Killers - Blake Crouch [26]
Joe: I was kinda feeling sorry for them at the end. Remind me why we brought Luther into this, other than to punish our characters.
Blake: Luther is going up against Jack Daniels in the upcoming novel we’re working on called STIRRED, which will conclude both your JD series and my Andrew Z. Thomas series. At the end of SERIAL UNCUT, Luther sees Jack Daniels on the television, talking about Donaldson. He figures if he’s going to go up against this very formidable cop, he should drop in on Donaldson and find out about their run-in (which occurred in the novella TRUCK STOP).
Joe: Luther also knew Lucy from your novella BAD GIRL. Both BAD GIRL and TRUCK STOP were combined with SERIAL to create SERIAL UNCUT. We also brought in Mr. K (the villain from my seventh JD novel, SHAKEN) and Taylor (from AFRAID and TRAPPED.)
Blake: One big, psychopathic family.
Joe: So, will we do the same thing with KILLERS? Make a KILLERS UNCUT?
Blake: I think the chances are very good that a KILLERS UNCUT will appear in the mid-March - April 2011 timeframe.
How was writing KILLERS different from writing SERIAL?
Joe: One thing we did, which I loved, was use Dropbox and Google Docs. We used Dropbox previously with Draculas (co-written with Jeff Strand and F. Paul Wilson). Dropbox is a program that lets people share the same document by saving it in a folder that appears on both people’s computers. But Google docs was new.
Blake: Google docs made the collaboration experience even better, I think, since it allowed us to type in the same document at the same time, and edit each other as we worked. With SERIAL, we wrote it by sending emails back and forth, which now seems kind of clunky. We also kept the instant message feature of Skype open while we wrote so we could ask questions and make comments as we went along.
Joe: I loved it. As with SERIAL, we didn’t read each other’s set-up scenes. So I had no idea how injured Lucy was, if she was lying, if she had weapons, etc. When we both wrote the third part, together, we were really trying to figure out what the other person was thinking. It was a lot like playing chess.
Blake: I was able to trick you into thinking Lucy was paralyzed from the waist down, and that impacted how Donaldson treated her in the final section. Also, I had Lucy hide a few crucial items in sensitive places…
Joe: When Lucy mentioned where the handcuff keys were, I IM’ed you and said “You gotta be fucking kidding…” Turned out to be a pretty funny scene. While SERIAL had some black humor in it, I really didn’t expect to be laughing while writing the sequel.
Let’s talk for a moment about point of view.
Blake: We each wrote our opening scenes (prior to Lucy and Donaldson getting together) from a perspective called 3rd limited, which means you write through your character’s eyes, and narrative is colored by their feelings, their view of the world, and the characters they interact with. But once Lucy and Donaldson got together, the game between you and I was on. For us to write in 3rd limited would have given away what our characters were planning. So we had to write in strict third person with no internal monologue. No indication of what the characters were thinking or feeling. Only action and dialogue. In that sense, it’s a little bit like a screenplay.
Joe: What you see is what you get. And we didn’t read each other’s opening section until after we finished the novella.
Blake: That was a fun experience, finally getting to see what you had done with Donaldson.
Joe: I made myself wince when he was taking off his arm brace.
Blake: That was one of the most uncomfortable scenes I’ve ever read. What is it with you and bone manipulation?
Joe: Have you ever broken a bone? Hurts like hell.
Blake: Never. Only cracked ribs, and it was miserable. The pain lasted for months.
Joe: Your opening with Lucy looking at her skinned legs was pretty intense. I was convinced she had no feeling in them.
Blake: Is this the most intense, disturbing stuff we’ve written to date? More so than the original