How Does Collaboration with Nick Thacker Work?

Hello reader friends!

Now, let’s talk about what’s going on out there in the world of Jim Heskett’s fiction writing. Here’s the newest news:

Can you smell with the Jim is cooking?

Primary Target is almost here, hurtling toward us like an asteroid on a collision course. I can’t wait for you all to jump into this six book series about an outcast assassin facing the most severe punishment her kind can endure…

Time for the AMA!

One of the questions Nick and I often get is how our collaboration process works.

Both of us are pretty new at collaborating. Before meeting Nick, I had collaborated with J. Thorn on a horror novel, but there wasn’t a lot of true collaborating going on. That was more like contract work, whereas the work I do with Nick is more like traditional collaboration.

I approached Nick about a year ago with the story idea. I said: It’s a six book thriller series, where each book takes place over exactly one week.

That was the initial pitch to get Nick on board. There was more to it, of course, but the six books-six weeks hook was my initial selling point.

Then, he and I sat down over onion rings at a bar halfway between our homes (we live a couple hours apart in Colorado) and we hammered out the overall story.

Idea firmly in hand, I went off and spend six months writing six first drafts, all by myself.

Then, I sent each of the files to Nick, and he goes through each book and adds his own flair, as well as edits the text to make it more polished.

So, it’s not maybe the fantasy of two authors sitting side by side in front of the same keyboard, but I doubt it’s like that very often any longer.