Sarah Ettritch's Blog

The Rymellan series is back with more lesbian science fiction and romance. Decisions, the latest installment in the series, contains four stories. Two of them feature new main characters.

Love Dismissed features Sheila and Ruth, a same-oriented couple (we’d call them lesbian) we met in Disobedience Means Death.

The Killing of Lieutenant Christine Leeds features the officer who sexually harassed Lesley in the story Intervention. When I started the story, I wanted to know why Leeds would so blatantly violate the Way and what happened to her when she was sent to the adult wing of the Indoctrination Academy. Once I started writing, the story went beyond that. In fact, it turned into a novel-length story.

Identity Crisis is about the triad having its first child. I had already published this story as a standalone eBook. I’ve folded it into Rymellan 4 to avoid confusion, and so that it can finally be available in print. The standalone book is no longer available.

Family Comes First features the triad. I wouldn’t release a Rymellan volume without at least one new story about Lesley, Mo, and Jayne. In this story, Lesley is having problems at work, Mo suspects Ann of cheating on Andrew, and Jayne receives a shocking letter.

You can find out more details about the book — longer story descriptions and buy links — by clicking here.

The eBook version is available now. The print version will be out in late September / early October.

The post New Release: Decisions (Rymellan 4) appeared first on Sarah Ettritch - Lesbian Fiction Author.

Love Me for Me, a sweet lesbian romance novel, is now available at online bookstores.

Here’s a short blurb (a longer one is on the book’s page):

Erin Hunt is the heir apparent to her father’s real estate company. Activist Lily Altree leads a grassroots group that often opposes real estate developments, including those of Aaron Hunt, Erin’s father. When Erin goes undercover and joins Lily’s group, their two worlds collide. What neither of them counts on is falling in love. Will their love survive when Lily finds out who Erin really is?

The eBook is available now. I hope to have print available by the end of October, but with shipping delays due to the pandemic, it might take a bit longer.

All my books are also available to libraries. If your library doesn’t have a book you want to read, ask the librarian to order it. This applies to both eBook and print.

Now I’ll turn my attention to my next book. If you’re on my mailing list, you’ll know that it’s a book in the Rymellan series. I’m sharing details about the stories the book will include with my list, so if you’re not a subscriber, consider signing up now.

Happy reading!

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Long time, no post. I didn’t have much to say in 2020, given how atypical a year it turned out to be. I’ll have a bit more to say in 2021. But first, if you’re reading this via email, I have important information for you. I use a Google service called Feedburner for my RSS feed. The email subscription feature is going away, which means that as of July 1st, you will no longer receive an email when I post to my blog.

Subscribing to my email list (the one I own, not Feedburner’s) is the best way to keep up with what I’m doing. If you’re already on my email list, you should have received an email with the subject line: April Update: My Books Are Going to the Moon! If you didn’t receive that email (check your spam folder and promotions tab), you’re not on the list. Over the years, I’ve changed email providers a few times, and whenever I do, I ask subscribers to re-subscribe. If you thought you were on my list but you aren’t, maybe you didn’t receive one of those emails.

When you subscribe to my email list, you’ll receive a free prequel story to The Salbine Sisters.

If you’re reading this through an RSS reader, you don’t have to do anything. However, given how Google often kills projects (remember Google Plus and Google Reader?), it’s possible that Feedburner will eventually go away.

I’m sending the Rymellan Series to the moon on the Peregrine lander (Astrobotics Technology) due to blast off in Q4 of this year. I described how this came about in the April update email to my list. The short version is that indie author Susan Kaye Quinn bought space on the lander (it’s a commercial mission) and gave other authors a chance to tag along. While I’ve included several of my books in the payload, Disobedience Means Death, the first book in the Rymellan Series, is my main book and will appear in the payload’s manifest.

Right now, the book is on sale for $2.99, but will be going back up to $6.99 soon. If you haven’t read it, now would be a good time to pick it up.

I’ve completed the first draft of a lesbian romance that I’ll release later this year. I don’t have much to say about it yet, but watch this space.

That’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted on the moon mission, the romance, and my next project, which I’ll announce in a few months.

Stay safe!

The post A Long Overdue Update appeared first on Sarah Ettritch - Lesbian Fiction Author.

It has been a long time coming, but the sequel to The Salbine Sisters is finally available. The story picks up six years later, when Emmey is about to turn fourteen and must leave the monastery.

Salbine’s Embrace is a lesbian fantasy novel with many lesbian main characters. I don’t want to repeat what’s on the book’s page, so I’ll just direct you there.

I’m working on the print version, which I hope to have available around the end of September/early October. Print can take a while because I have to receive a physical proof from the printer via snail mail. My printer is in the US, and there can be delays at the border.

