SeaHeart

This is the first morning since getting sick that I feel better/more like myself. HUZZAH! This means that The Tea Spell IS getting finished today. *smiles widely at novel as it squeaks into hiding behind the couch*

ALSO, BEFORE I START WAXING PHILOSOPHICAL-LIKE, the Fable Tribe update has been postponed because it is very hard to wield a paintbrush and glue when fevered! Look for it this coming Monday, April 16th! <3

So yes! Things have gotten slightly crazy. It's called the "snowball effect," and that's what The Dark Wife has hit. Self pubbers talk about it in hushed and hallowed tones, this "critical mass," because it means that the book can move completely independently of you now. The Dark Wife has ALWAYS consistently sold, and it's always been well received, and how much this has happened has climbed every single month in a nice, tidy upward curve, but ladies and gentlemen--in the past week, something glorious and wonderful has happened to it every single day, and it's selling A GREAT DEAL this month. (My articulation is amazing, I know.) This took almost an entire year of careful marketing and putting the word out there, but it's finally reached critical mass where it can propel itself forward on its own merit. It's a finalist in the Golden Crown Literary Awards (holycrapholycrapholycrapJOYFOREVER), and more people than ever are talking about it.

I kind of just want to lay down in the middle of the living room and just say "thank You" eleventy billion times in a row. It took a long time to get here. There are a LOT Of challenges involved in self publishing a lesbian YA book. But almost a year has gone by (eleven months!), and everything Jenn and I have worked for is blossoming in the ways we had always hoped and prayed it would.

And it's reaching critical mass.

I've worked so long and so hard for this, tirelessly, and I'm not going to stop working. This is the time that, when I release these next few novels in these next few months, the critical mass could explode in the very, very best of ways. I'm just so grateful and so happy and so OMG I CAN SEE THE LIGHT I can hardly speak~

I'm a full time author doing what other people have said, tirelessly repeating forever, would never, ever work, and would never, ever sell. I write lesbian novels, and lesbians love them, non-lesbians read them, too. I have faced prejudice and continue to face it every single day, and I thank the Goddess that She installed a thicker skin when I began this venture, but the rewards have far, far, far outweighed any of the negatives. I receive so many emails, much more frequently than the negatives, asking me to keep on keeping on, that what I wrote changed someone for the better.

It's a strange, marvelous, completely out-of-this-world place to be in. People are reading my stories about courageous young ladies who love other ladies. I know, sometimes, I'm a little speechless about that. "But, Sarah!" you wager, "you thought they'd sell." Yes, I did. I believed it. But seeing the evidence is like being a unicorn tracker all your life never seeing a unicorn, and then finding an entire fricken' field of them, with rainbow tails and manes and all.

I work very, very hard to live this life, but--at the end of the day--this is the life I am living: my passion for stories about queer girls that empower them have been well received and loved and I have fans and my life-long wish to put out these stories has been cheered and people continue to buy my outrageous-no-one-said-they-would-EVER-in-a-million-years-sell books about young ladies who love other young ladies and I am so fucking grateful, I will never, ever, ever have the words because WHAT THE HELL, AM I LIVING IN NARNIA OR SOMETHING, HOLY SHIT, I AM A FULL TIME LESBIAN AUTHOR OF LESBIAN THINGS.

Wow.

Dreams come true.

<3