We’re just five months into 2025, and the sapphic book community has already had so much to deal with this year—the political threats to LGBTQ+ rights, the rising fear of book bans, a drop in sales for many authors, and, recently, scammers creating rip-offs of sapphic books with the help of AI.
With all those threats from the outside, it makes me incredibly sad to let you all know that we’re now facing another blow to our already overburdened community.
And what’s worse, this time, the blow is coming from within.
TL;DR—a summary
If you don’t have the time to read the entire blog post now, here’s a short summary. But I strongly suggest you come back later to read it all because this is a very nuanced topic that needs a careful read.
The sapphic book community is grappling with another breach of trust: Author Sabrina Kane is not who she claims to be. There is strong evidence that leads us to believe that the person behind Sabrina Kane—most likely a 56-year-old man named Sean David Wright—created an entirely fake persona and used photos of a red-haired model to fabricate an online identity as a young lesbian author.
I want to make it unequivocally clear for everyone who is reading just the summary, though: The issue isn’t the author’s gender identity or that he was using a pen name. The issue is one thing and one thing only: deception.
Sabrina Kane was a fake persona, not just a pen name
Over the past few weeks, serious concerns have come to light about an author known in the sapphic book community as Sabrina Kane.
It has become clear that the persona of “Sabrina Kane” was entirely fabricated—not just a pen name, but a false identity with almost no resemblance to the real person behind it.
This wasn’t just a case of an author writing under a pseudonym; it was a calculated deception that extended into deeply personal territory. Nearly everything Sabrina shared with readers, fellow writers, and friends she made in the community was a lie. She built relationships and emotional bonds under false pretenses, and the betrayal felt by those who shared intimate details about their lives with her is profound.
We’re not making these accusations lightly. We have investigated this matter very thoroughly and independently of each other, yet we all came to the same conclusion. Our goal isn’t to drag a fellow author through the mud; it’s to protect the people who were deceived by someone they considered a trusted author or even a friend.
Side note: You might be wondering who “we” is. The person who first discovered that Sabrina Kane isn’t who she pretended to be was fellow author S-Jay Hart, who used to beta read for Sabrina.
S-Jay then alerted several other authors, including Alyson Root, Amber Perez, Katherine Blakeman, and me (Jae). We all did our own research that confirmed everything S-Jay was saying. Other people within the sapphic book community have raised concerns about Sabrina years ago, insisting that she was not who she pretended to be. Turns out, they might have been right. But back then, there was never any proof, and I don’t support witch hunts based on a “vibe” or an unsupported suspicion, so I want to emphasize that’s not what this is.
Here’s the entire story so you can judge for yourself.
How the truth came to light
S-Jay Hart started beta reading for Sabrina Kane around 2020/2021.
Sabrina presented herself as a white, red-headed, late-20s woman who lived in Carlsbad, California, with her girlfriend Katie.
Since two of S-Jay’s author friends were also beta reading for Sabrina, it quickly developed into daily interactions via Twitter chat, and friendships formed. The group shared details not just about their writing but also about their lives since everyone believed they were talking within a group of sapphic women they could trust.
Initially, Sabrina never shared actual photos of herself or voice messages or joined the others on Zoom calls or in their WhatsApp group. It did seem a bit strange, but everyone respected that she might just be private.
If you follow Sabrina on social media, you know that she’s actually not private at all. She wasn’t shy about sharing details of her life, frequently even posting drawings of herself and her girlfriend in bikinis.
Eventually, S-Jay and a few other beta readers decided to step away. There were growing concerns about how Sabrina handled sensitive topics in her books (using the words schizophrenia and crazy flippantly)—and how she reacted when someone raised those concerns. Some beta readers were also uncomfortable with the way certain scenes were written—they felt as if they were written from a male gaze.
S-Jay had no contact with Sabrina for over a year but still saw Sabrina’s posts on social media. When Sabrina posted a graphite drawing, S-Jay’s suspicion grew because the drawing looked familiar to her.
That’s when S-Jay did a reverse image search of the drawing—and came across an artist named Sean David Wright, a 56-year-old Black man living in Arizona. He was the one who created the graphite drawing and posted it to his Flickr account nearly a decade ago.
Shocked, S-Jay kept digging—and found several other pieces of art that Sabrina had claimed as her own but had actually been drawn by Sean years before.
Below are some side-by-side comparisons of artworks Sabrina claimed to be hers and Sean’s artwork:
Sabrina is even selling autographed prints of the stormtrooper “self-portrait” via her website.
It wasn’t just the artwork, though. Sabrina also posted photos on social media, claiming to have recently taken them—yet Sean had posted the same photos as his own long before.
Here are a few examples, but there were several more following the same pattern:
Please note: Sean took the photo of a woman’s legs in April 2007. Sabrina claims she’s turning 30 this year, which means she would have been 12 or 13 years old at the time the picture was taken!
That definitely proves that Sabrina isn’t the 30-year-old woman she claims to be, and she also lied about when the photo was taken and by whom.
Did Sabrina just steal Sean’s artwork and photos?
You might think maybe Sabrina just stole Sean’s artwork and photos from his social media and used it as her own, without Sean knowing.
However, we also found plenty of other connections between Sean and Sabrina, so this isn’t just a case of Sabrina stealing Sean’s artwork and photos. All the details that Sabrina shared about her father—that he’s from the Bronx, collects watches, and was born on March 22—are actually true about Sean.
Sean has been to Carlsbad, where Sabrina claims to live, several times.
In a “factoid” about one of her novels shared on her website, Sabrina mentioned that she named one of the characters, Mayor Wright, after her paternal great-grandfather.
Their houses also have several very unique decorations in common—the same white statue appears in photos of both Sabrina and Sean, as does a framed “Metropolis” poster.
Both Sabrina and Sean also seem to be huge fans of Star Wars and the Dutch painter Vermeer. They both posted about going to Amsterdam to see Vermeer’s art within a few days of each other in October 2022. And check out the dates on the social media posts below—Sabrina posted five days before Sean did, so it wasn’t possible for her to have stolen the idea for the post from Sean.
We considered for a moment whether one of Sean’s daughters (who is a redhead and around Sabrina’s age) might be the person behind Sabrina Kane, but she would have been a child at the time the photo of “Sabrina’s legs” was taken. She’s also married to a man, not living with her girlfriend in Carlsbad, and she doesn’t look like the redheaded woman Sabrina claims is her.
So who is the red-haired woman?
A reverse image search of photos Sabrina had posted of “herself” or shared with her beta readers revealed that the red-haired woman isn’t Sabrina Kane but a model named Anna—a married woman who recently gave birth to her first child.
Below is a comparison:
We did find a connection between Anna and Sean—he tagged her in a drawing he created of Anna on his Instagram account.
Clearly, they know each other, but we’re not sure if Anna is aware of her photos being used like that. So this isn’t the case of the person behind Sabrina Kane stealing from two random strangers (the artwork from Sean and the photos of Anna).
