2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults — “The books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens. The list comprises a wide range of genres and styles, including contemporary realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, historical fiction and novels in verse.”

2012 Amelia Bloomer Project List — Recommended Feminist Literature for Birth through 18

A Top 10 Selection of the 2012 Rainbow List — Recommended GLBTQ Books for Children and Teens

Thanks so much to all the librarians who read Huntress and supported it for these lists. I’m very honored. And congratulations to all the other fabulous books on these lists!

UPDATED 1/31/12: I just found out that Huntress also made it onto the Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books for Teens. This is so thrilling! I love Chicago!

Yesterday, Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) announced the sale of an anthology she is editing, Foretold, which will be coming out in the fall of 2012. From Publishers Marketplace:

NYT bestselling author Carrie Ryan, ed.’s FORETOLD, an anthology about prophecies and predictions featuring stories by Laini Taylor, Jen Lancaster, Meg Cabot, Richelle Mead, and Michael Grant among many others, to Krista Marino at Delacorte, for publication in Fall 2012, by Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

The part that isn’t included? I have a story in it, too! I’m so excited to be in an anthology with such fabulous authors. You can see the whole lineup here on Carrie’s blog.

The story I wrote is a fairy tale … ish. At least in feel. It was inspired by “Snow White,” but quickly veered in a very different direction. The only thing that remains the same is, well, there’s a stepmother. Isn’t there always a stepmother in a fairy tale? I can’t wait to share this story with you next fall!

2. I interviewed Lois Duncan!

Earlier this week I got two new paperbacks in the mail: repackaged and updated versions of Daughters of Eve and Locked in Time by YA suspense master Lois Duncan. The reason? My publisher, Little, Brown, is giving them new looks, and earlier this year they asked me to interview Lois for the repackaging. Those interviews are included in the back of both books as special extras. Isn’t that cool?

I read every single Lois Duncan book I could get my hands on when I was a teen. You might be familiar with I Know What You Did Last Summer because they made a movie out of it, but my favorites were Stranger With My Face and Down a Dark Hall. I was so thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to Lois about her books — she’s a real inspiration to me.

And getting to read Daughters of Eve and Locked in Time was really fun. Both books are fantastic and spooky, but in very different ways. Daughters of Eve is about feminism gone, well, slightly awry. It’s fascinating! And Locked in Time is a moody Southern mystery with plenty of creepy atmosphere. You can get them in bookstores now.

3. Casting Kaede

Via Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor, I discovered some beautiful artwork by Dan Dos Santos, an artist who has done amazing covers for many fantasy and science fiction novels. This painting (which you can download as wallpaper) is titled “Farseed” and, in my mind, is just about a perfect rendition of Kaede from Huntress … five years after the end of the book:¹

"Farseed" by Dan Dos Santos (click to enlarge)

It’s not entirely accurate because she’s kind of depicted in a postapocalyptic wasteland, isn’t she? And she has face paint on and is kinda punk. However, isn’t she awesome? I love it!

I often get asked to do fantasy castings for my characters, but I usually resist because it’s so hard to find images of Asian women who aren’t glamorized or exoticized in some way. If only I could afford to commission some artwork by Dan Dos Santos! I bet he’d paint a wonderful Taisin too …

1. Yes, I know what she’s doing five years after the end of the book. Honestly, I think I could write an epic series of fantasy novels about Kaede, but then they wouldn’t be YA because she’s just going to keep getting older, and also, I have other books I have to write at this point in time. However: SIGH.

First, I am so glad that the Huntress cover has an Asian girl on it. I know that if the cover had depicted a white girl or even no girl at all, probably even more readers would never have guessed that the characters look Asian. Second, I never realized this line of the cover copy would be so important: “The exciting adventure prequel to … Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences, inspired by the I Ching …”

As much as I think a book should not be judged by its cover, the package that it’s presented in, including the jacket illustration and the cover copy, is part of the book reading experience. It helps to set the scene for the reader before they even begin with the first sentence.

