Chapter 8 - Craig and Jaleesa Snow

Craig and Jaleesa Snow discuss writing as a team, heightening tension in conflict, and developing magic and technology in a steampunk setting. Their debut novel, Everblade, is a clean, thrilling adventure that will keep you at the edge of your seat! 

https://www.craigandjaleesasnow.com/ 

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Emma: Two minds are better than one, and today, I have two great minds in the studio with me, Craig and Jaleesa Snow, authors of the Republic of Steam Chronicles. Craig and Jaleesa, first off, why don't you tell me about yourselves?

Jaleesa: I'm Jaleesa Snow. We are the coauthors of Everblade, which is the first book in the Republic of Steam Chronicles. We're both from Idaho Falls. We both are born and raised here, and we are so excited to be able to talk about our book today.

Craig: I'm Craig. Something Jaleesa didn't tell you is I'm pretty sure you're a descendant of Vikings, right?

Jaleesa: Whatever.

Craig: Just kidding. She does have some ancestry from the area, so of course, I claimed that. No, but yeah. No, I'm Craig, and, you know, super excited to be here and to talk about writing books.

Emma: I'm excited to have you here. So first off, how did you two start writing together?

Jaleesa: So Craig, he's like the mastermind behind the story, I like to say, because I couldn't come up with the story myself. But Craig, he started coming up with this story. He did role-playing games and stuff with his brothers growing up, and so he just has a very creative mind.

And so being able to come up with these stories, he just had a bunch of them bouncing around in his head. And at one point, he was like, well, I'm just gonna sit down and start writing, you know, at least a story. Get this story out of me. And so then I ended up popping in, and we started bouncing ideas around together. And then we both decided, well, let's go ahead and write a book then, and let's coauthor this. And it's really nice because we're able to play off of each other's strengths with that.

Craig: We've had a lot of fun. A lot of this started during the time of grad school. I was reading so much technical literature that, you know, I was hitting the point where I was ready to take any sort of technical literature and just throw it out the window. I actually haven't been able to read nonfiction since. It's been a little bit hard, but writing a book was something that, you know, coming up with an idea was a creative avenue. And then it just became really, really fun.

And with Jaleesa jumping in, it became really fun, because she pulled out so many things about the world and the characters. And even one of the most compelling characters who, if you read the book, Amelia, she really built Amelia. She's got this very fiery, snarky personality and she's honestly probably our favorite character to write and read. And she really built out her, I feel like you breathe a lot of life into this. And so it's just it's been a lot of fun working together on this. And we are working on our second book, so it's about to get it's gonna get really exciting.

Jaleesa: Yeah.

Emma: I know in writing, it's difficult enough already to try to keep all your ideas all in a line and keep everything consistent with each other. So with both of you, what's your process of writing together and how do you keep your story coherent and cohesive?

Jaleesa: We've been asked this a lot, actually. Like, "there's two of you. How are you writing," yeah, "a cohesive story that makes sense?" And I think for both of us, it's actually not been too difficult. We're both very organized people. And I don't know. We have everything on our Google Docs so that we can see, like, okay. This is the outline for the book, and then these are what the chapters are going to talk about and what's going to happen. And so I don't know. We have our way of writing that Craig, since he's the one really coming up with the more intricate details of the story, he'll outline the chapter for me, and then I'm able to go based off of that. And then we end up going back and forth being able to edit and add different details. And then it's nice because it is in Google Docs that we're able to, like, write notes for each other of, like, "oh, how about we add more in this part?" Or, "I don't know if we need to talk about this here. How about we put it in this location?" So I don't know. With how we've been able to write and organize things, it's actually been able to be pretty clean, I think, for at least how we work. We're able to work really well together with the system that we've created for ourselves.

