RealityBypass

I was thinking the other day about how I ended up with a fascination for sci-fi, fantasy and the darker side of literature. My Dad reads mostly John Grisham and Michael Crichton political thrillers. I read them too, but in a book store my feet just naturally carry me into the fantasy section (or the mystery section too, but we’ll get to my other addiction another day.) Now Dad will watch fantasy and sci-fi with me, but it’s not his first choice. My mother describes all science fiction as “It’s all depressing, with all those ugly people!” Vulcans! Ugly!? Gasp!

So how did I end up loving Star Trek and tales of vampires?

It just happened.

In his book, On Writing Stephen King wrote “I was born with a fascination for the unquiet grave” (paraphrased). That really rang true with me. My youthful reading consisted of Bunnicula (a vampire bunny rabbit) and as many ‘Scary Stories to tell in the Dark’ as I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter that I spent as much time with the covers pulled over my head as sleeping, I couldn’t get enough of the thrills and chills.

One book I particularly remember was called ‘Wait til Helen Comes’. I read it 5 or 6 times as a kid, and it scared me every single time. I should go back and read it again, see if the youthful terror still gets me!

Inevitably reading turned to creating and my younger siblings became research subjects as I experimented with my own ghost and goblin creations. They, and the neighborhood kids, soon joined me in my terror filled sleepless nights and I found that being the agent of that terror was fun! Apparently they did too, since they kept coming back for more.

There’s something magical about a “scary story” that brings us back to Halloweens of our youth when familiar trees became a little more sinister, every bridge might just hide a troll and the strange house down the street hides witchy secrets. It bypasses the mundane and makes reality just a little more fantastic.

So my ‘writer’s advice’ or ‘reader’s advice’ for today is pick up some of those children’s books and young adult books you loved as a child (or some you managed to miss out on).

My own list:

• Scary Stories to tell in the Dark (Horror, elementary)
• Wait til Helen Comes Mary Downing Hahn (Horror, upper elementary)
• Bunnicula series James Howe (Horror, upper elementary)
• Anything Roald Dahl, Especially The Witches (Horror/Macabre)
• The Redwall series, Brian Jacques (Fantasy)
• The Wild Magic series Tamora Pierce (Fantasy)
• The Dark Moon series Meredith Ann Pierce (Fantasy)
• Anything RL Stine. (Maybe not the best writer, but definitely some creative work) (Horror)
• In a dark dark Room Alvin Scwartz (Children’s ‘spooky’)
• I’m Going to Eat you Matt Mitter (Children’s ‘spooky’)

-Kris

A question that’s come up recently was what it’s like to co-author books with someone that lives several states away?

       Truthfully it can be a giant pain in the butt.  To co-author anything takes a committment to clear communication and compromise. Co-Authoring a 150,000 word book is even more of a challenge.  We find we have to stay in pretty close to daily contact with each other which we do over email, IM and phone and we have to stay organized.  Whispers has been five years in the making, but it’s been the last about six months that we strapped in and got serious about it.  An updated outline helps a lot and then exchange of files back and forth with both of us keeping a copy of the master file and syncing it up at least once every couple of weeks.  As long as we gently keep each other on the ball we tend to do just fine, but it’s definately not for the weak of heart or the impatient.  Arguments sprout up often because text can be read in so many different ways and depending on the mood of the reader and how sleep deprived they are, so we make sure that when things get heated we take a step back and sort out what is a difference of perception and what is actually at the heart of the matter.  The other key is that we take time to goof off together so that we have casual friend time too.  No matter how compatiable you think your writing styles may be never co-author with someone you don’t like, because by the end you’ll kill each other if you don’t have a solid base to go on.  :)  Trust us.  We know.

     ~J

        January 28th we officially launched our website, and today is the first official blog post.  How bizarre.  Not that having a webpage is such a unique thing, half of the known universe seems to have one, but this one is all dedicated to that writing stuff we do.  It’s one of those steps of committment that says we are going to keep following this career and one day work from home doing it, come hell or high water.  It’s thrilling and scary at once, but we’re committed…or maybe we should be committed, it’s such a thin line of difference.

       So check in here frequently.  We’ll try to post once a day with observations about writing, genre, other authors we really think you should check out.  And the main page will gather exerpts from other up and coming novels and news as we push forward towards getting things published.

Dianna and Ben need a fan club, dangit, and the support wouldn’t make the humble authors unhappy either.  So there.

   ~J