Tagged: Divided Man Series

Making Ourselves Believe the Make-Believe

A hallmark of well-crafted fiction is when readers effortlessly suspend their disbelief. Creating good fiction calls for writers to suspend their disbelief as well.

For instance, to write our ghost story we need to convincingly portray a world in which ghosts exist, so we have to embrace that alternate reality. In our Divided Man series, it was extra-terrestrials, nanotech, and psychic powers. In the Music series, it was something else (which you will not be able to guess, ever, we guarantee that), and in the Science series it was immortality. Each story we tell gives consensus reality its own unique twist, which on a certain level becomes “true” for us also. That immersion is crucial for us to bring richness to the setting, and to keep its physical laws consistent.

And that’s the easy part. Writing a novel calls for the author to see the world through potentially disturbing eyes. Could be a cult leader, a mad scientist, a serial killer, or a televangelist. If you’re a nice person — which we’re sure you are — the behavior of such characters seems unthinkable to you. Then again, you’d probably make a rather dull bad guy. Every villain is the hero of their story. They believe in what they’re doing. So the writer must be able to believe in it too, at least while they’re writing. This is still true even if the villain isn’t a POV character! Like an evil marionette, it’s relying on you to pull its strings.

A writing partner is someone who encourages delusional ideation, but only when you’re on the clock.

Re-Reading The Divided Man Trilogy

For somewhat mysterious reasons, we decided that we’d read the first three novels we wrote. By “decided we’d read” what we mean of course is that we decided Kent would read them aloud to Jen. This project recently came to a successful conclusion.

To get the self-promotion out of the way: it was a blast. We really enjoyed it the whole way through. There is always some trepidation about revisiting early work. Has it aged well? (Yes.) Was it really polished enough to be published? (Yes.) Are we biased? (Yes. But we also have standards.)

The Divided Man Series
Miss Brandymoon's Device Tenpenny Zen Elsewhere's Twin

 

These books are of special interest to scholars of Rune Skelley’s oeuvre because they were written before we knew what we were doing. That is, writing this trilogy is what taught us how important it is for us to have a process. It was hard! There was at least one six-month span when trying to work on it became so stressful that we just stopped.

Did that seat-of-the-pants workflow contribute anything positive to the flavor of the end product? Probably. There’s a sort of punk-rock attitude infusing the whole thing — a crude spark. Going back to the first books now, we’re a little bit jealous of younger Rune Skelley’s “fuck it, watch this” confidence. We went for the double backflip, and we landed it! Eventually! After wrecking ourselves a whole bunch. As already mentioned, it was hard.

Did building this series without a blueprint actually, you know, work? Yes, but we honestly don’t know how. Each of the three Divided Man books has many moving parts, and the trilogy overall creates a structure in which all of the weird shit we set in motion adds up to a consistent, if convoluted, story world. Something we commented about repeatedly as we did the reading is the complexity of the plot and world-building, and how effectively it’s all tied together. Now, we know how this particular sausage was made. We know we played the game on hard mode, so we have a deeper appreciation for how unlikely it was that all these twists would ultimately line up. In other words, we know how likely we are to face-plant if we try to just wing it through something so ambitious again.

As we have said hundreds of times here at the Skelleyverse, writing with a partner is awesome. A good writing partner is your secret weapon. Something to keep in mind is that working with a partner increases your need for a formal system. Can two people take the free-jazz writing approach and get good stuff as a result? Totally! We did. But, in roughly the same amount of time we spent on those three books, we’ve written seven more. And it was way, way less stressful. Because we have a system.

A writing partner is someone who will ride with you down memory lane.

Rereading the Divided Man Trilogy

Once upon a time, Rune Skelley decided to write a novel. We knew two main facts, which seemed like an ample number of things to know to get started: how things would begin for the main character, and a catchy phrase to describe how he’d end up. We did not know that there would be a co-protagonist. We did not know much at all about the whole middle part, although we had a clear notion of the overall mood we wanted to convey. It was a very difficult process, but, hey! We did it. Rune Skelley wrote that novel! And then we wrote a second book extending the same story, and then a third. So, um, hey! We published a trilogy, and we called it The Divided Man.

At this point we’ve written two more trilogies and are substantially along on a tetralogy. A lot of miles behind us on this road, since The Divided Man. So we’re going to reread the series.

And it’s going to be weird.

For such a long time, those books took up so much space in our heads. We knew them by heart, and these are not small books. It was impossible to imagine even the tiniest details slipping away. But now that we’ve worked on so much other stuff, it seems just possible that our own early material might be able to surprise us. We’re excited to see how it goes.

