Countdown to The Living Wills

In the days leading up to the December 1st release of "The Living Wills", we'll be giving you little hints and previews of what you will find in the pages of this exciting new novel by Eckhartz Press authors Brendan Sullivan and Rick Kaempfer.

Today we'll answer a question we've gotten quite a bit: Two authors on one novel? How in the world can that work?

Co-author Brendan Sullivan (photo) explains it in the book's author notes...

"This novel was conceived, developed and written in what we’ve come to learn is a fairly unusual way. “The Living Wills” was written through improvisation, brainstorming mind mapping and other ideation techniques, as an experiment in pure collaborative creativity. Rick and I had no pre-conceived ideas about the content of this novel, absolutely none. All we had was our own creativity, Rick’s wisdom and experience as a writer and a set of mutually agreed-upon rules, based upon my years as a professional improvisational actor and my extensive experience in applying these rules with corporate clients to improve their ideation, problem solving, team development and leadership skills.

These rules include true mutual respect, trust in yourself and your team, active listening, playfulness, being ‘in the moment,’ taking risks, supporting someone else taking a risk, accepting one another’s ideas, finding the positive and building on that, saying ‘yes…and’ first and creating a safe and healthy environment for all of this to take place.

I happen to have an awesome partner in creating this novel. Rick’s talent, experience and wisdom made this work. And there’s no replacement for that. The rules stated above are not a substitute for education, knowledge, experience and talent. But the rules tremendously increase the odds that the collaboration will be successful."