I love to sing solo, but I also love to harmonize. Singing with a group or with accompaniment offers a different kind of enjoyment from performing on your own. You have to be attentive to different things, more in tune with your fellows, which in some ways can limit where you can go but in other ways expands the reach of your performance.

Writing solo and writing collaboratively is much the same. I find writing alone to offer unlimited possibilities, but the discipline of writing with someone else helps me to hone skills that might otherwise go undeveloped. I've been fortunate to enjoy several strong writing partnerships in the past, so when a friend of mine who writes screenplays asked if I'd like to collaborate on a project, I said, "Yes."

Jamie and I mapped out a show "bible" and pilot episode for a proposed television series based upon some concepts he'd been wanting to explore. The work we did on the screenplay was a fantastic learning experience. Jamie and I squashed each others' weak points (mine is a tendency toward exposition, in case you couldn't guess) and played off each others' strengths. We were both happy with the results, as were a number of readers whose judgement we trust.

We had such a good time that now we're exploring the possibility of working together on a novel. We're also working on some humor projects together. While working on the television script, Jamie also pulled me into a project he was developing that pokes fun at the high-tech stock bubble and the current state of mutual funds.

We posted the finished product on a web site: The Mattress Fund. We're in the process of putting together a smaller version that will stream faster, but if you have a good connection and a few minutes to kill, please check it out and let me know what you think. Oh, and if you have any problems downloading, please let me know that, too.