Status Update!

Hello, friends!

So, I realize it’s been a while since the last update. Like I mentioned before, we’ve been working a lot. Constantly. Since I have two non-writing jobs now, with Victoria at full time, and seriously none of our few days off matching up, it’s been tough squeezing in writing time.

Or any time.

Ugh. It’s been so aggravating.

So, the first book of Monsters of Myth, Ave’s series, Bleed Cinders and Venom is intended to be out by the end of spring. We’ve been doing a lot of work with the first draft to make it the most awesome of possums, but that also means it’s been taking a lot of time.

A lot of what we have to do we have to do together. So, we catch a few hours here and there around our work schedules. We still want to have a late spring debut, with the latest being an early summer debut.

As Victoria and I have been working on book 1 of Monsters, I’ve also been working on book 4 of Marionettes, Open the Path to Fire, which I’m about a little under halfway through, and things are coming together sweetly. Once BCV is finished, I’ll be able to chug ahead full speed. Hahchachachacha.

We’ve also been talking about the end of OPF a lot.

Like, a lot.

The two books do two different things that hit us right in the feels, and I just can’t wait to actually finish writing the second half of OPF, oh my blob.

I also can’t wait to finish and share the covers. They’re looking pretty snazzy. BCV is very much almost finished – I just have to do a few more things. These two covers are also the first covers actually designed to be full wrap-around covers, and I can’t wait to see what they look liiiiike.

Speaking of which, the proof of book 3’s paperback finally arrived (after waiting nine full days for it, geez). I’m so floored by how awesome it looks. Take a look:

Alrightalrightalrightalright. It’s friggin gorgeous, and I love to caress it gently with the first book and the novella. Now that I've finished fixing any formatting errors, it should be available very soon.

Tweaking the second book’s cover is my next project, that way we can have a lovely matte matching set. Maybe we’ll stick them altogether on the dresser. With bookends. Yeaaaah, that’d look rad and so official-like.

Anyway, these slow months are pretty slow, but we’re still hard at work. Even during the times I can’t write because Victoria’s at work, I’m still working on the next set of promo posters (and painting hair is the bane of my existence – why is it so hard??).

Although, at the end of this month, we’ll be returning to PA, and I’ll be taking the camera to grab photos for new covers, which is so exciting I could do a pee dance. I’ve gained a lot of new insight with how to use images for covers, which’ll help me with my perspective and composition. It’ll also be spring, so I wonder if anything will be in full bloom.

Though, sending me to take pictures when things are in bloom is dangerous – I’ll have five thousand pictures of flowers and zero pictures for covers. Oops.

So, that’s it for now. As we get closer to a more realized release date for book 1 of Monsters, we’ll definitely be posting more details, including snippets, the synopsis, and, of course, the shiny new cover.

Until then, stay awesome!

How do Victoria and I write together?

Firstly, as of yesterday, we officially finished book 1 of Monsters! After the third installment of Kali with Marionettes, Monsters begins with this book. Seriously, the cast in this book really did some things that we were not expecting. Victoria had planned the ending to go a very different way before one of the characters decided, "Hey, umm, I'm gonna do this thing right now. Good luck."

Yeah. Thanks for that, character.

But, either way, the ending killed us. It KILLED us. I mean, we're over here trying not to cry and crying anyway. I can't wait to make you all cry too.

What happens next is Victoria's first time revising a full manuscript. At least she has a coach who's very experienced with the art of revision! Tralala.

So, we've had plenty of people asking us, "Exactly how are you guys writing this?" Who writes what and how does it all work?

Victoria and I have been writing together for a heck of a long time. Maybe about ten years now. Even while I was over here in California and she was in Pennsylvania, we were writing together. So, we've had a very long time to develop our styles and learn how the other thinks and writes.

Basically what we do is roleplay. I have a cast of characters that I play, and she has a cast that she plays, and when we write a scene where these two casts mingle, we trade posts. Sometimes a post is a single line. Sometimes a post is paragraphs. The key is to make sure that our posts flow together like any other narrative, so that there's no break in continuity. A lot of this is fixed during revision as well.

(Sometimes we'll write a little extra than necessary and edit it out later, or we'll explain what a character is doing or what something looks like specifically so we have similar visions of what's going on.)

It also helps that we have very similar writing styles and voices, that way we stay consistent throughout the story.

Plotting is also a big deal between the two of us. We spend a LOT of time plotting. For the first three books of Marionettes and the first three books of Monsters, however, we plot separately. I do all the story planning and outlining for the first three books of Marionettes, and she's just along for the ride. She didn't know what I had planned while we were writing.

When we get to later books, especially after one series ends and the other continues, we plot together, and we pretty much do it everywhere we go -- in the car, when we take our walks, when we go out, when we're with people who have no idea what the hell we're talking about -- we're always discussing what's going to happen.

But sometimes we can't always plan for what happens. Characters often surprise us (like I mentioned above) and do something completely unexpected. Or, sometimes we just know to anticipate that we don't know what the characters will do, so we'll plan a few steps and then write ourselves into the answer.

So, in the end, co-writing takes a lot of work and dedication in order to be successful. We're a perfect match because we keep each other from slipping into slumps like writer's block and we have very similar brains. As long as one of us is super excited about the story, it usually doesn't take much coaxing to get the other pumped up!

Next, I'll be taking about a week's break from the writing blog to focus on revising book two of Monsters. Hopefully the proof for the first book will be here by Friday or Saturday!