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.

Most of the responsibility for making sure this piece didn’t center wholly on gay men rested on the shoulders of Guy Raz. And he did bring up Ellen, who is often the only lesbian mentioned in these kinds of discussions. But when Schiappa dismissed Ellen’s significance, Raz didn’t push, even though Raz clearly had some idea of her significance. In addition, other than the famous clip of Ellen saying “I’m gay” during her coming-out episode in 1997, every other example in this piece focused on men: Kurt and Blaine from Glee, Will and Jack from Will and Grace, Mitchell and Cameron from Modern Family.

This isn’t unusual, and that’s why it pissed me off so much. This is just the latest in another, long string of media analyses of LGBT people that almost entirely ignores the existence of women. Even as gay rights becomes increasingly accepted by the mainstream, lesbian, bisexual, and queer women have to continue to fight to be seen — on TV, in news articles about gay rights, in general. Queer women are never exempt from the broadly rooted sexism in our society that enables Republicans to convene congressional hearings on women’s health issues that don’t include a single woman. Women are often, by default, invisible. Even within representations of gay people.²

Finally, a note on the word “symbolic,” which was used to diminish Ellen’s significant contribution to broadening the representation of LGBT people on television. This word, symbolic, has been bandied about a lot lately because of President Obama’s recent statement that he now supports same-sex marriage. I’ve heard many a talking head say that it’s great that he’s said it finally — it’s a symbolic victory — but it doesn’t do much to change the state of the law.

I don’t think these people understand the importance of symbols.

Maybe because I’m a writer, I think about symbols a lot. Symbols do a lot of “heavy lifting.” If they’re powerful enough, they get under your skin. They take up residence right under the surface where you might not consciously see them, and they work to change your unconscious perceptions. President Obama’s statements last week were certainly symbolic, and they were also incredibly important.³ Ellen Degeneres’s coming-out episode wasn’t the end-all be-all of gay TV, but it was an incredibly powerful moment. By stepping out of the closet, Ellen gave a broad swath of women — queer women and our allies — someone to look to and admire. For men who have countless role models they can find all over the media, maybe they don’t get that. But you know what? They should.

By now, I think Ellen has gone above and beyond “symbolic.” Her TV show Ellen did a lot to throw open the door for the very shows discussed in this report, Will and Grace, Glee, and Modern Family. And Ellen didn’t stop with her 1997 coming-out episode. With the success of her talk show in recent years, she has become a daily friend to millions of straight women, many of them moms. How influential do you think moms are to their children and families? It’s certainly regrettable that NPR didn’t go on to point this out, but instead chose to focus — like so many other news sources — on men, thus largely rendering queer women invisible.

Even five years ago, I would have shrugged and said, hey, at least they talked about gay people at all. But in 2012 — after gay marriage has become a near-constant story in the media — it’s past time for that. Queer women exist. We always have, and I wish the media would finally recognize that.

* * *

10 Symbolic Moments in the Representation
of Queer Women in the Media

[Edited to Add: This list of 10 moments in the representation of queer women in the media is only meant to illustrate that there were many examples that NPR could have used in their reporting on the subject. These are not the only 10 symbolic moments NPR could have used as examples. This is not a "top 10" list. It is numbered in chronological order, according to when these moments occurred.]

1. Personal Best

The groundbreaking 1982 film starring Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly portrayed a (relatively) positive relationship between bisexual women.

2. The Color Purple

Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel includes an intimate relationship between two women, Celie and Shug. It has since been adapted into a film and a musical.

3. k.d. lang

This August 1993 magazine cover of k.d. lang and Cindy Crawford, became an iconic representation of "lesbian chic" in the early '90s.

4. Melissa Etheridge

This 1993 album confirmed Melissa Etheridge's lesbian identity and produced some of her most well-known songs, including "Come to My Window."

5. Ellen Degeneres

In April 1997, Ellen Degeneres came out in Time Magazine and on her sitcom, during "The Puppy Episode."

6. The L Word

In 2004, the first TV series about a cast of lesbians premiered on Showtime. It aired for six seasons.

7. Rachel Maddow

In 2008, MSNBC premiered "The Rachel Maddow Show," anchored by an out lesbian.

8. Grey’s Anatomy

In 2008, the popular ABC drama introduced a romance between Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith). Though Erica left the show, Callie went on to meet and marry Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw); they both continue to be series regulars.

9. The Kids Are All Right

In 2010, this Golden Globe Award-winning film starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, directed by Lisa Cholodenko, focused on lesbian parents.

