The Horde Has Spoken

::Looking over massive amount of BDH suggestions and questions::

Mod R helpfully summarized some of them for us.

Roughly 1 in every 3 comments and most of the people who sent emails made the request for more fiction over any other topic. New serial, snippets, bonus scenes, alternate character POVs, deleted scenes, short stories. They explicitly miss having a new installment to anticipate every week, or even every month.

We are going to try to reinstate the Fiction Serial.

For the new members of the Horde, we will be posting a rough draft of a story. It will be posted once a week (sometimes twice, but usually once.) It will contain grammatical errors and other issues that occur in the rough draft.

Once finished, the posts will stay up for a couple of weeks to let everyone catch up and then will be archived. The story will be then edited and published. The final may vary significantly from what you read on the blog. We try to keep the plot and the main scenes the same, but the final book might have more scenes and edited dialogue, etc.

The fun of the serials is that people get something to look forward to, they can freely discuss it in the comments, and the likes and dislikes of the readers influence the flow. If BDH loves a particular character, they will get more page time. For example, in The Inheritance, Elias evolved into a full fledged character because BDH went, “Ooooo!”

The downside of the serials is that it is the first draft. A lot of times you will be reading something that was written that morning.

First drafts are kind of fragile and easily murdered by harsh feedback. That means that we ask you to not be overly critical in the comments. You can’t create and edit at the same time. Comments like, “This is a waste of time. I don’t know why anyone would like this. I hate it” will be removed. It’s counterproductive to making words go.

Also, we have a lot of irons in the fire. There will be times when we have to skip a week, so we want to be clear that everyone goes into this with the understanding that there can’t be a meltdown if the post doesn’t appear on schedule.

We are not yet sure which serial will be happening. We are going to try and sketch a few ideas in the next couple of weeks and see which one goes. The serial has to be fun and easy to write because it is a bonus project. As cheesy as it sounds, we need to be inspired.

Contractual work is not always inspired. Sometimes it’s written because it needs to be written. I know for a fact that the readers can’t tell when something is very difficult to write and when something just fell out of you, but the serial cannot feel like slogging through mud for us. It must come from a place of fun and be low pressure, or we will quit writing it.

We are going to try to begin the serial sometime in November. We need to write ahead enough to make sure the concept makes sense and leave ourselves some breathing room.

Gordon is strongly in favor of a sequel to Inheritance. My fear is that it will grow. If you are new to our blog, the veteran Horde members will explain it in the comments. When I say something is a short story, people start hysterically laughing. We don’t really have room in our schedule for something that is too long. So please understand that the serial may go on for months and may not have a firm publication date.

So I am off to try to write some opening chapters with Gordon.

Writing Together

On that note, we have gotten the perennial question of how do we write together. We sit at the same desk like so:

I dictate, Gordon types. He often alters what I dictate as it goes onto the page because sometimes I dictate nonsense. If you like writing fiction, try dictating a scene. It feels very different from writing it, and it’s kind of hard to do. It’s a whole different skillset.

Funny story: one time we were at a convention – I want to say NY Comicon, for some reason – and we were on a panel with several SF and Fantasy writers. They asked us to do a story, where everyone add a little bit as it goes. So people start.

“He took his sword.”

“He went outside.”

And it comes to me and I’m like, “The sunset bled crimson on the mountain, the glowing orbs of the twin suns shining like raw wounds in the fabric of the heavens…”

The looks I got, hehehe. It wasn’t because I was that high speed; it’s just because I’ve trained myself to dictate. It requires an adjustment.

We don’t write scenes separately. Everything that goes into our books is the result of a compromise and a joint effort.

Each of us has separate strengths. I’m better with description. Gordon is better with natural dialogue. The mannerisms and romantic lines from the male POV are almost always coming from Gordon. So when Everard says something like “Use me. Let me be your shield,” or Erodel puts on his glove before the fight, that is Gordon in action. I tend to do the majority of female character lines.

We do fight scenes together. It is a very slow process with much reenacting and video watching. It usually takes all day for a two page fight scene.

We also have assistants.

As you can see, Tubby’s level of the Bulldog Sadness is epic. Tuna is doing his trademark, ‘You have worked enough” move.

The other two, Nykie and Batty, are asleep, so I didn’t take pics.

This year took three elderly pets away from us. It’s been a little difficult. We are down to two dogs and two cats. And that is all I will say about that.

So back to the subject, we write side by side, but we edit separately. Each of us takes an editorial pass, because editing by committee is impossible.

We are boring. We rarely have dramatic fights about writing, although we do occasionally throw fits, when things aren’t going well and neither one of us is sure what the problem is. Usually one of us declares that they are just done for the day and we quit and do something else while the story sorts itself out in the background.

So that’s that. We will have more fun stuff for you this week as Halloween draws near.