Sean seems to be the person connecting everything. Sabrina also posted time-lapse videos showing how the artwork was created—and how would anyone but Sean have access to those?
So while we can’t present definite proof, the most likely conclusion is that Sean David Wright is actually the person behind Sabrina Kane.
There’s also one final clue that likely points to Sean:
He published two sapphic romance novels under his own name—the first one, Two for One, in 2005 and the second one, Two for One—Relatively Speaking, in 2011.
The main characters of Sean’s books are named Katie (like Sabrina’s girlfriend) and Danielle Edwards—which is the name of the photographer who is credited with taking the author’s photo in Sabrina’s first book.
So there are a lot of clues all pointing to Sean being the person behind Sabrina Kane.
If he’s not, I’d like to challenge Sabrina to explain what else is going on, but I have to be honest and say I’d look very skeptically at anything she says, because everything we laid out above clearly proves that Sabrina is a fake persona and very few things she told us about herself were true.
Why this goes far beyond using a pen name
Some people might be saying “authors have been using pen names for centuries… What’s the big deal?”
The issue isn’t that Sabrina Kane was writing under a pseudonym. Having a pen name is perfectly fine. There are many valid reasons for using a pen name to protect your identity, especially during times of political turmoil, when it’s not always safe to be LGBTQIA+.
That has never been the issue. I use a pen name myself, yet I’m still entirely authentic whenever I interact with my readers or fellow authors. Everything I tell readers about myself is the truth.
Being a private person and not wanting to reveal much about yourself is fine too. Authors don’t owe readers any details about their private lives or their identity. They can just let their books speak for themselves, if that’s what they prefer.
But if authors do talk about themselves and their lives, everything they share should be the truth. Creating an entire fake persona and making friends under false pretenses is not a marketing strategy or a fun little game. It violates the trust of vulnerable people—people who often had to lie about or couldn’t be open about who they really are, strictly for their emotional and sometimes physical survival.
Lying and deceiving those people is despicable, especially since none of it was necessary. The person who wrote as Sabrina Kane didn’t have to share a thing about themselves, or they could have shared just those details they were comfortable sharing.
The issue I’m calling out in this blog post is creating a fake identity that is far removed from their own and lying to people for years. It’s not fine to gain the trust and access to a marginalized community with deception, building a fictional persona that has almost nothing in common with the person behind it.
The sapphic book community is built on trust. As authors, we’re not interacting with anonymous masses. Ours is a small, tight-knit community so betrayals cut even deeper. This is a time when we need to stick together, rely on each other, and uplift each other—and catfishing schemes erode that kind of solidarity, and make it harder for people to trust each other.
Let’s be clear: This isn't about gender; it's about deception
I want to make something very clear because I fear some transphobic people might try to twist this situation to suit their agenda.
What the person behind Sabrina Kane did has absolutely nothing to do with being trans, gender-questioning, or writing under a pen name. And I deeply resent any attempt to conflate those things.
To the best of our knowledge, Sean is not trans.
We’ve combed all of Sean’s social media, and nothing points to him being anything but a cis man who deceived everyone about his identity by posting photos of a woman, claiming to be her. (By the way, I’m using he/him pronouns for Sean because that’s what he’s doing in his social media and blog).
In fact, in one of his blog posts, he makes a comment that is both misogynist and transphobic, so if he were trans, that would mean he has a lot of internalized transphobia to work through.
Of course, we can’t rule it out entirely. Only Sean can know for sure. Whether or not Sean is trans isn’t the issue, though.
The trans women who are part of our community as writers and readers are not deceiving anyone. They don’t claim to be women; they are women. For some, it might not be safe to be fully out, but none of them go around posting pictures of someone else and claiming that this is them. They live their lives as authentically as is possible while still trying to stay safe.
If Sean were trans, he would have every right to write sapphic fiction under a female pen name and to interact with people as a woman.
If he were struggling with his gender identity, I would have supported using his writing as a tool to explore it. I have friends who only through writing sapphic fiction came to understand that they are not as straight or not as cis as they assumed themselves to be. I think a lot of writers can empathize with that. My writing certainly helped me understand my own identity as a queer woman better too. So I don’t want this post to discourage people from exploring their gender or sexuality through their writing. If someone wants to write under a female pen name because it helps them explore an identity that feels more truthful than the one they show to the outside world, that’s entirely valid. But there’s a huge difference between exploring your identity and inventing a fake one to manipulate people.
I wholeheartedly embrace anyone who wants to write sapphic fiction, may they be straight or queer, cis or trans, male or female or nonbinary. As I have said many times before, to me, sapphic fiction is about the respectful representation of queer women and sapphic people, regardless of who writes the books. I don’t want to gatekeep who gets to write sapphic fiction. I want the doors wide open and support everyone who loves sapphic fiction.
The only people I want to keep out are those preying on the community, those who think it’s fun to play games with people and build close relationships based on lies and deception.
What Sean did went way beyond a writer possibly exploring their gender through their writing or their pen name. Sabrina lied about everything, not just their gender. Their age. Where they live. Their girlfriend. Being happily child-free. When photos were taken and by whom. If Sean were trans, he would be a mid-fifties trans woman from Arizona. But he interacted as a 30-year-old woman living in Carlsbad. He even used someone else’s face! It was all one big fabrication. He actively and consistently lied to people who trusted him on a near-daily basis. He built friendships not based on an authentic version of himself but on deception. He got people to open up about their own lives when everything he told them about his was a lie. The issue is deception.
So please, don’t add more harm to the community by trying to turn this into a trans issue. It’s not.
The issue isn’t an author’s gender; it’s their harmful behavior—lying and deceiving people for years, undermining the trust within our community.
This is not a call for suspicion and distrust
I also want to say: This post is not a call to start doubting people or an invitation to dig through authors’ private lives.
We don’t want to create a situation where readers are hesitant to try new-to-them authors or to interact with them on social media.
We don’t want writers feeling pressured to post photos or videos of themselves to prove they’re “real” if they don’t feel comfortable showing their face online. As I mentioned above, there are many valid reasons why some writers might choose to keep their legal name private or avoid showing their face online. Authors should be allowed to protect themselves and their privacy without being suspected of any wrongdoing.
We don’t want trans, nonbinary, intersex, or gender-questioning authors to doubt their place in the community or to hesitate to explore their gender through their writing.
We certainly don’t want to encourage the kind of despicable “transvestigation” behavior that targets trans people and anyone deemed looking “not female enough.”
Communities like ours are based on trust and mutual support, and that’s exactly why people like Sean are so harmful—they erode that trust and support. Please don’t let that happen.
I, for my part, will continue to support and uplift my fellow writers and take them at face value, embracing anyone who loves sapphic fiction.
Sabrina’s reaction to being confronted
Before I forget to mention it: S-Jay did reach out to Sabrina, said she knew that “Sabrina” isn’t who she claims to be, and gave her the opportunity to come clean. Instead, the person who we think is Sean doubled down and continued his gaslighting.
