About the Authors
Sarah Naughton‘s debut novel, The Hanged Man Rises, was shortlisted for the Costa children’s award. It was followed by a second young adult thriller, The Blood List, before she took some time off YA to write psychological thrillers for adults. Now she’s back in her happy place, writing for teenagers again. She has two of her own, but neither of them read any books, including hers.
A(dam) Connors is a former physicist and former child who likes writing stories and building unlikely, poorly thought through gadgets with his sons. He started his career as a physicist, building part of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. He has also sold encyclopaedias in Chicago, worked for an investment bank, taught physics in Sudan, fitted emergency Wi-Fi in the refugee camps in Greece, and now works as an engineering manager in the Google Research team. He lives in Hertfordshire with his partner, two sons, and a dog named Rosie.
Amy McCaw is the author of the Mina series, YA murder mysteries set in 1995 New Orleans, and the curator of the upcoming A Taste of Darkness anthology. She is also a YouTuber, Bookstagrammer and Booktoker. Her main interests are books, movies and the macabre, and her debut novel has elements of all of these. If Amy’s not at a book event or reading, she can usually be found scribbling away in her writing room, surrounded by movie memorabilia and an out-of-control signed books collection. Unsurprisingly, she’s a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and has gone to conventions to meet James Marsters more times than she cares to admit. Amy also loves travelling and has a particular affinity for America. She’s visited 29 states, 13 Man Vs Food restaurants and many bookish locations, including the cities where Twilight, Interview with a Vampire and Vampire Diaries were set.
About Their Books:
Title: YOU BETTER WATCH OUT
Author: Sarah Naughton
Pitch: Eleri’s Secret Santa has arranged a real life advert calendar for her, in an abandoned towerblock, but what, or who is waiting for her behind the 24th door?…
Find on Goodreads.
Title: THE GIRL WHO BROKE THE SEA
Author: A. Connors
Pitch: A science inspired thriller set in the near future on the world’s first deep-sea mining rig 5 km under the ocean surface.
Find on Goodreads.
Title: MINA AND THE SLAYERS
Author: Amy McCaw
Pitch: In the sequel to MINA AND THE UNDEAD, Mina spends Halloween investigating murders with the police each day and running with the slayers at night.
Find on Goodreads.
What do you love most about writing for the YA audience?
Sarah Naughton: Being a teenager is a wild rollercoaster ride of emotion and drama, and if you write for them, instead of having to deal with boring topics like mortgages and unfaithful husbands, you get to focus on the purest essence of human experience : love, hate, fear, jealousy, revenge, obsession. All the good stuff.
A. Connors: I have always loved, and will always love, stories. But the stories that stand out most vividly in my mind are the ones I was reading in my teens and early twenties. It’s the point in your life when you first begin to realise that there is more to the world than the world you were born into, when you’re most hungry for new things. I remember, quite by chance, picking up a Robert Heinlein book in the local library, and it being like a bomb going off in my brain. I don’t think it was a particularly great book, but it had everything my fourteen year old self needed: a devil-may-care anti-hero who is (for reasons not immediately apparent) being chased by multiple assassins; a mysterious woman who saves him, and who appears to know more than she’s letting on; a mission to save a decommissioned sentient computer from being destroyed; and a cat who is too young to know that walking through walls is impossible. Writing YA is a way to recreate some of those feelings in my own head and, hopefully, share them with others.
Amy McCaw: YA books have always been my favourites as a reader. I love the fact that both the teenagers they’re intended for and adults (usually fans of pop culture and horror movies) read my books. I love writing tightly plotted books that explore what it’s like to be a teenager while putting them in life or death situations!
How has writing YA changed your perspective on the world?
Sarah Naughton: Everything about teenagers is fresh and exciting and honest. The world has way more colour when seen from their perspective.
A. Connors: It’s put me back in touch with my teenage self. I grew up in the 80s in a mining town in the Midlands that had really not very much going for it. It had a small-town mindset and most of the people I grew up with never left. I got to leave, mostly, because university education was free back in the 1990’s in a way that, tragically, it isn’t anymore. So my memories only really start at university, before that it is all kind of a blank. But as I’ve been writing YA I’ve started to think more about my younger self, the books I was reading, the thrill I got from them. It’s the time when you’re at your most powerful, and yet, ironically, the time when you are least able to see that fact. Spending more time with my teenage self, thinking about what I was reading and what was meaningful to me back then, has been … educational.
Amy McCaw: That’s a good question! I think writing YA has encouraged me to see things from different characters’ viewpoints, which can only help with compassion in real life.
What trends are you most excited about in UKYA at the moment and to come?
Sarah Naughton: I don’t know about trends, but I’m always excited to see what’s coming next. Please give me some recommendations!
A. Connors: Thrutopias. I didn’t really set out to write a “climate” book… or “Cli-Fi” as I’ve seen it called. I decided to set my book in the deep-sea, and when I started researching it, I quickly learned about the massively controversial topic of deep-sea mining, and so it was inevitable that it would become a central part of my story. That led me down a path of thinking more about climate fiction and from there I discovered: The Climate Fiction Writers League — https://climate-fiction.org/ This has been a *huge* education, and a really exciting trend. The people in that group write and think a lot about how fiction can change how we think about climate change. We’ve all read dystopian cautionary tales, which raise awareness but can lead to a sense of disempowerment if we’re not careful, but the question is how can writing change our ways of thinking in ways that can make fighting climate change an active, passionate endeavour. To quote Rupert Read:: “We need to write Thrutopias: clear, engaging routes through to a world we’d all be proud to bequeath to future generations.”
Amy McCaw: I love YA horror and I think it’s having a real moment! I particularly like paranormal books and those with surprising twists.
What do you think is special about UKYA? (Books and/or community)
Sarah Naughton: The passion that the community has for stories and characters is incredible, and as a writer I know I have to do something really special to deserve their attention.
A. Connors: Books are a conversation between the writer and the reader. The squiggly lines that the writer put in the books are just one part of it, the really important part is the worlds that the reader creates inside their heads. The most special thing about YA is that it has by far the most interesting readers.
Amy McCaw: There’s an absolute wealth of talent in UKYA, and the community is amazing. I was a blogger first, and it’s great to see people getting genuinely excited about books, as well as supporting authors and each other.
#UKYASpotlight 
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