END OF BOOK SHIT
So we’ve decided to do the EOBS a little different this time you guys. I asked Johnathan a few questions about what this new writing partnership has been like for him and he asked me some back. So I hope you enjoy this little change up!
JULIE’S QUESTIONS FOR
- Since this is now your second novel, did you notice it felt different to write book two, versus book one?
- What did you learn about yourself as a writer? Like… did you notice your style evolved?
- What is your favorite thing about writing Tyler’s character?
It doesn’t really feel like a second novel because it’s the same world, same characters, and a continuation of the story. It feels rather more like I’m writing a massive novel spread over four major acts (as in playwriting – what we’re doing is kind of like a big four-act play).
I think what feels different is that Sin With Me was an introduction of characters to the reader – the book was very much constructed to be that – so in Angels Fall, we now have to deliver on the promise of book one. So it’s almost like writing SWM felt like a really great and successful freshman year, and the last thing you want to fall into is a sophomore slump, so I suppose my expectation of and approach to the work was maybe a little more rapacious.
Insofar as there was an urgency present that didn’t feel as palpable in the first book. Because the first book was almost like an experiment, right? Like, “Let’s try this and see how it goes.” And when it felt like it went well, there’s that self-imposed responsibility to replicate that successful experience.
Now, as I write this, Sin With Me has yet to be released, and so who knows how it will be received. But that’s not what I mean when I say “successful.” I mean it felt like a successful artistic endeavor, and so that’s the only measuring stick I’m using. And honesty, it’s the only one I really care about.
Which is, of course, bullshit.
I very much care about how readers respond. It is for readers that I am doing this. But when all is said and done, I’m the one in the mirror when I brush my teeth, so I’m the one I have to live with ALL the time, and I’m the one who has to feel proud about what I’ve made. And if I feel that I’ve done the best possible work I can, in whatever the medium is I’m working, that’s what lets me sleep at night.
There’s a great TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love. It’s on YouTube. Check it out if you haven’t. It’s all about “genius.” The idea of it. The premise of it. The burden of it. And she discusses the onus an artist puts on him or herself when they feel an obligation to replicate an achievement. At the end of the day, she concludes that success or even “good work” is not the creator’s to own. Because the creator isn’t really. Not really the “creator,” I mean. I am not the source. The universe is the source. And if I get lucky and the special gift from the universe (in this case the story, the book) lands in my brain, then I’m fortunate. But it’s not mine to claim.
Now, let’s be clear, this is also an easy way to divert responsibility if you make something shitty. (“Wasn’t me. The universe made the shitty thing and I just handed it over.”) But if, in the striving to create, one can free oneself from the responsibility of having to make something perfect, then you actually liberate your mind to find the specialness hidden inside of what you’re doing. The work can breathe. And that’s true for just about all of life.
So, I’m not sure that answers the question, but that’s how it felt.
Although I’m an actor first and these are my first proper novels, I’ve been writing for a long, long time, so my style/my voice is pretty firmly established. But the thing about writing in the first person is that the voice is the voice of the character you’re writing. So stylistically, I suppose there’s something about Tyler and Maddie’s voices that steer me and not the other way around. Y’know, I’m eager to see how the tone of the next books we have planned after the Original Sin series emerge and change.
I can say that I have learned, quite frankly, I can write much more quickly than I ever thought possible. Writing a series of books to be released in the tight time frame we have for this series has been a real test of my ability to do fifty things at once, if nothing else. Because I’m also still working on my other two careers (acting and producing/writing television), I have every moment of every day filled with something active. Which I’m not complaining about. It’s amazing.
I have never been good with downtime. Someone asked me recently what my hobbies are, and I was like, “what’s that now?” I’m lucky enough to practice my hobbies for a living, so with the addition of novel writing to my résumé, I get to wake up every day with something creative to focus on.
That said, MAN WE’RE WRITING A LOT OF BOOKS QUICKLY.
