Fractured Fate co-author Zoe Bentley was just interviewed for author Jo Ramsey’s blog. Thanks, Jo, for hosting this!

Why did Zoe start writing? How does she get inspiration? Which planet would she like to be from? Read Zoe’s interview here to find out the answers to these and many more questions. Her interview also features an excerpt from Fractured Fate.

This is the first time a member of Caja Coyote has been interviewed solo about writing. Want to hear more Caja Coyote Q & A? Watch their video interview here and read an interview with the entire group here.

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How much do you know about the characters and locations of Fractured Fate? See if you can guess the correct response to this Fractured Fate trivia clue:

This trivia clue is part of a series by Zoe Bentley, one of the co-authors of Fractured Fate. Watch the other clues here.

Correct response: Who are The Pops?

The Pops, the group of five teenage superheroes in Sahuarita, Arizona, often meet in this tunnel.

The tunnel echoes a lot. It’s really fun to play with the acoustics, or to just yell inside the tunnel. It’s really long and has a skylight in the middle to let in light. In my opinion, it’s a great place to hang out.

It’s also very distinctive, since there are no other tunnels like this in the whole town. If you had to tell someone quickly to meet up somewhere, it helps if there’s only one place you could possibly mean. You wouldn’t want everyone to show up at two different tunnels!

One entrance to the tunnel.

There are several desert-themed standing tile mosaics just outside either tunnel entrance. No, I don’t think these have a purpose besides looking pretty, which they do.

A hummingbird and a prickly pear cactus decorate one of the taller-than-I-am mosaics. The one in the background has a saguaro.

Where you would you have a secret superhero meeting?

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Yes, it is. Frankly, I’m surprised more people haven’t asked this question. After all, do parrot-griffins and inexplicable global catastrophe sound fake? Of course not.

All events in Fractured Fate really did happen. You might remember at least hearing about the evacuation of Tucson, Arizona after a flood and the subsequent mass goblin bank robbery. If not, I’m sure you can recall the miscellaneous dragons and the like.

I really can control the weather. My teammates do have similarly unusual abilities. When the cataclysms hit, we were brought together and led by a boy whose power is controlling the Earth with his mind. Then we named our group after consumables. Later on, we found a glassy, rune-covered black box which turned out to be about as ominous as it sounds. Yes, this is all entirely real. Why wouldn’t it be?

While all of this was going on, much of Sahuarita was being rebuilt and the rest of the planet was worse off. I’d tell you exactly what happened next, but that would take a few hundred pages to tell properly.

Yes, Fractured Fate is a true story. If you’re wondering right now about how true this blog post is, check the date it was posted. That should clear up any doubt in your mind.

Note: Fractured Fate is set in a real town, and some of the more minor events in the story really are true.

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The Bronze Zoo, actually called the Safari Trail, is a path lined with animal statues located in Rancho Sahuarita, a planned community within Sahuarita. It was nicknamed the Bronze Zoo by Valencia Grant.

The trail entrance is guarded by two fierce frozen lions and a couple of monkeys.

The Safari Trail is a sidewalk lined with statues of elephants, monkeys, lizards, deer, pigs, an owl, and many more creatures of all sorts. There’s a road nearby across a strip of grass, and a playground at one end of the path.

Bronze Zoo monkeys hanging out in a tree.

Some of the animals might actually be found on a safari.

Uh, sure, I won't. What do statues eat, anyway?

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The pecan groves are one of the many settings in Fractured Fate which happens to exist in real life. In fact, there are very few locations which don’t exist. Most scenes are set in the town of Sahuarita, Arizona, just south of Tucson.

The pecan groves take up thousands of acres in the Sahuarita area, which is plenty of room to run around using your superpowers. Just imagine how much time you’d spend in a place like this, running around, making tunnels with your mind, and generally having fun with your superpowers.

Living in Sahuarita themselves, the real Pops knew the fictional Pops would have to run into the pecan groves at some point in the story.

Once Fractured Fate was published, it was sold at a pecan festival celebrating the pecans grown here.

Caja Coyote touring the pecan groves.

The real Pops, also known as Caja Coyote, kept track of anything and everything which might come in handy writing about this location. They took pictures, wrote notes, and even planned action scenes on the spot.

Try picturing this when you get to Chapter 17.

Which places in your town could you simply not leave out of a story?

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It was tricky figuring out how to order the scenes without plot holes. This was the reason why we added some of the scenes, and why some scenes don’t appear the same in the final version of Fractured Fate as they do in the timeline.

