• Amazon Kindle
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• Google eBooks

Want a sample first? You can download samples from those retailers, you can read Chapter 1 here on my website, or you can read a different excerpt from the book here at the Lavender Review.

Happy holidays!

1. I don’t know how long!

“My name is [name redcated], and I have recently read your novel Ash for a Young Adult Literature course I am taking at [name redacted] University.  One of the requirements of this course is to write a research paper relating a topic of our choice to one of the novels we read in class.  As you may now have guessed, I chose to complete my research paper on Ash, and was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?  My thesis for the research paper is somehow going to relate why there was a need for homosexuality within the novel, and the differences between your retelling of Cinderella and the tales we have grown to know.  My first is, why did you choose the tale of Cinderella for your retelling?  You could have easily chosen another tale such as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, therefore, what made Cinderella’s tale so special?  My next question is, why did you decide to spin the tale into a story involving homosexuality?  The well-known tale of Cinderella is one whose format and story line thrives from the need of a heterosexual relationship- a strong male character to “save the day.”  My final question revolves around Ash and the Huntress.  What made you choose the Huntress for Ash to fall in love with?  For most of the novel, the reader begins to believe that Ash is in some way in love with Sidhean, that the bond they were forming was a strong one.  Then suddenly a relationship sparks between the two women, why didn’t you follow the common tale format and allow Ash to fall in love with Sidhean?  I am aware that there are some short answers to some of these questions on your website, but I was wondering if you could elaborate more on them.  Tell me truly what your thoughts were, and give me any other information that might be helpful.”

Let me begin with the issue of students emailing authors for information to include in their research papers. Many authors get these emails all the time, but for whatever reason, I haven’t gotten too many until recently. My thoughts are this: If your teacher asks you to email an author to interview them for a research paper, I think your teacher should change their assignment. I know that many authors are extremely busy, and it may take months for us to respond to reader emails.

I try to respond to every reader email, but the more questions you ask, the longer it’s going to take me to respond. If your research paper is waiting on my responses in order to be completed, your paper is going to fail. I will most likely never be able to respond in time.

But more importantly, a research paper in which you analyze a novel does not need the author’s input, and this is what I’ll eventually tell you. A novel is a finished, completed thing. It exists on its own. I’m pretty sure that your teacher is interested in your perspective on the book, not the author’s. The author’s perspective is already there: It’s in every word printed on the page. You can debate the death of the author if you want, and sometimes, yes, an author’s intentions are interesting, but are they necessary for your paper? Probably not.

So, if you want to email me to ask me what I think about my own book, I suggest that instead you just do some research into what I’ve already said about my book. This is really easy, especially since I have a website where I have categories about my books, and also I have entire lists of press mentions in which I’ve been interviewed or guest posted about my intentions.

I’ve decided to answer your questions here on my website, this time, because I found them … surprising. You may not be aware of this, but they came off as sounding homophobic to me. I was, initially, offended. But I think that you probably didn’t realize they came off that way. So let me go through them one by one.

“My first is, why did you choose the tale of Cinderella for your retelling? You could have easily chosen another tale such as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, therefore, what made Cinderella’s tale so special?”

I have answered this here in the Ash FAQ.

“My next question is, why did you decide to spin the tale into a story involving homosexuality?  The well-known tale of Cinderella is one whose format and story line thrives from the need of a heterosexual relationship- a strong male character to ‘save the day.’”

Ash is a retelling of “Cinderella.” The purpose of a retelling is to change the story, to reimagine it with a different angle. If I hadn’t changed the story in some way, it wouldn’t be a retelling. It would be the same.

Why did I change it into “a story involving homosexuality”? I can see why you’ve interpreted Ash that way, but I don’t see it like that. In Ash’s world, there is no homosexuality or heterosexuality; there is only love. The story is about her falling in love. It’s not about her being gay.

Traditionally, Cinderella marries a prince. But I wouldn’t say the story “thrives from a need of a heterosexual relationship.” The character of Cinderella is chained to the customs of her time and place. In nearly all traditional, Western versions of the tale, Cinderella’s only way to escape her life of drudgery and servitude is marrying a wealthy man. This isn’t about thriving — this is about survival. For all women in these traditional fairy tales, marriage is the only way to be successful. This is because these tales reflected societies in which this was the way of life: if a woman wanted to better herself, she had very few options. It’s not like she could go to college and get herself a great career. She could marry well, or she could become a nun. Both were legitimate choices. Cinderella had the opportunity to marry well, and she took it.