So I suppose this entire experience is teaching me to be patient and at the same time urgent. Which sound like contrary skills, I suppose. But when melded together become something akin to efficiency.
Y’know, truth be told, I’m learning something about myself as a writer that I always knew, but is being reinforced: I’m willing to die for an idea I believe in. You learn very quickly in television to pick your battles carefully. Not everything is precious and not everything is worth saving. In the parlance of TV writing (and probably other writing too) it’s known as “killing your babies.” Which is macabre as fuck, but ideas do feel like babies. Things that have been birthed from your brain and that feel precious. So picking and choosing what to stomp your feet about and what to roll over on is a talent you have to cultivate.
All that said, if there’s an idea or plot point or character attribute that I believe in strongly, I will burn down the whole fucking village if I have to in order to defend it. And I hope that I do that sparingly enough that it doesn’t become white noise. I value my writing partnership with Julie exceedingly much and honoring and respecting that partnership while at the same time standing fast behind my passionate opinions is something I think I’m maybe learning how to balance even more than I already knew.
Because working with Julie is something that I think I’m going to be doing for a long time. And like any long-lasting relationship you need to grow together. Not as one. That’s fucking stupid. I hate it when people say dumb shit like that. Because forfeiture of your own personality and sense of individual passion isn’t collaboration, it’s co-dependence. But growing as individuals on parallel tracks is crucial for longevity and what I aspire to in all the relationships I have that are worth keeping.
I guess I also learned that I can be honest with someone I’m working with and that vulnerability strengthens the working relationship. Laura, my wife, is the only person on earth who knows me almost as well as I do. I am completely and unabashedly myself with her at all times. I owe her that. I said vows and shit to that effect. (Actually... Truth be told... We had a Conservative Jewish wedding ceremony, so the whole thing was in Hebrew. Laura and I joke all the time that neither one of us are completely sure what the fuck we vowed to do. Or if we’re even really married. The rabbi could’ve just been fucking with us. Anyway.)
But after Laura, Julie knows more about me and sees more about the person I am than probably anyone else on the planet. And that shit has happened quickly. And that’s fucking intense. But we’re making work together that’s intense, so the relationship has to be brazen.
And I guess that even though I’m a cold-blooded motherfucker who doesn’t trust anybody... I trust her. And that’s something I’ve learned about myself as a writer, and a partner, and a person. I can trust more than just one other person on this planet. I can trust two. So, good. Quota’s all full. Now I can stop trusting people again. Phew.
I don’t have one thing about Tyler that I like. Or Maddie either for that matter.
I love everything about both of them.
Years and years ago, I was acting in a play at Lincoln Center in NYC. I was in rehearsal one day, figuring out the character, and the director gave me a simple note that changed my entire life. He said: “Don’t judge him.”
That was it. Probably one of a dozen notes he handed out that day, but for me it was just about the most important thing I had ever heard. Because what that note actually meant was “don’t think about what the character is doing, just do it.”
And that translates into writing, big time. Write your characters. Don’t judge them.
So when I’m writing inside the minds of Tyler or Maddie, I’m just going on the journey with them. They’re leading me. Sometimes they’ll do shit that I’m totally not expecting. At the end of the third book in this series, Tyler does something that I was not expecting at all. I was just writing and the next thing I know this thing was on my computer screen that I hadn’t planned. The structure of the journey and the scene stayed the same, but Tyler’s behavior in it was totally unanticipated by me. And shit, if I’m surprised, the readers most likely will be too.
I can tell you a moment that happened in this book that’s like that: Way back in book one, Sin With Me, in the chapter where Tyler and Maddie connect up for the first time, there’s a bartender who calls Tyler “chief.” Tyler goes off on a mental rant about how he hates it when people call him “chief.” He says he’s not sure why, it just rubs him the wrong way. And I didn’t have a specific reason for writing that back then, it just felt right and I knew that it made sense.
