True Love author Andrea Bolter talks to us all about the inspiration behind her newest novel, His Convenient New York Bride.
I’m delighted to visit here and talk about my new release His Convenient New York Bride. I loved writing this book and I hope you find my enthusiasm on every page.
After a couple of books about European royalty, I was ready to return to my home, the US. I also wanted to do a brother’s best friend story. Because I have only a younger sister, I remember as a teenager wishing for an older brother who could bring interesting guys home! I began to create Jin Zhang as that best friend, the kind who’s always sitting at your kitchen table talking to your mother while she bakes his favorite muffins, of which he eats six.
For Mimi Stewart, Jin was that elusive, mythical, magical, smokin’ hot creature known as the brother’s best friend. What she never let show, not then and not later as they remained close into adulthood, was that she was in love with him.
Bound by family duty to the grandfather he admired, Jin had to pick up the pieces left behind by his reckless, recently deceased father. One of the requirements in doing so was that he had to remarry, something he swore never to do after his ex-wife’s betrayal. Luckily, good ol’ Mimi, herself coming off of a breakup, would enter into a phony marriage with him. They were pals after all, there’d be no emotional risk there. Right? Wink, wink.
I’d also been thinking about writing a book that took place in the fashion world. Not Paris runways, but I had the idea of a family-run fashion label sold in exclusive boutiques. So New York seemed like the right location for that story. But when I did some research into New York’s fabled Garment District I learned that it didn’t really exist anymore, the neighborhood having gone the way of luxury apartments and famous-name coffee shops. That was due to the fact that most clothing in the US is no longer made in the US. Some of the fashion scene had moved down to Chinatown in lower Manhattan. Since I had originally envisioned Jin as a Chinese-American, reflecting the diversity in the big cities I’ve always lived in, setting the story in Chinatown was a nice fit.
Another thing I discovered was that Spring New York Fashion Week, one of the most important events in that industry, often coincided with Lunar New Year, the most observed holiday on the Chinese calendar. I set the story during that time period, so I could take readers from fashion shows to colorful parades to delicious food and time-honored traditions.
And in between all of the sights and sounds and smells and tastes, we watch as two people find a love that is always in fashion.
