Malinda Lo

It’s been about 10 days since I turned in the first draft of the sequel to Adaptation. Since then, I’ve been catching up on the zillion things I didn’t do while making the final push to meet my deadline (OK, I missed my deadline by a week), but I’ve also been thinking about what it ... More→

A question from a reader: “Setting aside the tangled web of labels of low, dark, high, heroic, etc. fantasy (or speculative fiction) — do you consider yourself to write ‘lesbian’ books, or books that happen to be about lesbians?” I’ve been thinking about how to answer this question for some time now. It’s about categorization, ... More→

I recently read a blog post over at Kate Elliott’s LiveJournal in which she writes about struggling with gender in her novels: I’m a feminist. I’m an athlete. As a child I was what was then called a “tomboy,” which to me means merely that the things I was told were “boy” things, like playing ... More→

With startling regularity these days, the mainstream media publishes essays on young adult fiction, generally debating the question of whether or not YA is too mature or “dark” to be read by young adults. Recently, two more essays joined this growing body of opinion: Maria Tatar’s piece in the New York Times, “No More Adventures ... More→

Since Huntress was published, I’ve noticed that some reviews mention that the reader didn’t realize that many aspects of the fantasy world in the book are based in Chinese and Japanese culture, or that they only realized that because of the cover copy or the cover itself. This is really interesting and makes me think ... More→

On Monday I finished the latest draft of my next novel, currently titled Adaptation.1 I say “latest” because it’s already been revised once before, but that was a very quick and dirty revise to get it in shape to submit to my editor. So what draft is this? Maybe the third? I don’t know, because ... More→