AJ Tipton is the pseudonym for a writing team: Annie and Jess (Get it? “AJ”). We spend our days in Manhattan working for our corporate overlords, and during the evening we’re in Brooklyn writing fantasies to astound, amuse and arouse.
You can contact and follow us in all sorts of ways:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AJTiptonAuthor
Amazon listing: amazon.com/author/ajtipton
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJTiptonAuthor
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ajtiptonauthor/
Goodreads Reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8452926.A_J_Tipton/blog
Our ideas for future books–everything from sex-robots to ghost brothels–will keep us busy for many decades to come, so be sure to join us for the fun! Let us know what stories you like best, we love to hear from readers. Some common questions we get are below:
WHAT’S YOUR WRITING PROCESS LIKE?
Writing as a pair can be complicated, but on the plus side it halves the work, keeps us accountable to keep writing, and doubles the ideas. We start with our grand archive of ideas (we’ve got over a hundred future book ideas and still going strong) and then go to a bar and outline what we think the general plot is going to be, the backstories of the characters and their motivations, and the arc of how the main plot events are going to pan out.
From there, we go home and make a very detailed outline on Google docs, working through the kinks of logical cause and effect and if certain actions would make sense for that character. We try to see if we can work Lola into the plot, because we love her and she has a strange way of writing herself. Then we chart out which character perspective makes sense for each plot point. As our books (so far) are told from multiple points of view, we figure out which of us most identifies with a certain point of view and then… let the writing commence!
The first draft we write for each of our characters. Some books it’s easier to see the different writing styles than others. Annie wrote Jo’s perspective in “Her Fiery Viking,” Jessica wrote Audrey’s perspective in “Her Steamy Viking,” and so on. After the first draft, we dive into the other’s section with enthusiastic additions and merciless cuts. The more books we write, the less shy we’ve become in editing each other’s character sections, leading to a more streamlined writing style that’s become a true blend of our different styles.
If you have more questions about our writing process and how you also can write with a friend, we wrote an ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT IT –
How to Self-Publish Romance with Friends: Have Fun, Make Money, & Create Something
DOES WRITING TOGETHER CAUSE DRAMA?
It helps that we’ve been friends for over ten years and our strengths complement each other. Annie tends to write three adjectives when one (or none) is better, and marinate in backstory and character development. Jessica typically forgets to describe the scene or characters, but has no trouble axing the unnecessary adjectives and lyrical verbiage, and she writes better action and sex scenes. So by our powers combined, we’ve managed to turn out a lot of work in a relatively short period of time.
HOW DO YOU GET THESE GREAT COVERS?
We started with Fiverr and recommend it to any authors starting out. After trying a few different artists for different books, we’ve settled on using a wonderful woman, Lydia Chai (her site is here) who turns out beautiful work very quickly for $5. All of our current covers are her creation. We provide the stock footage photos (subject and background) and she puts it all together. Tip her generously, she’s an artist.
Now that we’ve been around for a little while longer, we commission a variety of artists through 99 Designs. The Her Elemental Viking series covers were designed by Chameleionstudio74. The Her Biker Dragon series was designed by ZamajK. The artist who designed our Bear Billionaire series is unfortunately no longer in business. 😦
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?
Wine.
WHAT’S LOLA’S DEAL?
We’re not telling…for now… although we welcome theories. 🙂
HOW CAN I GET STARTED DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS?
Just go for it! Seriously, we were sitting around having drinks one day talking about the various smut books we’d read and loved and went “we can do this, let’s do this.” So we ran home and pounded out the first draft of “Her Steamy Viking” in under two weeks. Uploading self-published books on Amazon is incredibly easy, the entire system is designed to make author’s lives easier. There is no longer any reason to keep your great “next American sex book” in the drawer or posted in a dark corner of the Internet for free. Upload and share with the world! For money!
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AJ Tipton 