Blood and Whiskey
(A Cowboy and Vampire Thriller)
Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall
Wanted: Lizzie Vaughan, Dead or Alive. Relationships are always hard, but for a broke cowboy and a newly turned Vampire, true love may be lethal. After barely surviving an undead apocalypse in The Cowboy and the Vampire, Tucker and Lizzie hightail it back to quirky LonePine, Wyoming (population 438), to start a family. But she's got a growing thirst for blood and he's realizing that mortality ain't all it's cracked up to be when your girlfriend may live forever. With a scheming Vampire nation hot on their boot heels and a price on her head, how far will Lizzie and Tucker go to protect their unlikely love? Blending evolution, religion and an overly sensitive cow dog named Rex, Blood and Whiskey drags the Vampire myth into the modern west, delivering double-barreled action, heart-pounding passion and wicked humor.
Published by~Pumpjack Press
Pages 347
Find “Blood and Whiskey” on Amazon
“Writing Together, and Other Full Contact Sports”
Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall
When a husband and
wife team up to write, it can be a no-holds-barred, bare knuckle cage match ...
just the way we like it.
We have been writing together for 15 years — with the scars
to prove it — and can say without hesitation that it’s not for the faint of heart.
Writing with a lover takes unwavering focus, deep trust, grim determination and
a willingness to push beyond your limits to reach a shared goal. It’s a lot
like a team sport, only with less athletic tape.
Our book, The Cowboy
and the Vampire: A Very Unusual Romance, was first published in 1999 — the
first “win” for the home team of McFall and Hays. When we ripped open the
manila envelope and saw the proof copy and smelled that new book smell, we knew
all the hard work and long nights and fights and tears (mostly from Clark) were
totally worth it. We spent the next decade perfecting our techniques (translation:
overcoming the various obstacles, including inertia, we kept throwing in our
own way). The Cowboy and the Vampire
was reissued in 2010. And then we seriously (finally, and long overdue) stepped
up our game to write the next book in the series, Blood and Whiskey. Published in May 2011, we got that same
“cross-the-finish-line” rush when the advanced reading copies arrived by mail.
We don’t have any championship rings yet (like, say, J. K.
Rowling), but we’re not rookies either. We’ve learned a lot about sustaining the
magic, mystery and madness necessary to reach peak performance in the often-bruising
world of paired writing.
What to expect: writing
together is a lot like …
Ultimate fighting: At least it
can feel that way. Working together on such an overly-intimate and highly-creative
project can lead to a lot of arguments — like, “we need a referee and instant replay”
kind of arguments — especially when we are knee-deep in editing mode. We fight
about important thematic issues and also about tiny topics, like overuse of
semi-colons. Bringing together two very different world views into one seamless
final product, especially for two people who are aggressively confident, can
lead to a few below the belt shots. But when the final bell rings, we know that
we’re better writers by working together. So maybe it’s more like…
Doubles tennis: Serving
up great writing requires a deep and abiding trust and respect for your
partner. You have to know they will always be there for you when you can’t
quite reach the next level, and that no matter what, they will not let you
down. Even if one of us feels like hanging back on the baseline, the other can
charge the net. It’s love/love, advantage, Hays/McFall, but since there really
is no opponent, maybe it’s more like…
Synchronized swimming:
Yep, that’s it. The secret to writing together is to rein in the natural
impulse to race ahead alone and instead find a routine that allows us to stay in
perfect synch. Boxing may be more dramatic, but treading water while matching
each other requires the exact skills needed to co-author.
Training regime
To write like a pro, you have to train like a pro. We start off with
extended sets of … reading. Reading great fiction (or nonfiction) keeps the
mind limber and ready to produce good work. We fall asleep every night reading
something. It sounds like a tougher training regime than it actually is, but
we’re always tired and fall asleep fast. We thought about starting a reading
journal to keep track of progress, but realized it would just be depressing in
its brevity.
As for actual writing, we like to stay loose, stay hydrated
and keep that pen moving. Or keyboard clacking. We write something every day,
and have strict schedules when we’re working on a project. Right now, we’re
working on book three in The Cowboy and
Vampire Thriller Series, tentatively titled Undead Asylum. That means working every night during the week, and
twice as much on weekends. Just pace yourself or risk one of those
career-ending writer injuries like a dislocated muse.
A note about performance
enhancing substances
Our industry is filled with stories of people who use illicit substances to
improve performance and we are totally those people. Here’s what we normally
use:
- Coffee — and lots of it.
- Cocktails — very important to take the edge off
after a full day of writing; a martini for Kathleen and a Sazerac for Clark …
or three.
- Sleep — when all else fails, a good night’s
sleep can work wonders for the creative mind.
- Exhaustion — conversely, studies have shown that
humans are the most creative when exhausted; something about the brain
naturally taking short cuts to solve problems and make connections to preserve
energy. Creativity springs from being tired and we are ALWAYS tired
That’s just a fraction of what we’ve learned along the way,
but we don’t want to give too much away. There will probably never be an Olympic
event related to writing together but if there is, team McFall and Hays is
looking for gold.
To learn more about the books, or connect with us, you can
find us at:
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How about that for a guest post?! I loved it! I hope you did too, and I hope it spurs (get it, cowboy reference?) you on to take a bite (ahem, vampire reference...) out of this book! Thank you to Kathleen and Clark for a terrific post!
*Liz