10. Glee

Despite the show's many problems (or perhaps because of them), Brittany and Santana have become an iconic lesbian couple for many viewers.

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.
2. Writing this blog post reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago when I was on a panel of YA authors focusing on LGBT YA. I believe the authors on the panel had, coincidentally, all written books with main or secondary lesbian or bisexual girl characters (a very rare occurrence!). A person in the audience asked, “What about boys? Why would boys want to read your books?” I don’t remember what the other panelists said, but I answered: “If I write books for anyone, they’re for queer girls.” Frankly, I don’t think queer girls are an overserved population.
3. Take a look at this fascinating interactive chart plotting out public responses to Obama’s statement.

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!)

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.)

The other books that resonated with me as a child came from every genre. I’ve never felt limited to reading only one genre, and I think that’s why I’ve also never felt limited to writing in one genre. I know that authors are often expected (by their readers and by the publishing industry) to stick to one genre, but I will never be able to do that. I like the challenge of writing in new styles and with new genre conventions.

The cover of the edition I read

Many people will be unsurprised to learn that a formative novel of my youth was Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword. I’ve mentioned before that my first novel, written when I was all of 13 years old, was a thinly disguised rip-off of this book. McKinley’s early novels are clear influences on me, most particularly The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Beauty. When I wrote Ash, I became associated with fairy tale retellings, but I have to admit that McKinley’s fairy tales are among the few retellings I’ve truly connected with.

What I love about McKinley’s books are her female characters, of course. They’re matter-of-fact. They don’t whine. They learn how to do things like ride horses and carry weapons and grow roses. (Believe me, gardening is hard. I’ve tried and failed — so far!) These will always be the heroines who defined the kind of female character I love best, and I think you can see that influence in everything I write.

The cover of the edition I checked out from my school library

But the other Great Novel of My Childhood was a very different book. It was A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle. When most people my age think of L’Engle, they think of A Wrinkle in Time, but that book didn’t affect me nearly as strongly as A Ring of Endless Light. I read Wrinkle, as well as every other L’Engle book, but Ringwill always be in my top 5 books of all time.

I was paging through this book a couple of weeks ago (the same paperback copy I got as a kid) and realized that this novel is incredibly complicated. I might have to read it again soon. It’s about a 15-year-old girl named Vicky Austin grappling with issues of faith, life, and death during a summer at her grandfather’s house before he dies of leukemia, so on one level it’s very serious. On another level, Vicky is involved in a love triangle.

I totally did not realize this until I skimmed the book a few weeks ago. But there’s Vicky going on dates with the hot, probably-bad-for-you Zachary Gray while wondering if she’s falling for the smart, kind Adam Eddington (also cute). For everyone who thinks YA is currently all about love triangles … Madeleine L’Engle was either ahead of her time, or love triangles have always been popular. I’m going to guess both.

In retrospect, A Ring of Endless Light has affected my writing (and me) in many ways. It invited me to have wonder in the universe — in science (especially biology) in a way that Wrinkle did not. It also invited me to be deeply interested in religion and faith. That has come through to some extent in Huntress, which I see as sort of an exploration of Taoism. But I anticipate that it will come through in future books as well. These are the kinds of questions that can drive a life’s work.

Other favorite books of my childhood include well-loved classics like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, both of which spoke to my desire to be a writer. But also, I loved plenty of stuff that my English teachers would have considered trash², such as the Robotech series of novels by Jack McKinney (nope, I was never into the animated series). Robotech pretty much gave me my first Asian heroine (Lynn Minmei! And I think she was in a love triangle with two hot pilots?) and a fondness for space opera. (Although honestly, I haven’t found any space opera yet that I love as much.)

Lynn Minmei, from the animated series

But what I remember most from those books was that they were thoroughly fun. Even though giant scary robots were potentially attacking Earth and might kill us all, the Robotech world was not dystopian. There was still room for joy in cool technology, in romance (so much romance!), and the belief that the future wasn’t all gloom and doom. That’s definitely something I hope I’ve brought to Adaptation and its sequel.

Finally, the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman was one of my favorites. These were a series of novels based on Dungeons & Dragons, and though I never played D&D, I read a lot of these books. My favorite character was Raistlin Majere, the sicky, evil mage who was so popular he got his own trilogy (Dragonlance Legends).

Raistlin and Crysania (she's clearly swooning!) in a painting by Larry Elmore

I really have no idea why I loved Raistlin so much because he’s pretty much evil (though misunderstood), not to mention not terribly good-looking, and he was always coughing up blood. But … take away the sickliness and you can see the roots of the character Sidhean in Ash. (He’s different than Raistlin of course. There’s some Spike in him too.)

