Hi Jenny! Thanks for having us on your blog. That’s right. Us! V.K Sykes is actually two people—Vanessa Kelly and Randy Sykes. Some people might call what we do writing by committee; we prefer to think of it as two heads are better than one. Either way, it works for us.
The first question people usually ask when they find out we’re a writing team is how we do it. No, silly. Not that! How we actually work together. Most people assume that Vanessa writes the female POV and that Randy writes the male POV. No, thank you. We can’t even begin to imagine how horrible that process would be.
What we do first is spend a lot of time brainstorming the characters and plot basics until we find something we both like. Then, Randy develops a story outline and writes a first draft. After that Vanessa takes over, fleshing out characters and scenes—especially the sex scenes—and focusing on the development of the romance. That’s what Randy likes to call “all that emotion stuff.”
OK, Vanessa chiming in here. Randy doesn’t really give himself enough credit. He’s an awesome plotter, and he writes great dialogue, especially contemporary dialogue. What you might not know is that I also write Regency-set historical romance under my own name of Vanessa Kelly. On more than one occasion, Randy has been forced to take the red pen to some of my descriptive passages, which can become tinged with a bit of, er, Regency flavour. All in all, we seem to play to each other’s strengths and weakness, and the result is our first contemporary romance with Carina Press.
So what is CaddyGirls about? As you may have already deduced, it’s got something to do with golf. Our heroine, Torrey Green, is a talented and aspiring pro golfer, who is struggling to find a rich sponsor to boost her out of the career rut she’s fallen into. Our hero, Julian Grant, is a videogame mogul, and Torrey thinks he just might be the answer to her prayers. Julian, however, isn’t really interested in sponsoring Torrey. He’s interested in something much more, ahem, intimate. And he’s got a secret to hide that has the potential to both sink Torrey’s career and destroy their developing relationship.
You can read an excerpt from CaddyGirls at our website: http://www.vksykes.com/
CaddyGirls will be released on July 5th from Carina Press.
5 responses to “V K Sykes, author of CaddyGirls”
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Having someone to solve the plot tangles definitely appeals.
Thanks, gals! It's always fun to explain our process. I know that some writers do the ping-pong POVs, but I have trouble imagining that. The way we've developed our process helps us keep a handle on the plot and the arc of the romance.Plus, I just make Randy do all the hard stuff, which works out great for me!
Oh, yay! A golf themed book. Right up my…er…fairway!Thanks, Randy and Vanessa, for explaining your collaborative writing process. It's quite different to how I imagined (yes, I assumed the his and her point of view scenario). Congratulations on the release of Caddygirls. This one's definitely on my buy list.
Thank you both for visiting. I've always marvelled at anyone who can share the writing process. I'm so possessive–I'm the same way in the kitchen–"get out! I'm cooking".