It’s been a month of really exciting announcements, one of which – the news that End of Story, my dystopian fiction, has been sold to Hodder – I waited over a year to shout about. Understandably, a few people were shocked that I could keep this mouth shut for that long. I am an enigma. A keeper of secrets. Ha. But now it is also out that my memoir, originally called Daffodils in audiobook, will be released next year. It’s now called Eighteen Seconds. Mardle wanted a less vague, more memoir-ish title, and I chose Eighteen Seconds because of a certain chapter with this title that many audiobook listeners told me had touched them. Obviously, the daffodils are still a huge part of the story, that hasn’t changed. Both books are out in 2023.
What struck me last night as I digested all this exciting news, was how close the release dates of these two books are. End of Story will be released 23rd March, and Eighteen Seconds (almost typed Daffodils!) is out 27th April. Just five weeks exactly between them. Which is exactly the time I took between writing them. I finished Daffodils, as it was then called, at the beginning of May 2020 as we came out of the first lockdown, and started End of Story mid-June. I continued writing that one through the final and darkest lockdown at the end of 2020. It feels perfect that though it’s the other way around (I wrote End of Story after Eighteen Seconds, but it will be first) they belong almost side by side. I could not have written End of Story if I hadn’t gone through the cathartic, painful, and full-on experience of writing a memoir.
At first, I was very scared though. Someone said to me that if I wrote my memoir, I might never write anything again. I’m not quite sure what the thinking was behind it – maybe that I’d be spent, done, have written everything I was supposed to. This might have put anyone off both starting the difficult task of writing their own story, and then trying to write a fiction afterwards. But anyone who knows me knows that suggesting I don’t do something is the wrong way to stop me. I trust only my gut instinct. It never lets me down. And when I had poured my own story onto the page, after a brief five-week breather, I was ready – though obviously nervous – to start what felt like my most epic book, a dystopian novel exploring a future world where all fiction is banned. The fear that I might never write again compelled me to write harder, better, with more self-critcism.
As you can imagine, I’m delighted that both books will be on shop bookshelves next year. Two of my proudest achievements, each written during what were unprecedented times. And though the memoir is my own truth, there’s a lot of that in End of Story too, a novel that explores themes of grief, loss, isolation, and the absolute power of the arts to heal and uplift and unite. Look out for the cover for Eighteen Seconds in the near future. I can’t wait. Huge thanks to Emily Glenister for getting me these wonderful book deals.
And you can pre-order End of Story here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Story-original-thriller-coming-ebook/dp/B0B7RB4VS8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28UPPG8G1PO9H&keywords=end+of+story+louise+swanson&s=books&sprefix=end+of+story%2Cstripbooks%2C77&sr=1-1
Louise Beech/Louise Swanson 