Clark Hays's Blog, page 6
November 20, 2011
Paranormal Romance: Vampires, Ghosts and Werewolves Optional
Writing fiction together and staying in love for more than a decade leads us to the inescapable conclusion that all romances are paranormal.
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this for the All Things Paranormal blog.
Paranormal (from the Greek for “beyond”) is a term typically applied to experiences that lie outside normal experiences or current scientific explanation. Lately, the word is often paired up with “romance” to characterize a kind of fiction that features elements of the supernatural. (Shameless plug: A perfect example is The Cowboy and the Vampire). As paranormal romance authors, we love the depth, intrigue and sensuality of these Gothic elements, but lately we’ve been wondering if the title is a bit misleading.
What romance isn’t paranormal?
For anyone lucky enough to experience a romantic attraction, it’s anything but normal. It makes your heart do funny things like skip beats or speed up, it makes you weak in the knees, it makes you do crazy stunts, and it physically hurts you when you’re not with the person you love. Romantic relationships almost by definition are beyond “normal.” Even though scientists may perfectly understand what’s causing all the various chemical and physiological reactions, they will likely never understand why the body goes haywire when certain pairs of eyes meet across the room.
We are still caught up in a paranormal romance some 15 years after our eyes first met across the stainless steel counter at a busy vegetarian restaurant. It was Kathleen’s first day as a waitress and Clark was working as a sous-chef in the kitchen. There above the rosemary chicken and Hungarian mushroom soup, our eyes met, our souls collided and our poor bodies experienced all sorts of unexpected reactions from floods of endorphins to swarms of stomach butterflies. Obviously, paranormal forces were at work. We never stood a chance.
Even though it took a few tries, and several years, to get all of that energy under control and focused into a relationship, being together today still feels like something way, way beyond normal.
And writing helps.
We write together as a team. The Cowboy and the Vampire came out of the recognition that there was something magical about our relationship. Two creative people from opposite worlds — Kathleen was born and raised in the heart of Washington, DC, Clark in the wide open spaces of Montana — with vastly different backgrounds (Clark grew up hunting and reading Louis L’Amour, Kathleen grew up marching in protests and reading Susan Sontag) coming together in a passionate cataclysm …
The clash of cultures love story at the heart of our own relationship carried over into The Cowboy and the Vampire. A good old boy, Tucker, falls for an ambitious city girl, Lizzie, who just happens to be a Vampire (even though she doesn’t know it yet). Even though they have nothing in common, the “paranormal” part of their romance gives them the power and conviction to face down all odds, including a horde of evil Vampires bent on their destruction.
Surviving against all odds and in spite of the natural tendency for things to degrade and decay is what any romance is about.
It’s not all roses and poetry and swirling supernatural energies for us. We have our share of “normal” fights. For example, Clark readily admits to flossing too loudly and vigorously. Kathleen has a low tolerance for loud, vigorous flossing. After many ridiculous fights, Clark now flosses in the hall and that entire sequence made it into the sequel we are currently working on, Blood and Whiskey as Tucker and Lizzie come to grips with their new life:
“All I really want is to have our baby and grow old with you and fight about stupid stuff like why you floss so goddamn loudly. But that’s not going to happen, is it? I can’t grow old, I can’t have a normal life, I can’t not kill people and the only possible solution I can think of is to just take my own life and be done with it. Is that what you want?”
Her fury subsided and she focused on the French fries suffocating under a congealing mass of brown gravy, stabbing them angrily with a fork. The silence stretched on between them until Tucker took a deep breath. “I really floss too loud?”
She choked out a sound that was half laughter and half anguish. “Yes, you do. It sounds likes you’re playing the violin with your teeth. But I don’t care. I mean, I do care, it drives me batty, but those are the kinds of things I want to fight about, not all of these huge, ridiculous things impossible things like how do I keep the Serpents from killing off humans and who do I feed on to stay alive without feeling like a sadistic freak. Mostly I can’t bear it that you think I’m some kind of monster.”
Flossing aside, we are happy to be part of a relationship that exists far beyond the normal. It’s a paranormal relationship, but aren’t they all?
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this for the All Things Paranormal blog.
Paranormal (from the Greek for “beyond”) is a term typically applied to experiences that lie outside normal experiences or current scientific explanation. Lately, the word is often paired up with “romance” to characterize a kind of fiction that features elements of the supernatural. (Shameless plug: A perfect example is The Cowboy and the Vampire). As paranormal romance authors, we love the depth, intrigue and sensuality of these Gothic elements, but lately we’ve been wondering if the title is a bit misleading.
What romance isn’t paranormal?
For anyone lucky enough to experience a romantic attraction, it’s anything but normal. It makes your heart do funny things like skip beats or speed up, it makes you weak in the knees, it makes you do crazy stunts, and it physically hurts you when you’re not with the person you love. Romantic relationships almost by definition are beyond “normal.” Even though scientists may perfectly understand what’s causing all the various chemical and physiological reactions, they will likely never understand why the body goes haywire when certain pairs of eyes meet across the room.
We are still caught up in a paranormal romance some 15 years after our eyes first met across the stainless steel counter at a busy vegetarian restaurant. It was Kathleen’s first day as a waitress and Clark was working as a sous-chef in the kitchen. There above the rosemary chicken and Hungarian mushroom soup, our eyes met, our souls collided and our poor bodies experienced all sorts of unexpected reactions from floods of endorphins to swarms of stomach butterflies. Obviously, paranormal forces were at work. We never stood a chance.
Even though it took a few tries, and several years, to get all of that energy under control and focused into a relationship, being together today still feels like something way, way beyond normal.
And writing helps.
We write together as a team. The Cowboy and the Vampire came out of the recognition that there was something magical about our relationship. Two creative people from opposite worlds — Kathleen was born and raised in the heart of Washington, DC, Clark in the wide open spaces of Montana — with vastly different backgrounds (Clark grew up hunting and reading Louis L’Amour, Kathleen grew up marching in protests and reading Susan Sontag) coming together in a passionate cataclysm …
The clash of cultures love story at the heart of our own relationship carried over into The Cowboy and the Vampire. A good old boy, Tucker, falls for an ambitious city girl, Lizzie, who just happens to be a Vampire (even though she doesn’t know it yet). Even though they have nothing in common, the “paranormal” part of their romance gives them the power and conviction to face down all odds, including a horde of evil Vampires bent on their destruction.
