97. CHLOE GONG: Leaving Shakespeare for Virtual Reality with Coldwire

This week on LiteraryHype Podcast, Chloe Gong joins me for a goofy fun time at New York Comic Con. Her new novel, Coldwire, takes us into a world where people live in virtual reality, and two girls are on missions to find the truth. We had so much fun talking about this book, her departure from Shakespeare retellings, and a word I noticed that left me with some questions.

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Coldwire
These Violent Delights / Our Violent Ends boxed set
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Vilest Things

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Coldwire
These Violent Delights / Our Violent Ends boxed set
Immortal Longings
Vilest Things

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Coldwire
These Violent Delights
Our Violent Ends
Immortal Longings
Vilest Things

Transcript

00;00;03;17 - 00;00;05;00
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype.

00;00;05;00 - 00;00;23;16
Speaker 2
I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman. And today's author conversation is one I have been trying to get for a while. I have asked for Chloe Gong in like six different things at different events and it just her schedule is always so busy or it doesn't work out. But this time we made it work.

00;00;23;21 - 00;00;26;03
Speaker 1
Chloe Gong was at New York Comic-Con talking about.

00;00;26;03 - 00;00;44;26
Speaker 2
Her book Cold Fire. This is her cyberpunk novel. This is the first in a series. So if you're expecting things to be nice, you shouldn't be. But this is really fun and unique book, so I'm going to let Chloe tell you all about it. So don't need further ado. Here's my conversation with Chloe Gong from.

00;00;44;26 - 00;00;54;21
Speaker 1
New York Comic-Con Welcome to Literary Hype. It's so funny. We have you on.

00;00;54;22 - 00;00;57;01
Speaker 3
Oh, I'm so excited. I pumped.

00;00;57;02 - 00;00;59;26
Speaker 1
I've had you on my vision board for this show for like three years.

00;00;59;26 - 00;01;00;20
Speaker 3
Vision board?

00;01;00;21 - 00;01;04;04
Speaker 1
I do. I put their faces on my wall like a stalker.

00;01;04;12 - 00;01;05;21
Speaker 3
And then you throw darts at it.

00;01;05;22 - 00;01;15;04
Speaker 1
No, I put star stickers on them when they get on the show. So you're going to get a sticker when I get home. OK, I'm on it. Do you have a preference on color of sticker pink? Pink, I think I've read. Is that close.

00;01;15;04 - 00;01;16;01
Speaker 3
Enough? Yes.

00;01;16;02 - 00;01;20;19
Speaker 1
OK, good. So we're going to get a Red Star on Chloe's face. Like it's like a.

00;01;20;21 - 00;01;23;22
Speaker 3
Smack in my forehead, right? Yeah. OK, great. Great. I can't wait.

00;01;24;05 - 00;01;33;00
Speaker 1
Awesome. So you are here at New York Comic-Con talking about your upcoming book, which by the time this comes out, it'll be really sweet because that's how I roll. I'm behind. OK.

00;01;33;21 - 00;01;35;18
Speaker 3
No, you're on time. They're exactly on time.

00;01;35;19 - 00;01;42;26
Speaker 1
There we go. But before we dove into the book itself, I want to talk about the into your dedication, because that's super cute.

00;01;44;28 - 00;01;49;21
Speaker 1
OK, so it's dedicated to Owen. And you talk about how on your first date you told him the idea for this book.

00;01;49;21 - 00;01;51;00
Speaker 3
I did. So tell me a little.

00;01;51;00 - 00;01;51;28
Speaker 1
Bit about how that all went out.

00;01;51;28 - 00;02;08;23
Speaker 3
Yeah, so my first date was with Owen was three years ago now. So that's how long Cold Wire has been in the pipeline for. I was actually trying to hide my see from him. I met I met him on a dating app where I had a fake name actually, because I didn't want to tell him I was an author.

00;02;08;23 - 00;02;30;05
Speaker 3
I was going to wait for it. But then we just, you know, clicked on all arenas of talking about, like, science fiction and like, fun cyberpunk elements. And I was like, Oh, I actually have a book idea along this vein. And I was telling him all about it. And that's just been an ongoing conversation until I wrote the book.

