I’m finally listening to the voice that has been in the back of my head since I first started writing Band Geeks: I think the story will work better as a middle-grade rather than YA. I’m doing other editing right now, but once that’s done I’ll probably go through and rework Band Geeks as an MG. I actually did keep out the bad language and sex talk anyway so I don’t have to worry about cleaning up anything. But I want to go through it with a younger audience in mind and see how the story works in that frame.
I haven’t written an MG since I was a kid, writing Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins ripoffs. Despite the fact that I do still love them and still have a collection of those books, I’m not using them as a model for how an MG should be written today because, let’s face it, they are pretty cheesy. I’ve been focused on YA and adult books since high school so the idea that Band Geeks might actually be an MG in disguise was hard to accept. But now it’s become even harder to ignore. Every time I talk about the story line with someone, the voice in my head tells me that this should be a younger book.