Tag Archive: collaborations



With 2018 drawing to a close, I’m sure a lot of us are reflecting on what’s happened in each of our lives as well as wondering about what 2019 holds. For me 2018 was a strange year of revelations, new opportunities, as well as upheavals. Two bouts with bronchitis, the second one becoming pneumonia, really took a lot out of me and my vacation time from work. I was supposed to be off this last week and not returning until January 2nd.

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Our 1st anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time” had been slated to be released in late September/early October but didn’t see the light of day until early this month (not a great time to push a new book, not when the big publishers are pushing a bunch of titles they’ve been holding back in time for the holidays). However, things will pick up. I know this from past experience, so I’m not too worried.

However, the big question of course is what can you all expect from us in the coming year? Well, quite a lot. Firstly, we’ve been gathering our thoughts on a number of writing topics to share here on the blog. We’ve got plenty of insights from our adventures to share with you all, so we hope you’ll still be checking in regularly and re-sharing our posts with others.

The Pass

Secondly, there are things that have been happening behind the scenes we haven’t shared with you yet such as what’s been happening with the collaborations. As you know, my high school friend Rich Caminit and I have been working by e-mail and Skype on a project involving Chinese vampires and actual historical events. I am happy to announce that the first draft of our collaboration “The Pass” is nearing completion as I write this post. Part of the reason the project has taken so long is the fact that the story was becoming more and more lengthy and farther removed from the Para-Earths vision Helen and I created. So, we decided to make “The Pass” the first in a new paranormal/historical set of books we are considering calling “The Paranormal History Series” (tell us what you think in the comment section below please). Furthermore, we decided to break the story up into two books because it was getting so long. We’d already found the perfect cliffhanger for the end of the “The Pass”, as well as a startling beginning for the second part of the story which will culminate in a battle scene of epic proportions.

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Thirdly, Helen and I have embarked on yet another new series that she is taking the lead writing role on, called “The Forever Detective Series”. The first book is “Forever’s Too Long”. Set in the late 1940s, the detective, a former policeman and officer has opened his business as a private investigator to find out that the cases he’s working on are leading somewhere there is no coming back from. She’s already written over 19,000 words of the first book and we have already started building a website for it over at https://foreverdetective.com/. Mind you the site is still under construction, but if you click on the “Blog” tab you’ll find some interesting background information about her leading man. And there will be a lot more coming soon to that site, so you might want to bookmark it. Her current goal is to have the book out by summer so stay tuned. She’s a lot faster writer than I am so the likelihood of it being out on time is very good.

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Finally, I want to let you all know that the long-awaited sequel to “The Bridge” and “The Ship” is once more fully under way. “The Door” takes up where both those books ended in a hospital where the wail of an infant leads Alex Hill, Veronica Ross, Cassandra Elliott, and Julianna Cloudfoot to face old and new threats from the realms of two different Para-Earths. Part of the reason this book has taken so long to write was the simple fact that I had a good idea of what I wanted the main story to be, but not a clear vision of how it should unfold. This is what led to our branching off and doing “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” tale, which was more clear and complete in my mind.

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That book also allowed me to find the missing pathways I needed to get “The Door” back on track with new characters and scenes that will “bridge the gap” (please excuse the pun) between the first two books and “The Vampyre Blogs” part of our Para-Earth Series. The story that will be unfolding in “The Door” will start the beginning of bringing the casts between all three books together creating opportunities for many more stories down the road, including one that will bring Alex face-to-face with the nightmare dwelling that nearly destroyed him in every sense of the word. I am of course referring to “Harlequin House”.

As you can see, there’s a lot coming your way in 2019 and beyond. We hope you’ll keep joining us for the ride ahead. It will probably have more twists and turns than a roller-coaster, and I hope will be just as exciting.

New Year 2019

Until time, we wish you all a very Happy New Year, and urge you all to keep writing!

 


Yesterday I had an epiphany about my writing and the entire Para-Earth Series… it’s been a collaboration all along.  From “The Bridge” to “The Ship” to “The Vampyre Blogs -Coming Home”, the entire journey has been one gigantic collaboration with my wife/best friend Helen.  And I am planning on putting her name on the first two books.

Why didn’t I do this sooner?  And how did I not realize it was a collaboration all along?  Because I thought a collaboration strictly meant two people were doing the actual writing, but that’s not the only way a collaboration works.  Ideas, suggestions, helping shape characters, plot, settings, events… all of that goes into a collaboration as well.

So even though I did all the writing in “The Bridge” and “The Ship”, Helen gave me so much guidance like helping shape the characters personalities, questioning their actions, being my sounding-board for ideas I had but didn’t know where to go with them until she suggested details or options I never considered which suddenly put the story back on track again… you name it.  To me, she has been just as much a part of those books as I’ve been.

Now, some of you might be wondering how did this realization come to me?  Well, it had been bouncing around in my mind for some weeks now but yesterday is when it finally clicked into place for me.  As many of you should know by now, Helen just recently got offered a job at Santa Cruz County.  Well, yesterday was her Orientation Day and she officially starts work on Monday as an Accounting Technician (I’m so proud).

Well, when my day ended we were driving home and I started sharing with her that I was working on a new short story for our other blog “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” (where we post brand new short stories involving characters from our book “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” Link: https://thevampyreblogs.blogspot.com/   *NOTE: Characters from “The Bridge” and “The Ship” have also appeared there and will be showing up again soon so keep an on that site).   Some time ago I had decided that Lisa (one of the main characters) was a gifted psychic.

*Note: Lisa is often mistaken for a Goth, but she merely loves old clothing styles and vibrant colors.  She’s actually into clothing design and cool make-up, including special effects*

Mind you she is not nearly as strong as Alex, Cassandra, or the Baby from “The Bridge” and “The Ship”.  Lisa’s talents show up in the form of glimpses into the near future in dreams, as well as being sensitive to strong emotions both past and present, but she’s only starting to realize it.

Anyway,  I was working on a short story with her that takes place between the end of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” and its sequel “The Vampyre Blogs – Family Ties” which is currently  being written along with several other projects.

*SPOILERS FOR THE SHORT STORY AHEAD: Lisa’s been having dreams where she senses the danger from the first book is not completely over and that more darkness lies ahead for not only her and those she loves, but the entire town where she and Nathan live.  But that was as far as I had gotten when Helen suddenly sprang to life and suggested a scene in the waking world that indicates there is indeed a threat.  A certain modern-day life form, that is similar to the Para-Earth life-form that makes our character Nathan a vampyre, are fleeing the area.  Upon seeing this, Lisa realizes there is something coming prompting her to see if Nathan has returned or not.  This will tie into the opening scene of the 2nd novel in the Vampyre Blogs section of the Para-Earth Series.

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As soon as Helen made this suggestion the rest of the story came to me in a wave.  I could clearly see the path forward and immediately asked her to help give more life to the characters of Lisa and her best friend Marisa who also will appear in the story.  She naturally agreed, having taken a crack at writing both girls recently for a story in our upcoming anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At A Time” coming in January 2018.

Now, this has been just one of many examples of how a collaboration can work when it comes to writing.  I have many more to share, including one with my other Collaborator Rich Caminit which I will share in my next post.  Plus others that I will continue to share down the road.  For now, I’m going to leave you all for now, before this entry turns into the length of a novella.  But please give thoughts to other forms of collaboration you may have encountered and please share them with all of us in the comment section below.  As I’ve already said, collaborations take many forms and the roles each collaborator takes is not simply one but many, and this is why I feel collaborations are something that should sometimes be embraced whole-heartedly.

And on a final note, don’t be afraid to share the credit for a project.  As Samuel Goldwyn the great movie producer once said…

When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.

Until next time, take care and keep writing my friends.

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