About Sarah
I’m a Londoner, now living half a world away in Tasmania, where I write young adult fantasy and paranormal fiction.
My obsession with storytelling began in my early teens, when I was given a second-hand, typewriter. You know, the machines where you had to press the keys so hard you’d end up bleeding. Decades later, after being awarded a First Class Degree in English with Creative Writing, I published my first novella ‘Billy Lemonade’. I was fifty. It’s never too late, it turns out, even for someone as disorganised as me. (A brand-new whiteboard is all that’s keeping my plots from unravelling.)
‘Billy Lemonade’* was highly acclaimed and will always have a special place in my heart, which is why I decided to write the prequel, ‘Dear Jane’. Then came, ‘What the Knocker-Upper Woke Up’, an unsettling, psychological YA fantasy that starts in Victorian London.
* Billy Lemonade is about to be re-released with some exciting changes and a brand new cover.
Book ideas and places come from something I’ve seen or felt. Here in Tasmania, beauty is everywhere, but in the shadows and the quiet, there’s always the chance something disquieting might be lurking.
The perfect response to my books from a reader would be either, thoughtful contemplation, something about the story sticks with them so that they keep going over it and perhaps want to read it again, or simply, I need to read the next one!
My own reading tastes vary but I can’t ever resist the wit of Jane Austen and I’m regularly swept away in the fantasy worlds of Leigh Bardugo and Katherine Arden. I love a good film too, though I’ll almost always choose my own sofa over a trip to the cinema.
When I’m not writing, I’m usually with my family, or strolling along the beach with my two English Pointers, Bob and Fred.
I run mostly on cups of tea by day and glasses of wine by night and possess a deep love for the people and pets around me. Just don’t ask me to cater your next dinner party: I’m a thoroughly ordinary cook.
So grab a cuppa (or a glass) and pick a world.
If she squinted, she could be in Dickensian London. The cobbles. The smog of a warm day quietly simmering.
Her books
Young adult fantasy
The Prince of Shadow
Coming soon
What the Knocker-Upper Woke Up
Out now
Paranormal fiction
Billy Lemonade
Out now
Dear Jane
Coming soon
Happiness is for the living, not for the dead.
For press
Sarah J Maxwell is a Londoner living in Tasmania, where she writes young adult fantasy and paranormal fiction. After a first-class degree in English with Creative Writing, she published her first novella, Billy Lemonade, at fifty. Her books include What the Knocker-Upper Woke Up, with Dear Jane and The Prince of Shadow to come.
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