I noticed this recently when I was flipping through White Cat by Holly Black the other night and realized, to my total surprise, that the character Lila has short blond hair. I don’t know why this didn’t register with me when I read White Cat, especially because I’m a fan of girls with short blond hair. But apparently I always assumed Lila looked like the girl depicted on the cover of Red Glove. I think that I read White Cat after I had already seen the cover for Red Glove, so that may be why that image is so firmly stuck in my head.

Anyway, this makes me doubly grateful that my publisher was so thoughtful about the package that Huntress comes in. If you bought the hardcover, you’ll know that there is a map of the Kingdom printed on the endpapers. While it was being designed, I communicated with my editor and the book designer about making sure that the illustrations on the map were not too typically European-inspired fantasy; I wanted to make sure that Asian elements were clearly depicted. The map illustrator, Dave Stevenson, added a phoenix and a Chinese unicorn to the map, as well as a Chinese-style boat and cottage.

The map of the Kingdom

Also, the book designer, Alison Impey, selected drop capital letters to begin each chapter that had a more Asian-like style than the drop caps used in Ash.

Interior design

And yet, you’ll notice that none of the elements of the Huntress package are over-the-top Asian in an exotic way. I very much wanted to avoid exoticism not only in the text but also in the design elements, and I’m so happy that the designers completely understood that when they were turning the book into a physical object.

However, the lack of exotic details in the text especially means that readers who aren’t familiar with Chinese or Japanese traditions like kyudo or Taoism may not understand that’s what I’m referencing. And honestly, that’s OK with me. Here’s why.

The Kingdom in Huntress is influenced by Chinese and Japanese culture, but it is not China or Japan. It is a fictional fantasy world that also must eventually become the fantasy world in Ash, because Huntress is set several centuries earlier. So it simply could not be the kind of “Asia” that exists in movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.¹ Also, there were elements of the fantasy world in Huntress that were simply not Chinese: there is no homophobia, for one thing, and there isn’t nearly as much sexism as there was in imperial China.

The fantasy China of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"

What I wanted to create was a world that was philosophically and spiritually rooted in Chinese tradition, but was not at all exotic. In Huntress, those traditions include Taoism, qigong, Chinese medicine, divination, and kyudo. They’re fairly directly represented in the book, but these are all beliefs or ritual practices, so it’s harder to tell they’re there if you’re not already familiar with them.

Most importantly, I wanted readers to find Kaede’s world normal, because it has to contrast significantly with the land of the Fairy Queen — and I wanted the fairy realm to seem totally foreign. That meant I had to remove the trappings of exoticism that are often associated with “Asian” elements.

What makes something exotic? It can certainly be philosophy or beliefs, but more often, I think exoticism resides in things you can actually see or hear. Clothing, food, music, architecture: these are the external markers of difference. So I decided to minimize, when possible, the descriptions of these things in Huntress, except when I was making a point. For example, when Taisin visits the royal palace, I describe some of the palace to show how luxurious it is compared to what she’s accustomed to. When Taisin and Kaede dine with the king, he has a very grand feast of delicacies that ordinary folks don’t get.

A Chinese banquet like the one that Taisin and Kaede attend with the King

Otherwise, the things that might seem “exotic” to an outsider are actually considered “normal” to an insider. Kaede is an insider in her world, so she’s not going to find most of it terribly exotic. The clothes she wears and the way the students at the Academy do their hair are pretty ordinary to her. The spiritual and philosophical beliefs that provide the backbone to the magic that Taisin practices aren’t going to seem unusual to Taisin.

Hopefully, they don’t seen too unusual to the reader, either. This can result in a few different reactions, of course. There are readers who won’t see the Chinese influence at all because it’s presented as entirely normal, and besides, they’re reading a fantasy novel where magic happens — maybe it’s all made up. And then there are readers who do see the Chinese influence and are excited by the fact that it’s presented as normal. I’ve definitely gotten emails from readers who say they’re Chinese and they really appreciated all the indicators of Chineseness in the story. There also may be readers who see the book package and realize that something about Huntress is based on Asian influences, and they might see some of those influences and miss others.

