The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* Mike was curious how we worked with other people, either as writing partners or for the purpose of critique. The answer was that it depends on who we’re working with, how we work with them, and if we know they’re not assholes.

* I talked about a recent email I sent to my reader list, asking for ideas about what I could do to serve them better. The results were both overwhelming and awesome.

* Bill was chomping at the bit to discuss my new book Gore Point, but because nobody else had read it yet, he diverted into asking if we’ve ever triggered readers, or if we’ve ever written something that meant much more to us than to readers - those under-performing diamonds in the rough.

* After talking about a time she unintentionally triggered a reader, I shared how I refuse to write bad stuff happening to little kids or animal cruelty or death, nor will I read or watch it. Cue the helpful site DoesTheDogDie.com.

* Bill asked how writers learn, and what we do when we go to conferences and what we get out of them. We went a bit into what it means to “study craft” (as opposed to studying business).

* We ended by talking about whether there’s a hierarchy of writers, or if people who talk about one kind of writer being better than another are really just pretentious assholes. (Hint: We feel the latter.)

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