The Astonishing Color of After(110)
Delilah Kwong fed me wine and chocolate and other treats, and kept me buoyed with constant love and excitement.
These badass women offered camaraderie and encouragement throughout the publishing process: Renée Ahdieh, Sona Charaipotra, Preeti Chhibber, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova, Sarah Nicole Lemon, Kaye (aka Karuna Riazi), and Marie Rutkoski.
Tiff Liao and Anica Mrose Rissi are magical beings of light who gave me crucial sanity checks, and always told me exactly what I needed to hear at exactly the right times.
Aisha Saeed, Joanna Truman, and Anna Jarzab are razor-sharp storytelling rock stars who were kind enough to read and give extensive comments on multiple drafts. Their texts and emails boosted me up when I needed it most.
Nova Ren Suma is one hell of a mentor and the greatest cheerleader, whose friendship and generosity have been so huge to me. I’m grateful for your amazing belief in me, and for your feedback early on that dug right down into the heart of my story. Thank you for your emails full of exclamation marks, and for making me feel like all this could ever be real.
Bri Lockhart is the eponym of Leigh and Axel’s apple orchard, as well as the gin to my tonic, the Nutella to my everything, my girl gang co-captain, and one of my very first champions. Thank you for reading that super-early draft on your vacation and messaging me about it from across the Atlantic Ocean.
Special thanks to my many aunts and uncles in Taiwan who helped with pinning down the details and logistics that went into my research and, in turn, this book. And to the rest of my extended family—thank you all so much for your love and support.
I’m grateful to my own waipo, the real Yuanyang, who I made into Leigh’s grandmother, and whose incredible life journey gave me the spark to begin this novel.
To my parents, Alex Pan and Beatrice Yu-Pan, I owe more thanks than there are words in all the languages combined. Thanks, Mama, for helping me find the line by Qing Dynasty scholar Sun Xingyan that’s printed on Leigh’s box of incense. Thanks, Baba, for staying up late to talk about superstitions and Ghost Month. Thank you both, for the battery-draining phone calls, and the millions of questions you answered as I was revising. Thank you most of all for supporting my wildest dreams.
Loren Rogers—my husband, best friend, partner in life—thank you for absolutely everything. For cooking all the meals and doing all the laundry and listening to every inane thought that bubbles out. For pushing me to chase this dream life. Thank you for believing in me, and letting me hear that belief so loud and clear. Thank you for every hug, every squeeze of the hands, every laugh, every reminder of how damn lucky I am that I picked the right night to go to Milk and Cookies. You inspire me every single day.