Exclusive Interview
Inside Julie Soto’s Journey to Turn Her Dramione Fanfiction Into ‘Rose in Chains’
It’s a tale as old as time. An unsuspecting person with an obsessive personality watches a movie or a new series, hyper-fixates on it, and the only way to channel all of their emotions about this new obsession is to write thousands of words within that world to perpetuate the fantasy for as long as the fixation lasts.
For the talented few, those thousands of words can unite entire fandoms (or tear them apart, depending on the whims of the author). In recent years, most famously since E.L. James turned her Twilight fanfiction into Fifty Shades of Grey, if you have enough of a sizable fandom backing your work, you can also find yourself with a traditional publishing deal.
Julie Soto has joined the growing list of fanfic writers who have transitioned into traditionally published authors with her adult romance debut, Forget Me Not, which was originally a Reylo alternate universxe fanfiction. However, her most famous fanfic – the Dramione saga, The Auction – arrives as Rose in Chains on July 8. Unlike Forget Me Not, which had to have some names changed and a few identifying details adjusted to make it suitable for publishing, Rose in Chains required Soto to create her own magic system and world to separate her work from its original Harry Potter inspiration.
“One of the things that I love about reading and writing fanfiction is the immersion. I don’t have to explain to you what The Force is or what a lightsaber is. In fact, I don’t have to know what it is myself, but we can use these magics and sci-fi things to move the story along. We don’t have to set anything up. I never felt like I was someone who knew how to set anything up. I didn’t ever need to flex that muscle of world-building as a writer. I didn’t have to describe a new political climate or create a new magic system,” The Thrashers author told Swooon of her start in fanfiction.
Jaap Buitendijk / Warner Bros. / Everett Collection
In The Auction, Hermione is auctioned off to Draco in a reimagined universe where the Death Eaters won the Battle of Hogwarts. Rose in Chains sees mind-magic user Briony Rosewood auctioned off to Toven, a high-ranking member of the enemy who just killed off Briony’s heir-apparent brother. Can these two enemies find enough common ground to save a suffering kingdom or are they doomed to loathe each other for the duration of their time together?
“One of the things that’s really exciting to me about Rose in Chains is that opportunity to take something that worked really well and meant a lot to me and getting to actually flex those world-building muscles now,” the author continued. “Even beyond the Rose in Chains trilogy, if I wanted to continue writing fantasy, it doesn’t feel as daunting anymore. It’s another new genre to play with, and that’s the fun part.”
While a lot has changed from The Auction to Rose in Chains, allowing both Soto’s fanfic fans and new audiences to enjoy the story, there will be quite a bit for the original The Auction audience to enjoy with the new book.
“You’ll find that some of your favorite lines and dialogue pieces are still preserved,” Soto promised. She also used the rewriting process to visit the comments section of her work and utilize the useful feedback while recrafting the story. “One of the funniest things that I’ve had the opportunity to do was take the years of feedback — whether that’s comments on AO3 or from my Facebook group. People want more from this, or they wanted to know more about that, and those are things that I’ve been able to draw out now,” the author said.
Soto also hinted there was one very popular request after The Auction came out that fans never thought they’d see. She wouldn’t spoil specifics but promised there is a big treat for the fans who have been following along for The Auction‘s journey, and the author is eager to see the fan reaction. She also admits she never anticipated the day would come when fanfiction would be celebrated in the mainstream – though still not given the respect it deserves – and enjoys seeing the more community-focused aspects of the fanfiction community making its way to bookish conversations around the internet.
“It means a lot to me that the culture of fanfiction of like, ‘Oh my god, this thing ruined me for 48 hours. I haven’t been able to stop crying. I hate it. I hate everyone in it. I hate myself. I hate the author. Please read this.’ The intense emotions of, ‘I’ve been vomiting about this fanfiction. You have to read it,’ that kind of community of sharing what makes us giddy, what makes us really intense in fandom, that’s kind of transitioning to BookTok and transitioning to Bookstagram,” she said.
Soto also wants to see readers get to celebrate the works they spent so many hours reading and supporting get their time in the spotlight.
“There’s a whole culture of don’t put fanfiction on Goodreads because you don’t want to do a five-star rating system for things that were not written for profit, and all of that stuff. The readers hopefully get to feel justified in the amount of time and attention that they give to those works, those free works. That’s something I’m really excited to see transfer over,” she revealed. And she’s happy to see her peers from the AO3 trenches also find their way to traditional publishing. “I am glad that so many of my friends in both fandoms, Dramione and Reylo, have found paths to publishing that weren’t going to be available to them prior to Ali Hazelwood becoming a New York Times No. 1 best-seller. If she hadn’t been the guinea pig for this new generation of acceptance, then Adam Driver would not be on the cover of every romance novel.”
We here at Swooon thank both Julie and Ali, and all of the other fic writers out there, for their incredible service.
Rose in Chains arrives in bookstores on July 8.
