A detached retina put a serious crimp in my writing and reading. On a recent trip to Washington, DC, with Kathleen (her home town) for a family event, we took in a Warhol exhibit at the Hirshhorn. Called Shadows, it featured 102 silk screen prints of exactly the same scene — a shadowy view from [...]

Joining us today from the pages of The Cowboy and the Vampire is Lenny, a survivalist and improvised weapons expert with some peculiar political views. He’s the long-time friend of Tucker and is now deeply involved in making weapons capable of dispatching the undead. Hello Lenny, welcome. What did you bring with you today? This? [...]

While a single positive book review in traditional media, like the New York Times, can literally make a book an overnight sensation, traditional media book reviewers are disappearing faster than a ghost in daylight.  However, all is not lost. Independent book bloggers are flourishing – of every type, for every reader, and for every genre. [...]

We had a lot of fun writing The Cowboy and the Vampire together so it’s no surprise we have a lot of fun talking about it — plus we have oversized egos — but we also both suffer from stage fright. As a result, “podium events” like book readings are terrifying. Thank goodness for book [...]

Recently we bought our first coffin. No, we weren’t shopping for final accommodations to drop into side-by-side cemetery plots — fingers crossed, we’ve got a few decades left. Our first coffin is a tiny decorative number purchased online and delivered in 3 – 5 days. We bought it to hold business cards and freebie stickers [...]

Writing authentic sex scenes is a tricky proposition for any writer; for writing partners, it’s twice as challenging, and three times as rewarding. The Cowboy and the Vampire is a love story, written by two people in love. Tucker and Lizzie, our main characters are, despite their better judgment, also passionately and crazily hot for [...]

We wrote this post for  YzhaBella’s Bookshelf where it was first posted on June 25, 2011… Wednesday night is trash night. It’s also spaghetti night. The two are related. We’ve been writing partners for more than a decade now, longer even than we’ve been married, and along the way — like most writers — we’ve [...]

When you are a writer, everything is fair game. Every conversation, every secret, every bad deed witnessed. Your good friends know this, and if you love them, you are kind enough to disguise their words and actions by inventing different hairstyles, names and maybe even changing their gender. But mostly you let loose on just [...]

A few scientists recently decided to test the hypothesis that love endures beyond the irresistible, passion-fueled, drugged-like falling head over heels state that generally, at best, is completely over in a few short years (or even months, sometimes weeks, occasionally days). We found the premise of the study immediately depressing. Why is it such an [...]

Top ten reasons a Cowboy should not fall in love with a Vampire: 1. Hard to make a living when your cattle is constantly anemic. 2. Say goodbye to most cowboy activities (rodeos don’t tend to be at night). 3. Also say goodbye to morning sex, unless you are into “that” kind of sex (and [...]

When a writer gets her book title just right, the book explodes fully formed into the universe, a block-buster, a goddess, a movie, a video game. But get it wrong, grasshopper, and the book limps along like a heartbroken troll. Right? Well, maybe… The boring reality is that titles are a publisher’s purview. A first-time [...]

Sometimes, in relationships and writing, a bit of distance from the quotidian spurs inspiration. Or so we thought. Clark and I took this past week off from our day jobs to relax, celebrate the holidays, reconnect and to try to make some progress on the sequel. A tall and impossible order, we quickly discovered. Well, [...]

We set a goal of 2,000 words per week. Epic fail. I have 962, I don’t know what Clark has because he is writing it by hand. Not quite what I had mapped out in my writing manifesto last week, but something unexpected happened in between my bouts of obsessive planning. Picture a rough day [...]

When we wrote The Cowboy and the Vampire, our lives were in a different place — I was a freelance writer working from a home office and Clark’s job was part-time. Our daughter was safely ensconced in middle school and income and expenses were more or less in balance. I was rigid about my writing [...]

We are getting ready to write the sequel and soon will be going into creative hyperdrive. I intend to chronicle the entire process of how we write together… how do we actually get to a finished book and what’s the effect on our relationship? I will also reflect on how writing this new book differs [...]