Keshe Chow

Keshe Chow (she/her) is a Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy, romance, and speculative fiction. Born in Malaysia, Chow moved to Australia when she was two years old. Her debut novel, The Girl with No Reflection, won the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literature Awards Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted in the 2025 ABIA awards. Her new YA fantasy is For No Mortal Creature. Currently Chow resides in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband, two kids, one cat, and way too many house plants.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title is taken from an excerpt from Wuthering Heights, which was one of the inspirations for For No Mortal Creature. Specifically, this passage of dialogue uttered by Cathy Earnshaw:

“He quite deserted! we separated!” she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. “Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff.”

I feel as though the title conveys quite a lot about the book. Firstly, that it draws inspiration from Wuthering Heights. Second, using words such as ‘mortal’ and ‘creature’ conveys that it has fantasy and gothic undertones. Third, ‘no mortal creature’ fits the book well, as the book is about ghosts who can die and become ghosts of ghosts. Since there are many ghosts in the book, having ‘no mortal creature’ in the title is very evocative.

What's in a name?

The names in this book are significant in that they indicate where the characters come from. For No Mortal Creature is set at the very edge of an empire that borders on a neighboring kingdom, so there are clashing cultures. The main character’s name, Jia Yi, is supposed to mean ‘auspicious’ and is Chinese-coded.

The character Lin, who is an orphan, is named after the forest in which he was found. Lin is the Chinese word for forest and it made sense to me that, as an orphan adopted into a Chinese-coded community, he would be named a simple single-character word that relates to how he was found. This is a similar origin story to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.

The character Essien Lancaster is from across the border, from the kingdom of Yske, which is modelled more after England. He is inspired by the character Edgar Linton, so his name reflects that.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I’ve always been quite scared of ghosts so my teenage self would probably be surprised that I would dare to write a ghost story! That being said, I don’t think they would bat an eyelid at me writing a book that mixes fantasy, romance, and horror elements, since I read extremely widely as a child.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Usually I find beginnings much easier to write, but I found the opening chapter of For No Mortal Creature extremely difficult. This is because I had a vision of the ‘vibe’ I wanted to achieve for this book and when I first started writing it, I wasn’t nailing that vision at all. The opening chapter initially started in a bustling market—it was much more urban and action-packed. However, it didn’t have that creeping, pervasive sense of doom, or the haunting atmosphere I wanted, so I scrapped that chapter several times. It was only when I rewrote it to the forest setting that it all clicked into place.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

All of my characters do have elements of my own personality but they are also their own people! Mostly they’re also a lot braver than I am. I’m a massive introvert and these days I would much rather be holed up at home with my family, books, and cats than out there journeying on quests!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

These days, I very rarely get a chance to consume other forms of media apart from books, but when I do I like to watch film and television. The other major influence for For No Mortal Creature was the film Inception—that’s where the idea for ghosts who can die multiple times, and a multi-layered afterlife, came from.

Visit Keshe Chow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue