Cusick published The Lifeguard as book #3 in the series in 1988, she unwittingly became one of the elite YA authors of the time.  She would go on to publish several more books under the Point Horror line over the next four years, including Trick...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. Diane Hoh is one of the big guns in my opinion.  She cranked out a lot of books, mostly slashers, and had one of the biggest YA series of the 90's that you could even pick up in the grocery store.  The Accident was one of the very first teen novels I ever read and changed my life forever. YA Pioneers  The earliest book that I can find written by Diane Hoh is Loving That O'Connor Boy in March of 1985, which was the 67th installment of a romance series featuring teenagers called Wildfire .  Hoh would go on to write another book in the series ...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. Some pioneers in teen wrote books based on ideas formed by committee.  Melinda Metz's wildly popular Roswell High was such a series, dreamt up by a publishing company.  This method proved fruitful in some cases, and for Metz at least, launched a career that continues to this day. YA Pioneers Melinda Metz began her career in the book industry as an editor.  After seven years, she made her leap to writing, penning an adaptation of a Goosebumps television episode in 1997 ( Attack of the Mutant ).  Soon after, a publisher a...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. Many YA writers were established in other genres before venturing into YA, but used pseudonyms.  An adult romance author, for example, would clearly want to distance herself from horror novels aimed at teenagers, and could adopt a different pen name to do so.  Sometimes, the reasons behind pseudonyms aren't so obvious. YA Pioneers Nicholas Adams is a curious case.  It's actually a pen name that was created by Daniel Weiss Associates that was used by several authors to write teen thrillers during the 90's.  Clay Coleman w...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. In the late-eighties to mid-nineties when teen thrillers were thriving, the internet was just getting its feet wet, so there wasn't a lot of information to be found on-line about the books coming out around this time.  I didn't have a really reliable source to find out when new books were coming out from authors I enjoyed, which is a weird concept given how everything is at people's fingertips today.  I asked bookshop clerks about books often, and would really just sort of rely on them to stock the books I loved on their shelves. YA Pioneers  ...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. All YA books at this time were sold in mass market paperback format, a cheap way to mass produce books for readers.  It's the same type of smaller paperback format that many mysteries and romance novels are published in today.  They're pretty disposable, and if unsold, rather than ship books back to publishers, bookstores strip the books of their front covers and mail those back for credit, as proof that it hasn't sold.  It's cheaper to do it this way than pay for shipping heavy books.  In the front of these books, there's usually a warn...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. Something I always really enjoyed about browsing for new teen thrillers was the covers.  Like with old video stores, it's fun to pick up a new title that you haven't seen before, drink in the illustrated image (as almost all teen thrillers were illustrations back in the 90's) and read the little teaser line.  It was usually something kind of cheesy like " Now I lay me down to die " (Kate Daniel's Sweet Dreams ), but every once in awhile a line would send a shiver down my back and I would think to myself that the book was going to be awesome...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today. I think that what drew me personally to YA was my love for horror movies.  Growing up, I would stay up late watching Friday the 13th marathons and renting slasher films from the video stores.  I think that when I actually read some teen thrillers and realized that they were in the same vein as the movies that I loved so much, I became obsessed.  I'd always really enjoyed reading, but I become a voracious reader with YA books, and blew through the teen sections of bookstores quickly. YA Pioneers Nicole Davidson was one of my favorite YA authors g...

YA may have blown up over the past decade, but it used to be a small section of bookstores.  In the early nineties, it consisted mostly of "teen thrillers," which mostly featured dark mysteries and serial killers, although there was some supernatural fare as well.  The authors of those days were ahead of their time and built an audience in teenagers, and paved the way for the YA that is beloved by so many today.  I devoured thousands of these books as a teenager, and I recall those early days fondly, when I fell in love with reading.  I wasn't the most popular kid growing up, and I turned to YA books and comic books for solace, to escape reality.  It has since shaped my life, as I have become a writer of YA and am still addicted to the medium. YA Pioneers  Carol Ellis is a pretty prolific author.  Before delving into the world of teen thrillers, she was already established, with several books under her belt for the Scholastic series Cheerleader...