by Holly Lyn Walrath
There is no “perfect mood” for writing–when you’re on deadline, you just have to get the work done, whether you feel like it or not.
R.F. Kuang
If you’re into SFF books, you’ve probably heard of R.F. Kuang’s debut bestseller The Poppy War (Harper Voyager 2018). It was a Goodreads Choice Award finalist (twice over), Nebula Award finalist, Locus Award finalist, and winner of the Stabby, Crawford, and Compton Crook Awards. Kameron Hurley calls its sequel, The Dragon Republic (Harper Voyager, 2019), “A blistering, powerful epic of war and revenge that will captivate you to the bitter end.” We can attest: This series packs a major punch of history, badassery, and grit.
INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT PRESS: We love the book covers for The Dragon Republic & The Poppy War. Can you tell us anything about the behind-the-scenes decisions that lead to such a badass cover series?
R.F. KUANG: I actually participated very little in the cover art! All the credit goes to JungShan, the artist, and the wonderful design team at Harper Voyager. The whole process was very smooth. My editor asked me if I had any ideas or preferences, and I said I thought perhaps a blue and silver color scheme would make sense–which, turns out, was what they already had in mind. JungShan created another illustration of Rin that I just absolutely fell in love with. We pretty much went with the first thing we came up with; we all liked it so much. I think covers for sequels tend to be easier, because you already have an aesthetic set up by the first, and you just need a variation on those themes.
IFP: A little birdy told us that you love Riverdale. Are there any other shows or films you’re really into right now? Are there any shows that have influenced your writing?
RK: Riverdale is SO MUCH FUN. The perfect mixture of weird, bizarre, and campy. And everyone is so attractive. I love that Archie basically exists to take his shirt off and make poor decisions. Hirum Lodge is Daddy.
Film/TV doesn’t influence my writing much. I stick mostly to twenty-minute comedies that I can work into my lunch break or watch while working out. Right now, I’m obsessed with Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place. Anything Michael Schur has worked on, really. I don’t have enough hours in the day to spend on longer dramas anymore, though I really wish I did.
IFP: You’re currently pursuing an MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies at Cambridge University, which seems like a lot of work to juggle between being a bestselling author! How do you make time for writing, and what drives you to come back to the page?
RK: It’s very hard, and I’m not sure I have a good time management system down. Term time was tough. Either I fell behind on book stuff, or I fell behind on school stuff. I chose to fall further behind on book stuff because at the end of the day, I prioritize academics. The term is over now, so I’ve had some more flexibility to work on Book Three. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at working through writer’s block because I’ve realized there is no “perfect mood” for writing–when you’re on deadline, you just have to get the work done, whether you feel like it or not. I have a bunch of little productivity tricks—using a Pomodoro timer, setting daily word counts or revision page counts, listening to music—that in tandem provide sufficient motivation to bang some words out. If all else fails, reading a few hundred pages of good writing usually does the trick. Watching other people work magic with words always jumpstarts my brain to try to attempt the same.
IFP: So much of your love of history comes across in your books. When did you first become interested in history and why?
RK: I’m not sure it’s possible to answer that question. It’s like asking someone, “when did you first become interested in stories.” Likely, at some point in my distant past when I first became sentient?
IFP: The Washington Post calls The Dragon Republic, “A study in every kind of violence . . . Kuang pulls from East Asian history, including the brutality of the Second Sino-Japanese War, to weave a wholly unique experience.” Your books delve into the complicated, bloody, and often contested events in history. Tell us what intrigues you about these historical events and how you approach translating them to the page for a modern audience.
RK: I study modern Chinese history and literature, so it’s natural that it inspires most of my fiction. I take a very syncretic approach to my academic and literary work; almost all of the cool/freaky/weird things I come across in my course reading gets spun into an episode in my books.
The question of how I translate them for a modern audience is interesting. See, I am the modern audience—I’m situated in the present day, so I can’t help but understand historical events through my 2019 worldview. In a sense, I don’t have to do translation at all, because I’m just presenting historical events to readers in the way that I, someone born in 1996, understand them. So I don’t consciously worry too much about whether historical events will make sense to readers; if they make sense to me, then it’s fine. On the other hand, I do have to think about whether someone not in my field will understand certain literary allusions, terms of art, signifiers, symbols, gestures, etc. (This isn’t just a modern/historical issue, it’s a Chinese/Chinese-American/American issue.) So I do often spell out the context behind a lot of images that wouldn’t need that same explanation if the novel were written in Chinese for a Chinese audience.
IFP: What is your favorite thing in The Dragon Republic?
RK: I like the naval battles! Dragons in Chinese mythology are often closely associated with water, so it makes sense that most of the action in Book Two happens over rivers or at sea. I got to play around with river warfare tactics, secret pirate cities, and all makes and models of different ships. (I got very into this–I have a whole research document titled “ship porn.) There are quite a few episodes in Chinese history that deal with naval warfare—most famously the Battle of Red Cliffs—so I enjoyed spinning my own version of those. I didn’t have any previous academic experience in naval warfare, so I did a lot of research in tactics and equipment, which was tremendously fun.
R.F. Kuang is the Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Award nominated author of The Poppy War and its forthcoming sequel The Dragon Republic. She is currently pursuing an MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies at Cambridge University on a Marshall Scholarship, where her dissertation examines propaganda literature by Northeast writers during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Check out her website rfkuang.com, to stay up to date with her writing.