paperback coming soon
About
Rae Sengele writes moody, character driven literary (Lonely Spires) & speculative fiction (Orange Like the Sun) that centers queer and neurodivergent characters like herself. When she’s not writing, she can be found crocheting, cross stitching, and consuming horror media. She lives in South Central Texas with a very talkative black cat.
books
In 2007, when Alex Matthews was 19, her mother committed suicide. Adrift in her grief, Alex pulled away from her brothers’ attempts to keep the family together. Lost to the dark waters of her own self-destruction, she found solace not in her boyfriend Marc, but in her professor, Jonathan, who she followed to Austin without telling anyone. It was only after five years of self-imposed exile that she returned to Port Aransas no longer with Jonathan, but with a four year old daughter.In 2018, now married to Marc, Alex writes a letter pouring out the guilt and regret she’s been holding onto for nearly a decade. In it, she explains why she left, where she was through those five years, and, most importantly, why she kept their daughter from him. It will be her final penance for disappearing while she fought through the raging sea of her grief to break a cycle set in motion generations before her.A love letter to Janet Fitch’s White Oleander and Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking, Lonely Spires is written with a lyrical voice that sways between prose and poetry while never flinching from the difficult emotions that come from grief and the weighty bond between a mother and a daughter.
INTERCONNECTED STANDALONE
SERIES: Twin Realms Universe
SUBSERIES: Redacted
GENRES: Women's Fiction, Literary Fiction
SUBGENRE: Epistolary Fiction
HASHTAG: #lonelyspires
READ THIS IF YOU LOVED...
White Oleander and/or Paint it Black by Janet Fitch, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, Failure to Zigzag by Jane Vandenburgh, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
ROMANCE TROPES...
(eventual) Second Chance Romance
Accidental Pregnancy that becomes a Secret Pregnancy
Sleeping with the Teacher (gone wrong)
Lots of Pining/Just Let Me Love You
I Don’t Deserve You
One True Love
QUEER REP...
BI for BI m/f romance (though only Alex is explicitly shown to be bi in Lonely Spires, trust me Marc very much also is); a messy SAPPHIC situationship
CONTENT GUIDE...Lonely Spires as a whole is an exploration of grief, depression, and self-sabotage, if you’re not in the place to sit in those feelings, be good to yourself. I’ll have other books for you to check out soon. Other strong themes/topics are suicide/suicidal ideation, cheating, and a secret pregnancy/child. There are also depictions and descriptions of domestic abuse, a toxic relationship, drowning (both literal and metaphorical), sexual content, and alcoholism/binge drinking, as well as, brief depictions of homophobia and smoking.
AUTHOR'S NOTE...
The concept for this book first came to me when I was 18. My own mother was in a rough place mentally, I wasn’t doing much better, and I was going through a strange pregnancy movie phase that I still can’t fully explain. One of the recurring themes in each of these movies (and I think one of the reasons why I enjoyed them) was the mother/daughter bond. I just remember watching all these pregnant women/teens lean on their mothers through the process of becoming mothers themselves and being so afraid of one day possibly facing motherhood without mine. I still remember lying on my best friend’s living room floor scribbling the original thought on a ripped off corner of notebook paper while we tried to remember how to spell “postpartum” in the pre-smart phone era.Lonely Spires, Alex, and the Matthews clan have grown up alongside me not just as a writer, but as a person. In many ways, I’m glad I never finished those initial attempts at a first draft. I was barely ready to write a “grown up” novel let alone one that focuses so heavily on grief, depression, and self-sabotage.This book was honestly ready to be published before I was. I wasn’t ready to let go of these characters. I wasn’t ready to let them be anything more than mine. They’ve been a part of me for so long, releasing them into the world scares me more than I was read to admit for a long time. But ships aren’t built to sit in port and books aren’t written to sit unpublished on a hard drive.
Orange Like the Sun was originally published as Blood Orange. The only change to the actual text was the gender swap of a minor character to include even more sapphic representation.
After waking up in a locked closet, Echo learns three things that change her world entirely: all of her memories have been fabricated; she's an android who's only recently been made sentient; and Marsh, one of her two creators—the one who rescued her from a militia hellbent on destroying her—isn't what he seems. The only thing she knows to be true is that her girlfriend, Aurora, and her love for her are real even if she, it turns out, is also a sentient android.
