Clark Hays's Blog - Posts Tagged "western"
Character Envy
Writing together, especially romances, can make for strange jealousies.
(Note: This is a guest post Kathleen and I wrote for the Where's My Muse book review site.)
In 1999, we came up with a radical plan to save our romance: write together. We had just reunited after an epic break up that required a several-year cooling off period. When a not-so-chance meeting rekindled the flames, we decided to channel some of the excess passion into a joint creative project to hopefully of avoiding total combustion.
The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Darkly Romantic Mystery (Midnight Ink, 2010) — and a newly entangled romance — was the result. This May, we finished our second book, Blood and Whiskey, and we learned something important: our characters lead far more romantic lives than we do.
Of course, they’re also dealing with murderous vampire hordes, cold-blooded killers straight out of the old west, biblical prophecies, undead race wars and the care and feeding of an overly-sensitive dog cow dog named Rex. But even with all of that, and even setting aside the fact they are from very different worlds — she needs human blood to live, he’s more of whiskey drinker — Tucker and Lizzie have a romance for the ages.
It may be petty but we’re kind of jealous.
And not just of the main characters Tucker and Lizzie. There’s also Elita, the fierce, sexy vampire warrior sworn to protect Lizzie, who has seduced her way through half the undead world and left a trail of drained human bodies — stone cold dead but with smiles on their faces — stretching back thousands of years. In Blood and Whiskey, she finds herself sandwiched happily between a handsome Russian vampire, Rurik and his supermodel human consort, Virote.
Us? Well, we found ourselves sandwiched between deadlines.
Early on, we figured that when romantic partners wrote together, it would involve far more reclining on satin sheets, sipping champagne and whispering sweet plotlines to one another. The truth is far less, well, romantic.
Here’s what a typical exchange between us sounds like (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent):
Chuck: Did you finish your chapter yet?
Cathy: Almost, did you finish yours?
Chuck: I need about two hundred more words and a better description of the thing.
Cathy: What thing?
Chuck: The thing. In the mountains. With Elita.
Cathy: Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Should we talk about the next chapters?
Etc., until bed time.
Compare that to a scene from Blood and Whiskey featuring Tucker and Lizzie:
“Do you ever, you know, take a look when I’m dead? Does it turn you on to have a naked corpse next to you?”
“Woman, don’t be gross.”
“I’d probably take a peek. I mean, I do anyway, at least when you are sleeping. What’s the difference? It’s perfectly natural.” She nipped at his neck playfully.
“It’s un-natural. That’s why they call you un-dead.”
“Is what I’m feeling now un-horny?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the pregnancy hormones getting you all riled up.”
She unbuttoned her shirt and slipped his hand under, molding it around her breast and they both sighed. “You sure you haven’t felt me up when I’m cold and dead? I wouldn’t mind. And I wouldn’t know it if you, you know, did stuff to me.”
“No. I mean, yeah, I’m sure. I’d like to do stuff to you now though.”
“I like that idea.”
Is it any wonder we’re a little jealous?
Still, just in case it sounds like we’re complaining, we don’t write all the time. And the passion we channel into our characters has to come from somewhere.
(Note: This is a guest post Kathleen and I wrote for the Where's My Muse book review site.)
In 1999, we came up with a radical plan to save our romance: write together. We had just reunited after an epic break up that required a several-year cooling off period. When a not-so-chance meeting rekindled the flames, we decided to channel some of the excess passion into a joint creative project to hopefully of avoiding total combustion.
The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Darkly Romantic Mystery (Midnight Ink, 2010) — and a newly entangled romance — was the result. This May, we finished our second book, Blood and Whiskey, and we learned something important: our characters lead far more romantic lives than we do.
Of course, they’re also dealing with murderous vampire hordes, cold-blooded killers straight out of the old west, biblical prophecies, undead race wars and the care and feeding of an overly-sensitive dog cow dog named Rex. But even with all of that, and even setting aside the fact they are from very different worlds — she needs human blood to live, he’s more of whiskey drinker — Tucker and Lizzie have a romance for the ages.
It may be petty but we’re kind of jealous.
And not just of the main characters Tucker and Lizzie. There’s also Elita, the fierce, sexy vampire warrior sworn to protect Lizzie, who has seduced her way through half the undead world and left a trail of drained human bodies — stone cold dead but with smiles on their faces — stretching back thousands of years. In Blood and Whiskey, she finds herself sandwiched happily between a handsome Russian vampire, Rurik and his supermodel human consort, Virote.
Us? Well, we found ourselves sandwiched between deadlines.
Early on, we figured that when romantic partners wrote together, it would involve far more reclining on satin sheets, sipping champagne and whispering sweet plotlines to one another. The truth is far less, well, romantic.
Here’s what a typical exchange between us sounds like (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent):
Chuck: Did you finish your chapter yet?
Cathy: Almost, did you finish yours?
Chuck: I need about two hundred more words and a better description of the thing.
Cathy: What thing?
Chuck: The thing. In the mountains. With Elita.
Cathy: Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Should we talk about the next chapters?
Etc., until bed time.
Compare that to a scene from Blood and Whiskey featuring Tucker and Lizzie:
“Do you ever, you know, take a look when I’m dead? Does it turn you on to have a naked corpse next to you?”
