Spend the day with Donna & Bree (Moira Rogers)

If there’s one thing that Brynn Adler hates, it’s feeling helpless and vulnerable in unfamiliar territory. Three weeks ago, life tossed her into a just such a world. A world of werewolves she never knew existed-until she found out her sister is one of them.

The pack seems determined to hurry her back to the normal world of humans. But after everything she’s witnessed, she’s not sure she wants to go-especially if it means leaving not only her sister behind, but the one man who makes her forget her life is falling apart.

Now all she has to do is convince him to agree to a plan to force the pack to let her stay.

Joe Mitchell has been battling his protective instincts since he rescued Brynn from her kidnapper. Getting involved with her is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. She’s on shaky emotional ground, and a supernatural war is no place for a human woman. He’s not about to let her make a hasty decision, one that will only bring her pain and regret.

Now all he has to do is let her go.

Available June 9, 2009 from Samhain Publishing.

Donna:  Good morning!  Huge thanks to Greta for having us today.  It’s always loads of fun to stop by and hang out for a while.

Bree: Absolutely!  And today she’s given us a chance to answer (obliquely) the question we get most often: “How the heck do you two do that whole co-writer thing anyway?”

Donna:  Everyone wonders.  Being a writer seems like such a solitary pursuit, and it’s really hard to figure how some people do it in tandem. Especially since every partnership I’ve seen works differently!

Bree:  Including ours, depending on the day, the time, how close the looming deadlines are and if we’ve had chocolate and/or NyQuil.

Donna:  Ryan Reynolds movies have been known to derail writing time too. But that’s neither here nor there.

Bree: So with those facts firmly established, how about an introduction to A Day In The Life of Moira Rogers.  Which usually starts somewhere between 8-9 am for me, because I don’t have any toddlers in my house and my day job is two time-zones behind me.  (I love my home office.)

Donna:  For me, it’s usually more like seven or so.  Whenever my younger daughter wakes up and drags me out of bed.  She’s what my husband calls a “morning person,” but I’m not really sure what that is.

Bree:  The first thing I do is find a source of caffeine, usually Diet Pepsi Max. (God I need to cut back on that stuff.)  Then I start the e-mail adventure and say something on yahoo so Donna knows I’m (mostly) coherent. This is something like, “Mph.” Or maybe, “Blah, I’m awake.”

Donna:  I make breakfast for the kids and myself and promptly forget to eat it as I check my email and stuff.

Bree:  The reason I haven’t mentioned breakfast yet is because I’m not going to remember it until at least noon.  I’m too busy trying to prioritize the day between what needs writing, what needs updating, what needs coding–and what fascinating stuff has gone down on twitter because I swear, everyone gets up before me.

Donna:  By noon, I will have played with the kids, tried to teach them something you can’t see on Noggin (harder than it sounds!), and made lunch. Which, woefully, I also usually forget to eat.

Bree:  Which is about the earliest we ever manage any of the actual writing. And I think that’s the mysterious part, because we don’t sit down and write. Donna’s kids don’t disappear, and neither does my job.

Donna:  No, our writing basically consists of both of us tossing pieces of manuscripts back and forth via email–constantly.  It’s literally a matter of chipping away at the books, bit by tiny bit.

Bree: My day is an infinite loop.  Write 50 words on one manuscript. Answer e-mail. Write 75 words on second manuscript. Write some code.  Write 1 word on the third and get laughed at by Donna.  Answer a phone call. Go to manuscript one.

Donna:  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Only mine is: write, referee a toddler fight, write, answer the phone, write, load the dishwasher, write, edit, write…  I’m tired.

Bree:  We really can’t participate in the various challenges and word wars, because in any given 1/2 hour I’m only writing for about 5-7 minutes.  But that’s the thing–we don’t just do it at set times.  Write 15 minutes an hour for 10 hours and you’ve got a solid chunk of time every day.

Donna:  But it also means we need to be coordinated, or it slows us considerably.

Bree:  And coordinated sometimes means making sure we’re both on the same page about what’s about to happen in a book.  Otherwise it turns into a tug-of-war with each of us trying to lead the scene somewhere else, and that turns ugly.

Donna:  Haha, usually culminating in the words, “Oh crap, I just assumed we were…”

Bree:  I’m not going to pretend that never happened with our upcoming release, Sanctuary Lost.  (You see what I did there?  Was that sneaky or what?)  In fact, Sanctuary Lost is the first book we have with an entire deleted scene.  Usually the fact that we both have to be on track means we end up axing extraneous scenes before we get around to writing them, but this one had to go.

Donna:  Funny, though.  The thing I remember about it is that we didn’t have that scene in our first draft, but added it later.  And then had to take it back out again.  LOL

Bree:  And that is the glamorous life of a writer.  Perhaps I should sneak back there and edit in a couple references to cabana boys or lounging about in satin PJs while I eat expensive chocolate.

Donna:  Alas, I have expensive chocolate, but no cabana boys.

Bree:  But we do have free books!  And in lieu of a fabulous life of leisure and pool-side writing, I’m going to have to settle for giving stuff away. So thanks Greta for lettings us drop by and chat, and hopefully someone will enjoy a new book!

For more information about Moira Rogers and her books please visit her website at: http://www.moirarogers.com/.

***Leave a question for Donna and Bree about their day or about their series Red Rock Pass.  They are generously giving away two books today.

For a chance to win a download copy of Cry Sanctuary include “I would love to have Cry Sanctuary” in your comment or question.

For a chance to win a download copy of  Sanctuary Lost include “I would love to have Sanctuary Lost” in your comment or question.

Good Luck!***