Sorcha Reagh - January Indie Author of the Month - 2026
Sorcha Reagh, the incredible indie author of the Sapere series - Cerulean Truth, and Silver Tiers are already out, with Scarlet Wars being released soon!
This series is an intense romantasy with spicy open-door scenes, fantastic world building, and a unique emotion-based magic system. There's brooding male characters to fawn over, and a badass female who gets ripped from her perfect human life and thrown into a world of chaos and drama.
Read below for our interview with Sorcha Reagh (full video available on our Youtube here - age 18+ viewers):
What made you want to write Cerulean Truth?
It was a combination of insomnia, absolute boredom, and soul-crushing loneliness. It was a coping mechanism – I’ll be very honest about that. I have a very tough job and when I come home and I try to watch TV, it just doesn’t turn off my brain, writing does. And I think all of my hard-earned traumas find a way onto the page and I don’t need therapy, so there’s that!
Was there a certain time where you thought “I’m going to do this, I’m going to write [Cerulean Truth]”?
I think I had parts of the story in my head – I wrote it backwards, so the revelations in Part Two was actually the first chapter I wrote, then I wrote backwards to see what it would become.
How long did it take you to write Cerulean Truth before you decided “right, it’s ready, I’m going for it”?
That took me a long time - I wrote it for four years. I wrote, in total, over 54 drafts. I wrote, re-wrote, wrote, re-wrote. It was always just for me, it was never shared, and then I think I shared it with my mum first, right after I gave birth to my son. That’s what really spurred it on, because she loved it, and so I was like “oh, I really have to finish this” ... so I finished the book. I asked the editor to read and improve the language, as you know English isn’t my first language, and so it was ... well it was horrible! I had never heard of em-dashes, so it was filled with ellipses, parentheses, and I think she called me “the Parentheses Wh*re”, or I called myself that, it was horrible! My grammar was basically non-existent, and [my editor] taught me how to write basically by correcting my book. I learned so so so much from her! She does two rounds, and on the second round that’s when she decided “yes, you have to publish this”, and I did!
It’s blown my mind how much effort you put into Cerulean Truth. Was Silver Tiers quicker to write?
Four months! With Silver Tiers, since Part Two was already written, it didn’t take me that long to finish it. Part three I loved writing. It was probably my favourite part to write. I struggled a bit with Part One because I didn’t want it to be too similar to Cerulean Truth, but I didn’t want it to be a huge jump from one to two. All in all, it was four months! Then Scarlet Wars, well the first draft went rather quickly, but then one of my alpha readers said, quite literally, “Miss Author, what the f**k happened?”. So, I deleted the whole book and I started over again.
Can we have a sneak peek into your writing routine?
I write whenever I can. I mentioned this to one of my other alpha readers – I do my best work when there is absolutely nothing close by to write. Like when you’re in the shower, brilliance just hits you and you have to shout to Siri and hope that your phone will register it. I write a lot on the can. Actually, we had a thing with the Street Team where they all chose a favourite quote and so many chose ones that were written on the can – if only they knew!
Do you have any favourite scenes that were written whilst on the toilet?
Oh – the best ones! I think the more emotional ones were all written there.
What is your favourite part of writing?
Have you ever experienced a runner’s high? There’s like an equivalent – sometimes you’re stuck, sometimes you’re just staring at the page, and you have no idea how to get from where you are to the next part. And then sometimes, you just can’t stop – and I love that!
How do you feel when you finish a book?
That is a very good question – ask me when I’m done with book four. I’ve had the whole story in my mind for all of these books, and I think if I could have done it, it would have been one book.
Which character was the hardest for you to write?
There were parts that were hard to write, I'm not sure there was one person, but there were parts. The fight scenes were very very hard to write for me, because I'm just your regular ... well, I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover! But I was very lucky, as my editor is actually a Jiu Jitsu trainer, so she helps me a lot. With one character specifically, I don't think I've really struggled. They're pretty much all based on real people, so I just channel those and then write them.
Which was the hardest scene to write?
This is hard without spoilers. As you know, we've all had our own darkness, our own trauma and stuff. Well, I used mine for a part in book three. It took me a lot of courage to go through that again in order to write about it. There's this one note in my notes where I wrote it from third person POV and then I was like, "when you find your balls, write this in first person POV". I think that was the one I struggled with most.
Which has been your favourite book to write so far?
Book two, Silver Tiers – it was the most fun, because I got to introduce all these new characters, and like the Walter story, that’s a real-life story! It was just so much fun to write about that.
Are there any themes in the books that are particularly important to you?
In book three, but I can’t discuss those without spoiling too much. What I was surprised about was how many people related to the loneliness she goes through in book two. I tried to write that as well as I could. Obviously, I have never been in the situation [like that] – I know a lot of people have, but I haven’t. I was very nervous about that [theme] and I was very very humbled that people related to it without [me having had that experience].
