Malinda Lo

Last Saturday I was driving to see Pamela Melroy speak about being only the second woman to command a space shuttle mission¹, when I heard a story on NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered about the impact of television on public opinions about gay people. Since I used to write about gay people on television, I was really interested in this piece, which featured an interview between host Guy Raz and Edward Schiappa, a professor of communications studies at the University of Minnesota. You can read the whole transcript here.

So, this was a 5-minute piece on the radio. I knew that they couldn’t get too deeply into the nuances of LGBT representation on television. But you know what pissed me off? It basically dismissed — and then erased — women from the dialogue.

The piece began with a clip from Glee involving Blaine and Kurt, one of the show’s gay couples. Then, Schiappa described the TV comedy Will and Grace as a major turning point in representations of gay people because of the show’s popularity. I don’t deny the significance of Will and Grace, but I was surprised that this is what came up first. I was happy when the host, Guy Raz, then said the E word:

RAZ: When Ellen DeGeneres came out on her show, “Ellen,” in 1997 and, of course, in real life, that was a big deal. I mean, that was a huge sort of television moment.

I got ready for Schiappa to delve into why Ellen Degeneres’s coming out was also important, and this is what he said:

SCHIAPPA: Yes, it was a big deal. It was a certainly symbolic breakthrough. But I think that there was a lot of other heavy lifting left to be done, which at least in part has been done.

Did you notice what Schiappa did just then? He diminished the significance of Ellen’s coming out by calling it “a symbolic breakthrough.” (More on “symbolic” in a bit.) Then he pushed Ellen’s coming out aside by continuing, “I think that there was a lot of other heavy lifting left to be done,” implying that her contribution to the cause of gay rights was fairly minimal.

Schiappa and Raz went on to discuss Modern Family, positing that this show has changed opinions about gay parenting. (It includes a gay couple, Mitchell and Cameron, who have a daughter.)

SCHIAPPA: The idea of their being a gay couple who have children is much more in the mainstream now than it certainly has been recognized at almost anytime prior to that. So there’s no question that that show is doing what I’ve described before as category work. It’s changing our understanding of what gay men are like, and particularly as parents.

To Schiappa’s credit (sort of), he specifies that he’s talking about gay men here. He’s an academic, and I think he’s being careful to use specific terms throughout the interview. Perhaps Schiappa only researches perceptions of gay men and masculinity — which is totally legitimate — and that’s why he’s not talking about women, and/or it may explain why he doesn’t seem to understand how completely, life-changingly significant Ellen’s coming-out was for the representation of lesbians and bisexual women on television. CONTINUE READING →

1. She was awesome! So inspiring. And there were so many young girls in the audience I got a little misty-eyed thinking about the future for women in space. [↩]

Back before the Internets became a hive of social networking, people used to subscribe to things called “newsletters” in order to get regular information from the authors, bands, organizations, etc., that they were interested in. I remember those days! I used to subscribe to newsletters.

This cat is so smart he can read the newsletter upside down.

Then came MySpace and Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and dude there’s so much stuff online I can’t take it anymore *plugs ears singing lalalalala*.

So, it occurred to me: Hey, maybe people might like newsletters again? You know, just in case you’re overextended in social media and don’t have time to follow me all over the internet, but would still like to know (1) when my new books are coming out, and (2) when/where I’ll be doing real-life events. (The real world. It exists!)

Well, my newsletter is for you! I will be sending it out no more than quarterly, because like you, I also get too much email. And to be honest, I probably will only send it out when I have a new book out, which is unlikely to be more than semi-annually. My first newsletter will come out this June.

If you’re all over that social media stuff and lovelovelove tweeting/tumblring/etc., don’t worry, the newsletter is for you too! I might in fact include some special newslettery news just for subscribers. I don’t know what that would be yet. Perhaps just personal secrets that I would never reveal to the internet at large, but of course is perfectly safe to share with my lovely newsletter subscribers in their email in boxes! Or, perhaps it might be special giveaways of books and things. I don’t know yet! But I will endeavor to write an entertaining newsletter for you to read at your leisure (or immediately upon receiving, whichever you prefer), and all you have to do to get onto this list is enter your email in this form below (just press return after entering your email address).

(Note: If you entered one of my giveaways in the last year and selected “join my mailing list” at the time, you have already been added to my newsletter mailing list! But if you’re not sure, you can still go ahead and enter your email below. It won’t subscribe you more than once, so you won’t get two copies.)

[Edited to add: If you're having problems with entering your email address, you can also go here to sign up.]

Thank you for considering joining my cult signing up for my newsletter. You won’t regret it! (And if you do, due to U.S. law you may unsubscribe at any time. I won’t be mad!)

Today the world learned that children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak has died at age 83. I am apparently one of the few who didn’t read Where the Wild Things Are as a child, so my connection to Mr. Sendak is only via the praise of others. (Though I did see his fabulous turn on The Colbert Report.)

