Bridget Asher

From a Q & A with Bridget Asher about her new novel, The Pretend Wife:

Random House Publishing Group: Your fiction explores unconventional twists on relationships-in The Pretend Wife, for example, your heroine decides to spend the weekend with an old flame as his spouse even though she is already married. Where do you get your ideas, and what's your personal view on family dynamics?

Bridget Asher: I never thought I'd be a wife, frankly. Never dreamed of my wedding day. And so the term "the pretend wife" has come to me over the years quite naturally. I sometimes still don't feel like a wife-the term itself is so wifey! But I've always been fascinated by love and the construct of marriage. I married for love but it's fascinating how we watch our friends and family sometimes marry for some other reason-safety, normalcy, acceptance. But the idea of love doesn't go away in these cases. It still exists. I wanted to explore the true love that got away. I wanted to write a love story about that love, and that's where The Pretend Wife came from.

Plus, we all have the beau who got away ... and have always wondered: What if?

I'll also confess: I've never wanted to have a fling, but I have wanted to have whole other lives. Maybe I'm not alone in this. Maybe this is part of the pleasure of writing and reading novels-we get to know what it is to live other lives.[read on]

Visit Bridget Asher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue