On Balance

It's Monday, I'm at work. We've had good news on the marketing front. Cathy's work is really paying off. I honestly don't know what I'd do without her, because that stuff is SOOO not what I'm good at. I can come up with a world, people, and stories, but the business stuff is not my forte. Odd, because in my "other" life I am extremely businesslike.

I've been writing on The Raveners. It's third person, which is unusual for us. Tried doing our usual first-person thing, but it wasn't working. We'll see how this goes. Cathy is still editing Kate. We're trying to get the word count up a bit. It's in the OK range, but would be better a little longer. I'm hoping she'll like the changes I made. We'll have to see. At a certain point we just have to "call it done" send it out to Merrilee and leave it to the editors to do their thing. I'm a little nervous on this one. I always am, but I am particularly anxious because this one was a book where I was primary and Cathy was second chair.

I appreciate our partnership so much. It's work, maintaining a balance of power. We're both very strong people with very strong opinions. It occasionally makes for some disputes. Fortunately they're not BAD disputes. And usually, when we don't agree, we come up with something that works as well or better that we can both live with. Another good point, because we like such different people in life we have a wide variety of characters with differing strengths and flaws. One of the most common flaws I see in books (particularly series) is that almost all the characters have the same voice and viewpoints: all middle-to-upper-middle class educated people who express themselves well and are articulate and have the same basic moral starting point (except, of course, for the villain, who is violating everybody elses). I LIKE that in Moon's Web one of our secondary characters isn't especially smart and isn't ambitious, but is kind and loyal and has other things going for him.

I also want to make sure that our characters have different attitudes about sex. I know that there is a push for *more sex* *more romance*, and that's fine -- as long as it's within the character's personality. Some people are very sexual by nature -- good enough. But if you have a character who is basically chaste then I don't think you should just throw it in there having them acting against their nature and strongest beliefs. It's got to make "sense."

Well, enough of the ranting. I've got business to attend to. But I just want to say how much I appreciate being co-authors with Cathy and how grateful I am that she contributes the things she does. She constantly amazes me (in the best ways). :)