Hearing about everyone who connected so deeply with his work, though, made me think about which books I connected to as a child¹. Very few of them were picture books; I seem to have always been more interested in words than images. But it was interesting to think about these books from my childhood and see how they’ve become reflected in the books I’m writing now, as an adult.

The earliest book I remember being fascinated by was a Chinese picture book that I think my mother read to me. We might have brought it with us from China when we immigrated to the United States; I don’t know. What I remember (hopefully accurately) is that it was a folktale about either foxes or wolves. There were vivid illustrations of a forest in the winter; I remember black trees and white snow … and a very frightening fox (or wolf!). I think there were teeth? And there might have been crows as well.

I remember being completely terrified of this story, and yet I wanted to hear it and look at the pictures. I think the memory of this story followed me all the way into the short story I wrote about Kaede from Huntress, titled (of course) “The Fox.” (That story, which was originally published in Subterranean online, will be included in the paperback edition of Huntress, which comes out this June. I’m so excited that it will get to become part of Huntress in paper format!)

I do remember some books I read as a child that included illustrations — but these were predominantly middle grade books with black-and-white drawings (Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers; The Borrowers by Mary Norton). But my favorite books — and the ones that left the deepest impressions on me, at least consciously — had no illustrations. I remember that at age 6, I decided I would read an entire book that had no pictures on my own. It took me a month, and it was hard. But I triumphed! That book was The Secret in the Old Lace by Carolyn Keene.

The early-80s cover of the version I read

That book started me on a lifelong love affair with crime mystery fiction. I devoured every single Nancy Drew book I could find, and then I moved on to other mysteries. I still love a good mystery, and my forthcoming book, Adaptation, is in some ways a mystery (if not a conventional one with detectives and a dead body). Someday, I know that I will write a “real” mystery — one with a dead body and clues and a detective. I don’t know when, because that story hasn’t come to me yet, but it’s coming. (Cue foreboding music.) CONTINUE READING →

1. I feel as if I’ve written about this before, but apparently I’m not sick of talking about this yet! [↩]

Recently I received my latest royalty statement from my publisher, and I was very excited to learn that my first novel, Ash, has earned out¹ its advance. This is exciting not only because now I will get royalty checks for future book sales of Ash, but because … MY LESBIAN CINDERELLA STORY HAS EARNED OUT.²

Authors don’t often announce when their books earn out. Some authors probably fully expect that to happen and it doesn’t seem like a big deal to them. Others probably never expect the book to earn out at all, so there’s nothing to state. But in a world in which it can often feel like anything about LGBT characters has a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful,³ I feel like this is something to celebrate. Cheesy as this may sound, now Cinderella really does get to live happily ever after.

There are many people who made this possible. My agent, Laura Langlie, who saw the potential in Ash from the beginning. My editor, Kate Sullivan, who jumped at the chance to acquire Ash and convinced everyone at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers that a lesbian Cinderella wasn’t a crazy idea. And Little, Brown itself, who designed and produced and promoted a beautiful book that made readers want to pick it up.

But it’s the readers — that’s YOU — who ultimately control whether a book succeeds or fails. The fact that Ash has earned out is due to YOU. Every reader who bought my book in hardcover or paperback or ebook; every reader who checked it out of their library or asked their library to buy it; every librarian who bought the book for their collection or recommended it to a patron; everybody who told someone else that Ash was something they might like.

THANK YOU.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It’s because of you and your support that my novel has found its place in the world. I hope it will stay there for a long time to come.

1. “Earning out” means the publisher has earned back the advance they paid me before the book was published. More info here. [↩]
2. According to Tobias Buckell’s 2005 (admittedly a little old) stats on first novel advances, Ash received an advance above the top of the range for first novels. Even though it took almost 2.5 years for the advance to earn out, because of the amount of the advance, I count it as a victory. [↩]
3. I’m also lucky that Ash has been published abroad in the U.K., Italy, Germany and most recently Turkey. I’ve been told that Ash and my other books have no chance of getting into many, many overseas markets because they would never accept novels about lesbians. So thank you also to the publishers overseas who have a progressive and inclusive vision for their lists. [↩]

April! It came, brought lots of pollen and allergies and rain to my neighborhood, and just blew out in a gust of wind. Here’s what I was up to:

April in News

On April 30, I got this in the mail:

This anthology of letters by LGBT writers to their younger selves technically came out on May 1, but since it snuck into my mailbox a day early I’m including this in my April roundup. It was very cool to be invited to contribute to this collection of letters, where I’m in some illustrious company (Armistead Maupin! Amy Bloom! Jewelle Gomez!). The Advocate recently interviewed Sarah Moon, the editor of the book, and two more of the contributors. It’s also gotten a starred review from Booklist:

★ “The letter Q stands for ‘queer,’ of course, and in this lovely, often funny, and always heartfelt book, more than five dozen celebrated writers send letters to their teenage selves. Each note, in its own individual way, promises the author’s younger self hope that, in the future, life will get better.” — Booklist

There are plans afoot for some bookstore events in June, and I’ll let you know when I have final details. Meanwhile, you can get the book from your local indie, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. CONTINUE READING →