For those of you using screenreaders or whose browsers can’t display webP images: Sabrina’s response was: “So, I don’t hear from you for years, and THIS is what I wake up to? No, no, no… First off, who is this “we” you refer to? Secondly, what is this “evidence” you have? I can’t believe this!”
So pretty much a classic example of gaslighting. Clearly, he has no intention of coming clean and apologizing to those whose trust he violated. He’ll just continue with his manipulation.
Which is why we chose to post all the evidence so everyone can make up their own mind about who Sabrina Kane really is.
90 Responses
Thank you…..I’m glad you posted this, your letter is so true we do not need or want this in our community. So for me I will NEVER read anything by Sabrina Kane. I do not know what else to do.
wow! one of their books is actually about how a sapphic author is actually a man and one of the MC covers for him and pretends to be the writer so he doesn’t get caught….🙃
Mind-boggling! I have to admit I’ve never read any books by Sabrina Kane, but that’s just beyond awful!
Yes, always wondered about “her” after that book. Glad I never wrote a review.
Fuck, this again? I don’t know what to do any more. Two years ago the Adam thing just sent me into a spiral of depression and self-hatred, I crashed out of social media, it cost me friendships and fucking hurt.
I’m not blaming you, any of you, you all did the right thing. Absolutely, 100%.
It’s just… fuck. It took me so long to finally get my act back together. List the Roxie name, made up another. Was open about being trans.
And today I’m really struggling, overwhelmed by being trans and not being female, and then this hits. I’m fucked.
I can’t cope anymore. I just want to belong and I never will and I get that and I know I don’t deserve to belong. I know I’m trans and I’m not trans. I know I’m a woman and I know I’m not a woman. I get it! I’m fucked up! I just want to write lesficcsnd be accepted for who I believe I am.
But fuck it, it’s never gonna happen is it? It’s my own fucking fault. I hate myself.
Fuck you Sabrina Kane.
Don’t put this on your shoulders, Roxie! What the person behind Sabrina Kane did had absolutely nothing to do with you or other trans folks! The vast majority of the sapphic book community fully supports trans people. I personally value all of my trans readers and my fellow authors who are trans. There isn’t a second where I equated any of the things the person behind Sabrina did with being trans, and no one who isn’t transphobic ever would!
So please don’t put this on yourself. It’s on this catfishing person and on no one else! Please reach out if you need to talk. My email is under “contact” in the menu of this website.
That’s the thing -I’m trans and I’m not trans. I’m just a mess. And it took me two years! Two fucking years! I crawled out of depression again, put myself out there as Roxie again even though I had lost all my friends (entirely my fault), fucked that up and almost sank again but one new friend kept me going, struggled along with this whole fucked-up dichotomy and now it’s fucking happened again!
I had just convinced myself I could write again as an open trans woman. But no.
Now, I have to fucking deal with this again. Fucking make a mess of things again. Cut myself off again. Think about lying and doing exactly what Sabrina-fucking-Kane did, just because I need to feel accepted. And why would I be? I’m no better.
FUCK!
Sorry everyone. I’m just very upset and angry.
But I also recognize that I’m making this about myself and that’s wrong and I do apologize. Sorry.
Hey, no need to apologize! Trans people have been targeted so much, so it’s understandable that you’re struggling. Please know you have our full support and that everyone can clearly see that you and other trans people have nothing to do with what the person behind Sabrina Kane did. Stay safe and be kind to yourself!
You ARE a woman. Period (or as Aussies like to say, FULL STOP). Don’t hand your power to those that are not worth your time . Be the person you are. Go write. I don’t know you, but I accept you. Go write what your characters are telling you to do. Give your characters the power to express how you feel.
This is a quote from one of my favourite poets, Khalil Gibran (poet, painter, and philosopher), that I think would suit you: “From suffering the strongest souls have emerged. The strongest characters are forged from scars.”
Own it. Celebrate it. BE YOU.
Hi, Roxie – I’m not quite sure why you’re saying exactly what you’re saying, and I’m not really asking (but if you want to share, please do). But I hope you take Jae up on the offer of talking. It’s a sincere offer, and you are deserving.
Please, please, be kinder to yourself. <3
You absolutely can write as a trans woman. I write, and I’m a trans woman. The thing is how Sabrina responded, not whether or not they are trans. If they had responded that yes, they were trans, and using Sabrina as a pen name, no issue. If they had not invented a whole life for themselves as someone else, no issue. Just be honest.
If you’re out in public, then all good. If you’re closeted, then say so, and that this is your femme side. I’d totally respect that.
Roxy, I want you to know you are valid. You are accepted by me and others. I am so sorry for the damage this does to honest people like yourself. I hate it. The anxiety and anguish this has caused me to have found this out. I thought SK was my friend. If you ever need anyone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Hugs to you. Sincerely, S-Jay xx
Hi Roxie,
You’re wonderful. You’re valid. Write please. If not for you then for the rest of us? 💜💜💜💜💜🙏
Thanks Jae! You are always looking out for us. We here in the US at the moment need to stick together and uplift each other and support one another, readers and writers alike! They are trying to erase us and we won’t go quietly! We are loud and proud!🏳️🌈
I’m going to have to be not honest though. I’m now going to have to be an AC Adams or Sabrina Kane. I hate it. But there’s no other way. And you, all of you, so kind and nice, you’ll hate me.
I’m sorry you were hurt so much by this S-Jay. I wish I could help you in some way.
I don’t see why you’d have to do that. Take a look at what all the established, out trans writers in the community are doing. I totally get that not everyone can be out, though, and that would be just fine too. If you need to protect yourself and prefer to stay more anonymous, you can do that too. You can publish under a pseudonym that you make your own. You don’t have to share anything about yourself and can let your books speak for yourself. All of that is NOT what the person behind Sabrina Kane was doing. As long as everything you’re telling readers is true, you’ll be okay.
Hi Roxie, Jae is right, there are plenty of us who wholeheartedly support you and all our trans sisters and brothers. At the same time, I recognize all the prejudice and hatred from without and within LGBTQIA. This a-hole doesn’t represent you or reflect on you in any way. As Jae said, this is just an opportunist and liar who tries to gaslight our community.
Okay, thank you both. I don’t want to lie to anyone. But I can’t help feeling it’s all a lie, you know? Like even if I don’t interact with anyone, just keep everything professional and distant, is having a female penname lying? Yes, I think it is. I can’t tell you how kmuch this hurts.
Sorry, I’m wasting your time. You’ve been very kind and understanding though. ♥️
Having a female pen name is only lying if you aren’t a woman. If you are a woman (cis or trans), then you have a right to write as a woman, under a female pen name. It doesn’t matter if you are out as trans in the rest of your life.
If you’re a trans woman, you’re a woman. You have the right to write and interact with others as a woman–as much as you can while keeping yourself safe. Anything else is transphobic rhetoric that, sadly, sometimes gets internalized.
