I am a private person and the process of writing is a cloistered one. I once hosted a writing date, where a bunch of authors came together at a set time to (individually) write. The experience reminded me how private I am. Everyone else had eyes glued to their screen, fingers on the keyboard silently tic tic tac tac tictictactactoc! Others furiously scrawled ideas as the muse whispered spur. I was paralyzed. Couldn’t write a darn word. I felt like the cat having a dump—everyone watching. 

But I love collaborations! I’ve now successfully collaborated with a few writers and illustrators including Clare E Rhoden (three short stories), E. Don Harpe (many stories), Seb Doubinsky (one short story), Andrew Hook (one short story and a time travel novel), Elena Betti (two illustrated collections of prose poetry), Dominique Hecq (one prose poetry collection), Milton Davis (one essay & short story collection), Steve Simpson (one illustrated collection of prose poetry)… And we’re still talking, none of them has put a hit on me! 

Let me share with you the onset of these wonderful escapades. 

Writing with E. Don Harpe

My very first collaboration was E. Don Harpe. He and I were both published on Amazon Shorts, way back in 2006 when the series thrived—Amazon packaged, published, and sold individual short stories. Don and I found ourselves interacting, liking each other’s short stories. I thought it would be really cool to write with him, that southern slang in his dialogue. So I reached out first by email, asked if he’d like to write something with me. He didn’t hesitate. I said I’d start a few para for a whatnot story, see where it took us. Sent him a few words. He read, expanded the draft with more words. I read, tossed in more to layer the character, the events… and so forth. 

That’s how we wound up with ‘That Danged Gizmo’, later recrafted into a new version of the theme story in Danged Black Thing.

Slade, he lit up like a Christmas tree, soon as his eyes set on the notebook.

‘Her name’s Embu,’ I said. ‘Bought her just fer yew.’

‘Yews de sweetest thang, my white chocolate,’ he said to me. ‘Brought me a dark truffle.’ He at once powered the machine. Her screen saver had cocoa eyes full of soul and thick braided hair, all kinky. Her skin was black velvet.

‘She looks almost human,’ he said in stupefaction.

Laptop Embu has designs on the hubby. Doesn’t matter how a laptop and maple syrup collaborate to generate a hickey on lovestruck Slade’s neck, to wife Champ’s chagrin, but Don and I wrote much fun into this story! His dialogue and quirky sense of humor bring something exceptional to our fiction. 

Our work rears its head every now in reprints, including ‘De Turtle o’ Hades’—also in Danged Black Thing. In this alternate fiction, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada finds himself now living in a ramshackle hut in the great swamps of Louisiana. He’s masking under the name Ole Andy. One cloudy noon in late October, he’s startled to receive a turtling visitor that has moseyed all the way past Sammy’s Chicken Bar and Fried Green Tomatoes, dawdled past trees whose roots the bayou has fed the living, up three steps, seven splinters and nine cracks to finally poke his head past a door and peer into the half-lit room, in the chaos and dereliction of Ole Andy’s hideout. They eye each other, Ole Andy speaks first: 

‘Yew want a drank o’ this moonshine?’

‘Ain’t no moonshine fer me,’ said the turtle.

‘Well. Ain’t got no bourbon fer yew, or any o’ dat fine liquor.’

‘All dat’s none o’ my thang,’ said the turtle.

‘Ah be danged to know yore thang. What’s yore name, turtle?’ the Man said. ‘Ole Andy wants to know yore name.’

Turns out de turtle ol’ Hades is no deliverer of goodliness—Ole Andy has some comeuppance for killing all those people back in what is now New Luganda. 

In writing with Don, I learnt a crucial lesson for working with others. Collaboration is trust and respect. Trust that, together, you make a perfect author. 

Writing with Seb Doubinsky

I’d read and reviewed books in Seb’s cities-states circle by Meerkat Press, and loved his bullet style—he’s in, he’s out, doesn’t linger. Having done story collaborations with other writers, I wondered how it might be to write an Afrofrancophone story with Seb. I knew it would be a migrant story, didn’t know where it would go. It was an amorphous creation.

I reached out to Seb in that playful ways of ours: 

Eugen: Hi darling, I’ve been thinking about you and wonder if you’d like to collaborate with me on a story that draws from our cultures: Afro and French. Something unplanned and organic?

Seb (same day): Yes, with pleasure! Have to give it some time for thoughts and completion… (Just swamped in acadermic bullshit the next month and a half). But would love to work with you. 

Eugen (figuring out the ‘acadermic’ bullshit, and seeing Seb’s a bit under the pump): Wonderful… Have an idea, will share when you’re more settled. 