Surviving against all odds and in spite of the natural tendency for things to degrade and decay is what any romance is about.
It’s not all roses and poetry and swirling supernatural energies for us. We have our share of “normal” fights. For example, Clark readily admits to flossing too loudly and vigorously. Kathleen has a low tolerance for loud, vigorous flossing. After many ridiculous fights, Clark now flosses in the hall and that entire sequence made it into the sequel we are currently working on, Blood and Whiskey as Tucker and Lizzie come to grips with their new life:
“All I really want is to have our baby and grow old with you and fight about stupid stuff like why you floss so goddamn loudly. But that’s not going to happen, is it? I can’t grow old, I can’t have a normal life, I can’t not kill people and the only possible solution I can think of is to just take my own life and be done with it. Is that what you want?”
Her fury subsided and she focused on the French fries suffocating under a congealing mass of brown gravy, stabbing them angrily with a fork. The silence stretched on between them until Tucker took a deep breath. “I really floss too loud?”
She choked out a sound that was half laughter and half anguish. “Yes, you do. It sounds likes you’re playing the violin with your teeth. But I don’t care. I mean, I do care, it drives me batty, but those are the kinds of things I want to fight about, not all of these huge, ridiculous things impossible things like how do I keep the Serpents from killing off humans and who do I feed on to stay alive without feeling like a sadistic freak. Mostly I can’t bear it that you think I’m some kind of monster.”
Flossing aside, we are happy to be part of a relationship that exists far beyond the normal. It’s a paranormal relationship, but aren’t they all?
November 17, 2011
With Murderous Intent
The couple that slays together stays together, hopefully…
Note: Kathleen and I originally wrote this for the paranormal and romantic suspense review blog
See that girl over there. The pretty barista with the bee-sting lips and dark braids? She’s about to die and we’re going to kill her.
Not immediately, but in the not-too-distant future she’s going to die. A horrible death. Actually, it won’t be too bad … at first. She’ll be lured into a luxury hotel room by a beautiful, raven-haired Vampire who will ply her with expensive champagne, seduce her on satin sheets, and take her to the edge of a mind-rattling
orgasm.
Just as she let’s herself go to the waves of pleasure, tragically, her throat will be slit open and her life’s blood sucked out of the pulsing wound. All that will be left behind is a lovely corpse that housekeeping will find in the morning.
But for now, she just wants to be paid for a coffee, black, and a cup of Irish breakfast tea to go.
She gets a good tip because we are going to kill her, or at least a fictional version of her, in our next book.
We are writers and shameless personality thieves, plundering the world around us for characters that will make it into our fiction. Though sometimes, as in the case of the barista, not for long.
Two become one
We started writing The Cowboy and the Vampire together in the early stages of our relationship “version 2.0.” Reconnecting after a tumultuous break up, the idea of writing together seemed like a logical way to channel our passion into something constructive, something that bridged our opposites-certainly-attract-but-don’t-have-very-much-in-common situation. (Clark was raised on a ranch in Montana, Kathleen in the heart of Washington DC). Sitting at a truck stop café in Madras, Ore., we each picked a topic to bring to the writing project. Clark went with cowboys, drawing from his love of the West, and Kathleen picked what seemed to be the polar opposite, the dark world of Vampires. We literally sketched out the plot line on the back of a paper placemat in the crayons they kept on hand to entertain little kids.
From there, the rest came easy (if easy can ever include massive, week-long fights about semi-colons or over uses of dashes) and, because we were living in 200 miles apart at the time, began mailing chapters back and forth. As the writing project took on an undead life of its own, we dug deep into the research, got a lot better at working together and began stealing the personalities of people around us.
Cannibalizing the world
One of the things we quickly learned was that we shared a penchant for obsessively watching others, creating stories about their lives and filing away their quirks, traits and unique characteristics for future use.
The farmer on the bus picking his ear and smelling his finger obsessively, he’ll show up again.
The transvestite flossing her teeth as she shows us furniture in a second hand store, she’ll be back.
The cheerleader who looks like she’s been crying, the one who is pale as death and smells of clove cigarettes, we’ll use that.
The barista, of course, we’ve already killed. But her earnest boyfriend with the ironic mustache and plaid shirt … we’d better file him away too.
Vampire novels tend to have a high body count. But in The Cowboy and the Vampire, and in the sequel we’re working on, Blood and Whiskey, every single victim was someone we once saw. Characters have to be someone, someone real, or else readers won’t feel a connection and — when they meet their tragic demise — a sense of loss.
Before we got so deeply involved in Blood and Whiskey, for fun we’d pick someone at random to hone our skills at building back-stories. A contest and a chance to scavenge from a renewable resource — people-watching.
That same approach has helped us create rich, nuanced characters in our work. Some of the characters in Blood and Whiskey have stories stretching back 500 years. But we know them inside and out so when we are advancing the plot through their action, we know exactly how they will respond, the words they will choose and the gestures they will make.
So if you ever happen to be in Portland and see two people watching you intently and scribbling feverishly in notebooks, don’t worry about, we’re probably just killing you in some horrible way. With any luck though, there will be dark, kinky sex first.
Note: Kathleen and I originally wrote this for the paranormal and romantic suspense review blog
See that girl over there. The pretty barista with the bee-sting lips and dark braids? She’s about to die and we’re going to kill her.
Not immediately, but in the not-too-distant future she’s going to die. A horrible death. Actually, it won’t be too bad … at first. She’ll be lured into a luxury hotel room by a beautiful, raven-haired Vampire who will ply her with expensive champagne, seduce her on satin sheets, and take her to the edge of a mind-rattling
orgasm.
