Coming-of-age tales…
[Note from Steve: This blog post was written by A. B. Carolan.]
We Irish are a hardy lot. We needed that for centuries. Readers of Steve’s blog might wonder why the Irish diaspora is so vast. Cromwell has a lot of responsibility for that, separating children from parents, wives from husbands, and shipping all over God’s creation. He even stabled his army’s horses in our cathedrals, which is why they’re mostly Anglican now. Those who were left behind suffered through various potato famines. The lucky ones died.
Yes, a sad history indeed, but sadder still the wee ones had as they were growing up. Readers might have read about that in the true story Angela’s Ashes. Childhood during the troubles wasn’t easy either.
That’s why I find coming-of-age stories so fascinating. Our Lord and Savior said “Suffer the little child…to come onto me,” and there are many who suffer, believe me (different meaning of “suffer,” of course, but the Good Lord will forgive me for the play on words, because children’s suffering is a reality in this world). Just the pain of growing into adults—innocence lost, if you will—is prevalent. We have to write about that as authors. Mysteries, thrillers, paranormal adventures, romances, biopics—you can add your own genres.
The Harry Potter series is a coming-of-age series. Harry is a wizard, so they’re YA fantasy. Robert Heinlein, an eccentric author of many talents, wrote Podkayne of Mars, a YA sci-fi thriller. I prefer YA sci-fi mysteries. Sci-fi allows me to lift readers out of their current milieu, rising above their cultural hang-ups, as it were, to analyze coming-of-age under my microscope.
This is what happens in The Secret Lab. I rewrote and reedited Steven M. Moore’s first edition of this sci-fi mystery. Shashi and friends are growing up fast and get into big problems as they try to discover the origins of a mutant cat. They have growing pains, but they basically discover that adults can be duplicitous—they lose their innocence but rise up to confront their problems.
I took Steve’s short story “Marcello an Me” (it’s contained in his speculative fiction collection Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape) and used it as a starting point for the sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns. It’s a coming-of-age tale where the young protagonist learns about adults’ bigotry and hatred and does something about it. By setting this story in the distant future, I hope to take these issues out of the emotional context of our current political situations.
Coming-of-age tales often occur when young adults cannot understand their elders. This is the case in these novels. But adults cannot understand tweens and teenagers either. This might explain a lot of the interest in these kinds of stories. Of course, adults might also be looking to understand their own coming-of-age problems they had when growing up.
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The Secret Lab. Mr. Paws, the mutant cat who loves mathematics, tells most of this tale set on the International Space Station in the future. Shashi Garcia and friends set out to discover his origins. Their sleuthing leads to a genetics conspiracy. Adventures await young adults and adults who are young-at-heart in this fast-paced sci-fi mystery. Set in the same universe as The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection (last few days for 50% off at Smashwords), this novel is available in ebook format at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc), and in print format at Amazon and B&N. Ideal for late summer and fall reading…and those book reports your children will have to write in school! For that, you should also check out the YA sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns, another novel by A. B. Carolan.
In libris libertas!
