Two Fabulous Co-Authors Tell Us How They Do It! #mywritingprocess
Today I have the great pleasure of featuring two wonderful authors (who you'll find here on Goodreads) Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk.
What's fascinating about this duo is that they write their books together! Which I find pretty amazing - I'm fairly certain no one would have the patience to put up with me!
These gals not only make it work - they rock it and what's incredibly interesting is their observation that in working together like this, they've come up with a third voice. As I say, fascinating!
So here they are, with their #mywritingprocess.
-------------------------------------
1) What are we working on?
We are currently working on a sequel (the second in a planned trilogy) to The Wolves of St. Peter’s, which brings our hero to Venice in 1510. In Renaissance Venice, dowry inflation was out of control, and noble families only could afford to marry off one of their daughters, so while the prettiest were found husbands, the “dregs” were dumped into the city’s many convents.
This resulted in not only an overabundance of nuns but also a plethora of noble bachelors who couldn’t possibly consider a dowry-less wife. But with so many nunneries overflowing with attractive young women, a convenient arrangement emerged, with some of the convents doubling as “houses of entertainment.” Certainly makes for rich writing fodder!
As for the contemporary romantic suspense novels we write under our pen name Meadow Taylor, the newest one, Midnight in Venice, is being published on August 19, 2014. No dowry inflation in this novel; instead our heroine finds herself falsely accused of drug smuggling while falling in love with a handsome cop. We haven’t settled yet on the location for Meadow’s next romantic suspense, but it is definitely fun to think about.
2) How does our work differ from others in the same genre?
Our work differs from others in the same genre - or frankly all genres - in that we coauthor all our novels.
3) Why do we write what we do?
More than a decade into our joint career, it’s safe to say that we mostly enjoy writing about Italy and Italian history. Four of our six published novels are set in Italy, either past or present. It all started with The Sidewalk Artist. Our heroine meets a sidewalk artist in Paris, having stopped to admire his chalk reproduction of Raphael’s famous cherubs. This led us and our heroine to learn more about the famous Renaissance artist. Raphael had virtually no connection to Venice, but Janice’s love for the city and desire to write about it gave us an essential plot twist.
Ciao Bella, our next novel, takes place in the Euganean Hills outside Padua. We were toying with writing a novel about Petrarch, and on a family trip, Gina stumbled upon the beautiful little village where the poet retired. Janice later visited, and the story emerged from there, though in the end it has nothing to do with Petrarch. It is instead set in the summer following World War II, where a woman waits for her resistance fighter husband to return.
We are very proud of Ciao Bella, but the difficulty of dealing with the recent past still in living memory made us long for the Renaissance again. We also wanted to revisit our beloved Raphael and liked the idea that he and Michelangelo were in Rome at the same time. They couldn’t have been more different, and their rivalry would be the stuff of tabloids today. Badly behaving celebrities is nothing new.
We love plotting, surprising both ourselves and our readers with the unexpected. This led us very naturally to the mystery genre, and while all our books contain a mysterious element, The Wolves of St. Peter’s is our first historical mystery and Meadow’s Midnight in Venice is our first contemporary romantic suspense.
4) How does our writing process work?
The process of how the actual words get onto the page has evolved with each book we’ve written together. With The Sidewalk Artist, we assigned each other various chapters (not always chronologically) and then went back and forth on them – that was a book that evolved as we wrote it, and its structure allowed for that.
For Ciao Bella, a more traditional narrative, we realized we needed to work it out more sequentially. While we always had a starting point and an ending point to that story, what happened in between was largely worked out from chapter to chapter. We would discuss it, Gina would write the first draft of a chapter, then give it to Janice, who would take it to the next level.
Of course, everything you write influences what came before, and so we were always in a constant state of revision. The Wolves of St. Peter’s, being a historical mystery, required more overall planning and structuring from the get go; the planning and outlining was a draft in itself. From here, Janice put herself into our detective’s head and started the actual writing, all the while firing off emails to Gina with new problems and ideas that can’t help but emerge with even the most careful planning.