00;02;30;05 - 00;02;39;03
Speaker 3
And then when I revised the book and it just he really he had he had a big role in all the conception of it.

00;02;39;08 - 00;02;42;12
Speaker 1
Did anything change because of his conversation?

00;02;42;13 - 00;03;12;28
Speaker 3
Oh, for sure. Yes. I mean, because he he's he studied machine learning in school. So he's actually an expert in this field that I'm writing in. I am not an expert. I went to school for English I went to I was an English major and I was an international relations major. So any time the book is talking about how they like hack into the system or you know, like artifacts of like the deep faking, I was just making things up in the first rounds and I would talk to him about it and he would be like, I'm so sorry.

00;03;12;28 - 00;03;24;22
Speaker 3
I don't I don't know if that's how it works. Then he would walk me through ways that could work and walk me through what we could explore instead. And I really think it improved the book drastically.

00;03;25;02 - 00;03;35;02
Speaker 1
I mean, there's so much to the story. It's a book. But before we get to all the tech of this, because there's there's a lot what is this book about for anybody who hasn't seen it or heard about it yet?

00;03;35;05 - 00;03;49;22
Speaker 3
OK, so the book is the first in a Why a dystopian cyberpunk trilogy. So it is the first in a series. Don't expect everything to be wrapped up in the entitlement, but there's a lot of chaos that, you know, hits the book as.

00;03;49;25 - 00;03;50;04
Speaker 1
You do.

00;03;50;04 - 00;04;08;26
Speaker 3
Unravels as I do. People are used to it by now. But Cold Wire is a it's my it's my take on the dystopian genre because I was raised by Y in dystopian, of course, like that. Those were my favorite books growing up. I wanted to go in with a kind of like, as I mentioned, I'm an international relations.

00;04;08;26 - 00;04;41;25
Speaker 3
I was an international relations major, so I wanted to go in with a kind of like bilateral take on it. And what I mean by that is a lot of times you look at dystopian as government versus people and cold wire. It takes place in a world where there's a Cold War happening between two major superpower countries and it's exploring how do the people in the shadow, you know, live, how do they resist and all of that, which is a long winded way of saying there are two main characters that we follow and one of them is in the real world, and the other one is in virtual reality.

00;04;41;25 - 00;04;48;06
Speaker 3
And they end up meeting a lot of conspiracy and secrets and angst.

00;04;48;11 - 00;04;54;21
Speaker 1
I guess when you're writing a dual P.O.V. book, do you have a favorite character and does that influence how you write them?

00;04;54;29 - 00;05;22;09
Speaker 3
I do. I do usually end up with a favorite because I there are toward the ones where I get to put more voice into it. So the two characters, Ereli and Leia, they initially kind of sounded very similar because I was still getting used to writing in first person. All my other books have been in third person and Cold Wire was my reentry back into first person that I haven't done since.

00;05;22;18 - 00;05;43;06
Speaker 3
Like all the books I was writing pre These Violent Delights, my debut. And so my editor looked at this at the first draft and she went, I can't tell what the difference between these two characters are. And I was like, Oh, OK, back to the drawing board we go. And so I really had to like look into, well, why do they speak the way they speak?

00;05;43;06 - 00;06;03;13
Speaker 3
Why do they see the world in the way they do? And at least in cold wire, Leia ended up being my favorite one to write because she's just a lot more emotional. She will kind of look at the narrative in a way that she's going like, I hate this, I love this. This makes me upset. And that's how she makes statements versus I really is very matter of fact.

00;06;03;13 - 00;06;08;29
Speaker 3
She'll see things as they occur, and she doesn't really attach her emotions onto it, which was harder for me to do.

00;06;09;04 - 00;06;11;13
Speaker 1
I think I like Lee about it, too.

00;06;11;13 - 00;06;11;27
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;06;12;28 - 00;06;15;04
Speaker 1
The banter with Karen is.

00;06;15;28 - 00;06;17;01
Speaker 3
That was so fun to write.