Craig: So when we're talking consistency, something else that helps, too, is we get very detailed in our outlining, and Jaleesa teasingly calls it our "murder board" that we create. It's more of like... Imagine a conspiracy board where you've got, you know, pins and red string everywhere. Usually, what we like to do is we'll create an outline of the story, and for each chapter, we'll write a description of each chapter. We'll cut it out and we'll tape it up on a wall. And then we'll look at that and then together we'll identify, okay, well, how could we embellish the plot? How could we embellish the world? How can we pull more of our character arcs, pull more conflict? What about the themes that we're trying to portray in here? And just the fact that we both talk back and forth until we basically create this vision of what the story will be and where it will go. I think a lot of that helps, too, so that once we actually get down into the chapter-by-chapter writing where we even do a detailed outline there of, okay, here's what's gonna happen in the chapter. We already know where we're heading. We know where we're going. And so I think it just helps with both of us being on the same page that we start out with a singular vision and then the rest of the time it's executing that and embellishing.

Emma: That is impressive. Because the tone, also—it doesn't... It's not jarring when you go.. Like, I can't tell you—I've read most of the book by now—and I can't tell you when one person was writing and when another person was writing. It just all seems like one.

Jaleesa: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of that, I think, is that our writing styles are really similar, but then we're also going back and forth so much as we're writing. And then, obviously, we have had some really great editors and copy editors that we've worked with, so I don't know. Just everyone who has read our book, our beta readers, different stuff like that, they were able to help us, you know, really smooth it out. But we had wondered the same thing when we were starting. We're like, how is this gonna be? Because if you see any book that has multiple authors, you know, you kind of wonder, like, how are they all writing this book together? And so it's been a really cool learning experience to see, like, how we write individually but can make it cohesive.

Emma: What would you say is the biggest challenge you faced in writing and how do you overcome it?

Craig: Yeah. I got this one. So one of the biggest challenges is the funnest thing about writing a book is actually writing the book. And when you become an author, there's actually so many other responsibilities associated with writing a book that it actually takes more time to do those things than it does to actually write your book. Maybe that's slightly not true. You do a lot of other... like, writing takes a lot of time.

Jaleesa: Well, I think it's more because we're self-published authors. It's almost like running a business. We're not just writing. We're also doing all of our social media.

Craig: Our marketing.

Jaleesa: We're creating our own marketing materials. We're creating posts. We are, you know, doing stuff like this, like being on podcasts or just trying to get our book out there. We have our website. You know? So it's not just writing. It's everything else. So it makes it kind of hard to just focus on writing, which is what we really wanna just be doing is just focusing on the next book.

Craig: So it's that as well as there's lots... At least for me, I have all of these different story ideas and worlds that I wanna write and characters that, you know, I can hear the music of, you know, what it is that we could create. And to not be able to write those yet is very, very challenging. Just case in point, you know, last night, here we are drafting, working on our next book, and I'm at the end of this chapter. And what's going through my head is this whole other story with this gripping father-daughter story in this medieval fantasy with a whole different other magic system. And I'm hearing the music of this story, as well, at the same time I'm trying to write this section that I'm currently in. So things like that, it's fun. But at the same time, it's... If only we could get our stories out faster.

Jaleesa: Yeah.

Craig: I feel like that would be really nice.

Jaleesa: I will say one fun challenge with this is Everblade is just book one of the series. It's gonna be a five book series, and so we know what's going to happen at the end. We know, like, all of the details of everything, And so we're trying to hide little hints of what's going to happen and, you know, just the deeper story that, I don't know, book five will, like, explode with. And so that's a fun challenge of trying to, like, hide those little tidbits within the different books without giving too much away. You know? That way, when people go back and read the books, they'll be like, "that—oh my gosh. Like, that was there! There was that hiding the whole time, but we had no idea." And so it's just really fun to be able to, like...

Craig: be devious as an author.

Jaleesa: Yeah! Just hide those little tidbits of, like, how can we show what's happening without anybody knowing what's happening on the bigger picture?

Emma: That is a fun challenge. And Craig, as for the wanting to write other stuff too, I guess that's a better challenge to have than not having enough ideas. Right?

