Slave to Sensation Twenty Year Anniversary

 

Alt text: white bookshelf with selection of Psy-Changeling and Psy-Changeling Trinity paperback and hardcover books, with Slave to Sensation placed with cover facing forwards.

Nalini posted this on her Facebook page over the weekend. Sharing here for those of you who aren't on FB.

~Ashwini

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This book of my heart released exactly twenty years ago today. I wrote it compulsively, obsessively, with intense love for the world and the characters, at a time when my writing career wasn’t in a great place. I didn’t know if anyone would ever read SLAVE TO SENSATION, but I had to write it. 

I could’ve never imagined that I’d one day take this photo where STS would be surrounded by multiple bookshelves of books that all began with a scared Psy and an angry changeling and a world on the brink of unstoppable change. 

It seems fitting that just this past week, I wrote a scene featuring Lucas and Sascha for the 2027 Psy-Changeling book. How far they’ve come!

I’m so incredibly grateful to all of you who picked up this book, and who continue to walk with me into the Psy-Changeling world. You are the reason I can do what I love, and why this world continues to burn bright. 

A very special shoutout to my agent Nephele Tempest and my editor Cindy Hwang, who loved STS from day one, and have been an integral part of this journey. 

Also a big virtual hug to Deidre Knight, who was the one who saw my manuscript come into The Knight Agency submission inbox way back when, and said, I have just the agent for you. Deidre, you were so right.

And to my family - thank you for being here from day dot, when I declared I was going to be a writer, despite not knowing any writers or anything about the publishing industry. You rock so hard. 

Happy Birthday SLAVE TO SENSATION!!!

I’d love to hear your memories of finding STS and this series!

Happy Birthday Desert Warrior

 

Twenty years ago this August, Desert Warrior made me a debut author. 

I wrote DW in a small notebook in whatever snatches of time I could manage, always aware that I was fighting a hard battle. Getting published when I began was difficult in the first place, and I was a young woman with no connections whatsoever who was submitting from a tiny dot of a country called New Zealand. 

I didn’t even know any writers in real life when I started. They were just names on books from faraway places.

The slush pile back then was a literal pile of paper, my submissions just one among thousands, tens of thousands.

I still tried anyway. Because we deserve to fight for our dreams. 

Then one day, a young editorial assistant named Diane wrote me back about a submission…and a year or so later, as an assistant editor, she bought DW. (Hi Diane! Thank you for being my first editor (and for one of the best phone calls of my life!))

I’ve now published millions of words across multiple series, but what drives me today is the same thing that drove the determined dreamer of a kid I once was: the love of writing, of stories, of books.

Thank you to every single one of you for reading my stories, whether you found me twenty years ago or today. You’re the reason that kid with stars in her eyes can live her dream. xo

Happy 20th birthday Tariq and Jasmine.