Just another writer's blog

People keep asking how Francene and I write together, and sometimes I’m still amazed that it actually works.

Francene had already started work on the first book of the Higher Ground series when she invited me to join in. We knew each other through the Internet Writing Workshop and had critiqued each other’s novels.

She already had a rough outline for the first two books and character profiles. I liked what I saw, so I took over three of the six main characters. Guess what? Somehow these guys just ran away with me, changed their nature and actions. I thought Francene would kick me right out of the project. Instead, she played along. There’s nothing more inspiring than a cowriter who thwarts your character’s plans.

We wrote very fast and sent each scene to the other before she wrote the next one. We tried to keep the characters’ voices distinctive while we went over each other’s work constantly to keep the style consistent.

Francene lives near London and I’m in Nürnberg, Germany. With one hour time difference, I can sleep in a little, while Francene is an early bird.

We work well together, give respect and patience and sometimes send more than twenty e-mails a day. It’s really funny that we might quickly agree on killing off a character while we might take five e-mail exchanges to fix a line of dialogue.

Francene always claims she isn’t good with action scenes, but we did rub off on each other. She wrote a fantastic girl fight scene at a party after the mudfights in book one. And hey, I sometimes come up with really nice atmospheric descriptions nowadays.

Two years ago I didn’t believe I could work with someone else in such a productive and fun way.