Jaleesa: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, yeah.

Emma: Like you were saying, self-publishing especially, that's a lot, because it's all—your marketing, everything's on you. How do you balance your writing and then with your other jobs that you have and then also with your family and other responsibilities?

Craig: It helps that we have different times for each of these activities. So for me, at least, when I'm at work, I'm at work. And when I get done with work, then that's usually time for family, and our kids are young. So usually, you know, between being done with work and them going to bed, you know, that is family time. And then time after that is time that's open to whatever hobbies we want to spend time on. So a lot of times that's writing. That does mean that the time that you have to spend on writing is very brief and very limited, and it's after you've spent all your energies in the day, which has its own challenges. We also do write occasionally on weekends and then also on holidays, but a lot of this is this is our hobby. This is what we do for fun. And I think that also plays into what it is that we create where you can kinda tell we're having fun. It's just plain fun. But, yeah, that's at least for me. How about for you, Jaleesa?

Jaleesa: Well, for me, I mean, yeah. During the day, you know, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And so I'm dealing with sick kids or our daughter who's at home who's not old enough for kindergarten yet and just... I don't know. All the housework, the endless piles of laundry and dishes and all that stuff that happens. And then, yeah, once it's the evening time, Craig is often writing. And for me, I also own a cookie decorating business. And so I'm getting my orders out and different stuff like that. And so a lot of the evenings, I'm working on cookies. So my writing is more limited. We have what we call a "book date" on Monday nights that, like, I will for sure be writing on Monday nights or working on the book in some way, whether it's social media or whatever. It's usually been writing lately because that's been our big push with book two. But, yeah, there are times where it's kind of a struggle to be able to balance all of that, because sometimes it just feels like there's so much. But I don't know. I feel like we have been able to set those limits that, like what Craig was saying with the times of the day, like, when he's at work, he's at work. During the day, I'm not working on book stuff or cookie stuff. I'm focusing on the kids and the family and housework. And then, you know, we have that family time. And then in the evenings, it's whatever hobby stuff that we wanna work on, whether it's business or book or whatever. So I don't know. I feel like we've had to figure out a system that works for us, and it's definitely not perfect. There are times where we're both just worn out or I don't know. We wish there were more days in the week so that we could get more done. But I don't know. That's what works for us.

Emma: Me and my husband, we both really love to write, but we also both have full-time jobs. So it's really hard, especially because, I don't know, after staring at a computer screen for eight hours... It's mentally exhausting.

Jaleesa: Exactly.

Emma: The last thing I wanna do is go home and stare at a computer screen again. So sometimes I'll write by hand, which I actually like because then I have to... When I type it up, I kinda edit it as I type and sometimes it goes completely differently than I had originally written it, which is kind of fun. But it is a challenge and actually, your book was a temptation for me because I kept... My husband would be like, "you said you were going to write, and you are sitting on the couch reading" and I'm like, "it's... it's part of my process. I'm just... you know."

Jaleesa: "Just idea gathering."

Emma: Uh-huh.

Jaleesa: No, Craig does the same thing. While he's actively writing, he's like, "I can't read other books!"

Emma: Yeah!

Craig: It's easy to get sucked into someone else's world.

Emma: Mhmm.

Craig: And, yeah, that's hard.

Emma: And I feel like it's, you know, reading is the escape and the relaxing thing. And then writing is also an escape, but it's a lot more mental effort. So Yeah.

Jaleesa: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, agreed.

Emma: What drew you to the genre of steampunk and what do you love the most about it?

Craig: You know, it's interesting because it's a little bit hard to say specifically what drew us to it other than it's just pure fun. There's a lot that you can do, especially since our world, it's steampunk and magic. You have the benefit of playing in both worlds where you can come up with all sorts of innovative technologies while also making them half-baked, which adds a layer of danger and flare to it. As well as with the magic, you of course, you know, magic is very commonly written of and you can do a lot there. But I just... I find it so much fun coming up with ideas of, you know, how can we... Especially when it comes to... your characters run into a challenge and how do they solve the challenge? Since our main characters fall into the realm of, you know, they don't have magic, so they usually have to innovate their way through challenges. And a lot of that means inventing something, and that I find just pure fun.

