Greetings Younglings,

For this month's edition, we had the chance to talk with @iya_fictional about her featured fake dating becoming a real romance story!

About The Author:

I am Iya, a writer and reader of all things romance and drama. I am a huge fan of the YA genre and enjoy delving into a good YA book once in a while when I want something cozy to curl up with. I have written two YA stories so far, out of which one has gathered over a million reads on Wattpad and is available to read for free here.

I started writing in 2020 and now it has become a part of my life which I look forward to turning into my career someday. When I am not lost in the fictional world of books, you will find me browsing through Netflix while not watching anything or spending time listening to music.

I am also a tea addict and in my free time, love getting to connect with my readers and making new friends on Wattpad.

Currently, I am a part of the Creators Program on Wattpad (extremely grateful to my readers for that)!

My most read YA story on Wattpad is Behind Your Walls which is your typical bad boy-good girl romance except in this one our main characters have a soulmates connection to each other and were always meant to be from the start.

It is a story full of drama, character growth, and dreamy romance. Carter and Amaya have been an integral part of shaping my writing career. They are the reason I am where I am now.

If you're a fan of good old Wattpad bad boy books with a twist in the cliché, then I hope you enjoy reading my story too. The Walls Duology which includes Behind Your Walls & Walls Between Us follows our characters through a journey from teenage to adulthood where they face many obstacles in life.

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About the Book Of The Month - Behind Your Walls

Runaway seventeen-year-old Amaya faces the consequences of faking a relationship with her notorious crush, Carter Bell, in exchange for a place to stay.

When seventeen-year-old Amaya runs away to escape her abusive step-father, she finds herself on the path of her school's notorious bad boy, Carter Bell. Desperate for a place to stay, she accepts Carter's offer to be his fake girlfriend in exchange for sharing his room with her. However, the lie comes at a cost when feelings start to develop in unexpected ways. Carter is everything Amaya has been taught to stay away from but more than that, he is impossible to resist. The more she tries to warn him about the dangers of being close to her, the desperate he becomes for her love. The stakes are high but Carter always gets what he wants, and he wants her.

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1. How did you find Wattpad? What is your highlight in the writing journey on Wattpad so far?

I remember stumbling upon Wattpad back in 2013 through a friend's recommendations (I have lost touch with said friend but she is someone I'll always be grateful to). I was mostly a reader with no aim for ever writing but then lockdown came and I penned down a story just for fun. Once my story started to gain readers, it made me much more serious about writing. I wrote more stories, made friends, and found my style through trying out different genres. My best highlight of my journey was getting a shoutout from Avery Keelan who is one of my favorite authors. Her one shoutout for Behind Your Walls on Instagram changed my life!

2. Using "fake dating becomes real" with a hint of enemies-to-lovers as the concept of your story, what aspects did you consider to make the relationship between two characters special and relatable?

Behind Your Walls was a creation of a lot of free time and wishing to try out already popular tropes. Carter and Amaya's relationship started out as them being strangers with Amaya crushing hard on the boy (a concept I took from my real life high-school experience where I never got to confess my love to this one classmate I had). The rest of the story is basically them getting to know each other. The spark between them is electrifying which adds to the fake-dating seeming more real. My characters respect each other a lot both in terms of relationships and allowing personal boundaries. Through their story, I hoped to portray a relationship that is messy but allows space for personal growth. I still hope that with each reader I get, I am able to achieve that.

3. Do you face any problems in building the two main protagonists? What do you have in mind in terms of character development throughout the story?

Character development is always an integral part of any story I write. I take care in giving my characters flaws and making them take realistic decisions. Carter is perhaps my most flawed male character and yet readers love him for his grey-shaded nature. He is possessive of things he wants as well as broken in more ways than one. Amaya on the other hand has more growth towards the end of the story where she does something that unexpectedly scars her for her whole life. They are both imperfect characters finding perfection when they are together. I didn't plan for them to end up how they did so for me, character development goes hand-in-hand with the plot of the story. The rest is mostly dependent on my writing so that I am able to express their emotions properly to my readers. It is one of the biggest challenges I face.

4. Are fake dating as well as "bad boy and good girl" your favorite tropes to write in the Young Adult genre? Do you have any concepts/tropes that you would like to write for the YARomance genre?

I have always had a soft spot for bad boys, except the bad boys I like are nowhere near as bad. They don't bully or promote toxicity but they are heavily possessive and do bad things for the sake of doing it and not because they have a tragic backstory behind their actions. Carter, for example, will always be bad in some way no matter how many happy endings he gets, but he is also someone who doesn't think twice before sacrificing himself. Writing bad boys is fun as long as you remember the boundaries of human acts. Some of the tropes that I'd like to experiment with when writing YA in the future are definitely writing a good boy trope too. I have a story in mind and am just waiting for the right time to start sharing it with the world.

5. Do you have a favorite YARomance TV Shows/Novels or Wattpad stories?

I have quite a few in mind right now! I recently loved The Summer I Turned Pretty show on Amazon Prime. It had all the contents of a good YA for me. Apart from that, Julie and The Phantoms on Netflix is another that touched every chord of my heart. As for writers and books,  officialrachelrose is one of my favorite YA romance writers on Wattpad. Gaslight was one of my biggest inspirations to start writing YA romances.

6. Becoming a creator and also a paid author on Wattpad is a great step in your writing journey, how do you feel when receiving the news? What is your future or upcoming plan in terms of writing, specifically writing YARomance stories?

It feels surreal still. I look back to when I began writing and to where I am now, and I can't help but feel overwhelmed by everything that I have been able to achieve because my readers trusted in me. Getting the invite for Creators was life-changing and getting paid for what I do on one of the biggest writing platforms is a dream come true. I hope to grow more with the help of Wattpad and work on more romances. I currently have two YA romances planned, one of which I hope to begin writing soon if time allows. This is a genre that I love deeply and can't wait to put more of my time in creating heart-warming stories for my readers in it.

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Thank you for chatting with us!

Check out the author's works in the profile account @iya_fictional.

Have you read their works? Any author to suggest to us for next month?