The fact that she had that opportunity with a man is, I believe, beside the point, because there was simply no other option. The point of my version of the tale is that she does have another option.

Now, regarding “a strong male character to ‘save the day’”: This is true in some fairy tales, such as “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White.” But in “Cinderella,” the prince doesn’t really save anybody’s day. He shows up with a shoe. He doesn’t slay any dragons, climb any towers, or even wake anybody up with a kiss. He finds a lost shoe. Honestly, this is why I think the prince in “Cinderella” is the most pathetic prince in all of the fairy tales.

Beyond this, I firmly and adamantly reject the notion that strong male characters are needed to save the day. In my world, in my life, the sisters can sure as hell do it for themselves.

“My final question revolves around Ash and the Huntress.  What made you choose the Huntress for Ash to fall in love with?  For most of the novel, the reader begins to believe that Ash is in some way in love with Sidhean, that the bond they were forming was a strong one.  Then suddenly a relationship sparks between the two women, why didn’t you follow the common tale format and allow Ash to fall in love with Sidhean?”

Many readers seem to believe that Sidhean plays the role of the prince in “Cinderella,” but this is incorrect. In Ash, there is a prince: Prince Aidan, who hosts the ball in which he chooses a wife. Prince Aidan is the prince.

Sidhean is the fairy godmother.

I thought this was pretty clear, but it seems that Sidhean’s seductiveness has seduced many a reader and caused them to believe that he is the prince. But no. He’s a fairy. He is the one who helps Ash go to the ball by giving her the magic dress and the magic coach. Thus, he plays the role of the fairy godmother. In the traditional tale, Cinderella definitely does not fall in love with the fairy godmother, so it is not accurate that this would be the “common tale format.”

I know that many readers really like Sidhean and wish that Ash would have ended up with him. I get this. I like Sidhean, too. He’s sexy. But you know what? He wants to kill Ash. Sometimes, yeah, Ash wants it, too. They have a twisted relationship, and I know that twisted relationships have their allure. I’m not judging her for wanting it sometimes — it’s very human. But think about it. Do you think Sidhean is the right choice for Ash?

As for why she falls in love with Kaisa, all I can say is this: From the very first draft, Ash only had eyes for her. It was always Kaisa. Even before I knew it was Kaisa, it was Kaisa. I’ve said before that in the first draft, I made Ash fall for the prince. It wasn’t until a friend of mine read it and told me that Ash seemed interested in the huntress that I figured it out.

The answer to “Why Kaisa?” then, is simple: Because Ash wanted her. And that is the story that I, at some unconscious level, wanted to tell.

There was no grand political intention behind this. There was no plan to subvert a much-beloved fairy tale (at least not at the beginning). There was only the fact that I created these characters, and the ones who had chemistry together were two female characters. Given that I’m queer, and that I was telling this story to myself at the time, it makes perfect sense.

Writing certainly involves making some intellectual choices. But I don’t know many writers who intellectualize every storytelling decision they make. In my experience, the things that appear most symbolic in my novels are the things that I wrote mostly by instinct. So if someone asks me why I wrote A instead of B, the answer is probably, “Because it felt right.”

This is another reason why it doesn’t matter what my intentions are. In a critical essay or paper, what matters is what you think. Not what I felt.

One part that jumped out at me was an analysis of a particular scene in Ash, and I’ve been thinking about the reviewer’s perspective for days. And then S. Jae-Jones blogged about cross-dressing, and I thought: OK, this is a sign. I’m just going to blog about this.

Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t read Ash, there are lots of spoilers in this post!

I hesitated because you know the rule: Authors aren’t supposed to respond to their reviews. But in this case, I’m not really responding to the review, but rather to an assumption that I think underscores many readings of cross-dressing. OK, here’s that part of the review I’ve been pondering (emphasis mine):

My favorite scene is towards the middle of the book, in which Ash wears pageboy clothing, and sees herself as a boy “with a proud profile and dark, long-lashed eyes.” In this carefully crafted moment, Ash confuses her gender and class roles in favor of seeing herself as someone else. Someone who is not meekly following the unreasonable demands of her family. At the same time, it seems troubling that she sees herself as powerful when she is a man, but I think this is a trick. Ash is really learning that appearances do not make a person powerful because power lies in emotion and knowledge.

