Writing with Others: The Story of Krypteia part 1

I wanted to go through and write a bit today about how we began this process. If you watch the video of us "On the Fly" you'll know that we met at church, discussed writting books, and decided to get together to discuss our ideas. We met in Mike's basement, and I remember us sort of just talking about our ideas. I remember that I had recently taken a class on Greek History, and was enamored with the concept of the Krypteia, a group of Spartans whose job was to make sure the neighboring Helots didn't rise up in revolution. That meant they could kill anyone they wanted, whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they wanted, all for the good of the Spartans. So, I wanted to include sort of that secret society influence into the book - sort of that secrety group trying to run the world. Mike wanted to do something more end of the world, and Jaren really wanted to push the "hero" epic. We started talking about characters, and I think this is what brought our book ideas together more than anything. I had a certain character in mind, Mike had another, Jaren had his, and we sort of started thinking about these as real people, and what would they be like and what sorts of decisions would they make in certain situations. As we started talking about our characters, it became clear that we could merge some of our plot lines together. And, as we started doing that, we came to the relevation that we merge everyting together into a series of books that would cover everything we wanted to. So, it was the characters in the book, more than anything, that drove the process towards the three of us working together. I still have the printed off sheet with our first stab at these characters - some of them are spot on with how the book ended up. We have a Russian mobster, a hero, a tall African (although originally his name was Xanadu!), and a Catholic priest. They all made the book. What is really interesting to me, though, looking back on this, is that my story, that of the secret society named Krypteia, is not really that prevelant in book one. We are writing book two right now, and it will have a much more expanded roll in that book, but it is sort of a side-note in book one. We knew from the beginning that we would get to it, and as book one grew and coalesced and became what it is, we realized that it would have to go to book two. So Hade's Gambit from the beginning has been not about me, or Mike, or Jaren, but about the characters and the story. Anyway, that is a brief bit on how we started the books. Next week I'm going to discuss how our original prologue morphed into the first six chapters. Have a great day!