Long-Form Projects, Publishing too Early, and Audra Winter [TCD]
The Cat Discusses #8
A few weeks ago, the online book space’s latest villain of the week was Audra Winter, an indie author from the bowels of Tiktok who exploded in popularity after a well-timed ad announcing preorders for her book, The Age of Scorpius. Orders flew in, books shipped out…and then the reviews came. And they were not pretty.
So what happened?
One of Audra’s biggest and longest-standing selling points was telling readers that she has been working on the world of her book since she was ten years old. That’s a long time to work on a single thing! And normally when one hears such a fact, they may think of how an idea or concept will have evolved over that length of time. After all, the ideas we have as kids pale in comparison to their thought-out and adult counterparts, right? Our brains develop, our concepts gain more depth… By the time we publish, the final result should look very different from how it started, especially after so long.
But that isn’t what happened in Audra’s case, is it?
I have sat on the particulars of the Audra Winter fiasco for the past couple of weeks, partially because I have been otherwise preoccupied, and partially because, in a lot of ways, I see parts of myself in Audra. Or rather, I did. We’re both neurodivergent authors who have our own worlds as a special interest and have written for years, and both have a deep love of fantasy. And, more importantly, we both have a project we’ve been trying to work on for several years.
That is where the overlap between Audra and myself starts and ends. Because, otherwise, we have almost nothing in common.
A Legacy of Creation
I’ve been writing since I was six years old. This is a fact about myself and my writing career I often bring up—not to be impressive (because what six year old’s writing is impressive?)—but to highlight an overarching point of mine that writing is kind of “my thing” and always has been. It’s the only thing I’m good at, by virtue of being what I’ve focused on for over 20 years.
Suffice to say, this means I also wrote a lot in my teens. This is not something that makes me unique. There’s plenty of authors who have been writing since they were young, and many were more impressive than I was in terms of craft and ability. But to say any of us should have been published at that age aside from whatever magazine or website wanted to make examples of our “prowess” would have been a mistake. We were still quite young and naive, with minimal understanding of things like “craft” or what truly makes a good story. We just knew that we loved writing in all its forms and wanted to do more of it… and so do more of it we did. I personally stuck my claim on Wattpad for a good while—at least, until they decided to torpedo their forums and throw their queer writers under the bus.
But that is a story for another time.
It was during my time on Wattpad that two major phenomenons (to me) happened: first, I joined a fair amount of book clubs, writing groups, critique circles, and the like; second, I began to work on and develop what is now my longest-lasting fantasy world, Mesiphrae.
Mesiphrae began as a mishmash of a bunch of older fantasy concepts that I had, including some of the settings. I recycled a lot to build its base. It was also fueled by new things I was taking inspiration from—namely, the Dark Souls series by the video game eidolon that is FromSoft. It is thanks to the latter that I created the Luricae, a race of people born with magic in their blood and the ability to be reborn through flame. The inspiration is, I’m aware, painfully obvious, but I feel like I’ve done something fun with it. And yet, for a while, I was unable to do anything with this concept.
A Novel Years in the Making
There is a particular novel I’ve been working on for over ten years, originally dubbed Clinker Girl in my Wattpad days. While a single draft was never completed, I got fairly far and would often restart the book to tweak minor things and try to edit it to perfection. I wanted to publish this one, mind, and thought if I just worked hard enough on what I had, I could become the next NYT Best Seller.
I was, of course, incorrect in this notion. Despite how long I had already been working on Clinker Girl, and no matter how much I thought I liked it, I could never get it finished. Similarly, all the critique groups I joined had plenty to say in terms of issues for me to address. And so, after a couple of drafts, I completely gutted Clinker Girl and scavenged it for parts. A surprising amount of concepts carried over into what became Those Who Emerge from Ashes, mostly in terms of characters. Everything else was abandoned with that old WIP. Now I had a cheesecloth for a book, with plenty of holes to fill.
And so I asked myself about that world I’d created. How could these characters fit into that world and still maintain some of their character arc?
Those Who Emerge from Ashes continues to be vastly different from its first drafts. The last draft I touched, I completely changed a main character’s arc and elevated two other characters to POV status. For a moment, I even considered cutting out Dakota, the original POV… but she got to stay thanks to the severe changes I made to her arc. The latest drafts of Those Who Emerge from Ashes is a whole new book compared to its old versions, which are even more different when compared to Clinker Girl. To the point that, had I been bullish enough to try to force CG’s publication, I most certainly would be ashamed of the result now.
Nowadays, I’m a lot happier with how the actual draft is shaping up. I had a lot of developmental-level issues, but I feel I’ve massively slimmed down on them. Any issues to come now would be a result of the prose itself and smaller, story-specific details, which is exciting! I finally feel like I no longer need to constantly start over.
Though, given the plot of TWEfA and a big twist in particular, perhaps it’s fitting this novel has had so many false starts.
Eggs in Baskets
Suffice to say, when the Audra Winter situation broke, I became incredibly nervous. Here was an author who had fucked up so badly, yet seemed to have a lot of similarites to myself. One of her main selling points was how long TAoS has taken her to write. Meanwhile, I often joke about how long TWEfA has taken to write properly. Was this novel that I had spent so long with suddenly bad? It sure felt that way for a couple of days.
But then I thought more on all of this, and more information continued to come out, and I’ve come to two key conclusions:
Audra Winter is prioritizing entirely the wrong aspect of her book.
