Coming Soon: Some Swan Song Books You Can Actually Buy!
A while ago, I stood at a crossroads with writing. I had gotten rid of my agent, who I was pretty sure didn’t really understand the stuff I wanted to work on, and also found myself out of contract with previous publishers. I spent the past few years just really enjoying myself, writing whatever I wanted, not worrying about what would and wouldn’t sell, what I could and couldn’t pitch. I just...wrote. I love writing, it is my absolute favorite thing to do with my time, and I just wrote and wrote and wrote a lot of words I loved a lot, and I shared them all with all of you.
But then eventually, after a while of doing this, I began to have this little itch inside of me. I would (sometimes) read the books of others, and (sometimes) watch a movie or television show, and I would think, “...I could have done this better.” (Or, sometimes, “I *have* done this better.”) In the time that I spent just enjoying my hobby, the market shifted to be more open and welcoming to ficcy properties -- the types of story I kept pitching to my agent that she kept saying the market wouldn’t know what to do with.
So I thought: Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time to try again with the whole publishing thing. Like, I hadn’t been thrilled with any of my publication experiences before but maybe the market had shifted to be more amenable to the type of stuff I write. Maybe I would feel less twisted-around now than I did last time. So I started jotting down agents who seemed to represent authors who wrote stories the way I did, who might be a better fit for me than my original agent was, and I got to thinking about starting the whole process again, and then I thought, “...Why am I doing this?” lol
I wrote a little bit about this earlier, about debating whether to find an agent or just self-publish, and I decided at the time to give both a try, but then later I changed my mind again. I just didn’t have a whole lot of interest in doing something I’d already done, which was the traditional publishing route. The more I thought about it, the more I dreaded it. The more I thought about letting someone else into my stories again, letting them thrash around in there to make them more like something else, the less and less I wanted to undertake the effort. It’s a lot of work to find an agent; why would I do it if I was ambivalent about what the result would be? I kept thinking of that Pete Wentz lyric: I became such a strange shape, trying to fit in. Publication messed with me. It messed with my relationship with writing. It messed with the stories I wanted to tell. It messed with my creativity and enthusiasm and process. I’m many years older than I was and the “reward” of publication just didn’t seem worth it to me anymore.
So I thought again: Now we live in a world where you can easily self-publish. This world didn’t exist even ten years ago when I was first getting my agent, etc. Why am I trying to do things in this old-fashioned way I know I don’t like, when I could just publish things myself? Like, yes, now I have to teach myself publishing, so this is a lot, but I’m untangling it!
Which brings me to my announcement! I’ve been working behind the scenes for months now, EDITING. If you know me at all you know I NEVER WILLINGLY EDIT. But I’ve been doing it! I sat down with Swan Song and chopped it up into five novellas (it was too long for one novel, and the novella thing works well for self-publishing, or so I’ve been told Idk). I started editing them, a part of the process I always dreaded, and you know what? It turns out I really like editing when I think it’s genuinely making the story better! Who knew! I have had a blast editing this story! I actually think it’s much better than it was in fic form! I’ve added tens of thousands of words and you’re probably sitting there like, “Did Swan Song need to be longer?” and the answer is YES, IT TURNS OUT IT DID. (Editing, incidentally, was what I was supposed to be doing while I was posting “I Prefer Our Love,” and I did! I really did! And then I got bored and started writing “Next Christmas,” so just in case you thought I was going to turn into a dedicated editor, I suspect not lololol)
So! There are going to be Swan Song novellas! Five of them! In ebook and physical format! My plan right now is the first one will go on sale on February 14 (just in time for Valentine’s Day!). I’m hoping to get it up for pre-sales on February 1. And then, hopefully, there will be a new novella each month after that, until I run out of them. The pen name is Ainsley North and she has a Tumblr, if you’re so inclined to follow for waaaay more updates on all of this. And, in the meantime, if you read the original Swan Song as it was posted on AO3 (where it’s staying, incidentally) and want to provide some kind of blurb I can use in marketing, lmk!