Have a great weekend!

The post Lesbian Fantasy: Salbine’s Embrace appeared first on Sarah Ettritch - Lesbian Fiction Author.

Rose and Nora, a story about how Rose and Nora got together and what happened to their relationship after the events in The Salbine Sisters, is now available.

After editing the story, it clocked in at about 22,000 words. Because it begins when Maddy is away from the monastery travelling to Heath, we get to see how the news of Maddy’s fate affected the friends she left behind.

Rose and Nora is available at the usual online bookstores. Click here for more information.

Salbine’s Embrace, the sequel to The Salbine Sisters, is on track for a late August/early September release.

The post Rose and Nora – a Salbine Sisters story appeared first on Sarah Ettritch - Lesbian Fiction Author.

Almost nine years ago, I released the novel The Salbine Sisters. The novel was received well, and I’ve often been asked if there will be a sequel. I always said, “I’m open to one. If a decent story comes along, I’ll write it.”

The story came along.

I’m pleased to tell you that I’ve written the sequel, titled Salbine’s Embrace. I’m currently editing the novel, and I expect to release it in late August/early September. I’ll tell you more about it between now and then. For now, I’ll just say that the novel opens six years after the end of The Salbine Sisters, when Emmey is about to turn fourteen and has to leave the monastery.

But that’s not all the news I have about the sisters at the Merrin monastery. Because the sequel takes place six years after the first book, we don’t get to see what happened to Rose and Nora’s relationship. At the end of The Salbine Sisters, Rose tells Maddy that she and Nora became involved while Maddy was away. By the time Salbine’s Embrace opens, their relationship has either flourished or fizzled. Maddy gets us up to speed the first time she sees them, but she doesn’t offer any details because it’s all water under the bridge at that point.

I thought it would be interesting to write the story of how Rose and Nora became a couple and what happened to them after the end of The Salbine Sisters, like I did with Playing With Fire, which contains a more detailed account of how Maddy and Lillian got together,

Rose and Nora is a novella (about 21,000 words). It will be available in bookstores sometime in July.

That’s all for now. Happy Pride!

The post Announcing Salbine’s Embrace appeared first on Sarah Ettritch - Lesbian Fiction Author.

I’ve given my website a complete makeover, and as part of that, I’ve renamed the blog to News. Blog implies ongoing content. While I’ll continue to post here, I won’t do so on a schedule, so I thought News would be a more appropriate label for the blog page.

The new design has a splash of lavender and doubles down on the lesbian fiction aspect of my work. If I ever decide to write a mainstream novel (no lesbian characters in sight), I’ll do it under a pen name. I’ll stick to lesbian fiction under my real name. It’s where my heart is.

The site’s design is very simple. For the first time, I paid
a lot of attention to how it looks on mobile devices. Until the last year or
so, I hadn’t used my smartphone to access the Internet very much, so I didn’t
have a clear idea of how people typically use their phones. I didn’t understand
the importance of things like large buttons. Now I know what frustrates me when
I’m on my phone. I’ve kept my site simple.

I also blew away all the existing blog articles. Many of them were years old, so I decided to start fresh. I saved the more interesting ones and might occasionally post one.

If you’re on my email list, you’ll already know what I’ve been working on for the past several months. I’ll talk about it publicly when I’ve finished the first draft, which I’m hoping to do by the end of this month.

I touch base with my email list once a month, which is more than I’ll post here on the blog. If you haven’t joined my email list yet, you can do so here. You’ll receive a copy of Playing With Fire, which is a prequel to The Salbine Sisters.

Have a happy rest of the week!

In my last post, I talked about rebooting my email list and giving away Playing With Fire, a prequel story to The Salbine Sisters, to subscribers.

The list is now open for business! If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here:

Subscribe to the new list

As I said in the email I sent to readers on the old list informing them about the transition, I’ll stay in touch between releases, but I won’t bombard you with emails. You’ll get a “touching base” email about once a month, an email when I release a book, and I’ll also let you know when I’m running a discount on one of my books.

You’ll also receive a series of emails introducing you to me and my books. I send you six emails (I think) that talk about the Salbine world, how I started reading epic fantasy—that sort of thing.

For the around-once-a-month emails, I intend to talk about what I’m working on, how I’m progressing, stuff I think would be of interest to readers, etc. I’ll send the first monthly email in early April. They won’t be long emails.

That’s it for now. The novel I’m working on is progressing nicely. If I’m more than halfway through the first draft in early April, readers on my list will find out more about the novel. Generally I don’t talk about first drafts while I’m writing them, but I’ve decided to relax that policy on my list. It’s a little less public than my blog.

Have a wonderful weekend!