When I first read this I thought: Wow, what an amazing analysis of that scene! I’m constantly surprised and delighted by the meaning that readers find in Ash, and I thought this was a very interesting interpretation — especially the part where “it seems troubling that she sees herself as powerful when she is a man.”

The review immediately notes that she thinks this is “a trick,” but I want to focus on the “it seems troubling” part. It struck me that this interpretation of cross-dressing seems based in a predominantly heterosexual reading of the scene (and in that case, yes, it would be troubling). This isn’t unusual; I think that a lot of times, when cross-dressing comes up in fiction, it is engaged with on a heterosexual level.

In this understanding of cross-dressing, a heroine, temporarily disguised as a male, is allowed to taste the freedom of masculinity without ever truly straying from her inner femininity. She may, for example, struggle with menstruation while disguising herself as a man. Her feminine body is always in danger of being revealed through bathing or through accidents, etc. A lot of the time, cross-dressing heroines in fiction wind up falling in love with a man who awakens in her a desire to throw off the masculine mask and reveal her natural (read: feminine) body and being.

I personally hate this kind of cross-dressing story. Why? Because it ultimately underscores heteronormativity. The woman is a woman; she can never be anything other than woman, and that always involves loving a man.

But for me, I appreciate cross-dressing for its queerness. Lesbians have often cross-dressed to disguise their femininity (from the straight public, not from each other) in order to carry on relationships with other women. Out of that necessity was born the butch/femme cultures of the 1940s and ’50s, and also a specific eroticism based on female masculinity.

For me, when Ash puts on the boy’s clothing and sees herself in the mirror, I see her as reappropriating masculinity for herself. Reappropriating masculinity is, I would argue, different than seeing oneself as powerful only when appearing as a man. It is actually about taking masculinity and reinterpreting it through a female experience. Part of that reappropriation leads to shifting one’s perspective about what is erotic.

When I wrote that scene, I knew that it was an erotic experience for Ash. She gains a new awareness of her body when putting on trousers, and the whole night is about the freedom to look — to gaze — on others, including Kaisa, the woman she ultimately falls in love with.²

I think that when a cross-dressing narrative is also a queer narrative, the heterosexual interpretation doesn’t really work. The heterosexual cross-dressing narrative raises the specter of potential same-sex eroticism, but ultimately vanquishes it in favor of a traditional heterosexual union. It is a heteronormative story in the end. Even though the lady was disguised as a man, her true heterosexuality was never altered by wearing men’s clothing.

But a queer cross-dressing narrative does more than flirt with homoeroticism; it foregrounds it. After that scene, Ash is increasingly conscious of her attraction to Kaisa. And, I might add, Kaisa (who is basically cross-dressing the entire time) helps Ash to cross-dress³ a bit, too, by providing her with a riding outfit that also involves trousers.

Anyway, Ash isn’t really about cross-dressing (bummer!), but I just wanted to point out that cross-dressing in a queer context has a different set of meanings than it does in a straight context. One of the primary differences is erotic. For a clear example of this, read Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, which is all about queer cross-dressing.

I’m all for cross-dressing, as long as it’s in a queer narrative. And yes, someday I’m going to write a real, honest-to-goodness queer cross-dressing story! It’s been waiting on the backburner since before I wrote Ash, but I haven’t felt like I was ready to write it yet. Soon!

1. I had a fabulous time last year at Sirens, and if you’re interested in issues around women in fantasy fiction, I strongly encourage you to go! It’s totally YA-friendly, and this year’s guests of honor are Justine Larbalestier, Laini Taylor, and Nnedi Okorafor. I am SO BUMMED that I won’t be there this year [barring unforeseen time and money falling from the sky], but I still read the newsletter. *sob*
2. In an early draft, Ash spent a lot more time cross-dressing. There was a whole story line that I cut in which she dressed as a boy and went to the palace to research whether or not her father actually left her stepmother in debt. This ultimately became irrelevant to the story, but the cross-dressing helped me to understand that Ash’s perspective on who she was falling in love with was changing.
3. Admittedly they’re not disguising themselves as men, but they are women wearing pants in a society where women typically don’t.

