Who Is Sacha Black?

sblogo3colored2They say night owls stay up late. But in the depths of midnight, Sacha isn’t just awake. She’s hunting. A nightwalker carefully treading the line between light and dark, strange and unusual. A hunter desperately pursuing the right words to chronicle the tales of The Netherworld.

Keepers, is the first book in the Fallon trilogy, set in The Netherworld. It’s currently being beaten into submission edited while the second book is outlined and boils in the cauldron of her mind.

Sacha is also writing Adultland, a new novel set in a dystopian world where Hunters steal all the adults and trap children in their cities.

She is also cheating on both those WIPs with a novel called the Firmament, it’s being in corridors, between meetings and sat on the toilet, it will eventually become a fully fledged novel.

Finally, she is writing a Non-Fiction creative writing book, on Villains.

She is also the founder of the Annual Bloggers Bash and Bash Awards.

Sacha was always meant to write, she was the girl who spent her lunch break tucked away in the corner of the school library, head buried in a pile of books, pencil in hand, weaving stories on the page. But she grew up, stumbled and fell forgetting her dream and then spent a while lost in a dark and twisted place.

Then, one day she sat in front of her laptop and started to write. She remembered that all she’d ever wanted to do was write stories in far away places filled with curious creatures and magical happenings. Characters started to talk to her, fill her brain with incessant chatter and demanded their stories be told. And so, The Netherworld was created, and Eden’s story began.

Sacha is a wonderer at heart. A thinker, and ponderer on anything unusual or controversial which you can see in her Weekend Wonders series. She finds inspiration in the beauty of imperfection and is enthralled by evocative questions.

She’s loud, but it’s mostly a mask. She prefers to take sanctuary in travelling the world, particularly New York or Asia. She’s spent time in both including Nepal and the Himalayas where she trekked up to Everest Base Camp. She also finds peace shoving her nose deep in a book, through haunting songs and tunes with a filthy dirty base beat!

Sacha has a fascination with writing, but particularly with deconstructing the writing process. She shares the trials, tribulations and lessons she learns trying to write the stories of the Netherworld and eventually become a published author.

Sacha is also a mother to a toddler and wife to a beautiful woman. When she’s not writing, she can be found working in the public sector, doing gel nails or occasionally baking cupcakes.

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You can also find her here:

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Snapchat (@Sachablack)

Or email her on:

Sachablack (AT) sachablack (dot) co (dot) uk

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All rights reserved. All material on website, Sacha Black © 2016

136 comments

  1. Hi there.

    Thought I’d take a quick nose around your blog and I’m so glad I did – I love it

    So nice to meet another Brit in the same position as us (albeit a little further).

    Really enjoying reading so far.

    Good luck with your journey.

    K

    Like

    1. Aah thank you 🙂 yes I have net so few other lesbians couples, particularly British ones I have only met a handful through speaking to people online. It’s nice too as I think your about the same age as us. Me and the wife are 26, and got married last year like you 🙂

      Yes well we are gobsmacked that I’m pregnant as the docs were so negative about my chances. But miraculously I conceived on our second try! No one can quite believe it!!

      Where are you having treatment? In the UK or abroad?

      I can’t wait to read more of your posts 🙂

      Good luck with ur next cycle x

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Ah. Wonderful! Nice to have a few things in common then. 🙂

    We’re in our TWW at the moment, and it’s our second try (third try if you count attempts, but the donor couldn’t make last time! lol). We’re not putting our hopes up…well… trying to anyway!

    We’re not having any treatment, we found a donor through pride angel.com and am going through the home AI route. Hows about you? AI, IVF, etc?

    Thanks again for the follow – it’s appreciated. Am also looking forward to reading more.

    K

    Like

    1. Yeh, it is, I am slightly concerned that when we have the baby and I am on maternity leave I might be isolated, because I don’t know any other parents, or lesbian parents. I would ideally like to meet some lesbian or gay parents before I give birth that aren’t too far away, or at least I could chat too, swap stories/advice etc.

