Character Spotlight — Leiliana

She didn't plan for any of this. That's what makes her impossible to look away from.

There are characters who arrive in a story fully formed — certain of themselves, certain of their direction, certain of exactly who they are. Leiliana Collins is not that character. And that is precisely why I wrote her.

Meet Leiliana

At twenty-five, Leiliana has built her life on forward momentum. She is charismatic and magnetic — the kind of person who walks into a room and quietly rearranges the energy in it without meaning to. She collects friends the way other people collect frequent flier miles: effortlessly, abundantly, without ever quite understanding how it happens. She is warm, adventurous, the kind of woman who thrives on the unfamiliar.

She is also afraid.

Not of risk. Not of a new city, a new job, a new language of streets to learn. She's moved before. She'll move again. That kind of change doesn't rattle her.

What rattles her is permanence.

Growing up watching a marriage dissolve will do that to a person. Leiliana carries the memory of that fracture quietly, under the laughter, under the charm, under the vintage dresses and the overflowing coffee cups and the Polaroid camera that documents everywhere she goes. She is exquisite at presence and deeply wary of staying.

So when she and Kanakami Mishada share a weekend in each other's orbit — something bright, something real, something she tells herself is nothing more than a beautiful coincidence — she walks away from it.

On purpose.

Because that's what you do when you're Leiliana Collins. You love the moment. You protect yourself from what comes after.

What She Didn't Account For

Fate has a particular cruelty — or perhaps a particular humor — when it comes to the people we decide to leave behind.

When Leiliana takes the position at Spherestone that she has worked for, sacrificed for, built herself piece by piece toward — the dream job in Fujiyako that finally feels like something hers — she walks into a building where Kanakami Mishada is waiting.

The story I wanted to write was never about whether Leiliana and Kanakami end up together. That, I'll let you discover on your own terms.

The story I wanted to write was about what happens when a woman who has spent her entire life choosing exit strategies is forced — by circumstance, by honesty, by the inconvenient fact of love — to choose differently.

To stay. To be known. To let someone share the weight she has always carried alone.

Leiliana's arc in Everything After is not about becoming a different person. It's about becoming more fully herself — which is, I'd argue, the more terrifying journey. You cannot hide from the version of yourself that finally stops running.

Why She Matters

I think we talk a great deal about romantic heroines in terms of what they want from love.

We talk less about what love asks them to give up — not in the sacrificial, self-erasing sense, but in the subtler sense. The protective mechanisms. The carefully constructed distance. The identity built around not needing anyone too much.

Leiliana is not a woman who needs saving. She is a woman who needs to decide — with full awareness of what it will cost — whether she is willing to be loved without conditions she controls. That is a different story. And it is the one I find most worth telling.

Everything After arrives Fall 2026.

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If you want to go deeper — into the architecture of this story, the emotional decisions behind it, and the characters who refused to behave themselves during drafting — I write about all of it in Letters from the Romance Conservatory.

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