You can now order "Trick Up Your Sleeve" on Amazon!! (so many thanks to @anotherwellkeptsecret for the incredible cover that I absolutely ADORE)
"Trick Up Your Sleeve" is a MM gay midlife romance about boys in a band getting back together and finding happy-ever-after. This is the first in a series revolved around the same couple settling into life together amidst the family of their rock band Swan.
Sneak preview of the beginning below the cut.
Matt Usher woke up one day to his silent, empty house. This was not an unusual occurrence. Over the past fifteen years, when Matt Usher woke up, it was usually to silence and emptiness.
What was unusual was that, on this day, Matt had nothing to do.
More often than not, over the past few months, Matt’s days had been busy whirlwinds of activity, serving as a mentor and coach and judge on the reality show Who Can Sing the Best? After years of aimlessness, the opportunity had taken him by surprise, as had the fact that it turned out he liked being busy. Now that the show was done filming and he was faced with all this empty silence all around him, a day stretching out in front of him in which nobody wanted him for anything, he felt…twitchy.
He got himself out of bed and sat at his piano and looked out over the California coastline. It was a perfect view of sea and sky that he had paid a lot of money for at one point, because it was supposed to have indicated that he had Made It. Now Matt could no longer remember exactly what he had made it for, or even what the “it” was that he had made.
Matt looked at the half-written songs he had scrawled over sheet music all over the piano, some of them songs he’d started working on literally years ago, because that was how long it had been since he had finished a song. Whenever he sat down to write a song, he inevitably remembered how easily he used to write songs, how they used to flow right out of him, how he would write multiple songs a week and they would all be top ten hits.
Of course, then he hadn’t been alone, he’d had…
Matt walked away from the piano. That seemed like definitely the wisest course of action. Better to walk away than to get mired all over again in everything he’d lost, everything he no longer was.
This was why Who Can Sing the Best? had been so great. It had, for the first time in a long time, given him somewhere to live that wasn’t the past. He’d had a present he was enjoying and it seemed like it had been so long since he had enjoyed his present.
How could he keep that going?
It took some hunting for Matt to find his cell phone because he never could remember where he left his cell phone. When he found it, he ignored all the texts because those would all be from people wanting to hitch onto his suddenly gleaming-again star: come out clubbing or go to a restaurant opening or be seen shopping in the right store. Matt knew all of these texts by heart, he’d lived all of them the first time around with his fame. The thought of going through all of them again – alone, this time – was not appealing.
But he definitely needed something to do. For too long he’d let himself wallow in silence and emptiness, enjoying the epic proportions of the sulk he was nursing, all while Patrick went off and filled his life to the brim with all sorts of things that weren’t Matt. Who Can Sing the Best? indicated that sometimes people still cared about him, even though he no longer came with a whole rock band attached to him. Maybe there were other people to find who would also care. Matt called his manager and said, “Okay. What else do you think you can get me to do?”
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has ordered a copy of "Trick Up Your Sleeve"! You can't imagine how much it means to me! :-)
Now I have one more request: If you wanted to leave me a review, I would love it! Reviews help books get recognized by Amazon and climb up the algorithm rankings, so every little review helps!
my sister in christoper, i forgot how much reading the early, broken-up parts of swan song feel like being punched in the chest. @ainsleynorth you are so evil!!
drew a tour poster for the lovely @earlgreytea68 in honor of Swan Song officially being published as a book!!! I love the story so much and I’m so proud of them— I wish I could read it. make sure to check that out if you can!!!!!! for this I thought I should keep the original concept of my design for banter and badinage’s art, but I expanded on it— attempted to mature it, in a way. I’m not sure if that came through.
pete's heaven iowa speech / patrick seeing the crowd light up after playing spotlight (oh nostalgia) / playing favorite record as a surprise song / pete smiling and singing along to the kintsugi kid (ten years) / patrick covering leonard cohen's hallelujah / pete's speech about found family in l.a. / patrick forgetting the lyrics to 27 and the audience screaming them instead / patrick smiling during saturday / patrick hugging joe on his first night back / playing the kids aren't alright as a surprise song
You can now order "Trick Up Your Sleeve" on Amazon!! (so many thanks to @anotherwellkeptsecret for the incredible cover that I absolutely ADORE)
"Trick Up Your Sleeve" is a MM gay midlife romance about boys in a band getting back together and finding happy-ever-after. This is the first in a series revolved around the same couple settling into life together amidst the family of their rock band Swan.
