Hi everyone! Today I’m so excited to feature Team Phison and Chace Verity! I’ve known Chace for a while and I can’t wait for more people to discover their work.
About the Book
Team Phison by Chace Verity
Released August 15th 2017
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For 55-year-old Phil Hutton, finding a new boyfriend is tough, especially since he’s still hurting from his ex leaving him for a younger man. Online dating has been a soul-crushing experience for the restaurant owner. Too many meat-haters interested in microbreweries or something called geocaching. His matches in the multiplayer for his favorite video game have been equally sucky too.
One night, he encounters a newbie who is so helpless, Phil can’t help showing him the ropes. It doesn’t take long for Phil to become interested in his enthusiastic teammate. 28-year-old Tyson Falls from Georgia loves working as a server in a rinky pizza joint and sees the best in everything. As Phil’s online dating matches get worse and his in-game matches with Tyson get better, he finds himself wanting to pursue the easygoing chatterbox with a thick, sexy drawl.
But Phil can’t get past the fear that Tyson couldn’t possibly want a fossil like him. If his brain doesn’t stop being so damn insecure, it might be game over for his heart.
Interview
1. Use any five words to describe your novel:
Geeky, gamers, burgers, texting, swearing
2. Team Phison is about online dating and a May/December relationship. What was your inspiration for the story?
I overheard two guys chatting while my husband played a multiplayer mission in Tom Clancy’s The Division. One guy with a thick country accent was obviously new to the game and kept asking questions and apologizing. The other guy was super polite to him and helped him a bunch and kept gushing when New Guy thanked him. They were strangers before that match, and it’s super rare to see such genuine kindness in games where cursing everyone out is the norm. The team ended up losing the mission, but Nice Guy was the last one standing, and New Guy was soooo impressed with him. He sighed all dreamily and was like “I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
How could I forget such a sweet interaction? Five months later, I had a protagonist and a love interest who were dying to get written.
3. The story also features a lot of gaming. Are you a gamer? What’s your go to game to play?
Yes, I play soooo many games!! I play a little bit of everything under the sun, but I only have one online multiplayer game I play on the regular – Mass Effect. I played a bunch of the multiplayer in the third game, but I’ve moved onto Andromeda’s multiplayer now. It’s very relaxing for me since I can turn my brain off for a couple of hours and thrash bad guys while feeling like I’m part of a team. I’m one of those no-mics, though, heh. Too shy to talk to people. Plus I sometimes listen to audiobooks while I play.
4. What is your writing process like?
Usually a chaotic mess. Lots of “let’s draft for a few chapters, get a solid foundation, and then freak out for the next 50,000 words”. Sometimes I draft a few chapters, draft the last chapter, and try to build a bridge from there.
For Team Phison, though, it was unpredictably straightforward. I was in a car for ten hours with no wi-fi to go to a writer’s retreat so I thought I’d try my hand at this outrageous thing called outlining. Just to see if I could outline a full story with chapters and multiple beats per chapter. It turns out I can as long as I don’t have internet! Being surrounded by other writers and listening to good music also helped. The music would set the mood for a chapter, and all the writers I rode with helped me when I got stuck on a plot point.
With that outline, I drafted nearly the entire novella during the retreat. It was so refreshing to have a solid blueprint at hand. I’d wake up, make coffee, and go outside to type away by myself while watching the sunrise. Plus I didn’t have wi-fi to distract me. That helped.
Honestly, I wish I could repeat that process more and dedicate myself to making a full, detailed outline before embarking on a first draft. Team Phisonwas my neatest first draft ever since I didn’t have gaping plot holes to deal with during revisions, and I never had to pause to figure out what to do next. But I also get a sick sort of joy out of pantsing projects and hitting blocks and creating scenes that need to get erased the next day.
There’s no wrong way to approach writing, and every project is allowed to have its own way of manifesting itself. That’s really important to remember.
5. What are you working on now?
Revising several books I have in the queer fantasy romance series I’m going to self-publish! The first is a novella with m/f and f/f pairings that I hope to have out later this fall. Harpies, sirens, magic, a quest to break into an agriculture school and steal some rare seeds. It was a lot of fun to draft, even though I got stuck in the cornmaze for weeks since I didn’t have an outline. Heh.
I also had a super inspiring afternoon of gaming in Andromeda just the other day. Pretty sure I am ready to start working on a f/f companion for Team Phison with lady gamers. Maybe I will attempt an outline? Who wants to go on a road trip?
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Related
I love the questions that you asked. I love how detailed the author was with her writing process. Great post!