Jaleesa: Well, and it's fun with the world, too, because I feel like magic is usually, like, the good guys. Whereas in our world, it's, in a way, the bad guys.

Craig: They're the bad guys.

Jaleesa: And so the people who don't have magic, the Commonborn—the Republic of Steam is full of Commonborn, and they're the ones who have gone away from the world of magic. And so they've had to innovate because of that. And so I don't know. It's just fun with the different challenges that we've created with the world that the world itself has.

Craig: Yeah, because being in the Republic of Steam, since you're Commonborn and other nations around you have these magical, powerful people, you kind of have this ongoing, ever-present sense of danger, and that adds a layer of tension through everywhere.

Jaleesa: How can we innovate our technology enough that it kind of beats magic?

Craig: It's pretty hard to do.

Jaleesa: Yeah. Which it... It's been a struggle for us. And it's also been fun because we've had to like, with our airship, we've had to, like, okay. Like, how does an airship work? Is it helium that's in the balloon? Is it oxygen? What is it? What happens if—

Craig: I mean, hopefully, it's not oxygen because then it would just sink.

Jaleesa: No. But you know what I mean?

Craig: I'm teasing you.

Jaleesa: Like, we've had to learn, like, the science behind different stuff too. Okay. Well, is it really flammable? What makes it flammable? It's just been really fun to delve into the science and technology of that itself. And then also with the magic system, you know, just trying to figure out how we can make it different than other magic systems that

Craig: Yeah.

Jaleesa: are in books out there and being able to, I don't know, in some ways, be able to integrate the two of them. It's been really fun.

Emma: That's actually been one of my favorite parts about Everblade is the conflict that comes from the two different groups, the Commonborn and then the magic people.

Jaleesa: Yeah.

Emma: I love that because it's conflict that's kind of fueled by the world building as well. So do you have any tips for how to create these worlds that lead to and create the conflict?

Craig: Sure, yeah. So conflict is an interesting thing because there's actually lots of different layers in which you can put conflict in. So what you mentioned is an example of how the atmosphere of this book, where we've got a nation of people without magic who have to thrive using technology and a nation of people with magic, there's an inherent conflict there. You got nation against nation and that's just atmosphere for the story. But if you get down into how do you feel this conflict through every single chapter, one of the mechanics that we use is every chapter, our characters start with a goal. They're trying to accomplish something in the chapter. And throughout the chapter, we throw up barriers to that goal. And we may even make the accumulation of those barriers escalate the feeling of conflict and reduce the resources that you have to succeed. Case in point example. Let's say you had a character and they needed to find a magical artifact in this cave. So then they go into this cave and they find that there's a pit and they have to go down into the pit. So this is their first obstacle, but the pit is super deep and they don't have rope long enough to go all the way down the pit. So that's the next obstacle. And lo and behold, guess what? You are terrified of heights. And so now suddenly you also layer another sense of tension with this. And guess what? The bad guys are right behind you. And if you don't start scrambling down that pit right now, then you're going to be in even greater danger. So now you've layered that in. And of course, then as you're starting to climb down in the pit and you're feeling terrified and you've got this whole context built there, then when you start adding in other details, like since you're feeling nervous and since you're exerting yourself as you're climbing down, your fingers are getting sweaty and you're starting to slip, and you're noticing how sharp the rocks are down at the bottom. All these things build all this tension and then by the time you get done with the end of the chapter, then you discover, okay, did they accomplish the goal? Did they not? Did you fall down to the bottom of the pit? I mean, that would be a...

Jaleesa: One way to get the goal.

