I’m about to run out to the Oregon coast for a three-day writing workshop — a fun opportunity to talk shop with lots of other writers, something I don’t get to do nearly often enough — but I wanted to share this link before I go.
On Monday, Fantasy Magazine, published my collaboration with Ray Vukcevich, “A Stray.” You can read it for free online.
Well, today they’ve published an interview with Ray and I about the collaborative process. We even included a couple of our email exchanges at the end, which you might find interesting. I also agree with Ray’s comment that when two people collaborate, then a third person emerges, which was certainly true in this case. A lot more planning and pre-writing went into this story than is usually the case for me — usually this sort of thing happens more in my head, and even then more on a gut level. I believe Ray was saying the same was true for him.
But going back and forth about the story via email, shaping it and molding it a bit before setting a word on the page — that was a very valuable experience. You might find some of our notes interesting too, especially if you read the story, because it shows where we made decisions about the direction the story was going.
Whether those decisions worked or not, well, that’s up to each reader to decide.