I could go on but I think I’ll stop here or I’ll never stop. But there you have it: my childhood influences. I’m fairly certain that someday they’ll all be reflected, somehow, in the books I write.

1. I feel as if I’ve written about this before, but apparently I’m not sick of talking about this yet!
2. *I* never considered them trash!

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 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.

April in Writing

On April 8 I turned in the first draft of the sequel to Adaptation, which clocked in at 93,300 words. I also revised two short stories: “Good Girl,” which will be published in Diverse Energies edited by Joe Monti and Tobias Buckell, coming from Tu Books this fall; and “Ghost Town,” which will be published in Defy the Dark edited by Saundra Mitchell, coming out in Summer 2013 from HarperTeen.

Then I collapsed and became a hermit for a while.

April in Reading

During said collapse, I read some great books. First up was The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour, a local author friend of mine (her first novel, Hold Still, was also a Morris Award finalist the year that Ash was). The Disenchantments (young adult) is about a girl band called (you guessed it) The Disenchantments, who are actually pretty awful, and their first-and-presumably-last tour of Northern California the summer after high school graduation. The three girls in the band are joined by their roadie, a boy named Colby, who narrates the novel. (SPOILER WARNING! Some spoilers for The Disenchantments follow, though I’m pretty vague.)

Colby is best friends with The Disenchantments’ lead singer, Bev, whom he’s known since he was a child. The problem is, Colby’s also in love with Bev, but Bev doesn’t seem to be in love with him. She’s distant and sexy and maybe a little queer, and while that doesn’t necessarily bode well for Colby, I think Bev was my favorite part of the book.¹

It was interesting to read reviews of The Disenchantments afterward because many readers disliked Bev (sometimes intensely) due to the way she treats Colby. I agree that her behavior toward him isn’t wonderful, but that’s what gives her relationship with Colby all those complicated knots that create a really fascinating story. And I do think some of the anti-Bev sentiment is because, well, she’s not a good girl. She knows she’s attractive and she knows how to use that to her advantage. That is something that as a society we’ve been taught to judge negatively — in girls. Give those attributes to a boy and you’ve got the next swoony love interest.

If you want to read a book about road trips and rock bands and unconventional girls (and boys — Colby is a sensitive soul), I definitely recommend The Disenchantments.

I also read two (2!) Tana French novels, The Likeness and Faithful Place. French writes contemporary (adult) crime novels set in Dublin, where she lives. So these are definitely not exotic foreign locale mysteries; they’re local, and that’s what I appreciate so much about them. I feel like I got to know French’s city much more intimately through the eyes of her characters. And the details! French is genius with characterization through details. Plus there’s the plotting. I don’t know how she does it. Her mysteries are so carefully structured and multilayered, with reveals in all the right places. I’m very much looking forward to her next book, which I was thrilled to learn comes out in the U.S. this summer.

April in Photos

On more thing I did in April was create a hand-bound edition of my short story, “The Fox,” which was originally published online at Subterranean a year ago. This hand-bound edition was for Kim, who had the winning bid in the Con or Bust auction earlier this year.

My hand-made edition of "The Fox"

I didn’t do any traveling in April, but I took some photos of my neighborhood. Here’s what’s blooming in my neck of the woods:

Two blooms in the back yard

Pink rosebud outside our front gate

Two more roses in the yard

Last but not least, it’s been a while since I posted a photo of my dog, code-named 007. Here she is, clearly laughing at us:

You humans are so funny!!

1. OK, and she looks exactly like a character in my Adaptation, so I was predisposed to like her!

Not real kissing, but fictional kissing. I’ve been thinking about fictional kissing for a while now because, let’s face it: I’m a young adult author, and all of my books have fictional kissing in them.¹

Then I read a book called The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George and I thought, damn, that is the best example of fictional kissing I’ve ever read in a YA novel. And because I’m a writer, I started to poke at what exactly made that fictional kissing scene so good. Why did it work so well? That made me pull out other YA novels that I remembered also contained excellent examples of fictional kissing, in order to dissect them from a writerly perspective. And I discovered that there is quite a variety of fictional kissing, from which we can learn some lessons.²

[SPOILER WARNING: In in this post I discuss kissing scenes in The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George, "Goblin Fruit" by Laini Taylor, and Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare.]