Craig: Yeah, an end to your story. Or did you reach the bottom? But by reaching the bottom, you lost half of your party, and now you have reduced resources. So those are just a couple elements is you throw up barriers. But going back to this concept of escalation versus scarcity of resources, you'll see this a lot with stories where at first, you start out and you're trying to save your family. And then as the plot goes on, now you're trying to save your village. And then it's your whole nation and now the whole entire world is at stake. You know, this is an example of your conflict is escalating and becoming bigger. But if we talk about scarcity, at first, you know, you have all these people behind you. But over time, maybe things start dropping out or maybe you get labeled as the villain or maybe you discover something that now suddenly you are the only person in the whole world that can actually make a difference. When you start getting into that, you've got now your resources to be able to succeed are shrinking. So all of these are elements that we like to play with and that create this conflict that adds in addition to just the natural conflict of the world of, you know, here's the overall conflict of you've got one nation that's kind of against another nation.

Emma: I don't wanna spoil anything, but that's another thing that I really enjoyed was how the Enchantrans, the magic people, you kind of get little snippets of their perspective, and they also feel like they are completely in the right,

Jaleesa: Oh, yeah!

Emma: which I thought was super intriguing.

Jaleesa: Yeah. It's fun to... I mean, I feel like whoever you are, you're gonna feel like you're right. Like, that's just kind of like a basic human thing. And so it's been fun to play around with that good versus evil aspect, because the Enchantrans, they 100% feel like they are in the right. They have magic. They feel like they have almost a birthright to help kind of care for the people in their nation and especially those that have magic. And so that's against those that are Commonborn in the Republic Of Steam that don't have magic. They feel like they've been downtrodden. And so just being able to play with that aspect of they both feel like they're good, but there's also bad parts of both worlds. You know? It's just it's been really fun to be able to play around with that.

Emma: And to make it convincing too.

Jaleesa: Yes.

Craig: Yeah.

Emma: Do you have anything else that you'd like to share about writing in general or your books?

Craig: Oh, man. There's a lot that we could share.

Emma: Yeah, I know. That's a very open0ended question. I'm sorry.

Craig: No. You're fine.

Jaleesa: I guess for me, I would just say, I feel like a lot of people growing up, we wanted to write a book or, you know, even as we've gotten older, we may still have, like, ideas running through our heads and stuff like that. And so if you want to write a book, I'd say just start. At least get your ideas down. It doesn't have to be good. And I feel like that's what holds a lot of people up is, like, oh, when I have it down, it has to be good. No. It doesn't have to be good. We call our first drafts, like, our word vomit. You know? You're just, like, putting it on a page. It doesn't... It's definitely not good. And so I feel like it's just getting that out of your system and being able to just get the ideas out. Put them into the world. It doesn't matter how they're into the world, even if it's just your own little world. But just being able to get it out, even if it's very much half-baked, which it will be, and being okay with that.

Craig: It's a good point because being an author, there's a lot of insecurities that can sometimes come with it because at first, you feel very vulnerable because you're coming up with these ideas and you have no idea if anyone's going to like them. And it's easy to take your ideas and compare them to fully published works and say, "wow, my ideas do not measure up." And I think the lie involved in all of this is the fact that those people who published those books spent a lot of time on revising. And just talking about what Jaleesa mentioned here, a book takes lots of revisions. You know, at first, you're basically blazing a trail for your story. And then after drafting your story, it's really then that you realize, oh, here's how I need to change the story to make it even greater. And there's a lot of processes for how you can do that and we won't get into that here. But honestly, if you've got a story, I'm totally with Jaleesa. Just start getting it down on paper and then find someone who's been down the path before and have them mentor you. And they'll help you with the revisions and getting it polished. You may even surprise yourself that what you create may actually be better than what's out there.

Jaleesa: Yeah. I mean, book one, it took us a couple years, you know, start to finish. The writing to it being published, it's not gonna come out perfect, so...

Craig: No.

