I wanted to do pretty much a purely boy story, yes. The girls are kind of the bad guys in 'Marble Season', although that wasn't my intention. It's also a world without adults.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There are so many stories about boys becoming heroes, learning their powers and becoming incredibly heroic. There have to be those stories for girls, too.
I'm a very girlie girl, but I often find the heroes of my books trying to take over the story. In truth, I enjoy writing the male point of view more than any other.
All the roles are for boys. The girls' roles are either small or all the same. There's just nothing interesting.
I hear all the time that boys don't like stories about girls. Which never made much sense to me. Wasn't 'Terminator' about a girl? And 'Alien'? Hell, I grew up on 'The Wizard of Oz.' People enjoy stories about anything if they're good stories.
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls.
I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.
It's fun being one of the boys. It's fun to have a character that's rough and gets down and dirty and not to be this precious girl who just sits in the corner and just sort of stands by the action.
I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines.
Whenever I write a story, I hope it appeals to both boys and girls.
I wanted to write a sci-fi story that would appeal to young women. Loads of girls like sci-fi, but it's more culturally associated with guys.