Group Questions – The Writers in Residence

A Group Question: Co-Writing with a Famous Writer?

Occasionally, each (or several) of us Writers In Residence answers a question about some aspect of writing or publishing. Here is this week’s Q&A for you. (Some of the answers may surprise you!)

Q: If you could co-write a book with any author, living or dead, who would it be, and what genre would you choose?

JACKIE HOUCHIN. “I would love to co-write a book with MARY STEWART (no longer living). She wrote suspense mysteries with a young, adventurous female heroine. Her books took her to countries around the world; Greece, France, Italy, Austria, Crete, Lebanon, and England. Perhaps I got my wanderlust to travel the world from reading her books. (I was 13 when I read the first.) There was always a handsome man who could be a bad guy and always a scary situation.

Oh, to write like that! I would let her do most of the writing, I fear, but every time her protagonist or the man in the scene would light up a cigarette, I would edit that out immediately. (haha). That would probably be my ONLY part of the collaboration. Or … I’d set some more of her romantic suspense in more countries!

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MIKO JOHNSTON. “I don’t think I would want to co-write a book with another author, as I can’t see how two writers could successfully balance their styles. I’ve read mystery compilations where two best-selling authors combined their characters into a single story with mixed results. However, I have contributed short pieces to anthologies over the years and would be happy to do so again.

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BONNIE SCHROEDER. “I would love to co-write a book with the late, great KURT VONNEGUT Jr.–something in the dark humor/satire genre.

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G. B. POOL. “There are so many authors I have read and admired through the years, from Ray Bradbury to Michael Connelly, James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, Thomas Thompson, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Ellroy, Robert B. Parker, and Steven J. Connell, all of whom are sitting on my bookshelves right now…their books, not them personally. Several of these writers I actually met, but as for co-writing with any of them, I don’t write like they do, and I don’t want to change my writing style just to have my name linked with theirs, even though the publicity would be magnificent.

But there is one person that I would have loved to co-write with. He was doing some early research on a mass murder that happened back in Texas at a KFC drive-in decades earlier and hinted that he wanted to write about it. He never had the opportunity to finish that endeavor.

The man was my husband, Richard Pool.

A few years after he passed away, I started reading the many journals he had written after he had been diagnosed with cancer back when he was twenty years old. On the fifth page of the very first journal, he mentioned that he wanted to be a writer. He was an avid reader and liked all the authors I liked. We had several of the same books in our respective collections. He wrote that being a writer was just what he wanted to be, but life got in the way of doing that. He moved from Texas to California and met me at the bank where we both worked. Richard knew I wanted to write. He told me before we got married that he would make my dream come true. We married. He got a better job and then another, making enough money to allow me to retire early and write. I did just that.

We had a great life together, and then he passed away. I started reading his journals and read that part about him wanting to be a writer. He gave me his dream.

If I could write with anyone, I would like to write with Richard. It would be what both of us wanted.

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ROSEMARY LORD. “I would like to co-author books with ENID BLYTON, the famous children’s author from my own childhood. Apart from the delightful “Noddy” books for the little ones about a wooden doll, “Noddy in Toyland,” Enid Blyton wrote wonderful mysteries for older children: “Adventures of The Famous Five” and others about “The Secret Seven.” They had all sorts of fun on ‘Adventure Island’ during their summer holidays. Total escapism and good, clean fun!! Seems like fun to write!

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LINDA O. JOHNSTON: “Not sure how I’d do co-writing with someone else, but if I had to choose someone to write a book with, it’d have to be one of the well-known authors who also use dogs in their books, such as Kathleen Donnelly, Margaret Mizushima, Diane Kelly, David Rosenfelt, Spencer Quinn, C.B. Wilson, or Teri Wilson—some of whom I know already.

But I’ve never considered co-writing with any of them before! And the story would have to be mystery, romance, or romantic suspense, depending on who my co-writer was.

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Dear “The Writers In Residence” readers: who would YOU aspire to write a book with if you had the chance? Comment or let me know at photojaq@aol.com.

How Do Writers Choose the Titles for Their Books & Stories?

This week the Writers In Residence members answered a “group question.”

How do you choose the titles for your books or stories?

1. Rosemary Lord: For me, titles flow as part of whatever I am writing at the time. Sometimes, the title comes first, maybe snatched from a song title or a poem. But the titles have to fit the setting, period, and essence. The title has to match the “inside” and be intriguing or evocative because it is the first thing that catches the reader’s attention.

Once, I thought a writer friend’s book titles were heavy and pretentious, a bit “off-putting.” I felt bad for her as I thought her big publisher chose them. I was going to make a “diplomatic” suggestion. Then she said SHE had come up with all her titles! Oops!

2. Maggie King: There are so many ways to choose a title. It’s not my strong suit, so I often collaborate with others. For Murder at the Book Group, my agent helped. When I re-released MABG as Death Turns the Page, my songwriter husband helped. I don’t recall how the title for Laughing Can Kill You came about, but I think “I” thought of it. For Murder at the Moonshine Inn, I brainstormed with a friend and her son. The son suggested the title based on his many visits to redneck bars (much to his mom’s surprise).