Jaleesa: And we can look back on book one, too, even now that it's published and be like, if we could, like, change that a little bit, we wish we could. But, you know, it's out there now. So we can just only move forward.

Emma: Being at the place that you are with having one book published and almost ready to publish your second book... I don't know, what were the differences between your process in writing the first book and then the second book?

Jaleesa: I feel like we got a lot better at working together as a team with, like, cowriting it and being able to know how to edit things and write things clearly earlier in the process than in book one. I feel like in book one, it was a lot of, like, oh, yeah. Well, what if we did this? And, you know, in book two, we have a more streamlined process of the actual story itself and how to write that.

Craig: And don't get us wrong. Book one is very clean and polished. The journey to get there took a lot longer than the journey to get through book two because there's something about writing something very polished the first time. Like, I have to disclaimer that though because you're... we just talked about drafts aren't highly polished, and they aren't. But after going through the process once, going through the process again is much faster and efficient.

Jaleesa: We know what we're doing this time. And that's with the whole book process, it's not just with writing. It's with the whole, like, oh, now we know more about, like, what our editors are looking for, and we know where to find those resources.

Craig: And illustrators.

Jaleesa: And illustrators and all of that. It's just a lot easier the second time around.

Emma: Well, we've been talking so much about your book, would you be willing to read some of it?

Jaleesa: Sure! So I'm gonna read a little bit of the first chapter where we talk about and introduce Amelia. At the beginning of Everblade, we are talking about the first main character named Ander, and he is a special ops in the Republic of Steam military. But Amelia, she's an inventor's daughter, and so this is... She has her own backstory that's really big, but this is where we kind of introduce her.

Explosions ripped through the air.

Amelia Steam sprinted away from the column of black smoke rising behind. Clutched in her hands was a roll of airship schematics. Proof that there was a traitor in the Republic. Steele was going to be furious. She should have been at the ball already, but a trail of rumors had led her to a half-finished Enchantran airship.

An Enchantran airship.

Leaving it would have doomed the Republic, so she had snuck in, strapped explosives to it, and set it alight. She had gotten just outside the walls of the military complex before the explosions. Fortunately, she still had time to make it to the ball if she could make a clean getaway.

"You, Redhead! Halt!" shouted a powerful voice behind her.

Three massive legionnaires in gilded armor raced after her.

Redhead, really? Auburn was her actual hair color, but she didn't expect these meatheads to understand that. Still, the meatheads were moving with unnatural speed towards her. Outrunning them would not be an option.

She turned into a crowd that was forming on the street. Her small, slim form easily slipped through the people despite the bulky tool belt hanging from her waist. Meanwhile, the large soldiers slowed down to force their way past people. She broke free of the crowd with a smirk. Just a little further toward the sewer gates and she'd be free.

Powerful hands ripped her from her feet. She screamed and rammed her elbow into her captor's gut. The blow bounced off his armor and sent a spike of pain through her whole arm.

"You are not going anywhere," came a gruff voice from the deep helmet. She struggled anyway, but her captor's grip was like a vice.

"Delvin, Asralyn, I've got her."

The airship plans, Amelia thought desperately. The Republic had to know.

Emma: I am so intrigued by Amelia's backstory.

Jaleesa: It's so fun.

Emma: I—yes.

Jaleesa: And we go into it a lot deeper in book two. And so you get to find out even more. So I won't spoil any of that, but I feel like her story is a lot about self-healing and...

Craig: Redemption.

Jaleesa: Redemption.

Craig: And her family legacy.

Jaleesa: Yeah. And so it's just... I don't know. I feel like that character development of hers is just really gripping, and we get a lot more of that in book two.

Emma: I like that. And I feel like it pairs very well with Ander, the other main character, with his arc of being this dutiful soldier. He has a lot of internal conflict, I feel like, which is super cool.

Jaleesa: Oh, yeah.

Emma: Well, thank you both so much for coming in today. It's been really fun talking with you.

Craig: Of course.

Jaleesa: Thank you so much for having us.

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