It’s So Bad It’s Good

Madeleine George’s The Difference Between You and Me is about two girls, Jesse and Emily, who come from very different social circles and political beliefs, yet find time to make out together once a week in the library’s bathroom. Emily narrates the chapters from her perspective, and it’s in her very first chapter that we get to the kissing scene that made me sit up and take notice. It begins, however, by describing a very bad kiss, with her boyfriend, Michael:

“When me and Michael kiss, it’s like I’m making out with a cut cantaloupe. He is the wettest, squishiest kisser on the planet. He’s so cute from a distance, you know, he’s such a good-looking guy, like a male model practically, but then when he goes to kiss me it’s like all the muscles in his face go slack and his lips get all spongy and loose and he opens his loose face and sort of lays his spongy lips all over me and drools his melon-juice spit into my mouth. It’s horrible. I don’t mean to criticize him, I’m sure lots of other girls would think he was a totally amazing kisser, it’s just … sometimes I have to pretend he’s getting too powerful and intense and I push him off me, but really I’m pushing him off me because he’s getting too disgusting.”
— The Difference Between You and Me, pages 20-21

Things that I love about this kiss:

1. Voice: Emily’s voice is hilarious. There’s such a wonderful combination of grossed-outness and bizarre pride in her voice. She thinks Michael is a horrible kisser, but she takes time to praise Michael for how attractive he is. This says so much about Emily, who continues to date Michael even while she’s secretly making out with Jesse.
2. Simile used very effectively: How perfect is the cantaloupe simile? I’d guess that most people reading this scene have eaten cantaloupe (or melon) before. That means the reader is right there, instantly, in Emily’s memory. You know exactly how kissing Michael feels to her, and I bet you all just went, “Ewww!”
3. Contrast: This kiss sets up the next kiss that Emily describes, which is far from disgusting to her.

The Kiss That Makes Your Knees Weak

A few lines later, Emily describes kissing Jesse:

“When Jesse Halberstam kisses me, she’s really focused and really intense. She puts her hands on the sides of my face to hold me where she wants me, or she winds her fingers up in my hair and tugs it tight, and somehow, just by the way she touches me, she makes my mouth open, she makes my eyes close, she makes me breathe faster and faster until I feel dizzy and I think I might black out. Sometimes when she’s kissing me, I swear to God, the edges of my body melt and I become sort of part of her. Sometimes when she kisses me I forget my own name.”
— The Difference Between You and Me, page 21

Why does this kiss work?

1. Feelings: The focus is on Emily’s feelings. How the kiss makes her dizzy, how it makes her forget her own name.
2. Contrast: This kiss has the benefit of being contrasted with the horrible one with Michael. Clearly, Jesse operates differently. Where Michael was sloppy, Jesse is focused and intense. Michael drools, but there is no drool here.
3. Power: Emily’s physical experience is definitely referenced, but rather than focusing on her mouth — which is where a lot of kissing descriptions tend to center — it focuses on Jesse’s fingers tugging her hair and drawing a response out of Emily (“she makes my mouth open, she makes my eyes close”). This description brings up something that appears over and over in effective fictional kissing scenes: power. Not necessarily in a Fifty Shades of Gray way, but every time two people come together in a kiss, there is a physical and often emotional negotiation going on. Who is in control? Who is totally swooning? Are they both completely bonkers for each other? Or is one less bonkers than the other? This relationship negotiation occurs in every kiss and without it, the kiss can often feel flat.

The Deadly Kiss

That power negotiation comes to bear most obviously in kisses that aren’t meant to be good for the character involved. In Laini Taylor’s beautifully written story “Goblin Fruit” from her collection Lips Touch, Kizzy encounters a gorgeous man who, she discovers, is not exactly looking out for her best interests. He is a goblin, or perhaps a fairy — the kind who puts on glamours and seduces young girls. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. But what does Kizzy (and isn’t her name so perfect?) do when she discovers this?

“Kizzy knew, but she willfully unknew it, and the plangent voices of the dead were lost to the drum of her hot blood and the tingle of her ready lips. She wanted to taste and be tasted.

She didn’t reach for the knife. Heavily and hypnotically, with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat, Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk’s full, moist mouth, and his red, red lips were hungry against hers, drinking her in return. Their eyes closed. Fingers clutched at collars and hair, at the picnic blanket, at the grass. And as they sank down, pinning their shadows beneath them, the horizon tipped on its side, and slowly, thickly, hour by hour, the day spilled out and ebbed away.

