Anna Langford asked Maria V. Snyder:

I really enjoyed Poison Study, especially the dark tones and plot points. Did you get any pushback, or how was the book ultimately decided to be marked as YA?

Maria V. Snyder Hello Anna! I wrote Poison Study for adults. At that time, YA characters had to be 18 or under and any relationships had to be with characters close in age. It was published as an adult fantasy in Oct 2005, the same month as Twilight and suddenly everyone is wanting to published YA books (and my male older character didn't seem so old compared to a 105 year old vampire :) . I received so many emails from teens who just loved my books, my publisher created new covers and re-release them as YA. Great, except I didn't get a chance to revise them before they went to press and I worried the darker scenes would cause problems. Then I was published as a YA author in both the UK and Australia - again without any chance to revise. However, except for one or two people, no one has given me any grief over those scenes and once I learned my readers were younger than I'd expected, I ensured my other books toned down those darker scenes. Although, I also had a couple teens tell me that Yelena inspired them and helped them deal with similar traumas they'd endured.

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