Bryn: Hi Tom. By my reckoning, we've been working together on an off now for what? More than four years. But Copper Age, and the island of Hopeless existed before I came along. I was wondering where they started?

Tom : Lots of ways I could answer that, actually. Hopeless certainly has its roots in my early and enduring love for the macabre, and the Gothic.  I'm very much at home in the dark. *grin* Combine a youthful  appetite for Poe,  the Lovecraft mythos, wierd tales, ghost stories, horror movies, legends, myths and the poetry of TS Elliot with life on the northern coast of Maine, and something like the bones of the Hopeless story would almost have to be the result.

I say "bones" because when I met my writing partner, Bryn, the bones of something strange and potentially wonderful was pretty much what I had. I came to you with a handful of oddly carved, wormtraced bones (possibly from several species, or none ) , displayed the oddly glowing collection to you, asked you if you saw something there, and if you might possibly...want to play, and then....?

Bryn: Initially I was intimidated. I loved what you had done and did not think I was equal to working on it. Took me a while, and some dramatic upheavals to think that perhaps I could. I’d been writing fantasy as well as erotica, but Hopeless was very obviously something else... Once I started, it turned out easier to do than I had anticipated. A lot of the time, it writes itself almost. Normally I don’t do funny, but there’s a kind of dark humour in these tales, and I have no idea where it comes from. You make me think in different ways.

Tom: I was a fan your writing from day one, and was thrilled when you wrote the first story about Sal (which is when we found out what her wrappings are about!) I was then startled, in the best possible way, to discover that you understood the characters better and more deeply than I did. You wrote Sal's voice in such a way that I could see her clearly and hear her as though I were standing next to her when she speaks. You gave the story flesh and sinew and blood, introduced complexity, wildness, and a life of its own. Reading the scripts I always had the sense that you had been present and were reporting events. The humor you brought to the story is brilliant, wild, dark and tends to come in at the least expected times.

 "Hopeless" would not be without you. There is something new and odd and wonderful in the world now that was not before.

Thank you!

Bryn: I am still not used to how you respond to my writing. Mind you, I think being so enamoured of each other's work is a distinct advantage!