Audra Winter was not ready to publish.
Any time spent seriously observing her online behavior will help you draw the same conclusions. After all, one of the biggest selling points Audra has continued to spew ad nauseam (aside from how long she’s been writing it) is just how artful her book is. Maps! A pretty cover! A whole team of artists!
Personally, I love a pretty book. I love having pretty versions of books I already know I love. I jumped so fast on the Fairyloot Howl’s Moving Castle special edition, and the Orbit limited edition of A Dowry of Blood. Both are books I’ve read numerous times and have fallen more in love with through each repetition. But I don’t tend to go for pretty books if I’ve not read them before.
Audra, meanwhile, prioritized making her book as pretty as possible, not making it as good as possible as an actual book. This is evident the moment you read her book summary or the first pages. Unfortunately, she seems to have bet on the fact too many people would be allured by a gorgeous book before looking at the particulars; before her book blew up, excerpts or even a summary were difficult to come by. Now that the book is in the hands of some people, meanwhile, it is abundantly clear she doesn’t yet have the writing chops expected of a professional author.
She’ll try to convince you otherwise. Many of her videos make a point of mentioning how many hours she’s spent writing and how many books she’s wrote. There’s a lot to be said for the simple act of writing and not stopping! That said, you can’t just… write for ten years. You also have to learn. And it is clear in Audra’s case she’s not internalized any of the feedback she’s ever been given. She has barely learned a thing.
Publishing Your Book too Early
There is no age set in stone for when a writer can or should publish, and I will not be the one to try to establish such an age. Everyone has a different career path. I, as I’ve often said, have been writing for over 20 years…but I didn’t feel comfortable to start trying publishing until a few years ago. First with short stories in anthologies, and then finally a novel. A Sharper, More Lasting Pain, didn’t get released until just October of last year. My writing has been decades in the making.
Meanwhile, if my mother had it her way, I would have been published in my teens. Technically, I was: I released a poetry book under my deadname I will give no further details on because I’m greatly unhappy with the result nowadays. That was the one and only project she was able to coerce me into releasing before I was able to put my foot down. I was not ready. I knew that. And yet, so many people who know nothing about writing attempted to convince me otherwise.
Writing is a skill like any other. You have to practice at it. You have to get a good foundation underneath you to build off of. In my teens, I didn’t have the latter quite yet. I knew about writing, sure, and I was able to start identifying what makes a book good, but I couldn’t quite yet translate that into my own work. In time, I would find writing groups full of fellow writers. I would talk to professionals. I would get critiques and critique others in my own right.
Above everything else, the most important thing I did was learn.
Given the quality of what Audra released with TAoS, it’s clear to me she hasn’t learned much of anything, no matter how many editor credentials she throws out or how many hours of writing she says she’s done, there’s been no substantial improvement because she refuses to learn. It’s clear in how she frames her work. It’s clear in the quality of the work itself.
It’s sad, really. She could make something good if she put her ego aside and internalized the criticism she has received. Instead, she has put all the money she’s earned into hiring more artists—which will have minimal impact on the actual quality of her words—and is trying to speedrun an “improved” version.
Good quality cannot be rushed. Good quality cannot be spun out of shit. Though I do not know what the second version of TAoS will look like, I am certain it will not be anything positive.
That’s a lesson for Audra to learn, I guess.
Examining the Aftermath
When the reception for The Age of Scorpius first turned sour, I was unsure what direction Audra would take. Typically, when a book comes out and it bombs, you dust yourself off and move on to the next work, hoping you do better next time. If you’re lucky, the book is pulled and improvements made and a second release done.
Audra, to her credit, did pull the book. And she is working on a second release. It’s the way she’s doing this, however, that has me concerned, because it reminds me an awful lot of the current outlook in the gaming industry.
For years now, the approach by many game studios has not been to make quality games, but to vomit out a prototype of the game and fill in the gaps later with swathes of updates and DLC, paid or otherwise. It has led to a sloppy series of releases: No Man’s Sky, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Cyberpunk… All of these were games that greatly underdelivered upon their releases and often were nigh-unplayable, but became playable after the fact. And we applaud them for doing this! We keep coming back to studios that do this! We, the gamers, have set a disappointing and concerning precedent.
The same has started to arise in publishing. Special editions with “exclusive” chapters or edits. The revised release of Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season. Both are not terrible in their own right… But it does illustrate for me the beginnings of a dangerous precedent being set, one I’m concerned the Audra Winter situation will exacerbate. I for one will be incredibly upset if publishing decides this is the next trend to chase.
Worse still, these all feed into the consumerist culture that book spaces have begun to cultivate.
But that’s an essay for another time.
Some Advice
I am under no illusions that Audra will read this essay, nor is this essay really for her. It mentions her a lot, for certain, because she’s the most recent example of some growing…trends in publication as a whole.
But if she ever did read this, and did manage to read all the way through, I think the key pieces of advice I would give her to move forward with would be this:
You are not a prodigy. Stop leaning on how long you’ve been writing and focus instead on how you can continue to improve. You can always get better.
Better art does not a better book make. It’s the construction of the words that count. No amount of pretty art will suddenly make the shit not stink.
Put TAoS down. It came out, it sucked, it failed. Internalize what went wrong and use that insight you’ve gained to do better next time.
Stop grifting, girl.