If you can safely be out as a trans woman, that’s great. But if it’s not safe for you to be out right now, then focus on your safety first.
I’m confident you wouldn’t even think of posting photos that are not your own and pretend that’s you. That’s how you know you are nothing like the person behind Sabrina Kane.
Again, no need to apologize. You’re not wasting my time. I mean it when I say please reach out if you’re struggling.
Roxie, it’s also okay not to know. You aren’t deceiving people at all if you say that you’re still figuring out your gender as well. The takeaway is to be you, not pretend to be someone else. These men pretended to be someone else completely. From your posts here I can’t imagine you could be dishonest with people. Stick with your integrity. Write for yourself and if you get to the point where you are comfortable sharing it, you can.
This is all a journey. Just ask all of us authors who discovered we were nonbinary after publishing multiple books.
Growth is never a bad thing!
Sabrina/Sean was lying about being a completely different person! Every detail was fabricated. As long as you show up as yourself, no matter what your gender identity is (or how complex it is), using a pen name and writing sapphic fiction is totally fine. Trans women are women and have every right to be part of the community. They make it stronger! And they don’t even have to be binary trans women — nonbinary trans folks are welcome too.
Yes, exactly. That sums it up pretty well. As far as I’m concerned, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex, and gender-questioning writers are all valid parts of the community. There’s a big difference between not being able to be completely out or not being 100% sure about your own identity yet and actively lying and deceiving people about EVERY aspect of an entire life, from age to ethnicity to using fake photos of models.
Hi Roxie. I am a trans woman author who has navigated this and had a lot of the same apprehensions you seem to have about writing as your true identity while being respectful of the community. I’d love to help you out and give you guidance if you’d like. Feel free to email me or connect with me on social media, I would be more than happy to speak with you.
Wow! That is just insane to me. Thank you and S-Jay and the others for bringing this truth to light.
Thank you Jae for bringing this to our attention. I never read anything by Sabrina Kane and never will. There is something mentally wrong with people like Adam and Sean. This has really been a messed-up year, in more ways than one. Much thanks to you and all the authors who spend their time researching this.
I would phrase it differently and say they clearly lack empathy and don’t understand and/or don’t care how harmful their behavior is.
I’m going to try really hard to make the rest of the year a positive one for the community, including celebrating sapphic books with a Pride Month event. I think we all need some positivity for a change!
Roxie, take a moment please. Reread what Jae has written about this not being about trans or gender it’s about not deceiving the community of which you are apart. Don’t doubt that you are not accepted here. Be true to yourself, write for you. You could be a blue, pink tutu wearing furry elephant, if you are honest about you and what you write, if that’s Lesfic, that’s all we as readers need to know. In the end just be true to yourself. Nobody else matters dear. The Sapphic with a T community will support you.
That’s actually crazy because their social media is really integrated into the sapphic community online. 😳
Totally unexpected!
Wow. This is so messed up. Not an author I’ve read thankfully. Thank you to everyone who uncovered this, and to you Jae for posting what seems very clear evidence.
Thank you for taking the time to read it!
Thanks for all y’all’s research into it. Not sure why men so at ease to lie their way in to places they don’t belong. Glad it was discovered.
I have never read S Kane before and never will obviously. I looked up their books on Amazon and I’m surprised to see how good the reviews are. Honestly it’s a little infuriating. As a community what can we do to shed light on this transgression? Leave bad reviews? Share this page to reveal it to more people?
Sharing the link to this blog post would definitely be helpful. Thank you!
Anything else, I’ll leave up to readers to decide.
If she is a man she writes better lesfic than a lot of the women. It’s refreshing in a way that she or he as you all think, doesn’t write in the same pattern as certain lesfic writers. The same old thing, angst until about the 80 to 90 percent mark and then the same old sex scenes.
I’d like to make it clear that the issue isn’t about whether the books were written by a man or not or whether the books are well-written or not. I haven’t read them, so I can’t say one way or another.
The issue is a writer who made friends in the community with nothing but lies and deception. He has hurt a lot of people…and for what? If he’s that good of a writer, why couldn’t he just publish his books without creating a fake persona? Why was it necessary to send people fake photos? To create an entire fake life? To emphasize in so many social media posts that she’s a red-headed, 30-year-old lesbian from Carlsbad when none of that is true?
While I agree with you about the writing, that is not the point. Many people, I suspect you as well, developed what we believed was a true friendship over time. To learn from Sean himself in my case, that it was all a fabrication was deeply disappointing.
Good grief. That’s an awful lot of hard work – public-spirited, on your part, and completely the opposite on that of “Sabrina Kane”. I feel for those whose trust has been abused.
Wow thank you guys for uncovering this! I’ve read hundreds of sapphic books and one of those was a Sabrina Kane book. It stood out to me from all the others because of how uncomfortable it made me at times with all the constant sexualizing of women. It was so much so that I had actually wondered if it could have been written by a man. Knowing that’s a likely possibility makes a lot more sense as it all felt very male-gazey. I’ve never read another Sabrina Kane since and now definitely will not be!
I messaged with Sabrina back and forth several times over the past two years. I’ve read all of her books (except for the space ones because that’s not a genre I’m into), and honestly, the books helped me so much. I felt like I could finally feel in touch with myself and my experience as a lesbian/be comfortable in my body/etc. Though I thought her books were written extremely fast, and sometimes they lacked a bit of substance, let’s be real… I was in it for the smut! haha.
She and I communicated on social media about art. I would send her my art and she would send me progress photos of hers. She even emailed me Procreate brushes for free which was really helpful and kind. I didn’t talk to her a lot, but she was one of the first authors I discovered that opened a WHOLE world to me and this just really bums me out. Sapphic romance novels really saved me and this definitely hurts.
I feel like this isn’t a huge surprise that she may not be who she says she is. I was always suspicious of just how reclusive SK was while also maintaining a pretty open life, naming her gf and her friends online, taking pictures of her home and day to day, but to see that the few photos of her are actually someone under a different name is the most shocking along with the artwork being the same as Sean’s.
I’m grateful to have such an incredible community online and in the world through sapphic romance novels, but I really would have rather the online persona not been such a catfish vibe. It feels intrusive. I wouldn’t care who was writing a book if they were good enough or were open about it, or just straight up private except for their name. It IS a shame that as far back as we can remember people had to hide who they were and create aliases to be given a shot as an author. But to build a pretend world and communicate so privately with people and keep up the charade is what hurts the most.
I’m so sorry those positive interactions are now tainted. The sad thing is that it was all completely unnecessary. I haven’t read any of the Sabrina Kane books, so I can’t judge the quality of the books, but Sean seems like an incredibly talented artist. I don’t get why he couldn’t just be honest about who he was and interact with people without all the lies.
I am thunderstruck that this has happened *again*. I have not and will not read anything by Sabrina Kane. But my heart goes out to those who have been negatively affected by yet another catfisher within our ranks.
