When publishing a book is like giving birth

After massive amounts of work, the Yin and Yang Books have been published by eMergent Publishing. Brainchild of Jodi Cleghorn and Paul Anderson, the Yin and Yang Books are the second Chinese Whisperings anthology – and they are anthologies with a difference. We've all heard of themed anthologies, well these are different: they are two 'mated' collections of ten interwoven stories, with a shared world and many shared characters. Each writer worked from the same prologue (written by Jodi) and was required to have part of their story situated in the unnamed airport from the prologue. There also had to a link to at least one other character from any of the other 19 stories. The two anthologies are then conjoined by the same epilogue.

I was fortunate enough to join the party as a reserve, when one of the original female authors (the ten blokes wrote for The Yang Book, while the women penned The Yin Book stories) had to pull out. My story is the last before the epilogue, so I knew I had to pull out a story that not only met the criteria, but that laid a path for Paul Anderson to write the epilogue. Fortunately one of the the stories from The Yang Book, 'Three Monkeys' by Paul Servini, gave Paul A the other half of what he needed to bring both books to a climax.

For the two creators/editors, it has been a long, hard road to publication. I liken it to giving birth to conjoined twins – only I was lucky enough to be standing on the sidelines, much like an anxious father. I mopped their brows when I could and gave them encouragement when necessary, but apart from that, the hard work was pretty much all theirs.

You can buy the eBook versions of the books here, either separately or together as The Yin and Yang Book. My story, 'Double Talk' (the one with the fruity language), appears in The Yin Book. The paperback version will hopefully be out in time for Christmas!