It was Kizzy’s first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious.”
— “Goblin Fruit,” page 54

Here we have a truly deadly kiss, and several things are going on:

1. Character revelations: Kizzy knows that Jack Husk isn’t good for her, but her desire for him overrides her desire for safety. This shows that Kizzy is complicit in her own demise — which tells us a lot about her.
2. Describing the mouth is almost always disturbing: There is something overwhelmingly lush and simultaneously off about this kiss, and I think that comes from the description of Jack Husk’s “full, moist mouth, and his red, red lips,” which Kizzy drinks from. What does that sound like? A bit vampiric, no? If there’s one thing I strongly believe to be true about fictional kissing scenes, it’s that physical descriptions of lips and the mouth in action should largely be avoided … unless you want to make the reader feel a little squicked out. And that’s exactly what Taylor has done in this scene.
3. Anticipation: This kiss comes at the very end of a 41-page story, which means there were 40 pages of buildup before it. Throughout the story we get to know Kizzy and her urgent desire to be kissed, but she isn’t kissed until the very last page. “Goblin Fruit” is about the power of wanting something deadly — in Kizzy’s case, this kiss — and every word that comes before the last line is used to aim us toward that moment when Kizzy kisses Jack Husk. Creating this sense of anticipation in the reader is one of the best ways to make a fictional kiss effective.

The Thrill of Anticipation

The Queen of Making You Wait for the Kiss is, in my mind, Cassandra Clare. In Clockwork Angel, Tessa Gray meets Will Herondale on page 35, but it isn’t until page 290 that It Happens:

“Her whole body ached; she ached as if there were a terrible hollow emptiness inside her. She was more conscious of Will than she had ever been of anything or anyone else in her life, of the faint shine of blue beneath his half-closed lids, of the shadow of light stubble across his jaw where he hadn’t shaved, of faint white scars that dotted the skin of his shoulders and throat—and more than anything else of his mouth, the crescent shape of it, the slight dent in the center of his bottom lip. When he leaned toward her and brushed his lips across hers, she reached for him as if she would otherwise drown.

For a moment their mouths pressed hotly together, Will’s free hand tangling in her hair. Tessa gasped when his arms went around her, her skirts snagging on the floor as he pulled her hard against him. She put her hands lightly around his neck; his skin was burning hot to the touch. Through the thin wet material of his shirt, she could feel the muscles of his shoulders, hard and smooth. …”
— Clockwork Angel, pages 290-291

Some things to note:

1. Escalating tensions: From the very first time that Tessa sees Will, you know she finds him attractive (“He had the most beautiful face she had ever seen.” — page 36). What happens between page 35 and page 290 is a series of escalations that (hopefully) makes the reader become invested in bringing the two of them together.
2. Kissing is about more than the mouth: Will’s mouth is described, but only before the kiss. After the kiss begins, the mouth is not described. Instead, Clare describes Tessa’s encounter with Will as a whole person—hands, arms, body. Kissing uses the whole body, not just the mouth. (At least, good kisses!)
3. Physical specificity: There’s nothing I hate more in a kissing scene than vagueness; that sense of pulling a gauzy veil over everything. Kissing is usually not a vague experience — and if it is, there is a reason for that vagueness.³ Therefore, kissing scenes shouldn’t be vague, either. But you do want to avoid making a character’s physical actions sound like a medical textbook. A good trick for doing that is to choose part of the body to describe (preferably not the mouth) and describe it from the perspective of one character. In this case, you have Tessa’s experience of touching Will’s shoulders through the “thin wet material of his shirt.” Specific! But not clinical.

In Conclusion

Whether a fictional kissing scene is effective can be a matter of debate. Some of it does certainly depend on the reader: whether they’re invested in the couple, whether they like romance, whether they like the writer’s style. But there are some things that I think every effective kissing scene has in common:

• They reveal something interesting about the characters involved.
• They acknowledge that a power dynamic exists between the two kissers.
• They’re specific without being clinical.

What do you think makes a good fictional kiss?

1. Also, there is a lot of fictional kissing in my next two books. Much more than in my first two, so that’s another reason I’ve been thinking about fictional kissing so much.
2. As always, writing “rules” are made to be broken. These aren’t rules; they’re observations, and there are always exceptions.
3. Drugs? Bad memory? The main character didn’t want to be in the moment?

The common wisdom among writers (or at least the writers I’ve talked to) is that you never learn how to write books. You learn how to write each book. That’s because every book is different, so the process is different every time.

By and large this is true, but there are some things that you can learn in the course of writing multiple novels. I think that I’ve learned a lot about my creative process and what works for me. I’ve also learned that whatever I turn out in the rough draft will look very, very different by the time I get to the final draft. Every time I write a book, I’m amazed by how powerful revision can be.

