I’d like to welcome Mina Carter and Bethany J Barnes who are celebrating the release of their Sci-fi Erotic Romance, Taming the Wildcat, which was released by Summerhouse Publishing earlier this month. Please give them a warm welcome and make sure you take the time to enter their contest. Over to BJ and Mina…
Hi all *waves madly* I’d like to thank Shelley for hosting BJ and I today. We promise not to break anything, or scare anyone off (maybe)!
Mina: Today we’re going to be talking about co-authoring. Personally, I love co-authoring. Writing can be a very solitary activity (just ask any author’s family). Very often I can hole up for weeks at a time with my laptop and a host of notebooks, snarling at anyone who tries to disturb my writing time and eating a year’s supply of chocolate. (I’ve always maintained I’m in shape. Round is a shape, right?)
Co-authoring alleviates the loneliness that comes with the writing territory. I talk themes, motivations and plot to my husband and he gives me a blank look. The same can be said for my friends, until I’m reduced to muttering to myself and people look at me as though I’m mad. Unless they know me, then they already KNOW I’m mad.
Anyway…co-authors. Finding a person to write with is like an epiphany (or at the very least a damn good chocolate sundae). Suddenly you have a person who will not only listen whilst you rabbit on about your newest shiny plot with all its characters and their subplots but…they actually talk back. Far from avoiding eye contact and making a break for the door, they make comments, ask questions and add to the plot.
From navigating your own course through the choppy world of the first draft, where you have to fight awkward characters, writers block and plot issues, you have back up :D Someone to work through a scene with, help you with that trouble sentence, slap you when you’ve used the same word twenty times in the last two paragraphs (you laugh, I’m good at that one!).
Mina: BJ and I spend hours writing together over the somewhat clunky medium of skype. We each take a character and write primarily for that person. I’m a plotter, so we tend to have a plot worked out in advance (after we’ve hunted and pinned down a couple of the ever present plot bunnies) and then we write over the course of a couple of weeks.
BJ: I don’t talk to my husband about writing. He’s very analytical and has no imagination (unless it involves ways for him to be the goofy and annoying). He also doesn’t read. Not he can’t read, he chooses not to. He’d rather wait for a movie if a book sounds interesting. The most I can get out of him is for him to keep me supplied with Coca-Cola (I don’t drink coffee. I know! The lifeblood of authors the world round and I don’t drink it. Coke is my caffeine of choice), Doritos and chocolate in various forms.
Co-authoring is something rather new to me. I can thank and blame Mina for setting my feet on that path in the first place. We met and became friends through a mutual friend (waves spastically to Nic). When Mina found out I was writing a book, we started talking about it and she became interested in hearing more about it. She offered to become my crit partner and from then on, we talked about each other’s writing. Finding someone to be able to talk about characters and plots with was incredible. Someone as crazy (and sometimes crazier) as I was about writing and great characters? Awesome! She also started telling me about another form of writing she was involved in. Star Trek based RPG (role playing game). She had several characters that I became interested in and eventually, as with all of her writing, I was hooked.
Writing on the sims was the first time I had ever written with anyone else. I totally blame her for getting me hooked on the sims. Writing with others was FUN! When it ended up that the character I created sounded like she’d be a good match for one of Mina’s characters’ sons, the mother of all plot bunnies reared its head. Pretty soon, we were talking about what they’d be like together. That’s how Roz and Summer came to life. From the amount of story that was quickly filling up our heads about them, we knew that we had to write about them in a book so we could explore their characters in ways we couldn’t on the sim. Hehehehe…that translates into sex as well as character development. We didn’t want to limit their interactions when it came to how they met.
Now, co-authoring is one of my favorite things to do, even though I’m still learning as I go along. Writing with Mina is an absolute adventure and joy. I’m very blessed that she took me under her wing and showed me the ropes on how to write with another person. We’re still getting ambushed on a daily basis by rabid plot bunnies that keep telling us about this couple or that one. So far we’ve got more bunnies than we have time to write, but we’ll get around to writing more in the Sargosian Chronicles soon.