For all our books, when we feel we are almost there, we read aloud the entire manuscript to each other – either in person or over Skype. It is an excellent process. In reading out loud, we catch things we didn’t notice reading to ourselves. It also helps to iron out any awkwardness in the writing itself.
We feel that in the course of writing together for more than a decade, we have come up with a third voice, one that is neither Janice’s nor Gina’s but uniquely ours together. We bring our collective experience, knowledge, and imagination to our novels and spend as much time discussing our books as we do writing them. Working with a coauthor is like having a constant editorial team, and our meetings are also like workshops in which we share ideas about writing, the books we’ve read, and story ideas.
We ultimately want our readers to feel they are really there, to lose themselves in the time and place so when they look up from the page they are surprised to see they are in their own living room, or bed, or riding the subway – not lost in the flooded streets of Rome listening to the howls of wolves in the hills or walking along a quiet Venetian canal on a foggy evening. We love it when readers tell us they stayed up all night to finish one of our novels.
-------------------------------------
Bio
Gina Buonaguro of Toronto and Janice Kirk of Kingston, Ontario have been coauthors since 2002. Together they've won three Ontario Arts Council awards and have written The Sidewalk Artist (St. Martin's Press - 2006), Ciao Bella (St. Martin's Press - 2009), and their first crime novel, a historical mystery entitled The Wolves of St. Peter's (HarperCollins Canada - 2013), which was longlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award - Best Novel. They also write romantic suspense under the pen name Meadow Taylor. Their latest Meadow Taylor novel is Midnight in Venice (HarperCollins Canada - available August 19, 2014).
Website: http://sidewalkartist.blogspot.ca
Gina & Janice Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaniceandGina
Gina & Janice Twitter: @JaniceandGina
Meadow Taylor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meadowtaylor...
Meadow Taylor Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeadowTaylor1
What's fascinating about this duo is that they write their books together! Which I find pretty amazing - I'm fairly certain no one would have the patience to put up with me!
These gals not only make it work - they rock it and what's incredibly interesting is their observation that in working together like this, they've come up with a third voice. As I say, fascinating!
So here they are, with their #mywritingprocess.
-------------------------------------
1) What are we working on?
We are currently working on a sequel (the second in a planned trilogy) to The Wolves of St. Peter’s, which brings our hero to Venice in 1510. In Renaissance Venice, dowry inflation was out of control, and noble families only could afford to marry off one of their daughters, so while the prettiest were found husbands, the “dregs” were dumped into the city’s many convents.
This resulted in not only an overabundance of nuns but also a plethora of noble bachelors who couldn’t possibly consider a dowry-less wife. But with so many nunneries overflowing with attractive young women, a convenient arrangement emerged, with some of the convents doubling as “houses of entertainment.” Certainly makes for rich writing fodder!
As for the contemporary romantic suspense novels we write under our pen name Meadow Taylor, the newest one, Midnight in Venice, is being published on August 19, 2014. No dowry inflation in this novel; instead our heroine finds herself falsely accused of drug smuggling while falling in love with a handsome cop. We haven’t settled yet on the location for Meadow’s next romantic suspense, but it is definitely fun to think about.
2) How does our work differ from others in the same genre?
Our work differs from others in the same genre - or frankly all genres - in that we coauthor all our novels.
3) Why do we write what we do?
More than a decade into our joint career, it’s safe to say that we mostly enjoy writing about Italy and Italian history. Four of our six published novels are set in Italy, either past or present. It all started with The Sidewalk Artist. Our heroine meets a sidewalk artist in Paris, having stopped to admire his chalk reproduction of Raphael’s famous cherubs. This led us and our heroine to learn more about the famous Renaissance artist. Raphael had virtually no connection to Venice, but Janice’s love for the city and desire to write about it gave us an essential plot twist.
