May 29th Blog Stop at Delirious Musings of a Writer
Covering Creative Ground: How Two Authors with Totally Different Voices Write Together When They’re 1400 Miles Apart?
Nancy Fraser and Patti Shenberger have known each other since 1995, but it wasn’t until 1997 that they even considered writing together and, like a lot of things in life, it all happened by accident. Patti wanted to practice her pitch before an editor appointment. Nancy made the suggestion that she could beef up one of her secondary characters and possibly pitch it as a two-book series. Then, we thought, well if one secondary character deserves a story, shouldn’t another? And, voila! … the idea for a series was born.
Now, you might wonder what happened between then and now that it’s taken this long for us to bring the McCade Legacy to the readers. Well, we shopped the first book around to all the big name houses (you know … the ones that take nine months to a year to response). We kept hearing: great writing, nice voice. Unfortunately, because it was a time travel historical, we weren’t finding any buyers. Then, Nancy moved away … far away … in a crazy grandma-like trance to follow her military son and grandchildren all over Canada.
Even long distance, we did end up publishing that book through an e-publisher back in 2007 and then it was reissued later. We get our rights back on the book at the end of this year and hope to make it part of the Legacy series as a prequel to the other seven books we have planned.
With the first book in the hands of the publisher, we were putting together the proposal for subsequent books, when life reared its ugly head. Over the next four years, we both took turns with life-threatening medical issues. However, even illness can’t keep a good idea down!
We began working on Gambling on Love in the spring of 2012. By the time we’d finished, Entangled Publishing had announced their new Scandalous line and we decided to send our brand new baby off to them. We heard back very quickly with a contract offer. Needless to say, we were elated! That first contract has turned into two contracts for a total of three books, with the outline for five more books, taking our wonderful relationship with Entangled into 2015. Some days it feels almost like having tenure!
Enough about “how” it all started. Let’s focus on “how” it works! First of all, we both had to acknowledge the fact that our voices are entirely different. Patti’s strength is dialogue while Nancy’s is all about the frivolous, touchy-feely, steamy stuff! Luckily, we do share an almost uncanny ability to spot what the other is doing wrong. However, with such divergent writing styles, we knew we’d never be able to alternate scenes or chapters. So, we devised our own way of team writing. One of us writes the entire book while the other is responsible for all line edits, final read-through and acts as the liaison between the team and the publisher. Then, next book, we switch roles.
That’s not to say, the words are set in stone, because everything is negotiable. If Nancy’s dialogue sucks (see Nancy shake head emphatically), then we discuss it rationally and come up with the best alternative. If Patti’s love scene isn’t “steamy” enough, Nancy always re-writes it! (See Patti shaking fist!)
For the second book in the series, tentatively titled, The Lawman’s Agreement, we tried a new tactic. First, we wrote a synopsis, and then broke the synopsis down into a twenty-five chapter outline. We set a writing quota of one chapter per day. Once five chapters had been completed, they were sent to the other team member for editing, then the next five and so on. We kept this schedule for the entire book, finishing it within five weeks, including the final read-through and getting it sent off to the editor.
We’re not saying the system would work for everyone, especially if you can’t agree to disagree sometimes. However, it’s certainly worked for us. Either Nancy or Patti would love to discuss the details of our system with would-be writing teams and how best to maximize your individual strengths. We welcome your emails on the subject, or any writing subject in general.
About the book:
Felicity Beaumont is a rich man's willful daughter with a heart of gold who wants more than anything to free her father's illegally indentured workers.
When she devises a plan to move them north with the help of Jake McCade, owner of the gambling boat known as the River Maiden, she finds she's run afoul of not only her father but of the man she's duped into helping her.
As her plan begins to unravel, she and Jake are forced into a marriage for the sake of propriety and soon discover the most important thing to them both is the life they're now building together.
About the Authors:
Nancy Fraser has been writing since she was a child, most often on walls and with crayons or (heaven forbid) permanent marker. Since first becoming published in 1996, Nancy has received numerous five star reviews for her futuristic, time travel romance. She's also published in short contemporary, historical romance and is contracted for a series of ten vintage historical romances set during the Golden Decade of Rock & Roll (1955-1964). When not writing fiction, Nancy likes to spend time with her grandchildren and is excitedly awaiting a new addition to her grand-family in July.
Connect with Nancy: Author Website - Twitter - Goodreads - Facebook - Blog
Patti Shenberger recently signed a contract for her sixteenth romance novel/novella sale. She is published in short contemporary, historical time travel, paranormal and erotic romance, as well as multi-published in fiction and non-fiction magazine length work. She's a wife, mother of two, mother-in-law of two and a pet mommy of two. Patti is a lifelong resident of Michigan, where she complains about the heat in the summer and the snow in the winter. When she's not writing, Patti can be found with her nose buried in a book.
Connect with Patti: Author Website - Twitter - Goodreads - Facebook - Blog
Gambling on Love available for Purchase:
- Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
- iTunes
- Kobo
Tour-wide Giveaway!
Name the Hotel!
As part of a tour-wide giveaway the authors are offering one lucky winner the chance to not only name the hotel which will appear in the second McCade Legacy novel, but will also have their name used as a character in the book as well!
