Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors

When people hear that John and I are co-authors, one of the first questions they often ask is how we accomplish that. Do we each write different chapters? Does one person write part of a chapter and give it to the other to finish? What is our writing process?

Here is the answer: I do the actual composition and typing, while John and I work together on plotting and characters.

Because I am the one who actually “writes” the books, you may be tempted to think that John’s contributions are not important. To the contrary, John has come up with some of the most significant characters and plot ideas for our stories.

For example, in our first published novel 60th Hour, John was directly responsible for the development of Kalchyra, the fugitive mage. I had the basic idea for the character, but he thought up the name, helped decide the character’s personality, and even came up with the devastating magic that got Kalchyra in trouble at the opening of the novel.

In the Post Host cozy fantasy series, John is the reason the main character became a magical artificer. When the two of us first decided to try our hand at writing cozy high fantasy, we knew we wanted a magical system different from other books. John suggested a world in which the power is imbued into items, rather than cast by a mage.

He also proposed that we add a character who was an expert in a dying field. I loved the idea, and we had many discussions about what the character might look like. Eventually, we came up with Herb Archer, the elderly star reader at the observatory. John also gave the village its name (Starwatch).

Discussing plots together is a lot of fun for us. We’ve spent long driving trips plotting out books. We also like to collaborate while eating in restaurants. I can only imagine what the other diners listening to our conversations must think.

-Susan 5/1/2026

p.s. And if you would like to see for yourself whether our collaboration works, you can find Recipes for the Copper Snake, the first book of the Post Host cozy fantasy series here: Recipes for the Copper Snake.