Just as she let’s herself go to the waves of pleasure, tragically, her throat will be slit open and her life’s blood sucked out of the pulsing wound. All that will be left behind is a lovely corpse that housekeeping will find in the morning.
But for now, she just wants to be paid for a coffee, black, and a cup of Irish breakfast tea to go.
She gets a good tip because we are going to kill her, or at least a fictional version of her, in our next book.
We are writers and shameless personality thieves, plundering the world around us for characters that will make it into our fiction. Though sometimes, as in the case of the barista, not for long.
Two become one
We started writing The Cowboy and the Vampire together in the early stages of our relationship “version 2.0.” Reconnecting after a tumultuous break up, the idea of writing together seemed like a logical way to channel our passion into something constructive, something that bridged our opposites-certainly-attract-but-don’t-have-very-much-in-common situation. (Clark was raised on a ranch in Montana, Kathleen in the heart of Washington DC). Sitting at a truck stop café in Madras, Ore., we each picked a topic to bring to the writing project. Clark went with cowboys, drawing from his love of the West, and Kathleen picked what seemed to be the polar opposite, the dark world of Vampires. We literally sketched out the plot line on the back of a paper placemat in the crayons they kept on hand to entertain little kids.
From there, the rest came easy (if easy can ever include massive, week-long fights about semi-colons or over uses of dashes) and, because we were living in 200 miles apart at the time, began mailing chapters back and forth. As the writing project took on an undead life of its own, we dug deep into the research, got a lot better at working together and began stealing the personalities of people around us.
Cannibalizing the world
One of the things we quickly learned was that we shared a penchant for obsessively watching others, creating stories about their lives and filing away their quirks, traits and unique characteristics for future use.
The farmer on the bus picking his ear and smelling his finger obsessively, he’ll show up again.
The transvestite flossing her teeth as she shows us furniture in a second hand store, she’ll be back.
The cheerleader who looks like she’s been crying, the one who is pale as death and smells of clove cigarettes, we’ll use that.
The barista, of course, we’ve already killed. But her earnest boyfriend with the ironic mustache and plaid shirt … we’d better file him away too.
Vampire novels tend to have a high body count. But in The Cowboy and the Vampire, and in the sequel we’re working on, Blood and Whiskey, every single victim was someone we once saw. Characters have to be someone, someone real, or else readers won’t feel a connection and — when they meet their tragic demise — a sense of loss.
Before we got so deeply involved in Blood and Whiskey, for fun we’d pick someone at random to hone our skills at building back-stories. A contest and a chance to scavenge from a renewable resource — people-watching.
That same approach has helped us create rich, nuanced characters in our work. Some of the characters in Blood and Whiskey have stories stretching back 500 years. But we know them inside and out so when we are advancing the plot through their action, we know exactly how they will respond, the words they will choose and the gestures they will make.
So if you ever happen to be in Portland and see two people watching you intently and scribbling feverishly in notebooks, don’t worry about, we’re probably just killing you in some horrible way. With any luck though, there will be dark, kinky sex first.
November 12, 2011
Anniversary Lost
How writing together keeps us close — probably too close.
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this blog for Ravencraft's Romance Realms
Our thirteenth wedding anniversary was two weeks ago. Thirteen years! Hold your congratulations, though. We both forgot it. We had been so busy, consumed, editing our next novel Blood and Whiskey that the day caught us unawares.
It was one of those awful, sitcom moments. Kathleen called Clark at work to find out when their anniversary was and both realized, with slowly dawning horror, it was that day.
Then we laughed about it, made plans to pick up some champagne and spent the night editing.
(Note: We did celebrate the next weekend with more champagne — we’re sensing a theme here — and candles. Call it “research” for love scenes.)
Writing off into the sunset
We are a rare breed – writers who collaborate and cohabitate.
We started working on The Cowboy and the Vampire before we were even married. After a fiery and passionate first meeting, we took a two-year break to heal our scorched hearts and figure out how to contain the passion between us. When we rekindled things, we decided to work together on a creative project. That’s how TCATV was born.
It was an amazing process in which the lessons we learned writing together — how to give and take, how to collaborate, how to trust your partner — shaped our relationship and vice versa. The book was published in 1999 and sold well, but we lost momentum. Life got in the way and even though we had to shift energy to our professional lives — Kathleen works in communications for a medical university and Clark works in communications for a national financial services company — we continued writing together and continue drawing sustenance from the creative energy crackling between us.
Romance writing: a double-edged sword
Almost ten years to the day TCATV came out, the popularity of Vampires (maybe you’ve heard of a little series called Twilight or True Blood) prompted a re-release with a sexy new cover and a strong marketing push. Keep in mind that when the book first came out, there was no Facebook (check out our Facebook page) and building a webpage was an ordeal (check out our webpage, too). Based on this renewed success, we’re hard at work on Blood and Whiskey and deeply enjoying writing together.
But it is a double-edged sword. Between the creative work, the marketing and our “day jobs,” there never seems to be enough time for each other. We find ourselves writing of a passionate love for the ages — between Tucker and Lizzie, our heroes — while our own relationship is sometimes left idling in the parking lot. Shades of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” by Nowlan (a great, short poem if you haven’t read it).
Still, the energy and passion that goes into every page, the way Tucker faces down armies of Vampires to protect Lizzie, and the way she catches his gaze across the room to let him know she wants him, well, those are echoes of our own feelings. And working together on a fictional romance gives us something to aspire to when it comes to real life.
We may miss a few anniversaries, but that’s only because we’re focused on writing and deepening our own relationship. Plus, we always know the perfect gift for anniversaries missed or celebrated — paper. No matter what the etiquette guides tell you, paper is always the perfect gift for a writer, even if it’s a virtual page in an eReader. Paper, and more time.
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this blog for Ravencraft's Romance Realms
Our thirteenth wedding anniversary was two weeks ago. Thirteen years! Hold your congratulations, though. We both forgot it. We had been so busy, consumed, editing our next novel Blood and Whiskey that the day caught us unawares.
