Welcome Lin and Kat Holmes

Mother and Daughter Reunion

Of Sorts

First I want to thank our beloved Queen of all things Humorous, Ginger Simpson for inviting us to come and share a bit of chatter on her guest blog. As always, we jump at the chance to come and set a spell with Ginger.

My Name in Lin and I write as L.J. Holmes and am an author with Muse It Up Publishing, Inc, one of the absolute finest publishers in the world today.

Lea, our glorious publisher has been nipping at my shyness trying to instill upon me the need to truly share who I am…so Lea, these next words are yours…I am an award winning, multi-published author. (Last count, nine in this past year alone with another coming next month in December.)

Like Ginger, I have been around the bend a time or two, giving my inner voice, I sometimes affectionately call Nudge…sometimes I have other names for her, but I’ll be nice, a lot to say. My current release is about a harrowing journey into having someone dare you to move way outside your comfort zone…WAYYY outside entitled Champagne Afternoon.

I could sit here with y’all and Ginger and wax poetically about how brilliant I am, but I try to always tell the truth…so instead let me introduce my better half…and NO…I’m not talking about a husband.

My better half is my charming, gorgeous to the marrow, equally prolific Best Selling, 2011 Pearl Award nominee, multi-published offspring, Kat Holmes. As of today, Kat has four releases in 2011, with so many coming in both 2012 and 2013 I can barely wrap my head around how many. Her current release Dangerous Voice is an amazing tale of a cougar and the hunky younger cop living next door who attaches himself to her like Krazy glue when a murderer stalks her sexy self.

But Kat and I are not here, this time, to speak about our separate writings…we’re here because so many have asked us to collaborate on a book and when people nudge our nudges, our nudges step up to prove their stripes yet again. (No not prison stripes, though sometimes our nudges make us feel like they’ve handcuffed us to our MS Word programs.)

Our first collaboration recently contracted Her Last Day, is releasing in April 2013…and trust me, we will be sharing many updates over the months ahead about this story, so dear to our hearts…and that is what we are here to talk about.

We’re here to talk about what it is like being a mother and daughter collaborating on our first joint project. (Did you notice that “first” reference? Yeah, Her Last Day is our debut together.)

People have asked us what it’s like to hone a story into something rational and worthy of both our names. Do we kill each other? Are clumps of pulled hair flying about in the wake of our writing endeavors?

We know a lot of people would be pulling each other’s hair out by the root clumps if they had to mingle their personalities into one single story, but for us it was fun, difficult, teeth gnashing, and in the end, more than worthwhile.

To begin with, it really helps that we live under the same roof. No matter how mad or frustrated we might get, we couldn’t storm off in a snit, giving each other cold shoulders. To live in harmony when not wrangling over our manuscript, communication on all levels had to be respected. (All right, total truth…it is what we promised…we like each other…and I can make Kat laugh even when she wants to be “in my face, boiling mad at me.” It ticks her off no end, but once I make her crack that first smile, the heat level begins to fade and it is back to being Mom and Kat giving life to Daria, our absolutely most favorite character ever.

Maybe that’s why it was so much fun. We both love Daria, the heroine of Her Last Day.

Sitting at our computers in the very same room, we take the draft one or the other of us first fashioned…in this case, Kat wrote the first draft…and go over it line by line…out loud. Does this word work? Would this word be more powerful? This scene has nothing to do with our heroine, should it stay in as peripheral detail, or be deleted altogether and a different scene inserted?

Should we make Titus a bigger pig, or just let him quickly fade out of the action and move on to the rest of the people in Daria’s life? How much detail do we need to share about Daria’s life before Her Last Day?

Word by word, line by line, scene by scene, we scrutinize the flow, ebb, and impact of what we’ve written, and in the end, when we finished sending it off for submission, our fingers crossed, we felt closer still than we’d been when Daria’s story first was born.

Kat and I are prolific authors, but to date, this story is the one that we hold deeply in our hearts, and present with pride and appreciation. 2013 is a long way away, but now that we have written one contracted collaboration, Kat and I have written a second and look forward to our next joint project.

Once more we both want to thank Ginger Simpson for her generosity in allowing us to come and visit a spell.

For more information on us you can find Lin on her authors pages at www.museituppublishing.com and www.museithotpublishing.com

She is also available through her Muse dedicated personal blog http://linsownblog.blogspot.com and via e-mail at Spatzdkat1212@yahoo.com

Kat can be found on her Muse It Hot author’s page at www.museithotpublishing.com her own website at http://www.authorkatholmes.webs.com her blog at http://katluvr130.blogspot.com and e-mailed at MyKitty130@yahoo.com

Thank you all, especially you Ginger.