First off, I’m sorry I’m not here “live” with you today to answer questions, but I’m expecting a new baby boy any day now. So, I’m frantically putting together the crib (last minute of course), washing a million teeny tiny baby onsies, and generally waddling around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get ready for his arrival. I promise I’ll be back live in a few months when things settle down a bit in the Halliday household. Sooner if he’s a sleeper! (Pray I get a sleeper. I have too many deadlines to have a night-owl baby.) Okay, on today’s post…
I got my first publishing contract in 2005 with Dorchester Publishing. They had great distribution at the time, and I loved working with my editor there, but the advances were lousy. So, as soon as I sold to them, I started working on a new proposal to sell to another house for hopefully more money. (A girl can live on Top Ramen only so long.) During that time I wrote several proposals and was rejected several times. It took me five years before another house offered me a contract, by which time I’d developed several story ideas that went nowhere.
One of those idea was for as series called BOND GIRLS. It centered around a former runway model turned P.I., Jamie Bond. A lighthearted, women-driven, action/mystery series. I got interest on it from several editors, but for one reason or another, it was always passed on. Then, I sent it to my manager in L.A., who handles all of my TV and film sales. She loved it and thought it might make a good TV series. So, I turned my proposal into the BOND GIRLS pilot. In addition to the pilot, I wrote out the show bible with character sketches and plot arcs, and I plotted out an entire season of episodes. We packaged the whole thing and sent it around to various producers and networks. The response was great! CBS loved it! Fox loved it! Everyone loved it… but budgets were tight, and with me being a Hollywood unknown, no one loved it enough to risk putting it on the air.
So, BOND GIRLS went into that dark, dusty drawer under my bed with all of my other dead ideas.
Fast forward a couple of years. With self-publishing taking off so well, some of those old, dusty manuscripts of mine have crawled out from the under the bed, been given shiny new rewrites, and turned themselves into money-making, published books. But poor BOND GIRLS had never even been finished. I had a finished pilot… but I only had a manuscript proposal – roughly the first 70 pages. As much as I loved this story and these characters, I just didn’t have time to finish it right now with all of my other commitments.
But Jamie kept bugging me.
And that’s when a good friend of mine started telling me bout his many co-authored projects he’d been working on, and how much fun he was having with them. I had never thought of the idea of a co-authored project before. Writing, to me, felt like a solitary thing. And I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a bit of a control freak. But I looked at poor Jamie languishing beside my dust bunnies. If I had a co-author, maybe she would get finished after all?
As soon as the idea took root, I thought of a name immediately who would be the perfect co-author fit for me. Jennifer Fischetto. I’ve e-known her for years from the Romance Divas writer’s forum, and have had the pleasure of reading a few of her unpublished works. Her style was similar to mine, and I knew she had the writing chops to take on a project like this. Lucky me – she was interested! I was beyond ecstatic. So, Jennifer and I embarked on a co-author odyssey to finish Jamie’s story.
I’ll admit, I had my doubts going into this. (See control freak comment above.) I had to consciously let go of my vision for the book and let it become something new. It’s sort of like envisioning your baby as a doctor, but then realizing he’s actually an artist. You have to shift your vision. But I’m so glad that I did, because Jennifer did an amazing job of running with the character that I had created and making it her own as well. Jamie is a great blend of both of us now, and I think she’s even better than I could have made her on my own.
BOND GIRLS is out now for Nook, and will be out on July 26th in all other formats!
(Yes, we’re doing the Nook first program with BOND GIRLS, so I will report back and let you know how sales went!)
~Gemma Halliday
www.facebook.com/gemmahallidayauthor
Thanks for sharing! Super congrats on the new release, will be looking forward to reading it. I know what you mean about the control freak bit! How did you manage the co-authoring? Did you each write alternate chapters, or one write the first half and then the other write the second? Would love to know how to make it work the best
Congratulations on your new baby boy! And your Bond girl books too- I look forward to reading them:)
Wow! A new book and a new baby! Congratulations, Gemma! Good luck with both. Can’t wait to hear about Nook first, also.
Wow! Not one but TWO new babies: boy baby & book baby. Fab!
Also with Tamara looking forward to your Nook first report.
Congratulations on the two new babies! I hope the first is a sleeper and the second a run-a-way bestseller!
Very exciting. Great story and great cover, too. I would like to know more about the process of working together, too. Have fun with your new baby boy! Congratulations on Bond Girls and Baby Boy!