00;06;17;04 - 00;06;25;01
Speaker 1
Oh, I'm sorry. It has to be like getting to write banter. Yeah, everybody loves reading it, right? But then to write it like you're giddy, like.

00;06;25;08 - 00;06;25;25
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.

00;06;26;03 - 00;06;28;12
Speaker 1
It's our favorite banter moment for you.

00;06;28;18 - 00;06;51;16
Speaker 3
There's a moment where it is they're kind of looking out into the sea and it feels very slow and almost invoking this beautiful moment. And then they kind of just start ribbing each other. And Karen grabs her finger and it's like, you're going to you're on a jab your finger at me now. You don't get your finger back.

00;06;51;24 - 00;07;09;11
Speaker 3
That was so funny. I think the best banter is when it comes out in a way that to me feels like it's telling us something about that character. You know, it's it has to be performing double duty or else I'm just, you know, I do love writing fluff, but at a certain point, I'm like, it needs to be relevant fluff.

00;07;09;19 - 00;07;13;16
Speaker 3
And when the banter feels like it's telling us something about the character, I'm like, OK, I can get away with this.

00;07;13;23 - 00;07;17;11
Speaker 1
So on the tech side of things, there is a lot. So you've got to your own.

00;07;17;11 - 00;07;17;26
Speaker 3
I did.

00;07;18;00 - 00;07;32;14
Speaker 1
But what other research and like plotting out worldbuilding did you go through to kind of bring this life? Because building a world that's real is hard enough and then having a virtual world in there as well. Lots of extra effort.

00;07;32;19 - 00;08;04;20
Speaker 3
Lots of effort. So there were there were two pieces of my kind of like tech research because in I rally storyline in the physical world, they are like breaking into facilities and trying to hunt down a program in Leah's world in virtual, they're hunting down a possible traitor or they're, they're breaking into apartments and safes and all that there's a concept called penetration testing that is a real thing tech companies do where they'll pay someone to essentially figure out how easy it is to hack their system.

00;08;04;20 - 00;08;34;26
Speaker 3
It's like they're like you know, test us out and tell us what we have to kind of prevent in case of a real attack. And so a lot of these stories are fascinating, like the research that I was kind of doing. I felt like I was just reading for fun at a certain point because there are some moments where I would just stumble onto a fun fact and it would be like, Oh, yeah, there are no cameras in deeply secure facilities because they don't want someone hacking the camera and seeing what their workers are up to.

00;08;35;03 - 00;08;47;05
Speaker 3
And I would take that fact and be like, Oh, that's great. Actually, I'm going to mention that because I know someone's going to be reading this and be like, Why are there no security cameras? That doesn't make any sense on my end. But but the research.

00;08;47;25 - 00;08;50;16
Speaker 1
Especially if it's something illegal, like they really don't want.

00;08;50;16 - 00;08;53;27
Speaker 3
To know, and especially if they're like, OK, people can know about this.

00;08;54;04 - 00;09;08;08
Speaker 1
We they I especially in this world where so many things are being faked, including books. What do you want people to think about most when they are using A.I. or chat and like, Oh, I wrote a book, but I use tragedy.

00;09;08;12 - 00;09;30;25
Speaker 3
Well, I don't think people should be writing books on chat, but I'm not even going to start around that. So write your books on Toxic Beauty. I think it's so silly. I mean, I think the whole thing about like, you know, there is going to be massive, massive movement in the tech space and in the air space. It is a tool, and there are many, many aspects where we still have not fully explored what it's capable of doing or what it will be helpful in doing.

00;09;31;04 - 00;09;51;04
Speaker 3
But I think one thing that we can basically be sure of right now is that A.I. and Art don't really go in the same sentence together. Like when it comes to writing a book, the choice of the words that you use is so important. The the way that you put together the character dynamics from the worldbuilding into how the prose is structured.

00;09;51;15 - 00;10;19;12
Speaker 3
All of that is a human decision in order to connect with the reader on the other side. And I think as soon as you have that, you are writing a sentence, it's like, OK, well now that's Chuck. You put his thoughts, not your own. And I would just encourage people to put their own thoughts on the page instead, you know, like, I think we we like to jump right into the arena of having something that feels perfect, having something that feels complete.

