Amy Shearn: You Have To Write the Thing That You Want To Read

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the critically-acclaimed novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean from Here. She has worked as an editor for Medium, JSTOR, and Condé Nast, among other organizations, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, "Modern Love" column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O, The Oprah Magazine, Poets & Writers Magazine, Literary Hub, The Millions, The Rumpus, and other publications. Amy Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

In this interview, Amy discusses how the COVID pandemic naturally weaved its way into her new literary novel, Animal Instinct, how early drafts were more surreal in nature, and more.

Name: Amy Shearn
Literary agent: Julie Stevenson / MMQ
Book title: Animal Instinct
Publisher: GP Putnam’s Sons
Release date: March 18, 2025
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Previous titles: Mom Blogs; Dear Edna Sloane; Unseen City; The Mermaid of Brooklyn; How Far Is The Ocean From Here
Elevator pitch: Animal Instinct follows Rachel Bloomstein, a recently divorced mother exploring online dating during the spring of 2020, as she seeks fulfillment through various relationships and creates an AI chatbot named Frankie. Ultimately, Rachel learns that real-life connections are more complex and meaningful than any program she could design.

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Like my main character Rachel, I found myself newly divorced during the pandemic, and mulling over these same issues of dating in one’s 40s, what was or was not acceptable in such scary times, and the role of technology in my very-online life. I was thinking a lot about the stories we’ve told ourselves as a society about love, coupling, and relationships, and what new stories we might be able to create. I found myself constantly talking with my female friends about the absurdities of marriage, sex, and the unexpected truths of divorce, and I wanted to explore and expand those conversations on the page.

I started writing it in the summer of 2020, which is when it’s set. By the time I was finished writing the first draft a few years later, it felt like a work of historical fiction, and I was glad I had sketched out so many details as they were happening and/or fresh in my mind, because I had already forgotten many of them—the particular tang of revolution in the air, the constant sound of helicopters overhead in New York, the weird six-feet-apart culture of social interactions in pre-COVID-vaccine days, the fear and uncertainty that defines wild historical moments before we know the whole story arc.

That said, I did at first try to write this novel without the pandemic in it. But as I wrote that early COVID-less draft, I realized that Rachel’s actions didn’t quite make sense without the context of the pandemic. The ever-present fear and danger, the forced isolation of New Yorkers stuck in little apartments, the way all the sirens and news stories and other daily reminders of our bodies’ fragility made us refigure our relationships with our lives—the ever-present reminders, in other words, that life is short and so fragile—all of these inform and motivate a lot of her actions.

I had published my two most recent books with a (wonderful, beloved) indie press, so this is my first time back with a Big Five publisher in a while. I didn’t know if anyone would want to publish a book that’s about the pandemic, and also about dating and love and sex. There’s a lot of sex in this book! So, it’s a weird combination of things—the high highs and low lows of life in our time—and I was relieved/surprised/fascinated that a bigger publisher was willing to take a risk on this unusual novel.

In early drafts, the book was a bit weirder and more surreal than its eventual iteration. The AI chatbot that Rachel creates became sort of monstrous and malevolent, and there was a whole slew of other monsters as well, that she was either hallucinating or actually seeing around town. I suppose this seemed to me a clever way to externalize her fear and uncertainty. My agent, who is an amazingly astute reader and editor herself, was the one who suggested that these surreal elements weren’t necessary. This is a book about Rachel figuring out, in a time of intense crisis, how she wants to live her life, rediscovering her sexuality and orientation to relationships and the shape of her existence. I realized it was kind of radical to let a woman’s life story be enough.

I hope that it’s an entertaining read, first of all. There are so many ways people can spend their time, and it’s an honor when someone devotes their time to anything I’ve written—I want reading this book to be an engaging and lively experience. I hope that people will feel seen by it—especially women who are not feeling necessarily seen in their daily lives. I hope that it’s a call to invite more fun and sex and adventure into our lives. And I hope that it’s a way to process this wild time we all just went through—in so many ways it feels the world has moved on from the pandemic without really processing—without reliving it in a depressing or traumatic way. I think this is possible to do, and it feels like a major project of our current moment.

You have to write the thing that you want to read.