You Must Fall In Love

To The Author

Why on Earth did you write this book?

Well, for one thing, I was getting annoyed at my inability to write a book, but that's usually how things happen these days. No, that's not the right question. Perhaps we should try again.

How did you come to write this book?

A better question, by which of course I mean an easier one. This story began when a lovely old lady told me about her experiences as a second wife. The practice was common across the Chinese mainland and diaspora well into the twentieth century, and some say that polygamy still continues in not-so-plain sight even in our own enlightened era. Polygamy is also closer to my generation than it would be to many of yours — one of my great-grandmothers, I'm told, was the third of three wives, and therefore the least. Needless to say, none of these marriages were happy ones, and it was here that I began to suspect that the human heart only really had room for one person at a time. It's something that most of us take for granted in this age, but old ladies have a certain way of bringing reality into focus.

Polygamy turns wives into weapons and the marriage bed into a battlefield. It destroys female dignity and encourages marital abuse. Then again, I suppose none of the wives particularly wanted to be married. It was simply how things were done at the time. They were set up by a matchmaker, given away for a dowry, and once they were married they forfeited all ties to their birth family, becoming the unpaid servants of their husband and his parents. A modern woman would simply refuse.

But what if the situation were inverted, so that the hapless bride-to-be, a thoroughly modern and thus gormless specimen, had to choose one of many suitors?

What if there was powerful magic behind her fate, and a mother who could see the future?

What if she had to fall in love?

Why romance? Aren't you a guy?

I like entering into the hearts and minds of my characters, and for some reason romance seems to be the only genre where you can have your characters do nothing but brood, argue, and talk past each other for three hundred pages, while leaving your audience perfectly happy.

(The other genre where you can also do this, modern literary fiction, has the distinct and curious quality of leaving no-one very happy.)

I also adore the animated films of Studio Ghibli, specifically Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata's, which almost always feature female protagonists. Their lovingly rendered, strong-willed but thoroughly girlish heroines were a great inspiration to me.

Besides, I read entirely too much shoujo manga growing up. Think of this series as Fruits Basket meets Sailor Moon, giving each other sideways glances on a Ferris wheel somewhere.

What about the next book? Cliffhanger much?

I'm glad you asked. Please, turn the page.