...in which the authors try to answer the questions that are most frequently put to them at book signings, radio and television interviews, supermarket checkout lines, and the like...

Photo by Christine Preston

Okay, quiz time. Are these a couple of CPAs out for a liquid lunch? NO, and here's a smack upside the head for guessing wrong! They are the world-renowned authors, Lincoln Child (on the left) and Douglas Preston (on the right), caught on a recent caviar-hunting expedition in New York City.

Q: How did Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child meet?

A: In the dim days of prehistory, around 1985 or thereabouts, Lincoln Child, an editor at St. Martin's Press and a big fan of the American Museum of Natural History, decided to commission a book about the museum's fascinating history for his publishing house. Doing some research in the Museum's magazine, he found that a Museum employee, Douglas Preston, wrote the most interesting articles on the Museum itself. So Child contacted Preston, took him to lunch at New York's Russian Tea Room, and pitched the idea of a book. Thus was born Dinosaurs in the Attic, Preston's first non-fiction book. During the book's (at times difficult) birth, the two became friends.

Q: How did RELIC come to pass?

A: After Dinosaurs in the Attic was published, Preston approached Child with a proposal for a murder mystery, set in a natural history museum. Child told him that murder mysteries were very numerous, and hard to make truly successful. But what about a techno-thriller, set in a museum? And what if they were to write it together? And they did. The book's incubation took several years--Child left St. Martin's to work as a systems analyst, and Preston moved out to Santa Fe to write full time--but at last, in the spring of 1995, RELIC was published by Tor Books.

Q: So how do two people write a book together?

A: A bi-coastal writing partnership is unusual, but it's much easier in the age of the information superhighway. Long before most people even knew what the Web was, Preston and Child were exchanging chapters by modem. But it isn't only modems that are used--faxes and especially telephones are kept busy for hours while the two brainstorm, argue, or just gossip.

Q: That's very interesting, but I meant, how do two people write a book together???

A: Ah! I see. A lot of people assume that Preston and Child divvy up chapters: 'You take chapter seventeen, and I'll take chapter eighteen.' But at least in this partnership, that would be a recipe for disaster. Instead, what usually happens is that a great deal of discussion about the overall plot and structure of a new project is done first. Then, Child sends a brief outline of a set of chapters to Preston. Preston writes the first draft of those chapters, which Child then rewrites. And then, of course, there are more rewrites that follow on both sides. That's what gives the novels a relatively seamless surface: all four hands have found their way into practically every sentence, at one time or another.

Q: What other books have these two written besides their collaborations?

A: Douglas Preston has written several novels, including Jennie and Tyrannosaur Canyon. He has also written several non-fiction works, including Cities of Gold and Talking to the Ground. He also writes for Smithsonian and The New Yorker, among other magazines.

Lincoln Child edited five collections of ghost stories, including Dark Company and Dark Banquet, and written two solo novels, Utopia and Death Match.

Q: Do Preston and Child ever have differences of opinion?

A: Douglas Preston replies: "Of course we do! Sometimes, we argue like an old married couple. It wasn't always that way, of course. At first it was more like, 'after you, old man, whatever you say...' 'no, no, I insist, let's do it YOUR way...' and so forth. But as we got to know each other better, and as the books grew increasingly important to both of us, we both became more assertive in our own ways. But this is a very good thing, actually. The finished books are much better as a result of our always questioning each other's work, trying to find the best possible way in which to write the story, and so on. And with two heads at work, with twice as many ideas to choose from, our books should be twice as good. Right?"

Q: Okay, let's get down to the important stuff. With two authors at work, how do you manage the (infrequent) sex scenes?

A: Lincoln Child replies: "Some people thank us for not having much gratuitous sex in our books. Others upbraid us for not making our novels more titillating. I can only think of three scenes off the bat, one in MOUNT DRAGON, one in THUNDERHEAD and one in BRIMSTONE, and I did those myself--for better or worse. Guess it's just a case of not getting the time to do any field research..."

Q: Which of your books is your favorite?

A: Lincoln Child replies: "We hear this question all the time. I don't know how Doug answers it, but I always say, 'I love all my children equally.' I like all the books, but for different, and personal, reasons."

Q: All right then, do you have any favorite chapters from among the many you've written individually?

A: Lincoln Child replies: "As we say above, Doug writes most of the rough drafts of the chapters. However, there are still quite a few I've done from soup to nuts myself. Usually they are chapters that I have an extremely clear vision of, or that are a little unusual and I want to experiment with on my own first. Or, as with some of the Skip chapters in THUNDERHEAD, that grow out of an idea I've had after a certain section of a book has already been written. I think I have two favorites from among my own. The first is the opening chapter of RELIQUARY, where the police diver descends beneath the muddy river bottom and finds some rather nasty things. And my second favorite is Pendergast's first 'memory crossing' sequence, an idea so bizarre that I found myself unable to explain it to Doug, so I went ahead and wrote the chapters myself! There are some chapters of Doug's that I've especially liked, too: stuff that has really encouraged my own creative juices, or where I've said, 'damn, I wish I'd written that!' These include the MOUNT DRAGON quarantine scene, the scene in RIPTIDE where Neidelman is examining the sword and all hell breaks loose, and the scene of Black alone--or so he thinks--in the kiva in THUNDERHEAD."

You can find the answers to even more questions here.