What a wonderful time Greg and I had last night at the Westlake Barnes & Noble (home of CRM Jo Virgil, as always a gracious hostess) with three other married writer/illustrator couples at a panel, “‘Til Death Do We Write & Publish,” sponsored by the Writers’ League of Texas.

Janice and Tom Shefelman talked about their fifty year marriage (congratulations again!) and writing as an author-and-illustrator team. Apparently, they keep separate offices on the same property and write little “notes” to one another, sometimes using the walk between them as a “cool down” period.

Lila and Rick Guzmán are true writing collaborators, and Rick has been known to wake up Lila at two a.m. after finding the just right story idea.

Frances Hill and Brian Yansky are each others’ trusted first readers and benefit from the knowledge each of them brings from different genres as Frances writes high fantasy and for the very young whereas Brian is a more realistic YA and adult author who keeps his occasional magical twists more grounded in the real world.

It was a packed and lively crowd of thoughtful writers.

Afterward, Greg and I joined Frances, Brian, and fellow Austin authors Julie Lake and Jerry Wermund for dinner afterward. An utterly delightful friend of Frances also joined us and put up with our shop talk, but I won’t write about her in too much detail as she wasn’t warned about my blogging ways (and I’d hate to scare her off).