Seb: Excellent! I mean, we can talk about it now. No problem. Might take a little longer to start, that’s all.

Eugen: Well, here’s the initial idea… I don’t know where it will go… It would be great if we could draw from your knowledge of the city to shape the narrative. We could make it a hybrid with poetry, Swahili and French…

Seb was on board. I crafted a 3,500-word story, hoped Seb would chart another big chunk. 

Seb: Thank you for this truly beautiful beginning! I am very interested in working with you on this, but I have one main problem: blackfacing (for me). I simply cannot speak for those who have suffered through the domination of my country and my color. I know this is fiction, and that we can allow ourselves much liberty, but I cannot speak when others speak better than me and are entitled to do so… Love the idea and hope you will not be angry at my remarks.

(offers an alternate approach, then adds): But if you think it’s OK and you are patient (Like I said, I am so swamped I can’t even see the surface), I would absolutely adore to collaborate on this. Big fraternal hugs, SEB

Eugen: Haha, tripping on blackface. Yes, my dearest, I love your concept—it will add layers to the story. It hurls in a paradox: her aim was to recreate the black boy but the golem turns out white or mixed, a conundrum of souls also haunted by its past. And, yes, there’s a bit of background to research: Where she came from, how she got here, where she works now, who are her neighbors, what will happen to the golem when she goes to work… does she go to work with it… ?

Seb: Stoked just thinking of collaborating with you, biggest hug, and take it easy. 

Seb looked at my draft and came back about a month later with an ending, not from the migrant girl’s perspective, but rather from the golem’s: 

Seb: Dearest Eugen, here is my small contribution. I hope it lives up to your expectations. If it doesn’t, do not hesitate to tell me. I will not be miffed. Lol!

Best, as ever, SEB

I loved it! His was a perspective I’d not thought of before, and it worked so well for our story, ‘The Failing Name’—that ultimately became a 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist. 

In writing with Seb, I realized that a collaboration can surprise you in unexpected ways. I’d initially hoped Seb would write a lot, like a lot, to make our story a novelette, but he offered an alternative—an unusual ending that was simply perfect. 

I closed our narrative with a tiny loopback to our migrant girl, and Seb was game: 

She sees her lost childhood, spaces filled with dust roads. She longs to see the shiny leaves of a tropical tree, wonders why no mango hit a head to save her…

Her pen is poised to write a story that interrupts itself in lambent colors that don’t match as they flicker between moments. If she could hide in poems, she’d scribe no apology or complaint, just a dirge (not a fête) of words that keep going. That’s enough. Alain, Divin, Rivlin, Yavan is gone. She wants no compassion—half-smiled or whole. Just a corridor she can borrow for a reference to feel included more than a minute and forty seconds more more, and not in a second-hand shop. STOP. More more.

Writing with Clare E Rhoden

I’d submitted a short story for an invited anthology, and looked with dismay at the editors’ feedback:

… we absolutely loved the style, atmosphere and the general feel of the story – so unique and enigmatic!

Although we love your voice and the overall story, we feel it needs a few tweaks to really hit the theme of the anthology.

We’d like the horror trope – and its twist – to come through sooner and a bit more strongly. We also feel that a little more detail for J’s motivations would be useful.

I was spaced out, juggling projects. My brain looked at me, said, ‘Go away,’ gave me the finger. On a gamble, I thought of Clare Rhoden. She had a quirky perspective and I wondered if she might…  

Eugen (email subject to Clare): help!

(email body): I wonder if you want to collaborate with me on tweaking a story to address the anthology theme. Basically, they want a cursed object twist… 

My head is stuck, and the word count is up to 7000, and I’ve got a ‘finished’ story that has a few gaps… Do you want to help me address the tweaks… Attached is my version, and the call for submissions… Please say yes… 

Clare (2 minutes later): YES! 

We submitted Take 2 of ‘Paperweight’ for the anthology, and the editors said aye. 

I learnt, from writing with Clare, that she’s a sweet woman with a dark mind. We’ve since gone on to write together two more short stories—‘The Zanzibar Trail’—another help! that will appear in my short story collection A Place Between Waking and Forgetting in September 2024 by Raw Dog Screaming Press. We co-wrote ‘Kizimbani’, a short story also set in Zanzibar, released in Apex Magazine this fall. 

Writing with Andrew Hook

I’ve written a lot about writing with Andrew Hook. I’d finished reading his short stories in Frequencies of Existence, Human Maps, The Forest of Dead Children, and The Alsiso Project, and was hooked. 