It was one of those awful, sitcom moments. Kathleen called Clark at work to find out when their anniversary was and both realized, with slowly dawning horror, it was that day.
Then we laughed about it, made plans to pick up some champagne and spent the night editing.
(Note: We did celebrate the next weekend with more champagne — we’re sensing a theme here — and candles. Call it “research” for love scenes.)
Writing off into the sunset
We are a rare breed – writers who collaborate and cohabitate.
We started working on The Cowboy and the Vampire before we were even married. After a fiery and passionate first meeting, we took a two-year break to heal our scorched hearts and figure out how to contain the passion between us. When we rekindled things, we decided to work together on a creative project. That’s how TCATV was born.
It was an amazing process in which the lessons we learned writing together — how to give and take, how to collaborate, how to trust your partner — shaped our relationship and vice versa. The book was published in 1999 and sold well, but we lost momentum. Life got in the way and even though we had to shift energy to our professional lives — Kathleen works in communications for a medical university and Clark works in communications for a national financial services company — we continued writing together and continue drawing sustenance from the creative energy crackling between us.
Romance writing: a double-edged sword
Almost ten years to the day TCATV came out, the popularity of Vampires (maybe you’ve heard of a little series called Twilight or True Blood) prompted a re-release with a sexy new cover and a strong marketing push. Keep in mind that when the book first came out, there was no Facebook (check out our Facebook page) and building a webpage was an ordeal (check out our webpage, too). Based on this renewed success, we’re hard at work on Blood and Whiskey and deeply enjoying writing together.
But it is a double-edged sword. Between the creative work, the marketing and our “day jobs,” there never seems to be enough time for each other. We find ourselves writing of a passionate love for the ages — between Tucker and Lizzie, our heroes — while our own relationship is sometimes left idling in the parking lot. Shades of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” by Nowlan (a great, short poem if you haven’t read it).
Still, the energy and passion that goes into every page, the way Tucker faces down armies of Vampires to protect Lizzie, and the way she catches his gaze across the room to let him know she wants him, well, those are echoes of our own feelings. And working together on a fictional romance gives us something to aspire to when it comes to real life.
We may miss a few anniversaries, but that’s only because we’re focused on writing and deepening our own relationship. Plus, we always know the perfect gift for anniversaries missed or celebrated — paper. No matter what the etiquette guides tell you, paper is always the perfect gift for a writer, even if it’s a virtual page in an eReader. Paper, and more time.
November 10, 2011
The Spiritualist Papers
Writing to raise the (un)dead — and the never born
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this for the Confessions of a Scarlet Woman blog.
Most nights and every weekend we hold séances. We channel the spirits of the undead, the never born and various lost and unformed souls swimming through the ether anxious to be made flesh.
There’s no flickering candles, no table rapping and — usually — no emanations of ectoplasm. There’s just two people, dueling computers at 20 paces and a lot of automatic writing as we compel a host of characters to inhabit our bodies and guide our fingers and record the lives they wish they could live.
Help us, oh spirit guides
We’re writers, not spiritualists, but sometimes the two feel similar. We certainly strive to disorder our senses, disassociate ourselves from reality and diverge from the plane of existence. About ten years ago, we wrote The Cowboy and the Vampire together. It was a magical experience that came almost too easily. The passion of our own romantic entanglement brought the two main characters to life and an otherworldly energy kept the words flowing. In the space of a short year, we had fallen in love, written a book together and it was published by Llewellyn. The future we wanted was not in the tarot cards, however, and it seemed the literary spirit guides abandoned us as life got in the way.
Fast forward a decade. TCATV was rereleased by Midnight Ink thanks to the current interest in Vampires (thank you Twilight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries!) and just like that, the magic returned. We are editing the sequel — Blood and Whiskey — and thankfully rekindling our trips to the other side to meet characters and pull them back with us.
We both write professionally as well (Kathleen works in communications for a medical university, Clark for a national financial services company), but not much occult magic is required to bring a press release to life or translate quarterly earnings into the human tongue. We make up for it at night though when the shadows are long and eldritch energies flow and we ask our fictional characters to briefly inhabit our physical forms.
The world is a warehouse of personality parts
Creating characters from scratch and sustaining them for the length of a novel requires building new worlds — the world they would see. We all move through mostly the same planes of time and space, but we each experience it differently, sometime vastly differently. Fictional characters do the same. We spend our creative writing time purposefully disconnecting our senses and plugging them into the brains of the not yet undeparted.
To do that successfully, we also have to develop lives and loves and back stories rich enough and complex enough to yield consistent motivations and behaviors out of a swirling mass of possibilities. It’s equal parts observation and creation. That’s why we constantly watch those around us and capture their actions and quirks, storing the bits and pieces away in a warehouse of spare parts from which new lives can be assembled and animated.
Springing forth from somethingness
The two main characters in TCATV — Tucker and Lizzie — were assembled from the very best parts of our own lives as we fell madly and passionately in love. Onto that framework, we built new characteristics (some we probably wish we had and others, the small and petty parts, we have in abundance). Other characters were loosely based on real people. Lenny, the survivalist, paranoid conspiracy theorist and improvised weapons expert, was modeled on someone Clark grew up with only all of his tendencies were supercharged to the farthest extremes.
The Vampires are different, of course. Their motivations are (somewhat) foreign because they are predators. We researched works of biology to understand the motivations of the big predators, and spliced that with philosophical and neurological works to help us understand the basis of cruelty. Elita, a sexy, sultry and joyously amoral creature of the night, is perhaps our greatest creation with allegiances that shift on a whim, a cruel streak wider than New York alleyway and insatiable sexual appetites.
In Blood and Whiskey, we have a host of new characters, all of whom have detailed histories — a daunting prospect for Vampires that have lived for centuries. We know how they take their coffee (or vodka), who their first lover was (or first kill) and, most importantly, how they would interact with others. Will the same magic be there for Blood and Whiskey? All signs point to yes.
