My Fondest and Fervent Hope: A Guest Post by Samantha Sotto Yambao
An unassuming Tokyo ramen shop contains a portal to another realm where customers can change their lives for the low price of one regret at a time. This is a breathtaking, magical story that feels like a dream. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Samantha Sotto Yambao on writing Water Moon.
Water Moon: A Novel
Water Moon: A Novel
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Hardcover
$25.99
$28.99
A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike fantasy novel.
A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike fantasy novel.
Sometimes, you step into a coffeeshop and walk out with a matcha latte. Other times, you hop and skip out with a strange, little idea cupped in your hands. The latter happened to me during a visit to Kyoto’s historical district before the pandemic shut the world down. Strolling along Ninenzaka Street’s stone-paved path felt like I had wandered into the past, but the bigger surprise came when I entered an old and traditional-looking house and found myself in a modern café. I knew at that moment that this feeling of being transported into some place completely unexpected was something that I wanted to capture in a book. What I didn’t know was what the book was going to be about. The answer to that question would come later during lockdown, when every cell in my body screamed to escape into a brighter reality.
The concept of an establishment that traded in regrets was born out of living in a city whose ubiquitous pawnshops became a lifeline for so many people during the pandemic. It made me think about the things people pawned and how these items were more than just objects. A wedding ring wasn’t just a band of gold. A watch handed down two generations wasn’t just a clever assembly of gears and springs. Beyond their monetary value, these items were physical representations of the choices and circumstances that led their owners to the pawnshop’s door. Merging these musings with the sense of wonder and surprise that I had felt in Ninenzaka became the seed for a story that would grow into Water Moon.
Water Moon’s original storyline is very different from the final story that readers will find in the book today. In the original, it is the magical pawnshop’s owner, Hana, who finds herself in our world when she embarks on a search for her missing father. I was a few chapters into the book when I realized that I had taken the wrong turn. My gut told me that the story had to take place in the world hidden behind the pawnshop’s door instead. The problem was, I was too terrified to turn around, walk back into the pawnshop, and write it.
All my previous books had been set in our world and trying my hand at full-fledged fantasy this late felt foolish. I knew in my heart, however, that Water Moon’s themes of choice and free will were best explored against a setting where there was an absence of them. This direction challenged me to imagine a world steered solely by “fate.” I had no idea how its magic system would work or that Hana and Kei could travel through puddles until the moment they jumped into one. When they dove in, I jumped in after them—and found myself on a journey to places both outside and inside of myself that I had never been to before. It’s my fondest and fervent hope that readers find themselves happily lost in Water Moon too.