Ciao Bella, our next novel, takes place in the Euganean Hills outside Padua. We were toying with writing a novel about Petrarch, and on a family trip, Gina stumbled upon the beautiful little village where the poet retired. Janice later visited, and the story emerged from there, though in the end it has nothing to do with Petrarch. It is instead set in the summer following World War II, where a woman waits for her resistance fighter husband to return.
We are very proud of Ciao Bella, but the difficulty of dealing with the recent past still in living memory made us long for the Renaissance again. We also wanted to revisit our beloved Raphael and liked the idea that he and Michelangelo were in Rome at the same time. They couldn’t have been more different, and their rivalry would be the stuff of tabloids today. Badly behaving celebrities is nothing new.
We love plotting, surprising both ourselves and our readers with the unexpected. This led us very naturally to the mystery genre, and while all our books contain a mysterious element, The Wolves of St. Peter’s is our first historical mystery and Meadow’s Midnight in Venice is our first contemporary romantic suspense.
4) How does our writing process work?
The process of how the actual words get onto the page has evolved with each book we’ve written together. With The Sidewalk Artist, we assigned each other various chapters (not always chronologically) and then went back and forth on them – that was a book that evolved as we wrote it, and its structure allowed for that.
For Ciao Bella, a more traditional narrative, we realized we needed to work it out more sequentially. While we always had a starting point and an ending point to that story, what happened in between was largely worked out from chapter to chapter. We would discuss it, Gina would write the first draft of a chapter, then give it to Janice, who would take it to the next level.
Of course, everything you write influences what came before, and so we were always in a constant state of revision. The Wolves of St. Peter’s, being a historical mystery, required more overall planning and structuring from the get go; the planning and outlining was a draft in itself. From here, Janice put herself into our detective’s head and started the actual writing, all the while firing off emails to Gina with new problems and ideas that can’t help but emerge with even the most careful planning.
For all our books, when we feel we are almost there, we read aloud the entire manuscript to each other – either in person or over Skype. It is an excellent process. In reading out loud, we catch things we didn’t notice reading to ourselves. It also helps to iron out any awkwardness in the writing itself.
We feel that in the course of writing together for more than a decade, we have come up with a third voice, one that is neither Janice’s nor Gina’s but uniquely ours together. We bring our collective experience, knowledge, and imagination to our novels and spend as much time discussing our books as we do writing them. Working with a coauthor is like having a constant editorial team, and our meetings are also like workshops in which we share ideas about writing, the books we’ve read, and story ideas.
We ultimately want our readers to feel they are really there, to lose themselves in the time and place so when they look up from the page they are surprised to see they are in their own living room, or bed, or riding the subway – not lost in the flooded streets of Rome listening to the howls of wolves in the hills or walking along a quiet Venetian canal on a foggy evening. We love it when readers tell us they stayed up all night to finish one of our novels.
-------------------------------------
Bio
Gina Buonaguro of Toronto and Janice Kirk of Kingston, Ontario have been coauthors since 2002. Together they've won three Ontario Arts Council awards and have written The Sidewalk Artist (St. Martin's Press - 2006), Ciao Bella (St. Martin's Press - 2009), and their first crime novel, a historical mystery entitled The Wolves of St. Peter's (HarperCollins Canada - 2013), which was longlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award - Best Novel. They also write romantic suspense under the pen name Meadow Taylor. Their latest Meadow Taylor novel is Midnight in Venice (HarperCollins Canada - available August 19, 2014).
Website: http://sidewalkartist.blogspot.ca
Gina & Janice Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaniceandGina
Gina & Janice Twitter: @JaniceandGina
Meadow Taylor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meadowtaylor...
Meadow Taylor Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeadowTaylor1
No comments have been added yet.
A Writer's Life
Back to blogging about #Writer'sLife and such!
...more
- Lisa de Nikolits's profile
- 390 followers