I think these are all perfectly valid ways of reading the book. My novel isn’t meant to be a history lesson or a course in Chinese sociology. It’s a novel, and it should be read as entertainment. I think the Chinese influences are clearly there for those who see them, and for those who don’t, it’s fine. It’s just like the gay thing, actually. The story is certainly about two girls falling in love, but I made efforts to present it in a way that didn’t turn it into an issue about sexual orientation.

I think it’s a fine line, honestly, writing a book about something that’s not mainstream (Asian-inspired fantasy or LGBT characters) but writing it in a mainstream style. This might be one of the most difficult aspects of writing non-European-based fantasy, because in the past, non-European-based fantasy worlds have been thoroughly and problematically exoticized. Readers are used to seeing Asian fantasy worlds filled with geishas and kung fu masters, which means presenting Asia as the norm can be a challenge.

Ultimately, I think my project with Huntress was a fairly Asian American one. I am Asian American, and I move through the world as an Asian American. Kaede’s world has elements of both Asia and America in it, and I like that. I’m intrigued by hybrid cultures and moments of cultural intersection — like when Kaede encounters the fairies for the first time. That’s why I almost got a Ph.D. in anthropology: because I am really interested in those spaces where differences intersect and change. That could, really, be an underlying theme to all my books, past, present, and future. And now I’ve gone totally off-track, so I’ll leave it at that!

1. Just want to note that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those kinds of fantastic “Asia.” They can be very entertaining and enjoyable to experience in film or books. But that’s not what my intention was with Huntress.

Thankfully I recently discovered Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor, a tumblr (what are they? blogs? sites?) that not only distracts me from my technology stress but also has made me seriously consider joining Tumblr. Back when I was first posting about Huntress, I remember I went online and looked for images of women I thought might resemble the main character in the book. However, whenever I searched for “huntress” I got images like this:

This is not what Kaede looks like.

Uh, no. A woman who was actually going to use a bow would not be prancing around in a leather bikini. (There are plenty of other opportunities to wear a leather bikini, I’m sure, but not while hunting.)

Anyway, Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor (I love the name!) is just that. And the ladies are awesome! Here is a very reasonable approximation of what Kaede might look like (the girl is even Asian!):

Artist: Mario Wibisono

It’s even more awesome because it is a Japanese bow and the girl is wearing a Japanese glove, which is exactly what Kaede puts on when she learns how to shoot. (OK, I don’t know what that hat with the feathers on it is about, and Kaede probably wouldn’t tie a bow around her waist, but still, it’s closer to her than other images I’ve seen.)

I also love this image from Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor:

Art from Magic: The Gathering by Michael Komarck

She looks quite serene. And serious. When you’re getting ready to kick some ass, these are good qualities to have.

Last but not least, finally I have an excuse to post this photo of Kristen Stewart from the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman:

I first saw this image back in July when Stewart was promoting the movie at Comic-Con, and I was floored back then because I had just written a short story, loosely based on “Snow White,” that involves a girl wearing armor. OK, the girl in my story isn’t a brunette, but still, I just love this image. (Yes, the story will be published! I can’t tell you where or when yet, but I will soon. I’m very excited about it!)

So, if my site is down and you’re wondering what I’m up to, I’ll be visiting Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor to keep myself sane while trying to deal with hackers. Grr!

I was interviewed over at Girls of Summer, which is a great blog founded by two writers that focuses on 18 books to read this summer (including Huntress!). Here’s a teaser, in which I answer a question with more questions:

Is there an assumption that only having one strong girl would be easier? Does having more than one girl make a story unbalanced somehow, and thus require the author to do some sort of fancy maneuvering?

On Sept. 26 I’ll be joining fellow YA authors Daisy Whitney, Nina LaCour, and C.J. Omololu at Book Passage’s Kid Lit Salon to discuss “Sex, Love, and Death: How Far Can You Go in YA?” It should be a fun evening of hot topics! We will be available to sign books as well.

