Yes, folks, we wrapped up the fourth Creatures book last night.  In addition to that, we have a pretty solid framework plotted—yes, plotted—out already for book five.  And we have a solid idea/game plan for a female/female side series for Creatures.

Hold up, Emery, that’s a whole lot of news for one paragraph.  Care to expound?  Why, sure, Emery, I’d love to.  (I’m an only child; talking to myself comes very naturally.)

Right, first off, finishing off Creatures book four, Sins of Influence.  I love our titles—Grey has a gift with them.  At long last, we finally came up with a solid story to explore the dashing Commander Christopher Montgomery, and his equally dashing lover, Kieran Phillips—who met in our ARe 28 Days of Heart short, Sea of Sin.  (If you haven’t read that, you really should because a) HOT, and b) all proceeds go to the American Heart Association, so good cause!)  It’s a bit under our word goal, but that’s usually remedied fairly easily in the revision process.

After wrapping up book four and exploring Middle Earth (LOTRO), Grey and I hashed out a rough framework for the fifth book, including motivations and threats and all the plotty, generally non-sexy bits (though there was a fair amount of that as well).  Maybe we’re learning after all.  By “we” I mean me.  Grey likes knowing where things are going; I like winging it.  But winging it only gets you so far.  Plotting helps you from hitting a wall, too hard.

And last, but definitely not least, we have Creatures of Sin: Lilith and Eve, followed by whatever Sins of fits the flavor of the book.  Why the differentiation?  Because it seems readers, typically, don’t like to mix up the gender composition of the romances they read.  Which baffles both Grey and I.  If the characters are engaging and the sex is hot, what does it matter if it’s two men or two women, or a man and a woman, or a male/female/male threesome or male/male/female threesome or female/female/male or female/male/female or moresomes?  Is the vajajay really that off-putting that you’re going to avoid a book in a series because it focuses on two women instead of two men?  Okay, I’m all behind the fact that people have different tastes and preferences, but still…baffled.  Maybe my view is skewed because I’ll read anything so long as the writing’s good.  And you know what?  Hot is hot regardless of gender and combination.  *climbs off soap box*  But the short, non-ranty reason is that the books will still be identifiable as part of the Creatures world, but differentiated in such a way that those who wish to can avoid them.  And a little part of me thrills at the idea that Lilith and Eve decided to go off together and leave Adam to bemoan his fate.

So, there you go.  A real, thorough, writing-related update!

“What color are Scotty’s eyes?”

“Did we ever mention where Graeme and Peter went to school?”

“How old is Carver again?”

When you write series, these are the kinds of questions you ask all the damn time.  It’s easy enough to keep track of the details through one book, but by the time you get to the fourth (or seventh!), it’s a lot harder.  Did you actually mention a detail or not?  And if so, where and in which book?  It’s just not always easy to flip back through all those manuscripts trying to find one little detail that might actually never have been referenced there, but might instead be in a side piece you wrote or some napkin scribblings in a restaurant somewhere.

We’ve tried to deal with this by creating a series bible.  For those of you not familiar with the term, a series bible comes from television series production and refers to a mythical tome that the series writers use to keep track of all the little details that develop over time in the shows they write.  I say mythical because several writers I have heard speak have said they didn’t actually have a physical document that kept track of these things.  Which seems foolish.  Wouldn’t that make things easier?

But just because they don’t doesn’t mean we can’t.  Emery is the master of what we call productive procrastination, basically doing something that is writing-driven but isn’t actually writing.  The series bible has been one of those projects.  For the longest time, this was in the shape of an Excel spreadsheet, sorted by character name, book and series and with the various details plugged in.  But again, that gets unwieldy after a certain size, and with 23 projects started, completed or abandoned, that’s a lot of characters to keep track of.

This week she hit on the brilliant idea of creating a wiki for our books.  I’m thrilled with this idea, as not only will it be easy to search, but it will also be easy to crosslink to relevant people, places and objects that are significant to each of them.  It’s going to take a lot of time to set up, but once it’s done, I think it will be a great tool for our writing.

