The Name and the Key is undergoing another change. The first one was the naming of the trilogy, switching it from The Name and the Key Trilogy to The Darkening Gate. Pretty nifty, right?

Well…the next one is an age group and marketing group. My publisher is very open with how they market our books, how they spend for their ads, how they work with algorithms, etc. And in one of their marketing notes, they said classifying The Name and the Key as young adult was not necessarily the best tactic.

This took me a little by surprise. The ages of the characters–14, 18, and 19–seemed YA (although the main characters, upper YA). Plus, I’ve been told multiple times that my narrative voice sounds very young, which lends itself to YA. In harsher critiques of Son of the Siren, and a beta read of The Name and the Key, I was told that my books sound middle grade (yikes).

Because of the youthful tone, I always thought this book trilogy was going to be YA, so all this time, I’d marketed it as such. However, after discussion with the editor and publisher, it looks like it would be better to position this book series as New Adult, largely due to its darker subject matter.

The blessing of switching to New Adult means that I have a little more freedom with the concluding book–The Fear and the Flame–to get into some grownup stuff. Not smut, but possibly a full-on love scene that wouldn’t have been possible if the book remained YA. I haven’t completely decided on writing one, but I know that my readers would probably like one after two characters have pined for each other over the years, and great and terrible things have separated them. It would be a sweet bit of closure to come together after being apart for so long.

I tagged a lot of posts “young adult” in my social media that I’ve tried to go back and fix. I’m too lazy to go back and fix posts on here referring to the book as YA, because that’s far too much work. So just know that from here on out, The Darkening Gate trilogy is meant for more mature audiences; specifically, New Adult and adjacent readers.