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 about everyone. Because when you are a writer, the world only makes sense when you arrange facts, actions and colors into a perpetual narrative. A writer’s life is an never-ending gigantic story with millions of chapters running through his mind. Every time you interact with a writer, you become a character in her story. Some are evil, many are cast as the chorus of life, and a few are main players.

Of course, only a small fraction of those stories ever make it from the brain to the page. And an even smaller fraction ever get published.

Sometimes, seeing their transgressions and darkest thoughts in print makes people seethe. Bright Lights, Big City. Tropic of Capricorn. The Bell Jar. The literary landscape is littered with stolen secrets. It’s why writers are loners, outsiders, tortured. When you use your friends as fodder, you don’t keep friends for very long. Or spouses. Both Clark and I were previously married; both to non-writers, although his was a redhead, at least.

That’s why we never put any redheads in our books because I don’t want her to secretly fantasize that he is writing about her. We often put stuff in about my ex. Take a look at any character who is a doctor.

This voyeuristic tendency to cavalierly use friends, colleagues, and countrymen as ingredients in stories is another reason why it’s pretty great to write with a partner. We know in advance that everything about each other is totally fair game. Our egos can take it. Plus, it’s kind of fun.

When we are out to dinner, we make up stories about the people around us. A redhead and a doctor enter the restaurant. She’s at least 20 years older. What’s their story? Lovers? Mother and son? Yes, probably, observe the tell of their similarly shaped noses. Long lost to each other, tonight is the first time they’ve seen each other in a decade. They discovered they were related after meeting online at Match.com. People are attracted to their own images. It’s why dogs and their owners always resemble one another. We laugh.

Here’s another example of a stolen secret, now part of the book we are writing together called Blood and Whiskey, a sequel to The Cowboy and the Vampire. It’s straight from one of our own nocturnal conversations, uhm, well maybe it’s more accurate to call it a fight.

Let me set the scene: Tucker, a cowboy, and Lizzie, his vampire fiancee, are talking about the uncertainty of their future at a truck stop outside LonePine, Wyoming.

“All I really want is to have our baby and grow old with you and fight about stupid stuff like why you floss so goddamn loudly. But that’s not going to happen, is it? I can’t grow old, I can’t have a normal life, I can’t not kill people and the only possible solution I can think of is to just take my own life and be done with it. Is that what you want?”

Her fury subsided and she focused on the French fries suffocating under a congealing mass of brown gravy, stabbing them angrily with a fork. The silence stretched on between them until Tucker took a deep breath. “I really floss too loud?”

She choked a sound that was half laughter and half anguish. “Yes, you do. It sounds likes you’re playing the fucking violin with your teeth. But I don’t care. I mean, I do care, it drives me batshit, but those are the kinds of things I want to fight about, not all of these huge, ridiculous things impossible things like how do I keep the serpents from killing off humans and who do I feed on to stay alive without feeling like a sadistic freak. Mostly I can’t bear it that you think I’m some kind of monster.”

Yes, it is true. Clark is a loud flosser and I hate it, just hate it. But I never thought that private conversation would end up in our book. Another stolen intimacy shared with the world. As long as it makes someone else laugh as much as I laughed when I read it, it’s all fair game.

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