Beginnings, Challenges and Victories!

What if a painting could trap someone in time? Make them immortal for as long as the painting existed (enter Hero). And what if someone else (enter Villain) used that knowledge to curse someone into keeping them alive too?

Those were the questions that sparked the beginnings of The Shoalman Chronicles Series. We had a tortured hero, but what about his savior? Who was she? How would she save him? That’s where Kyrissa came in and where the partnership between Kira and Toni began.

Looking back, it seems ironic that a simple challenge between new friends turned into a great friendship and an amazing co-writing adventure. The challenge was NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know what that is, you have one month to write a full-length novel (50,000 words). It became a greater challenge when we decided to enter into NaNo as co-writers for the first time as well.

Amazing doesn’t even begin to describe the journey. Both Toni and Kira love art, so incorporating art into all the stories was a no brainer (that and tattoos). Both lovers of YA and NA, what a better way than to create twenty-somethings and throw in a taste of romance and paranormal fantasy at the same time. Bingo. We have story concept.

The journey didn’t stop there though. We both liked what came out of that month long intensive writing. So much so we decided to pair up and make it a real story, a real world, a real partnership and see what happened. Toni Decker Books happened and The Shoalman Chronicles began.

Now most people take their story and run with it. We did that, but anyone who has met us will tell you, Toni and Kira don’t do things normally. We needed a break from edits and decided to write a quick novella about two of the side characters in SHOALMAN IMMORTAL.

The characters had other ideas. Six-weeks later, we had another complete novel that we both loved, IMAGES ETERNAL.

Um, now what? Did we mention the adventure aspect of our writing? We call it choose your own adventure style. So we chose to make the new book, Book 1 of the series and move the original story to Book 2. (Confused yet? We were.) Yet another challenge on the publishing journey for SHOALMAN IMMORTAL.

(What? Robert’s waited 500 years. He can wait another six months. *rolls eyes*)

Well, the journey has reached its destination finally. SHOALMAN IMMORTAL released January 16, 2015, but the adventure is far from over. We have several more books planned for the series and who know what new characters will pop up next.

When you have an Immortal to play with, the possibilities are ENDLESS!

 

 

Images Eternal

Available at Amazon / Nook / Kobo

Shoalman Immortal

Available on Amazon / Nook / Kobo

 

Tagged: #amreading, #amwriting, #blogging #co-writing #nosleep #writinginthemoment, #Fantasy, #ImagesEternal, #MustRead, #NA, #NewAdult, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Series, #ShoalmanChronicles, #ShoalmanImmortal, #ToniDeckerBooks