A writing partner is someone who’ll stick with you on the journey, even when it includes a detour down Memory Lane.

The Divided Man Series

Miss Brandymoon’s Device
Tenpenny Zen
Elsewhere’s Twin

Holiday Shopping Can Be Stressful — We’re Here To Help

It’s a good idea not to brave the stores this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be generous.

The Divided Man series offers hours of fun! Some of it is the kind of fun that makes you laugh, and some is the kind that makes you flinch, or even shake your head in dismay. It has love, and hate, and existential dread. It has sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. It has a talking lava lamp!

The whole trilogy can be ordered in your choice of paperback or e-book formats. Sample chapters are available on our writing page, along with links for purchase options.

Rune Skelley Author Page

Beat the crowds — order today for everyone on your list!

Rune Skelley and the Secret of the Hidden Bookcase

We do most of our writing in the aptly named Writing Cave, but from time to time, especially in the winter, we like to hole up and work in the Auxiliary Writing Cave. It has a fireplace, you see, which makes it extra cozy. It’s also the only room in our house we hadn’t gotten around to redecorating. This year we’d finally had enough of the dingy yellow paint, and a decision was reached: it was time for a change. Once we hauled out all the mammoth bones and gave the place a good sweeping, we decided a little bit more than a coat of paint was needed. We would update the fire. As part of the process, we had to put in a false wall.

In the past when we’ve done projects around the house, we’ve written messages on the backside of drywall before installing it, and on the floor before tiling over it. Fun little surprises someone might discover in the far future. This time we got a little more creative.

The fireplace redo is the first major renovation project we’ve done since self-publishing our Divided Man books. Jen thought it would be fun to hide signed copies of the books inside the wall for some future homeowner to find. Kent heartily agreed.

We inscribed all three books.
Kent installed a hidden shelf between the 2x4s.
Up went the backer board.
Then the tile.
Voila!

We think it looks amazing. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever wanting to replace the tile, so perhaps our secret hidden bookshelf will never be discovered.

Singing For Our Supper

Something we enjoy here in the writing cave is looking for recurring patterns in what we write. There’s some stuff that we do on purpose to give our story worlds and plots a consistent flavor, and then there’s stuff we’ve noticed recurring in subtle ways even though we never had a meeting and decided it should be in there. We’re fascinated by this, because our stories are all very different yet contain these common threads.

Among the recurring elements in our work is original song lyrics. Not every book has them, but they’re not limited to just the Music Series. The trend began with our very first novel, Miss Brandymoon’s Device.

Writing lyrics is very different from writing prose. It can take as long to come up with a few stanzas as it does to write a couple of pages, for us at least. But it’s fun to shift gears, and it’s good exercise. Both of us have taken our turns as songsmith with great results. What we hadn’t done until this week? Collaborate directly on lyrics.

Crazy, right? We’ve been at this for nine books now, lots of which contain song lyrics, and our whole deal is collaboration. Yet all those lyrics had been written by Jen or by Kent. The new ones were the first time we teamed up to craft the words to a song.

What was different about this case was that we had more constraints to deal with. The words had to come from a certain album, and we’d already nailed down its themes and mood in considerable detail. These lyrics also had to catalyze some specific actions, almost instructing the characters to do a certain thing. Note, this perceived instruction is not at all the meaning intended by the singer. Jen tackled this job, but the phrases she found that fit the desired meanings all felt trite to her. So, over dinner out, she and Kent analyzed the situation, brainstormed imagery, and jotted down a few snippets. And when we got home, Jen cranked out exactly the lyrics we needed.

A writing partner is someone you can still find new ways to collaborate with.

A Lot of Balls in the Air

It’s hard to remember, but there was a time when we were only working on one book. Back in the prehistory of the Skelleyverse, Miss Brandymoon’s Device was our only project and we devoted all of our time to it. And it took forever to write. We were still learning how to organize our process, how to mesh our styles, how to create a coherent story with two headstrong people both trying to steer.

Through the years we got much more efficient. We also broadened our fictional ambitions. We added a second story universe. And then a third. Three seems to be a comfortable number for us. Our books come in trilogies, and once we put the Divided Man Series to bed, we started really fleshing out the ghost series that will come next.

Currently we are writing in the Music series, getting feedback on the Science series, and working on preproduction for the Ghost series. Our stories tend to be big and complex, and they benefit from being able to simmer for a long time. Every time we circle back and have a brainstorming discussion, new details emerge. It makes the story world and characters rich and full-bodied. It gives us time to get to know these people we’ll be spending a lot of time with, and it helps us spot plot holes.

