As She Likes It: Chloe Gong Talks Foul Heart Huntsman, Setting Shakespeare in Shanghai, and More

Chloe Gong’s debut novel, These Violent Delights, enchanted readers with the glitz and glamor of 1920s Shanghai—and terrified them with the dark undercurrents, not just of gang warfare, but of an evil lurking beneath the surface. From that first book, Gong showed herself to be a rising star of SFF, both in the YA sphere and, with her 2023 novel Immortal Longings, in the adult market.

Gong’s newest book, Foul Heart Huntsman is now hitting bookstore shelves, and it marks not only the conclusion of her “Fortune” duology but the final book of her Secret Shanghai series. The book follows Rosalind, an immortal assassin who works for the Chinese Nationalist government, and her sister, Celia, a Communist spy, as both of them try to stop mad scientists from giving over their country to the Japanese Empire. Rosalind’s cover has been blown, but rather than allow the Nationalists to retire her, she decides to make a public press tour, revealing herself as the poisoner Fortune across the countryside.

But it’s not all political. The personal stakes? Orion, Rosalind’s mission partner—with whom she has fallen in love—has been captured by the scientist, who is also his mother, and who has been experimenting on him for years in her attempts to create a super soldier. Celia’s mission partner, Oliver, with whom she is in love, is Orion’s brother. And Orion’s best friend, Silas (a triple agent) and younger sister, Phoebe (whose alter ego was revealed at the end of Foul Lady Fortune, but is hidden here for fear of spoilers), have their own thoughts about how to get him back.

If none of this sounds like Shakespeare’s As You Like It, don’t worry—you need to know nothing about the play to follow Gong’s action adventure. Just like in the first duology, which transformed the story of Romeo and Juliet, Foul Lady Fortune and Foul Heart Huntsman pay homage to Shakespeare’s original play, but become wholly their own story. That tale is sure to leave readers’ hearts pounding (and their eyes weeping at all the right moments) as they root for a happily ever after, against all the odds. This blend of Shakespearean influence, real history, gothic horror, spy thriller, and romance pulls out all the stops to hit readers right in the heart.

We had a chance to catch up with Gong herself about the book’s release, how it feels to wrap her Secret Shanghai series up, favorite literary influences, and lots more. 

Paste Magazine: You’ve had a busy year—and a busy few years since your debut! With your first book making such an impact on readers from the start, what has it been like with each subsequent installment? Was These Violent Delights hard to follow?

Chloe Gong: It’s been a complete whirlwind. I feel like I already started with a lot of chaos with that first book. It was a COVID release. It was my first book, and the industry was moving into an entirely different format of release. People weren’t discovering it by browsing in bookstores; people were discovering it online.

And then it only got more wild! The second book was that first duology’s finale. People were excited about it. I was really nervous about it. The third book was a spinoff, so I was really nervous about how it would be received. It had to be different enough to be a spinoff, but not so different that it wasn’t in the same universe. This one is the conclusion conclusion! 

Every single one has brought something new for me to have a panic attack about.

Paste: Wait, conclusion conclusion? There’s no more Secret Shanghai after this?

Gong: No more. It’s the final one. I’m pretty sad about it too.

Paste: How much did you know about Shanghai in the late 1920s/early 1930s before you started writing? How much research did you have to do?

Gong: I knew enough about it to know that it was a time period I really wanted to explore. It wasn’t that I knew as much before as I did when I was writing it, but growing up, my parents were always talking up the 1920s in Shanghai. In their minds, that is the most romanticized era of Chinese history—alongside the fact that there were also a lot of these very bad things happening.

But people don’t tend to talk about that when they’re thinking about the glamor days. You think of the speakeasies, you think of the beautiful costumes. You don’t really think about the poverty and the death and the imperialism. I really wanted to work in this era, especially being someone who really loves history and politics.

When I had the idea for the book, that’s when I started my research. What led up to this kind of environment? The wars that came before it led to this lawless city. And of course, I had all my relatives as informational sources. I could start talking about some random thing, and they’d go on a tangent for a few hours. I’d think, “I can use like two lines of this—but thanks anyway!”

Paste: Shakespeare has obviously also been a starting place for your books, but they really come into their own as stories—I think in this duology even more than the first. How did you go from a pastoral, cross-dressing, romantic comedy to a mad-science spy thriller?

