Submitted: Touching Silver

Our first book with Juno Books, Chasing Silver, is due for release on September 1st. It will be released as a mass market paperback--the first of four Juno Books plans to release as a mass market paperback this year.

About a week before the editor, Paula Guran, informed us of this decision, she emailed and asked how soon we could complete the sequel to Chasing Silver. We told her by the end of May, which gave us just a little over two months to write the novel from our brief outline.

Sounds crazy, don't it?

We were very excited to have a chance to write this book. What author isn't excited when an editor requests a sequel, right? But Chasing Silver was the first book Vivien and I wrote together. The characters--Nathan, Remy, and Isaac--are very important to us. Well, all of our characters are important to us, but these three have a different meaning. We also had a chance to introduce a new character, Isaac's love interest, Olivia Wright.

Olivia is a smart, no-nonsense, kickass heroine with a great sense of humor. Though she's my character, so I might be a bit biased, lol. I was thrilled to meet her, to bring her to life, and to get to know her. I was especially happy to let her fall in love with Vivien's character, Isaac.

We wrote this book in twelve days, then took another two weeks to edit it. We started it on May 9, 2007, a little over one year after we started Chasing Silver, and submitted it to Paula this afternoon. I won't exactly be doing my happy dance until Paula gets back to us, but in the meantime, I can't deny the very real sense of satisfaction.

I say this to my esteemed writing partner often, but the thought strikes me every day--we make books. How cool is that? We make characters, worlds, mythologies, relationships. This story didn't exist before, but now it does, and we get to share it with the world. Isn't that the coolest job ever?

I'll post a blurb for Touching Silver as soon as I can.