Sneak preview of the beginning below the cut.
Matt Usher woke up one day to his silent, empty house. This was not an unusual occurrence. Over the past fifteen years, when Matt Usher woke up, it was usually to silence and emptiness.
What was unusual was that, on this day, Matt had nothing to do.
More often than not, over the past few months, Matt’s days had been busy whirlwinds of activity, serving as a mentor and coach and judge on the reality show Who Can Sing the Best? After years of aimlessness, the opportunity had taken him by surprise, as had the fact that it turned out he liked being busy. Now that the show was done filming and he was faced with all this empty silence all around him, a day stretching out in front of him in which nobody wanted him for anything, he felt…twitchy.
He got himself out of bed and sat at his piano and looked out over the California coastline. It was a perfect view of sea and sky that he had paid a lot of money for at one point, because it was supposed to have indicated that he had Made It. Now Matt could no longer remember exactly what he had made it for, or even what the “it” was that he had made.
Matt looked at the half-written songs he had scrawled over sheet music all over the piano, some of them songs he’d started working on literally years ago, because that was how long it had been since he had finished a song. Whenever he sat down to write a song, he inevitably remembered how easily he used to write songs, how they used to flow right out of him, how he would write multiple songs a week and they would all be top ten hits.
Of course, then he hadn’t been alone, he’d had…
Matt walked away from the piano. That seemed like definitely the wisest course of action. Better to walk away than to get mired all over again in everything he’d lost, everything he no longer was.
This was why Who Can Sing the Best? had been so great. It had, for the first time in a long time, given him somewhere to live that wasn’t the past. He’d had a present he was enjoying and it seemed like it had been so long since he had enjoyed his present.
How could he keep that going?
It took some hunting for Matt to find his cell phone because he never could remember where he left his cell phone. When he found it, he ignored all the texts because those would all be from people wanting to hitch onto his suddenly gleaming-again star: come out clubbing or go to a restaurant opening or be seen shopping in the right store. Matt knew all of these texts by heart, he’d lived all of them the first time around with his fame. The thought of going through all of them again – alone, this time – was not appealing.
But he definitely needed something to do. For too long he’d let himself wallow in silence and emptiness, enjoying the epic proportions of the sulk he was nursing, all while Patrick went off and filled his life to the brim with all sorts of things that weren’t Matt. Who Can Sing the Best? indicated that sometimes people still cared about him, even though he no longer came with a whole rock band attached to him. Maybe there were other people to find who would also care. Matt called his manager and said, “Okay. What else do you think you can get me to do?”
I asked a friend who’s also an editor if she would look over my novel for me, and she had never read Swan Song before, and one of her editorial comments is “It feels like it takes a long time to get to Matt,” and I’m just like, I know! And I cut a bunch of stuff and actually introduced the concept of Matt much sooner! You should have read the original version where I didn’t even know a Matt was going to show up until literally the instant he walked into the room lololol.
At least now the story has been edited so that the characters (and the author) are aware of Matt’s existence on the planet...
So! I’m still working like a busy bee! I’ve seen the line art for the cover and I love it! Just making a few tweaks and it will be ready to share!
In the meantime, I can give you this tidbit of information: Book 1 will be titled “Trick Up Your Sleeve.”
Also, I have a question to ask. Swan Song didn’t really have chapters, just little breaks between sections. Is that annoying in a “real” book? Does it need to have chapters? I’ve been reading Katherine Addison’s Witness for the Dead series, and those books don’t have chapters, which isn’t surprised because she also came from a fic tradition and so probably doesn’t think in chapters. Many of my fics have chapters but mostly just so I can post them in chunks, they’re never super-well-thought-out, I’m just like, “That seems like enough words to be a chapter.”
So: Thoughts? Should I do the same thing for Swan Song now that it’s going to be books instead of just up on AO3 and just bunch some words into chapters? Is it really annoying to you to think about reading a book that doesn’t have chapters?
I wish you could poll on Tumblr, which you can’t, but I’d love any insight you have. Also, you *can* poll on Instagram, and I have a brand-new Instagram account, ainsleynorthwriter, that has a poll up right now on its Story. It has...basically nothing else lololol because operations haven’t fully begun yet, but more is coming!
