Welcome CL Raven

Today I am excited to have these two very talented ladies visiting with me. CL Raven is a duo of two sisters who write together. Come sit back and get to know them just a little better and see what they have going on.

1. Your sisters and you both write. Let's start out by sharing how the two of you write your stories together.
For novels, we write about 1000 words each per chapter, or to the nearest stopping place. One writes the first 1000 words then we switch. We take it in turns to write the first half of the chapter. For short stories, we usually write a page each then switch. Once the chapter or short story is completed, we'll each do a couple of separate redrafts of it, until we can't remember who wrote what. We never sit at the computer and write together, so we never know what we're going to find in the chapter until the second person takes over.

2. Will you guys always write together or do you think you will branch off?
We started out writing separately then redrafting each other's novels, until 2007 when we started writing short stories. We realised it would be too heart breaking for only one of us to get published, when we'd both worked so hard, so we decided to put our separate novels under one name then we started writing together. We'll always write together now. We make a good team and it helps having someone to take over when you get stuck. They can take it in a direction you might not have taken by yourself. Plus we can share the blame and the glory. Or just blame each other. The Hydra did well with more than one head. Til it got burned by a sexy hero in a loincloth...must stay away from sexy heroes. 

3. You ladies have several publications under  your belt. Tell us a little about them and where we can find them. 
We've had nine short stories published and one poem. Two years ago we even did some performance poetry. Nobody was sure how two people could perform poetry together until they saw us do it. A couple of our stories are in obscure places that are probably lost, such as The Pages anthology. Our first short story, End of Innocence, was published by Legend Press, in their Eight Hours anthology. It's available on Amazon. We had to do a book launch in Waterstones for that, which was fun. We've had two published by Dark Fire Fiction, 'Til Death us do Part  http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/horror/darkfire/march11_2.html and Deadly Reflections http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/horror/darkfire/july11_4.html The Black Kiss and Field of Screams were published on Draven Ames' blog  http://dravenames.blogspot.com/2011/10/black-kiss-by-c-l-raven.html and http://www.dravenames.blogspot.com/2011/11/field-of-screams-by-c-l-raven.html Field of Screams also won Writing Magazine's magazine's ghost story competition and was published in their August 2010 issue. Our tenth short story, The Ferryman, is due out in issue 6 of Dark Moon Digest, which is available through Amazon & Barnes and Noble.

4. Can you choose a favorite?
Field of Screams and The Ferryman are our favourites. Field of Screams is a paranormal comedy so it's totally different to our other stuff and we really enjoyed writing it. It still makes us laugh. We wrote it 3 weeks before Writing Magazine's deadline. We like winging it. We've never been good at working well before deadlines. The Ferryman's funny and we really like the characters. It's an updated version of Chiron, set on a train. We mostly remember our stories by the characters.

5. Scott The Zombie, I follow him on facebook and he's been complaining lately about not getting a lot of attention. Any plans for him in the future? 
Scott the Zombie is always complaining we don't pay him enough attention! We were in the middle of redrafting his book when NaNoWriMo came so once we've finished writing that novel we'll go back to him. If he hasn't eaten our brains by then. In the novel Scott works in a supermarket. At the time one of our mates worked in a supermarket so he gave us inside knowledge in exchange for a part in the book. His character is Tyler, Scott's best friend. We plan to self epublish Scott the Zombie and release merchandise with it. I ♥ Scott the Zombie t-shirts with his Facebook and Twitter account addresses on the back. We might produce mugs, keyrings etc. We've already got an order from a Writing Magazine writer, Margaret James, who plans to feature him in the April issue of the magazine. A 300 word extract from the novel got a great critique by author James McCreet in Writing Magazine. But we've had no luck selling his short story. He blames us for this.

6.What you are currently working on?
We're currently working on our NaNoWriMo novel - Field of Screams. We hit 80,000 by the time NaNo finished but we're not done with the book yet. We loved the short story and characters and they wouldn't stop nagging us to turn it into a novel. Same thing happened with Scott - he started out in a short story. We've just sent another novel Soul Asylum to an editor in America (we worked with him on The Ferryman). That one's set in a North Wales asylum. We used an abandoned asylum in Denbigh, North Wales for the inspiration but they're demolishing it. We visited it in November and were promptly escorted out for trespassing! Whoops. We wanted photos for the front cover. Another novel, Majesty of Darkness is with a publisher but we're waiting to hear back, though it just got rejected by 5 agents.

7. What is a must have snack while you write?
Red Bull. Vegan chocolate. Red Bull. A bigger Red Bull.

8. Is there a genre that you one day hope to write that you haven't yet?
We like dabbling with erotica, we often put it in our stories and would love to be able to write an erotic short story or novel.

9. Is there anything you guys would like to share?
Our aim was to steal Stephen King's horror throne from him by the time we were 30. We'll be 29 in February and it hasn't happened yet. Hope he doesn't read this. We love ghost hunting and recently spent the night in an abandoned haunted jail. We plan to turn the experience into a short story. But with added ghosts. The only unusual thing that happened was when we were locked in the Dark Cell with our mate, the K2 meter kept lighting up every time we asked if the 'ghost' was executed or if we mentioned murder. We probably should've been scared but we just chastised the ghost for lighting up the machine when we were talking. We blame our family of teachers. It's rude to interrupt. We'd love for Tim Burton to turn Majesty of Darkness into a claymation. We've even planned the action figures. Which is probably creepy. So if anyone knows him, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter...

The photo was taken this Halloween. Lynx is Freddy Kreuger, Cat is Jason Vorhees.

---