Developing successful characters really is magical and a little disorienting. Imagine a medium channeling a spirit with multiple personality disorder. For a couple that writes together as one voice, it’s even more confusing. First, we have to let our minds come together — never an easy task — before we can derange our senses enough to let the visitors inside. And some of them aren’t very nice.
Luckily, Lizzie and Tucker have a love strong enough to overcome just about anything. Happily, so do we, in our real lives. At least we do now. There was a time when we were sorely tested … and didn’t speak to one another for more than a year.
But clearly we stayed in contact somehow. Perhaps remotely across the astral.
Note: Kathleen and I wrote this for the Confessions of a Scarlet Woman blog.
Most nights and every weekend we hold séances. We channel the spirits of the undead, the never born and various lost and unformed souls swimming through the ether anxious to be made flesh.
There’s no flickering candles, no table rapping and — usually — no emanations of ectoplasm. There’s just two people, dueling computers at 20 paces and a lot of automatic writing as we compel a host of characters to inhabit our bodies and guide our fingers and record the lives they wish they could live.
Help us, oh spirit guides
We’re writers, not spiritualists, but sometimes the two feel similar. We certainly strive to disorder our senses, disassociate ourselves from reality and diverge from the plane of existence. About ten years ago, we wrote The Cowboy and the Vampire together. It was a magical experience that came almost too easily. The passion of our own romantic entanglement brought the two main characters to life and an otherworldly energy kept the words flowing. In the space of a short year, we had fallen in love, written a book together and it was published by Llewellyn. The future we wanted was not in the tarot cards, however, and it seemed the literary spirit guides abandoned us as life got in the way.
Fast forward a decade. TCATV was rereleased by Midnight Ink thanks to the current interest in Vampires (thank you Twilight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries!) and just like that, the magic returned. We are editing the sequel — Blood and Whiskey — and thankfully rekindling our trips to the other side to meet characters and pull them back with us.
We both write professionally as well (Kathleen works in communications for a medical university, Clark for a national financial services company), but not much occult magic is required to bring a press release to life or translate quarterly earnings into the human tongue. We make up for it at night though when the shadows are long and eldritch energies flow and we ask our fictional characters to briefly inhabit our physical forms.
The world is a warehouse of personality parts
Creating characters from scratch and sustaining them for the length of a novel requires building new worlds — the world they would see. We all move through mostly the same planes of time and space, but we each experience it differently, sometime vastly differently. Fictional characters do the same. We spend our creative writing time purposefully disconnecting our senses and plugging them into the brains of the not yet undeparted.
To do that successfully, we also have to develop lives and loves and back stories rich enough and complex enough to yield consistent motivations and behaviors out of a swirling mass of possibilities. It’s equal parts observation and creation. That’s why we constantly watch those around us and capture their actions and quirks, storing the bits and pieces away in a warehouse of spare parts from which new lives can be assembled and animated.
Springing forth from somethingness
The two main characters in TCATV — Tucker and Lizzie — were assembled from the very best parts of our own lives as we fell madly and passionately in love. Onto that framework, we built new characteristics (some we probably wish we had and others, the small and petty parts, we have in abundance). Other characters were loosely based on real people. Lenny, the survivalist, paranoid conspiracy theorist and improvised weapons expert, was modeled on someone Clark grew up with only all of his tendencies were supercharged to the farthest extremes.
The Vampires are different, of course. Their motivations are (somewhat) foreign because they are predators. We researched works of biology to understand the motivations of the big predators, and spliced that with philosophical and neurological works to help us understand the basis of cruelty. Elita, a sexy, sultry and joyously amoral creature of the night, is perhaps our greatest creation with allegiances that shift on a whim, a cruel streak wider than New York alleyway and insatiable sexual appetites.
In Blood and Whiskey, we have a host of new characters, all of whom have detailed histories — a daunting prospect for Vampires that have lived for centuries. We know how they take their coffee (or vodka), who their first lover was (or first kill) and, most importantly, how they would interact with others. Will the same magic be there for Blood and Whiskey? All signs point to yes.
Developing successful characters really is magical and a little disorienting. Imagine a medium channeling a spirit with multiple personality disorder. For a couple that writes together as one voice, it’s even more confusing. First, we have to let our minds come together — never an easy task — before we can derange our senses enough to let the visitors inside. And some of them aren’t very nice.
Luckily, Lizzie and Tucker have a love strong enough to overcome just about anything. Happily, so do we, in our real lives. At least we do now. There was a time when we were sorely tested … and didn’t speak to one another for more than a year.
But clearly we stayed in contact somehow. Perhaps remotely across the astral.
November 6, 2011
How to Become “Book-Club Friendly”
Engage fans, make new friends and enjoy free cocktails
Note: Wrote this article for Pacific Northwest Literary Alliance newsletter.
We had a lot of fun writing The Cowboy and the Vampire together so it’s no surprise we have a lot of fun talking about it — plus we have oversized egos — but we also both suffer from stage fright. As a result, “podium events” like book readings are terrifying. Thank goodness for book clubs. Low key, friendly and replete with free drinks … it’s like flying first class. And like most people who generally fly economy, we are so grateful. Every author should be so lucky.
Given our aversion to public speaking, we focus on book clubs and have become by default minor experts in the burgeoning field of author/book club relationship management (ABCRM; what’s a specialty field without an acronym?). Like any good experts, we’re going to share our brief but extensive knowledge about why book clubs are so valuable, ways authors can connect with book clubs and share a few tips for the actual event.
Why book clubs?
This one is easy. Book clubs are great way to meet new readers and network with fans and sometimes, the guest list can be surprising. At a recent book club, we met the mother of an A-list(ish) actor and asked (begged?) her to press a signed copy of The Cowboy and Vampire directly into his hands and tell him what a great movie it would make. We’re still eagerly waiting for that follow up phone call. It will come, we know it!
The book club venue is also perfect for receiving great feedback. Book clubs are made up of people who love to read and enjoy talking in-depth about their experiences as a reader. They are also critics. In essence, book clubs are focus groups with cocktails. (Note: Book club charters, apparently, require the consumption of alcohol … thank goodness.) For writers, what could be better than hearing directly from readers? The input is invaluable and definitely will make the next book better. We changed a few plot points in the sequel Blood and Whiskey based on what we heard from our book club friends, and were surprised to hear about parts of our book we had thought were inconsequential but actually scored big with our readers.