Thank you, S-Jay, Jae, and all the others who worked hard to bring this truth to light.
Ugh I wondered about this and makes me suspicious of authors who don’t post themselves AT ALL! I kind of like the Carlsbad series this and Moonflower Cove series were nice easy reads. Sucks to now have heightened distrust with some other authors because of this. Even if the author truly is private (which is totally ok!) now doubt is there behind who is actually writing these stories.
This adds doubts to so many other authors that I find also not posting anything about themselves. Just drawings of themselves which privacy is cool but things like this make you doubt the others as well.
And that’s exactly why this is so harmful. It creates distrust where we need unity.
Yet another man doing stupid things. Why can’t they do their stupid thing and write what they want to write and own it?
BTW that was some kick ass investigative work! Sucks to know the truth that all of it was built on lies and deception but well done on all that hard work.
I live in Missouri, known as The Show Me State. You will have to do more than this to prove that she is a man. I have read all of her books and have actually written back and forth. I have to say, if she is a man, she should get a sex change because she is definitely more feminine than most women. Have you seen ALL of her artwork? Is it all drawn by this man? The things we have talked about over these few years, he would have to be a gay man, the likes of none we have ever seen. Gayer than Liberace to Billy Porter. You will have to show me more to convince this lesfic reader.
I can’t “prove” that the person behind Sabrina Kane is a man, but it seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to me.
I can prove without a doubt that Sabrina lied so many times–about her artwork, about what she looks like, about her age, about photos she claimed to have taken. I think anyone who looks at the screenshots I shared can agree that she was not telling the truth about herself, right?
And all the lies lead back to a cis man named Sean David Wright. He was the one who created the artwork. He was the one who took the photos Sabrina posted as hers. He has a connection to the red-haired woman whose photos Sabrina posted claiming this is her. It’s a little bit too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? So the most obvious answer to me is: Sean is the person behind Sabrina Kane.
Honestly, can you think of a more logical explanation for all the things I have laid out above?
If there’s another explanation, as I said, I challenge “Sabrina” to come clean and tell us the truth.
Feel free to check out Sean’s social media if you need more proof. Like I said, I’m happy to let readers draw their own conclusions.
Hi Deb,
I am happy to jump on a zoom with you at any time and show you more and more evidence that shows every piece of graphite art, each “photograph” was drawn or taken by Sean.
None of us went into this lightly, we didn’t expect the results we found and I didn’t influence anyone off the bat. Every person involved in providing evidence for this did their own research independent from me.
I too spend days, months, years sending daily texts with “Sabrina” as does every beta who read for them. The first Cornwall book contains a lot of my personal information and life story. That’s how “close” I was with a person who deceived me. Trust me, this wasn’t the result I expected nor wanted. I guess the simple solution, as someone so close to Sabrina is, ask to FaceTime them. Ask them to jump on zoom with you. I can’t say for sure who the person is behind the name… but I know for certain it’s not the person in the pictures. Who is a woman married to a man, and they have a child. I know “Katie” isn’t the woman in the pictures as that’s a model who definitely isn’t Anna’s girlfriend and they don’t live together.
Either way you and countless others of us have been lied to and that’s not okay.
Looks like you *were* shown. That’s an awful lot of evidence that Sabrina Kane, at minimum, either lied a lot or stole someone else’s artwork. Seems that it’s more logical that it’s the original male artist Sean (who also wrote a lesfic book prior being SK) versus a real woman in a confusing web of lies. Even just the photo of Anna on its own is a huge lie.
It’s always so strange when someone goes through so much trouble to fake a new identity, but steals from the original identity. Common sense would be to not mix them.
Anyway, I appreciate the warning, Jae. I don’t think I’ve read an SK book yet (and now won’t), but I’ll have to check my list. I’ve read/listened to 180 lesfic books since the depressing results of the US election in November and sometimes I forget who I’ve read. I replaced my obsessive political podcasts with romance. 😂 My therapist approves.
What’s your investment in asserting S. Kane’s femininity (not an indicator of gender/sex), or claiming they must be a gay man “the likes of which we have never seen”? If it is the latter, what he’s done is still deceptive, no?
As noted in another comment, Sean’s blog posts are fixated on/repulsed by the idea of gay male sexuality and transgender people. Lesbians are a really common fetish for homophobic straight men. They don’t view women as people, or lesbianism as a legitimate identity- so in their minds, it’s not incongruent with their other conservative beliefs.
What we take issue with is the misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and disdain that this writer has for a group of people while making money/clout off of us and presumably sexual gratification at the same time.
Excellent work, Jae. I swear there’s an investigative journalist buried in you! I’m just very sad, yet, again such work is needed. I appreciate these cases are being exposed.
At one point, I actually considered reaching out to you to have you double-check my conclusions due to your journalistic background. But honestly, it just all seems so obvious, and the proof kept piling up. Plus it’s bad enough this entire scheme wasted my time and S-Jay’s and that of many others.
So I’ve never read a Sabrina Kane book, but had a couple on my ‘eventual’ ebook TBR. Getting rid of those now omg.
What a wild, but !!! article – thank you for putting it together, Jae!
What got me, is after reading this, I went to Sabrina’s insta. I don’t know if your site allows html, so I’ll just drop the URLs, but this post: https://www.instagram.com/lesficbykane/p/CzG9aPvRvX1/ of the Halloween makeup, and then this AI slop: https://www.instagram.com/lesficbykane/p/C1-GuosPyrt/ are definitely 2 different people. Of course the AI slop being AI makes it not the right person, but the fact that the caption is “By the way, AI made my hair shorter and my lips fuller–I don’t know why…but you get the idea…I’m on a redhead on the #beach…LOL.” makes this wilder. Even if AI was used to ‘fix’ parts, those would be two different people (the nose is a dead giveaway).
Anyway, my brain fixated on that – apologies!
I have zero problems with pseudonyms being used – but like your post says, it’s not about the pseudonym, it’s the fact that this person was purposefully deceiving others & “it’s their harmful behavior—lying and deceiving people for years, undermining the trust within our community”. So spot on.
I’ve rambled enough now – sorry!
The person with the Zombie makeup isn’t supposed to be Sabrina. Sabrina says she took that in 2023 of a friend of hers, but that’s actually one of the posts that Sean posted 12 years before that on his social media.
Thank you for putting together this extensive expose.
I am a sapphic author who was very good friends with AC Adams. The betrayal I felt when I found out that this guy I called my friend had been lying to me for over a year took a while to get over, and now this? Just sad.
I have worked very hard to complete five LGBTQ+ series, but with all the political craziness going on right now, I have put everything on a temporary hold. I am working on a children’s series until I can get my fears under control.
I just saw an alarming video about a bill that, if passed, could lead to WLW books being banned and authors ending up in prison! This is part of the threat of Project 2025 in all its insidious glory:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjPf7j85/
It’s just sad what we are all going through, and we sure do not need people posing as someone they are not in our community.
