'After the Fall' author Morgan O'Neill: 2 writing as 1

Deborah Cordes and Cary Frates do something I could never do: They write as a team, under the name Morgan O'Neill. Their latest, After the Fall, came out Oct. 1, book two in a series that began with Love, Eternally. Next up, in December, is Return to Me. I can't imagine writing with another author. I suppose my friends and family would say I'm way too much of a control freak. (And they would be right.) At any rate, the idea of how to write with another author fascinates me. So Deb and Cary are here to give us a little insight.

Deb: There's an expression that perfectly fits what we do: Two heads are better than one. We decided to give the old adage a go, and it works well for us, especially because of the complexity inherent in writing time-travel novels.

Cary: Exactly. Our stories are woven with many threads, and because it is time travel, it's almost like writing two separate plots -- the present and the past -- which must be blended together to make a cohesive whole.

Deb: And one of the threads is to give our heroine a more realistic and challenging experience when she travels to the past, meaning she doesn't know the language or the customs. This literally opened the world to us, and we decided to venture to ancient Rome. Our heroine, Gigi, must learn Latin. And she does!

Cary: But don't worry, we didn't belabor the point. To give realism to Gigi's struggle, we used my experience of moving to France without knowing the language. It was a baptism by fire, much like the situation we created for Gigi. Yet, as she struggles to learn, we found there were opportunities for humor, and it came about that her ham-fisted attempts to communicate helped endear her to our hero, Magnus.

Deb: Ah, Magnus! Was there ever a more noble, heroic, or hunky Roman? Sometimes we may butt heads in our attempts to find common ground in our writing, but with him we instantly connected in our ideas about his appearance and personality. Tall, darkly handsome, honorable, fiercely blue eyes, broad chest ...

Cary: Ah, Magnus, indeed! I think we've each peeked beneath his toga more than once, but I digress ... ; )

Deb: I tend to peek when he's wearing his leather warrior's skirt. OK (Deb fans herself) shall we get back to the subject of writing together? Do you realize how unusual it is to have a writing partnership that works? I don't know of many; in fact, I personally met a screenwriting team. I called them the "screamwriters," in that they fought like demons but still managed to write great scripts together.

Cary: We are a rare breed, but most of the time we're screaming with laughter, especially when writing sex scenes. Don't get me started on all of the euphemisms for male appendages!

Deb: Ha! Seriously, how do we write together? After all, our two brains (on a good day) must ultimately come together as one, blending new ideas and tens of thousands of words into one cohesive epic.

Cary: A tall order, and you're right. Combined, all three books in the series come to over 180,000 words.

Deb: Whoa, that's a lot of coffee and chocolate and laughter!

Cary: But when we first began to work as a team, we found the process to be far more difficult than we'd imagined. Different styles, different ways of approaching a scene. We each wrote "perfect" chapters, and yet there was always something the other wanted to change. However, as time went on, we learned how to blend our writing with edits and good grace.

Deb: So, the reader can't tell where Cary ends and Deb begins.

Cary: Precisely.

Deb: The first lesson we learned was to put aside our egos, each and every day. We had to recognize we are both striving for the best possible outcome.

Deb and Cary: A writing partnership can be like a marriage: Sometimes it's sweet and happy, sometimes it's a screamer, sometimes we need to just step back and have several drinks (chocolate martinis for Deb, double Scotches for Cary). But in the end it's worth all of the struggles. We strive to create rich and memorable time-travel stories, with characters that will not be forgotten. And we hope our readers agree.

We have a question for Happy Ever After's readers: If you could travel through time, what location and year would you choose, and why?

You can find out more about Deb and Cary's books, you can visit their website, MorganONeill.com.