Gong: I really try to take the central questions that I’m most fascinated by. As You Like It has this amazing theme of: what does your identity become when you have been hiding it for so long? Who do you become to other people if you’re not willing to show that part of you?

There are bits and pieces I felt like I could leave behind. Foul Lady Fortune’s not very pastoral, but there are countryside scenes in the second book! I will adapt certain things if it feels like they fit the new story that I’m trying to tell. But the new story becomes a 1930s spy thriller, with scientific experiments and super soldiers. I work in things like naming a road Arden Road. They’re out in the rural countryside for a bit. It contrasts with the city the way that As You Like It contrasts the forest with the court. 

Ultimately, if it doesn’t go back to that main theme I’m trying to pluck from Shakespeare, it’s okay—I can leave that behind. He did that play already; I can do my new thing. It’s the thematic value that I’m most interested in.

Paste: How much did you know about where Rosalind and Celia were heading when they were first introduced in the earlier books, given that they were named for the As You Like It characters from the beginning?

Gong: Originally, when I was writing the first draft of These Violent Delights, I didn’t know yet. It was a happy coincidence because I was very influenced by the fact that there are some coincidental pieces in Shakespeare’s plays already. Rosalind was first named after Rosaline from Romeo and Juliet. Kathleen doesn’t become Celia until the second book. There are bits and pieces there already.

I always wanted to do the spin-off, but it wasn’t confirmed until I finished the second book. So in the first one, all I could do was sow the seeds for it and hope that I could eventually do it. When I finished the first book, I knew how Our Violent Ends was going to end. I thought that everyone else’s character arcs were satisfying to me, except Rosalind’s. She has just made a huge mistake, and now she has to live with it. There’s nothing for her, as far as recourse for her actions. She’s just suffering. I thought, “That’s so sad for a teenage girl.” 

It is more likely that someone could relate to Rosalind than Juliette. So I knew I could then sow the seeds and say, “This could be an As You Like It retelling… It fits, because of Rosalind the name!” I put Celia’s name in as an Easter Egg. I put Oliver in as an unnamed character in a scene in Our Violent Ends. All of that was there ready for the spin-off. And thankfully my publisher let me do it!

Paste: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews that Mary Shelley was a huge influence on you, and I think we can see that influence all over the twisted science that happens in Secret Shanghai. How much of Shelley’s Gothic take on science became an inspiration for these books?

Gong: Even before being a fan of her work, I was a big fan of Mary Shelley just as a figure. She was a teenage girl who invented science fiction. That’s something I admire so much. She was smashing head first into a genre completely dominated by men at the time, and not only was she a woman, she was a teenager.

I took a course on the Gothic when I was in college, and one of the texts was Frankenstein. I’m very fascinated by these ideas of darkness, but not necessarily darkness as the all-imposing thing you should be afraid of. Instead, it’s what is just lurking with everyone. Which is, of course, a very emo/Gen-Z thing to say. 

I tend to write things that I don’t really think are that dark, or things that I don’t think are that gory. But then other people read it and say, “So, a lot of people are dying in really grotesque ways…” And then I think, “Oh, I see what you mean.” I’ve always been called to those types of stories. There is something very cathartic about writing either violence or dark science to its complete extreme. What is it humanity is capable of? Why is it that we want to explore this in fiction, to look at that in real life, maybe some things should not be done? I really think fiction is a useful avenue to look at these things. If we start saying, “Fiction should be a moral path! Fiction should be how we learn things!” it limits the use of why you make characters do things. They’re not real, and that’s a good thing.

Paste: In Foul Heart Huntsman, we see the return of some characters from previous books. Without spoilers, what was it like to reunite with some of those cast members?

Gong: It was so fun because I have been planning this reunion for a very long time! I’ve been planning it since we last saw those characters. Certain characters got certain storylines in earlier books because I knew I was bringing them in for this. I play the long con in my head; I plan five years in advance. I rip people apart just so their reunion can taste sweeter. 

It was a lot of fun to finally get to do it. Foul Heart Huntsman really feels like a conclusion in a lot of ways, not just as the Foul Lady Fortune, but truly as the universe conclusion.