Thank you for this excellent reporting. I vaguely remember rumours two or three years ago, and I stopped reading Sabrina Kane.
Thank you for your hardwork…Her books are still in my kindle….i can’t believe this…I am going to delete those books….This is making me hard to trust other authors…again thank you so much
I did some digging myself after hearing this and came across Sean’s Pinterest profile. If you go through all of the boards, they’re very similar to Sabrina’s personality. There’s also tons of lesbian content on there in the form of photos, rainbows, memes and quotes:
https://pin.it/3TdKFCBNa
I found it by searching his name online.
To me, there is no doubt that Sean is the person behind Sabrina Kane. There’s also no doubt that SK has been lying about a lot of things, including their age, where they live, what they look like, etc.
Note: I am NOT trying to shift blame, this person’s actions particularly in misleading people in private conversations are creepy and inappropriate. BUT: I wonder to what extent the modern publishing landscape pushes this sort of deception with their demands for authors to market themselves on social media?
Back in the day it was common knowledge that a lot of romance authors (het romance) were men using female pen names, and no one *really* cared as far as I know? If the author is just a name on the cover, it’s not a very meaningful lie, and if the truth can be uncovered by anyone who looks into it, it’s not even that misleading.
But if authors are now expected to do the bulk of their own marketing and to push their persona as much as they do their books, that presents an incentive to be more fake and tell bigger lies.
Are there current examples of men with openly-acknowledged female pen names writing successfully in the romance field? Not talking about trans authors, talking about authors who write under multiple names for genre reasons and will say so on their sites.
As an author who works hard to make a living from my writing, I do get the pressure. But as an author, you’re supposed to market your books. Sure, authors establish a brand, and the person behind the books is just as much a part of the brand as the books themselves, but in no way can it be okay for deception to be part of the marketing. I know that’s know what you’re saying; I just want to make it very clear where I stand as a writer who uses a pen name. The person behind Sabrina Kane built friendships as that fake persona, so it extended far beyond social media too.
I also don’t think authors having to do the brunt of the marketing is anything new. What is new (well, “new” meaning the last 20+ years…so maybe not really new at all) is readers having more access to authors via social media. No doubt authors pick very carefully and only reveal the shiny details of their lives. Which is okay. No one should be forced to share details they’re not comfortable with. But there has to be a line somewhere. To me, that line is actively and consistently lying and deceiving people.
In many genres and literary categories, readers might not care so much about the person behind the writing. I think LGBTQ+ books are a little different in that our identities as LGBTQ+ are so intertwined with our characters and our storytelling. Most readers and most writers share that identity (although there are a few cishet readers and writers, and I’m supportive of that too).
So, while I don’t doubt this person isn’t who they say they are, and I see you’ve acknowledged you’re not trying to be transphobic, this type of dogpile callout actually may just make more harm than good. You say that as far as you can tell this person is a cis man, but you actually don’t know that. In this type of transphobic world, which has been ongoing for much longer than just recent escalation, you simply do not know this persons identity, and you say as much here. So where exactly am I supposed to trust that there isn’t a form of transphobia at work here — and there is subconsciously. I don’t think it was intended, I think y’all really want to keep harm from being done. But the fact is, no one was actually harmed here, not physically, and you may have just outed someone in a very hostile world. Was there a little bit of interpersonal deception here? sure, but no one was harmed by this persons work or their existence, and accountability and restitution could’ve been made between folks if handled not on social media. As y’all can see, there’s a very real trans woman in these comments having a very real reaction to what’s happening. And that’s in part because you have prejudged someone as cis based on your OWN preconceived notions of who is trans.
Actually multiple people were harmed as a result of this dishonesty and deception. People have been ridiculed, teased, bullied on-top of everything else, so please don’t assume that no one has been hurt. They have.
Jae is one person within our community who does everything she can to support our trans members. This is not a witch hunt, nor is it anything to do with this persons gender. It’s everything to do with this person lies to multiple vulnerable people. Obtaining personal information about other under pretences is not okay. That’s the long and short of it
I am one of the people who got hurt. Maybe not in a physical way but mentally. I had to step away in the middle of a beta read for SK (after having beta read about 9 other books by him), it’s not something I ever did before. But when I only got dismissive replies back, when I was made fun of, including a post on X of how we made him want to drink wine (it was a list that included all the names and I was on top), I just had to leave. It was literally bullying, after it wasn’t like this at all when I started. To discover now that most of the things I got told were lies just adds to everything. So yeah maybe no one got physically hurt, but mental abuse exists too and can affect people too. It definitely did affect me.
Again, this is interpersonal harm that can be handled between people OFFLINE. Like I said there was interpersonal deception or disagreement here, and yeah that sucks, but y’all were just in a group chat and got your feelings hurt, it is not something to transvestigate someone (which you all did do because we’re literally reading the blog post documenting said transvestigation) over is what I’m saying, and then allow people to comment fraud hotlines to encourage people to report them in this kind of political climate. You gave someone you didn’t know personal information of your own free will, and it turned out that you didn’t actually know the person. That sucks, but again does not warrant all this, especially when, you all continue to misgender this person you ADMIT yourselves you don’t know if they are trans or not, you just THINK they’re cis based on what you perceive as cis profiles. I think y’all think this is trying to get some kind of justice, but it’s not. And really all this is in practice, a witch hunt. You can say that it’s not 1000000 times, doesn’t change that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck that it’s a duck. I’m sorry that this relationship did not work out for y’all, but this ain’t it.
Pretending to be someone you’re not in order to sell products is fraud and it is illegal.
If you want to do something, you can report the fraud.
In the U.S.: reportfraud.ftc.gov
Outside the U.S.: econsumer.gov
If you want to include the address where they accept mail in your report, it is:
2712 Loker Avenue West #1035
Carlsbad, CA 92010
If you have purchased books, art, or other merch and are within the return window – return them.
You can also report fraudulent charges through your credit card or debit card provider.
People who do these kinds of despicable things need to know that we will fight back and there will be real consequences.
So I did explore for myself because I found it hard to believe the person I chatted with on Facebook was a man. I’m thinking it was a tag team of him and his software daughter named Addison. Addison wrote something about her Mom a while back. ” Witnessing my single mother successfully provide for two daughters is one of the most impactful life experiences I have had with regards to achieving my educational goals. Her struggles and perseverance have highlighted the importance of having a good education to fall back on.” So this Sean David Wright is not only a man pretending to be a lesbian writer but he is also a deadbeat dad. I once asked, Do you write any books under another name? They responded- ” No. No other books under another name. I have enough to do writing books under my name. ( two smiley faces)On 12/30/24 6:28 PM ” I have a question for you!!!! Back in the day, ( like the 1970’s or even the late 60’s) if two women were gay and living together, did they have to tell people some made-up story about their connection, and why they were living together? Like, “We’re sisters or we’re cousins.”This is a conversation about that Adam guy: January 11, 2025 9:16 PM. ” On the one hand, I was kind of always appreciative of the fact that he talked up my books, but I was also kind of, “Ok, dude, back off a bit, because all you’re gonna get from me is a ‘ Like’ on something you say, that’s it.” ” He also kept trying to get me to read his books before they were released. Out of curiosity, I let him send me one for free (obviously), and it sucked. I didn’t even finish it.” ” Some of my other fans and I would make fun of the way he kept showing up on ALL my posts!!! And then would join convo threads that were clearly all for women!!! Ugh!”