I didn’t know at the time that he’s a three-time British Fantasy Society award-winner, and he’s since stumped me with Candescent Blooms—I can’t stop talking about it—and it didn’t matter. 

And I was already nuts about Hook’s way of saying, how and where his mind takes him. In a nutshell, I was Hooked. 

Would you… might you… I broached nervously. 

‘A collaboration sounds like fun and something I’d definitely be interested in,’ he surprised me with his response. ‘Do you have any specific ideas?’

I didn’t. 

‘When I’ve done it before,’ he said, ‘it was a case of taking turns with the other writer, adding 500-750 words or so and then sending it back and forth until the story was finished.’ 

Yes! I loved it. 

‘Looking forward to seeing the start of the collaboration,’ he said, leaving me in a mixture of trepidation and ecstasy. What the hell were we going to write? 

I opened a folder named ‘working with Andrew Hook’. 

That’s how ‘Messier 94’ was birthed, also published in Danged Black Thing. We went on to write a time travel novel, Secondhand Daylight, a finalist in the Foreword Indies Awards. More about this collaboration in our exclusive interview with Paul Semel. 

Prose poetry collaborations 

Who would have thought I’d collaborate with my once PhD supervisor, now mentor and friend, Dominique Hecq? Well, I did. And Tricia Reeks at Meerkat Press was mad keen to publish it and reveal her closet creativity with accompanying in-text illustrations and the book cover of Speculate. In this book, I wrote poetry—Dominique responded to it. She wrote poetry—I responded to it in an exhilarating call and response that was a consummation.  

I’ve also worked with an Italian illustrator, Elena Betti, on two illustrated prose poetry collections, Black Moon by IFWG Publishing and Saving Shadows by NewCon Press. I sent Elena pieces of prose poetry, said create whatever the text inspires in you, and she did:

‘Unfinished’—in Saving Shadows—illustration below by Elena Betti:

Survival reduced to pickets wakes me at night. Walls painted in stench, each day the beginning of my last. A siren of coppers chases rioters waving placards about paradigm shifts. Faces of my dead friends break out from the wind, imprint on each uniform’s head, sketching shapes with colourless lips. Hearts weeping, bones humming. I exit by an alleyway, words raining like a president’s bisque full of grime. I duck into cold roads of the city, walls pissing unfinished graffiti: I. Can’t. Brea… A hobo with an umbrella hands me a parcel of dreams. More sirens—is there a better life? I take each folded dream and its prosthetic limbs, flick it to immortality. Text is your legacy! I call to the drifter losing himself in the brolly as I flee. Eat it! Lest the world murmurs oaths buried in your manuscript.

Saving Shadows went on to be a finalist in the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards for Best Artwork—honoring Elena’s staggering contribution. 

My latest prose poetry collaboration is with Steve Simpson, who, like Dominique Hecq, wrote responses to some of my poems and also illustrated them, in Texture of Silence by Independent Legions Publishing:  

Collaborating with others is an opening to learn, to find reward in a participation that merits the artifact. It may be a chance encounter, like mine with Milton Davis, whom I first met on Facebook. Then at a book launch in Atlanta, USA, where he emceed my event that publisher Tricia Reeks organized. Milton and I connected well and promised to do something together. One day I got in touch, said, I’ve got this idea… 

We wrote our collection Hadithi & the State of Black Speculative Fiction published by Luna Press Publishing—a finalist in the Australian Shadows Awards. This partnership with Milton was the onset of a kindredship. Milton went on to publish a few of my stories in his anthologies, including Cyberfunk! and Spyfunk!, and my anthology Languages of Water—longlisted in the BSFA Awards. We edited another anthology together, but that’s a whole lot of other story.

In all these examples, there’s a commonality: initiation. Someone must woo the other with an idea—it doesn’t just catapult from the sky and fall on the both of you. There’s a writerly pickup line from one person, it gets the other person’s knees melting. There’s dialogue about it, and there’s trust to experiment. Because that’s what it is: experimenting.  

Being open to another person allows for all those intimate moments.  

Like a marriage or a relationship, collaboration needs to be with the right partner. Can’t work with a bludger, a lazy sod, if you’re the graveyard shift type—working past midnight o’clock. Collaborating is giving and getting. It’s mutuality that can yield excellence. 

Contrary to what some editors might argue, I approach the editing of anthologies as a collaboration—without the participants, I wouldn’t have the same creative artifact. Each contributor offers value that bolsters the sum of our work. 

I am working on something poetic with three spectacular creatives on a project right now—can’t wait to see what comes of it!