My Mysterious Coauthor
The secret to writing a book with cool aliens is having a coauthor who’s good at writing cool aliens.
Dear readers,
I’ve gotten lots of questions lately about my novel-writing partner and our process. So, today, I’ll tell you how Sam Clamons and I met and started working together. But first… some info about upcoming events:
On Saturday, April 20th at 2pm MDT, I’ll be signing copies of Inner Space and Outer Thoughts: Speculative Fiction From Caltech and JPL Authors at the Tattered Cover Bookstore’s Local Author Meet and Greet (7301 S. Santa Fe Dr., Littleton, CO). Please come out and say hi—there will be several other awesome local authors there, too! And I’ll have some free swag to give away.
Save the date: the Spring Book Bash is coming up on Saturday, May 4th in Colorado Springs. Over 40 authors from Colorado will be there to sign books and give away swag!! Plus snacks, refreshments, live music—all free and open to the public. You can find more info on the Facebook event page, and the participating author list should be posted there soon.
Additionally, I have two university visits in April. Last week, I met with Metropolitan State University’s Creative Writing Club in Denver for the first time, which was a blast. Next week, I’m visiting the Writer’s Society at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. My favorite part of the MSU visit was the collaborative writing exercise. Everyone picked a prompt (either “a mundane object is found in an impossible location” or “an animal is trying to tell you something in a creative way”) and wrote for ten minutes. Then we all swapped and continued the story for ten minutes, then read them aloud. I was impressed by the students’ creative ideas!
This collaborative exercise is exactly the kind of thing Sam Clamons and I used to do when we were both members of Caltech’s creative writing club, TechLit. It’s how I learned that we’d make a good team.
So… who is Sam Clamons? Let’s start with some fun facts:
He is writing a young adult science fiction horror duology with me, called THE GHOSTS OF GADOLIN. It’s set in a utopian future and has themes of ecological justice and neurodiversity. (I’ll share more in a future post.)
Sam was the reason I had to order vegan Domino’s pizza for TechLit writing club meetings at Caltech. (I’ll be honest—I sometimes forgot.)
He has a cat that gets excited every time we have a writing phone call because Sam fidgets with cat toys while we talk and she knows she will get played with.
By day, he’s a bioinformatic scientist at the DNA sequencing company Illumina. He writes code to help biologists understand and learn from their data. (He would love to say more about that work, but for now it’s confidential.) Before that, as a graduate student, Sam was a professional bacteria-programmer.
He is VERY good at writing aliens that feel very alien and yet are somehow super relatable. Y’all aren’t ready for some of the ones you’ll meet in GHOSTS.
Sam is a firm believer in human rationality—in the ability of people to change their minds when confronted with persuasive arguments. I think this is one of the most important reasons we make a good team: we believe that writing optimistic sci-fi, which shows how humanity could right our wrongs, matters. That it can change minds, and actions.
Sam and I met shortly after I email blasted all of Caltech to see if anyone wanted to form a creative writing club. Like me, he was working on a PhD in the biological sciences and trying to balance that with his love of fiction writing. Over the years, he wrote stories with such titles as, “On the Theory and Practice of Cat Burglaring,” “Cassidy Donegan's Electric Zoo,” “Bug Juice,” and “Yuan Tzu’s Second Law of Evolutionary Design”—that last one, you can read in the Caltech anthology!
In 2021, after several years of reading Sam’s work, I decided I wanted to write a book that included intelligent aliens. I knew this book would be MUCH better if Sam designed those aliens. I remember being so nervous when I asked him to write a novel with me! But, in the end, he said yes.
Here’s Sam’s recollection of how we got started, in his own words:
I've been writing stories since roughly the age I learned I had (almost) the same name as Mark Twain. I first tried my hand at novel writing in elementary school, with a sprawling Star Wars fan-fic that grew to 200 pages before I realized I didn't know where I was going with it. Other attempts ended even more prematurely, so early on, I decided to stick to short stories.
That changed when Rachael came to me with a pitch for what would become The Ghosts of Gadolin. Rachael founded Techlit, the after-hours writing club that got me back into writing after something of a lull. She has always been the person who made things happen—the one with the boldness to launch projects and the grit, intelligence, and strength of personality to see them through. So, when she asked if I wanted to coauthor a novel, I knew that, if I accepted, I'd be publishing a novel. Taking on a coauthored project was a scary proposition at first, but I'm so glad I accepted!
Three years later, we are four drafts into THE GHOSTS OF GADOLIN and the novel has split into a two-book series. When this draft is done, we’ll start querying literary agents to find someone to pitch the books to publishers. In parallel, I’ll move on to writing my first solo novel! However, I suspect this is not the last project Sam and I will work on together…
I’ll save the logistical aspects of our co-writing process for a future post. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about Sam, follow him on X and check out his stories in the Caltech anthology. Here’s an excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Zarblax?”:
Two soft-bodied worms pulled themselves toward each other along a methane shore, politely squirming over bystanders in their path and keeping one pseudopod stretched out into the shimmering surface of their life-giving ocean. They met with a joyful exchange of touches colored by bursts of pheromones. Two pinprick-tiny moons whirled overhead. The aliens soaked up the powerful rays of their distant white star as they talked.
“Zarblax, what a surprise! Small tides and large clutches!”
“It’s good to see you, Yobwup. I was hoping I might find you here.”
“What are you doing on the homeworld? I thought you were still scouting the coreward arm. Don’t tell me they cut your funding?”
“No, Yobwup. Dark matter storm. We turned back after System 22250.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What a terrible waste! So many surveys have been cut short by storms of late. Did you by chance make it to . . . ?”
“System 54239? Yes. That’s why I came to see you.”
“Oh? Do tell, do tell! What did you find?”
“You were right—It’s inhabited.”
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Rachael