It’s here, it’s finally here! Here is the book cover for my novel, co-written with Thursday Euclid, “Black Gold.” It’s coming out on Loose Id November 23rd. Gorgeous art by P.L. Nunn.
Billy “Goldie” Goldean is the biggest pop star in the world and he’s harboring a terrible, career-killing secret: he’s gay. Even with song titles such as “Astral Glider” and “Winking Brown Eye,” few question Goldie’s squeaky clean teen heartthrob status. That is, until Jethro “Jett” Black, an infamous womanizer and underground punk icon, names him in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine as the celebrity he’d most like to fuck.
After they hook up at an industry party, Goldie’s management dumps him, Jett’s exes come back to haunt them, and even Goldie’s mother makes a public plea for him to come to his senses. Can Goldie trust his untamed new lover, or will the pressures of fame tear them apart?
Looks good, Clancy.
Is this your first collaboration?
What made you do it as one?
Did you role play it, ie one writer take on one character?
How did that go?
Did you have the stroy plotted before you started?
cheers
Alison
Hey Alison, great to see you here!
This is my first professional collaboration. I’ve role played for many years now, which is how this started. We did have the story plotted before we started–I was actually going to write it myself, so I had it all outlined.
We each took one character and it did end up a head hopping mess, which made for many, many hours of editing and a lot of conversations about “okay, so whose perspective is the most interesting here?” and then rewriting everything that way. We were really lucky to have a great editor who helped give us direction on how to approach rewrites.
We did another story after this one called “Playing With Fire” that will be out early 2011 where we actually built the perspectives into the outline so we’d know who was doing what and wrote in chunks. This leads to a lot less rethinking and editing and is how we’ve approached our current stories. We have a couple in the can that are in need of editing and submitting (including one we wrote before our epiphany that we could actually be collaborative without the head hopping) but I have to finish some stuff and let our poor editor breathe before we dive into that.
Hi
As you know I’m doing stuff over at Haven Falls. Is this the co-writer that caused the problem??????
As for: “our epiphany that we could actually be collaborative without the head hopping”
So if you chunk it out first with perspectives built in, do you still “own” a character and have a veto on what that character would say or what he wouldn’t do?
We’ve done some posts at HF with five authors working together (I think four were conscious at one time).
We ended up rambling in chat for a while until we eventually got the thread of what was happening and each person’s contribution and then we slit it up into different stories which eventually all got written. It was an interesting process using Google Docs. We kept pretty much to the guidelines we’d thrashed out which ws good.
Who does the editing? And do you have to get approval from the other author to change their words?
This is the co-writer who verified the fact that it would be all right with the moderator of Haven Falls for her to join even though the book she was publishing with me wouldn’t be out until now before we both applied to join. This is the co-writer who was then told she couldn’t join after we’d both applied and I’d been approved.
This is the book that was accepted. The one with Taylor and James is on the back burner for the moment, mostly because I’m still worried about what might happen if we do release it. I know that’s your friend and you obviously have a very different opinion of that person than I do, but to me they came off as erratic and unstable, so it’s hard for me to divorce myself from the possible drama.
But, maybe someday.
I’ve been writing with Thursday for a few years now, so there’s a level of trust there as far as changing each other’s words. Google docs is invaluable for our first draft. We do consult with each other for actions and reactions and if someone oversteps or if there’s something that the character wouldn’t do, we discuss it and rewrite. We do try to keep interactive scenes as interactive as we can. Sometimes that includes doing the dialog in chat and/or expressing mood as you would if the other character was seeing it. You do have to adapt the voice of the other character a little to write from their perspective, but obviously the writer of the character has final call on the wording.
Like, you could say “okay, this character isn’t that observant and couldn’t intuit that” and you change it. I enjoy it because it brings another perspective to the other character and even your own. You have someone to bounce ideas off of and who can help keep it interesting. Obviously not everything is accounted for in even the best of outlines, so things come up and we add to the outline and adjust. It keeps us on the same page.
In some ways it’s a lot more work, because you really do have to keep things updated and you have to put a lot of thought into your plot and you don’t always agree. But I really enjoy the collaborative energy and I feel like the stories come out a lot more fleshed out than if I’d done it all on my own.
We both do the editing. Usually she does the first SPAG of the draft. Then I format it and read through and tweak — pulling out those “justs” and “thats” and all of those hesitation words. Make sure body parts are connected, that there aren’t 12 shruggings in a row. Every publisher has a preflight list and I combine them and pick through to get as much of that out as I can. If there are any major changes, I’ll run it by her, usually in chat. Sometimes if it’s big enough, we bust out the track changes and can approve/reject/make notes on it until we’re happy with it. Then one more spag and then we send it out.
So basically, we edit it as a team as you would work with any other editor. When we added Jules in, there was a lot of comment banter and teasing, so that made it all fun because you never knew what discussion of anal hygiene you might happen upon.
It has its ups and downs as anything will when you’re dealing with other people, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out with some discussion. I think that the real key is finding someone you get along with generally and whose writing you respect.
There is a lot of trust that goes into writing together and a lot of humility. You can’t really work well with someone who is “never wrong” even if that’s you. You have to be utterly mercenary when it comes to ideas, often killing your own babies when your partner comes up with something better.
But yeah, rambling in chat for a while is pretty normal as you sort out what to do and even just how to work together. Straight up RP is easier in that you just do responses and there’s often not a story you’re trying to keep to, just interactions to see where things go. I enjoy them both, though I don’t have much time for group rp lately.