Then in this book, in the chapter after Maddie and Tyler have sex in The Four Seasons on Thanksgiving, they run into Tyler’s estranged father in the lobby. And even though that’s a Maddie chapter, I was tasked with writing that portion of this book because Julie had her hands full with other work and in order to keep our deadlines, I had to take the first pass at it. Which we can do with each other because for the most part, everything’s been plotted and outlined, and Julie and I know what’s going to happen in each chapter. But the tiny details, the nuance, that’s found in the moment. So while I knew that we were about to meet Tyler’s dad, I didn’t know exactly how that interaction would go.
So when Tyler’s father didn’t recognize his son and then leaned into him and said, “Didn’t catch your name, chief...?” I actually gasped. I remember it vividly. I was writing on an airplane, and I leaned back in my seat, put my fist up to my mouth, and gasped. Because I discovered WHY Tyler feels a way about something that I knew he did but didn’t know where the origins of his feelings came from. Until that moment.
So that’s my favorite thing. That magical discovery. And it’s not just restricted to Tyler. It’s every moment of everything that happens. There’s a bunch of moments like the one I just described in this book (and all of them), but I won’t inundate you with them. I’ll just say that as Julie and I are writing this series, thus far, nothing feels forced and there are many magical moments that are causing us to feel, like the Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk, that we are just the conduits. We are not the controllers of this saga. It is simply passing through us on its way to you. And we hope you love reading it as much as we have loved writing it.
Because without you, there would be no need for us.
My thanks, my love, and my unceasing gratitude to you all.
-JM
11 February 2018
JOHNATHAN’S QUESTIONS FOR
1. Now that you’re several books into this partnership process, has working together been harder, easier, or about what you expected?
I think it’s both easier and harder at times. Like… when it’s easy, it’s VERY easy. And when it’s hard, it’s VERY hard. I don’t know if that makes sense, but so many things we’ve done together just come naturally. Like writing the TV pilot was incredibly easy. And Sin With Me was incredibly easy as well.
Since I’d never written a screenplay before (and no idea how to even start to do that) Johnathan took lead on that. And it was all very satisfying for me because I’d already written the story. The world was mine, the characters were mine, all the dynamics between the characters were mine. And Johnathan didn’t try to change that at all. I mean, I’m gonna be honest and tell you that the STORY is different. Certain things that happened in the book have been changed, but never once did I hesitate about it. It all felt right. Throughout the entire script-writing process I felt that Johnathan and I were one hundred percent making The Company a BETTER story.
And the best part of writing The Company was filling in the details of scenes I only hinted at (like when Harper kills everyone on her birthday) and expanding that into a real scene. Because I never wrote that scene in the books and it turns out, when we were finally “done” with the pilot, it ended up being the first scene. We had started the writing process thinking the scene with James and Sasha out on the prairie was the first scene, but it got bumped because the Nick and Harper on that super yacht was so just… EVERYTHING. So fantastic!
So when we started writing Sin With Me I took lead because, let’s be honest, I’ve done this a shitload of times. Just like he was the expert script-writer, I was the expert romance novel writer. And it went pretty easy. At least FOR ME. Lol Because Johnathan let me take lead and adapted his style to mine. Which I was grateful for.
But when it came time to write Angels Fall, I could see that he was maybe struggling a little to adapt to my “easy-going” style. Like when I write, if I fuck something up, I let it go until I’m done. Because I’m me, I know what I did wrong, I know how it needs to be fixed, and when I’m writing alone, the most important thing is to just… KEEP WRITING!
Writing with a partner changed all that. I mean, he can’t read my mind. I wish he could, but he can’t. And I knew it was kinda driving him crazy that I would just fuck shit up in the story and tell him to worry about it later, ya know, like I usually do when I write alone. So we agreed to try his style for book two.