To everyone who bought my book, thank you. To everyone who checked it out from their library (or who asked their library to order it!), thank you. To everyone who blogged or tweeted or facebooked or mentioned my book on the internet, thank you. To everyone who told their friends in person about my book, who gave it as a gift, who loaned their copy to someone else: Thank you.

Ash was my first published novel, so it will always mean a lot to me, even as I write new and different books. Your support for Ash has been amazing, and I’m so glad that the words I wrote touched you in some way.

To thank you, I’m excited to share with you the brand new, official¹ book trailer for Huntress, which will be coming to bookstores (and ebooks!) on April 5, 2011.²

Now, I know that not everyone likes book trailers. I mean, you’re interested in the book, which means words, right? So, I’m also posting Chapter 1 of Huntress right here for you to read.

And, because Chapter 1 is really pretty short, I’ll be posting Chapter 2 in two weeks. And then, two weeks after that, I believe I may even post Chapter 3.

I also know that some people don’t even like to read teaser chapters, because then they get all antsy about not having the rest of the book to read. I’m sympathetic to you guys, because I’m the same way. Sometimes I’ll check out a book trailer because I’m curious, but I rarely read teaser chapters. I just want the whole book.

Since I totally get where you’re coming from, I’m also giving away five signed ARCs of Huntress! I will ship up to two of them outside the U.S. and Canada, so overseas readers, you’re welcome to enter.

And, since this is totally a valentine from me to my readers, I don’t want you to do any work to get it. All you have to do is enter your email address in the form below. There are no extra entries for promoting my contest on Twitter or Facebook or your blog.³

I do ask, though, that you not enter the giveaway unless you honestly loved Ash. This is totally on the honor system here; I can’t check to see if you’re lying or not. If you haven’t read Ash yet, I’ll be doing more ARC giveaways of Huntress on Twitter in the next month, so you can follow me to make sure you have a chance to win there. This giveaway, though, is for fans of Ash. Also: You can be any fan of Ash. I don’t care if you work in the publishing business or are a fellow YA author or are one of my real-life friends who keep demanding that I give you an ARC (I love you, really) — if you’re a fan of Ash, feel free to enter this Huntress ARC giveaway!

That said, here are the rules:

1. To enter the giveaway, please enter your email address in the form below. Comments do not count as entries.
2. You do not have to answer the survey question, but I would love it if you did, since I’m curious.
3. The deadline to enter this giveaway is Friday, Feb. 18th!
4. Winners will be selected using Random Number Generator shortly afterward, and will be notified by email.

And, last but not least, thank you again for reading Ash!

Updated 2/20/11: The contest is over! Thanks for entering; winners will be notified shortly.

1. And 100% home-made, aka I’m a writer, not a cinematographer!
2. Can I tell you how hard it is to find stock photo or video of Asian teens who are not wearing tons of makeup and/or carrying a cell phone? It’s really, really hard. In fact, I found no stock video of that. Hence, photos.
3. Although if you do want to share the giveaway news out of the kindness of your heart, I’m sure you’ll rack up some good book karma.

My reaction is sorta complicated, and since whitewashing YA covers continues to be discussed in the YA book community, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this. (Warning: this is a looong post!)

From January to April 2011, I counted 57 young adult fantasy novels being published by all the major American book publishers. Among those 57, nine include main or major supporting characters of color:

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda
Eona by Alison Goodman
Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon
Huntress by Malinda Lo
Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney
Red Glove by Holly Black
Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves
Tiger’s Curse by Collen Houck

Three include main or major supporting gay characters:

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
Huntress by Malinda Lo
Shadow Walkers by Brent Hartinger

So, that’s 11 books that incorporate racial and/or sexual diversity. That’s 19% of YA fantasy novels being published from January-April 2011. I think that’s actually quite an astonishing percentage.

Among those 11 books, two are represented by covers that clearly feature people of color:

Another three include distinct Asian elements that echo the books’ Asian inspirations:

(It is harder to tell in this small images, but the dagger on Fury of the Phoenix is engraved with a Chinese character. There is a Chinese character on the cover of Eona. And those curlicues on Tiger’s Curse look quite South Asian to me.)

