Never Thought I'd Have A Co-Author ...

My whole life was spent this way. I'd consume book after book after book and have not a single person to share the emotions the books cause. A character would die and nobody was there to cry with me.  A hero takes action and stands up against evil, and I'd be the only one smiling with pride and love for the character.

Thank goodness I met Lynsi in 2005 when we were both fresh out of high school and starting college.  We became friends instantly, fell out of contact for years later, and now we talk almost every day on Facebook about books.  She's got me hooked on her genre, she's become my co-author on this series I'm working on. 

And what do you know?  Having a co-author isn't as bad as I always feared it would be.  In fact, I'm loving it. I do all the writing, but she reads over my work and lets me know when a character is not acting the way that their personality would demand them to behave.  I have this tendency to turn hardcore characters more mild, using words they never would use in a million years.  And when tough Rain Maddox starts sounding whiney and pouty, Lynsi lets me know how Rain REALLY would behave in the situation. 

I write, she reads it, we discuss it, I make revision notes.  I go back to those scenes and fix them and send them to her again for approval.  It is a long process, sure.  Not supposed to edit until the whole story is written because the most important thing is to simply get the story written down.  However, this really has been working wonderfully.  She's great with characterization (my weakness), and we spend hours each night (sometimes from 11 p.m. until four or five in the morning) discussing our story, creating new characters, defining them, google imaging random people to try and find people who look like our characters so we have actual visuals to help with the writing, and mapping out future scenes and plot.  Right now we are planning a five book series.  Could easily become more, but we are limiting ourselves to five for the time being.

One of my favorite characters I came up with so far (besides Rain and our gay couple we just created a few nights ago) is Ainslie.  She's so fragile and delicate ... with a whole other side to her you would NEVER expect, but that's all I'm saying. 

How could I not give co-authorship to Lynsi when, thanks to her help, I'm creating my own amazing characters that are almost worthy of Fever or BDB status?  We're hoping for third place after those two series, actually.

Aim big if we're going to aim at all, right?