I met Max when I was reading some werewolf stories and came across his on Wattpad. I can't remember which one I found first, but soon became addicted to reading all of his stories. One of my first interactions was to a comment of having to stop reading Folican Chronicles 4, where one of the main characters dies. His comment was "Yes!!!! Nailed another reader. (does happy dance)" Needless to say, something about that made me want to get to know him.
I started just chatting in the comments of his stories, especially the unfinished ones and especially adding to the howls of outrage over the cliff hangers that he put into his chapters and speculations on the resolutions. When he put out a request for an editor for the third Folican Chronicles book, I offered, and started working with him on that, and eventually also did editing for the then titled 'Mate Rejection Thang' but was published as 'Love Rejected - Love Found'.
When I sent him a link with a chapter or two of my own story, he read it and very enthusiastic on me posting it to Wattpad. Before I knew it, he had done a shout out for it, then before I knew it, I had quite a few people clamouring for more! That was the single thing that got me writing my story.
The request to co-author a section of A Pregnancy Story was a request that really touched me. The fact that an author that had become one of my favourites and a person I liked and respected had wanted my input to their story? It stunned me hard for a while and made me feel very good. That co-authoring, I think, wasn't planned to go beyond a couple of scenes, tied into my third book, The Alpha, and was used there as well.
The end of The Pregnancy Story tied into another story, Why Us that I related to personally and had been one that he had stopped writing about half way, and may have been my urging to finish, that I then started asking about borrowing characters from. After a few weeks of work to get permission to use them in my story, they appeared as guests of the pack, late in Wolf Tech 3 which overlapped and fit into part of his Why Us 2, with Brian writing their side of the story. Then with an offer late in that book, the characters (Zane and his Team) became major characters in Wolf Tech 4. Towards the end of that book, he surprised me with a request to have them permanently become part of my story, with him co-authoring the parts of the story they dealt with. That lasted through another four novels, and three short stories!
I had also enticed a local friend to write a story of Were-Tigers and he had it tied into our shared world. For one story, Thawing of the Ice, all three of us worked on it.
I even had a chance to co-author parts of Book 11 of Folican Chronicles, We Come in Peace (Which he always has to add "Shoot to kill, Shoot to Kill, Shoot to Kill" as a parody to a Star Trek skit song) and of Book 12, the last book written in the series.
I had started two new stories, one where I had some wolves, that were distantly related to those in my other books, decide to emigrate to Folica, which almost would be Folican Chronicles book 13, and one that was follow-up to an offer that was made in Folican Chronicles 12, that had a bunch of pack emigrating to another planet. He threw me a curve, by adding in a part of a request from some characters from the Folican Chronicles wanting to move to the planet with the Weres.
I have got about five chapters into each of the books, before I got hit with a bad case of Writers Block, and had a few other interests start up, along with being very busy at work, and fewer of the readers hounding me for updates, I let it slide one day, then two, then a week, then a month... and has been three months since I last posted chapters. It is going to be hard to go back to the stories and try to be true to the characters that he was writing.
I am going to very much miss our nearly daily chatter about weather, our life, his dogs licking his toes or jumping on him, and most especially the banter and working together. My stories would never have gotten the exposure without him, and beyond my first three books, I don't think I would have had much content, as it was his push to do better and write better. He never said it in so many words, but the fact he kept wanting to co-write more, showed how much he respected me as an author, and wanted to help me write my stories.
I have had times that I found something funny or interesting that I wanted to share, and keep starting to send it, before remembering he was gone. It is going to take a while to get over it, from doing it the last three or four years. I am very much going to miss my friend.
The only fitting legacy I can think I can give Brian is to work to have my books published and out for more people to read and enjoy his work that is linked to mine. Maybe we can give him everlasting life through his stories, that he gave so much to accomplish.
(Anyone have their own written stories, let me know and I can add it here)