A lot of commentary laments the low percentage of books with people of color on the covers (and yes, it is low), especially in comparison to the huge number of YA novels (fantasy and otherwise) featuring slim, attractive white girls. I totally get that. And yet, there are a few things that I think is important to remember.

Book covers are advertisements. This doesn’t mean that they can get away with just anything to sell a book to teens (because if that were the case, hello, freaking Robert Pattinson would be on the cover of every YA novel), but it does mean that cover designers are working within a marketing context.

Before you get upset and say, “But I am a consumer who wants to see more diversity! I would buy books with people of color on them!” — I assure you that I’m not talking about you. Readers who visit my website are already engaged in the dialogue online about race and representation in YA fiction (or they’ve read my book — hi, readers of my book! — and they know what I’m about). I’m talking about the mass market for YA books; teens who pick up a book because of its cover at Barnes & Noble or their local/school library.

Do I think that these “mass market” teen readers are racist? No. But they, like everybody else on the planet, is part of a world dominated by an entertainment industry (and society, too) that sells whiteness as attractive and desirable. Yes, I wish that were not the case, but you can’t ignore reality.

The reality is: At this point in time, slim, attractive white girls sell books. They sell freaking everything. Just look at an issue of People sometime, or turn on your TV. What do you see? Slim, attractive white girls.

This doesn’t mean that it’s OK to always slap a white girl on a YA book cover. But in order to change the status quo (which I believe is already changing), you have to do some sneaky manipulation in order to get the ordinary, non-YA-blogosphere reader to pick up a book about someone who is different from them. Sometimes that does mean putting a dust jacket on a book that does not shout out “HEY I’M TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM YOU!”

(Obviously, this scenario is different if you are a person of color yourself. Hang on a sec — I’ll address that a little further down in this post.)

The only job of a book cover, in my opinion, is to get someone to pick up a book and read the flap copy or the first page. Hopefully then the words will complete the sale.

And that’s the important thing: the words. The most important part of a book is always the words of the story; it is never the cover. There are good covers and there are bad covers, but most often, there are mediocre covers. No cover will ever perfectly match an author’s vision for her book, and no cover will ever attract every reader. That’s why it is so important to look beyond the cover, in all cases.

That maxim of “don’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, it’s still true.

Even if a book cover doesn’t echo the diversity within the book, that doesn’t erase the diversity. It hides it a little, yes, but the cover is not the story. The cover is an advertisement. (And in most cases, it’s removable.)

Every time someone reads a book about a character who is different from them — even if they didn’t know it going into it — that reader’s universe is broadened a little. This is how the status quo is going to change: publishing more books about diverse characters, and giving them covers that attract readers. As more of them sell, publishers will be more inclined to incorporate diversity overtly on the covers. (I’m being optimistic, but I actually do believe this.)

If you’re a person of color and you are sick of not seeing yourself represented on book covers, I get it, even though I don’t personally fret so much about not seeing Asian women on book covers (I do get a bit frustrated by Hollywood, though). I tend to be more annoyed by overly exoticized representations of “Asianness.”

But the reason I understand your frustration is because I’ve been following the representation of lesbians in the media for years. It is so hard to find a realistic, three-dimensional lesbian character in television or film. YA fiction actually is doing fairly well in this area, though it publishes far more books about gay boys than lesbian girls.

One way book publishers (both YA and adult) sell books that include queer characters is by hiding the queerness in the jacket copy — essentially by closeting the gay story lines. This happens all the time. I recently read Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours, a recent major women’s fiction commercial release, not suspecting it had a lesbian character at all, but it did.

This has also happened to my own first novel, Ash. The U.S. edition doesn’t entirely hide the gayness, but the jacket copy is, at best, suggestive. The U.K. edition, however, totally closets the gay story line. Here’s the U.K. jacket copy:

With her parents both gone, Ash finds herself a servant in the house of her ruthless stepmother and there seems no hope of finding happiness again.

But Ash is unaware of her mother’s legacy, and that it will lead her to a magical place. A place where love, identity and belonging are all waiting….

