Q&A with Chloe Gong, bestselling author of "Foul Heart Huntsman" (and many others!)

Welcome to the interview 🗣️

Howdy friends & foes, faces new & old! I am so over-the-moon delighted and honored to bring you a Q&A with Chloe Gong today! If you don’t know who Chloe is, that’s wild. She’s the bestselling author of the YA historical fantasy / sci-fi Secret Shanghai universe, as well as the (also bestselling!) adult Flesh & False Gods trilogy. I’ve been a fan of hers since I first interviewed her in 2020 for We Need Diverse Books, and then did an event with her, and basically now she’s stuck with me forever because I’ve read all her books (some twice) and adored them. When I read Immortal Longings this summer I literally felt physically ill I had such a book hangover1!!!

We’re doing this Q&A today to celebrate the launch (on Tuesday) of Foul Heart Huntsman, the incredibly epic and devastatingly satisfying conclusion to the Secret Shanghai world, which consists of two duologies and one set of novellas. I’ve loved this world so immensely, and there’s a very real chance that I reread the whole series at least every two years just for the fun (and because I need my regular doses of Juliette and Rosalind, aka my perfect murder daughters). These books, in short, begin with a Romeo & Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai following the heirs to dueling gangster families when their city is rocked by a monstrous disease. And from there, shit hits the fan.

Without further ado: here is Chloe!

Karis Rogerson: What are the main emotions you are feeling as you launch this final book in your first series (really, like, a whole universe of series) and say good-bye to the Secret Shanghai world? 

Chloe Gong: It’s so bittersweet! I’m very sad to be saying goodbye to these characters that I’ve spent so long with, and many of whom I’ve practically grown up with. I started writing the first book in the Secret Shanghai world These Violent Delights when I was 19 while the original cast was 19, and now we’re about to conclude Foul Heart Huntsman with the original cast being 24 years old while I’m 24 too.

It’s truly as though they’ve been with me through my own coming-of-age in the time I’ve been writing theirs. But—this is the conclusion they deserve, and I’m very satisfied with how their stories have wrapped up, so I wouldn’t have it any other way2.

KR: Is there anything about Foul Heart Huntsman that you think may surprise readers?

CG: I think readers might be surprised that there’s nothing about it I would consider sad! I know I’ve kind of built a brand for making people cry (insert evil laugh), but I do think Foul Heart Huntsman is more the angsty type of pain rather than anything heart-wrenching.

KR: What was the most fun part of writing FHH, and what was a writing challenge you faced while drafting & revising?

CG: Because Foul Heart Huntsman is the conclusion of a duology and also the culmination of the entire Secret Shanghai universe, it was so tough to make sure I had pulled the threads together on every last question I had left hanging. But, that was also the most fun part, because I have been waiting to write some scenes for years at this point, and I finally got to put it on the page!

KR: You spent a month on tour in July/August for your adult debut, and now you’re going on another tour for FHH, and I feel like I don’t often hear authors interviewed about tour, so I’d love to know more: what is your favorite part of going on tour for your book(s)?

CG: Oooh, fantastic question! My favorite part is always meeting the readers. So much of writing is done in complete solitude, and it’s so easy to forget what is happening on the other side of the bookish experience. When you spend months chipping away at a manuscript, you become so familiar with the story and you know the changes inside-out to a point where your own writing is the most mundane thing ever.

But then you meet real people, and readers are so excited to dive into the latest release or they tell you about how much the last book meant to them, and that alone is enough to justify the hours perfecting the story. I wanted to pursue being an author to open up my stories to as many readers as possible, and going on tour reminds me how wonderful that experience is.

KR: Is there somewhere you haven’t been yet that you’d love to visit, and what about it calls to you? (Either for a tour or just for fun, tbh)

CG: I’d love to go to Antarctica, just for funsies. As a Sagittarius, there are plenty of places in the world where I want to go for funsies, and I want to tick off every continent so you’ve gotta get to Antarctica at some point. Though I guess I could tour there too, if the penguins are fans3.

KR: Can you chat a bit about the research you did for this universe and specifically this installment?

CG: A lot of research for Foul Heart Huntsman surrounded the January 28 Incident, also called the Shanghai Incident, which was one of the first major events in the lead-up to World War 2 in Asia. Although my books are works of fiction, I always want to make sure that the speculative elements I’ve inserted support the historical atmosphere at large.

I spent a lot of time in the digital catalogs of libraries and browsing archives for photo references in order to pull together a real picture of 1930s Shanghai that the characters would be operating in. I may invent all their romantic perils and familial drama, but the backdrop of the city crumbling beneath them was very real and plucked from the textbooks.

KR: If you had the chance to talk to your younger self who hadn’t yet gotten a book deal or agent for These Violent Delights, what would you tell her?

CG: Hold the joy of writing close to your heart. After entering publishing, it’s so easy to think of writing as a business, and that every completed chapter somehow contributes another step to moving farther along my career. But at the end of the day, I started writing because I loved telling stories so much, and I would want my younger self to really appreciate that energy. As much as I adore publishing my books, it is definitely a different experience to writing into the void, knowing the story could become anything!

Alla prossima 👋

That’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed this Q&A. I, personally, adored it!

Next week I’ll be sharing some reflections on the ~2-year anniversary of coming out, as well as some writing reflections and yet another cringe high school poem!