After the conclusion to long running and popular children books series Skulduggery Pleasant, many fans were left wondering what would come next for author Derek Landy, and what his secretive 'Project X', which he mentioned in his blog, could possibly be. When Demon Road finally hit the shelves, the first book to Derek Landy’s new series it had been waited for with baited breath by fans across the globe. Derek Landy is a renowned writer of children’s books, for age groups between 9 and 14, but Demon Road stands as his debute into YA fiction. His Skulduggery Pleasant series is dark, tense and thrilling; creating a fantasy world of humour, horror and mystery that tempted readers of all age groups, and left a high-bar for his new adventure. However before the Skulduggery Pleasant series Derek Landy was far from famous. Landy failed his Leaving Cert, repeating it only to get kicked out of Animation College for not doing any work, at which point he returned to his family home, living with his parents on the family farm, where he spent practically every day picking vegetables. This was a return to the life he had lived during his summers as a schoolboy, and after leaving college he further spent 10 years working on the family farm. He had little to show for his efforts aside from a £10,000 credit card bill. During this time Landy wrote and produced two screen plays, which became largely unsuccessful zombie films for the Irish market and produced virtually no income. Things finally changed in 2005 when he came up with the idea for the Skulduggery Pleasant series, as Landy said in an interview with the Independent; “In the summer of 2005, when I got the idea for Skulduggery, I spent six months putting in everything I always wanted to write about. I didn’t know if anyone was going to read it, like it or publish it. I had the best time writing it.” To Landy’s luck after only three weeks of his book being sent out to prospect publishers a buzz had grown around his book and the offers started to flow in. Landy was soon offered an advance for £1m from his present publishers HarperCollins. His first book ’Skulduggery Pleasant’ sold over a million copies in the UK and Ireland alone, and by the time he published his fifth book ‘Mortal Coil’, Landy had sold more than 17 million books in 33 countries around the world. Since the very first book, Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant series have won many awards, including the Bord Gais Irish Book of the Decade. When Landy launched Demon Road at the 2015 Edinburgh Book festival he talked about his fears that the new series would see a drop from his previous readership and a loss of some fans, but he stepped into the new venture with as much glee and enthusiasm as ever. With the second book to Demon Road coming out in 2016 the loss of readers which Landy feared is yet to be seen. #DerekLandy #DemonRoad #SkulduggeryPleasent #Edinburgh #Bookfestival #HarperCollins

It was recently announced that acclaimed young adult author Patrick Ness will be writing new Doctor Who spin-off series Class which shall start filming in April 2016. A full cast list has yet to be announced for the new series, nor has it been made clear whether the eight episode show will be aired weekly or put onto the new online BBC3 channel all at once. It has been announced that current Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi will be making an apperance in the new series. The show will be based in Coal Hill, a school which has appeared in the recent series of Doctor Who as the place where assistant Clara Oswald taught. Fan's of Patrick Ness and Doctor Who alike are looking forward to the new series, though some have expressed concern about it replacing the popular Sarah Jane series as the new Doctor Who for children. It is expected that Patrick Ness will bring some of his unique and acclaimed style to the show, though as of yet there is no word of a second series. Currently the show is scheduled to consist of eight 45 minute episodes, though the BBC is as of yet undecided about how to air them. #PatrickNess #DoctorWho #Class #PeterCapaldi #BBC

Warning there are spoilers in this article! Due to reading so many YA novels a year, as with any genre, you start to notice a pattern between the books that come out and the stories they tell. This can only be put down to the publishers, who obviously will sign a book they think will sell in that year. On close analysis it's obvious what publishers think we want in any given year, take Harry Potter for example, a book that filled a hole in the market for young readers at the time while also throwing open the door for authors to produce greater children's novels than ever before. Recently I have read Marie Lu's latest series, The Young Elites and Victoria Aveyards debute series Red Queen. The first in both of these series' came out in 2015, just months apart, and from completely different publishers. However the similarities between their core storyline are too obvious to ignore. In both books we are looking at a strong female main character, who lets be fair, is quiet self-centered. These leads have power though, and power that they shouldn't have, beyond anything their world has seen before. In both books the love interest is a flaming prince, and I mean that literally, we're looking at two men here who were meant to be king and who can control fire. In Glass Sword, the second to the Red Queen series, a new character is introduced, a young man who can create illusions. His power is almost identical to our lead Adelina Amouteru from The Young Elites. In both novels the abilities these people possess are put down to genetic mutation, in The Young Elites this is due to an illness, and in the Red Queen it's suggested as evolution. Again in both books we have our main character fighting to save those like her, people with powers, who are scorned, hunted, murdered and feared by the general population, but particularly by the ruling authority. Although these similarities show a striking cross-over of core ideas, what is truly amazing is how different these novels are. Although they came out in the same year and have the same basic stoyline at the core, Victoria Aveyard and Marie Lu have taken completely different paths, and subsequently created two very separate worlds in which their stories play out. The most interesting question of all, however, is what researchers from Penguin and Orion Books both found, that the target audience for YA fiction in 2015 were looking for stories about 'x-men' like super humans? And why? #VictoriaAveyard #MarieLu #RedQueen #YoungElites #YAnovels #spoilers