A Nineteenth-Century Manor Maid

Please add my next novel, The Days I Was a “Nobody” at an American High School, to your reading list.

Blurb [updated daily]: She wakes up as a black-haired, yellow-skinned Asian maid in a Western aristocrat’s estate in the nineteenth century. She is the lowest-ranking servant in the manor, and she has no intention of staying a maid forever, with no freedom and everyone above her. Once she has saved enough money to get started on her own, she will quit and make her own living.

Duke Herman is thirty-eight, unmarried, from an illustrious family, and the owner of a vast estate and untold wealth. His status is exalted, and women throw themselves at him, hoping to become a duchess. He is also tall and imposing, with blond hair, blue eyes, and the striking features of an ideal Western gentleman, along with an air of noble refinement.

One day, he draws the petite, black-haired maid into his arms and gently coaxes her to stop crying.

Herman’s son Austin is seventeen, rebellious, and insolent. He looks down on anyone who tries to climb into bed with him or his father, or marry into the nobility. The maids on the estate are especially contemptible to him: vulgar, gold-digging playthings whom he feels no guilt about toying with. The short maid with black hair and black eyes is no exception.

One day, he unexpectedly discovers that the maid has grown close to his father. His father embraces the crying, black-haired maid in a secluded corner. Usually, his father dislikes her most of all, considering her ugly, filthy, and lowborn, and saying that even touching her would soil his hands. Now he is holding her in his arms. Austin is furious. He feels betrayed by his father, but also thinks that if she’s going to climb a social ladder, why climb his father’s instead of his? If she wanted, he could make her his woman and give her a noble status. They are the same age, while his father is already old and unsuited to her.

Content warning: No specific exclusions. Enter with caution if you need content warnings. Some place names are fictional.

Upcoming novel, The Days I Was a “Nobody” at an American High School: At fourteen, Ning Changqing is sent by her parents to study in the United States. She enrolls in an elite private American high school, where most of the students are white and there are very few Asians. She thinks she’s invisible at school, keeping her head down and out of trouble. In reality, the exact opposite is true: she’s a “star” among her classmates, everyone knows her, and plenty of boys secretly want to date her.

Upcoming novel, A Banker’s Maid in the Nineteenth Century: Nineteenth-century New York City is dazzling and extravagant, and the Wilsons are a banking dynasty, the elite of the elite. They have more money than they can spend, and nobody in New York dares to cross them.

Colin Wilson, who has taken over the family business, sees his brother Ian kissing the family’s Asian maid. He warns his brother not to get too serious and to treat it as a fling. Those women are all lowborn climbers, hoping to marry into wealth and rise above their station. The family will only allow him to marry a woman of equal standing.

That is why he looks down on the Asian maid too. He regards her with suspicion, convinced she is mercenary, money-hungry, and unable to recognize her lowly place.

Colin corners the maid in the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. Furious, he demands, “When are you going to make our relationship public?”

“Mr. Wilson, you’re twelve years older than me. You’re an elder, nothing more. There’s nothing between us. I’m your brother’s girlfriend, and I love Ian. A lowly maid like me could never aspire to marry a noble banker like you. Please behave yourself!” (A brothers-competing-for-the-same-woman story)

Upcoming novel, It’s Not Easy Being a Maid in the Kangxi Emperor’s Palace: She wakes up in the body of a kitchen maid in the Qianqing Palace, spending her days working in the palace kitchens. She has been in the palace for five years and has never even seen Kangxi.

At the New Year’s Eve banquet, Kangxi drinks too much and accidentally sleeps with a palace maid. That maid is the unlucky woman herself, but she wants to leave the palace and refuses to acknowledge what happened. So she has another maid who wants to become a mistress take her place. The other maid becomes a mistress, while she remains a kitchen maid.

The following New Year’s Eve, she stays stubbornly in the kitchen, afraid to wander around. But Kangxi suddenly summons everyone in the kitchens to the front hall, and she sees him again. Leaving the palace is no longer an option.

Theme: Stay strong and keep going when you face setbacks. Meet challenges head-on.