Usually I can tell people what I'm working on: a new book, often one set in Italy. Right now I can't. There are contracts agreed but yet to be signed, announcements to make, press releases to be written. It won't be long, I promise, and frankly I can barely wait to get this thing off my chest. But here's another reason I can't just blurt it all out.

It's a collaboration. Yes. The c-word. One that sends shivers down so many writers spines.
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I've never collaborated on anything before. No, before you ask <em>The Chopin Manuscript</em> and <em>The Copper Bracelet</em> weren't collaborations in the truest sense. We just wrote what we wanted and some clever editing by Jeffery Deaver and Jim Fusilli made it all work afterwards. Real collaboration means you talk to your co-writer through the entire process and produce the whole thing together.

That's what I'm doing though with whom... sorry. Later.

Here's the thing that's amazed me. It's gone incredibly well. We've got a first draft, bar a closing scene, ahead of schedule. It looks good I think though will benefit from some revises. We didn't fight. We didn't fall out. We discovered we looked at the thing the same way as it developed (not that we knew that to begin with).

All in all it's been a very interesting experience and one I think I'll write about later from the practical writing point of view. As anyone who lurks around here knows I'm big on what management consultants call 'workflow'. I like the processes to be right because if they are life is an awful lot easier.

Largely by accident I think we fell into the right processes very quickly with this one. Give me a few weeks and I plan to expand on that quite a lot more.