Malinda Lo

Today I’m heading off on a mini-retreat through Sunday, so I won’t be updating my blog again till next week (probably Tuesday), because during this mini-retreat I will have no internet access. Yes, this is a revolutionary situation!

If you’re following me on Twitter, though, you might already know that I’ve begun to practice a no-internet-before-noon policy. (And if you’re not following me on Twitter, please do! Who knows, I might text an update while I have no internet.) This is because I am currently working on my next novel, and I’ve discovered that as long as I don’t check my email/Twitter/AfterEllen/anything online before noon, I can write a good long chunk of brand new words every day. But once I go online, all is lost. Productivity flies out the window on very fast, high-tech wings. Sigh.

Anyway, while I’m away, as I said, I’ll be working on my next novel. And I am happy to tell you all that this next novel is a companion book to Ash. None of the same characters are in it (at least I don’t think so, though some of them could still surprise me), but it is set in the same world, just several hundreds of years earlier.

In Ash, you see, there’s this big thing with hunting, which is basically the national pastime of this imaginary world (like baseball, but, um, deadlier). Each hunt — from small local hunting parties to the King’s biggest Royal Hunt — is led by a huntress. My next novel, currently known as Untitled Book 2 (lyrical, isn’t it?), is the story of the the Kingdom’s first-ever huntress.

These are some of the things I’ve had to research for Untitled Book 2 so far: the I Ching, Chinese medicine, the history of steel manufacturing, the medieval hunt in Europe, and wolves. I am super excited about writing this book, and I can’t wait to turn out a whole lotta words while I’m offline.

Meanwhile, if you’re bored, I have some suggestions for you! Check out the new group blog I’m part of, The Enchanted Inkpot, amuse yourself with LOLcats, visit the blog of debut author Michelle Zink (whose upcoming book Prophecy of the Sisters is fantastic!), or pre-order Cindy Pon’s Asian fantasy Silver Phoenix via IndieBound in order to avoid Amazon in the wake of #amazonfail.

See you all next week!