Arranging the scenes was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle at first, and a logic puzzle near the end. At first, we sorted out slips of paper into the general area where they should be. Then we arranged it a bit more precisely. A lot of scenes were rearranged without interrupting the flow of the story. In fact, switching them around helped immensely! The hard part was making everything which needed to be in order in the right spots.

Then, we began reading the timeline from top to bottom.

We doodled a bit.

Reading one scene at a time, all of us agreed on the placement of an individual scene or else rearranged, then we taped the scene down and called it final. The final decision of who got to write each scene was made the same way.

By the time a couple dozen scenes were in place, we were out of time in our meeting and had to finish up next week. We rolled up the timeline into a scroll, which is pretty tricky, and called it a day.

Next week was more of the same. The whole thing was more exciting than it sounds, so more plot arranging was not a bad thing. What’s even better is once we were done with the timeline, we could finally start writing! You’d be surprised how much of a writer’s job doesn’t involve any writing at all, or at least requires a different sort of writing than you’d think.

Throughout the whole year it took to make Fractured Fate, the the timeline was incredibly useful. All five of us in Caja Coyote kept on track and knew which scenes to write because of this timeline.

There was a nice fancy "The End" at the end until we had so much plot, it overflowed!

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One of the most important steps in writing a collaborative novel is, in my experience, making a timeline.

Some authors write whatever comes to mind, no matter what part of the story it is, as long as it’s clear in their heads. Other authors write in a more organized way, writing a list of plot points and events, writing chapter by chapter in chronological order. Then there are infinite types of writers in between.

Between the five authors in Caja Coyote, writing habits vary, but because Fractured Fate was a team project, everyone had to figuratively be on the same page. To accomplish this, we made a timeline of events in the story. Using a mutually agreed upon timeline as a guide helped to avoid confusion.

We started by asking each writer to come up outlines for a few scenes, making notes of who is in each scene, where they are, what they’re doing, when, and from whose point of view. We wrote these basic parts of each scene in a grid, then sliced up the grid into individual scenes. There is at least one scene per chapter.

An example scene outline from the timeline:
Time: pre-cataclysm
Location: copper mine
POV: both
Characters Present: Val, Grace, Val’s parents, Grace’s grandpa
Summary: Val and Grace meet at the copper mine

A note about the example—POV is an abbreviation of Point Of View, and “both” referred to both of the two main characters present in the scene, in this case Valencia Grant and Grace Black. A few details changed in the final, full version of this scene and several others. For example, this scene was only told from one POV.

The beginning of Fractured Fate's timeline.

Then, we arranged everyone’s scenes according to when they happened in the book. The more introductory scenes were placed at the top of the timeline, then some buildup, the climax near the end, and the epilogue at the very bottom of the timeline. We ended up jotting down a lot of scenes on the spot to move from one point in the plot to the next.

Since we wrote scene outlines independently from each other, but we’d already discussed some possible scenes together, there were some duplicates. For example, descriptions of scenes where two main characters meet for the first time usually were written by the author of each of the characters. Important plot points were often brought up by more than one person, too.

Any duplicates were taped over-top of each other. This way, we could tell they were the same scene yet we could still read all the versions of the scene, in case different details were mentioned.

Near the bottom of the picture and below the line near the top, two duplicate scenes are taped one on top of the other.

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Can you guess where this important Sahuarita, Arizona location in Fractured Fate is? Here’s a clue:

The ASARCO open pit copper mine is a major setting in Fractured Fate. It serves as the location for many very different scenes both before and after the fictional version of Sahuarita was demolished by cataclysms.

The copper mine is an open pit mine, not a mine which uses tunnels.

Caja Coyote visited the copper mine to get a feel for it and so we would write all the details correctly.

Caja Coyote observing the location and planning scenes set at the mine.

Imagine this filled with debris, or with tents.

Starting at the gift shop and Mineral Discovery Center, the five of us took in every detail—which rooms could be used for other purposes, what their characters would do at the mine, ways to work in plot elements, and much more.

Baskets in the gift shop have some interesting designs.

Caja Coyote poses in the 11-foot-tall tire in front of the open pit.

The first stop of the tour was at the open pit, where the actual mining part is done. Everything there is huge! The pit itself is 2.5 miles long and 1.5 wide. Even the 11-foot tire on display is on the small side of the things we saw. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any explosions.

The bridge to the building where copper ore is broken apart and processed.

When our tour bus reached the milling stop, the air smelled a lot like pine, and a tiny bit like pickles. The bridge we had to cross vibrated just slightly from the movement of the machines inside the building.

Outside of the milling building.