00;10;19;22 - 00;10;38;12
Speaker 3
But I would argue the, the nice thing and the cathartic thing and the human thing about writing is the imperfections. And it's so much more worthwhile to write something that feels kind of shoddy and half done and is wholly yours. Then to put it into a machine and have it feel like complete.

00;10;39;05 - 00;10;58;26
Speaker 1
A fricking man the number of times people are like, oh, if you don't get on air, you're just going to get left behind. And it's like, no, you're taking the soul out of art. And books are art. Yes. But there are so many big issues that you cover in the book from AI to government and all of that.

00;10;59;14 - 00;11;02;23
Speaker 1
What message do you want readers to take away from this book the most?

00;11;03;19 - 00;11;26;26
Speaker 3
I think I think I just I overall, I want readers to feel as though the whole book is a thought experiment of sorts. Like I would say, I don't have one particular message that I want them to take away. I rather want them to start thinking about these themes and use it as a conversational jumping point, especially with Cold War, it being young adult fiction.

00;11;26;26 - 00;12;03;05
Speaker 3
That was so important to me because I want teenagers to have this you know, accessible piece of media that they can, you know, revolve the conversations around. And to use it as a I use it as a discussion point, either with friends in classrooms like, I don't know, in college essays. Like I think having something that feels relatable to their own experiences is a really great way of getting them to critically think about things and not just jump into, you know, ideas about certain technology because like, big tech said so.

00;12;03;05 - 00;12;14;09
Speaker 3
And God knows big tech is everywhere right now, right? We can't get away from it. But so more than ever, I think it's important to have media and have art that discusses it and allows you to feel free to discuss it.

00;12;14;15 - 00;12;17;18
Speaker 1
Was Niall Corp inspired by any particular company?

00;12;18;07 - 00;12;35;05
Speaker 3
For legal reasons, I cannot say. I will say that, you know, it's not one particular entity that inspired, but rather I think everything that we are currently seeing about where big corporations are moving. That's my legal advice.

00;12;36;25 - 00;12;44;18
Speaker 1
And talking about moving, you move away from Shakespeare in this one. What was it like for you to not be doing a Shakespeare based book for once?

00;12;44;23 - 00;13;00;20
Speaker 3
So weird. I mean, Shakespeare were like the same year we were and suddenly I was like, OK, Shakespeare, like, we've had fun, but this is me for now. I got to go my own way. I might, you know, come back to him at a certain point, but is it?

00;13;01;05 - 00;13;04;26
Speaker 1
Maybe I've heard wrong, but Immortal Longings three is. Oh, yes.

00;13;05;01 - 00;13;07;22
Speaker 3
I'm all longing as the series is still Antony and Cleopatra.

00;13;07;22 - 00;13;09;27
Speaker 1
Every time since I'm I'm still.

00;13;09;27 - 00;13;11;16
Speaker 3
I'm still with him, you know, he's.

00;13;12;03 - 00;13;12;28
Speaker 1
He's in your heart.

00;13;12;28 - 00;13;16;26
Speaker 3
Yeah, he's my he's my friend that I locked away in the basement for now.

00;13;18;29 - 00;13;43;04
Speaker 3
It was, it was strange, I think, for for a very long time. Everything that I published, I had been working up the Shakespearian framework, and all of my storytelling stemmed back to something that I felt he had already said best. And I was in conversation with but Cold Wire is the first time that I'm truly playing in my own sandbox.

00;13;43;16 - 00;14;07;22
Speaker 3
I'm not, you know, speaking back to a theme that I felt was super intriguing. And I want to add to I'm just I'm just here and constructing a world out of what I would find most interesting. So it's been exciting because by Shakespeare, I don't need you, but it's been very scary because Shakespeare was holding my hand before.

00;14;07;27 - 00;14;09;20
Speaker 1
Well, Shakespeare, your personal training wheels.

