By Debbie Viguié

I am not a short story person.  I don’t tend to read them and I hate writing them.  It’s ironic, but writing a short story takes me longer than writing a novel.  Also ironically when I do write a short story most people comment (correctly) that it sounds like the setup for a series of books.  It always is because I think about big, large plots that can’t be completely condensed down into a few thousand words.

What makes Latchkeys so cool is that even though I was technically writing a short story, it was more like writing a chapter in a novel.  There’s an entire world we have built, rich characters that we’re just starting to explore on paper, and miles and miles of plot much of which has only yet been hinted at.  It is awesome.  I basically wrote chapter three for this epic story that I helped to craft the outline for.

I hope that’s how it reads to people.  When you have multiple writers it can be difficult to control tone and voice and make something flow smoothly.  One of the points of creating the Latchkeys universe was a bunch of us wanted to do something as a group showcasing our ability to work together and our ability to shine on our own.  I think we’ve managed to do that.  There are continuing style elements that let the readers know this is all the same big story.  There are also ways and places in which we can shine individually and bring our own creative drives to our individual chapters, er, stories. Continue reading

Breathing life into new characters is always a challenge. You sketch them out in your notes and think you know how you want them to sound, but invariably, once you begin the actual prose, things change. They develop a bigger vocabulary or sound snarkier than intended. You let things flow because it feels right and after all, they’re your characters.

It’s vastly different when you’re putting words into characters’ mouths for the first or second time when you’re collaborating with others. Such was the case with Latchkeys when I began writing The Ugly Little Bloke the second installment. Steven Savile focused quite a bit on our point-of-view character Matt and the Wardens’ leader Jeremy but less so on the others so it fell to me to find their voices.

I grabbed on to the story when it was offered because it centered on Kaitlyn, the young teen who can access the electromagnetic spectrum but has no clue just how powerful she is. She’s young and fun and enjoys being a Warden so she had a lot to learn. Finding her voice was pretty easy and the dialogue flowed smoothly. Continue reading