I am working on a new novel and wanted to find out about the current market for my book proposal. My book could be classified as an “eco-dystopia” according to my writing group buddy Peta, which I took to basically mean a book that is a dystopia (see more about that at Peta’s blog) that centers around ecology, kind of like the movie Wall-E where the basis of the dystopic setting has to do with the large amount of garbage that humans produce.
But before Peta mentioned it, I’d never heard this term before, so I put out a call on twitter for some suggestions from my fellow writers for MG/YA eco-dystopias. Here are the responses I got:
@margogremmler reminded me about Uglies by Scott Westerfield (which I’d already been meaning to read) @JessicaVarin told me about Life As We Knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer @JennBailey mentioned Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (but I’m having trouble deciding whether it really fits or not. @AnabelMarsh from Scotland wanted me to consider Exodus and Zenith by Scottish author Julie Bertagna and Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick
Three people told me that they were working on their own eco-dystopias: @JoTreggiari has a book called Lucky coming out in 2011 (see her blog for details) @WillHawthorne aka New York Times bestselling author AJ Hartley says he also has his first children’s book coming out in the fall of 2011 (see his blog for details) and @Margogremmler is working on polishing her manuscript as well (good luck!!)
I guess I have a lot of reading to do!