So, you're reading this blog filled with so many fantastic, best selling authors and you see one name and think, hmm, who the hell is that? Sable WHO? Who is this Sable Grace person and why is she listed on Supernatural Underground? Well, Sable Grace isn't just one who. It's two. The writing team of Heather Waters and Laura Barone. We're long-time friends and critique partners who started writing together because of a simple, and odd, challenge: I'll write one sentence, you write the next. This was supposed to be an exercise to spark our creativity so we could work on our own projects, but two hours and a chapter later, Sable Grace was created.
Are you two alike? No, not really. We are as different in our writing styles as we are in real life. Heather's blond. I'm brunette. She writes historical. I write steamy contemporary. She likes to explore the world we've built. I like to see more action. She's organized. I'm so totally not. But, we do have a lot in common that made us friends, and allow us to work together without killing each other. We both have a thing for Jon Bon Jovi, both adore Johnny Depp, and both want out of Florida so bad that we dream about it daily. Our tastes in music, books, and movies tend to run the gambit--we'll both listen to anything, read anything, and watch anything. Okay, I have an issue with 'Chick Flicks" only because nothings getting blown up or shot at, but if you swear to me it's good and can convince me something shocking is going to happen in the first ten minutes, I'll give it a try.
How do we write? Well, we've tried several different ways. We'd rent a hotel room for the weekend and spend the time busting out a couple chapters at a time. We've played a game of toss--lined up numbers cards and whatever number it lands on is how many sentences you have to write. And thrown dice--same deal as the toss. Fun, yes, but not always cool because Heather's much luckier than I am and always finds the ones and twos. Due to family obligations, we're not always able to get together for the weekend, so we had to try something else. Since Heather is so organized, she came up with a spreadsheet detailing how many words/pages we had to write to meet our deadline. One of us writes in the morning and emails it to the other who finishes before bedtime and mails it back. We edit each others work as we go and add our new pages. No, we don't always write an entire scene or chapter--it's been known to happen, but normally this isn't the case. Wherever one leaves off, the other picks up. No, it's not as aggravating as it may seem. We've been surprised more than once because the way one saw the scene going when she emailed it to the other, isn't how it was finished, but 99% of the time, we like the direction it took so all is good.
Pros/Cons of working with someone else? As you can imagine, the biggest Con is control. It's not easy to give up the control of a story idea and trust it to someone else. Waiting for the other one to complete a task or acknowledge they received the pages or to discover if you wrote four pages of crap that have to be redone is a bit stressful, too. But the high notes are way up on the list. We get surprised and explore new areas and ideas we hadn't thought of because we stopped in the middle of the scene to let the other one finish. We live two hours away so the fear of getting hit with flying objects are minimal (Although I am always expecting her to smack me in the back of the head every time we do see each other). There's always someone to share the workload and tasks with so you're not overwhelmed as much. And the best thing of all--If you write yourself into a corner, most times you'll realize it's happened at the point you reached your pages/words for the day and the other one gets to figure out how to get the characters out of the mess you dumped them into. (Okay, I'm famous for this one which is why I'm usually expecting that smack to the head.)
How do we take two distinctly different voices and make them read as one? Darn good question. Our typical answer is a glance at each other, a duel shrug, and one of us mumbles, "I don't know" (as one confused word, to which our editor says whatever you do, keeping doing it because it's working.) Honestly, though, we don't know how we do it. Maybe it's because we do have a lot of things in common. Or maybe it's because we're so different. Or perhaps it's because we've been reading/editing each other for years. Or even because we edit the other before we start our pages for the day. I really don't know, but we've decided if it's not broke, we aren't going to try to over analyze it.Alright, now that we know a little about Sable Grace, what's the series about? It's a post-apocalyptic series set in St. Augustine, FL. The world has been destroyed when the gates of Hell are breeched, spilling Dark Breeds into the human world. The Order of Ancients, the gods of old who have been given the duty of keeping the balance of good and evil, and preventing the humans from knowing about all the things that really do go bump in the night, are losing their powers and are unable to restore order. With their Chosen replacements being slaughtered, they must rely on an unlikely ally to save them all. The first book, Ascension: A Dark Breed Novel, is due out in May 2011.
If you'd like to keep up to date on what we're doing, you can find us at http://www.sablegrace.com/ and come join us at www.facebook.com/sable.grace www.twitter.com/sablegrace or www.myspace.com/sablegrace
So, did we miss anything? What else would you like to know about Sable Grace?