Processing copper ore.

Details can make the scene! Sometimes they just make me intrigued.

After the tour we discussed some of the more important scenes at the mine. There was a lot to keep straight, including where and when the… well, that would give too much away.

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At the Fractured Fate book release party, there were lots of snacks, courtesy of K. T. Blacknight, but the main attraction was a cake decorated to look exactly like the Fractured Fate book. This cake was a surprise to everyone else, and really good one, too!

Fractured Fate, paperback format on the left, cake format on the right. E-book format not pictured.

The cake looks just like the book, except you can only read from one. If we get rich and famous, we’ve agreed we want to to get a cake book that’s actually a complete, readable novel. This was originally Carly Frieders‘ idea, but I think we’d all like a readable cake. I have no idea how to do this, but it sure would be awesome!

A Parrot-Griffin in frosting form.

Do Life Right, Inc., our publisher, gets some sweet credit.

The details were incredible. Even the cracking, fractured black background of the book cover was captured nicely. My favorite detail was the Parrot-Griffin in the bottom right corner.

Check out the spine!

Then, of course, we cut the cake. It was a shame to mess it up, but you can’t exactly deny a crowd of people their cake!

Caja Coyote cutting into the cake-ified book. Before...

...After.

The guests loved it, and I’m glad we took pictures.

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The day after the book release party, we had a booth at the Sahuarita Pecan Festival, which celebrates the same pecan groves frequented by the characters in Fractured Fate. At least two authors at a time manned the booth, which really helped when there were lots of potential customers. This festival was a great experience and the feedback we got was very interesting.

I arrived right around sunrise to help set up. We taped up banners, arranged and organized books, set out business cards, set out signs with prices, and generally arranged the booth for the day ahead. As all five of us arrived, we filmed interviews of each author individually. We were all asked the same questions and had very different answers. The results were used to make this video for the virtual book release party.

Caja Coyote, ready to start a day of selling books! On a side note, the ground was covered in pecan shells.

We put up Fractured Fate banners which could be seen from far away.

We took turns sitting at the booth and wandering the festival. Despite being a pecan festival, there were a huge variety of booths, including one selling tie-dyed clothes next to us, a bunch of arts and crafts of different sorts, and a large tent for the actual pecan store. There was even a stage with live music!

I had a blast pitching the book at the top of my lungs as fast as possible. It was a fun challenge. My pitch made specifically for this festival, which went in a loop until somebody interrupted: Fractured Fate, a young adult novel about five teens who use their superpowers to save the world from a mysterious artifact. Set right here in Sahuarita, Arizona, and it’s written by the five of us. (I’d gesture at my co-authors.) We’ve got a special deal going on right now for the pecan festival, twelve dollars for one, twenty for two. It’s also available on Amazon.

At one point, we made an assembly line of book signing. The day before, at the book release party, we’d begun signing every single book with everyone’s signatures. On this day, we finished every single one of our two hundred copies. Some copies even got a few special additions.

When at the booth, we were asked a lot of questions. Often they were simple ones like, “How much?” and “Who wrote the book?” (Answer: twelve dollars for the pecan festival only, or twenty dollars for two books, and all five of us wrote it by writing as different characters in the same story.) These questions now are answered in our FAQ.

Then there were the odder questions, for example, “What are you raising money for?” and “Is this a real book?” (Answer: We split the proceeds and use them however we choose, and yes, it’s very real.)

My favorite question was by far: “Is this a true story?” This was asked after hearing the full pitch, including the part about superheroes in Sahuarita. Rocket almost said yes, which we all thought would have been hilarious. (Real answer: No. There are moments inspired by real life, and most of the settings are real, but as far as I know, the world was never overrun by myths and natural disasters and saved by Sahuarita superhero teenagers.)

We were visited by a squirrel! The squirrel didn't ask many questions.

As the day went on, it got windier. The tarp over our booth started blowing away. It partially lifted off the ground just because of the wind! We’d been told by the people running the festival that we had to keep it up, so for a while we held down the booth by having someone stand and hold onto each corner of the tarp frame. Eventually we got to take the tarp off its frame, which really helped with the wind issue.

After we took down the tarp so the whole booth wouldn't blow into anyone.

Whenever we got the chance, the five of us discussed Fractured Fate and possible sequels. Some of us are considering writing more, but some of us have other plans. You’ll have to keep checking this website and like our Facebook page to see what happens. It was still fun brainstorming. There’s nothing like a day filled with stories, both real and fictional.

The Pecan Festival at sunset. Just about time to pack up and go home.

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