“Woman, don’t be gross.”
“I’d probably take a peek. I mean, I do anyway, at least when you are sleeping. What’s the difference? It’s perfectly natural.” She nipped at his neck playfully.
“It’s un-natural. That’s why they call you un-dead.”
“Is what I’m feeling now un-horny?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the pregnancy hormones getting you all riled up.”
She unbuttoned her shirt and slipped his hand under, molding it around her breast and they both sighed. “You sure you haven’t felt me up when I’m cold and dead? I wouldn’t mind. And I wouldn’t know it if you, you know, did stuff to me.”
“No. I mean, yeah, I’m sure. I’d like to do stuff to you now though.”
“I like that idea.”
Is it any wonder we’re a little jealous?
Still, just in case it sounds like we’re complaining, we don’t write all the time. And the passion we channel into our characters has to come from somewhere.
#50DaysofFiverr - Like the Star Wars Cantina for Marketing
The worst part about writing is anything that’s not writing (that means you, marketing)
At the end of a long day of work (writing internal communications masterpieces for a financial services company), all I really want to do is come home, pour a nice tumbler of whiskey and spend a few hours … writing about cowboys and vampires and death cults and metaphysical energy fields. I would too, if wasn’t for the need to market our books.
Sadly, at least for indie authors, marketing is almost as important as creativity and foundational writing skills. Without a marketing plan, you can’t connect with readers and even the best books may languish in obscurity.
That’s why many (most?) nights find us working on marketing plans and studying website trends and designing ads.
Kathleen and I really don’t like marketing, but if we ever hope to achieve our goal of having our creative works contributing to financial self-sufficiency, we have to do it. A lot. Which is why we’re constantly on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and forever thinking about ways to make our limited marketing budget work harder for us.
Then we stumbled across Fiverr.
It’s a website that connects artists, graphic designers and creative types of all stripes with customers in need of logos, testimonials, writing help, graphics, illustrations and more. It’s like the Star Wars cantina, only for creative types, and yeah, we’re Luke in this scenario.
The trick is that the starting price for any service is just $5. You can add more sophisticated components that send the price up a bit, but not much. And they can be delivered crazy fast.
Being thrifty-minded authors (read: broke), Kathleen and I came up with a crazy idea: What if we pooled our limited marketing budget and spent it on fifty $5 products and shared them across our social media channels?
#50DaysofFiverr was born.
It's part marketing campaign, part experiment and all fun. We’re using the considerable talents of the Fiverr community to do the creative work for us – focused on cowboys, vampires and our books (and we've received some truly epic deliverables) – and then we’re going to share it out with the world and see what happens.
Come along for the ride.
I’ll share a few things on Goodreads (check out my photos for a fun caricature), but the best way to participate is by connecting with us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/cowboyandvampire), Twitter (@cowboyvamp) and Instagram (@cowboyvampire). And remember, it’s #50DaysofFiverr.
When it’s all done, 49 days from now, we’ll have some fun stories and hopefully a few lessons to share.
Oh yeah, and there’s a contest. Share your favorite pieces of work to be entered into a drawing for a $50 (of course) gift card.
At the end of a long day of work (writing internal communications masterpieces for a financial services company), all I really want to do is come home, pour a nice tumbler of whiskey and spend a few hours … writing about cowboys and vampires and death cults and metaphysical energy fields. I would too, if wasn’t for the need to market our books.
Sadly, at least for indie authors, marketing is almost as important as creativity and foundational writing skills. Without a marketing plan, you can’t connect with readers and even the best books may languish in obscurity.
That’s why many (most?) nights find us working on marketing plans and studying website trends and designing ads.
Kathleen and I really don’t like marketing, but if we ever hope to achieve our goal of having our creative works contributing to financial self-sufficiency, we have to do it. A lot. Which is why we’re constantly on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and forever thinking about ways to make our limited marketing budget work harder for us.
Then we stumbled across Fiverr.
It’s a website that connects artists, graphic designers and creative types of all stripes with customers in need of logos, testimonials, writing help, graphics, illustrations and more. It’s like the Star Wars cantina, only for creative types, and yeah, we’re Luke in this scenario.
The trick is that the starting price for any service is just $5. You can add more sophisticated components that send the price up a bit, but not much. And they can be delivered crazy fast.
Being thrifty-minded authors (read: broke), Kathleen and I came up with a crazy idea: What if we pooled our limited marketing budget and spent it on fifty $5 products and shared them across our social media channels?
#50DaysofFiverr was born.
It's part marketing campaign, part experiment and all fun. We’re using the considerable talents of the Fiverr community to do the creative work for us – focused on cowboys, vampires and our books (and we've received some truly epic deliverables) – and then we’re going to share it out with the world and see what happens.
Come along for the ride.
I’ll share a few things on Goodreads (check out my photos for a fun caricature), but the best way to participate is by connecting with us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/cowboyandvampire), Twitter (@cowboyvamp) and Instagram (@cowboyvampire). And remember, it’s #50DaysofFiverr.
When it’s all done, 49 days from now, we’ll have some fun stories and hopefully a few lessons to share.
Oh yeah, and there’s a contest. Share your favorite pieces of work to be entered into a drawing for a $50 (of course) gift card.
