[Martin Elster]

Hi everyone,

I'm pleased to announce that Dogged: A Verse Novel, which I wrote with my writing partner, Joan Axelrod-Contrada, is now live on Amazon. Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/DOGGED-Verse-...s%2C113&sr=8-1

[Christine P'legion]

Congrats, Martin!

How did writing something this long in partnership work for you two? I'd be really interested to hear about your process.

[Martin Elster]

Hi Christine,

Thanks! Joan (who is a dog-lover; so am I) read a short story a while back from a memoir by Steve Bernstein called Stories from the Stoop, which tells of his experiences as a boy growing up in The Bronx (NYC). It’s the first story in the book and is about his Malamute dog, which he became very attached to. His father, a plumber who had a drinking problem, gave the dog away in a card game.

Joan’s memory of that story was the inspiration for ours. The theme of our book is Intolerance. The secondary theme is losing one’s pet. The setting is a future dystopian world with a sprinkling of science fiction elements, such as robot pigeons (flying drones), humanoid robots from Planet Plake, and a tyrannical king. There are also gadgets like watches that can become invisible and communicate like cellphones, and 3-D printers that can make almost anything (except those watches!).

The exiles participate in contests for a chance to get out of the desert and get their pets back, but it’s all propaganda. The two teen protagonists (with the help of a special talking robot pigeon called Lucky) need to find a way to depose King Sagittarius.

Joan (who specializes in books for young readers) was mostly the storyteller, and I was mostly the poet, though we also wrote many of the poems together. Sometimes elements of a poem generated material for the plot as we went along. It was a really fun collaboration.

[Martin Elster]

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.

[Christine P'legion]

Thanks for the answer, and the expansion on the answer I'm always fascinated by people's processes, especially when it comes to things like collaboration. I'm glad that you two found such a workable partnership!