00;14;10;02 - 00;14;10;22
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;14;10;23 - 00;14;16;01
Speaker 1
He was just like, you can go. Yeah. Do you feel him pushing you off the bike?

00;14;16;13 - 00;14;24;25
Speaker 3
I do. I feel his presence. He's like sitting in the bike basket I'm carting him around now.

00;14;26;16 - 00;14;47;08
Speaker 1
That's amazing. A great visual. I know oh, my other weird question, I almost forgot. This is bizarre. And I mentioned it in line to somebody, and I was like, I was like, I've got a weird question I'm going to ask her. And they're like, now I need the answer. So you mentioned I forget which character was, but she's like, I don't have enough hair to put it up into a bundle.

00;14;47;08 - 00;14;52;29
Speaker 1
And I was like, who says, put it up into a bundle? It's a bun weight. It's bunch of four bundles. You know something? I don't know.

00;14;58;00 - 00;14;59;13
Speaker 3
I just call it a bundle.

00;14;59;20 - 00;15;02;03
Speaker 1
I've never heard anybody call it a bundle before.

00;15;02;13 - 00;15;26;14
Speaker 3
But now that I think about it, Bun might be sure for a bundle. OK, I don't have any more information than you do. OK, I will say there are some. See, now that you bring this up, this is actually a really fun fact about some of my writing I will notice sometimes that little weird words will slip into my writing and I'm not sure where they come from until I go home to New Zealand and I'm like, Oh, this is just a weird thing that we say.

00;15;26;14 - 00;15;42;13
Speaker 3
And then my copy editors don't catch it because I think I think they're getting to a point where they almost feel like they can't be like, not us English. Is that OK? Because it happens. A lot happens where I use the UK English version instead, and they have to keep paying me for it. And I think they get I think they're like, I'll let you have this one.

00;15;42;13 - 00;15;43;29
Speaker 3
So maybe bundles just one that sits.

00;15;43;29 - 00;15;46;28
Speaker 1
In New Zealand. I, me, no.

00;15;47;15 - 00;15;49;26
Speaker 3
I think that makes sense, right? It's bundled back there.

00;15;49;26 - 00;15;55;29
Speaker 1
It does. But then you at this moment, like reading it, I'm like that's what, what.

00;15;56;07 - 00;16;00;24
Speaker 3
I almost feel like that makes more sense for where it came from than like an eating bun.

00;16;01;01 - 00;16;10;09
Speaker 1
Right? It's true. Yeah, it looks good. Change my whole perspective. And other people in line were like, I need answers, so please ask. This has been an absolute delight. We could talk forever, but we both have panels.

00;16;11;08 - 00;16;12;07
Speaker 3
Important panel.

00;16;12;08 - 00;16;19;27
Speaker 1
Yes, we're panelists we're family. So the last question we always ask is because this is literary hype, what books are you hyped about?

00;16;20;07 - 00;16;35;24
Speaker 3
Oh, my God. OK, so a book that I'm so hyped about it's coming out November 4th. So same day as Cold War when Cold War is out, someone you know, you can get this book as well. It's called Reasons We Break By Just Mean Audio. I heard it pitched as Romeo and Juliet meets Breaking Bad.

00;16;35;27 - 00;16;36;14
Speaker 1
Oh.

00;16;36;23 - 00;16;48;10
Speaker 3
I feel like that compilation will tell you everything you need to know about it. But it is just I think it's one of the best. Why a contemporary and also boundaries, genre breaking books I've read in a long time. Awesome.

00;16;48;10 - 00;16;52;18
Speaker 1
Well, thanks so much for taking time to talk to literary hype from New York Comic-Con. Thank you for having me.

00;16;55;25 - 00;16;57;01
Speaker 1
Thanks again to Chloe for hanging.

00;16;57;01 - 00;17;16;02
Speaker 2
Out with me at New York Comic-Con to talk all about her brand new book called Wire. If you want to check this out, what she said, it's super fun. The links to do so are down in the description for you, as well as Where to Find Chloe on social media. If you enjoy this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast give us some stars, leave a comment and share it with your friends.

00;17;16;10 - 00;17;19;01
Speaker 2
Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.