How to find a willing book club
Sadly, there’s not (yet) a personals site for “Book Clubs looking for authors with benefits.” Finding a book club is all about marketing and taking advantage of whatever channels are available. We connected with one wonderfully fun book club through Clark’s work. They made cowboy and vampire themed food and drinks (many, many drinks) and we stayed for almost two hours laughing and talking about our characters and how we can stand writing together.
We found another great connection at an art festival event, chatting with the event organizer who ultimately bought five copies and invited us to her book club. From that, we spent a lovely two hours in a beautiful home beside the Clackamas River drinking whiskey and talking about vampire-induced murder. (Note: plan for the long term. Books about cowboys mean whiskey will be served, vampires mean red wine. Sorry young adult authors.)
How to seed a book club
Book clubs are social events so don’t forget the ever present essential social media. “This book is perfect for books clubs: may include author appearance” can go a long way on a Facebook page or personal website. The same holds true for book signings and author events. “Book Club friendly” would make a great sticker on the front cover of the book, or perhaps a T-shirt. Or better yet, a shirt that says “Take this author home with you.”
Geographic proximity is also an important factor. Except for authors of J.K. Rowling stature, it’s difficult to jet across the country for a book club appearance, no matter what food or quantities of whiskey are being served. Our current outer limit is about 40 miles. Technology is pretty advanced these days, though, and we’re thinking a 30-minute “video drop in” might be pretty easy to arrange with Skype or an iPad.
One last thought. We think there’s definitely role in all of this for Writer’s Groups. Members would definitely benefit from support in this area.
At the book club – etiquette for the event
A few tips:
• Provide study questions in advance. In the rare event that members don’t have much to say, questions help keep the conversation going. If possible, avoid yes or no questions.
• Have some great stories ready to tell. Share details about writing, the creative process and the next project.
• Enlist their help. Book clubs are all about grassroots campaigning. Let them know how important it is to get reviews and ask them to share their thoughts online in a review or via Facebook and Twitter.
• Stay in touch. Take a picture with the group and then offer to email it to them. Then save the contact information and provide updates.
• Bring something: food, wine or marketing freebies.
• Leave them with an “ask.” What’s the last thing they should remember? “Please tell one friend about how much you liked this book.” “Post a review.” “Watch for my next book.” Whatever it is, use it on the way out.
• But most of all, have fun. Book clubs are an amazing opportunity for writer and reader to directly connect and isn’t that what it’s all about?
And in keeping with our own advice, we’d be happy to stop by and talk more about all of the many things we know about ABCRM at your next writing group or book club, or more importantly, about The Cowboy and the Vampire. As long as you live within 40 miles of Portland, have Skype or keep decent whiskey on hand.
Note: Wrote this article for Pacific Northwest Literary Alliance newsletter.
We had a lot of fun writing The Cowboy and the Vampire together so it’s no surprise we have a lot of fun talking about it — plus we have oversized egos — but we also both suffer from stage fright. As a result, “podium events” like book readings are terrifying. Thank goodness for book clubs. Low key, friendly and replete with free drinks … it’s like flying first class. And like most people who generally fly economy, we are so grateful. Every author should be so lucky.
Given our aversion to public speaking, we focus on book clubs and have become by default minor experts in the burgeoning field of author/book club relationship management (ABCRM; what’s a specialty field without an acronym?). Like any good experts, we’re going to share our brief but extensive knowledge about why book clubs are so valuable, ways authors can connect with book clubs and share a few tips for the actual event.
Why book clubs?
This one is easy. Book clubs are great way to meet new readers and network with fans and sometimes, the guest list can be surprising. At a recent book club, we met the mother of an A-list(ish) actor and asked (begged?) her to press a signed copy of The Cowboy and Vampire directly into his hands and tell him what a great movie it would make. We’re still eagerly waiting for that follow up phone call. It will come, we know it!
The book club venue is also perfect for receiving great feedback. Book clubs are made up of people who love to read and enjoy talking in-depth about their experiences as a reader. They are also critics. In essence, book clubs are focus groups with cocktails. (Note: Book club charters, apparently, require the consumption of alcohol … thank goodness.) For writers, what could be better than hearing directly from readers? The input is invaluable and definitely will make the next book better. We changed a few plot points in the sequel Blood and Whiskey based on what we heard from our book club friends, and were surprised to hear about parts of our book we had thought were inconsequential but actually scored big with our readers.
How to find a willing book club
Sadly, there’s not (yet) a personals site for “Book Clubs looking for authors with benefits.” Finding a book club is all about marketing and taking advantage of whatever channels are available. We connected with one wonderfully fun book club through Clark’s work. They made cowboy and vampire themed food and drinks (many, many drinks) and we stayed for almost two hours laughing and talking about our characters and how we can stand writing together.
We found another great connection at an art festival event, chatting with the event organizer who ultimately bought five copies and invited us to her book club. From that, we spent a lovely two hours in a beautiful home beside the Clackamas River drinking whiskey and talking about vampire-induced murder. (Note: plan for the long term. Books about cowboys mean whiskey will be served, vampires mean red wine. Sorry young adult authors.)
How to seed a book club
Book clubs are social events so don’t forget the ever present essential social media. “This book is perfect for books clubs: may include author appearance” can go a long way on a Facebook page or personal website. The same holds true for book signings and author events. “Book Club friendly” would make a great sticker on the front cover of the book, or perhaps a T-shirt. Or better yet, a shirt that says “Take this author home with you.”
Geographic proximity is also an important factor. Except for authors of J.K. Rowling stature, it’s difficult to jet across the country for a book club appearance, no matter what food or quantities of whiskey are being served. Our current outer limit is about 40 miles. Technology is pretty advanced these days, though, and we’re thinking a 30-minute “video drop in” might be pretty easy to arrange with Skype or an iPad.