And we’ll be able to stop arguing about how big the age gap is between Carver and David.  Finally.

Emery’s first piece of wisdom for the day:  Smoothies, however tasty, are a BAD idea when one works in an icebox.  Not a literal icebox, mind, but I have yet to work in an office anywhere that doesn’t go subzero in the summers.  Winters aren’t so hot either, ha ha.  Smoothies bad, sweaters good.

Auntie Emery’s second treat for you:  http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2010/06/08/manifesto/.  Pretty much sums up my feelings on promotion and sums it up far more eloquently than my rambly style allows for.  If there’s one thing Grey and I butt heads over more than my pantsing vs. her plotting, it’s promotion.  I dig my heels in like nobody’s business.  Now, before you get the wrong idea, she’s not exactly gung ho about the marketing aspect either, but she’s willing to give it a go, whereas I’m all NONONONONONO!!!!  Yes, I understand that you have to get your name out there or no one’s going to buy your book, but it just makes me feel, well, dirty.  Discussion groups and forums strike me as too self-serving and too incestuous to do what they’re purported to do.  If I want to talk about myself, I have a blog—okay, two and a half.  Awards submissions are a waste of money and pointless anxiety.  And book signings…okay, I like book signings, mainly for the chance to chat with other authors and the odd person who takes an interest in something I wrote.  I like conventions for that same reasons, though book signings are a bit more budget friendly.

And in writing news:  Grey and I are still moving forward with our fourth Creatures book.  Though it’s a bit slow in writing with figuring out the plotty bits, but forward is forward.  And when your solo stuff is *crickets* you’ll take whatever the muse gives you.

Emery and I have been reading some interesting discussions about misogyny in M/M fiction this week.  Some of it is as blatant as the horrible bitch ex-wife/boss/whatever, but some of it’s more subtle and yet more pernicious, following the idea that the woman in question actually deserves “better” than the man involved, and so moves on and out of the story, leaving a clear field for a men-only story.  This rightfully got us thinking about our own stories, and the women in them.

We like women.  Probably a good thing, since we both happen to be female.  But we like writing them as well, enjoy creating strong, believable yet imperfect female characters to play off the men.  We are comfortable with the fact that not all male/female relationships are inherently sexual.  Yes, Virginia, it is possible for men and women to “just be friends”, even straight men and women.  That’s why Scotty exists, because Carver needed a sounding board and an awesomesauce chick with a brain seemed like the perfect foil for him. 

And gay men and straight women flirt.  It happens.  Really.  I’m fortunate enough to be friends with a number of gay men as part of a larger, tight knit, mixed sexuality community.  None of the guys are insecure about their sexuality, all of them are out and open, and many of them I would put up to my own sons as role models.  And some of them flirt outrageously.  With the women in the community.  Women they aren’t interested in sleeping with and who aren’t interested in sleeping with them, but who nevertheless flirt right back.  Flirting and fucking aren’t the same thing.  And so you get Alexandra, a character we got a bit of grief over but who we adore.  She’s strong, she’s playful and she and Carver have an odd rapport that includes a bit of sexual teasing.  Carver’s not sexually attracted to her, and Alexandra isn’t looking for more.  They’re just playing, and it’s safe.  The presence of a female character who is actually sexual is not a threat to the M/M story line.

The world most of our characters inhabit are equal parts male and female.  The idea that you could write a M/M story and not have a female presence is alien to us.  We understand that our readers are looking for the same sex interactions, but sometimes it’s hard to write to those expectations.  Scotty is a prime example of this.  Here is a smart, sassy, sexy lady with a great boyfriend and an inappropriate attraction for her female partner.  But we can never play with that relationship, because the readers of the Creatures of Sin series aren’t looking for F/F or F/F/M stories.  (To be fair, we’ve also wanted to hook Miranda up with Alexandra, but again with the F/F issue.)  We’re professional writers, so will we or nil we, we do take our readers’ preferences into consideration.  But there will always be strong women in all our stories.  Because there are so many strong women in the world.