“Are you insane, Bet?”

Not exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for when I made my proposal to Will, I’ll grant you. Still, I tried to tell myself it was a start. At least my idea was now out there, loose in the world.

Turn the clock back a minute or two . . .

“Perhaps,” I said, feeling the smile stretch across my face, “there is a way we can help on another out.”

“Such as?”

“You will go into the military, while I will take your place at school.”

This little passage from Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s new young adult release THE EDUCATION OF BET  illustrates how a master storyteller can craft a hook, provide backstory and clearly outline the character’s goals in less than ten sentences.

Craftsmanship, a clean writing style and touches of humor are what make Baratz-Logsted’s books addictive. Her skillset also allows her to hop between genres with ease, whether it be a historical YA as in THE EDUCATION OF BET (set in Victorian England), or a chick-lit novel.

Last week, Baratz-Logsted revealed a little bit of her writing process and how she is able to write successfully for different genres. This week she talks about the inspiration for her latest release and the YA market.

Please enjoy part two of our two-part interview with Lauren Baratz-Logsted.

Q: You don’t shy away from dark themes for your teenage audience. CRAZY BEAUTIFUL, for example, deals with loss and self destructive behaviors. Have you ever had an editor tell you to “dial it down?” Should writers worry about getting to “real” for teens?

Lauren: Short answer to your second question: No. Look at the world we live in. And teens growing up, in the age of the Internet, are well aware of what’s going on in that world. Pretending that awful things don’t exist serves no one, just as pretending that wonderful things don’t exist serves no one. It’s a complex world, with both pain and joy. The thing to remember is that the teen audience covers a Grand Canyon of years in a person’s life, roughly from age 13 through high school. What’s appropriate for an 18-year-old to read might not be the same for a 13-year-old but the publishing world, bookstores and libraries are very good at channeling whether something is for barely-teens or almost-adults. Now I’m trying to think about if an editor ever asked me to dial anything down. In the original version of The Twin’s Daughter (Bloomsbury, August 31), there were a few more overtly sexual scenes that my editor wanted me to tone down so we could expand the audience to include the younger ages of YA. I immediately agreed because while the scenes were – I hope! – sensitively rendered, they were not critical to the plot or point of the book. 

Q: Do you think that the YA market is more accepting of “alternative” themes and topics than adult genres might be? The reason I ask is that many of our readers who cannot be published in the adult market because their platform doesn’t fit this or that often move to YA and find success.

Lauren: I do think the market is much more accepting in YA. The readership is still young enough for ideas to feel fresh to them and YA writers react to this. Vampires, other supernatural creatures, steampunk, dystopian novels – did these exist in the adult market prior to this Golden Age of YA? Sure, in isolated instances of success. But nowhere near what we’ve seen since the widespread acceptance and huge success of such books in YA.

Q: Your upcoming YA novel, THE EDUCATION OF BET, is a historical, which is different from your other books for teens. What was the inspiration for this story?

Lauren: It’s funny. I keep seeing early reviewers reference “Yentl,” a film I’ve never seen. Actually the primary source was Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. I love that book but I wanted to explore how girls in the 1800s did not have the same educational opportunities, not even close. Yes, girls could go to school, but it was nothing like what was available for boys, what boys took for granted. So I wanted to write about a girl who so desperately wants that experience that she’s willing to go to drastic lengths, impersonating a boy, to achieve her dream. It’s not the first time I’ve had a character engage in impersonation to meet a goal. In my first published novel, The Thin Pink Line, the main character impersonates being pregnant for nine months.

Q: Even though THE EDUCATION OF BET is set in Victorian times, it features aspects that speak to today’s teens such as unplanned pregnancy, bullying, same-sex attractions, etc. Was it important for you not to sanitize the world of a boy’s boarding school?

Lauren: Absolutely. My goal is always to entertain readers and hopefully make them think. In terms of the bullying, anyone reading Tom Brown’s Schoolboys can readily see how prevalent bullying was in the 1800s. And in terms of unplanned pregnancy and same-sex attractions, haven’t those things been around as long as humans have walked the Earth? Unplanned pregnancy, bullying, same-sex attractions – if we add people breaking into song, we could be talking about “Glee,” which I imagine most teens watch these days.

Q: What problems and challenges do your characters have to overcome in this story? Did this story present any unique challenges?

Lauren: Bet wants to go to school while the boy she’s been raised with, Will, wants to leave school and join the military. In order to do that they have to create an elaborate charade. Since both of them care deeply for Paul Gardener, Will’s great-uncle and Bet’s benefactor, the biggest hurdle is trying to achieve their own dreams in a way that will keep him in the dark and keep him from feeling hurt. Challenges: I’ve written first-person female before and I’ve written first-person male before but I’ve never written a first-person female impersonating a male in speech and dress who’s still a female underneath the male trappings – so that was a challenge, but a fun one.

Q: What advice can you give to aspiring writers?

Lauren: I always say the same thing: Read, read, read – read everything you can get your hands on because you can’t be a good writer without being a good reader first. And always remember, the only person who can ever really take you out of the game is you.

Q: What are you reading now?

Lauren: London Underground, by Ken Bruen. It’s a gritty book about a man released from prison who immediately goes off the rails again. It’s fantastic.

Q: What is next for you?

Lauren: On August 31, I have another YA coming out, The Twin’s Daughter. I’m very excited about this book which is also set in Victorian England, only this one’s a gothic suspense novel about a teen who discovers that her gorgeous society mother has an identical twin who was raised in the workhouse. And then on October 4, Book 6 in The Sisters 8 series comes out, Petal’s Problems, which I once again created with Greg Logsted and Jackie Logsted.

The Education of Bet is available at booksellers everywhere.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.
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