When we decided to co-author a new adult contemporary romance, we knew working together would make us better writers, but we didn’t realize it would make me us better men.
Um…maybe we should back up at this point and mention that we are not, technically, men at all, so much as wives, moms, and card-carrying members of Team Estrogen. But the beauty of writing is that we get to inhabit our characters, and for this particular project, we got to climb into the head and very hot bod of Vaughn Shaughnessy—male model, up-and-coming media personality, and unapologetic playboy.
Although our fingerprints are all over both characters, it was a unique experience to know that when one of us was writing a “Vaughn scene,” (i.e. a scene from our hero’s point of view), our heroine was in the other author’s capable hands. So liberating! Also, there are huge advantages to being the dude. No stressing over wardrobe. While poor Kendall agonized over the black dress or the purple dress for their first date, Vaughn threw on something clean and focused his efforts on seducing her out of her carefully curated clothes. Effort denied, as it turned out, but hello to the strange, undeniably male thrill upon realizing this was going to be more challenging than he anticipated. We may have sprouted an actual Y chromosome. For real.
And then, like the worst kind of guy, once we got the characters together for the first time, we lost interest! Okay, that’s not really a fair statement. Deadlines on other projects, and the wife-ing and momming stuff took precedence, and we had to shift our project to the back burner. But from Kendall’s perspective, she was definitely ghosted. Vaughn, however, turned out to be a better man than either of us. He couldn’t get Kendall off his mind. He kept whispering, “When do I get to see her again?” “I still have plans for us.” “Look, you scattered writers, we’re not done yet! I want more. I deserve more. And so does she!”
To our credit, we refrained from saying any of these things to each other. The mantra going in was “no pressure,” and we stuck by it, even though we both felt very excited by the potential of what we had on the page so far. A half-complete manuscript is like a half-born baby, and the pain of it just intensifies with every delay. Thankfully, our tangled schedules slowly unwound, and we were able to do justice to Vaughn’s better instincts!
So it is with great pride that we bring this labor of love to the light of day. Promise Me definitely made us better writers…and better men! Robin and I hope you enjoy Kendall and Vaughn’s journey to happy-ever-after. No two characters ever earned it more!