The Bond Of Writing A Novel Together By Angel Payne And Victoria Blue

6 June 2017

A bond between souls is ancient - older than the planet.” ― Dianna Hardy, The Witching Pen

No Broken Bond

It's Memorial Day here in the US, and I’m relaxing in our home by the beach in Southern California. Unfortunately, it’s very gloomy outside, so I think the typical Memorial Day plans of beach going and picnics may yield to indoor pleasures, like reading!

I’m Victoria Blue, and I’m thrilled to send you all a message regarding our new book, No Broken Bond, book 7 in the Secrets of Stone series. This series has been co-written by my fabulous friend, Angel Payne, and me.

While the book is about three (yes, I said three) lovers, trying to find their way through a near tragedy, I thought it might be fun to talk about the bonding experience of co-writing a novel. More often than not, we are asked exactly how does this process work and how did we come into this arrangement in the first place.

I got my start in the literary world rather late in life. When I was younger, I never really had the lust to read as I do now, and honestly, it wasn’t until I picked up the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer that I understood what ‘getting lost in a book’ could truly mean.

From there, I discovered contemporary romance as a whole. Hot books with a love story at the core, driving the characters and plot through to the end. It was magical and I found myself consuming book after book within the genre.

Which led me to discover the amazing and smartly written stories from Angel. Her storytelling style was different than a lot of what I had read, and engaging in ways others weren't. When I discovered how close we lived to one another, I reached out to her on Facebook and we set up a lunch date.

I think we both knew right away how much we had in common, especially regarding books and modern-day love stories. I ended up having a spine surgery with a long recovery soon after, and, at her suggestion, started writing in an online group that she was a part of. That lead her to approach me about a possible collaboration on a future project.

And so the Secrets of Stone were born, and a friendship that I believe will last a lifetime.

Our friend, Lexi Blake, once said, “If you plan on doing a collaboration, be sure you really like the person, because you will be spending more time with them than your spouse during the process.” Truer words could not have been spoken.

We approach a story/plot in two very different ways, but the combination of our voices creates a complete, incredible book in the end. We do a lot of document sharing via Dropbox and a lot of messaging back and forth while we are creating a story.

Please check out the latest book in our series, No Broken Bond. We are currently running a ‘Sharing is Caring’ contest where one lucky participant will win a $50 Amazon.com gift card. Check out the details here: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9e14eeb321/?

We love to stay in touch with readers! Feel free to reach out!