For Better or Worse… How We Started Writing as a Collaborative Team

If we dropped a penny in a jar every time someone asks us, “How on earth do you manage to write together?” we’d have enough to book that next roundtrip flight to Istanbul to see our granddaughter. Sometimes, we give them the short answer, to others the long answer, and a few get the in-between answer. And we don’t really mind the question.

Then comes the next one: “How did you start?”

Our collaboration started on a snowy day on a snowy weekend during a snowy winter. We were living in Pennsylvania, and our boys were small.

Nikoo: Jim had decided to submit a short story to a national writing contest posted in Writer’s Digest magazine. He was looking for publication credits he could add to his tenure portfolio at the college where he was teaching. The story was pure adventure and featured a guy trying to save his small sailboat in the middle of Newport harbor during a hurricane. I remembered him writing it in grad school.

Jim: Nikoo has always been a brutally honest person, and she has strong opinions. That’s just two of the many things I love about her. But I can get a little defensive about my writing. She was working as an engineer, but she was always a closet writer. I, on the other hand, pursued my writing openly. And for all our years prior to that snowy winter, she was my first reader. Anyway, before sending the story off, I asked her to read it again.

Nikoo: So I read it. Now honestly, who cares about a guy trying to save a catboat while scores of people are losing their homes and… I don’t remember what I said exactly.

Jim: She said, “Don’t bother.” Maybe she worded it in a gentler way, but that was the bottom line.

Nikoo: He turns around and asks me, “Could you do better?”

Jim: And she says, “WE could do better.”

An entire snowy weekend passed while the two of us sat side-by-side and a new story emerged.

The ‘man saves his catboat’ story turned into ‘a woman contemplating suicide boards her catboat in the middle of a hurricane’. Her past plays itself out in the course of battling this storm. Old and painful conflict with her father. Guilt that haunts her about the death of her brother. Failed relationships.

We both physically wrote portions of that story and contributed when we weren’t actually pounding the keyboard. Agreements and disagreements. Pizza. Kids swinging from the chandeliers in the background.

We loved it.

We sent the story off, knowing we’d done something special. That short story went on to win a national prize. But by the time we heard the results, we’d already started a novel. It was our first, The Thistle and the Rose. The first of many.

Subscribing to our newsletter will provide occasional insights into the meandering nature of our minds. Sign up here.

Fresh Fiction...and Scones!

The wonderful folks at FreshFiction were kind enough to have us in for their Valentine’s Deay Recipe Roundup. Here’s our contribution. Be sure to visit them for great news and events and information about your favorite authors and books! Here’s the post…and the recipe!

We're pleased to present another delicious recipe on our Valentine's Day Recipe Roundup from the historical romance writing team, May McGoldrick! 

In Highland Sword, Aidan Grant and Morrigan Drummond are both proud and principled. He is a barrister. She is a trained fighter in search of revenge. They each know their own mind and are certain about what they want. And they end up spending a lot of time together, be it fighting in Inverness alleyways or the training yard at Dalmigavie Castle or duel each other in a battle of wits. But it is during the night of the Samhain celebration that their romance blooms.

Many of our readers already know that May McGoldrick is actually two people – Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick. We write together, live together, love endlessly, and enjoy cooking together. In our household, Nikoo loves the everyday and holiday cooking, and Jim is great at baking.

In this Highland competition, players are banned from using their hands. This game challenges participants to take bites out of treacle scones dangling from string. How can you lose?!

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup white sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup dried currants or raisins (optional)

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup sour cream

1 egg

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp all spice

1 tbsp treacle (molasses)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and spices into a large bowl.

Gently heat the butter with the sugar and treacle and stir till sugar has dissolved completely

Let this cool a little before adding the egg and milk and sour cream (save a little to glaze the scones before baking) then stir gently in the dry mix until well blended. Add the raisins and currants, if desired.

With floured hands, pat scone dough into balls 2 to 3 inches across. Let the scones barely touch each other. Brush the tops of the scones with the egg and milk leftover. Let them rest for about 10 minutes.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are golden brown. Hang them from the strings, and have fun chasing the deliciousness at any time of year.

The Fussy Librarian Q&A with May McGoldrick

Posted on 02/20/2019 at 10:53 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek at The Fussy Librarian

Now this is news you’ll like to hear even more than we like sharing it: The secret to success, for the people behind author May McGoldrick, is ice cream.

(We’ll pause for a moment so you can shriek in excitement.)

And now to explain and make a long story short.

Though they both considered themselves storytellers at heart, Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick started out their careers working in engineering and education, respectively.

The day Jim told Nikoo he’d like to enter a national writing contest, she was encouraging but honest: his submission needed work.

Together, they revised it into what was ultimately a prize-winner, but before they’d even received that external confirmation, they knew they wanted to continue this creative partnership.