      Oh my god. I literally fucking hate the 2WW. It’s the vilest most horrible thing ever. Basically 2WW’s are tortuous. I wrote a blog saying as much! I will keep my fingers crossed for you that you get a massive BFP. How many DPO are you? and when is your d-day? Oh I heard of pride Angel, very good, and pairs people up. I am crossing everything and throwing baby dust your way 😀 xx

      Basically.. our story in a nut shell:

      I found out at christmas I have a really really low AMH. but everything else is normal, all my other hormones, and scans, the doctors didnt know what was wrong but basically said that I should try to get pregnant in the next year or I might not be able to. So for us it has all been a bit whirl wind, we were going to buy a house before having a baby but it hasnt worked out like that because of time pressures. The NHS referred me and has put me through the process for IVF, so were on some waiting list or other. But because it would have been about 6 months from the start of all the tests to when IVF started, I decided I didnt like the time frame because the docs said I had a year.

      So… we checked out UK mostly london based clinics for IUI and nearly had heart failure. I was reading some womens blog and she had gone to Denmark, because of all the equality and how they are a third of the price of the UK. So I did some investigating and basically Denmark seems to be the sperm capital of Europe! so we have been flying over there for inseminations. So we went for an anonymous donor although we have some limited information about him, the baby will not be able to contact him, for us, we decided that was the best option.

      so I did one cycle on Feb 14th – BFN. Then did another cycle on MArch 10th – My birthday and ironically mothers day…

      Much to the clinics and our surprise I got a BFP last week. No one can quite believe it at the moment! Least of all me and the wife, we are both in a bit of shock really. 2nd cycle is less than the average, and I was meant to be having significant fertility issues. No one can really say how it has happened! but we are obviously delighted if a little shocked/surprised. We were expecting some disgustingly long drawn out IVF type process.

      Sorry for the essay! and thank you for the follow 😀 x

      Liked by 2 people

  3. Thanks for following! I’m delighted to find you. Any UK connection makes me happy. One of my long-awaited trips is a wander through (besides London, I’ve been there but not the uplands) and to follow the road to Sunderland territory! Six Sunderland brothers came from England in the late 1800s and three of them came to Kansas. Ergo. Me.

    And I absolutely NEEDed the Wordle. Two hours changing “like” into metaphors rather than similes. Woosh. One word! Two hours. But the revisions were worth it. Thanks.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Where are you based? Sunderland? Sorry I think I may have misread. It is great to find fellow Brits, lots of diversity in the bloggisphere which is fantastic for learning new things and making world wide connections. so glad it helped 😀

      Like

  4. I really love your blog; it motivates me to write and specially fiction which I always wanted to do but never knew how. I had interesting ideas but didn’t know how to approach a plot or develop characters; I would come up with only a scene or conversation and wished I could create a story around it. But I never did that out of my fear that I suck, especially that English isn’t my first language; but I am passionate about writing, and I mean in English since it gives me tremendous power of expression than my own native language which I haven’t used for decades. I have published a non-fiction book about physics and philosophy but really like to write short stories; your blog and the tips in it encourage me to give it a shot. Thanks for the wonderful and exciting blog.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. This, is simply the most wonderful compliment. THANK YOU so much for reading and taking the time to look at my blog. I am so honoured that you feel this way about my blog. I am thrilled that it is helping you and I hope it continues to do so. Monday’s post may just be up your alley. Let me know how your stories go. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Hi Sacha. 🙂 I followed you here from Twitter – looking forward to reading some of your writing tips. Not to criticize, but if you add no more than fifteen categories and tags (combined) to your posts, you’ll get seen in the WordPress reader. More than that, your posts don’t show up.
    When I read that you have a giant toddler, my first thought was, I have one of those! He’s 20 years old! Haha.
    Nice to meet you. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi Linda, thanks for the tip, I’ll have a look at reducing the categories 😊.

      Haha, no he’s only 18months, so just a baby, but a tall one! Very tall!!

      Lovely to meet you too, what kind of stuff do you write?

      Like

      1. Ahh I am no where near ready to publish. I’m only nearly at the end of my first draft so still a long way to go. Are u self publishing? Have u got a release date? Haha yeh I am predicting my boy will be way over 6ft, my mums family are all Giants, don’t know what happened to me but I got the short gene!