One last thought. We think there’s definitely role in all of this for Writer’s Groups. Members would definitely benefit from support in this area.
At the book club – etiquette for the event
A few tips:
• Provide study questions in advance. In the rare event that members don’t have much to say, questions help keep the conversation going. If possible, avoid yes or no questions.
• Have some great stories ready to tell. Share details about writing, the creative process and the next project.
• Enlist their help. Book clubs are all about grassroots campaigning. Let them know how important it is to get reviews and ask them to share their thoughts online in a review or via Facebook and Twitter.
• Stay in touch. Take a picture with the group and then offer to email it to them. Then save the contact information and provide updates.
• Bring something: food, wine or marketing freebies.
• Leave them with an “ask.” What’s the last thing they should remember? “Please tell one friend about how much you liked this book.” “Post a review.” “Watch for my next book.” Whatever it is, use it on the way out.
• But most of all, have fun. Book clubs are an amazing opportunity for writer and reader to directly connect and isn’t that what it’s all about?
And in keeping with our own advice, we’d be happy to stop by and talk more about all of the many things we know about ABCRM at your next writing group or book club, or more importantly, about The Cowboy and the Vampire. As long as you live within 40 miles of Portland, have Skype or keep decent whiskey on hand.
November 1, 2011
Cowboys and Vampires: Shootout at High Midnight
This first ran on pocketafterdark.com
These two enduring archetypes, opposites sides of the same bloody coin, go together like fear and trembling.
When it comes to instantly recognizable icons, cowboys and Vampires are near the very top of the list — crashing them together releases nuclear amounts of energy.
The cowboy, despite a relatively short time on the stage, is a permanent fixture of the social psyche now, the embodiment of all that’s good and right in the world. The quintessential cowboy is tough, resourceful, laconic, honest, hard-working and — usually — ruggedly handsome. Cowboys are the products of simple country life and so are uncomplicated and driven by a clear moral code that prevents them from ignoring injustices. That’s why they are forever saving widows, orphans and puppies. They also have a habit of sweeping beautiful, headstrong women off their feet and riding off into the sunset together.
Vampires, existing in some form in most cultures for centuries, are the exact opposite. They are the very embodiment of evil, decadence and decay. The quintessential Vampire is cunning, conniving, scheming and — usually — possesses refined, cruel and often androgynous features. They are the products of ancient family lineages and as such are comfortable in urban settings. They are tortured and mysterious, driven by uncontrollable lusts for sex and blood that have them forever killing widows, orphans and puppies. They also have a habit of seducing beautiful, hysterical young women and discarding their lifeless bodies before they retire to their coffins at dawn.
The two could not be more different — and that’s precisely why they work so well together. Putting cowboys and Vampires in the room, or a novel, brings matter into contact with anti-matter. It immediately contrasts all of their vices and virtues with little need for exposition. Thank you, cultural zeitgeist, for splitting the archetype atom.
In The Cowboy and the Vampire, written with my lovely partner Kathleen McFall, we took full advantage of all the baggage already packed into these two icons in an “opposites attract” love story. The heroine, Lizzie Vaughan, is a reluctant Vampire (she doesn’t know at first that she’s undead) who falls in love with a cowboy, Tucker, who has been living a quiet life in the modern West. As they work through all of the many, many things stacked against them in their relationship — he’s from tiny LonePine, Wyoming, she’s from New York; he’s a human, she’s undead; he reads Western Horseman, she reads Kierkegaard — they ultimately find that all of their differences actually bring them closer together.
Nothing ensures love survives like a challenge and their love is hastened along by hordes of maniacal Vampires anxious to kill Lizzie and consume the ancient power running through her veins. No cowboy worth his salt, especially Tucker, would ever let a bunch of fancy talking city slickers come between him and the damsel in distress.
In Red Winter, my new e-novella, instead of playing the two stereotypes off of each other, I pared them down to their essence and then set them against each other in a fight for survival. Instead of romantic, the tension is homicidal. The story is set in LonePine in 1890 as winter closes in like a noose. Sheriff Early Hardiman is settling in for another long four months of bitter cold and boredom made bearable by the lovely Miss Grace, his new wife and the former madam of the Pearl — an infamous and now defunct brothel.
Sheriff Hardiman is a classic good guy — tough, honest and handy with a gun. Some say he’s the fastest draw the West has ever known, but he is getting on up there in years. The West is changing though and fewer young guns are anxious to make a reputation as the modern era gnaws away at the frontier. It’s not an easy life, but it’s a good life; that all changes when a Vampire arrives out of the snowy darkness.
Jericho Whistler is everything Sheriff Hardiman is not: immortal, immoral and inhuman. Whistler is pure evil, driven by a blinding biological impulse to feed on humans and a pathological desire to revel in the terror and cruelty he inflicts. He’s impervious to pain and lacks the common decency to stay dead.
Obviously, the town — and the archetypes — ain’t big enough for the both of them; LonePine is barely big enough for one of them. But it’s tough to have a classic showdown at high noon when Vampires are terminally allergic to sunshine and generally not inconvenienced by bullets. Red Winter strips away all of the attempts at deconstruction and icon-bending reinterpretations and let’s these two just battle it out, six gun against fang (actually, our Vampires don’t have fangs) in the isolated wilderness. The fate of LonePine, and Miss Grace, hangs in the balance.
Who wins? Fans of the clash of timeless titans.
Cowboys and Vampires are mirror images of the way we think about good and evil and there may not be two more natural opponents. At least we certainly hope that’s the case. We are hard at work on the sequel, Blood and Whiskey, that moves the story back to “modern” LonePine. There will be plenty of action, romance and horror as the two archetypes renew their epic battle. And as the cowboy rides off into the sunset to try and save the girl, his nemesis, the Vampire, is just waking up with an appetite for her blood.