The novel I just turned in is the seventh novel I’ve written in my life, and will be the fourth one to be published. (Brief moment of sheer shock.) I didn’t revise the first three novels I wrote. I wrote them when I was in high school, and at that time I didn’t know anything about revision. I think that my English teachers did try to talk to me about revision (I have vague memories of being resistant to the idea), but the structure of high school classes made it pretty much impossible to delve seriously into revision. And, when I was a teen, I was very prickly about accepting criticism.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I learned how significantly revision could change a piece of writing. That’s when I took a short story writing workshop with Marilyn Sides. I wrote a story that started out very rough. During the course of the semester, it was workshopped in a way I had never imagined possible. Everyone in the workshop read it; everyone offered comments. I did the same for the other students in the workshop while I revised my story many times. In retrospect, I can see that Professor Sides was a stellar writing teacher, because she created an environment in which everyone was able to learn how to take criticism. I had never learned that before her workshop. In the past, I’d mostly been praised about my writing, and it was life-changing to discover that however “good” I thought something was, it could be better.

By the end of the semester, my short story had been completely transformed. I had learned how to write better sentences. I had learned how to describe scenes and people and food and places. But most importantly, I had learned that by turning a story inside out and thinking about every word, I could create something that was much deeper and more multilayered than I initially expected. The final draft of that story, versus the first draft, was an entirely different creature. It was alive in a way that the first draft never had been.

In graduate school I took more writing workshops (I was actually supposed to be studying other things, but I always managed to sneak in writing workshops). I did a creative nonfiction one that taught me a lot about how to be truthful, as well as how to read like a writer. I took another fiction workshop that didn’t fit me as well, but did teach me that every word should be scrutinized, and many can be cut. That workshop was a bit brutal, but it was, in retrospect, good training for working in journalism, where other people rewrite you all the time without telling you in advance.

These days I don’t have a workshop teacher or classmates; I have editors and critique partners. But they can only do so much. The responsibility of revision lies with me. The good thing is, with every novel or short story I write, I am taught anew that revision is what brings life to the tales I’m telling.

Most recently, as I was writing the first draft of the sequel to Adaptation, I kept thinking about revision as this kind of shining oasis waiting for me in the future. All I had to do to get there was lay down this track of rough draft. It could have bad sentences and plot holes all over the place. It didn’t matter as long as I laid it down, because I knew that once I had those first draft words, then and only then would I have something to work with.

I could compare writing a novel to sculpting a piece of art, and there are some similarities I’m sure, but there is one main difference. With sculpting, you can acquire the clay that you’re sculpting by buying it. With writing, you have to make the clay first. That’s the first draft. Once you have it, in all of its misshapen, sticky mess, dragged out of the recesses of your imagination and given shape in letters and words and punctuation, then you can begin the sculpting process.

This time, I sent in my rough draft along with a list of items I already planned to do in revision. You might think that after writing six books, I would have gotten better at first drafts by now — that maybe I’d be able to turn in a first draft that required less work. But I think that what I’ve learned is that in the first draft, I should try to get everything on the page that could possibly be necessary to tell the story. Every extraneous plot strand, every potential theme. Some things won’t be in the right place; some things might actually turn out to be wrong for the story. (And new things will inevitably arise during revision.) But I need to do my best to put those ideas on the page in some form, so that when I come back in revision, I have something to work with.

In the past, when I’ve turned in first drafts, I’ve felt sort of triumphant, like: Yay! HERE IS MY AWESOME BOOK! But every time, without fail, I’ve had to pretty much rewrite that first draft completely (I still call this “revision”). This time I felt less triumphant, but a lot more eager to get to revision. I think I’ve finally internalized the fact that yes, there will be a lot of revision to come, possibly even significant rewriting. But that’s okay, because that’s the way it works for me.

The manuscript of the first draft of the sequel to "Adaptation"

I’m also now able to emerge from the drafting cave of my office to report that I will be going out into the real world for a few actual real events this month. It’s true! Here are a couple of fun things I’m doing in San Francisco very very soon:

EVENT #1: April 14, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.
Writers With Drinks — With Amber Benson, Glen David Gold, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Sarah Kuhn
The Make-Out Room
3225 22nd Street
San Francisco, CA

Doors open at 7 p.m. $5-$10 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. All proceeds benefit local non-profits.

