Guest Post -- Victoria Abbott

I have been following and reviewing the Book Collector Mystery Series since it began. 1st book was The Christie Curse (click here), 2nd entry was The Sayers Swindle (click here), and we were honored to get a great author interview (click here).

Are two heads better than one? Or worse?

Recently, someone asked, “Who’s the girl with the two heads?” Um, that’s Victoria Abbott, was the answer. She’s a mother daughter collaboration writing the book collector mysteries. The ‘two-headed’ question made sense in the context of the picture we found ourselves in. Luckily nobody asked about our ringlet hairstyles. Let’s just say that Photoshop was involved and the picture was pretty funny.

Funny or not, we thought the question was a good one. We may not be girls any more (not the daughter and especially not the mom), but as the collaborators for the book collector mysteries, we often feel like we have two heads. Sometimes neither head knows what the other one is doing. 

This can play out strangely in our characters. Case in point, below. Let’s take for example, our young sleuth, Jordan Bingham’s, Uncle Kev, who appears in The Wolfe Widow and in The Sayers Swindle before that. The kindest thing anyone can say about Uncle Kev is that he’s a walking disaster. No really, he is. Of course, if you met him, you’d think he was really adorable. Like the rest of the Kellys, he has all that ginger hair and those amazing, sparkling blue eyes, a gift from some Viking passing through Dublin in 965 AD. The ladies are all pretty dazzled by him, at least until there’s an explosion or something catches fire. 

Jordan’s boss and the housekeeper, Signora Panetone, think he’s perfection. But they may not be fully aware that Kev is always available as handyman, gardener and general whatever, because of a small disagreement over a large sum of money belonging to a group of somewhat dangerous gentlemen with guns and a business in Albany. Kev needs to lie low although that’s always hard for him to do.

Like all ladies, we also love Uncle Kev. We laugh our heads off at every Kev-inspired catastrophe. Kidnapping the Siamese? Causing a flash fire in a diner? That thing with the wild turkeys? Oh yes, where there’s smoke, there’s Kev.

In a recent edit, we were fixing a description of him. Have a listen in on our conversation:
“We need a change, It says here, Kev’s pudgy cheek.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, for one thing, Kev doesn’t have pudgy cheeks.”
“Of course, he does.”
“Doesn’t.”
“Does.”
“No. He has chiseled cheekbones.”
“I don’t think so. He’s pudgy.”
“He is not pudgy. He has chiseled cheekbones and a jawline you could cut paper with.”
“He’s still pudgy.”
“He looks great in his jeans and with his great unpudgy bone structure.”

Well, my friends, I think you see the difficulty. Although we both wrote about Uncle Kev and contributed to his misadventures and relationship with Jordan and our story, we each had a very different idea of what he looked like. To this day, we are fudging around with that. There’s a bit of pudginess to Kev’s chiseled features and to do him credit, the ladies still like that. If you’re reading about Uncle Kev, just be careful to sit near a fire exit, that’s all. 

So there you go, so far we’ve written three book collector mysteries together and although we have two heads and don’t always envision the same thing, no one has died, in real life that is.

What about you? Could you collaborate with a family member on a major project? Would there be fireworks?

GIVEWAY!!

Entry for this giveaway lasts until Sunday September 21st, 6:00 p.m. (MST).  U.S.  entries only please.  The publisher will ship one copy of The Wolfe Widow to the winner.

How to enter:

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I will accept entries for this giveaway until Sunday September 21st, 2014.  I shall notify the winner via the email address you provide to get your physical mailing address and have the prize sent directly to you.

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