I Whispered to the Alchemist

  • by jenwherever he’s hiding
  • “To be continued,” she said
  • lizard person in a human suit
  • It sure was memorable
  • smell anything out of the ordinary?

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I whispered to the Alchemist, “I’m sure we’ll find him, wherever he’s hiding.” Whichever of my brothers the Alchemist was horny for, I wouldn’t be making introductions. But he didn’t know that, and I might be able to use him to make my escape before he figured that out.

The Alchemist jerked into action. “I have to get this man to a hospital!”

“What’s the problem?” Valentina’s husband asked from the ceiling.

The Alchemist dropped me a creepy wink, and said, “Acute slug poisoning.”

Valentina leaned down and squeezed my junk. “To be continued,” she said. “As soon as you get medically cleared.”

The Alchemist pulled a collapsable gurney from his kit and assembled it with a few flicks of his bony wrists. As he settled me on it and strapped me down, he gave another laborious wink, and quickly swiped his lips with his tongue like he was a lizard person in a human suit. It sure was memorable, much to my dismay.

He started wheeling me toward the door. Before we made our exit into the snow, though, Valentina said, “Hang on. Does anyone else smell anything out of the ordinary?”

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No, After *You*

A month ago we were lamenting how intimidating it’s been for us to reenter composition mode. “Oh, woe,” we cried. “It’s been so long since we wrote actual prose!” And “It’s been literal years since we began a new story world, how ever shall we remember how to do it?”

We can be quite melodramatic when it suits us.

In the weeks since that declaration, we came up with myriad excuses for not actually setting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It was, frankly, getting ridiculous. During one of our daily forest snow strolls with the pooches, we finally diagnosed ourselves. We were each waiting for the other one to go first, each holding the door open, hoping the other half of the writing team would charge through into the unknown.

Whoever goes first makes a bunch of creative decisions that impact the rest of the novel. They set the tone with language use. They set the pace of the prose. They give us the first glimpse inside a new character’s head and heart. It’s a lot of responsibility!

Usually Kent will jump in and write the earliest scenes while Jen wraps up the last few stubs of the first batch. It’s a process that’s worked well for us, but at least the last 4 novels we wrote were all set in existing story worlds. There are a lot fewer unknowns in an existing story world. Kent wasn’t sure Jen wanted him to plunge in this time. Perhaps she wanted to be the style master this time? Please? No. Being the one to write 100% of the stubs (maybe 99.5%), Jen feels like she already has enough influence over how the story is told.

And so, with great fanfare, Kent slipped into his speedo and took the plunge! This very week saw the minting of the inaugural words, sentences, and paragraphs of the Rune Skelley Ghost Quadrilogy! And what words (and sentences and paragraphs) they are!

A good writing partnership is one where both partners are happy to either lead or follow.

The Passion of Valentina’s Kiss

  • by Kentthe stroke that a dog uses when swimming
  • which we call the Alchemist
  • bring his microphone and a recording device
  • Tall, pale, and lanky
  • “You know, the sexy one.”

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The passion of Valentina’s kiss was impressive, and it would have been quite enjoyable if her tongue action weren’t cramming a big wad of nylon down my throat. As my oxygen levels dropped, I tried to fight her off with motions that must have resembled the stroke that a dog uses when swimming.

I blacked out momentarily, and came to in the middle of a mob of EMTs. As my head cleared I realized that they were just the same ninja production assistants from before, except one guy with a stethoscope.

“This is our on-set medical coordinator,” Valentina informed me from somewhere nearby but outside my peripheral vision. “A job which we call the Alchemist because of some silly union thing. Whenever he comes in on a call, he has to bring his microphone and a recording device as well as his first-aid stuff. It’s in the bylaws.”

The Alchemist was a distinctive person. Tall, pale, and lanky, with long braids like a macrame plant hanger. He leaned down to apply the stethoscope, but that was just a cover for his true goal of whispering in my ear. “Do you think you could introduce me to your brother?” he asked breathily. “You know, the sexy one.”

