BRIAN
SAYS:
Tom
looked at me, nodded his head toward Chris, and said, “You know he writes,
right?”
I
replied with, “Ummmmm… no.”
Turning
to Chris, Tom pointed to me, and asked, “You know he writes, right?”
Coincidently
enough, the reply Chris gave sounded oddly familiar. “Ummmmm… no.”
Tom
then summed up the future partnership that Chris and I would form with one
word: “Idiots.”
That
little tale about the endeavoring spirit of human nature took place almost
fifteen years ago, about ten years after we first met. Yes, I just said that it
took ten years for each of us to figure out that the other wished to be a
professional writer, which only happened by the assistance of a third party.
Not only is it a testament to how well men actually communicate with each
other, but even if the conversation somehow came close to the subject, then
inevitably something would distract us from it. One time Chris and I
accidentally forgot to go to the local bar to pick up women [The Ferrell/Kattan
skits you’re envisioning now really aren’t too far from the truth], because we
got past a difficult level in the latest Star Wars video game and wanted to
keep playing. Why is any of this relevant? Because the first thing Chris and I
worked on together was The Devil’s Grasp.
Of
course, before we put the proverbial pen to paper, we sat down and compared notes:
How long we’d been writing, where we’d gotten published, what we liked to
write, how many more levels there were in that damn Star Wars game, why the
beer pitcher was always empty. We discovered that we were in the same stage of
our writing careers – a few things published in small magazines. So, the next
obvious step was to write a novel together.
By
this point in time, I had already written two novels; one solo, one with
another writer. Neither amounted to anything more than experience, beer
drinking, and good times. Luckily, I was able to bring all of that to the table
when Chris and I FINALLY stopped playing Star Wars and started talking about
the novel.
CHRIS
SAYS:
Testing!
Testing! Is this thing on? It is? Well, hi, folks! Let’s see here… video game… beer
pitcher empty… be right back! I’m not so sure this thing truly holds 64 ounces!
While
we were walking around the used car of our writing aspirations, randomly
kicking tires and jumping through open windows, we discussed genre and found
that we both have a keen interest in fantasy, though we had largely gotten
there via different paths. As a kid I had read the “classics” and many of my
days had been wholly consumed by them. Tolkien, Le Guin, Leiber, Howard… they
made me want to swing a sword, to hurl spells of magical creation, to be the
size of a mouse running from dark wizards, or to be seeking the advice of an
alien seer. Brian was familiar with more modern, but not less important, works
found on the cinema screen or comic book pages.
As
we were discussing tropes and quests and magic, we also confessed to each other
that we both had an interest in horror and here seemed to be a way to
differentiate our piece from other more mainstream fantasy. As all of this
involved far more discussion and learning about another dude that either of us had
done in quite likely our entire collective lives, we took a break and went to
our respective homes to do more thinking. We both typed up a short page or two
– essentially of list of “do’s” and “don’ts”.
This is really how we began the process of collaborative writing.
Passing chapters back and forth, each trying to outdo the other by putting
characters into perilous situations and challenging the other to save them.
Over
the next few weeks, we established goals and outlined chapters. Afterwards, we
each picked a chapter that we wanted to work on and set monthly word count
goals. On the designated day, we would meet up and go over what we had done and
where we envisioned the characters going next. We always outlined a good 5-6
chapters in advance and worked on different chapters, writing towards the day
of the inevitable passing off of a chapter to the other person, back and forth
until revision time...<shiver> I still get chills thinking about
revisions… slimy, putrid… out of what miasma they crawl, I know not, but they
are certainly welcome to go back whence they came! <shudder> I think I
got some miasma on me….