Since then, they’ve jointly written over forty novels and two works of nonfiction under the pseudonyms May McGoldrick and Jan Coffey.

But what about the ice cream?

Nikoo and Jim, like all writers, have certainly received rejections and bad reviews (along with the acceptance, sales, and praise).

They’ve decided to process them by first swearing, then going out for ice cream.

Jim goes for soft-serve twist; Nikoo tries new flavors; and their dog, Marlo, partakes as well.

Together, they answered a few more questions about their remarkable long and award-filled career.

SADYE: So what else has contributed to your professional longevity?

MAY: We have a mantra that defines our life: persevere.

To survive as writers, no matter where we are in our careers, we need to keep writing. ...

One thing that has contributed to our longevity is that over the years we’ve developed a toolbox or a first-aid kit of strategies that pertain to a writing and living career.

We’ll just mention a few here:

We write for the love of writing, just as we read for the love of reading. We say that writing is our passion; the career is incidental.

Sicknesses, tragedies, days when creativity is the furthest thing from our mind, we still write.

We all have those real-life things that bang us around. They’re mostly unavoidable, and you often never see them coming.

I (Nikoo) am a true believer in the power of journaling during those times.

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way has provided a morning ritual for me every time life becomes unbearable.

I have volumes on my shelf from the times I was going through everything from cancer and depression to publishers failing to renew contracts.

Writing during difficult times, however, is a reminder to me that in my heart and soul, I’m always a writer. This is what I love to do.

Words make me happy, and putting them on the page is one thing that I can control, even if the rest of my world is spinning off its axis.

I can go on and on about the therapeutic effect of journaling. Of course, not everyone can do it or wants to do it. Jim thinks of it as torture.

We learned early in our career that there’s nothing worse than trying to work with someone who is not enthused about you or what you do.

For writers, this includes agents, editors, assistants, publicists, and even critique partners. A lukewarm reaction is like a disease; it impairs motivation and drive.

Thank God, we like each other. And thank God, we like each other’s work.

The writing business is cyclical. Publishing houses and editors need changes.

Our answer is to always be ready with a backup plan. A new proposal. Write in a different genre. Self-publish.

SADYE: What is the most rewarding moment or theme of your writing career?

MAY: We’ve had many of those moments; one that stands out was about three years ago.

May McGoldrick and historical romance started our publishing career. A decade into it, we changed over to Jan Coffey suspense/thrillers for another decade.

Then Jan needed a break, so we decided we wanted to try our hand at historicals again.

We came up with a proposal for a trilogy of novels loosely based on Shakespeare plays (our Scottish Relic trilogy) — Highland romance with a touch of magic.

Our agent sent it off, and she soon called back saying that an acquiring editor at St. Martin’s Press reached out to her, having experienced a “fan-girl” moment.

The editor had read our novel Tess and the Highlander (a prequel to this trilogy) when she was a teenager and had kept it on her “keeper” shelf ever since.

Soon after, St. Martin’s Press launched May McGoldrick’s career again.

One other really rewarding moment that comes to mind was in Scotland.

Touring Stirling Castle, a friend and fellow traveler, visiting the place for the first time, turned to us and said, “I’ve been here before…because of your books.”

SADYE: What is the biggest challenge in writing with your spouse?

MAY: Challenge? None. There are absolutely no challenges in writing with a partner.

However, we did write about our process in Marriage of Minds: Collaborative Fiction Writing at a publisher’s request.

So there might be a few challenges:

Jim eating chocolate chip cookies nonstop and never gaining weight.

Nikoo blasting music while she writes.

Nikoo hanging Chris Hemsworth’s photo above her desk as “research.”

Jim doing too much unimportant historical research.

Nikoo chucking ninety percent of Jim’s research in the draft stages of the book, reminding him that there was actually no Jack and Rose on the Titanic, and that nobody cares if a bee hive belongs in the northwest corner of the garden versus the northeast corner.

Jim merrily chopping off too many heads in the scene.

Nikoo being too attached to the character’s heads.

Jim thinking story is about action.

Nikoo lying awake at night worrying about how the character feels.

SADYE: Do you have a favorite genre to write in?

MAY: We love writing historical romance, of course.

From our knowledge of history (Jim has a PhD in sixteenth-century British lit), we know that human nature and the nature of political systems never change.

So we use our stories to comment on what is going on in the world now.

We also love writing contemporary suspense and techno-thrillers (Nikoo has an engineering degree) because there’s nothing like getting immersed in a page-turning story.

SADYE: What do you find most rewarding or interesting about all the public events you do?

MAY: Meeting readers and getting feedback is the best. We’re constantly learning.

Plus, Nikoo gets to share horror stories about our writing process in front of an audience. And Jim gets to wear his kilt.