I had an easier time coming up with the titles for my short stories on my own. Maybe being “short” made the titles more apparent.

3. Madeline Gornell: I’m not being flippant, but they seem to come to me out of the blue. Maybe from dreams? Or TV? I say, don’t worry about it, they just come.” Hmmm.

4. Miko Johnston: For me, a good title hints at the theme and tone of the piece before it’s read and summarizes it afterward. Some titles came easily, like calling my short story, featuring a nameless protagonist who creates “art” By Anonymous. Others took a while to find the right title – years in the case of my series A Petal in the Wind – a perfect metaphor for my character.

5. Linda O. Johnston: I generally consider titles for any new series and the book I’ll next be working on as I’m starting to plot them. I jot them down, often on the computer, and modify them as new ideas come to me. And, of course, I anticipate that my editors will most likely modify them again once I submit them, although I do get to approve any new ones.

6. G. B. Pool: This is a fun question. When I’m pondering a new book or short story, the title almost always comes right as I’m coming up with the plot. I couldn’t tell you which came first. This is when I’m actually writing the story, not just tossing around ideas.

I have had a title before I had a plot. I mention this fact in the book of short stories I’m working on right now, called Bits and Pieces. This book is the result of several folders I keep of story ideas I’ve written down, newspaper articles I have saved, or ones a friend like Jackie Houchin has sent me over many years. These “bits and pieces” of ideas just might prompt a story. These are all fragments of an idea, and most have no title listed.

I have changed the title of a story once or twice, but that comes about only if I totally redirect the plot into something entirely different and the title just doesn’t work anymore.

One title I came across in a folder that I haven’t used yet is: “Just Shoot the Archbishop and Pass the Brandy.” All I have is the title. No story. A story may never come of it, but I mention it in this upcoming short story collection just to show how writers work. But I do think the title has to fit the story, the two coming as Siamese twins seems to work.

7. Jackie Houchin: It’s never been published, but a “woman’s fiction” book I wrote had the title of Sister Secrets. It’s about three women who have the same mother but different fathers. They each have a long-standing “secret” that has returned to haunt them. As the story unfolds, each sister’s strengths and talents help unravel and resolve the secret that is keeping another sister captive.

In my children’s short stories set in Africa I tried to make the titles be “teasers” for stories that middle-grade kids would enjoy. Dead Mice, The Eyes in the Well, and Deek’s Wild Ride were a few.

All my titles come to mind in the process of writing the story. They just fit.

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READERS: If you enjoy these “Group Questions” and have one YOU would like to ask us, please mention it in a comment below or forward it to me at Photojaq@aol.com

Remember, if you comment, first click above on the TITLE of this post. (How do writers….)

Group Post #1 – How do you handle TECHNOLOGY?

Occasionally, we have an open spot on our blog schedule. One of our members suggested we all (or those able) could jump in for a group blog question. Our first was suggested by Miko Johnston.

How do you incorporate ever-changing technology in your writing, especially in a series that covers years?

Jackie Houchin — In my short stories, I use the technologies needed in the story’s time and place. I used GPS settings to find a long-buried stash in one mystery set in modern New York. In that story, the dates were firmly set by newspaper clippings. In my missionary kids’ series set in modern but rural Africa, cell service is spotty (indeed, you can’t even be sure of electricity), so I use these technologies but don’t depend on them. Actually, “no cell service” adds to the suspense of the moment when an emergency happens.

Gayle Bartos-Pool — If you write stories set in the Roaring Twenties, you might want to include a bunch of things to define that era, like telephone operators connecting you to whomever you are calling or a radio program providing music and some news. There were no televisions or cell phones back then. The automobile was new with the Ford Model T, and assembly lines were just gearing up.

Every era has its newfangled gadgets, but do they have to do more than set the stage in the story? Sometimes, too much detail distracts from the narrative unless there is one particular thing that plays a key role in your story, like the old typewriter with the damaged key and the ransom note with that same twisted letter. That’s been done before in several old movies, but it worked.

But if you are writing a contemporary tale, do you have to rely on the main character’s cell phone on every page? After a while, it gets old to have the characters pull out his or her phones rather than use their eyes and ears to see the problem at hand.

I do like gadgets, but I don’t depend on them totally in my books. My characters will use a computer, but they use their brains more.

Miko Johnston — Back in the 1990s, before I started my series of historical novels, I attempted to write a (then) present-day mystery thriller that centered around a secret high-tech device. The problem was that I knew nothing about the subject and figured what I’d made up would ring false with knowledgeable readers, so I put the manuscript aside. Twenty years later, I revisited the story and realized I knew enough about what had been developed back then to finish the story with authenticity.

I do incorporate technology in my modern work as it’s such an integral part of life now. For example, my short story, Senior High, comically follows three older women who travel to Washington, one of the first states to decriminalize marijuana. Although they haven’t “partied” since the seventies, they decide to get high one more time but can’t figure out how until Siri comes to their aid.