I have no stakes in this one way or another, I was shown this by a friend. But now I’m interested in it.
I have a couple of questions that I feel I must ask, given the nature of this.
Why was it merely assumed Sean must know the model simply because he tagged her in a drawing? This is fairly common for artists to do as I’m sure any within your community could confirm. I’ve known a lot of artists that have really lucked into boosting their careers by grabbing the attention of someone famous they made art of. Though I highly doubt that was ever the intention for him, it still doesn’t make sense to equate that with them knowing each other. I feel like there’s some missing context here?
And secondly, why did no one in the process of this investigating bother reaching out to her? Asking if her photos were approved to be used in this manner would give you far better evidence to work with.
Futhermore, on that subject, I feel like the focus of the wrongdoing here is not where it fully ought to be. The lying and deceiving is shitty, but ultimately doesn’t do any real damage to any individuals outside of some betrayed trust (and I say this as an internet old: until you have met with someone in person, never fully trust someone online. This was internet safety 101 for 20 years, long before the internet was even *properly* the internet. It’s just best practice.) and hurt feelings. Not to discount hurt feelings and all, but it’s a trivial matter in the grand scheme of things.
The stealing of a model’s photos and grossly misattributing them is *directly* damaging to her, her work, and possibly even her reputation. Not to mention Danielle Edwards; if that happens to be a real person he’s inserting into his writing without permission, then yet another woman he’s directly harming. One is morally bad, the other is morally, financially, and criminally bad. It just feels a little odd to heavily focus on the breach of trust over the potential damage done to the model, who was sort of dismissed in this whole piece.
I could be missing a lot that this group is privy to, though, and if so then my apologies. Just an outside perspective.
I’m left wondering what the heck his end goal was, though. I don’t see any version of this situation that ends in any sort of win for him. So like… why? It’s all quite bizarro.
I agree with you that you only know someone when you actually have met them and even then you only know someone after awhile. I can’t say anything about the model or anything you mentioned there, but I wanted to explain something about your point that no real damage was done otherwise. I was one of SK’s beta reader for almost two years and about 9 of his books. Beta reading needs a lot of trust, honesty and respect from both sides. For example the author trusts the beta reader with their work, while the beta reader trusts the author with their time and in the end that they are in a safe space. Sometimes friendships develop out of this, other time it’s more a professional relationship. But again it’s build on trust, honesty, and respect.
The whole beta reading was fun at the beginning and I enjoyed it, but things changed with the time. So called jokes felt more like mocking. Comments were dismissed and we got to hear all the time how many glasses of wine SK wanted to drink because of our comments. Again it was fun at first, but when he did a public post on X where he mentioned the wine thing including a list with all the beta reader names, this was my last straw. In the end I just felt bullied (in private and public) and just felt horrible. When I left I sent a DM to SK and explained how I felt. I got some kind of an apology, that didn’t really feel like one. He also said that he will look into this. I totally knew that nothing will change, but in the end that wasn’t my problem anymore.
You may say again that this was only an internet connection, but again a beta and authors relationship doesn’t work without trust. I also think it can be compared to a work relationship. Personally I haven’t met all the people I work together with. There are some I only ever spoke on the phone or I interact via email. Does that mean I shouldn’t trust them? Or does that mean I should treat them in a disrespectful way? Because that’s where he definitely went against it and harmed people. Again you may disagree there and think it can’t be that bad, but for me it was at the time. In think in the end we can only know how something felt, when we experienced itourselves. Otherwise we have to trust, when others tell us how something made them feel and not dismiss it.
It’s not about who was in on it with him, it’s about him pretending to be someone he wasn’t. That he cultivated relationships based on a fake persona where a lot of people would not have been as open and honest with him if they’d known they were talking to a man.
It’s about the abuse he dished out to certain beta readers whilst playing favourites with others.
I personally saw the effects this person had on my friend Conny and I can tell you that if you think it can’t and hasn’t affected her just because he’s online then you’re very much mistaken.
I’m lucky that after this fiasco I was able to persuade Conny to beta read for me. She’s an amazing beta reader and like all other beta readers they should be praised and cherished because they make our books so much better.
I could go on and on but I think you get my drift.
And for clarity, Conny has met me in real life and knows I’m who I say I am despite using a pen name. But I don’t feel like I’m in a position to make my family life public knowledge so I don’t. You could say only my toes are poking out of the closet presently. Not how I wish it to be but that’s my reality.
But now I feel compelled to offer zooms etc to prove I am that person on my page pic, author pic etc. So the repercussions of this man’s actions have affected me too as well as for all my trans sisters and brothers and fellow authors who will be called into question when they are innocent.
You know what though? He isn’t worth it. But I’ll play the game and do a zoom if it helps people decide I’m not who I claim to be which sadly is a middle aged hag from Yorkshire.
Hey FR,
I did reach out to the model regarding this issue and she hasn’t responded to my messages. She was given ample time before the blog post in order to communicate back with me. I made sure every avenue was covered. I was apologetic to her for the potential of her being brought into a situation she may have had no knowledge of. However there was a mutual exchange between the model and Sean on Instagram, they’ve worked together on photoshoots.
Regarding this person not having hurt anyone outside of the model … there are a handful of us who have shared such personal stuff in a space we thought was a safe space and now know that the person we had thought they were, they were not. Some people shared about their children, their trauma, their sexuality/gender, and they did so based on trust. Thankfully each of us betas knows each other and have confirmed we are who we said we are. But this doesn’t remove the humiliation and bullying some of us were subjected to, the shame and fear we feel having had what was supposed to be a safe space now be anything but that.
Thank you for this. I was one who was deceived by Adam. I thank you again for shining light on Sabrina/Sean. At least I hadn’t purchased an of his books like I did Adam’s. They may be wonderful writers but if you do so by lying and deceiving people, then my money and I want nothing to do with them. Too many other authors are much more deserving to have their books purchased by me.
I am so sorry that you were deceived too, Regina. You deserve better. All readers and betas deserve the best 😔
I looked up that Vermeer show—2013. 🤦🏼♂️
https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/culture-monster-blog/story/2012-01-27/vermeers-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-coming-to-san-francisco
Jae, I am so grateful that you emphasize that this has nothing to do with being trans. I am grateful that it seems the sapphic romance community you’ve curated is trans inclusive. I remember when the Adam Gaffin situation happened, a lot of transphobes were saying it was no different than a trans woman writing sapphic romance and it made me feel isolated from the community. I’m not trans, but my girlfriend is.
