Note.

S.E. Diemer no longer writes YA, and she no longer writes under this name. You can read her best-selling lesbian romance by searching for Bridget Essex.

MOTH

Imagine a future America where being gay is punishable by death.

Piper doesn’t have to imagine. She lives it.

Adopted siblings Piper and Easton aren’t careless. Their parents raised them with the knowledge that if they ever give themselves away, they’ll be sent to the Borstal, a dilapidated prison where deviant children–Recreants–undergo brutal treatments to cure them of their “sins.” By command of Liberty’s leader, Voice Wright, if the Recreants fail to be cured, or are ever caught committing another sinful act, they are sent to the Void. And no one ever returns from the Void.

Despite their caution, a freak Enforcer raid on an illegal party catches Piper and Easton by surprise. They and all of the other queer kids at the party are immediately shipped to the Borstal–which proves to be even worse than the whispered rumors had predicted. When Easton is falsely accused by a tormentor–and sentenced to the Void–Piper dares a desperate, and almost fatal, escape, beginning a journey across Liberty to chase after Easton in the hopes of saving his life…without losing hers.

Set in a future America where a deranged dictator supposedly hears messages from “the One,” where being queer (or promiscuous, or unwholesome, or rebellious) is punishable by death, MOTH is a button-pushing novel of oppression, resistance and hope, written by award-winning author S.E. Diemer.

Available on Amazon

Changes!

Lots of changes coming, sooner, rather than later, I hope!  🙂

Basically, this is a place holder, and a blowing-off-the-dust sort of thing of this here ye ole blogue. 🙂

Warmly,
S.E. Diemer

   

A New Excerpt from ROSE WITCH

Excerpt from my upcoming novel, ROSE WITCH: the lesbian, YA retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” in verse. COMING SOON!  Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when ROSE WITCH is released!

—-

“I want you,” Grace tells
the spiraled girl,
the freezing girl,
the monstrous girl,
“to live.”

From the depths & darkness
of the frozen mud,
from the irreversible act
of forever sleep,
Perish rises.

Excerpt from ROSE WITCH

Excerpt from my upcoming novel, ROSE WITCH: the lesbian, YA retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” in verse. COMING SOON!  Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when ROSE WITCH is released!

—-

And Perish kisses
a star.

Later, that is how she will
come to think of it.
All that came before
& after that kiss
are as separate as two lives.

Before, there was only darkness.

And after?

Well.

Then came the light.

My Next Novel, ROSE WITCH, Will Be Released This Year!

It’s coming.

For every girl who was ever told that she wasn’t good enough, beautiful enough, strong enough, brave enough, quiet enough, comes a story of a girl named Perish…a girl who is none of those things. Perish is an angry girl. A girl who will carve out a place to live in a world that does not want her. A girl who, despite a world against her…will learn to thrive.

Imagine “Beauty and the Beast” with a lesbian protaganist. Imagine a POC Beauty. Imagine a dark carnival of a palace, a beastly girl who dreams of love, a magic so dark and deadly that it could pull the world asunder. Imagine a fairy tale told in verse for every girl who couldn’t find someone like them in the fairy tales they loved…

Rose Witch is coming. And it’s going to be dark and raw and pained and bright and within its pages will be the fairy tale that I, as a lesbian growing up obsessed with fairy tales, never had. It’s coming this year. I’ll let you know a firm date when the novel is completely finished. ❤

Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when Rose Witch will be released!

Mightier, a Free YA Short Story — Part of Project Unicorn (A Lesbian YA Extravaganza)

“Mightier,” by Sarah Diemer
YA/Dark Fantasy
Cleo is one of the Mightier, a mysterious group of people who can change the world with the stroke of a pen. But, one night, her new powers are tested when an angel-like creature needs her help to prevent a massive disaster from happening.

(photo by Kathryn Denman)

(Part of Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza, full of free, original, never-before-published YA short stories featuring a lesbian heroine. Also, every story is a work of genre fiction [Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic, etc.].)

Last Chance for Signed Copies!

