Amaterasu Reads: [The Apocalypse Gene blog tour] Guest post: On writing together + giveaway!

I am part of the Apocalypse Gene blog tour! Today on my stop Suki Michelle is going to talk about how it's like to co-write a book with Caryle! There's a pretty interesting conversation just below which gave me a good laugh, but hey, it looks like this is really how authors start writing their books!

P.S. My review will be up tomorrow, so stay tuned for that!

-----

ON CO-WRITING by Suki Michelle

Carlyle and I have weirdly compatible writing skill sets. He has a great feel for story. He knows how to unwind a plot and where to plant reveals. I’m happiest following characters through real-time, establishing voice, and creating settings. During the writing process for The Apocalypse Gene, we both come up with bizarre ideas and scared each other badly, but we never argued (cough). I pouted, he bristled. Like in a courtroom, ideas would be sentenced (pun intended) to life or death. If we couldn’t decide, we sent it to hard labor to see if it had earned the right to live on our pages.

Sometimes I wrote scenes featuring Mikah, an elite Empath in a clan of demon hybrids, and Carlyle would have to “man him up”. Occasionally, Carlyle wrote scenes with Olivya, a 15-year-old girl with aura sight and sweet dreads, and I had to remind him that Olivya is a perceptive young girl, not a dude.

It all began, three years ago, something like this:

“Hey Carlyle,” I say after a long day typing medical reports, “I almost killed myself this morning from boredom.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How did you almost kill yourself?”
“With . . . umm . . . poison.”
“We don’t have any poison.”
“Yes we do. That hot sauce you bought. I almost chugged the whole bottle just to end it all. I was that bored.”
“That hot sauce is awesome.”
“Ya think? Anyway, so instead of killing myself, I dreamed up an idea for a story.”
“Let’s hear it.”
(I settle in) “Okay, say the world is dying off from an incurable pandemic, and the whole thing is linked to this, I don’t know – what is it linked to, Carlyle?”
“A band of zany immortals?”
“Yeah! And one of those immortals is this boy who . . . hold on . . . hold on . . . I know! Feels everything that everyone else feels. He’s super sensitive and his hair is all shiny, and he looks hot in a tight black T-shirt and he’s gorgeous.”
“Does he like girls?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Think up a love interest while I get a snack.” Carlyle leaves for the kitchen and returns with a plate of potato chips and that infernal hot sauce. “Want some?” he says.
“Ewww,” I say, “What are you - tryin’ to kill me? Anyway, so the boy meets this girl who can see auras and talks to animals and no one can go to school anymore because, um, because__”
“Because,” Carlyle says as he munches, “it’s the apocalypse. I’d lose the Dr. Doolittle thing, but I’m warming up to doomsday.”
“Yay!” I say while scampering away. I return with chips and MUSTARD (Everyone knows a sane person prefers mustard for chips, not hot sauce). “Let’s do this!”

From that day forward, for the next three years, we discussed, bantered, and argued until The Apocalypse Gene was complete, each fully satisfied with the result. A true collaboration, The Apocalypse Gene couldn’t have been written by either of us alone.
Learn more about us and our painstakingly co-written, potato-chip-powered novel at www.theapocalypsegene.com

The Apocalypse Gene by Suki Michelle and Carlyle Clark

With Pandemic ravaging the globe, Olivya's psychic Sight compels her to see auras riddled with the colors of despair, and now her mother is infected.

Olivya’s only hope is the mysterious Mikah, a powerful Empath who claims the Pandemic is linked to his clan, the Kindred, and their brooding, monstrous, Immortal Lord. But can she trust this boy who can manipulate her very emotions?

With Mikah's aid, Olivya races to unearth Kindred secrets, desperate to find a cure, only to discover the Pandemic is far, far more than a mere disease . .

GIVEAWAY TIME!

I have two giveaways on the blog today! You can participate on the APOCALYPSE GENE KINDLE GIVEAWAY by filling out the form HERE.