A WRITER'S LIFE IS SOMETIMES DIFFICULT

Writing a book is not an instant process.  Authors work at different speeds. Kirsten Osbourne is able to write at least one book a month. Other authors take a year to complete a book. One friend has been working on the same book for at least three years. I am trying to write faster, but I’m still unable to write faster than a book every couple of months.

I have good intentions but life always intrudes. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? Currently, I’m writing (almost finished) a book that is companion to three others. Each author is releasing her book on the same day and the covers coordinate. The books are about four brothers: Jamie, Caleb, Gideon, and Ethan who live in Colorado.

The idea for this belongs to Cynthia Woolf. We based this very, very loosely on the old movie “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” but we wanted NO kidnapping. Everything had to be on the up and up--that is except for the fact the grooms' mom lied when writing to the matrimonial agency and the brides. Cynthia thought seven grooms were too many and settled on four brothers. Callie, Sylvia, and I were happy to be included.

If the brothers and brides-to-be are snowbound, how can they marry? We thought one of the brothers should be a preacher who also helped on the ranch when needed during the week. To keep the men separate from the women, one of the brothers has a cabin a few hundred yards over a hill.

My hero’s name is Jamie and he’s the eldest brother. Because their mother, Fiona Fraser, despairs of them ever marrying, she pretends to be them and sends for mail order brides—hence the subtitle THE SURPRISE BRIDES. The four women arrive in the midst of a blizzard and are snowbound. The other authors are Cynthia Woolf, Callie Hutton, and Sylvia McDaniel.

We Skyped (is that a verb?) and emailed until we had our books planned. We thought we’d worked out all the possible twists and events. Again, the best-laid plans went awry. We are in almost constant contact with questions about whether or not our books interfere with the other three.  Usually, they do and that means juggling scenes and rewriting.

Another problem we’ve met is keeping each book from being a repeat of the other three. We don’t want our four books to simply retell the same events from a different point of view. That would cheat readers. So, we have worked hard to insure each book is a separate story with different conflicts while still being true to the other three. Only the prologue is a repeat because the information contained sets up the stories.

My story is about the eldest brother, JAMIE. The next brother is rowdy CALEB and is written by Callie Hutton. Or you can mix them up any way you wish. GIDEON is written by Cynthia Woolf, and she assured us writing about a preacher without making the book preachy was hard. Sylvia McDaniel wrote ETHAN, the youngest brother. You can read them in any order, but I suggest JAMIE, ETHAN, GIDEON, and then CALEB because I know events in the books.

This is the hardest book I’ve ever written! I’m surprised my forehead isn’t bruised from beating my head against my desk. LOL Every time I started a scene, I had to ask if it would conflict with anything one of the other three authors had written. Should I include anything happening in one of the other books? How much should I include about Jamie’s children?

Will our idea work? Only you readers can decide. We’re pretty happy with the end result, though. 

Fingers crossed you’ll like all four books. They go up for preorder on September 1^st and will be published simultaneously on October 1^st in print and e-book.