About Red Winter
Sheriff Early Hardiman has seen a lot of bad things in his life, but nothing could have prepared him for the first Vampire to visit the Old West. It’s 1890 and winter is closing like a noose around tiny LonePine, Wyoming. Fans of The Cowboy and the Vampire know LonePine will see its share of Vampires 120 years later, but in 1890 the appearance of the fearsome Jericho Whistler — with an unquenchable thirst for blood and unwilling to die — created a new kind of terror.
About The Cowboy and the Vampire
It’s the clash of two iconic characters — cowboys and vampires — in a novel story about true love, culture clash and evil plans to take over the world. There’s also a healthy dose of laugh-out-loud humor, a rich portrayal of life in the modern West, a fresh new take on the Vampire myth and plenty of morbid ruminations on death.
Learn more
www.cowboyandvampire.com
www.facebook.com/cowboyandvampire
Twitter: @cowboyvamp
These two enduring archetypes, opposites sides of the same bloody coin, go together like fear and trembling.
When it comes to instantly recognizable icons, cowboys and Vampires are near the very top of the list — crashing them together releases nuclear amounts of energy.
The cowboy, despite a relatively short time on the stage, is a permanent fixture of the social psyche now, the embodiment of all that’s good and right in the world. The quintessential cowboy is tough, resourceful, laconic, honest, hard-working and — usually — ruggedly handsome. Cowboys are the products of simple country life and so are uncomplicated and driven by a clear moral code that prevents them from ignoring injustices. That’s why they are forever saving widows, orphans and puppies. They also have a habit of sweeping beautiful, headstrong women off their feet and riding off into the sunset together.
Vampires, existing in some form in most cultures for centuries, are the exact opposite. They are the very embodiment of evil, decadence and decay. The quintessential Vampire is cunning, conniving, scheming and — usually — possesses refined, cruel and often androgynous features. They are the products of ancient family lineages and as such are comfortable in urban settings. They are tortured and mysterious, driven by uncontrollable lusts for sex and blood that have them forever killing widows, orphans and puppies. They also have a habit of seducing beautiful, hysterical young women and discarding their lifeless bodies before they retire to their coffins at dawn.
The two could not be more different — and that’s precisely why they work so well together. Putting cowboys and Vampires in the room, or a novel, brings matter into contact with anti-matter. It immediately contrasts all of their vices and virtues with little need for exposition. Thank you, cultural zeitgeist, for splitting the archetype atom.
In The Cowboy and the Vampire, written with my lovely partner Kathleen McFall, we took full advantage of all the baggage already packed into these two icons in an “opposites attract” love story. The heroine, Lizzie Vaughan, is a reluctant Vampire (she doesn’t know at first that she’s undead) who falls in love with a cowboy, Tucker, who has been living a quiet life in the modern West. As they work through all of the many, many things stacked against them in their relationship — he’s from tiny LonePine, Wyoming, she’s from New York; he’s a human, she’s undead; he reads Western Horseman, she reads Kierkegaard — they ultimately find that all of their differences actually bring them closer together.
Nothing ensures love survives like a challenge and their love is hastened along by hordes of maniacal Vampires anxious to kill Lizzie and consume the ancient power running through her veins. No cowboy worth his salt, especially Tucker, would ever let a bunch of fancy talking city slickers come between him and the damsel in distress.
In Red Winter, my new e-novella, instead of playing the two stereotypes off of each other, I pared them down to their essence and then set them against each other in a fight for survival. Instead of romantic, the tension is homicidal. The story is set in LonePine in 1890 as winter closes in like a noose. Sheriff Early Hardiman is settling in for another long four months of bitter cold and boredom made bearable by the lovely Miss Grace, his new wife and the former madam of the Pearl — an infamous and now defunct brothel.
Sheriff Hardiman is a classic good guy — tough, honest and handy with a gun. Some say he’s the fastest draw the West has ever known, but he is getting on up there in years. The West is changing though and fewer young guns are anxious to make a reputation as the modern era gnaws away at the frontier. It’s not an easy life, but it’s a good life; that all changes when a Vampire arrives out of the snowy darkness.
Jericho Whistler is everything Sheriff Hardiman is not: immortal, immoral and inhuman. Whistler is pure evil, driven by a blinding biological impulse to feed on humans and a pathological desire to revel in the terror and cruelty he inflicts. He’s impervious to pain and lacks the common decency to stay dead.
Obviously, the town — and the archetypes — ain’t big enough for the both of them; LonePine is barely big enough for one of them. But it’s tough to have a classic showdown at high noon when Vampires are terminally allergic to sunshine and generally not inconvenienced by bullets. Red Winter strips away all of the attempts at deconstruction and icon-bending reinterpretations and let’s these two just battle it out, six gun against fang (actually, our Vampires don’t have fangs) in the isolated wilderness. The fate of LonePine, and Miss Grace, hangs in the balance.
Who wins? Fans of the clash of timeless titans.
Cowboys and Vampires are mirror images of the way we think about good and evil and there may not be two more natural opponents. At least we certainly hope that’s the case. We are hard at work on the sequel, Blood and Whiskey, that moves the story back to “modern” LonePine. There will be plenty of action, romance and horror as the two archetypes renew their epic battle. And as the cowboy rides off into the sunset to try and save the girl, his nemesis, the Vampire, is just waking up with an appetite for her blood.
About Red Winter
Sheriff Early Hardiman has seen a lot of bad things in his life, but nothing could have prepared him for the first Vampire to visit the Old West. It’s 1890 and winter is closing like a noose around tiny LonePine, Wyoming. Fans of The Cowboy and the Vampire know LonePine will see its share of Vampires 120 years later, but in 1890 the appearance of the fearsome Jericho Whistler — with an unquenchable thirst for blood and unwilling to die — created a new kind of terror.
About The Cowboy and the Vampire
It’s the clash of two iconic characters — cowboys and vampires — in a novel story about true love, culture clash and evil plans to take over the world. There’s also a healthy dose of laugh-out-loud humor, a rich portrayal of life in the modern West, a fresh new take on the Vampire myth and plenty of morbid ruminations on death.
Learn more
www.cowboyandvampire.com
www.facebook.com/cowboyandvampire
Twitter: @cowboyvamp
