In February 2023, Clare Sager was filling out day job applications. Her income had tanked after the post-lockdown \"Great Correction,\" her savings were gone, and going back to full-time employment felt less like a setback and more like a personal failure. That same month, her book A Kiss of Iron came out — and instead of the usual spike-then-crash of an indie release, the sales kept climbing. By March, she'd earned more in a month than she used to make in a year at her day job.
Clare Sager is the Sunday Times bestselling author of darkly addictive romantasy, full of slow-burn steam, gut-wrenching conflict, and morally grey everybody. Dubbed the \"Queen of Edging\" by readers, she's built the Saberverse — a connected universe of series and standalones — and has gone on to sign a UK deal with Transworld's Fairyloot imprint and a US deal with Forever for her novel King of Ravens, all while staying primarily indie.
We get into the real, unfiltered version of watching a career collapse and rebuild in the same year, why she turned down several traditional publishing offers before finding the right one, and how deliberately leaning into genre tropes — rather than chasing originality — is what made A Kiss of Iron take off. We also talk about what romantasy actually is, why she abandoned her early instinct to \"Tolkien\" every detail of her world before writing a single scene, and how diversifying across audiobooks, translations, and subscription boxes protects her from any one platform's next policy change.
🎙️ What we get into:
* The month she was applying for day jobs while her breakout book was quietly climbing the charts
* Why the post-lockdown \"Great Correction\" gutted her income after finally going full-time as a writer
* Her framework for evaluating trad publishing offers: what a deal gives you versus what you're already generating on your own
* Why she deliberately diversifies across KU, audiobooks, translations, and subscription boxes rather than relying on any one platform
* How the Fairyloot and Transworld deal for King of Ravens actually came together, almost by accident
* Why she stopped trying to fully \"Tolkien\" her world before writing, and started dropping worldbuilding seeds as she goes
* What romantasy actually is, its contested definition, and why she thinks reader expectation of a happy ending is now essentially non-negotiable
* The craft lesson from Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes — \"storytelling is a pleasure technology\" — that changed how she approaches tropes and originality
* Why she thinks leaning harder into what worked in her Beneath Black Sails series is what made A Kiss of Iron break out
* Her honest take on authors chasing romantasy as a trend without actually reading or respecting the genre
Links & Resources:
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Clare Sager: https://claresager.com
Clare Sager on Instagram: @claresager
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📚 About Clare Sager
Clare Sager is the Sunday Times bestselling author of darkly addictive romantasy full of slow-burn steam, gut-wrenching conflict and morally grey everybody. Dubbed the Queen of Edging by readers, she takes no responsibility for lost sleep or therapy bills.
When she's not breaking hearts with her books, Clare can usually be found drinking coffee, lifting weights or impulse-buying stationery. She lives in Nottingham, Robin Hood country, so it's no surprise she writes about characters who don't always play by the rules.
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