Fiona Fisher thought she had it all: a loving husband, three kids, and a life far away from the suffocating expectations of her family. But when her husband reveals that he’s leaving her for his secret second family, Fiona is left devastated and humiliated.
Satoshi Tsukamoto wants it all. He’s the owner of a popular wine bar, and he’s studying for the hardest test in the world: the Master Sommelier exam. There aren’t enough hours in the day for anything else – except maybe Fiona, his favourite customer, and the woman he’s head-over-heels in love with.
On paper, Fiona and Satoshi make no sense. He’s eight years younger than her and has no time for romance. She’s a single mother and doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to trust anyone again. But how can Fiona resist when Satoshi suggests they give into their mutual attraction to let off some steam? And how can Satoshi resist when the woman he adores is finally within his grasp – even if they’ve agreed to keep things casual?
Q&A
Congratulations on the publication of A Study in Sparkling! We both adored An Academic Affair and were excited see the sequel was in the works so soon after the first book in the series. How did writing book two compare to writing book one?
A Study in Sparkling was easier in some ways than An Academic Affair, and more difficult than others. It was easier in that I already had a strong sense of who Fiona and Satoshi were: because I set them up in An Academic Affair, I knew who they were going in (especially Fiona, who plays such a significant role in that book). However, they were more difficult because they’re both further away from who I am in terms of my life and my experiences. Sadie and Jonah both have the same job as me, so I instinctively understood where they’d been, the kind of things they faced, and how they thought. Fiona and Satoshi required some more research and thinking to really get a handle on the intricacies of how they ticked.
Through your PhD and academic career, you are quite literally a doctor of romance! What are the most important ingredients when it comes to building a realistic romance between two characters like Fiona and Satoshi, who might not make a lot of sense on paper, but have sparkling (pardon the pun) chemistry?
One of my favourite things to do as a writer is take a high-concept premise that might seem ridiculous on paper, and then sell it by making it feel as real and grounded as possible. In An Academic Affair, that was the marriage of convenience; in A Study in Sparkling, it’s what Fiona’s been through – having your husband leave you for a secret second family you knew nothing about isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence.
My first step in writing Fiona was thinking about how that would feel. You would be angry, of course, and you would be devastated – but what really unlocked her character for me was realising just embarrassing it would be. That’s where she is emotionally at the beginning of the book: because everyone knows what’s happened to her, she experiences just about every interaction as a form of humiliation.
That is a tough place from which to jump into a new relationship, so I knew I had to pair her with someone very patient and very kind: there was no universe in which I could put her in, say, an enemies-to-lovers dynamic, when she’d already been through so much. Fiona needed, before anything else, a friend – someone she could trust to be an oasis from that constant state of embarrassment.
The struggle, then, was to not to make Satoshi too perfect: he had to feel like a real person instead of just a manic pixie wine boy. To do that, I tried to think about the dark side of all the things that make him right for Fiona. His anxieties around being taken seriously turned out to be the way in for me there – it’s something he experiences in his professional life, and, as he’s eight years younger than Fiona and at a bit of a different life stage, it colours the way he approaches their relationship as he desperately tries to be everything she needs.
TL;DR: these are two very lovely, very kind people trying very hard to do the right thing by each other – and that was a fun challenge to derive narrative conflict from.
In A Study in Sparkling, it’s Fiona’s time to shine, despite her insecurities about finding love again as a single mum in her mid 30s, dealing with a massive family upheaval. What do you hope women like Fiona will take away from that kind of representation?
Fiona’s husband really did a number on her, the poor thing: not only did he profoundly humiliate her, he really damaged her capacity for trust. How can you begin to trust someone again when the person you thought loved you the most reveals such an immense betrayal to you?
What I wanted to make clear throughout the book was that this wasn’t something Fiona somehow deserved or had brought on herself: she’s wonderful, just as she is, and she deserves to be seen and treasured without needing to be any more or less. If readers take something away from her journey in this book, I hope it’s that: your worth is not defined by the way other people treat you, and someone doing something awful to you isn’t your fault.
In our podcast interview last year about book one, you spoke about the need to avoid writing Satoshi as a ‘manic pixie wine boy’. In book two, we dive further into Satoshi’s backstory and personality. How did you approach writing his point of view chapters?
Because Fiona is on such shaky ground, the real temptation with Satoshi was – as I wrote above – to make him too perfect. But there are two people in a relationship, not a person and a fantasy of one, so making sure a) Satoshi had flaws and b) they were crucial, rather than merely incidental, to the narrative was key. He’s innately such a beautiful person, but he’s also both very ambitious and very anxious, which drive a lot of his decisions.
And much as I thought about what Fiona needed in a partner, I also thought about what Satoshi needed in one – why was he so drawn to her? That answer is ultimately threaded through his backstory: after being constantly uprooted in his childhood, he craves security, stability, and the feeling of home. Fiona comes to represent that dream for him – and he wants it so badly that he twists himself into some pretty unfortunate pretzels over it.
There were some complicated relationships in this book, even outside of the central romance. Characters in this novel also demonstrate their love in different ways, whether it’s grand gestures, or small moments of solidarity. What were your favourite relationship dynamics to explore in the novel?
Sibling relationships inflect this whole series, so I loved writing the sibling relationships in this book – Fiona with her brothers Jonah and Elias; Satoshi with his brother Isamu – but there were two other key relationships that I absolutely delighted in digging into.
The first was Fiona with Sadie, her sister-in-law. Fiona was desperately in need of another woman to talk to, and if you’ve read An Academic Affair you’ll know that Sadie’s been in need of friends, so building out their relationship and finding ways for these two women to be there for each other was such a joy.
And the other was Fiona with her oldest child, Lex. Lex is mostly a quiet and fairly restrained child, but they’ve been deeply affected by being abandoned by their father. The scene where that all boils over and we get to see just how deeply Fiona loves them was one of my favourite to write in the whole book – for its own sake, but also because of what a turning point it represents for them both.
Can you give us any hints on book three – I am assuming a certain other Fisher sibling might be taking centre stage?
I do have plans to write about a certain other Fisher sibling eventually, but they’re not next on the agenda! Instead, Sadie’s sister Chess will be taking centre stage – and if you read An Academic Affair and (especially) A Study in Sparkling and look closely, you just might work out who she’s going to be partnered with. 😉.
A Study in Sparkling is out now through Simon & Schuster Australia.
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