Fandom Love Letters With Author Chloe Gong: Dear Shakespeare
In our Fandom Love Letters series, EnVi asks passionate creatives to write a letter to other artists, musicians, and writers they admire. For this installment, EnVi spoke with Chloe Gong, author of the Flesh & False Gods trilogy.
Romeo & Juliet. As You Like It. Antony & Cleopatra. Three famous plays, three sources of inspiration for bestselling author Chloe Gong. Shakespeare is her “role model,” she noted in her letter to the Bard himself. “There are so many thoughts I have had in conversation with your writing—expansions and new turns and subversions of what your stories show about the world, but always, always, my retellings come back to the same heart and core message that you were writing to,” Gong added.
The same goes for her newest novel, Vilest Things, which is the second book in the Flesh & False Gods trilogy (the first being Immortal Longings). Leading up to its publication today (September 10), Gong has consistently stated that her series pulls from Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra. In this latest epic in the Gong-Shakespeare crossover, the lives of Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa are — violently — turned upside down. As the stakes grow higher and the paths grow more unpredictable, Vilest Things takes readers on a twisty journey from the first page to the last.
On a sunny summer day, EnVi Media connected with Chloe Gong over a video call to discuss her letter to Shakespeare, Vilest Things, and her experience writing the middle book in a trilogy.
*Writer’s Note: Interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
EnVi Media: Thank you for joining us once again here at EnVi Media! We really appreciate it, and I can’t wait to talk about your new book. Can you introduce yourself, your book, and something people may not know about you?
Chloe Gong: Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I’m always so excited to be back here. I’m Chloe Gong. I am a YA and adult author previously known for These Violent Delights, Foul Lady Fortune of the Secret Shanghai universe, and now, most recently, of the Flesh & False Gods trilogy, which is inspired by Antony and Cleopatra. Vilest Things is out in September, which is the second book of the trilogy.
I am very, very excited for people to read [it], because I think it was the book that really wrung the most out of me, like ever. As a result, it is quite, uh, quite explosive in some parts, because it really was my motivation to keep going.
So something that people may not know about me…That is a great intro question. You know what I realized I needed to stop saying…Something people may not know about me is that I’m from New Zealand. It used to be really evident, like right off the bat, because my accent was really strong, but it’s really started hybridizing recently. In some words, you will still hear it, and in other words, I’m like, completely American.
EnVi Media: That’s a good point, actually. How long have you lived in the U.S.? Because I know you went to college here.
Chloe Gong: Yes, it’s seven years now because I moved [in] August of 2017, which was [my] freshman year.
EnVi Media: What was your experience writing the book and ensuring that you balanced events from Book One and your actual story in Book Two?
Chloe Gong: Vilest Things is my first middle book that I’ve ever been contracted to write. So previously, like before These Violent Delights, I have written trilogies and series where there are book twos, but counting from all the books that I knew were going to get published, this is my first book to have a trilogy. Everything else I’ve written before has been duologies or short stories. But this is the first time I’ve been working in that format.
So there was a lot of, I guess, experimenting around to see what this book would actually look like and how I can get past that dreaded middle book syndrome. I feel like we as readers, we have all read a trilogy where you finish that second book and you think, “What was the point of that? My goodness,” and I really wanted to avoid that. You know, there was a reason why the Flesh and False Gods trilogy was a trilogy, as opposed to a duology that I had been doing for so long. And it’s because in my head, I knew it was a three-parter, which meant there were many things I needed to fiddle around with in order to go through the series of events in the best possible way.
And what that looked like was the first draft was almost thrown out entirely. I wrote that first draft so long ago. I remember when I finished it because I sent it in in Singapore, because I was doing the Singapore Writers Festival. I sent that draft in November of 2022 and the final draft was not really finished until earlier this year, like right before all the editing process was going to start. So it was a very, very long process, and I am very proud of what the product turned into, because I think it needed that rewrite. But my God, was it hard.
EnVi Media: I love talking to you about craft. I feel like every time there’s going to be a different process, even though it costs you a lot of pain.
Chloe Gong: It’s maddening from an angle of like, “Oh, I’ve written so many books. I should know how to write a book. I should know how to do this.” But it changes every time, depending on what the story needs.
EnVi Media: We also asked you to write a letter to Shakespeare of all people. What was it like writing this letter? Was it difficult? Or did you find the words pretty easily?
Chloe Gong: I found the words pretty easily […] You knew how excited I was when I heard of the idea of “Fandom Love Letters.” I was like, “Oh my God yes,” because […] writing a fandom letter to Shakespeare is not only just telling him how much I am a fan of his works, which I do on a daily basis anyway. So that was very easy. A lot of it is also the classic, ”Let me tell you about all the work that I’ve produced inspired by you.” It’s kind of the same as how I [w]ould imagine writing a letter to Taylor Swift would be, like, a 20 page long thesis, because it would be sitting down and really conveying “This song did this for me and inspired this” and not only, “Oh, this is why I like it, but this is how it aided me.”
In the same way, I’m sure if I really had the opportunity to, I could definitely give you a thesis, too, for Shakespeare, but in the interest of time, we kept it to one page. Though the words really felt easy, I think because I have been working in this Shakespearean-inspired space for so long, there is so much to talk about. There’s so much of his works that I’ve been very, very intimately engaged with for so long.
EnVi Media: You start your letter with the two deaths of an author. Why did you decide to open your letter with this thought?