Jenn and I are doing a lot of stuff differently this year. Writing is this wonderful, all-encompassing thing in our lives (I try to–no joke–get 100K written every month, and MOST MONTHS I GET PRETTY DAMN CLOSE, just to give you an idea ;D), and as we start to write more YA again, we’re putting our creative resources more towards our YA work, too. This means that we have fewer resources for other creative endeavors, and–in order to flourish–we need to know when it’s time to end certain things.

We were very sad to decide to close down our Etsy shop, the Fable Tribe, but knew it’s the right time to end that chapter in our lives. And, while we’re at it, we decided to shut down our other Etsy shop, Sappho’s Boutique.

Sappho’s Boutique is where we’ve been offering signed versions of our books, and we LOVED being able to offer those. Awesome, awesome fans have purchased those books, and we’ve loved connecting in that way, but a lot of time and effort was spent going back and forth to the post office and packaging things. Since we’re concentrating on our YA writing more, something had to give.

Since we assume that you guys would much prefer if we put out new things, we decided that shutting down the shops was the best use of resources.

This means that Sappho’s Boutique is shutting down, and–after this–the only way to get books signed by us is to see us in person. 🙂

We don’t have many books left, so if you always wanted a signed copy of a book, now’s the time to do it! ❤

This is what we have left in the shop!

The Benevolence Tales, Volume 1 — Three copies
Twixt — Three copies
Love Devours — ALL GONE
Project Unicorn, Volume 1 — ONE COPY
Project Unicorn, Volume 2 — ALL GONE
Cage the Darlings — ALL GONE
The Dark Wife — Ten copies
Sappho’s Fables, Volume 1 — Eight copies

THE DARK WIFE now has a French translation!

A really amazing fan, Touweny, contacted me about a year ago, offering to translate The Dark Wife into French. Very much a labor of love, the translation is now completed–and, like its English counterpart–will now be offered for free so that everyone can have access to books with lesbian protagonists. 🙂

Please enjoy!

Find out about The Dark Wife in English here, and buy a copy of the book here.

~*~

Traduit par Touweny

Il y a trois mille ans, un dieu a dit un mensonge. Maintenant, seule une déesse peut apporter la vérité.

Perséphone a tout ce que la fille de Zeus pourrait vouloir… tout sauf la liberté. Elle vit sur la terre verte avec sa mère, Déméter, grandissant sous le regard toujours averti des dieux et déesses du Mont Olympe. Mais quand Perséphone va rencontrer l’énigmatique Hadès, elle découvre quelque chose de nouveau : le choix.

Zeus appelle Hadès “le seigneur” des morts, comme une blague. En vérité, Hadès est la déesse des Enfers, et nullement l’amie de Zeus. Elle offrira à Perséphone un sanctuaire dans le royaume des morts, permettant à la jeune déesse d’échapper à son destin olympien.

Mais Perséphone trouvera bien plus que la liberté dans les Enfers. Elle découvrira l’amour, et elle se trouvera elle-même.

L’épouse des ténèbres – libre PDF

The Princess Sword, a Free YA Short Story — Part of Project Unicorn (A Lesbian YA Extravaganza)

So, almost two years later, we take up the…ah…sword again.  🙂  Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza (a project of [eventually] ONE HUNDRED free genre YA short stories featuring lesbian heroines!) is (slowly!) starting up again until it’s finished!

The month that we were currently on (when we went on hiatus) was on the theme of “Swords and Spaceships.”  We both had all of the stories finished for this one (two years ago!), but they needed to be edited.  They will now come out until the month’s theme is finished, and we’ll keep going on the project.  🙂  THIS IS VERY EXCITING and I’m stoked about it!  🙂  We have always loved Project Unicorn and are VERY excited about being able to finish it.

This story is dedicated to Terry Pratchett.  Thank you for everything, sir.

~*~

“The Princess Sword,” by Sarah Diemer
YA/Fantasy
Princess Lexandra is frustrated with the gender roles that have been assigned to her from birth. But a meddling goddess–and a lady in waiting–are about to change her life.

(photo by June Yarham)

(Part of Project Unicorn: A Lesbian YA Extravaganza, full of free, original, never-before-published YA short stories featuring a lesbian heroine. Also, every story is a work of genre fiction [Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic, etc.].)