In my Welcome to 2019 post, I mentioned that I’ve written a prequel story to The Salbine Sisters. I also said that I want to reboot my mailing list. When I started it, I promised subscribers that I would only send an email when I release a new book. I didn’t want to send readers emails they don’t want. But I’m not a prolific writer. I don’t release a book a month, or even a book every six months. Because of that, my subscribers might not hear from me for months, or maybe even a year.

Long gaps between emails isn’t ideal. It affects the deliverability of my emails. Plainly speaking, it means email services like GMail might decide not to deliver my email to someone, or to put it into their spam folder. Readers who want the emails might not receive them. Not emailing for a while also means that people might forget who I am, or even that they signed up for my list.

I’d like to send out a monthly email, even if it’s just to say, “Hi, remember me, here’s a link to someone else’s free book” or “Here’s some information about such-and-such that might interest you as a reader.” I can’t do that right now. It would break the promise I made to my subscribers.

If you’re on a few mailing lists, you’ll remember last year
when the European GDPR rules came into effect and you received a bunch of “I
need to make sure you really want to be on my list, so click here” emails. I
didn’t do anything about my list at the time because I’ve always followed the
rules. But because my list has been around for a while now, and because I’d
like to send a monthly email, I’m going to ask readers on my list to re-subscribe.

(And here’s a detail you probably won’t care about: I’ll
also be changing email service providers, which is where the new list will
live.)

As part of this, I’m going to give away a prequel story to The Salbine Sisters to everyone who subscribes to the new list. I might eventually upload the story to the bookstores, but not for at least six months. For a while, the only way the story will be available will be by signing up for my list.

What’s the story about? Well, in The Salbine Sisters, Maddy has a conversation with her friend Rose about how she and Lillian ended up in bed together. Background info: Mistress Lillian is teaching Maddy how to draw fire. She warned Maddy that she might feel light-headed when she drew…

Maddy snorted as she pulled Rose away from the trees and up
the path that led to the inner courtyard. She’d visit her other spots later;
she preferred to be alone when she fed her furry friends. “I did more than
sway.” Fortunately Lillian had been prepared. “I almost fainted, and would have
ended up on the floor if the mistress hadn’t caught me.”

“Did she get angry?” Rose asked, her eyes wide.

“No. I grabbed onto her to steady myself.” Lillian’s rough
robe had scratched her hands. “And I looked up at her, and she looked at me,
and I don’t know why, but . . . I kissed her. Or she kissed me. Or we kissed
each other. I don’t know, we just kissed.”

“Mistress Lillian!”

“Yes.” And they hadn’t stopped at one kiss. The lesson, the
training room, everything had faded away as they’d melted into each other.
They’d briefly come to their senses when they’d started to unbutton their robes
and remembered where they were. “We ended up in my bedchamber, and that’s where
we’ve ended up after every lesson since.”

“Mistress Lillian?”

“Will you stop saying that, please?”

“Sorry,” Rose murmured. “You’ve certainly kept it quiet.”

“As I said, I wasn’t sure what the mistress wanted.”

“You, obviously.” Rose grinned, then yelped when Maddy
playfully slapped her arm. “Though are you sure you’re not part of some
experiment?”

She hoped not.

“I didn’t think Mistress Lillian had,” Rose lowered her
voice, “those sorts of needs.”

Maddy could personally vouch that she did.

“But she does like to do experiments, or so I’ve heard,”
Rose added.

“Maybe she does.” She’d heard the same, and wished she could
hear it from Lillian herself. “But I’m not part of an experiment.”

Rose grunted, looking unconvinced. “What do you think will
happen, now that everyone knows?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. “I hope she’ll still see me.”

Rose stopped and faced her. “You like her! As more than a
friend, I mean.”

Maddy nodded. “But I don’t know how she feels.” She bit her
lip. “Do you think I’m foolish?”

“No. You can’t control who you like in that way.”

“Oh, so if I could control it, then you’d think I’m
foolish,” Maddy said ruefully.

“I didn’t say that,” Rose said with a laugh, slipping her
arm through Maddy’s again. “I just hope the mistress likes you in the same way
you like her.”

She fervently hoped so, too. Her next lesson should be
interesting—though it could turn out to be disappointing and humiliating if
Lillian made it clear that she’d return to her own chambers when it finished.

That scene from The Salbine Sisters is the inspiration for the prequel story. Called Playing With Fire, it’s a more detailed account of how Maddy and Lillian ended up in bed together. Here’s the blurb:

After devoting herself to the goddess Salbine for three years, Sister Maddy of the Salbine Order is ready to take the next step to becoming a true sister. Maddy is excited about learning how to manipulate the elements of fire, air, water, and earth, but her excitement turns to dismay when she finds out who will tutor her: Mistress Lillian, a powerful mage who has no time for initiates. Maddy arrives at her first lesson expecting to be shouted at for the most trivial of mistakes.

