The Sovereign Launch Party!

Usually, big launch parties happen with debut books or first books in a series. When publishers put them on, it’s a bit of a splashy way to say “pay attention to us, pay attention to this book!” When authors put them on, it might be the same, and it might be a way to do it because it seems like it’s the done thing. Whatever the reason, it can feel really good to celebrate the release of a book and the journey that’s beginning.

And so it felt a little odd to be doing it at the end of a trilogy instead of the beginning. Making it to the end of a trilogy, though, is just as celebration-worthy as selling that first book.

Man, did it feel good to celebrate the end of this trilogy. Not only is The Sovereign the culmination of my debut series—which feels like the end of an era, and the beginning of a new phase of my career—but I also feel like it’s a new level in terms of my skill and craft progression. It feels like celebrating growth, which is pretty cool.

It’s also the series that earned me my first readers (though I can’t forget those who read my short fiction, the real OGs)—so it felt like getting to celebrate everyone who has ever live-tweeted their Unbroken reads or blushed at The Wall or asked me who lives and who dies at the end. It was a chance for so many of us to be in the same place (not all, I know, but hopefully one day I’ll have the opportunity to meet more of you!) and it was a beautiful thing to know we were all there to celebrate my favorite lesbian fuck ups. To celebrate this messy story of empires falling and warlords rising and love caught up in the middle of it all.

My partner introduced me before my thank you speech and though I said they weren’t allowed to give a better speech than me, they disobeyed. It was beautiful and worth reproducing a small portion of it.

I think sometimes art and making can feel like a game on a much more serious world stage. And perhaps us fantasists feel that most pressingly — although I really enjoyed MH Ayinde’s spicy take the other day that all fiction is fantasy. But as someone who asks myself about our legacies on this earth a lot, I can’t think of anything more important than the work of the people — CL Clark among them; and also so many greats in this room — who encode our culture and lessons against power and oppression, and our joy and our heartbreak — into allegory and emotion so that we understand them on the level of bones and muscle when the times grow hardest and our action is both most risky and most defining of our humanity. So is fantasy a game? I think, my friends, that either nothing at all is a game or everything is a game. And either way the stakes are very high. 

I’ll be thinking about that for a long time.

Thank you to everyone who made it, especially those who traveled from afar, crossing countries and seas and celebrating birthdays and everything just to hang out with me on a night that meant the world. Even my parents came over to celebrate, and it was great to enjoy the moment with them, since they’ve never gotten to be a part of an actual release day.

As I said in my own speech last night, this life can be a lonely one. Thank you all for showing me that I’m not alone.

Stay sharp, my friends.

C. L.