What do you hope readers take away from your books?
Well, I have a list of things I don’t hope readers take away from it! I have one – that no one is completely bad or completely good. We all have potential for both and when the occasion arises, we can be either or. That is why I wrote everyone in my books as morally grey. And yes, absolute pain for everyone who reads it! The suffering is instrumental for the reader’s experience – if you aren’t suffering, I haven’t done my job right.
If you were dropped into the Sapere world, do you think you would survive?
No. The first time I did the stairs I’d be dead already, no. This is so true for a lot of fantasy books, they all have incredible cardio!
If you did end up in the Sapere world, what position would you take?
I think Orators are like the moral compass of the bunch, and I wouldn’t want to be the moral compass – I think I’d be a healer. They can have all the fun! They can drink and smoke, and just heal themselves, just translate it out of their bodies.
Are any of the characters based on real people?
Pretty much all of them, but not like one person influenced one character, except for Matthew, Jackson, and Sean. They are based pretty prominently off real people. But everyone else I take character traits from people that I know and just mix them up. That was a lot of fun to do.
What was their responses to having characters based after them?
Well, the thing is, this is hard to explain without spoiling a bit. Let’s just say the nature of the interactions between Jackson and Sean make for a good laugh, seeing as though the original people do not have similar interactions.
I bet they absolutely loved reading their characters!
Actually, I kept this entire persona a secret for a very long time. I didn’t tell anyone, and then the real Matthew found my Instagram page and he called me up and was like, “where the hell do you get off having a whole secret page without telling us, no one does this except you, of course it had to be you”! And then I had to tell everyone. They were incredibly supportive, but no one is really a part of this world, no one really reads like I do or understands Bookstagram. It was a personal thing.
How did it feel telling everyone about your writing?
Very vulnerable actually. I’m not used to emotions like self-doubt, second guessing, vulnerability – it is not something there is a lot of space for in my job or my real-life. Writing these books is as personal as it gets, so its a lot of self-doubt, second guessing, rambling. Very new emotions. I think that's why I’m so nervous about the third book, because when you write from such a personal experience, if it doesn't pan out, well it's scary.
Your magic system is very unique – an emotion-based magic system. How did you come up with that? Was it hard to develop the whole system?
Yes and no. Actually I wanted to be kind of ironic. An ironic system in which we'd have protagonists that could not deal with their emotions, but needed them for magic. Because what would happen if you had a very rational girl who had no idea how to word her emotions or how to cope with them, and you put her in a world where she needs them to succeed. And of course she’s type A, so she wants to succeed. There is this whole new generation who are very communicative about how they feel. I’m from a generation where this was a lot harder to do. I loved that she would start off like that in the first book and grow and mature into the new generation in the second.
Did you have to do a lot of research? How much time would you say you spent researching in comparison to writing?
That’s very hard to say – what would you say is research? Because I spent a lot of time researching language. If that all counts, then I think about 70% is research and 30% writing. Whereas if you were to say “no, language is part of the writing”, then we're moving more towards 50% or 40%. I’m type A, so it all needs to be real and perfect.
The slow-burn in the first book is sloooow, then it picks up in the second book ...
It’s going to get worse! This is something I don’t usually talk about – when I wrote the first book, it was actually going to be YA and there wasn’t going to be any spice. I had a traditional publisher lined up, and I let them read the book and they loved it; but they wanted me to change the language. They said it was too rough - it wasn’t “rough”, but I can’t remember the word they used - and stubborn as I am, I made it worse. So, when they said the language needs to be more refined, I said “well, I’m going to self-publish and make it open-door [spice].
Who was your favourite character to write?
Sean. Sean was the most fun to write because he allowed for the comic tone and for a lot of real-life moments to be implemented, where I had lots and lots of fun.
What is your favourite quote out of one of the first two books?
I don’t think I can say it on here without a trigger warning, but it's where someone threatens Emma with grapes, and then she stays very calm – which is very strong of her, because in the book he holds her by the neck whilst he threatened her – and instead of responding in a fearful manner, she responds:
“Considering the small size of your d**k, it would hardly be an inconvenience”. I love that!
Some of our favourite quotes are:
- "Damn woman, if I had known steak made you so docile I would've fed you a long time ago".
- "I wasn't sure if mister "Legs like Legolas on Steroids" realised my stride wasn't built for his pace".
- "... a modern-day "why choose" take on Romeo, Juliet, and Hamlet, with vampires".
- "... female beauty had always been a constant in my life, an everyday reality, but it had never been my downfall. When Emma walked in that night, for the first time ever I felt like it could be".
Thank you to the wonderful Sorcha for such an entertaining and insightful interview. Her books are available to purchase here.
Give Sorcha Reagh a follow on her social media for more content!
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