Maddy survives her lesson and expects the next one to follow a similar pattern, but she couldn’t be more wrong. By the end of her second lesson, Maddy is playing with fire in more ways than one.

If you’re on my mailing list, you’ll receive an email, hopefully by mid-February, that will tell you about the email reboot and where to subscribe to the new list. As soon as you re-subscribe, you’ll receive the story. If you’re not on my mailing list but you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here (you’ll go on the old list and receive the email everyone else will receive about re-subscribing), or you can wait until the new list is ready to receive subscribers. I’ll post here when it’s open for business.

Right now I’m preparing the eBook files and setting up the new list. The novel I’m writing is also trucking along okay.

Enjoy your weekend!

The Salbine Sisters Prequel is a post from: Sarah Ettritch

I wrote my last blog post all the way back on August 17th. I ended it by saying, “Life is settling down, so I’ll finally get back to writing.” Oh, how I wish! If only I were able to travel back in time and tell my earlier self, “Enjoy the next couple of months, because major shit is about to hit the fan.”

Once again, I’m reminded of the famous quote by John Lennon:
Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.

I’ll look back on 2018 as a year of significant changes,
some good, some terrible, some planned, some thrust upon me.

After I wrote that post, I did start to write again, but I
found it difficult to get back into the creative groove. Creativity is like a
muscle. If you don’t use it, it atrophies. I had several false starts; stories
I began but abandoned. But finally, around the end of September, I felt the
magic again. I started another novel and was in my creative zone.

In my last post about moving from Toronto to Kingston, I
said one of the reasons we moved was to be closer to my parents. When my father
turned 80 in November, we spent the day with them. He was in fine form, and we
had a great time.

Four days later he was dead.

My father’s sudden death certainly took the wind out of my sails. But life wasn’t finished with me just yet. Eighteen months earlier, my sisters and I had noticed that my mother was having problems with her memory. We approached my parents about it back then, but the conversation wasn’t welcomed, and so we backed off.

After my father died, we came to understand how much he’d been doing for her. Her cognitive abilities had declined more than we’d thought, and she was diagnosed with dementia in December. One of my friends said it’s as if I’ve lost both my parents. Not quite, but it feels that way sometimes.

We’re spending a lot of time supporting my mother until she can move into a retirement home, which should happen soon.

Right after my father died, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to write for a while. When I had some quiet time to myself after his celebration of life, I realized that it was important for me to start and finish a story. I hadn’t done so in at least eighteen months, perhaps longer. I released Their Last Hope in February of last year, but I’d completed it much earlier. It has the dubious distinction of being the story that took the longest for me to publish.

I needed to start and finish something to show myself that I
could still do it. A novel wouldn’t make sense because it takes months to write
one. So I put the novel I’d been writing aside and started a short story. And I
finished it! I wrote the damn thing and had a good time doing it.

The story is a prequel to The Salbine Sisters. I’ll talk more about it in my next post. I’ve completed the first draft and will edit it next week. I’ll also pick up the novel I’d started, the one that was going well until the anvil was dropped on my head in November. I’m about 10,000 words in so I can’t say for sure that I’ll finish it, but I have a good feeling about it.

I’ll definitely release the prequel story to The Salbine Sisters. If you’re on my mailing list, you’ll get it for free. In fact, I probably won’t make it available at the bookstores for a while.

I hope to release the
novel I’m writing in 2019. January will be a bit of an odd month until my
mother is settled, but after that, I should be able to write regularly.

I’d like to write a few short stories this year, but I’m not going to pressure myself.

I’d like to at least start another novel, but one that will be released under a pen name. I have ideas I’d like to try that I’d rather do under another name. The name won’t be a secret. It will be there to say, “Hey, this might not be like my other books. Specifically, there might not be a lesbian character in sight.”

But honestly, if I can release the Salbine Sisters prequel and the novel I’m writing, I’ll be happy. I’m not going to pressure myself to do more than that. Anything else will be gravy.

I want to give my website a facelift. It’s not a priority, but I’ve been wanting to do it for a while.

Finally, I’m going to reboot my mailing list. Part of that will be the prequel story. More details in an upcoming post.

For me, life at the beginning of 2019 looks very different from life at the beginning of 2018. My surroundings have changed (good), and I’ve suffered significant loss (bad). I’m hoping 2019 will be less of a roller coaster ride.

I’m looking forward to continuing the novel, releasing The Salbine Sisters prequel, and connecting with my readers a little more.

I’ll post again in a week or two.

All the best for 2019. Have a great weekend!

2018: The Year of Change. Hello, 2019! is a post from: Sarah Ettritch