Doug is a teacher, so most of our writing happens over summer break and Christmas break. With that being said, Doug likes to work late at night while Sheryl is more of a morning person. Doug usually starts writing around 9:00 pm and goes until midnight or 2 am. Sheryl gets up the next morning, reads what he wrote, wonders why it isn't what was discussed at dinner the night before, and then works with the new version of the plot. Rinse and repeat...
Yes! Many of the interactions at the bridge club were inspired by our experiences at our club and at various tournaments. Additionally, the Strange sisters characters were rewritten after we overheard an exchange between 2 players who were both hard of hearing.
We are both very focused on grammar and consistency. Characters need to be consistent within the book and also between books, as well as descriptions of the town, etc. For Christmas, we had our son paint us a full map of the town of Alpine as described in our books. We have it hanging on the wall in the room in which we do most of our writing so we can reference it easily. We also try very hard to make each chapter end with something that makes the reader want to continue reading.