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“And What Sort of Uniqueness Do You Bring to the Festivities?”

  • by jen“Valentina, your hands are a distraction.”
  • biggest snake ever
  • under the covers late into the night
  • you’re supposed to throw the first pancake away
  • I appreciate the tongue being so firmly in the cheek

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“And what sort of uniqueness do you bring to the festivities?” I asked.

“I’m double-jointed!” Dr Ferguson demonstrated, flexing and contorting her fingers into many unnatural positions.

The speaker in the ceiling crackled. “Valentina, your hands are a distraction.”

Valentina Ferguson’s digits all snapped back into human-like shape and she glared up at one of the cameras. “I realize he doesn’t have the biggest snake ever seen on this show, but there’s no way my hands were obscuring it completely.”

Had she just insulted my genitals?

“Valentina, please,” the ceiling voice griped. “Get on with it.”

Valentina turned back to me. “He never complains about my fingers when we’re naked together under the covers late into the night.”

“For the show?”

“Of course not! He’s my second husband.” She wiggled her left ring finger in front of my face like an eel. “I don’t have a wedding ring because it just wouldn’t stay on.”

I eyed her hypnotic digits. “What happened to your first husband?”

“Husbands are a lot like pancakes.” She laughed at my confusion. “You’re supposed to throw the first pancake away.”

“Get on with it!” shrieked the ceiling.

Valentina shrugged and planted an openmouthed kiss on me. She tasted vaguely of my toes, but that was an improvement over the slug from earlier.

From the speaker in the ceiling, her husband gave direction. “I appreciate the tongue being so firmly in the cheek. Keep it there as the slugs are applied.”

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A Delicate Balancing Act

Something we’ve discovered about ghost stories from working on ours: they have ghosts in them. Who knew? And ghosts can be scary! But not too scary, at least not all the time…

As we get into a finer level of detail about everything, we discover that our ghosts must be around in the background of a lot of scenes that we didn’t really envision as “ghost scenes” and where we don’t want them to interfere. But we do want the ghosts to matter, to be an important element of the story world. A genuine menace at times. So, a lot of our recent conversations have dealt with resolving this apparent contradiction. And it’s turning out that we aren’t really trying to have it both ways, but just that our earlier, broader outlines of the story didn’t require us to dial things in like we must now that we’re getting gritty with it.

There’s a line we need to walk between too much chaos and not enough. That balancing act is what creates the feeling of suspense for the reader.

The question of how easy it is to reach our main story location is another whose answer seems to depend on when you ask us. The difficulty of the journey is occasionally a plot point, but it can’t be so arduous that no one would ever be able to get there. Again, conversations just need to get more granular so we can establish what it is about the terrain that raises challenges, so different characters can have different experiences without it looking like we’re changing the rules on them.

A writing partner is someone who’ll catch you if you fall off the tightrope.

Dr Ferguson Did Not Want

  • by Kentlike a tiny fireman
  • That’s a promise.
  • stone table near the fireplace
  • my fishmonger uncle
  • because you had a wedding ceremony

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Dr Ferguson did not want me to put my shoes back on. This was because she had designs on my pinkie toes, and soon I was struggling mightily not to kick her in the face while she treated my left little toe like a tiny fireman searching for a way into the inferno. My toes are extremely ticklish.

“Just one scene!” I grunted through clenched teeth and a layer of nylon mesh.

“Mmm hmmm,” she replied. Then, taking my digit from her mouth she added, “That’s a promise.” I was splayed by then on the stone table near the fireplace like some poor creature my fishmonger uncle would have hacked up for chum.

Before she could go after my toes again, I asked, “Why do you want me on your show so bad anyway?”

“You’re sort of a unicorn,” she replied, “because you had a wedding ceremony — a proxy wedding ceremony — with that golden tongue of yours. Such a rarity. Our viewers are a lot like birders, or trainspotters. They’re always on the lookout to check things off their lists. This episode will be a ratings bonanza!”

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You Know That Dream?