Sept. 26, 2011 from 7-9 p.m.
Kid Lit Salon: Sex, Love, and Death: How Far Can You Go in YA?
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA

Kid Lit Salon is a monthly event at Book Passage, and membership to the salon costs $120 per year. I was a member for a couple of years and there are always really interesting panels and also lots of local writers to meet and mingle with. I also think the first meeting is free for those who are considering joining (at least it used to be), but you should contact Book Passage to confirm.

In October, I’ll be participating in San Francisco’s Litquake, which I’m very excited about because LitQuake is so huge!

On Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 9 p.m. I’ll be joining Michael Alenyikov, Nick Krieger, Michael McAllister, Monica Nolan, and Rob Rosen at Joe’s Barbershop in the Castro, which will be “transformed for just one night into a nightclub featuring outstanding voices from the city’s LGBT community.” From what I’ve been told there will be adult beverages, which I think will make this the best reading I’ve ever participated in.

October 11, 2011, 9:00 PM
Barbershop Reading: A Little Off the Top and Over the Top
Joe’s Barbershop

2150 Market St.
free; $5-$10 suggested donation

On Friday, Oct. 14 at 8 p.m., I’ll be at the Teen Writing Awards, sponsored by Teenquake (the teen element of Litquake) and Figment. I’m going to be judging the fantasy entries, which I believe you enter somehow via Figment, but I’m not sure. When/if I get more info about it I’ll be sure to post it.

October 14, 2011, 8:00 PM
Teenquake and Figment.com present Teen Writing Awards
Z Space 

450 Florida St.
Free

At the end of October I’ll be going to San Diego for the World Fantasy Convention, where I’ll also be doing one more Diversity in YA event with some amazing MG and YA fantasy authors.

Diversity in YA: San Diego with Paolo Bacigalupi, Holly Black, Cinda Williams Chima, Karen Healey, Cindy Pon, and Greg van Eekhout
Oct. 27, 2011 at 7 p.m.
San Diego County Library Poway Branch
13137 Poway Rd.
Poway, CA 92064

This event is free and open to the public! Books will be available for sale from Yellow Book Road.

Of course, I’ll also be at WFC for the whole weekend, and I’ll post my panel info for that conference when I have it.

Last but not least, Huntress received a lovely review from Gwenda Bond in Locus magazine in July. I especially appreciated this review because I read Gwenda’s thesis on omniscient point of view while I was writing Huntress! Here’s a snippet from her review:

Lo excels at keeping the reader engaged during action scenes — whether the characters are battling for their lives or their hearts. … Readers of Ash will revel in the heavily Chinese-influenced, non-fairytale perspective on the Kingdom’s past offered here, while readers new to Lo’s work will find it an excellent starting point.

More soon …

2. Karen Healey (author of the YA fantasy novel Guardian of the Dead) has written a thought-provoking column for Strange Horizons that includes a very nice analysis of Huntress. I totally agree with her. Read it here: “Heroes of Tomorrow: Adventures in Unreality”

3. Librarian Liz Burns has written a lovely review of Huntress at her School Library Journal blog, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy. Pullquote:

Because Huntress is part of the world I loved in Ash. Because Huntress is different than Ash. Because the love between Kaede and Taisin is romantic and sweet. Because the action never ends. For all of this, Huntress is one of my Favorite Books Read in 2011.

4. Earlier this week, Scholastic’s This is Teen tour came by San Francisco, along with Meg Cabot, Libba Bray, and Maggie Stiefvater. I had the honor of meeting Meg, who was the first author to blurb my first novel, Ash, and I took this picture to prove it:

Meg Cabot (!!!) and me!

How cool is that? It’s one thing to write and publish one book — and that’s certainly an achievement — but Meg has written and published more than 50 (I stopped counting on her Wikipedia page). Wow. You know what I learned from that? I should get back to work right now and keep writing!

P.S. I’m going to Comic-Con this July! I will be on two panels (on July 23 and 24) but the details aren’t finalized yet. More info soon, and believe me, they are very awesome panels!