We just have to shoot or stomp on the plot bunnies that keep popping up when we’re trying to focus on current projects or they’d take over. I don’t know who I’m kidding here…they took over a while ago. Between them and the muses (for me the characters become the muse and let me tell you they are very vocal about how they should be written or what they would or wouldn’t do), I’ve had to embrace the insanity. I’ve always been crazy, but this is an all new level of coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs!
Disclaimer: No plot bunnies were harmed in the making of this post. *snickers* No…really. They are all safe and sound…for now.
Thank you so much Shelley, for letting us stop by so we could blog about co-authoring. Seriously, if anyone could see what goes into our Skype chats besides our writing, they’d wonder if we were drinking whacky juice or taking some mind altering pharmaceuticals. We aren’t, by the way…we just have that much fun together.
I’ve often wondered, before I did this myself, how people wrote books together. I always wondered how they meshed their ideas together. Now I know and hopefully, we’ve explained it a bit for your readers.
Mina Carter was born and raised in Middle Earth (otherwise known as the Midlands, England). After a slew of careers ranging from logistics to land-surveying she can now be found in the wilds of Leicestershire with her husband and young daughter…the true boss of the family.
Suffering the curse of eternal curiosity Mina never tires of learning new skills which has led to Aromatherapy, Corsetry, Chain-maille making, Welding, Canoeing, Shooting, and pole-dancing to name but a few. A veteran Star Trek RPGer, she’s run both games and groups of games but now finds her home in Bravo Fleet,one of the internet’s oldest Star Trek simm groups.
She juggles being a mum, working full time and writing, tossing another ball in the air with her cover artwork. For Mina, writing time is the wee hours of the morning before anyone wakes up and starts making demands, or any spare minute that can be begged, bought or conned.
Her first stories were penned at age 11, when she used a stationery set meant for Christmas thank you letters to write stories instead. More recently, she wrote for her own amusement and to save on outrageous monthly book bills. Now she’s totally addicted and needs her daily writing fix or heads roll! To learn more about Mina’s books visit her website.
A fiery-tempered stay at home mom by day, Bethany J. Barnes is really a superhero in disguise. Equally at home creating fantastical worlds and the men and women who inhabit them or driving armed across county to collect a hot male (her gorgeous horse, Tristan), she’ll happily wrestle rattlesnakes, rescue baby owls or perform strenuous casting tests for male leads in her stories. An active RPGer, B.J. is equally happy writing hot paranormal or steamy sci-fi and is the mainstay of many online games. An accomplished photographer, B.J.’s specialties are concert and equine photography. She’s dabbled in wedding photography, but has no patience for Bridezillas.
PS – She’s been known to shoot a bumble bee hovering in midair. Not a lady to be messed with! To learn more about Bethany’s books visit her website.
CONTEST:
Mina and Bethany are giving away a $10 Amazon voucher to one commenter during their tour. Increase your chances of winning by following their tour.

Blurb:
Fresh out of a disciplinary that almost ruined her career and landed her in jail, Summer King is out for a much needed night on the town…or bar district in her local space station. It seems this King girl can’t stay out of trouble though, causing a bar brawl within minutes of her arrival.
Roz Taren is a mercenary, leader of the Wildcats, and a man who knows what he wants. Right now, that’s the pretty girl in the purple dress. Rescuing her from the unwanted attentions of a bunch of drunks lands her right in his bed for the hottest weeked he’s ever experienced.
Then she’s recalled and Roz discovers his little firebird is a fleet pilot aka insane crazy with a side of total fruitloop. Fleet pilots live fast, die young and leave legends behind. When he recieves word her ship is lost with all hands, Roz must bury her along with his heart.
Only this firebird isn’t your garden variety. This bird is a Phoenix…one out to tame a Wildcat.
Purchase Taming the Wildcat