I’m just grateful that you emphasize trans inclusivity and call out the transphobes in this post. What Sean David Wright and Adam Gaffin are doing are exactly what transphobes want, so they can try to justify their beliefs. It’s severely damaging to the community and puts trans people at risk :(
But I’m grateful for you, Jae!
The last thing I want is to make trans or gender-questioning people feel as if they don’t belong in the sapphic book community. They do! As I said in the blog post, the only people I want to keep out are the deceptive people who manipulate others and don’t care who they harm in the process.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!
Thank you for clarifying that it’s not a trans issue, that it’s not about pen names, and that it’s not a call to investigate other authors. The precedent you’re setting still bothers me, though. You’re going through an awful lot of trouble to dig up this person’s dirt – and they deserve it, don’t get me wrong. But as a trans author with a pen name, I’m constantly worried that some transphobe will put the same effort into doxing me.
You haven’t done anything wrong, Jae, and I genuinely applaud the work you’ve put into this. But it still scares me. There’s always a degree of “What if I’m next?” whenever I read an article like this. I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of, but a tenacious bigot could still mess up my life.
Thank you for what you do. I just wish it didn’t scare me.
I get it. Transphobes might use it against trans people who have done nothing wrong. I can’t even imagine how scary it must be, especially in the current political climate.
In no way do I want this blog post to be used as a weapon against trans writers. Staying silent wasn’t an acceptable alternative, though. When confronted, Sean refused to be honest and kept up the manipulations. So the only thing we could do to tell people to be careful and not to get involved was to put it all out there.
I really hate that people like him add to your burden. Please reach out if there’s ever anything I can do.
Thank you, Jae. I appreciate you.
I was suss after the Jillian Ashley book. I even had a brief email exchange with Sabrina in 2021 about grammatical errors I kept finding in the books. I don’t like this. This book also gave me pause because of the male writer. I stopped reading the books after that, but now everything is getting dumped out of my to be read. It just feels too cringey now. Thank you Jae.
Is anyone aware of Sabrina’s fun factoids for each of her books? I always enjoyed reading these after each book. Last night, I went back to the facts about the Jillian Ashley book… because I, too, was skeptical at the time, yet I kept reading the rest of the series. The facts are wild for this book. I am copy and pasting the few that stand out to me as suss:
Factoid One
I conceived the idea for this book while I was in the midst of writing the second book, A Matter of Trust: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance
The idea came to me as I was taking a long walk around Carlsbad one evening. It struck me as so good that I immediately stopped walking, took out my iPhone and started typing the concept into the Notes app.
I was so in love with the idea, in fact, that I actually couldn’t help my mind from writing the story: I began imagining scenes, characters, bits of dialog…everything! It excited me that much!
Factoid Five
Controversy! :-)
Once I started writing FFJA in earnest, I tweeted that I was including a sex on the beach scene.
Wow!
I got a lot of responses–on Twitter and via email–from fellow women telling me how having sex on the beach is such a bad idea. How it always sounds like fun at first but then all that sand gets into the most inconvenient places thus making it not worth the trouble.
What little faith in me! :-)
Of course I knew about the sand problem! And of course I accounted for that in my sex on the beach scene, writing it in such a way that sand was taken out of the equation.
In the end, I silenced my critics. :-)
(If you haven’t read the book, you’ll have to do so to find out how.)
Factoid Six
I was very nervous about the introduction of the character Max.
Let’s face it, the vast majority of lesfic books do not feature a prominent male character and so I was unsure how Max would be met within the lesfic community. Also, I had never written a male character before (at least one who is so integral to the story; William in Nothing But A Fling: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance doesn’t count IMHO) and wasn’t sure I could pull it off.
In the end, I did what a lot of daughters would do in my situation: I based him on my Dad. :-)
Factoid Nine
This was the first of my novels which I made available for beta reading by a curated group of fans.
Factoid Ten
Max’s original last name was Moore. I changed it to Tremont at the last moment in another nod to the Bronx roots of my Dad.
One of these days, I should start including Connecticut references in my books in a nod to my Mom’s roots. Unfortunately, Connecticut just isn’t as interesting as NYC. (Sorry to all my Connecticut readers. :-) )
That’s what bothers me the most: All those completely unnecessary lies, as if deceiving people was just a clever little game.
Max was also the name of the main character in Sean David Wright’s two sapphic novels (which are FFM). So he has written a male main character before.
Here I am trying to to break into the Sapphic authors world, and this man does this… I don’t have any queer friends or connections no one knows I exist. But I write and self publish…. And I kind of feel cheated.
I’m really sorry. That’s one of the many ways in which the person behind Sabrina Kane harmed the community. But remember that you don’t need to prove yourself or your identity just because of what Sabrina Kane did. You can write under a pen name and protect your privacy, if that’s what you prefer. And if you want to make friends and make connections, my advice would be to join some sapphic book groups or sapphic writer groups. I run a group for writers and a group for readers on Facebook, and there are many others.
Sheesh… I used to write with the Merpups. I’m familiar with you and Mary Dee and Melissa Good, and I’m friends with Lee Winter on FB…I need to find my way back.
Wow! I’m just finding about this. I was one of I’m sure many who had created a “friendship” with Sabrina. I actually sent an email yesterday because I couldn’t reach her (him?) and was worried. I hadn’t seen any of this. I did receive an email this morning where he laid out everything to me. I’m sure he’s had to do that many times by this point. I too always wondered, at least a little, after reading the book featuring a straight man writing as a lesfic author. My response was exactly what you have pointed out. It’s not about the pen name, its about creating personal relationships. That is where he crossed the line. I will not let myself feel foolish for getting drawn in, but I will not allow it to happen again. It has become an insane world. Thank you for your post. Oh, and thank you for your writing. which I enjoy very much!
You are actually the first person I know of that Sean responded to. A lot of other people he created friendships with as Sabrina never heard back.
Interesting. I have no clue why. What he laid out were all the reasons for what he did. His words were “explain, not excuse.” He did think that I knew all of this when I sent the email. I did not. I’m sure he initially misinterpreted my reaching out. While I do understand his explanation, it doesn’t change the fact that he literally brought a character to life and caused pain for many people by bringing us into his fantasy. I am working through feeling such a loss for a person who never even existed. He said it all got out of control and he never intended for that to happen. Intention is irrelevant to me. I do really enjoy his writing and his deception has taken that joy away. And it has me again wondering how to ever know who the writer of anything actually is. It’s all so surreal.
You know I have always believed that it goes far deeper than what we know. I’m not going to throw out accusations as I have no proof but I believe there’s been a lot more hurtful things done and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
His acknowledgment in his latest book is – Does it really fucking matter?
The answer is yes. It does fucking matter. It matters a lot.
Hopefully more and more people will tell their stories and it will be much clearer exactly why it matters. See the harm this sorry excuse for a human has done and it’s not about the pen name and never has been. It’s about so much more.