THIS HAPPENED TO ME

Confession of a Former Romance Novelist

If I don’t share it now, then when?

Josephine Crispin
6 min readOct 20, 2024

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Image by Bing Naranjo from Pixabay

FOREWORD: People who knew me, especially friends and extended family, had often asked why I have not written about my own love story. This was during the time when I was writing romance novellas one after the other, published the conventional way by various Philippine publishers from 1985–2011.

My answer was always reticent, “I only write fiction, the romantic fairy tale type.”

That was not a lie.

Now, however, I am ready to tell it as it is.

Mail-Order Bride

Mainstream media invented the term mail-order bride.

This was in the 1980s.

Men from the West sought wives from the East.

These men were of a certain age, in all shapes, colors and civil statuses — single, divorced and even married. They fancied Southeast Asian women who were nubile and younger than them.

They preferred women from the Philippines because, according to them based on interviews, most could speak English. They also believed that Asian wives were obsequious to their husbands.

Pitching this controversial issue to my

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Josephine Crispin
Josephine Crispin

Written by Josephine Crispin

Writes about writing, nature, animals, the environment, social issues and spirituality. Editor and published author of romance novellas amongst other genres.

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