Christine, I realized after I posted my answer to you that I didn't really answer your question about collaboration. So here are some thoughts about it:
Joan and I love collaborating and often tell each other that two heads are better than one. I highly recommend working on a project with someone whose talents compliment your own.
Joan and I came from different backgrounds, she being the author of over 20 books for young people, while I'm primarily a poet for adults, though have written some for younger readers as well.
Joan mentioned that she wanted to write a young adult verse novel, but knew that, for that niche market, most of them are composed in free verse. Even so, we decided to stick with form, meter, and rhyme, especially after finding a book by Helen Frost called Room 214, which, in the first edition was billed as a novel in verse. The second edition called it a year in poems, since there isn't all that much of a plot. The project we were working on, however, was tightly plotted.
We often wrote together in the kitchen, though I also wrote a lot of the poems on my own based on Joan's story idea and feedback. After we finished the book, Joan consulted some friends in the field who read the first ten pages, and echoed Joan's original concerns about the market being heavily tilted toward free verse. However, besides Helen Frost (who also wrote Hidden), we read Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston. It's all written in anapestic tetrameter rhyming couplets (just like the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas"). So that one, at least, found a publishing home. I, on the other hand, decided to self-publish our book. We'll see how it does.
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