NOTE: Did you notice that Amber Benson is reading at this event?! (She writes urban fantasy, among other things, these days.) Hello, Willow/Tara fans! I can’t wait.

EVENT #2: April 24, 2012 at 5 p.m.
24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalist Reading — with Ryan Van Meter, Daphne Gottlieb, Justin Chin, Tirza T. Latimer, Jan Steckel, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jim Provenzano, Lara Fergus, Christina Hutchins, and Nat Smith
San Francisco Public Library
Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room A & B
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA

5 p.m. – Reception
6 p.m. – Reading

NOTE: I did this event when Ash was a finalist for the Lambda Award, too, and I really enjoyed it, so I’m very happy to be doing this again. Also, reception! I love a good reception. Come early for the wine. (Or, er, in case there isn’t any, for the cheese. There must be cheese.)

March in News

Huntress received some wonderful kudos last month, as it was long-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, which recognizes science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. It was also named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Woohoo!

March was also a month for book cover reveals, and I had two to show. First up was the cover for the anthology Foretold, coming this September, to which I’ve contributed a fairy tale-ish short story, “One True Love.”

And I revealed the cover for my next novel, Adaptation, also coming out this September:

I did an ARC giveaway, too, and the winner of the signed ARC is Kim. (There were a few Kims, so I’ve emailed the winning one!) Thanks to everybody who entered and shared the news of my new book cover!

Finally, last Friday the details of another anthology I’m contributing to were announced:

Tu Books, a new imprint of Lee & Low Books that publishes diverse science fiction and fantasy for young readers, has announced the upcoming publication of Diverse Energies, a YA anthology of dystopian stories edited by author Tobias S. Buckell and literary agent Joe Monti. The anthology, which will be released in Fall 2012, will feature stories by several award-winning speculative fiction writers including Ursula K. Le Guin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, and Greg van Eekhout.

My contribution is called “Good Girl”:

Malinda Lo’s “Good Girl” is about a girl searching for her brother in what they think is the last city on earth, a doomed, tightly controlled New York City. “It’s about manipulation and loss and the hope of possibilities,” says [Tu Books Editorial Director Stacy] Whitman.

That is a very cool way to describe it! I would say it’s about a criminal. Can’t wait to share it with you guys!

March in Writing

I spent all of March diligently writing the first draft of the sequel to Adaptation. As of March 31, I was at 71,878 words. My goal was to finish the draft by April 1, but no fooling, I need more time. So I have another week of drafting to get to the end of the story, which is going to be So! Dramatic!

Here’s one of my favorite photos I found last month to illustrate the writing process:

Two chickens and a duck plotting! No, there are no chickens or ducks in the book, but there is lots of plotting. (Also, the fact that this photo cracks me up so much demonstrates that I have totally gone off the deep end. This happens every time I get to the end game portion of writing a novel. So, crazy = normal. Just ask my partner.)

March in Reading

Last month I read a wonderful historical novel that people have been talking about for years: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. Here’s what I said about it on Twitter:

I finished reading Jennifer Donnelly’s A NORTHERN LIGHT last night. It came out in 2003 & was critically acclaimed/lauded at the time. …

— Malinda Lo (@malindalo) March 29, 2012

It was SO GOOD, people. It’s a historical novel with a mystery in it, and it was so heartbreaking. And brilliant. With a fantastic MC. …

— Malinda Lo (@malindalo) March 29, 2012

Anyway, just wanted to say if you haven’t read it, go to your library and read it. It’s in the YA SECTION.

— Malinda Lo (@malindalo) March 29, 2012

March in Photos

Last month I traveled to San Miguel de Allende to participate in a fantastic writer’s retreat with some of my favorite authors. Here are some photos of the gorgeous city and the villa where we stayed:

The view from the roof of the villa

Another view from the villa roof; note the moon on the horizon

Looking down into the courtyard from the roof. I believe that's Sarah Rees Brennan with her laptop. Other authors are hidden beneath the umbrella!

Another view of the villa's courtyard. This is where I sat and drank my tea on many a morning. (Thanks SRB for the tea!)

Some of the coolest things about San Miguel are the doorknockers. Here's the entrance to our villa, adorned with a frog.

A wreath in hand

Beware the dragon!

Are you there, God?

Take my hand. (My favorite!)

Last but not least, I couldn’t get all of us in one shot, but here are four of us after a lovely dinner one night:

L to R: Sarah Rees Brennan, Holly Black, me, and Paolo Bacigalupi

In April, I’m looking forward to finishing the first draft of the sequel to Adaptation, and to enjoying lots of sunny spring weather. More later!

