Jade Song’s next chapter: ‘I Love You Don’t Die’
Following her debut, "Chlorine," the author's second book publishes Tuesday and comes from a place of love
Jade Song's new book is called "I Love You Don't Die."
Photo by Harish Balasubramani
Words by Sara Conway
I Love You Don’t Die came from two opposing forces: “I hate my job” and “I love my friends.”
Jade Song’s second novel comes almost three years after her body horror debut, Chlorine (2023). In I Love You Don’t Die, readers follow Vicky, a late-20s New Yorker obsessed with death. So much so that she lives above a funerary parlor in Chinatown and works as a copywriter at a celebrity-headed urn company called Onwards.
Bursting with equal parts love and death, Song constructs a fascinating tale of friends, throuples, and surviving a capitalist world to the best of one’s abilities. They peel back their characters’ darkest moments and lead readers through connections that endure and burn.
I chatted with Song about writing this next chapter of their author career, death organizations they’ve stumbled upon, and the death-inspired creative prompt they’re bringing to their book events.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sara Conway: I Love You Don’t Die is dedicated to your friends. When was the first seed of this novel planted for you? How was it different from the inspiration spark that eventually became Chlorine?
Jade Song: I wrote Chlorine from a lot of anger. (I Love You Don’t Die) came from a place of love, so it did feel very different. The book first coalesced with two opposing forces: one was “I hate my job” and the other was “I love my friends.”
I set out trying to write a workplace novel first, but then I realized that the workplace is really f*cking boring. I was much more fascinated (with) the characters’ lives outside of work.
There was this part of me (that was) really suddenly—in my adulthood—afraid of death, when before, I had never been afraid of it. I had always been open to the thought of it, but I was finally in a place in New York where I loved my friends, I loved my family. So this preemptive grief of losing them also played into a big part of the novel.
SC: The novel mainly follows Vicky, but there’s also Jen—her best friend—as well as Angela and Kevin—Vicky’s lovers. How did each character first appear to you?
JS: I wanted to try something new in my writing process and introduce a bigger cast of characters. I also felt that would help shine a broader light on how Vicky's actions affect others. If the novel is going to be about friendship and connection, then I also wanted to include different perspectives to show how that connection can affect each other.
SC: There’s a vignette vibe to each chapter, which tends to alternate between chapter titles like “work, love, friendship.” Why was this the best way to tell the characters’ stories?
JS: It just very much reflected how I was thinking about life at the time. When you look back on happy memories or sad memories or day-to-day memories, you remember little moments. It's never a chronological, “this is what happened, then this happened, then this happened.” You remember certain disconnected aspects, so I wanted to reflect that experience of memory into the book.
Another reason that I wrote it like that was because in my experience of depression, in my most severe episodes, memory feels very fractured. It's difficult to recall exactly what happens, and it feels very jagged. Mimicking that experience of depression in the book was something I also really wanted to do.
SC: How do your public moodboard/”repository” on Instagram aid in your writing process? Do you intentionally curate what you share?
JS: There (are) two big reasons why. One, it does help me remember a bunch of inspiration that I have for the book. Slowly posting it is a way for me (to) remember leading up to the book publication and what this book meant to me and all the different research nuggets that I had.
I really enjoy sharing those because a book is a work of art in many ways. One of the best parts of being able to make art is pulling from all these different sources and being able to be in conversations with other art pieces.
But (the other reason is), I hate social media. [Laughs.] I hate having to pose. I know there’s all this book promo I should be doing, but god, it's so exhausting! So being able to have a separate book account from my real account is a method of separation. I don't check my book account as much, so I can forget about it, and my main account is just for me to talk to my friends.
SC: Were there any writing processes and or mindsets that needed to be adjusted after your debut novel experience?
JS: I started writing in 2020, and then (Chlorine) came out three years after. Being a writer was never really something I had imagined for myself, not because I didn't want it but because it was never a possibility presented to me. I was so taken aback by everything that happened with Chlorine that I was like, “I can write whatever I want!”
There is a big sense of freedom, I think, in writing (I Love You Don’t Die) because I have been set free by the fact that Chlorine was published, and it was this weird, angry body horror novel. I (also felt) like I was a better writer at that point (when writing I Love You Don’t Die) because I felt line-by-line, my sentences were stronger than in Chlorine. It was very fun and free.
SC: What have you learned about balancing your day job and your writing since publishing Chlorine?
JS: Before, when I was younger, it was a lot of pressure just to make something because I was like, “I have to prove to myself that I can do it.” Now, I understand who I am—and that is someone who will always be writing and making art. It's such an intrinsic part of me, that regardless of what's happening, I'm always going to turn to it.
SC: Can you tell us a bit more about creating the urn company Onwards, their mission, and the work Vicky does for them in marketing and PR?
JS: Vicky is a copywriter in PR, which means she essentially ideates and then writes the copy for big creative campaigns. I wanted to focus on this because I did work in it for several years—and still do.
Working in advertising and PR for so long, it felt like every corner of a person’s identity or personality was being co-opted to sell a product or to sell a higher aspiration of being. I was just really horrified. I kept thinking, is there anything that's left over, that's not being commodified into a product that we want to buy. (I thought) maybe natural forces like death, but then I started researching and no, actually, there are end-of-life planning startups. There's so much inequality in the funerary business as well. The fact that death is also being commodified—combined with the big emotions that death can bring—I found that very interesting.
SC: What kind of research did you do for I Love You Don’t Die? Were there any odd rabbit holes you went down related to death, death traditions, and the business of death?
JS: American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford was a big one. The Politics of Friendship by Jacques Derrida was a big help, too. It made me think about how friendship is a verb, and how to be a real friend is to also grieve because you're thinking about the life without the friend.
Learning about end-of-life planning startups was very interesting. (My research) definitely did bring me closer to some death organizations that I think are very cool, like Morbid Anatomy. I really like Postal Service for the Dead; they did something with a funeral home in New York, and you basically write letters to your dead.
SC: What’s this death-inspired writing prompt you’ll be bringing to your book events?
JS: I have this generative writing workshop that uses the fear of death as creative energy. I've really enjoyed teaching it because it offers people catharsis and a vulnerable space for people to think and write about death. It's also been fun sharing other writers who have written about death in creative ways because we also read their works.
I wanted to do something different for my book events. I love this event, Books and Burlesque, where they pair a burlesque dancer with a book. I wanted to do something more interactive and welcoming for my events. Also, if I’m the one who has to bear my heart at a book launch event, then you do, too. [Laughs.]
Published on March 17, 2026
Words by Sara Conway
Sara Conway is a Chinese American writer based in New York and Taiwan. A lover of a good story and a good song, Sara is the creator behind the bookstagram Lyrical Reads and the digital editor at EnVi Media. She also has published her writing in places like Timid Magazine, GRAMMY.com, and Clash Music. Although books are her number one love, you can always find her learning Mandarin, listening to K-pop, heading to another concert, or petting all the cats she sees.