A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape with Guest Star Tabico

All right, folks, it's time for the less mysterious of my co-conspirators to weigh on our two collaborations. Take it away, Tabico!

I have the memory of a balsa wood elephant, but there are a few moments from my lengthy engagement in this genre that still stand out. One of them was that first week when Spellbound appeared. It was short, sharp, and awesome, and I knew immediately that a new top-shelf talent had appeared in our midst. I didn't know if she would continue to write - Alphax, another best-of-breed storyteller, has only two short pieces to his credit - but I saw right then at that moment that something had dawned.

So later when thrall suggested a collaboration, I was fully on board. I don't recall now (remember the elephant) what sequence of events led to the suggestion, or even for certain that she brought it up, but I'm fairly sure she did. At that point I had already worked with Iago once, and been ecstatic at what we had produced despite an almost complete lack of any subsequent fanmail. The process as well as the product had been really good, so despite the fact that In Darkness Bound totally bombed at the MC Box office, I was ready to give a collaborative work another go.

I don't recall how spiders came up. I do recall, quite distinctly, that thrall had a mental image she wanted to go with, of a mummified figure with cobwebs over her mouth, the cobwebs moving in and out with her breath. I'm into transformations and monster-women, so the half-human half-spider figures are probably from my imagination.

Arachnae turned out well; not genre-defining, but a good yarn with some punch. Moreover, the process of creating it worked well and was fun. In short, we batted the plot back and forth, each picked different sections to write - and free-edited, meaning that we rewrote each other's work as though it were our own.

It's a tricky recipe, that last part, but as I had with Iago, thrall and I hit just the right balance of respect for one another's work and lack of ego when our own stuff was polished. So it was a good experience.

Later on we did Salvation. I recall even less about that effort, but it was also a fun activity. Somehow we missed the mark a bit there - I secretly (well, not so secretly now, eh?) think that "Salvation" although both good and fun could have been really earth-shaking, and wonder what I or we could have done to make it so. The elements are there - the brilliant concept of the slave being rescued who turns the tables on her rescuers. The hot element of the freed slave, now rescuer, who is lured back into slavery. Somehow, though, we missed some element, some tone, that would have made it more molten.

But I regret nothing.

I've prompted thrall a few times (twice, I think) since then about maybe doing something else together, but the time wasn't right or maybe my suggestions just failed to light a fire. In any case, my genre writing has slowed down a bunch. More recently thought hers has increased, (particularly if you take the blog into account), so perhaps there's hope. I still think that, if we could just get exactly the right ingredients, we could write something that people would be talking about years from now.