Come by Night 3: Kitsune No Yomeiri

Afterword

It was a warm summer night in 2019 when I conceived of Isamu and Hotaru. Playing around on an Instagram comment thread with Lila Mina, I described how my inner kitsune would seduce my favorite character from her Temper series. This became the seed of Come by Night, and within a week I was crafting the reason the wicked fox wanted fair Yuki — she was the reincarnation of his beloved.

Since I already have a white fox yōkai in The Atlas Dystopia Apocalyptica, I needed a reason for writing this, besides accruing the interest of a Western audience in a subject I loved. I chose to give Kohaku a voice, a lesser known character in my first book, The Origin of the White Wind. If she knew Hayate, and happened to be a writer herself, it was conceivable that she might develop such a fantasy, the kind of guilty-pleasure novellas that would make my Book Four love interest blush if anyone knew she was reading them.

I haven't decided if I will continue the modern incarnation of Kohaku's tale, but I will write her story of how she met and had an adventure with Hayate, leading to the writing of Come by Night in their world, my first and only PNR. And, of course, there will be mention of this series in Book Four.

I hope you have enjoyed Come by Night as much as I have the writing of it. I never expected a simple conversation to evolve in a novelette, much less a trilogy, but I can't imagine a world in which I didn't write this charming little nest egg in the greater TADA universe. Thank you for joining me on Isamu and Hotaru's journey.

Xander Cross, October 21, 2020