But when Marsh helps Echo reunite with Aurora and their small found family of other sentient androids, she quickly realizes that none of them share her false memories, leaving Echo feeling isolated in a past that only she remembers. Her confusion and disorientation isn't helped by the fact that one of their family is missing along with their other creator, Eden. No one can tell her where they are or what happened and they all seem to harbor resentment towards Marsh that Echo doesn't understand.
Though Echo wants nothing more than to stay still and adjust to her new reality in peace with Aurora, the group instead escape Marsh and head out across the country to find Eden and, hopefully, Echo's real memories.
An exploration of autonomy and identity, Orange Like the Sun is a literary sci-fi and sapphic love story for fans of Blade Runner and Klara and the Sun.
STANDALONE...
(with easter eggs to The Eyes of Texas)
GENRES: Science Fiction, Romance
SUBGENRES: Sentient AI, Epistolary, Road Trip
HASHTAG: #orangelikethesun
READ THIS IF YOU LOVED...
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick) & Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
THE VIBES...
lead with amnesia/false memories, literally coming out of the closet, found family, hurt/comfort, dealing with PTSD, road trip
QUEER REP...
LESBIAN lead character & romance, BI for BI m/f side romance, TRANS and ARO/ACE side character, multiple SAPPHIC side characters & romances, disaster BI antagonist, NONBINARY minor character
ROMANCE TROPES...
"Every part of me loves every part of you"
Hurt/Comfort
"I'd burn the world for you"
When angels and demons begin using the earth as a battleground, Dolly drags her best friend, EJ, across the Texas Hill Country to get back the one who got away before the world ends.
STATUS...
Editing first draft
TRILOGY...
GENRES: Paranormal Romance
SUBGENRES: Apocalyptic, Road Trip
HASHTAG: #dollyandelvisvstheapocalpyse
READ THIS IF YOU LOVED...
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
THE VIBES...
dual POVS, end of the world, angels and demons, fuck yeah humanity, average people just trying to survive the apocalypse, m/f platonic love, female golden retriever & male black cat
QUEER REP...
BI FMC with two LESBIAN love interests and PAN & DEMISEXUAL MMC with a NONBINARY love interest
ROMANCE TROPES...
DOLLY, LEO, & GREMORY
Second chance romance
Why choose
Big/Small
"I can't help but love her"
EJ & EMBER
Grumpy & Grumpy
Hurt/Comfort
"Who hurt you?"
"Touch him and die"
After her sister goes missing, Randy Hart goes into Vixens, an underground VR game where the rich hunt missing women, in an attempt to get her sister back.
STATUS...
World building & outlining
DUOLOGY...
GENRE: Sci-fi
SUBGENRES: Dystopian, Cyberpunk
HASHTAG:
READ THIS IF YOU LOVED...
Ready or Not, the West World TV show, Ready Player One by Ernest Kline,
THE VIBES...
feminist Ready Player One, "good for her", sisterhood, siblings who will kill for each other, liminal spaces
QUEER REP...
LESBIAN lead
At the same time that Sparrow is given the mantel of Bloody Catrina, a title her mother gave up before Sparrow was born, the highly sheltered niece of the King, Lady Thora, is running across unfamiliar territory from an arranged marriage.After circumstances bring them both onto the same magical ship, they’ll be taken on a journey to not only solve a century’s old puzzle, but also the source of both women’s generations old family traumas.
STATUS...
Researching and Worldbuilding
Just having fun for now ♥ ♥ ♥
TRILOGY...
GENRES: High Fantasy
SUBGENRES: Romantasy, Pirates, Royals
HASHTAG: #daughtersoftheseatrilogy
THE VIBES...
gay pirate, sapphic witch, water heavy world/mythology, elemental magic, generational trauma, breaking the cycle
QUEER REP...
LESBIAN pirate lead, BI & DEMIROMANTIC witch lead, BI plant "genasi" mentor,
SERIES SETUP...
Book 1: Following Sparrow, a new pirate captain learning the history of her family--a matrilineal line of female captains passing down the mantel of Bloody Catrina
Book 2: Following Thora, the sheltered niece of the king who just wants to be left alone to train to be a witch, but has to run from an arranged marriage
Book 3: Dual POVs between Sparrow and Thora as they work to solve a centuries old magical puzzle that promises to help them understand how their families are connected
