When teenager Sarah J Maas was allowing her imagination to run wild with her first attempts at writing, she could never have dreamed of the impact her heroine Feyre Archeron would have on the world.
By spicing up her magical worlds, Sarah’s early self-published stories quickly attracted breathtaking numbers of readers.
And close to two decades on, her magical mix of sex and spells continues to lead the way in the TikTok generation’s favourite genre – Romantasy.
Not only has Sarah sold close to 40-million books, had her work translated into 38 different languages, and is having her ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses) series adapted for the screen – many of her novels are now banned in several American states.
The controversy has only added to the appeal, with the ACOTAR hashtag on TikTok being viewed over 14-billion times.
And dozens of other Romantasy authors are now following Sarah’s lead with their own chart-topping worlds of foxy fairies and passionate princes.
Sarah spent close to a decade developing her initial Throne of Glass series of novels before embarking on the A Court of Thorns and Roses books.
She admits spearheading the Romantasy movement has been a gradual process – and came from an unlikely source.
Sarah said: “I first got the inspiration for Throne of Glass by listening to a piece of music from Disney’s Cinderella score.
“I thought the music that plays when she flees the ball was really, really dark and intense – my imagination, not surprisingly, made the jump to ‘Well, what if she had done something really bad?’
“And then I went one step further and asked ‘What if she was an assassin who tried to kill the Prince?’
“And so Throne of Glass was born.
“As I wrote over those ten years and explored more of that assassin’s world, it became its own story, not a straight-up retelling, though Cinderella was the original spark!
“I worked on what became Throne of Glass for a long time before I ever sent it to a publisher, and A Court of Thorns and Roses started as a passion project I was working on in my spare time.
“They’ve been quite different from each other.”
While Sarah’s best-seller success has continued for more than a decade, the popularity of Romantasy is showing no signs of slowing down with sales in the UK alone rising from £15million in 2022 to £27million the following year.
While other authors such as Ali Hazelwood and Elena Armas are pushing the genre forward with their own adult-themed fantasy novels, Sarah believes her assassin Feyre, the High Lord faerie Tamlin, or the tall dark Rhysand have not yet lost their sex appeal.
She added: “I love building a long arc over a series and taking the time to get to know characters and worlds inside and out.
“I find it really satisfying to take bits and pieces of a larger story and figure out how it all fits together.
“So, when it’s time to sit down to start drafting the next book in a series, I’m always psyched to get back to it and reveal more of the world to readers.”