I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read "The Giver" now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.

I was a sidelines child: never class president, never team captain, never the one with the most valentines in my box.

I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.

Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.

You will be faced, now, with pain of a magnitude that none of us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience. The Receiver himself was not able to describe it, only to remind us that you would be faced with it, that you would need immense courage.

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors.

What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?