What does publishing "New Adult" mean?  

We are the answer to the question: Is this story Adult or Young Adult? Well, it's both, and it's somewhere in the middle. It's the age where society considers you a legal adult but sometimes you're still associating yourself as being mentally, socially, and physically closer to teenagers and younger adults who learning about who they are and what they want out of life rather than older adults who have experienced twenty years of marriage, kids, and careers.

 

We are also the answer to the question: Does this story's plot and voice align more with Women's Fiction or Romance (in its various sub-genres)? Again, it's a cross-over combination of both. It's the thought-provoking eloquent narration following a thrilling character-driven plot embedded with romantic entanglements between heart-pounding, swoon-worthy heroes and heroines rooting for their happily ever after without having to follow a strict story structure. It can be set in the mystical excitement of Contemporary, Fantasy, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Dystopian, Historical, and more.

This story is Romantic Literary New Adult Fiction.

It's Kaleidoscope Hearts Publishing.
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Compared to other genres of literature, "New Adult" is relatively new, first appearing in 2009 during a special call for works geared at an older YA audience. ("Ya" first appeared in the 1940s, became a regularly used term by the 1960s, and became popularized in the mid-late 2000s.) Recently, within the last couple of years, New Adult has gained popularity as a sub-genre of Romance geared at adults in their young 20s. To this day, some publishing companies, book stores, and readers don't understand, appreciate, and value the genre. Here, we understand, appreciate, and value "New Adult" as a genre, philosophy, and audience.
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We believe the age of New Adult is an extremely important one to psychological, social, and physical development in life, and as such, it should be represented, reflected, and refracted in the literary realm, just as other age groups are. Generally, baby development is represented by Board Books, toddlers by Picture Books, young children by Early Readers and First Chapter Books, older children by Middle-Grade Books, teenagers by Young Adult Books, and adults by Adult Books (generally, established firmly in the mid-to-older adult age). This has left a gap in the representation of development between the ages of adolescence and complete adulthood. We seek to fill in that gap by publishing stories that are not only representative of recent post-adolescence but also expressive and navigational of life as a New Adult.

New Adult is the age where we transition from childhood to adulthood. In many ways, we lose our childhood innocence and bliss as we shift away from depending on caretakers to depending on the self. We redefine old relationship dynamics into new ones to support our new independence and responsibilities. New adults learn to rely on themselves to "make it" in the Real World.
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For many of us, generally, this age is one of Firsts. This is when we, for the first time, move out of our childhood home to live on our own, commit to being in a serious romantic relationship and even marry, buy/rent cars and homes, choose a college major(s) and then graduate, start entry-level jobs in our chosen career fields, travel and vacation without caregivers, host Friendsgiving, try and indulge in wine tastings, have children, plan for and invest in the future, and earnestly evaluate our ethics, morals, beliefs, spirit, religion, and politics.

This is a time of great advancement, but it can also be wrought with fears of failure, loneliness, mortality, losing your family base, and drifting away from childhood friends. ​Sometimes, these fears manifest into real life and then we have to learn how to address and cope with our scariest nightmares.

In our mission of representing the spectrum of new adult experiences and emotions, including those that may be more difficult, sorrowing, and tragic, we may at times publish possible mature and sensitive topics that the characters then have to address. Please take care, as your emotional health is important to us.

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What does publishing "Kaleidoscope Hearts" mean?

We're the Love Letters to the New Adult Age, yes, but we're also Love Letters to ourselves. Here, we write Love Letters to the Self (although, our mailboxes remain open for some written to us by others!). The Human Experience is a unique one. It's amazing, wonderful, exciting, blissful, peaceful, breathtaking, hopeful, and thrilling, but also scary, terrifying, heartbreaking, depressing, and tragic. It's experienced through lenses of love, happiness, optimism, beauty, shyness, enthusiasm, fearfulness, frightfulness, hatred, anger, sadness, pessimism, and so many others. Our Language has seemingly created countless words in trying to describe the emotions, feelings, thoughts, and characteristics that our hearts beat out.

One minute, you might feel shy in classroom and choose to sit in the back while a few hours later you're the butterfly socialite at a dorm party and then on the weekend you might be the sweetest apple during a family picnic. Some friends might know you as loud, others as quiet. Some friends might see how you're terrified of the future but others might see only the ambition of chasing after multiple graduate degrees.

Even to yourself, you might see yourself through an array of colors, both vibrant and clouded, changing by the minute to reflect the moment you are experiencing. You might see yourself as a person who is happy on Monday but then sad on Tuesday, and a person who needs to be alone on Wednesday but then needs to be with friends and family on Thursday. On Friday, you might be your biggest fan and advocate, but then on Saturday, you're your own worst enemy. Then, you might go through a replay of all of these things in the span of hours on Sunday. You might feel like you don't even know yourself and that you're lost. Or, you might understand your identity so clearly that you can explain it in a 500-word summary or in a 200,000-word thesis.

Paradoxically, we are all of these things and yet none of these things at once.

The Kaleidoscope Heart mirrors all the individual pieces of a person's psyche and reflects it back in a brightly colorful pattern of light to tell that person's story. It's when we look at the pattern--at the shapes, colors, lights, angles, and mirrors and the change and growth therein--that we can start making sense of everything we are. Who we are. The essence of our Identity. We, like kaleidoscopes, are all unique, special, and here for a reason.

Kaleidoscopes are used by some for meditation, reflection, retrospection and even early childhood education. The patterns can look and feel harmonious, balanced, and soothing. We find serenity, beauty, and knowledge (and fun) in kaleidoscopes. We see emotions in the colors, events in the shapes, philosophies in the lights, attitudes in the angles, and ages in the mirrors.

KHP's mission is to express transformative journeys and relationships through a reflective and refractive mirrored-mosaic story of colorful, ever-changing emotions, feelings, thoughts, personalities, and hearts. Our authors may have created the characters, but their stories shaped their hearts and identities. Our stories are the embodiment of the fevered incandescent fire of the soul and mind.

We are Love Letters to Our Hearts.

We dance like Kaleidoscopes
We laugh like Kaleidoscopes
We breathe like Kaleidoscopes
We live like Kaleidoscopes
We read like Kaleidoscopes
We heart like Kaleidoscopes

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