Before falling asleep, take a book into your hand, open to any page, and see cute animals, then fall asleep in peace. I wanted a book like that, so I wrote it myself. This is Isuna Hasekura.
I’m mostly joking, but it was a lot of fun writing an energetic girl as a main character.
But even I was surprised at how I decided on how our heroine, Myuri, was going to be. Because when I wrote the first short story in Spice & Wolf, Vol. 18: Spring Log, which is from the previous series to this one and out the same month, I had not written her directly yet, and I had no idea what her setting would be. The moment I indirectly portrayed her through a letter from her and Col, that was when she started to take shape. It’s hard to explain, but it felt like she was already there on the other side of the letter in the story.
There are many strange things is something I thought to myself as I started writing this book.
By the way, for those of you who have first encountered the world of Spice & Wolf with this novel, as this book is called New Theory Spice & Wolf, the main character Col appears in the middle of Spice & Wolf as a younger boy, and the heroine Myuri is the daughter of the two main characters in that series.
The world is the same, and the story takes place one generation later. It’s been said many times, but this is a work that anyone who hasn’t read the earlier series may enjoy as well. Still, do please read the previous one, too. I’m sure it will be much more interesting with that knowledge! And I am hoping to elaborate more on the world in a way that I could not in the original series. I am excited to do things I was not able to do. I hope you will accompany me!
And so I feel adventurous having started a new series, so I feel the need to write completely different stories, and like Myuri pulling a prank, I am scheming many things. If you see them out in the world somewhere, please smile for me.
Well then, I will see you in the next volume.
Isuna Hasekura