Thank you so much for the questions! I have to tap out for now (it’s around 4:00 PM Eastern) but I’ll try to check in later tonight around 11:00 PM Eastern to catch any questions I missed.

I’m not sure “impressive” is the word I’d use. It was more like desperation. I did like the result, but that process I could have done without ;)

A good question. I coined it to describe a specific aesthetic ideal I had in mind, and I’m not sure I know of many other literary examples. If pressed, I’d say something like Zhang Ran’s “Three Feet of Snow in Jinyang” — an alternate history in which Medieval China invents an analog of the Internet — and Richard…

Since I had an arc planned out for the series before I started writing Book 2, I’m pretty much just executing that plan. Mary Robinette Kowal once explained to me (and this is a bad paraphrasing) that the way to do a sequel is to give readers “the same thing, but different.” I would say that TGOK II tries to hew to…

I’m not terribly knowledgeable about non-textual resources on these subjects. Sorry!

On the gods: they were inspired in many ways by Ovid’s portrayal of the Classical gods as well as Chinese folkloric traditions regarding the Immortals. They guide and teach, but are not omniscient or omnipotent. Indeed, they’re often little better than the mortals they bicker over, though they have a great deal more…

Oh, I’d say life is going pretty well. I’ve been way too busy lately, and I’m hoping to fill the summer with more fun activities with the family—such as playing video games with my daughters or a family trip. After that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad winter we had in Boston, we want to make the most of this…

Ha, I’m glad you stuck with it :)

Great question. Generally, my feeling is that it doesn’t matter: readers should buy the book in the format that makes it most convenient and fun for them to enjoy the story. I may make a little more money if you buy the hardcover, but I vastly prefer that you come away with a happy experience. I have a Kindle and…

Oh, thank you for the kind words about my work!

Interesting translation questions! Translation doesn’t play much of a role in TGOK except in the sense of cultural negotiation and as a metaphor since it involved the transposition of a fundamentally Chinese narrative into a non-Chinese framework. In my case, this act of “heroic translation” (to borrow Liang Qichao’s…

I don’t think anybody would be surprised to find that TGOK was influenced by writers like Jin Yong, Homer, Virgil, Le Guin, Ovid, or Woolf. But they might be surprised to find that TGOK was also influenced by Chiung Yao, the prominent romance novelist from Taiwan. Her influence is mainly seen through the use of…

I don’t think anyone would find it surprising that TGOK was influenced by writers like Jin Yong, Milton, Homer, Le Guin, Virgil, Ovid, or Woolf, but they might find it surprising that it was also influenced by Chiung Yao, a prominent romance novelist from Taiwan. She was particularly important for the way the novel…

Hello! Thank you very much for your questions :)

Thanks Ria! Thank you for having me!

Thanks Everyone,

I am indeed working on the third book. As far as progress, it's hard to say. Doing a translation is a lot like writing a book yourself: you get a first draft and then you have to go through it and revise it many many times, and then comes the editorial process. Anything I say at this point might give people the wrong…

Ria, the translation was quite a learning experience for me. I had translated a lot of short fiction before, but doing a novel was a completely different experience. My overall guiding principle was to retain and preserve as much as possible the integrity of the original, and doing so for a long work like a novel was…

Sorry, this is Ken — when I typed Liu Cixin's answer above, I made a typo. Liu Cixin meant the writer "Zheng Wenguang" (not "Deng Wenguang").

Hi Ria and Everyone,