Over the weekend, like many, many other folks, I saw The Hunger Games movie. Here are some of my reactions:

1. I went into it as a fan of the books, which means I expected that I would like the books more. I did. That’s not unusual for me, though, because I’m more of a book person than a movie person. The intimacy and intensity of the reading experience pretty much always outweighs two hours in a dark theater for me. However,

2. I thought the movie was pretty good! I thought it was well-paced and visually intriguing, and the cast did a good job.

3. But the one thing that failed to completely work for me was Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. I’ve never thought she looked like my mental image of Katniss, and after seeing the movie, I’m still not entirely convinced. I thought Lawrence did a good job with the role, but for me she lacked a sense of hunger and desperation.

4. That said, it took me a few Harry Potter movies to really warm up to the cast. I think when you’re a fan of a book and you have mental images of the characters in your head, it can be difficult to see them on the screen because usually they don’t match up. Sometimes casting is absolutely perfect. Like in HP, Alan Rickman as Snape was always right on. The moment I saw him as Snape I thought: Whoa, you are so the exact embodiment of Snape. In The Hunger Games, the moment of perfect casting for me was Amandla Stenberg as Rue. She was spot-on from the beginning, and her scenes were so gut-wrenchingly tragic.

6. That’s why I was completely dismayed to discover a that a whole lot of people are surprised that Rue is black. Some of them were surprised because they skimmed the book and didn’t pay attention and then just assumed she was white. They were surprised to see a black actress playing Rue because “Hey, I thought she was white. OK, my mistake.” There are plenty of problems with assuming a character is white (especially if the author clearly describes the character as not white), but this is not the mistake that dismays me the most. What really depressed me were people who tweeted that they cared less about Rue when they discovered she’s black.

7. One of the most compelling themes of The Hunger Games books, for me, is the critique of capitalist spectacle. The fact that the movie and its tie-ins fully capitalizes on the spectacle is … a little disturbing for me. I really wonder if those who see the movie and encounter all of its overwhelming marketing without knowing anything about the books will actually get it. I have to admit that seeing the film promoting tie-in products like Hunger Games-themed nail polish makes me a little sick inside.

Now, I know that The Hunger Games is a movie. Sure. So there’s a part of me that understands this kind of promotion. We don’t live in Panem; the televised spectacle on the screen is not real. But … I guess because the books affected me so strongly, and because I think the story they tell about our media-and-war-saturated society is so important, I find the nail polish especially distasteful. (And relatedly, I don’t understand the massive promo that Elizabeth Banks has been getting for her role as Effie Trinket. Effie was a blip on the page of the books, and she barely has 10 lines in the movie. Why is she being promoted so heavily? Is it because of the makeup tie-ins? Ick.)

8. The movie’s interpretation of the romance story line was interesting. It was more low-key than the book in some ways, because we don’t get inside Katniss’s head in the movie so we don’t know what she’s thinking. This might be detrimental in that her attraction to Peeta might seem more straightforward than it actually is. I felt like the book problematized her feelings for Peeta quite well, showing the awful trickiness of appearing to fall in love with him in order to win sponsors, get medicine, and survive. I’m not sure that entirely came through in the movie.

9. You know what came through, though? Gale. I never thought much about him in the books because he wasn’t really there until Mockingjay, but actor Liam Hemsworth made me look at Gale in a totally new way. Like, I wanted to look for longer! I have no idea how he did that after barely being in the movie, but yeah. Hi, Gale.

10. Overall, I thought The Hunger Games was a faithful adaptation of the novel and I’m looking forward to seeing if Jennifer Lawrence grows more into the Katniss role in Catching Fire.

11. Okay I lied, one more thought. I want more Cinna! I didn’t think there was nearly enough of him. When Lenny Kravitz was first cast as Cinna there was such an outpouring of “OMG, I thought Cinna was gay, this is so weird!” It was really striking because the books never address his sexual orientation, and yet the fact that he’s a stylist alone made many, many readers assume that he was gay. Additionally, he is never described as dressing as flamboyantly as the other stylists, but so many readers assumed he did. So, the casting of Lenny Kravitz (who is, let’s face it, a super sexy straight guy) was kind of like a wake-up call—and in my opinion, a welcome one. The stereotype of gay men as stylists may on the surface seem harmless (or, depending on who you are, fabulous), but it is so deeply entwined with limiting, harmful sexist beliefs about gender roles that I’m glad to see it turned on its head in this case. And with Lenny Kravitz? Awesome.