Here are a few cool things I want to tell you about:

Last month I wrote a post for NPR’s Three Books series, and it was recently published on their website. In the post I recommend three tales retold for women. I really love these three books, so I hope you’ll give them a try!

Right after I got back from the tour I made a guest appearance on CBS5′s Bay Sunday, which airs in San Francisco. Here’s the segment:

This week The Atlantic is running a four-part series on YA fiction, and Cindy Pon and I were interviewed for it about the Diversity in YA tour. I’ll post a link to the interview when it’s up, but do check out the whole series; it looks like it’s going to be very interesting.

Finally, Huntress just received a wonderful review in the June issue of School Library Journal! Here’s a pullquote:

Lo has created a wonderfully detailed world, and this dynamic and moving story of love that must find a way against nearly insurmountable odds will be as well received as Ash. (full review)

More later!

Thanks to my lovely U.K. publisher, Atom Books, for being so on the ball and rolling out Huntress so quickly after the American release. I specially guest-posted for them yesterday about the origin of my idea for Huntress, which you can read here.

Cheers! And in other news …

Diversity in YA starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow the Diversity in YA book tour kicks off in San Francisco! I am so excited! And a little nervous. Have you seen this Onion article, “Author Promoting Book Gives It Her All Whether It’s Just 3 People Or A Crowd Of 9 People”?

I laugh because it is so true. (Want some real-life tales of crazy/lonely/wtf author events? Check out this post from Shannon Hale.)

This fear is why Cindy Pon and I have loaded the Diversity Tour with so many awesome authors! Just to name a few: Gene Luen Yang! Dia Reeves! Nnedi Okorafor! Holly Black! David Levithan! Rita Williams-Garcia! Jacqueline Woodson! For all the details on the tour, click here.

But wait, there’s more to life than the Diversity Tour! (Although sometimes lately you’d think otherwise at my house.)

Even more news from around the web:

• Huntress is in good company on Kirkus’ list of Tough Teen Heroines in Science Fiction in Fantasy. My question is, do they mean Kaede or Taisin? Maybe both?
• I wrote an essay for the May issue of School Library Journal: “A Healthy Dose of Diversity”
• An interview with me at LambdaLiterary.org
• An interview with me at the Chicago Sun-Times blog about the Diversity in YA tour
• An interview with me at the Brown Bookshelf, also about the Diversity in YA tour

And lastly, the Horn Book has a lovely review of Huntress in their May/June issue. Here’s a quote:

A “Tam Lin”–inspired rendition of fairy society blends nicely with the author’s Chinese and I Ching–inspired human society, creating a delicate, unusual setting. … Most notably, the inclusion of gay characters in a young adult fantasy, and the natural unfolding of their relationship, comes as a refreshing change.

I hope to see you on the road next week!

Voilà!

If you’re in the San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, Boston, or New York areas, I really hope to see you next month. If you’re not in those areas, I’m sorry I can’t make it there. I wish I could go everywhere, but time and money limit me (damn it!).

In other news:

• You still have until May 1 to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope to get a limited edition signed Huntress bookplate and bookmark. Details here.
• I recently guest-posted for Ari’s Reading in Color blog — “I absolutely have been upset, angered, and made to feel like I can’t make a difference. But I also know that change will always happen. It is inevitable.”
• I also was recently interviewed by Steph Su at Steph Su Reads — “Every stage of writing has its difficult aspects, each unique to the stage, and honestly the most difficult part varies with each book. With Huntress, the middle of the second (or was it third?) draft was the most difficult for me; it felt like slogging through mud at times.”
• I was interviewed by Ellz Reads — “These days my free time has become very precious, and I can tell you exactly what I do with it: I watch The Vampire Diaries or Top Chef or Battlestar Galactica.”
• I guest-posted at Bibliophiliac Book Blog on “Connecting With Social Media as an Author” — “As an author with books available that I want people to read, I am always aware that what I say online is not private.”
• Of course I stopped by my old stomping grounds, AfterEllen, for a Q&A with Heather O’Neill — “I think what I miss the most is the sense of queer community at AfterEllen, because my day-to-day life now as a young adult novelist is pretty darn straight. People in YA love to talk about cute boy crushes, and usually I’m just sitting there with a smile plastered on my face as my mind wanders off to dykier pastures.”
• And I shared the cover story for Huntress at Melissa Walker’s blog, where you can see some of the other covers Huntress might have had — “Seeing these images made me realize that as much as I want to see diversity on book covers, it can be tough because designers usually have to work with stock photos. The fact is, not every book gets a cover shoot — hardly any books do. If you’re designing a cover for a contemporary novel, it might be easier to use stock photos, but because Huntress is a fantasy, we couldn’t use photos of Asian girls carrying cell phones or wearing t-shirts, for example.”

