Many thanks,

Chris.

Thanks for the info on your writing process. I’ve always wondered if collaborating makes it easier for authors, or if the logistics/creative process differences makes it more difficult.

Derryl with a second r, not Deryl. On the plus side, people usually make the mistake of spelling it Darryl, so you’re very original there. I see you’ve got my name that way in the blog list as well.

Enough pickiness. The key to collaborating, I’ve found, is to live very far away from each other so you can have breathing space and not want to commit violence. This story took us a few years, mostly because we each had so many other things on the go. I’m in the middle of a similar process with William Shunn right now, and he lives even further away than Peter.

A general idea of the plot is important, so that you both have a road map (sounds sensible, but I do sometimes start a story without any idea where it’s going to end up). Even then, all sorts of false starts came up first time out. Yeah, we each would write a section, go until we thought it seemed like a logical break, and then would hand it off. On my end, each time it came back I would backtrack and edit, which gave me a better sense of where we were going. Once wrapped up, Geoff Ryman (who edited the original anthology, along with Nalo Hopkinson) worked closely with us on a few issues, and the story is definitely stronger for it.

The idea came when Peter and I were in the same room and bitching about a novel by an unnamed famous author, and decided we could better handle the central conceit. Of course, the end result resembles in no way our starting point.

D

I thought that John was referring to the Vonda McInytre story in Best SF 11 not the character McInytre in the MacLeod story. It’s the drugs. Or the booze. Or the PTSD. Take your pick.

I’ll go home now and hang my head in shame.

:O

Thanks for the link! I’ve updated the post. And I’ve added you (and a bunch of others) to our ever-growing list of sf/f authors who blog. Also, I’m curious, how does a writing collaboration work, logistically? Is it alternating passages? Does one of you come up with the ideas and the other execute? Just wondering…

Fred,

Since I read that story in the Hartwell/Cramer, it was a simple cut & paste – no need to re-review, eh? Not sure what you mean with the McIntyre/MacLeod confusion comment, though. McIntyre was the character’s name in the story.

“Review: A bit preachy (as could be expected) and borderline uninteresting until McIntyre slips and falls in the quicksand that is home to alien.”

Methinks you were consulting your Hartwell/Cramer Best SF #11 review and got McIntyre confused with MacLeod. Different sides of the ocean, different sexes, different levels of experience…

:-S

On the plus side, there’s relatively little overlap between this and the Hartwell/Cramer megathology. On the negative side, I was hoping that more of my work on my own review had been done by now with my reading of the Hartwell/Cramer collection!

|-)

Derryl