Paste: But you do leave one of the romances just a little open…

Gong: I love chaos, so sometimes when I’m doing the romances, there are some characters that deserve a very closed, warm resolution, and there are some that I think are happier when it’s more uncertain.

Paste: Your debut adult novel Immortal Longings also came out this year—once again putting a Shakespearean spin on a SFF setting, with some very cool body-swapping magic. Since your YA titles also appeal to adult audiences, how do you distinguish between writing for YA and writing for adults?

Gong: I always think of it as primary audience. I’m very aware that my YA books “read older.” It does mean a lot of adult readers will naturally read it and think, “Yeah, this was written for me, too.” But first and foremost, YA books need to be for the teenagers. It’s always an additional positive when adult readers can come in, but they weren’t the target audience the way they are for Immortal Longings. (There, it’s an additional positive if there are teenagers who enjoy it!) 

It was so wild to me when my agent was pitching These Violent Delights, and she said, “I think we could probably send this to some adult editors, too. I think they’d enjoy it.” I was so taken aback, because I was a teenager. I thought, “I don’t even know how adults think. There is no way I wrote something that adults want to read.” So all throughout my YA career, I’ve been pleasantly surprised when adults are like, “Great work!”

The central questions are suited differently depending on the target audience. All of my YA, I’m trying to capture that feeling of, “I’m growing up, I’m confused, and I’m never going to find my place.” I seed it with an edge of hope for the teenagers. With adult works, I try to capture the frenzy of, “I’ve grown up, and I’ve realized that nothing makes sense.” It has a different feeling that sits in the center of your chest.

Paste: How do you structure things differently when you’re writing a duology than when you’re writing a trilogy?

Gong: Trilogies are so much harder, but so much more fun. It’s a really strange concept to sit with because there are pros and cons to both. Duologies to me feel easier to structure, because I’m very certain about what is part one of a story, and what is part two. Trilogies to me feel like they have more to work with; it means you can expand the world more. Book two can’t just be the bridge between beginning and conclusion. It needs to be its own story as well.

 That is where all the fun comes in of feeling out the story. In a duology, I just jump from beginning to conclusion, and that’s what the story captures. I can compare and contrast—book one and book two usually speak to each other in some way. It was especially stark with These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends, because in These Violent Delights, one of them is lying to the other and has a false idea of what their relationship is. In the second one, their roles switch. And that is how I can very cleanly see that these books are paralleling each other, even as we move the story forward. It’s very hard to do that with a trilogy. It doesn’t work anymore. I’ve had to find a new way to beef up the story with every subsequent book without playing off of the last one, and more letting it develop on its own.

Every time I write a new book, I think, “I know how to write books now!” And then I realize, “No, no I don’t.”

Paste: If you could go out (or stay in) for an evening with any of your characters, who would it be, and what would you do?

Gong: I would go out for an evening with Orion because he would be an absolute riot. We would go to a cabaret show, and then we’d come back and Rosalind would be very weird about it.

Paste: What is the best piece of advice that you have received as a writer?

Gong: Art is subjective. As I’ve grown through the books, I’ve truly digested this. If you really accept that art is subjective, that also means to create a story that really resonates with someone, it also has to really not resonate with someone. 

You would rather really hit your target audience, and really not hit whoever is outside that target audience, than appeal to everyone. Because that means that you’d just get a little bit of everyone, you don’t really hit that exact thing you’re trying to say. It creates far better art when you understand that. Once you accept it, you can write the books as they call to you, as they should be.

Paste: Do you have any last words for our readers?

Gong: I hope that Paste’s readers who have been following along with the Secret Shanghai books are very happy with the conclusion of Foul Heart Huntsman. And when I say happy, I have always said this is an adaptation of a comedy. I’ve promised a happy ending. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be painful up until the very ending that is happy. So I hope they enjoy the happy ending—because don’t get used to it!

Foul Heart Huntsman is available at bookstores everywhere.

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Alana Joli Abbott is a reviewer and game writer, whose multiple-choice novels, including Choice of the Pirate and Blackstone Academy for Magical Beginners, are published by Choice of Games. She is the author of three novels, several short stories, and many role-playing game supplements. She also edits fantasy anthologies for Outland Entertainment, including Bridge to Elsewhere and Never Too Old to Save the World. You can find her online at VirgilandBeatrice.com.