One of the best parts of working on a collaboration like Team Trojan is the camaraderie of having additional input in the writing process. While each author and story are unique, sometimes it’s great to talk out the details with good friends.
Throughout my career, I’ve collaborated on many projects (Breakdown, Stormwatch, Behind Closed Doors, Never Too Late for Love Romantic Suspense, and more) and enjoyed them all.
What made this Team Trojan project unique was the concerted focus we put into building connections and friendships between our heroines.
We started the series planning with five heroes from the same military unit – and those connections were easy to find. But Desiree, Delilah, Reina, Jen, and I wanted to weave in deeper ties for our heroines. After all, these women would eventually help our heroes settle in to their new lives with renewed hope for their respective futures.
The first text I received from Jen is a prime example. She and Reina had been chatting because both of their heroines were from Fool’s Gold, (the fictional town where Elle James new Brotherhood Protectors Colorado division is located).
Jen and Reina had been tossing around ideas about how their heroines knew each other and, since my book followed hers, Jen wanted to brainstorm the best way for our heroines to connect. We started with a women-only hiking group. Obvious for that part of Colorado. And then came the cookies.
Maybe we were both hungry, regardless, we ran with it.
Yes, Jen’s heroine is a sheriff’s deputy and she’d rather have my heroine’s homemade cookies than any stereotypical doughnut on offer. It was a sweet friendship bond and gave our stories a lighthearted spark to offsent the suspense.
Then Reina and I chatted and discovered we had a ton of stuff in common in real life. Eventually, we got to the reason for our call: she knew my heroine was a bit of an introvert and her heroine had the perfect location (her heroine’s ranch) for my heroine to hang out and enjoy some quiet alone time.
The connections we forged for our heroines deepened our connections as authors as we moved through the project. Overall, it was an unexpected and wonderful bonus. And those character insights added more depth to my story as I wrote Defending Avery.
Friendship is an integral part of life, in my opinion, and there’s a mighty strength within the connections we make. Working with authors who are also friends is a special joy and I’m thrilled we could breathe that power and bond into our fictional characters as well.
Live the adventure!
ps The five of us collaborated on two additional series for the Elle James Brotherhood Protectors World! Be sure to check out the Athena Project and Team Wolf.
I like reading these special series. I won’t read any previews of the stories. I like the anticipation and joy of reading the stories in their entirety. Learning more about the writing process the authors I read is intriguing. Knowing that you put so much thought in making the characters real is why they feel like my friends.
It always makes me happy when readers feel like they could be friends with my characters. That extra connection between us as authors makes it more real as we’re writing as well. 🙂