Johnathan is kind of a perfectionist. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but he doesn’t like to make mistakes. He likes to get it right. So for this book when I’d fuck something up he didn’t let me say, “Later.” He wanted it fixed. Which was a hard adjustment for me. So when things got hard, they got REALLY HARD. It’s like… we have no middle, we’re either cruising along and everything is perfect, or we’re at full stop because we’re having issues.
I’d be lying if I said it’s been perfect, but I’m not lying when I say I wouldn’t change a thing. Not one thing about how we write, or what it took to come to an understanding, or anything. Things worth doing require effort and we are a thousand times better because of our disagreements because we’re honest about working things out. But all relationships require WORK. And all the work we did on our writing relationship (and friendship too) paid off in the end. We’re more committed now than we were yesterday. We’re better writing partners today than we were last month. And we’re better friends too.
I think Angels Fall is a GREAT book. I love it so much. It might be my favorite of the series, although I love them all. I think Maddie came into her own in Angels Fall this is the book that made me fall in love with her.
2. You’re working simultaneously on jointly written books and solo work. Can you keep all the stories in your head at once, or do you have to parse out time for each?
It’s pretty easy for me to keep the stories straight once I’m actually writing. Because I write in first person I AM the character I’m writing. So, for example, right now I’m writing The Pleasure of Panic as my solo book. And when I’m Issy Grey or Finn Murphy, I’m THEM. I know how they are, what they’re doing, and where they need to go. And when I’m writing Maddie and Tyler, I’m THEM. And so it’s pretty easy for me to switch between stories because what I’m really doing is switching between characters.
The one thing that IS very difficult is finding TIME to write all these people. :) But Johnathan has been a champ about this part. He has been really great about it. So thank you, Johnathan. I appreciate that more than you know.
3. At this point in the Huss-McClain adventure, the TV series version of THE COMPANY is getting closer to happening every day. Does it feel exciting? Nerve wracking? Still too far from being real to feel like anything yet?
It’s still kinda unreal to me. I mean, I was in London a couple weeks ago and I had to have a call with the entertainment lawyers about the book rights for the TV series deal and just listening to them explain things to me was both exciting and scary. (I’m in good hands, so don’t worry about the scary part!) So it’s starting to “become” more real as time goes on, the negotiations get further along, and the reality of what it will really mean if we make it to the finish line sinks in. And at the end of the call my lawyer says, “So, do you feel good about this”?” My answer was, “I have no clue what I’m doing.” And he replied, “You’re in London to sign books for fans who love you, so you know exactly what you’re doing.”
And I appreciated that little reality check. Like… it’s OK. I’m doing fine. We’re gonna figure this out together. So… yeah, I’m a little excited. And once we hammer out this initial deal and sign those papers I’m gonna be very excited because that’s when I get to TALK to people—important people—about what I created. About what Johnathan and I BOTH created when we took on this new project. And yeah, if it all goes through I’m probably gonna cry with happiness. Because these characters in The Company are REAL to me. And being able to see them come to life on TV, and follow them, and fall in love with them all over again—I have no emotion to really describe how that will feel, I just know it will be amazing.
THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU, for being a part of my life and going on all these journeys with me. I started this new Huss/McClain partnership with YOU GUYS in mind. So I hope you’re loving this new period of my writing career as much as I am.
--JH
March, 6, 2018
Original Sin is a four-book series that releases three weeks apart starting March 6, 2018. So chances are good that next book is already on sale.
Johnathan and I would like to thank all of you for reading our second book together. We hope you enjoy it just as much as all the books I wrote alone. Actually, we hope you like this better. :)
And if you’ve got a minute, and you liked the world we created, and the story we told, and the characters we gave life to… then please consider leaving us a review online where you purchased the book.
We are not traditionally published – WE ARE INDIE.
And we rely on reviews and word-of-mouth buzz to get our books out there. So tell a friend about it if you have a chance. We’d really appreciate that.
Much love,
Julie & Johnathan
www.HussMcClain.com