  • by jenbeside you in a bathing suit
  • sinister red mask with pointy ears
  • “Don’t be fooled by their cuddly appearance
  • fine silken tunics
  • “Should I put my shoes back on?”

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You know that dream? The one where there’s a beautiful woman beside you in a bathing suit and a sinister red mask with pointy ears, and she twists your fingers into impossible shapes to make grotesque shadow puppets, and growls in your ear, “Don’t be fooled by their cuddly appearance, sonny boy, they’re deadly even if they are just shadows!”? This felt a lot like that dream, only Dr Ferguson was dressed for skinny dipping, and I was the one in a mask (if pantyhose can be said to count as a mask). And instead of growling, Dr Ferguson purred into my ear, “Just shoot this one scene for us and we’ll dress you in fine silken tunics — as many as you want — and drive you to the airport.”

It was just one scene. How bad could it be. I murmured to her, “Should I put my shoes back on?”

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Cartographer’s Blues

Sometimes there’s a lot of drawing involved in being a writer.

One of the artifacts we generated in our pre-writing for the Ghost Series is a map of the principle setting. It’s a rather complicated map, not only because the setting itself has many interesting quirks but also because the map shows how things change over the course of about a century.

But, Kent didn’t mind taking that on. It let him relive his dungeon-master glory days a bit, and simultaneously offered an excuse to use lots of layers in the Illustrator file.

We’ve included maps in some of our actual books. So far, this one is for our own use during the project, and we haven’t really decided about sharing it with our readers. All we know for now is that it’s going to be a living document that will be updated as we make new discoveries about our locale. In other words, the map that shows how things change over time will, itself, change over time.

Another trick we might use is building it in 3D with modeling clay. The terrain is quite unusual, and flat drawings might not suffice for making sure we both picture it the same way. This is something we haven’t done on past projects, but it fits our penchant for the tangible and the colorful.

A writing partner is someone who’ll help you chart the unknown.

I Hadn’t Experienced

  • by KentRussian-born catsuit designer
  • do they hold your hands and look intensely into your eyes
  • little woogie-moogums
  • the name of your equipment is also objectively cool
  • made an actual hashtag with my fingers

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I hadn’t experienced anything like Dr Ferguson’s touch since my fling with a Russian-born catsuit designer named Orlova. What can we say of the world’s great lovers? When they’re with you on the set of a tawdry reality TV show, do they hold your hands and look intensely into your eyes? Sometimes. But sometimes one of their hands is busy elsewhere, and they can’t look into your eyes because of the pantyhose on your head, so they laugh and call you their little woogie-moogums, and that can be okay too. And they’ll do magical things to your equipment without even knowing your name, or its name, even when the name of your equipment is also objectively cool.

The voice in the ceiling said, “We can use this for a promo. To camera in three, two…”

Dr Ferguson darted behind me like a cat, hugging me and seizing my hands as she said “Hashtag Slimy Passions!” Too late I realized that she had made an actual hashtag with my fingers.

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I Could Still Taste the Slug

  • by jenhad sex with the devil in exchange for magical powers
  • a Grade IV erection
  • very diabolical piece of
  • pantyhose on his head
  • spitting with impunity

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I could still taste the slug, or perhaps it was the PA’s fingers. I turned my head and spat into the wastebasket. Twice.

“There is no spitting with impunity on my set,” the voice from the ceiling said. “Put the pantyhose on his head.”

I was so distracted by the idea that anyone these days would have pantyhose on demand that I failed to dodge Dr Ferguson. Before I knew what hit me, my face was smooshed inside the tube of sheer fabric held in place by a very diabolical piece of knot-tying artistry.

“I think you like that,” Dr Ferguson cooed, trailing her fingers down my torso. “This is a Grade IV erection at least.”

“We can’t proceed until he reaches Grade VII,” ceiling-voice said.

“Luckily,” Dr Ferguson breathed into my ear, “I had sex with the devil in exchange for magical powers of seduction.”

And then she did something astounding with her hand that I am at a loss to describe.

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