Whew! So, you’re coming to Diversity in YA, right?

I am so excited about “The Fox” because it’s the first short story I’ve written in fifteen years! I had no idea what to expect when I jumped in to writing it, and it was a joy to do from beginning to end.

Also, it’s set in the world of Huntress, two years after the end of the novel, and is about Kaede. When I wrote the story, I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, so that it could be an introduction to Kaede and her world, as well as serve as sort of a post-script for readers who wanted something more after the end of the book.

If you’ve already read Huntress, you’ll have no problem with spoilers and can read “The Fox” free and clear. If you haven’t read Huntress yet and don’t mind minor spoilers (keeping in mind that what happens in “The Fox” takes place two years after the end of the book, so lots of stuff happened between the end of the book and the beginning of the story), I think it would be fine to read “The Fox,” also. If you’re super spoilerphobic, though, then you should read Huntress first.

OK, ready? Those who want to read it, click here to read “The Fox” for free!

If you’re curious as to what I’ve been up to in the last week or so, here is a list of all the guest posts and interviews I’ve done lately, all in the name of spreading the word about Huntress:

Queering SFF: An Interview with Malinda Lo at Tor.com — Choice quote: “I wrote the books the way I did because that’s just the way that felt right. I think the style of the books is not particularly suited to graphic sexuality, anyway. But I will quibble with the word “chaste” — the girls in my books are certainly not chaste, even though the language used to describe what they do is somewhat restrained. ”

Taking the Homophobia Out of Fantasy at GayYA.org — In which I offer five tips on how authors can write fantasy novels without homophobia in them.

On the Day of Silence: Guest post at Dreaming in Books — Choice quote: “Sometimes I’d feel this kind of tingle rippling through my body, sort of like the beginning of a fever. It would feel as if my entire skin was turning red, as if a giant flashing sign was pointing down at me, declaring: SHE’S A LESBIAN! SHE’S A LESBIAN!”

On the Chinese influences in Huntress: Guest post at The Naughty Book Kitties — Choice quote: “The magic in Huntress is fairly closely based on the practice of qigong, which is a kind of meditative martial art, related to taichi. I’ve actually done qigong before (during meditation retreats), and even though I was a total beginner, I was able to feel the qi (the Chinese word for energy) moving in the air between my hands.”

My Top 5 YA books: Guest post at Manga Maniac Cafe — See which five YA novels are my favorites of all time!

5 Questions with Mundie Moms — Choice quote: “The specifics are different with every book, but in general, I’m inspired by big themes: love, faith, trust, power.”

Finally, a couple of lovely reviews of Huntress:

“Filled with dangerous adventure, an evocative setting and a compelling romance between its two leads, Huntress is an appealing and exciting offering from this talented author.” — BookPage

“Malinda Lo’s  Huntress is a familiar and satisfying adventure story nestled within a truly diverse and nuanced fantasy world. There is a long journey through a magical Wood, a brave prince, an ice fortress, a pack of fairy huntsmen, and strength derived from the power of true love. The way these tropes are pushed and pulled in unexpected directions presents a story that is enjoyable, fresh and compelling.” — Hyphen Magazine