Spice and Wolf - Volume 11 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It has been a while. This is Isuna Hasekura.

This is the eleventh volume, a collection of short stories—the second one so far.

Since I’ve written almost nothing but long works ever since my debut, I feel extremely unskilled when it comes to writing short stories. Also, all of my stories come from the same source, so I got it into my head that using a good idea on a short story was a waste and wound up not writing very many. But when I tried writing this one, I surprised myself. In particular, I found that depicting one of Lawrence’s and Holo’s ridiculous conversations from top to bottom was perfect for the short story format.

So the stories about Lawrence and Holo turned out very nicely. I will brook no complaints.

However, half of this volume is taken up by Eve’s story. Eve is the merchant who shows up in volumes five, eight, and nine. She was perfect for an idea I’d been wanting to use for a long time but just hadn’t found a place for, but the number of pages she took up kept increasing, and now here we are. So far we’ve seen her crafty, money-grubbing side, but this is a story from when she still hadn’t rid herself of her nobility. Personally, I think it’s interesting to go back and read her earlier appearances once you’ve read this story. Especially volumes eight and nine!

In any case, I’m an author who writes a lot of disposable side characters, but now that I’ve done Eve, I’m thinking of doing Norah next. Truth be told, I’d already written about a hundred and fifty manuscript pages of that before neglecting it. So maybe once that’s done, or…I have the plot worked out up to the climax, but…motivation…and sheep…

But I wrote steadily away, and thankfully the pages stacked up.

The next volume will be a long-form story. Hopefully it’ll be out just as the second season of the anime is at its peak!

—Isuna Hasekura