Wavin’ atchy’all and you too, Gemma!
Gemma’s new baby boy arrived this past Friday, and she’s over the moon! Still not sleeping much, she told me, but thrilled beyond thrilled!
Congrats, Gemma, from your WG2E Family!!!
And congrats too on your latest adventure with your co-author who also sounds terrific, btw! I can’t wait to read this new one!!!
As many of you know, I’m doing the co-authoring gig too with the very talented David Slegg (aka The Edit Dude). We’ve been releasing our book a chapter or two at a time as a Serial Novel, but will have it uploaded to all platforms soon as a full novel. We use Google Docs which seems to be a marvelous way to collaborate, and it’s very user-friendly.
best wishes gemma on your bond project
and really interesting to hear of the collaborative experience too, thanks so much
Congratulations on both of your new editions, Gemma! May your precious little boy start sleeping thru the night soon, and your ‘Girls’ become an instant best seller!
Hi, Gemma! Congrats on Bond Girls and your baby boy!
Wow, I hope I’m as active as you are so close to your delivery date. I’m in my second trimester with our first child and I’m already feeling the wear of it, especially when I’m facing multiple flights of stairs to climb each time I need to board the subway and even more so when I have to be up at the horrific 4am hour for my day job on a daytimetelevision show working the scripts for the teleprompter (I’m nocturnal by nature and have the hardest time falling asleep before midnight no matter how tired I am).
Congrats and best of luck on getting that sleeper you crave.
I’ve worked with a co-writer before and had mixed feelings about it. The process of finishing the story was great. It was only bad when dealing with the interested company (it was a film script). In this case, the company was so unimpressed with my co-writer’s writing that theystipulatedthey would only purchase the rights to it IF she was cut out entirely. I turneditdown for several reasons,partly because it my co-writer’s story idea – she had come tome to help flesh it out and turn it into a finished product. After the deal was scrapped, I told her about their offer and my decision. She thought I’d been stupid, said she knew I would’ve paid her a contribution on the side for use of her ideas and that she would have been happy just to have the idea produced. Despite all that, my conscience wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve also worked with my husband too. He wasn’t a “writer” per se
Ahem… Didn’t mean to hit the post button on my device… Continuing…
He wasn’t a writer per se on the project, but the composer, performer, and recorder for it. It was a musical theater adaptation of Cinderella (all original music and lyrics and script based on the iconic paradigm). We’d been commissioned as a team for the project with only a couple of weeks turn around time to produce the audition and rehearsal ready script, music, and instrumental accompaniment recordings (fully orchestrated, not a simple piano work or duo or trio, etc.). As crazy, chaotic, and hair pulling a rush that had been, it merely fortified my love of working with him (though preferably with more production time and more pay to make all those hours worth it). The great response by the audience made the experience that much better.
With the opportunities offered by the indie scenes nowadays, much of the negatives I experienced could be eliminated to a decent degree. Thank you for reminding me of that.
I’m so glad your experience with co-writing has been so good and i wish you the best of success with it!
Thanks everyone! Popping in here between feedings and diapers.
So far, I’ve been a big fan of the Nook First. We still have another week on the program, but we hit as high as #7 on the BN bestseller list. Which was beyond what I expected, considerng that the Fifty Shades books and the Hunger Games book take up a good chunk of those top spots at the moment. I’ll tally up total Nook First sales when the program ends, but we sold over 3000 copies in our first week. A number I’m very happy with! I’m excited to see how we do once we go live on Amazon next week. It will be interesting to see the comparison, since I don’t have any particular Amazon promos in place.
Congrats on the new baby! And congratulations on Bond Girls. I’m glad you finally got it finished. I’m not sure I could c0-author, but it would love to give it a try one day. I have an idea for a project that would be great for collaboration. Maybe I’ll check in to it.
Congratulations Gemma on the new baby. I bet he is adorable. Congrats on the book too. I have a Nook so off to check it out.
Congrats on BOTH of your productions – one co-authored and the other…well…you know.
So happy for you, Gemma. Congrats on your new book and the new baby.
Thanks for sharing about the joint writing. I’ve always thought having a writing partner would end up like those group projects in school–terribly frustrating and with me doing all the work. I was always the geek in the group who was actually worried about a good grade
But it sounds like if you have the right person, it can work.
Congratulations on the Book and the new BABY! What blessings
xx, Lauren Clark