My dad, who's a successful author, has enjoyed using the Kindle format the past few years to sell his books. For years, he's been encouraging me to try my hand at writing a book as well, and it's been something I've been interested in, although not very motivated with my time schedule. A few months ago, we decided to collaborate on a new project, Ninth Crossing. I LOVE to read fantasy and paranormal romance books. My Dad... not so much! It's not his genre at ALL. He's more a political thriller kind of guy- think Tom Clancy.
He decided to go ahead and give my genre a try and he came up with a plot involving a female secret service agent who falls in love with an Elf (thus entering the paranormal side to things). From there, we brainstormed together, wrote scenes, and edited and re-edited each other's work. People always ask us how we can write a book together when living so far away from each other. I live in Washington State, and my dad lives in New Zealand. Basically, we do a lot of emailing and Skyping. We find a common storyline, and then we assign out different scenes to write. Then we blend them together, reading through the novel numerous times to make sure our "voices" blend into one cohesive unit.
We had some frustrating moments when the story line wasn't coming to us, or when he had lots of time to write (Retirement!! Woot, woot!) and I was bogged down with a full time job, five kids and a husband, and many church responsibilities. I managed to carve out enough time though that we finished our joint project and I'm proud of the result... Ninth Crossing: Discovery.
Our plan is to write three books in this series and then see what our plan is from there. The first book is called Discovery, because the main character, Reagan, makes a few discoveries that will rock her world! We also learn of a big discovery at the end of the book that throws a whole new twist on what we think we know about the characters. Read it and make the discoveries for yourselves!
Currently, we are in the middle of book two, and I can't wait to get home from work in the evenings to go write. The second book is shaping up so nicely and I'm excited for readers to see the final product. Our goal is for a publication date sometime in July. We're hoping to have book three out in September.
If you've read the book, I'd love to see some comments. What do you think? Who's your favorite character? Who's your favorite hunk... Ian, Michael, or Tony??
Ninth Crossing: Discovery
