chloe gong

It's 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue. Four years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging - and allows her to heal from any wound. In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption for her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country. Code name: Fortune.

But when the Japanese Imperial Army begins its invasion march, Rosalind's mission pivots. A series of murders is causing unrest in Shanghai, and the Japanese are under suspicion. Rosalind's new orders are to infiltrate foreign society and identify the culprits behind the terror plot before more of her people are killed. To reduce suspicion, she must pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy, Orion Hong. Although Rosalind finds Orion's cavalier attitude and playboy demeanour infuriating, she is willing to work with him for the greater good. But Orion has an agenda of his own, and Rosalind has secrets that she wants to keep buried. As they both attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the two spies soon find that there are deeper and more horrifying layers to this mystery than they ever imagined.

1. The epigraph from your new book Foul Lady Fortune is from As You Like It, as is the character name of Rosalind. Can we expect lots of comedy, or do we need to keep the handkerchiefs nearby? 

Lots of comedy won’t necessarily cancel out keeping the handkerchiefs nearby! [Insert maniacal cackle]. But yes, Foul Lady Fortune, despite being a spin-off to my duology retelling of Romeo & Juliet, is based on a comedy and the tone very much reflects that. There’s a lot of humour and many jokes with references to As You Like It, some of which I gave myself a pat on the back for while writing. Of course, I still can’t go without including angst, so early readers have told me they switch from cackling over a running joke to immediately hurting when the tragic backstory comes out. Hehe.

2. Your books are incredibly atmospheric and strongly evoke the feeling of place. We know you have done lots of research for the setting of these books, what was the most interesting thing you learned during your research? What helped build that feeling of atmosphere?

I love evoking a sense of place so I’m always happy to hear that it comes across successfully! My favorite thing to do is to actually visit the place, and it’s easy for me because I have a lot of family in Shanghai so I’d come and go during my school holidays (pre-pandemic). There are all sorts of little details that I can pick up in person which wouldn’t get mentioned in textbooks or historical articles, like the smell of an area or the surface texture of a building’s wall. And I find those little details really make something come alive! The most interesting thing I learned was that the Bund in Shanghai was height-restricted during construction. I don’t know if anyone else will find it as interesting as I do but I love that factoid because it really exemplifies the emphasis on a cohesive look!

3. Foul Lady Fortune is a sort of sequel, which you've said can be read as both the last book in the Violent Delights trilogy, and the first of a new series. Will all your future books take place in this shared universe?  

Foul Lady Fortune is also a duology, so it makes the These Violent Delights universe four full books in total! I really like spin-offs, because you get to give the fans of the original series something nice, but it’s also a new cast with new interesting character arcs. I think my shared universe might come to a close after Foul Lady Fortune’s sequel, in that I have something in the works set in a different universe, but I’ll never say never to projects in the future!

4. What are the challenges of reinterpreting Shakespeare for a twenty-first century audience? What are your favourite literary interpretations of classic texts?  

The biggest challenge for me is keeping the original heart of the Shakespearean text while also repackaging it with a new lens for the modern audience. Which…I suppose is actually just the challenge of doing a retelling, full stop! I love a lot of what Shakespeare has to say, so I’m fascinated enough with his plays to keep working with them and doing reinterpretations. That being said, I know the general consensus among teens in particular is that Shakespeare is very hard to read and understand, and he was writing for an audience 400 years ago! So I want to take his ideas, and turn them into stories of my own, representative of what my readership today are more interested in. I also love the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliet.

5. Through booktok and word of mouth, we’re seeing a lot of books aimed at 20-25 year olds or the ‘New Adult’ market. What do you think about this categorisation? Your books could happily live in a number of genres. Do you have an audience in mind when writing? 

I wish there was a concrete categorisation of New Adult in traditional publishing because I really love what the niche does! I know that it’s more of an informal label since bookstores don’t have a New Adult section, but it usually tells a reader to expect Young Adult pacing with Adult stories which is a style a lot of people are looking for and I personally quite enjoy writing as well. My These Violent Delights books are quite firmly Young Adult, because I write them with 13-18 year olds in mind and I write the sort of themes and vibes that my 18-year-old self would have loved to see. Audience is definitely a huge aspect of deciding where the story goes and what the tone of a book is. My forthcoming Immortal Longings series, which is inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra, is for a New Adult audience!

6. Any advice for aspiring teen authors who want to be writers? 

Writing is a muscle, and the more you practice it, the more you’ll find that you can tell your stories the way they appear in your head. It’s very easy to get discouraged when you first start out because there’s a phenomenon where the text on the page doesn’t quite match what you want it to be, but so long as you don’t give up, it absolutely will get there one day. You can edit a first draft no matter how wild it is, but you can’t edit a blank page!

7. Are there any other Shakespeare retellings on the horizon? Besides Anthony & Cleopatra. 

We’d love to see you do the complete works…. 

Not at the moment! I’ve announced all my Shakespearean retellings, but my English degree might lure me to return one day in the future.

8. What are you reading at the moment?  

I read a lot of early advanced copies because I like poking publishers to send them to me, and recently I loved Aiden Thomas’s forthcomingThe Sunbearer Trials and Joan He’s forthcoming Strike the Zither! I’m also about to start reading Siren Queen by Nghi Vo. 

9. Any film adaptions on the horizon?  

I have to keep my secrets ;) But in all seriousness, my literary agency is always hard at work trying to bring on adaption possibilities, so I hope there might be news one day!

10. Do you write several books at once? How long does a first draft take?

I try not to write multiple books at once because I like staying in the “headspace” of a project, but by nature of being a traditionally published author sometimes I have multiple deadlines and I do need to swap around! First draft speeds always depend on the book for me, because sometimes they come into the world very easily if I already have a very extensive outline, and sometimes they take much longer if I need to figure out the sequence of events as I go. It could be a month sometimes to have a messy first draft that I’ll later tear apart from the ground up once I know what the skeleton of the story is, or it could be up to a year to get the spine into shape.