An Indies Introduce Q&A with Justinian Huang

Justinian Huang is the author of The Emperor and the Endless Palace, a Winter/Spring 2024 Indies Introduce adult selection, and April 2024 Indie Next List pick. 

Born to immigrants in Monterey Park, California, Huang studied English at Pomona College and screenwriting at the University of Oxford. He is now based in Los Angeles with Swagger, a Shanghainese rescue dog he adopted during his five years living in China.

Kathy Baum of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado, served on the panel that selected this title for Indies Introduce. 

“The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a hard novel to sum up but let me try: an erotic love story, three eras, loyalty, betrayal, intrigue, mythology," Baum said. "The story is gloriously addictive and will keep you turning page after page as the seemingly separate layers converge. You will share this with everyone you know!”

Here, Huang and Baum discuss the creation of The Emperor and the Endless Palace.

Kathy Baum: The book feels both luscious and deep. There’s XXX steam, and also human depth and longing for love and authenticity. How did you strike this balance?

JH: There's already a fair amount of outrage on Goodreads about my steamy scenes, and I proudly wear each of those reviews like a shiny badge of honor. I am rather unfazed by pearl-clutching. That's because I know there's nothing more human than sex and sexual chemistry, and therefore writing lusciously about acts of lovemaking IS what creates that feeling of depth and longing. The romance genre is often denigrated as frothy and shallow, but that is unfair: Physical intimacy and connection are profound experiences, good sex is a wondrous collision of universes, and the majority of us are sexual beings. Hence, I exuberantly dive in with my writing, and the readers who want to join me are rewarded with titillating thrills that still speak to the basic truths about who we are.

I also am keenly aware that Asian men don't get to exhibit enough passion and visceral sexiness in Western media depictions. In America, I grew up feeling like I couldn't own my sexuality as an Asian man, so I wanted my book to pay a swaggering homage to folks like me. They say to write what you know, and I know spicy Asian men!

KB: Can you tell us about the structure of the book — did you always have the three threads in mind, or did one lead to another?

JH: When I first came out in my early twenties, I was told that Asian people like me can’t be gay, that gayness is a modern Western thing. So I knew I wanted to tell a story about queerness throughout the ages of my heritage, starting with the real-life ancient Chinese emperor who fell in love with one of the men in his palace in 4 BCE. That was always going to be my central storyline, this epic tragedy between these two boys…really, the greatest love story never told.

Next, I remixed a famous gay folktale from 1700s China written by a writer named Pu Songling. This folktale is about a lonely innkeeper who falls in love with a male fox spirit, and I was fascinated by Pu's gender-swapping of the fox spirit, which are nearly always depicted in Asian mythology as women. And finally, I dipped into my own personal history to create a contemporary tale of two men who crash into each other on the dance floor of a circuit party while high on drugs.

So I always did have these three threads in mind. Originally, they remained parallel throughout the entire novel, only thematically related to one another…which was probably the more prestige-y literary choice. But I quickly got bored of writing them so compartmentalized, and I decided to challenge myself to see if I could metaphysically weave them together into a twisty roller coaster and deliver an ending in which these three timelines smash into one shocking climax.

KB: You wrote this during Covid lockdown? I watched a lot of Netflix. Did you have the idea for the novel prior to the pandemic, or did the isolation spur your creativity?

JH: No shame, Kathy, I watched a lot of Netflix too, and in fact Squid Game was a big influence on the teeter-tottering cliffhangers in my book.

I actually thought about The Emperor and the Endless Palace for years before I wrote the first draft in the lockdown of Summer 2020. I lived in China from 2015 to early 2020 as the head of development for DreamWorks Pearl, where I worked on Kung Fu Panda 3, Abominable, and the Oscar-nominated Over the Moon. But when the pandemic happened, my Chinese career disappeared overnight. I went from being a high-rolling American expat in Shanghai to moving back home to Los Angeles, where I spent the lockdown in my mom's attic wondering what the hell had happened to the world, and to me.

I'd had this great career in Asia, but what I really thought about the most in isolation were the two men that I fell in love with during my time there, both of whom broke my heart in different ways. Once I realized that I could imbue them into this novel as the central couple, I wrote the first draft in just a couple months. So I would say that being forced to stop and reflect about my life was what brought about The Emperor and the Endless Palace. That, coupled with the occasional perfectly chilled Pinot Noir.

KB: The book illustrates the ties between the historical and the present, and what evolves and what stays the same. What is something about our culture today that you hope endures, and something that you hope evolves?

JH: Wow, what a question…

Growing up as a gay Asian kid, I expected the world to be a lot crueler to me than it turned out to be — instead I have found compassion and humanity in places and people that continually surprise me in the best ways possible. Because of this, I truly believe that our human culture is one that is based in goodness; I believe we are all the same soul doing our very best to love ourselves. When vastly different folks from all walks of life tell me that they saw themselves in the characters of The Emperor and the Endless Palace, despite it being a very culturally specific story, I am reminded of this. I hope we never forget this, because it is our saving grace.

I hope we evolve to be less anxious, and I am including myself here!

KB: If you were a bookseller, how would you summarize The Emperor and the Endless Palace to a customer?

JH: Beyond the standard pitch (“a spicy romantasy thriller inspired by real ancient Chinese history about two men who keep reincarnating as doomed lovers”), I would tell them that at the near center of the book is a steamy scene so scandalous that they won’t know whether to be terrified or aroused. Page 142, to be exact.

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang (Mira, 9780778305231, Hardcover Fantasy, $28.99) On Sale: 3/26/2024

Find out more about the author at @justinianhuang

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