Chloe Gong: I think about this a lot when it comes to very classic texts, and I think it’s because we are in such a commercial age. We’re in this age of rapid consumption. There is a meme that interests me a lot where people are like when you loved the book and gave it five stars, but you can’t remember the main character’s first name. It’s very, very fascinating to me how there are different ways art is consumed. There is art that is for mind-blowing revelations; there is art that is for entertainment. They’re equally valid, but they do achieve different purposes that have different impact[s].
As an English major, we end up studying things that are from centuries ago, like in a whole different age, where the records kept of it might not even be true. There are certain folios that we’ve got left of Shakespeare’s works that some people aren’t even sure if Shakespeare himself wrote it. So it is all up for speculation and deliberation within classrooms of what this could mean. Sometimes I think about this when I’m writing. I’m thinking about how it would be wonderful if, in a few hundred years, there are still people that remember this. There are still people who want to analyze it, but I think I’m also very aware that that is a complete coin toss, in the same way that when Shakespeare was writing, he was writing for entertainment. A lot of people forget that Shakespeare was putting in dick jokes and doing identity swaps for the fun of it — it was to get a giggle. But now, we think of him as some all-knowing, wise guy, intending to make all these remarks about life and death. In reality, he was just trying to entertain.
I try to keep that in mind, where I’m like, “Am I saying enough deep things? Am I being serious enough?” That actually is not the gauge for whether or not you are remembered in time. It is just that magical something. So I guess I bring it up because it is that about Shakespeare I think I admire a lot. It is not that he set out to be this long-remembered person. It’s that he set out to entertain, and he resonated with people enough to last this long. It’s really hard to think about something like that happening again when we one) live in such a quick, rapid world where there are so many books, so many pieces of art, but two) also [in] that [digital] age. Things are not even kept as records anymore. There will not be folios left behind to keep in museums. There is only data that will disintegrate.
*starts laughing* I feel like I should have dropped the microphone at the end of that.
EnVi Media: Are there any other elements from Shakespeare’s work that inspire your stories?
Chloe Gong: I do think the trilogy as a whole really tries to pull from the characterization Shakespeare does [in Antony and Cleopatra] and less so the event of it. I think there are certain easter eggs that I like to pull in […] But other than those little bits, I really try to make the character dynamic the heart of it. I throw out everything in the Shakespearian play that doesn’t serve me anything, I really just get rid of.
So in that way, I do think Immortal Longings and the rest of the trilogy is probably my loosest retelling compared to YA. Because [for] YA, I really still tried to […] keep the tone. I wanted to keep the tragedy at the core of These Violent Delights; the comedy at the core of Foul Lady Fortune. And I do think there is still the core tragedy of Immortal Longings, but it also so expands past that, probably because Shakespeare was also working off of an existing history.
For example, there was a rabbit hole I went down where Cleopatra had a sister called Arsinoe, who served a threat to her throne. When Arsinoe was exiled, Antony had her killed at a temple, which was so blasphemous across Rome, but that was his way of showing his commitment to Cleopatra. I read that, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I love it.” So I won’t spoil it for what happens in Vilest Things, but there is a character we hear about where — for the readers who are super eagle-eyed — you can see that her name is a playoff Arsinoe. You will know what is happening in terms of everyone’s dynamic in that way.
EnVi Media: What can our readers expect from the final book of Flesh & False Gods?
Chloe Gong: Well, the final book is going to be the culmination of everything that we’ve been building toward. I’ve said this before for Vilest Things as well, where I’m a big fan of fantasy series where it feels like every subsequent book plays off of the one preceding it times one hundred. There are some of my favorite fantasy series where book one feels so close to home, where it’s the characters’ base; it’s a lot of what the character knows. The stakes are super concentrated within their limited worldview. And then book two expands outward, and suddenly everything they knew was a lie. Then book three expands even further, and they’re like, “Wow, this, in comparison to book one, feels so different.”
That is what I have been trying to lead toward, knowing that there are three books. So far — well, book three hasn’t been written yet — but so far, as far as the planning, there are many, many things that I think I’ve been waiting to write since the first chapter of book one. So, I’m really excited for it. It’s definitely going to be my Roman Empire, in the sense that, I have so many thoughts about the Roman Empire and all the things that could have happened in history that would have been counterfactuals to the way the war played out. I have so many thoughts about the war between Cleopatra and Augustus; there are so many things that could have been different. But ultimately, you know, when Shakespeare took it on, this was a tragedy. This is not going to change what happens. So book three, it’s like me putting them onto the little chessboard and moving the war games around, and I’m really excited for it.
EnVi Media: What was your favorite part about writing the letter?
Chloe Gong: I really liked getting to end it with “I hope there’s more to be found in the Chloe-Shakespeare collaboration.” I feel like the beauty of writing a letter to someone, even sent into the ether because he has been dead for a couple hundred years, is this idea of making it known why you are the one writing the letter as opposed to just any regular fan. Of course, every regular fan letter is valid. But why is your fan letter super valid for you? What is that personal touch you can put in? I like[d] that a lot.
EnVi Media: Thank you so much for chatting with EnVi again!
Chloe Gong: Of course, thank you for your time! It’s always a joy. I’m very excited to see this go live.
Keep up with Chloe Gong and the Flesh and False Gods trilogy on Instagram, TikTok, X, and her website. Vilest Things can be found wherever you purchase books.
Want more book recommendations? Check out Team EnVi’s book recommendations for the beach season and beyond here!