There are no blurbs on the cover from any authors who have written about gay teens (often a hint about gay content). There are no review quotes that mention the gay stuff. There’s not even a suggestive excerpt on the back, like on the American edition. Along with the obviously Cinderella image, the book seems totally straight.

The U.S. version of Ash has sold well. The U.K. edition has sold even better.

Partly, I think this has to do with distribution. In the U.K., Ash was available in bookstores, but it was also available at Asda, which is the U.K. equivalent of Wal-Mart. (In the U.S., it was definitely not available at Wal-Mart.) But I also do think it’s partly due to the heterosexual-seeming packaging.

I often get emails from readers in the U.K. saying, “I had no idea this book would turn out to be about a lesbian relationship, but I loved it anyway.” These kinds of comments make me both happy and a little sad. Happy because they loved the story enough to write to me, obviously! But a little sad because it implies that had they known it was a lesbian story, they wouldn’t have read it.

Many people still believe that books about people of color or LGBT people are only for readers who are also people of color or LGBT. This is a sad but incontrovertible truth. We can’t ignore this. Those of us who write books about people of color or LGBT people have to acknowledge it. And until the world changes — and every time another diverse book is published, regardless of the cover or the cover copy, that change happens — sometimes it’s necessary to market to the masses.

Taking to the streets (even figuratively) and shouting about the need for equality is something that needs to be done, and is being done by many people today.

But change can also happen subversively. Subversiveness is just another tool we can use, successfully, to make the world a more inclusive place.

Diversity in YA is not only a website celebrating diversity in middle-grade and young adult fiction, it is also a real-life book tour! Cindy and I invited a bunch of amazing children’s and YA authors to join us at events in five cities this year in the U.S. And today we announced our incredible author lineup.

It’s going to be awesome! In May, Cindy and I will be traveling to San Francisco, Austin, Boston, and New York; and then this fall we’ll hopefully be doing something in San Diego. Our locations aren’t entirely finalized yet, but as soon as they are we’ll announce that, too. If you want to stay up to date on what DiYA is doing, please join our mailing list to get the scoop before anyone else.

So far the response has been amazing, and I’m really excited to do the tour with all these wonderful authors. Plus, I’m finally going to Texas! I have never been there and am really looking forward to it.

Next up: This week I was thrilled to get copies of the German edition of Ash in the mail!

The German edition of Ash, published by Pan

It’s a little smaller than the American edition — kind of like those Modern Library pocket-size hardcovers. I think it’s beautiful, and it’s always so cool to see my words translated into a different language. Thanks to my German publisher, PAN, for publishing Ash!

In German!

And lastly, I’ll be taking a brief blog hiatus. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks!

I got so many wonderful emails from teachers and librarians and youth mentors that it was difficult for me to narrow things down, even when I added in another 16 paperback copies to the giveaway. I was hoping to email everyone about who I chose to send books to, but (lack of) time and the holidays have gotten in the way. So, I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to email those who won’t be getting copies. Please be assured that I would have given you copies if I could have, but I had a limited number to give away. I prioritized sending copies to libraries and organizations who did not already have a copy of Ash, and to teachers who specifically worked as mentors to their school’s gay-straight alliances.

Last week I packed up and mailed all those copies of Ash, which have been winging their way across the U.S. and Canada to the following schools, libraries, and community organizations:

Alameda County Social Services Agency’s LGBTQ Workgroup (Oakland, CA)
Balboa High School (San Francisco, CA)
Bayfield High School (Bayfield, CO)
Batesville Public Library (Batesville, MS)
Berkeley Unified School District (Berkeley, CA)

Canyon High School (Anaheim Hills, CA)
Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering (New York, NY)
County of Prince Edward Public Library (Picton, Ontario)
Delaware Hayes High School (Delaware, OH)
Ecole Secondaire De La Salle (Ottawa, Ontario)

Gloucester County Library, Mullica Hill Branch (Mullica Hill, NJ)
Guilderland High School (Guilderland Center, NY)
Lowell High School (San Francisco, CA)
Marble Hill School (Bronx, NY)
Mission Vista High School (Oceanside, CA)

Nelson County High School (Lovingston, VA)
North Lambton Secondary School (Forest, Ontario)
NYU LGBTQ Student Center (New York, NY)
Our Space/Oakland Public Library TeenZone (Oakland, CA)
Out Youth (Austin, TX)
Second Chance Books, Gardner Betts Juvenile Detention Center (Austin, TX)

Tri-Cities High School (East Point, GA)
United Action for Youth (Iowa City, IA)
Washington State GSA Network (Seattle, WA)
Willard Middle School (Berkeley, CA)
Woodland Acres Middle School (Houston, TX)
Woodside High School (Newport News, VA)

Thanks to everyone who emailed me and shared a little about how they are working to make life a little better for LGBTQ students today. I really appreciated hearing from you, and I hope your students enjoy my book. Happy holidays!

