The Sapling Cage
or: the kickstarter campaign for my debut novel has gone live
Today, the pre-order campaign for my debut novel, The Sapling Cage, went live. Pre-order campaigns are more important to independent publishers than you might realize: since small presses work without much capital, they rely on pre-order campaigns gauge the popularity of a book to determine how many they should print and not lose their shirt. They also show reviewers, awards, and the rest of the industry that a specific book is worth paying attention to. I… sure don’t mind the idea of you helping make my debut novel be a book that people pay attention to. I deeply appreciate any help you offer in spreading the word.
It would hard to overstate how I excited I am about this book, and it would be hard to overstate how important this could be for my career. See, I’ve been writing books for years, but they’re mostly novellas, plus a short story collection and a “being an adventure of your own choosing” book. Each of those books are dear to my heart, but in the publishing industry there is a specific weight and importance placed on the Novel, and especially the all-important Debut Novel.
It’s a funny place for me to be in, as a reasonably established author, but I do feel a sort of weight and importance about this book—and this book launch—myself as well. Because The Sapling Cage is the best thing I’ve written so far. I’m proud of all of my books, but by giving myself the larger canvas available to this longer form, I’ve been able to start really saying some of the stuff I want to say during this one life I have.
The Sapling Cage is a coming-of-age high fantasy story, the first in a trilogy. It’s a “crossover” book, which is a genre developed by the publishing industry to acknowledge that a lot of readers of Young Adult books are Regular Adults and not Young ones. This genre exists to say “yes the protagonist is a teenager, but we won’t hold ourselves to all of the conventions of the Young Adult genre.” Which isn’t to say this book is more violent or explicit than other young adult books (it’s not), but rather that I didn’t have to limit myself to a specific emotional voice, or treat the romance within it in some specific and formulaic way. Which is important to me, because I want to write honestly about the experiences of a trans teenaged witch.
Our protagonist, Lorel, starts the story as a young boy who wished she was a girl, who wished she was off to join the witches. Her best friend was promised to the witches, but that friend doesn’t want to go. So Lorel dresses herself up in a black linen dress and heads out to join the ancient Order of the Vine.
It is and it isn’t a story about gender. I know it will be pigeonholed as a “trans book” and it’s a story about a young trans girl. But to me, it’s a book about magic and power: nature is dying mysteriously and magically, and a Baroness is making a play for the empty throne of the kingdom. Lorel’s gender is a part of her story, because how it could it not be, but this isn’t a novel about a trans girl being trans, it’s about a trans girl finding community and sisterhood and discovering magic and fighting for what she believes is right.
It’s a novel about a trans girl in the way that my life is the life of a trans girl. I don’t wake up in the morning and think to myself “how are you doing this morning, Margaret the Trans Girl? What trans things can we do today?” I wake up in the morning and let my dog into the yard and make breakfast and start my workday without ever thinking about gender. My only struggle with my gender is that it is marginalized by society, that it isn’t safe. Which of course means I think about gender quite a bit.
So while it’s a book informed by my thoughts and experiences of gender, it’s a book that’s for everyone who cares about nature and magic and who cares about better ways we can live, who cares about finding the strength to fight against power.
And anyone who backs it on Kickstarter gets a signed copy of the book.
I think I’ll be posting an excerpt from the book here on Substack soon enough.
In the meantime, thanks for being on this mailing list of mine. At the moment, there isn’t a system for international fulfillment for the kickstarter, so all but the ebook is US-only and for that I’m sorry. And if you’re waiting to borrow a copy from the library, I see you and love you too.
I love how everyone went "shut up and take my money"
so stoked to read this! just backed it as an e-book, and when print copies are available outside of the US i'd love to grab a copy for the trans lending library i help out with :))