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      2. I’m seriously considering looking for an agent first. If that doesn’t go anywhere I’ll self-publish. I think my novel is good enough to be picked up by a traditional publisher (yeah, who doesn’t? haha) but it’s longer than most will accept – it’s hovering around 166K words – so we’ll see. What’s your novel about… if you’re ready to talk about it that is…?
        You know what they say about small packages, right? 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

      3. You should – you haven’t got anything to lose. I am going to try too, and if I don’t get anywhere which I will assume will be the case, save the disappointment then I will just self publish anyway. ok, wow, that is a long book! I’m sat at 75K at the minute, unlikely to hit 100K this draft, I imagine I will be a fraction over 100K on the next draft, but then aim to cut it back down to 80 for the third draft when I will look for beta readers.

        Its a YA fantasy/Dystopian novel, set half on Earth and half in a world I created call the Netherworld which was created to to keep the balance between their world and the planets in our realm. The inhabitants are called guardians, and the protagonist is the guardian of Earth. Its got a little love story woven in. What about your story? I don’t think I have made that sound very exciting, but I don’t have an elevator pitch yet!!

        Like

  6. …and from the sound of it, one hell of a busy woman. Or else a scarily efficient one.

    I read what you wrote about the semi-sleep state (separate post–I don’t want to leave this page to check the spelling; dormiveglia?) and writing. For whatever it’s worth, I’m a writer–three novels, one blog–but don’t often have vivid dreams and haven’t since I was a kid. I tried, when I first started writing, keeping a journal to see if by paying more attention to them I’d remember them better. i did, but in the end it made zero difference to my writing and I stopped bothering. I taught fiction writing long enough that I believe we all work in different ways and that the trick is to figure out what works for us.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Haha, can I tentatively say both…. Busy and efficient?! 😋

      Wow that’s awesome what type of novels do you write?

      I have to say I do agree, we do all do things differently, and you’re right not all writers will have vivid dreams… sometimes I write things just to prod people into discussion……. Can’t help myself I love nothing better than a good natter and a bit of debate!! 😋

      Can’t say I’ve ever really logged dreams although I’ve had a few vivid ones this year which I attempted to draw! Thanks for reading my post 😊

      Ps you got the right spelling!

      Like

    1. Wow thank you so much for such lovely compliments I’m blown away and you have made my week saying those lovely things.

      Is your name Janey or Jane? Are you a writer? I’m going to pop over to your blog now 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You can call me either! It’s actually a pseudonym, because I was teaching and was afraid my students would find my blog (Ireland is a really small place haha).
        I do write, but I haven’t put any of it up on my blog yet. I have a terrible habit of starting something and not finishing it. I have hundreds of pieces of fiction that remain unfinished.
        The advice and inspiration that you give here is invaluable though, so thank you!
        My blog is all over the place, so apologies in advance 😀
        Great to meet you!

        Like

    1. Hey Cynthia great to meet you – what’s your novel about?

      I’m actually now writing my first draft of a second novel while my first novel (and first draft of that) rests. Hope to be editing in the new year.

      How’s your writing going?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi Sacha, Thanks for asking. My novel is about a 20-something PR flack who finds out she’s surrounded by spies and gets tangled in her own information hunt to save her friends’ lives and also save herself! I am reading through it now and doing some light edits, but by December I’ll be moving on to writing book 2 in the series. Like you, I’ll let book 1 rest while I get going on book 2. My hope is that I’ll be able to clean up book 1 a bit better with distance. What’s your book 2 about? Sin

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Your novel sounds awesome. Proper thriller. I agree about the distance. When I wrote my first draft of the first novel I wrote it in two halves – the first during a NaNo – which was fine, but I wrote the second half 6 months later – I had grown and developed A LOT – so I suspect that it will be dramatically different. sigh. bin 50K.

      The book Im writing now, is kind of YA fantasy/dystopia – where Hunters come and steal the adults one by one in the middle of the night and then when they are all gone trap the kids in the city. Its a race to save their parents and take down the baddies.

      The other (my first) is much more complicated to explain and I don’t have an elevator pitch so I don’t even know where to begin – bad I know. But hopefully once revisions are underway i can tell you! haha. But similarly its YA fantasy.

      What do you do when you’re not writing?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I know Surrey my mums from Farnham! Been around there a bit. That’s even more of a shame you can’t make it. Are you sure you can’t jump on the train for a few hours? 😁 lovely to meet you Trina

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I am about 15 minutes away, use to live in Aldershot, different county but right next door and less posh 😉 I would love to but due to various being crazy reasons its probably not going to happen, but I shall keep it in mind its still a way a way

        Like

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