Konrath and Crouch in a short Q&A promoting STIRRED

VERY SHORT Q&A From STIRRED authors Blake Crouch and J.A. Konrath

J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch are participating in a spate of promotional Q&A sessions of five-questions-only for their new thriller STIRRED, and here are mine. I tried to think of something they aren’t asked each and every time and also something I’d be interested in knowing.

QUESTION:  As collaborators, what happens when you stubbornly disagree over your story or characters? (They wrote STIRRED together as the final book to two on-going mystery/thriller series–the Jack Daniels series for Konrath and the Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite series for Crouch.)

ANSWER:  This will sound strange (Crouch), but I don’t think we’ve had any major disagreements over story or character (probably why our collaborations have been so much fun and why we continue to do them). This isn’t to say we agree on everything, but there’s a level of trust where if either of us wants to do something the other one isn’t keen on, we talk it out and trust that they know where they’re going.

QUESTION:  Do you allow family or friends to influence your work (make suggestions you take seriously, change something because they don’t like it, etc?)

ANSWER:  Yes, we have family and friends who are successful writers whose feedback we value greatly (Crouch).

QUESTION:  Describe a normal day for yourselves. How much time do you put into your writing.

ANSWER:  There is no normal day. Some of STIRRED we wrote separately. Most of it we wrote together in long, intense bursts in a Google doc. On the day we finished the book, we put up 9,000 words (Crouch). 

QUESTION:  Do you have a special story you would like to write that is out of the thriller genre or in other ways much different from what we are used to from you? And will you write it?

ANSWER:  I think most of the projects I want to write happen to fall in the thriller genre (Crouch). There is no romance or sci-fi or big literary project I’m dying to do. I pretty much write exactly what I want to write. That’s one of the great things about ebooks. The freedom they give you.

ANSWER:  No (Konrath).

QUESTION:  What is your favorite book, movie, television series?

ANSWER: Blood Meridian (book), Unforgiven (movie), Twin Peaks (television series) —Blake Crouch.

Note: I didn’t recognize the title of the book so I looked it up. Author Cormac McCarthy.

ANSWERThe Judas Goat (book), Black Dynamite (movie), Good Eats (television)–J.A. Konrath.

Note: This time I didn’t recognize the title of the book or the movie. Book author Robert B. Parker. Black Dynamite is an action movie from 2009 starring Michael Jai White.

STIRRED ends the series for both authors and is exclusive as an ebook to Amazon.com and the Kindle. It goes live November 22.  http://amzn.com/J.-A.-Konrath/e/B000BCH4EM    ought to get you to J.A. Konrath’s Amazon.com pages. His blog (a must for all writers) is at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com   Look for Blake Crouch’s books at http://amazon.com/Blake-Crouch/e/B001H6U8X0 . Blake Crouch’s website is http://blakecrouch.com.