Prince William and Kate Middleton

The news gave me the nudge I needed to finally tackle a question that a reader emailed me a while ago.² Here’s the hot topic:

I just have one question. I found I wanted to know what happened to the prince, and if he got his own happy ending. Will this be discussed or not? I just found that everything else sorta satisfied me, but him.

Before I answer the question …

SPOILER WARNING! The end of Ash will be discussed right here in this blog post. Look away if you don’t want to be spoiled!

Disney's Prince Charming

When I first received this email I was a little stumped, because I remembered that Clara, Ash’s stepsister, told her exactly what happened to Prince Aidan at the end of the novel. Here’s the section from page 261 where she explains:

Ash smiled, and she asked, “Who, then, did Prince Aidan choose?”

“He chose an heiress from Seatown — I do not even know her name.”

Her stepsister sounded carefully nonchalant about it, and Ash did not press her for further details.

So, that’s what happens to the prince. He marries some unnamed heiress from Seatown. Is this a happy ending? Well, I don’t really know. I’m going to bet that the unnamed heiress thought she got a pretty good deal by marrying the prince, but I doubt that she was really in love with him.

This is because marrying the prince in the Cinderella story is not really about finding true love. It’s about making a good match — financially and in terms of class. It’s about marrying up, as anthropologists say. Moving out of a lower class situation and climbing to the very top of the aristocratic ladder. If that’s your goal — as it was for Ana, Ash’s other stepsister — then you would be very happy to marry the prince.

You’ll notice that Clara sounds “carefully nonchalant” about it, and that’s because she personally held out hope that she could marry the prince. There was little chance of success because Clara’s family was not wealthy or noble enough to truly put her in contention. But Clara did want it, even if her feelings about marrying up were not as mercenary as her mother’s or sister’s.

The interesting thing about Prince Charming, though, is that he’s less of a three-dimensional character than a symbol. In all the Cinderella stories, he is the goal, the prize. He’s money and wealth and power and success. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for being human.

David Beckham as Prince Charming

So, when I wrote Ash, I ran into that obstacle. I could never really find the character within the prince, and I think that shows in the book. He’s the least developed character overall. I even feel more kinship to Jonas, the sometime servant/cart-driver who works for Ash’s stepmother, than I do for the prince.

I did try to make him more interesting. I sent him off to war, but unfortunately, when he returned he turned out to be kind of hard and cold. It didn’t work. And soon enough, I realized he would never have a chance with Ash anyway, because she only had eyes for Kaisa.

Anyway, my conclusion is: The prince married the heiress. Eventually he became king. I’m pretty sure he had children. Is that happy? I don’t know, but it’s not like he has a bad life. I mean, he’s the prince (and future king!). He’s got a great house, plenty of money, parents and a younger brother (Hugh! who I think is pretty cool) who love him, and an entire lifetime to work through his PTSD from that war I mercilessly sent him to. I think that as he ages — and especially after he’s no longer the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom — he becomes a much more interesting person. Once he’s no longer the prize, he has a chance to become human.

Lastly, I have to say it was really interesting for me to get a question about the prince. People often have asked me what happened to Clara, which I love, because she was an unexpectedly three-dimensional character for me. And of course a lot of folks want to know what happens next for Ash and Kaisa, and some of them want to know what happens to Sidhean. But this was the first time anyone asked about the prince.

I have to wonder though, will anyone ever ask me about Lore, Kaisa’s apprentice? Because she totally has backstory.

Edited to add: OK, so I was totally begging for someone to ask about Lore, obviously. Thankfully you have obliged me by asking (even though I know who you are, Amy!). So, I will tell you, but I’m going to put it in white text (highlight to read it) because Lore’s backstory involves other characters in Ash. Read at your own peril!

