AtoZChallenge 2015: C is for Collaboration

Hello and welcome to day 3 of the AtoZ Challenge 2015. This year we are talking about the ‘why’ behind our books.

Welcome, this is Tasha, and Sophie will be talking in a little bit, so I shall try and keep it short and sweet 🙂 . Sacrifice of An Angel (scroll down for the FREE book offer) is a contemporary fantasy murder mystery set in the depths of the home counties and it is one of the few books Sophie and I wrote together. Think Harry Potter meets Midsomer Murders.

We decided we wanted to write together and collaborate very early on, even though we have rarely done it before. This is because we believed that together we could bring something to the novel that we might, not necessarily, do alone. Soph is a language geek and really enjoyed putting together a magical language for us. I’m more of a leap to the plot person so I loved hashing out all the ins and outs and that’s just one example for each of us.

It took a lot of preparation to be able to write together, but, in the end, it was very rewarding.

Sophie here now – and yeah, I will agree with Tash that it took a lot of prep to work together (there were some spectacular rows)! Anyway – why – well, I can tell you why I loved writing this book and am looking forward to working on the rest in the series, that would be the twins, our main characters, Remy and Theo. They’re not self-inserts, well there are aspects of us in the twins, the way they interact, the practiced knowing of each other, but they are very different characters from us. It was brilliant fun working on them, planning out who they were, their back stories, everything to do with their daily lives – something that I don’t think I do as a writer when I’m writing alone – not in that much detail anyway. The detail was needed because we were working together and we have to make sure we both understood the universe we were working in.

So, yes, the twins and playing with all that magic in a modern setting were what kept me writing Sacrifice of An Angel.

Do you have a special connection to a character, one you wrote, or one you’ve read or watched?

FREE Book Offer

Sacrifice of An Angel by Natasha Duncan-Drake and Sophie Duncan

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The body of a girl in a ceremonial robe is found sprawled on a playground roundabout, her throat brutally ripped out. Is it a ritualistic, magical murder or a setup to distract from the real killer? That is the question that faces Theo and Remy Haward, detectives in the Sorcerous Crimes Task Force (SeCT), when they are called to the scene.

*Click Smashwords to go to the book on their site. Click the buy option. Put the code in the Coupon Code box, click ‘apply coupon’ and the book will be free. Coupon is only guaranteed to be valid for 3rd April so please use immediately.

Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)

AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.

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Twins!

by Sophie Duncan

Most people had no idea what it meant to be a twin and Theo didn’t think about it very often, his fraternal bond with Remy just was. A knowing, an innate understanding of each other, a oneness that transcended all else.

Theo snorted to himself as that last thought sounded pretentious, even to him. Philosophy was all very well, but what it came down to was the fact that he was ‘the sensible twin’, the cleaner-up of Remy’s ‘oopses’.

He smiled ruefully to himself and bent to help Remy up from the magical heap his brother had just landed in.

~*~

The Haward Mysteries

Remy and Theo Haward weren’t expected to be police officers, they had trained to be Magical Technicians (MTechs), a respectable job for any Natural Magic User. However, after a traumatic attack left Theo fighting for his life, they chose to join the front line of magical law enforcement. Now detectives in the Sorcerous Crimes Taskforce’s, Murder Squad, they form a formidable team investigating deaths that the rest of Britain can’t explain and doesn’t know about.