posted by
mermaiden at 04:38pm on 29/05/2012 under fairy tales, jenn and me, love, novellas, sappho's fables, writing
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Two days after I told Jenn "I love you" for the first time, a thick envelope arrived in the mail. It was about five or six printed-out, neatly-folded pages of a novel she was working on, entitled White. It was intoxicating. Across the space and divide between us, words spanned and had begun to build a bridge. Through fiction, through poetry and music, two women who were many miles apart shared in a connection that was otherworldly. Our love began with stories, seeds planted from our heads and hearts that grew, invited, entwining across the space and divide to spiral our spirits together verdantly.
I read White laying on my stomach on my bed, the snow outside silent and hushed as I read over and over the pages of a novel that had bewitched me utterly. The tracker girl, Kyle, the mad-man and the castle and the quiet girl in search of a beast, and love growing between the girl who bore secrets and the girl who was skilled in finding them. It was weird. It was intense. It was fucking beautiful.
It was also never finished. And it broke my heart. Every day, I keep my unwavering hope and faith that someday, somehow, I will get to read that novel.
Jenn went to college for writing, and graduated with top honors, with accolades and whispered mentions of how great she had become, how much she would be able to accomplish with her fiction. And, after that, she stopped writing. There are many reasons, and it's heartbreaking, because for years and years, my wife wrote not a word.
Writers can not be forced, begged, cajoled or asked to change their writer's block or writing habits. They must choose when they decide, if they have been blocked, to pick up the pen or the laptop again. But I held the space for her, of how deeply I loved her writing, how it was a crime to humanity that she'd stopped, and how I hoped with every last part of my heart, that she would write again.
And then, Sappho's Fables came along. The only writing she'd done in this time was the old lesbian fairy tales we'd done together, and when we started talking about redoing them as a novella series...she was excited. I was ecstatic.
And so it went.
The first volume, I had two novellas, she had one. "Snow White," one of her favorite fairy tales, was retold. Some moments were painful (as anyone recovering from writer's block can attest), but as the days went by, as she went to the page, day in and out, everything else fell away. And my beautiful, amazing, beloved wife finished her first novella. Seven, a lesbian Snow White, is done, and will be released Thursday. <3 <3 <3
Today, I read the novella for the last time--the fully edited, feature-length motion picture edition, if you will. :) And I was floored.
I've known my whole life what an amazing writer my wife was. But all that I've known before is incomparable to what has come, now, to what has opened up within her, and what has begun. The novella is intoxicating. I have wished forever and forever and forever for a story about magic and beauty and pain and darkness, and for a story about a girl like me, with a love that could consume you, heart and soul. And, in every hope for such a thing, I have been disappointed. Nothing in the world is comparable to Seven, and that is an amazing, wondrous thing, because it is filling a hole that needed to be filled.
To be able to overcome something so serious as a writer's block that has lasted almost a decade, and to debut with something so incredibly beautiful, is an accomplishment that is deep and lovely. I am so proud of my wife, so proud to be her wife, so proud and humbled to work on these projects with her. <3
Seven was only the beginning. Now, the novel A Currency of Roses begins...a novel written by my wife that is going to forever shift the face of Gay YA. And who knows? Maybe Currency will, eventually, someday, lead to White.
I know I'm her wife. I know I'm supposed to be her biggest fan. I know you're probably thinking, "Sarah, that's sweet, but your opinion doesn't count and can't possibly be valid, as you're so close to her." But when you read Seven, you're going to understand. You'll see. <3
Until Thursday. <3
I read White laying on my stomach on my bed, the snow outside silent and hushed as I read over and over the pages of a novel that had bewitched me utterly. The tracker girl, Kyle, the mad-man and the castle and the quiet girl in search of a beast, and love growing between the girl who bore secrets and the girl who was skilled in finding them. It was weird. It was intense. It was fucking beautiful.
It was also never finished. And it broke my heart. Every day, I keep my unwavering hope and faith that someday, somehow, I will get to read that novel.
Jenn went to college for writing, and graduated with top honors, with accolades and whispered mentions of how great she had become, how much she would be able to accomplish with her fiction. And, after that, she stopped writing. There are many reasons, and it's heartbreaking, because for years and years, my wife wrote not a word.
Writers can not be forced, begged, cajoled or asked to change their writer's block or writing habits. They must choose when they decide, if they have been blocked, to pick up the pen or the laptop again. But I held the space for her, of how deeply I loved her writing, how it was a crime to humanity that she'd stopped, and how I hoped with every last part of my heart, that she would write again.
And then, Sappho's Fables came along. The only writing she'd done in this time was the old lesbian fairy tales we'd done together, and when we started talking about redoing them as a novella series...she was excited. I was ecstatic.
And so it went.

Today, I read the novella for the last time--the fully edited, feature-length motion picture edition, if you will. :) And I was floored.
I've known my whole life what an amazing writer my wife was. But all that I've known before is incomparable to what has come, now, to what has opened up within her, and what has begun. The novella is intoxicating. I have wished forever and forever and forever for a story about magic and beauty and pain and darkness, and for a story about a girl like me, with a love that could consume you, heart and soul. And, in every hope for such a thing, I have been disappointed. Nothing in the world is comparable to Seven, and that is an amazing, wondrous thing, because it is filling a hole that needed to be filled.
To be able to overcome something so serious as a writer's block that has lasted almost a decade, and to debut with something so incredibly beautiful, is an accomplishment that is deep and lovely. I am so proud of my wife, so proud to be her wife, so proud and humbled to work on these projects with her. <3
Seven was only the beginning. Now, the novel A Currency of Roses begins...a novel written by my wife that is going to forever shift the face of Gay YA. And who knows? Maybe Currency will, eventually, someday, lead to White.
I know I'm her wife. I know I'm supposed to be her biggest fan. I know you're probably thinking, "Sarah, that's sweet, but your opinion doesn't count and can't possibly be valid, as you're so close to her." But when you read Seven, you're going to understand. You'll see. <3
Until Thursday. <3
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