1

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰 (I am taking the phallicmic, of course 😛)

Evelyn: Aye, that's a curious one. I was dutifully copying' a line out of a dreadful maths assignment. 'Twas, as follows: "If a 🚂 A left the station going 60 mph & 🚂 B left the station going 70 mph... At what time..."

I stopped and thought.

At what time would I give a fuck?

At the time when each of dem 🚂s would carry a unique soul, that's when.

🎙☔️

Rainer: Well, if these train hurtled past each other at a cumulative speed of 130 mph, neither of the two souls would care.

So we started giving it some more thought. There'd have to be a station somewhere in between where they'd stop. And the two souls had to be a reason to be in these trains, a life to drive them forward, and a yearning to pull them out.

2

🎙☔️

Rainer: Oh, I struggled with my co-writer, mostly, chasing after the sparks cast by her beautiful imagination.

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: Shapin-up!

When I write, the river of words just bursts out through the keyboard-finger dam.

I'm like in some kind of a bloody moon-walking trance! Puppet on a string, speed-playing the piano!

Two hours later, 2000 words have been laid down but they are all Level 1 words!
Many of them to be improved, cut, re-shaped, better-worded. Grammar mistakes to be fixed...

On the road to Level 2... Tis is where the co-writing steps in!

Stretch yer arms.

Free-fall backwards.

Have no fear, your co-writer is here!

Always there to cyndilauper catch you if you stumble

3

Evelyn: So. Many. Friggin. Things about Iris part. Ugh, I will try to keep 'em at 4️⃣!

1. The 🥕 and the 🍩. Who wouldn't enjoy a doughnut? Or a carrot. 😏

2. Discovering and fiddling with the Redken Virtual Hair Colour Try-On instantly explore new hair colours with our 70 + shades" thingie.

3. Those perfect little geeky references I got to spill! ☺️ Potterverse and Whoverse! Not to mention Marvel, DC and Baby Yoda!

4. Writing about the act of illustrating, and the illustrating itself was extremely pleasurable. I have always felt that drawings are life in colours, just like books are life in words.

🎙☔️

Rainer: Usually, describing the same event from two different points of view is boring, for the writer as well as the reader. Here, with two characters so different and them knowing so little about each other, it was quite a blast, at least for the writer. It was fascinating to see the gap between them, the way they see things differently, and how easy it is to get each other wrong. That, combined with the co-writing experience, made this quite a ride.

🎙☔️

Rainer: Hmm. I think "WTF" summarizes it quite well.

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: 🧐 I do believe that the most common one I've encountered while rifling through the comentio section was, pardon, were:

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 💔!"

And

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO🤬!"

5

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: Why, how quaint that you've asked. It has always been envisioned as a piece of series. Volume 2 shall be called "Mind the Baby!" The cover will surely depict Evan's hands on the lower half and Iris' hands on the upper half. Baby in the middle. All that shebang.

Rainer: And Volume 3 will be Mind the Hearing Aid, when the two of them have grown old and even more beautiful, but their auditory capabilities are on a decline. Fortunately, though, this will be a Science Fiction book, and possibilities there are endless: So, before hearing loss can create a new gap, they'll upload their immortal souls into bits and bytes, where they'll have their true HEA.

🎙☔️

Rainer: They shouldn't take anything away from it. That would be stealing! *chuckles* Just kidding. There are some themes that went into this tale, one of them being the gaps between people. Small secrets, undiscovered misunderstandings, and tiny grudges will always stand between even the best of friends and the most passionate of lovers. The shortest distance between two souls is greater than zero, most of the time. The moment when two of them finally touch, that's something worth cherishing for two lifetimes.

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: One thing I would like the readers to take away from the story is the importance of a choice. And of how it works, where it comes from. Sometimes there is no more powerful moment than right here right now. The precise moment when your mental energy flows from your thoughts through your words and finally prompts your actions that happen just NOW—that's the power of human decision.

Of a human choice.

It's important to know that your life always is and always will be in your hands. You can fight for what you wish to accomplish, fight for a magical encounter. Make a choice. Then invest all your time, all your energy towards that goal.

Evelyn: Appearance. Plot. Character.

Appearance: The Title, the Cover and the Blurb are sometimes what 'makes it or breaks it' in a potential reader's mind who takes some seconds out of their fast-forwarded life to glance at the blurb and decide—yay or nay.

Plot: Dynamism. Dynamism. More dynamism. Plot. Twist. Cliff. Hangers. Make the reader gasp in love, hate, surprise or repugnancy whenever you can.

Character: Anonymity. Deception. These are your tools. Be your character's shadow. Trace them imperceptibly. Become them. Breathe their air. Inhale their thoughts. Give 'em a Strength. Give 'em a Flaw. Then, slowly torture them while ye explore that Flaw xD.

🎙☔️

Rainer: Work, work, work. I don't think that I've ever poured more thought into such a (comparatively) short story. From the first idea to the final product, we went through endless steps. Plot idea, plot outline, character sheets, more detailed plot outline. First draft, second draft, redraft, etc. etc. We challenged each other, questioned each other, and wrestled each other, which forced us to go to our limits.

There may be writers who can just sit down, write the first draft, and it's perfect. If you're not among those lucky few, invest the effort to make writing worthwhile.

8

🎙☔️

Rainer: Nevah!

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: Not many, really. A lil'.

Scarlet Witch coat, "Bookmarks are for quitters" socks, love for "Friends" TV show, DC, Marvel, Doctor Who, baby Yoda t-shirt ownership, doughnuts 🍩🤤, white choc Hershey's, illustrator-ing, cosplayin', falling on arse on a subway that one time while cosplaying.

9

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

TRAINS! 🤤

Long... And... Short...

With their first-slow... and then-fast... rhythm.

What's not to love about them?

The best mean of transport on this planet Earth.

They will surely draw in any rail-enthusiastic trainlad or trainlassie who had either a model train or a toy train as a child.

For what is life but a ride on a train that "stamps and stamps onward?" That incessant desire, ever-hunger for something new, the restlessness and the longing of the pre-journey...

The moment when we lay back, sink in the train seat and hear the whistle! 🌬 It's priceless.

It's a sign: the adventure of a lifetime is about to start!

The time slows down. The moment grows longer.

The train is our constant. Our chance. Our connection between unseen places.

🎙☔️

Rainer: I've never written true romance before. Writing this book, I came to love the charm of this genre. People yearn for it. They don't want to open a book and be faced with the same shite that life offers them. The Heart Asks Pleasure First (a beautiful piano piece by Michael Nyman—if you don't know it, duckduckgo it).

So, it's the eternal, time-honored call of Romance that might draw in a reader or two.

🎙☔️

Rainer: Lots. Such as staying sane. Staying human. Oh, and maybe writing a book about that.

🎤 👩🏻‍🦰

Evelyn: 'That went as planned...' Said no project ever xD

So I prefer the term 'past project.'

A formula is simple: after something is done or a goal is accomplished, I tell everyone about it! 😹

But exclusively in past tense.

"I will do..." is too overrated.

"I have done ✔️," now THAT sounds loads