The market for young adults provided crucial opportunities while Dragonriders stalled. Editor Roger Elwood sought contributions of short work to anthologies and McCaffrey started the Pern story of Menolly for him, although in the end she delivered four 1973/74 stories that later became "Crystal Singer". Editor Jean E. Karl, who had established the children's and science fiction imprints at Atheneum Books, sought to attract more female readers to science fiction and solicited "a story for young women in a different part of Pern". McCaffrey completed Menolly's story as "Dragonsong" and contracted for a sequel before it was out in 1976.