Here it is: In several early drafts, Lore was a much more major character. She was the one who taught Ash to hunt, not Kaisa, because Kaisa was too busy being the King’s Huntress. Also, I’m pretty sure Lore is Kaisa’s ex. It’s not entirely clear to me when they had their relationship, but they definitely had one. This is why Lore is so prickly when she first meets Ash. Of course, Lore and Kaisa are totally over, and obviously they now have a professional relationship. (Ha!) But still, it can be difficult to see your ex with a new partner, even if you no longer have feelings for her. And someday, in the future, Lore absolutely takes over the job of King’s Huntress.

1. Yes, I was one of those who woke up really early in 1984 to watch the wedding of William’s parents.
2. Don’t worry, I responded to her email already; I’ve just been saving her question for a rainy day. Or a royal engagement, apparently.

But … my books can! And I have at least 30 copies of Ash that I want to put in the hands of LGBTQ teens. But I need your help in figuring out who to send these books to.

Are you a teacher who mentors a gay-straight alliance at your high school?

Do you know someone who does one of the above?

Then I want to hear from you! Please email me (mlo [at] malindalo.com), preferably from your professional email address, and tell me (1) what sort of work you do with LGBTQ youth; and (2) what you would do with a copy or copies of Ash.

It could be as simple as, “Several of my students are LGBTQ, and I’ll put it the book in my classroom library.” Or it could be something like: “I lead a queer youth group with six teens, and we’d love to read Ash together.”

Please note: If you are an individual who simply wants a copy for yourself, I regret that this giveaway is not intended for you. My goal here is to reach out to GSAs, LGBT community centers, schools, and libraries, to make my book available to a community of readers.

I’d love to be able to send these books out before the holidays, so please spread the word to anyone you think might be interested. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me directly. Thanks for your help!

UPDATED 11/2/10: The responses I’ve gotten so far have been fantastic! I’m going to set a deadline, though, for this giveaway: If you’d like a copy of Ash for your school/library/youth group, please email me (mlo [at] malindalo.com) by Nov. 7, 2010. After that I will go through the emails and make decisions. Thank you!

Woohoo! What makes a celebration even better? Obviously, a giveaway! In honor of the fact that Ash is a fairy tale retelling, I’m giving away two different prize packs of fairy tales retold. Each pack includes a signed paperback copy of Ash, plus two other books. I’ve separated them into YA and adult, because fairy tales often cross over into both age groups. Those in the YA group are somewhat gentler than the ones in the adult group, which are best read by mature readers (you know who you are!). I know that both teens and adults have read Ash, and it’s my giveaway after all, so I’m including Ash in both categories!

Prize Pack #1: The YA Collection

Beauty by Robin McKinley — One of my favorite books of all time! A retelling of Beauty and the Beast that is warm, wonderful, magical, and meant to be read by a fire. Beautiful indeed.

Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue — A lyrical, linked collection of fairy tales retold, in which the witch is not as witchy as she seems, and girls sometimes love other girls, too.

Ash by Malinda Lo — My book!

Prize Pack #2: The A(dult) Collection

Deerskin by Robin McKinley — Another of my favorite books of all time, but definitely a dark, dark story that involves sexual violence. Still, it is haunting and beautiful.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter — A collection of short stories by a masterful writer, these tales are frightening and powerful and make me want to be a better writer.

Ash by Malinda Lo — Yep, it’s me again!

Here are the rules:

• To enter the challenge, you must fill out the form below. Comments will not be counted as entries, but if you have questions about the contest, please do comment and I’ll answer them as I can.
• Everybody who enters gets one entry automatically. You can have additional entries in the contest by tweeting, blogging, or liking me on Facebook. Please be sure to leave links as requested in the forms; otherwise I won’t be able to confirm what you did, and those extra entries will be invalid.
• I am only able to ship to addresses in the United States and Canada, so if you live overseas, you can enter the contest as long as you have a U.S./Canadian mailing address I can ship to.
• The contest will end at midnight Pacific time in two weeks, on Oct. 20th. Winners will be drawn the next day, and I will email them (you, perhaps!) for their addresses.

The contest is over! Thanks to everyone who entered. Winners will be notified by email.