Frost Is Not Frost

Frost, Not a Pair Blurb One: In Chunxi Alley lived a young woman named Qingshuang. The “shuang” in her name meant frost, as in the sorrow of frost and dew, not “pair,” as in peerless and unmatched. When Qingshuang was still an infant, her name was Yishuang. Her father had been the noble and cherished Prince Duan of the Great Liang Kingdom, and her mother had been the most beautiful woman in all of Great Liang. She should have been the most carefree young woman in the royal city. Then, in a single night, everything changed, and she became the most unwanted person in the kingdom. Her mother sent her a fox-fur cloak, and Qingshuang, lost in a daydream, desperately hoped for an affection she had never known. What she didn’t realize was that her mother only wanted to use her as a convenient pawn. Mother and daughter would share one husband, and together they would claim the realm for themselves. Qingshuang had been raised to be frail and untalented. No matter how unwilling she was, all she could do was sit idly and weep. Fortunately, she met two benefactors destined to change her life. Her stepmother taught her how to muddy the waters and turn the tables, making clouds with one hand and rain with the other. A neighbor she had never even met felt an uncharacteristic pang of compassion, then saved her from disaster. Blurb Two: When she first met Song Congbei, she thought he was a burglar who had broken into the neighbor’s house. Why else would he be standing on the roof in the middle of the night, feeling the cold wind? By the time she saw him again, he had become a dishonest businessman who knew exactly what to say to anyone he met. Qingshuang assumed he was one of the countless ordinary people struggling to get by on a few silver coins. Little did she know that he took pleasure in it, or how much he had given up along the way. Who says a man has to harbor grand ambitions and make a name for himself? Studying for the civil service examinations, inheriting a title, and becoming an official were not his dreams. All he wanted was to stay home with his wife, warm himself by the hearth, and count his gold and silver. There was a truth of its own in such an ordinary life. Qingshuang smiled. He was, after all, someone who shared her ideals. All she wanted was a peaceful life, with nothing happening, plenty of free time, and enough work to earn a little money and support her family. Blurb Three: Liu Yi'an, young Master Liu, was a scholar who had emerged from obscurity after North Prefecture had waited more than a decade for someone like him. The first half of his life had gone so smoothly as to invite envy. Born into a merchant family, he passed the examinations at his first attempt. Though shy by nature, he and the woman he loved had fallen for each other and secretly pledged themselves to one another. He thought his life was complete. But after passing the examinations, he discovered that the ways of officialdom bore no resemblance to the principles he had read about in books. He could only struggle forward through the gap between ideals and reality. What he had thought was mutual love ended, at the final moment, with her shutting him out completely. He kept waiting, but in the end, all he learned was that she had chosen to be with the contemptible merchant everyone despised. Life was full of helpless turns. When they met again, she was trapped in a desperate situation and hoped he would come to her aid. Liu Yi'an sighed softly. Should he save her or not? Reader’s Guide: Happy ending / a little angst in the middle / fictional setting, no need to nitpick the historical details / no forced melodrama or golden finger / slice of life / a little inner-family scheming / the main cast are laid-back types [Looking back, my first book was truly awful. I’m so sorry to my readers; it was an absolute eyesore. I swear I’ll write a historical romance for my third book, and it’ll be much better than this one. TUT] Theme: Life is a knife, every cut ruthless; love lives forever, flourishing without end