Writing a Book with My Best Friend

The Process Behind Human Scars on Planet Skin

Today I’m celebrating the release of Human Scars on Planet Skin, a strange sci-fi horror novel that I wrote with one of my best friends Effie Joe Stock.

Human Scars on Planet Skin follows two mushroom protagonists as they deal with the aftermath of humans attempting to colonize their sentient planet. It’s a bit gory, with lots of body horror and ecological horror, but at its core it’s a story of healing and finding community in the hard times.

This is a story that kind of fell into place unexpectedly. Effie and I were thinking through the types of stories we like that don’t seem to get published often, and we realized that we wanted a weird story told through the POV of living mushrooms. We had a lot of fun coming up with a world that would house these mushrooms. Turr, the planet, is alive and able to talk to her inhabitants. She is the one to grants life to some of her insects and plants.

This novel opens with Turr evacuating the humans from her skin. She’s violent, having stored energy for the last five years, and she tears apart their city and smashes some of their ships. When the remaining ships launch, they dump a lot of waste on Turr’s surface, leaving behind the dead zone.

Within the first chapter, everything is set up for our characters to have a traumatizing journey.

My goal with this story was to write about returning to life after going through a horrific event. I wanted to navigate the complicated emotions that come with healing even when you still feel completely broken.

Effie and I both gave each other the freedom to write almost complete stories on our own. We had our own characters, our own settings, and our own goals. We just knew that within a certain amount of chapters, our characters would have to meet and heal the planet together.

I like the freedom that we had in this world. We weren’t so concerned about how the story would come across as a whole. Not at first. Our initial goal was to see what this world had in store for us. Once we’d written our halves, we were able to see how well they’d fit together.

This story took a lot of work. I rewrote my half at least five times, and it wasn’t until February of this year, as we were doing our final edits, that I rewrote some scenes and finally made them as weird and gross as they were supposed to be.

Human Scars on Planet Skin taught me that not all stories are meant to happen in a linear manner. Sometimes we need to grow before we can tackle certain sections. I’m so grateful this book happened when it did. It was such a learning experience and I’ll always find value in the process.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Human Scars on Planet Skin and give it a chance. It has so much heart in it, and I think every reader will connect with it in a different way. If you ever have the chance to write a story with your best friend, I recommend going for it. There’s nothing quite as rewarding as holding a book with both of your names on the cover.