A writing partner is someone who will help you with your juggling act.

Stereos in the Snow

When we designed the covers for the Divided Man series, we worked on the three of them simultaneously. It was a good way to produce a unified result, with the content, colors, layout, and typography working together so the books really looked like a set.

We liked how that went, so we’re following the same methodology for the Science Novels. For books one and three, the main images were downloaded and then manipulated in Photoshop, much as with the earlier cover designs. But we just couldn’t find a stock image anywhere that really worked for book two.

So, we took our own, snapping extreme closeups of an old amplifier from our music room. The initial candidate gave us very encouraging results, but we felt dissatisfied that there wasn’t any ice in the image (probably because we took the pic on our dining table). Pervasive cold is an important thematic element in the story that should be reflected on the cover, plus it would help connect the imagery for the other two books. Kent tinkered with adding ice and snow textures sampled from many of the same images that we’d already auditioned and rejected, but it wasn’t coming together. The effects he was getting didn’t match what Jen saw in her mind’s eye.

A confluence of propitious events followed. Jen tracked down a source for salvaged electronics, where she purchased another techie gizmo for us to photograph. This also prompted us to scavenge our to-recycle pile. That turned out to be a been-recycled pile, and therefore it didn’t exist. Rats. But, Jen’s mom was looking to clear out some old stereo equipment that no one had used in years, so we grabbed it.

And then, best of all, it snowed. We took all our delightfully obsolete treasures out on the deck and let nature heap them with eleven inches of snow. We also spritzed them with a squirt bottle to help things along. The neighbors, if they noticed, didn’t say anything.

The final cover image will be an amalgam created from portions of several of the pictures Jen took. It’s not done yet, but already it looks awesome.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

December is coming to a close, which means it’s time for our annual Year in Review post, 2017 edition.

At the beginning of the year we rather optimistically predicted that we might finish up both Son and Grandson of Science novel, and at least get a start on the third Music novel. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! We were so fucking naive!

While we did manage to get the last two Divided Man books polished and released, we didn’t even come close to finishing the Science novels. Jen was already frustrated at our lack of completion last year, so just imagine how thrilled she is now that it’s a whole year later and we’re still not done!

So what did we accomplish, if not everything on our wish list?

In January we had a belated launch party for Miss Brandymoon’s Device, and fretted a bit about what we would do once we finished writing our current trilogy of trilogies. February was spent editing various Divided Man books.

March brought the release of Tenpenny Zen. Yay! 

In April we seem to have wrapped up the first draft of Son of Science Novel, and were somewhat disappointed by its size. In the months since, we have added a bit more to it and, you’ll be relieved to learn, it now checks in at just a hair over 104,000 words. That’s still a bit slight, but is much less frightening. It’s now closer in size to its Mama.

Along with flowers, May brought major edits to Elsewhere’s Twin, and an important decision about the Music novels. And some delicious Greek food.

June was full of chainsaws — real ones, this isn’t an editing metaphor. When we got done bitching about that, we diagnosed some of what was missing from Son of Science Novel and finally got started composing Grandson.

By early July we’d already banged out 11,000 words for Grandson, which begs the question of why it’s still not done. Some of the blame should lay with Elsewhere’s Twin, which needed more edits before its release.

In August we took a road trip to attend a concert, and had a wonderful time. The band was great, and we used the car time to brainstorm ideas for the Middle Music novel. We also topped 20,000 words on Grandson of Science.

All we could talk about in September was the release of Elsewhere’s Twin. Have you seen the gorgeous cover? Our first trilogy is complete! We felt quite the feeling of accomplishment. We’re very proud of those books and all the work that went into them.

October had the new novel’s word count at 40,000, which is nothing to sneeze at. It also had us jetting off to Europe, which we didn’t talk about until November because we like to keep you guessing. And as soon as we got back from overseas, we turned right around and ran off to a writing conference.

And here we are again, back in December. Grandson of Science Novel is sitting pretty at 70,000+ words, which many people would consider novel-length. Just not us. Apart from that being far too short to fit in with our other work, we’re nowhere near done telling the story we set out to tell.

Our 2017 was quite successful, with the editing and publishing of two novels, the completion of a third, and a really good start on a fourth. Just try telling Jen that. She needs to recalibrate her expectations to be more in line with reality, and Kent is doing his best to help her with that. Maybe 2018 will be the year she finally gets it figured out.