Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason couldn’t be more different.
Chatting in the Borders at Bailey’s Crossroads, Caldwell’s tall frame and glasses, peeking out from under a mop of dark blonde hair, stand in stark contrast to the shorter, black haired Thomason. Caldwell speaks in measured, soft tones, leaning in to each person, often with a hug or a handshake. Thomason’s animated expression and ebullient voice dance from conversation to conversation, weaving through a variety of topics and tones. Polar opposites.
What the two twenty-eight year old Fairfax County natives have in common, though, is a friendship that has lasted since the third grade, and their new book, The Rule of Four, which recently debuted at six on the New York Times Bestseller list. On Thursday, May 27 the two returned to Fairfax County as part of their book tour and participated in a book signing at the Border’s book store at Bailey’s Crossroads.
Having a best selling novel is an impressive feat for any author. Most writers won’t ever experience the rarified atmosphere of the top ten list, so for two first time authors to see their work premiering there, it is a bit breathtaking.
To make the situation more unique, there is the way in which the story was written. Novels aren’t usually written by two authors. The difficulty of balancing artistic visions and writing styles often gets in the way of the creative process. But Caldwell and Thomason attributed this very tension as the basis for their success.
“Any partners, in any field, feel that kind of friction,” said Thomason. “But [for us], that friction ends up generating the best results,” followed Caldwell.
The two have been creating together since they first met in Mrs. Bhelir’s third grade class at Glasgow Elementary. Bhelir joked that she had seen their creativity at that early age. “I think they told a few stories,” laughed Bhelir, indicating that their creativity had less of a literary focus at the time.
As teammates on their community soccer team, The Little River Scorpions, Thomason and Caldwell played on the same side of the field and would work together to create set plays and strategies. Caldwell described a strategy that the two developed for throw-ins. In the play, Thomason would slowly move towards Caldwell and then sprint in the opposite direction, while Caldwell tried to throw the ball in the path of his run. It seldom worked.
Despite the poor showing of their soccer strategies, the two saw their teamwork as being the beginning of bigger things. “That sense of working together [as teammates] was one of those building blocks,” said Caldwell.
They continued to work together on projects and papers throughout grade school, including a speech they co-wrote for a teacher, which Thomason presented, and which both admitted, was awful.
When they went to college, Thomason went to Harvard and Caldwell to Princeton. Despite their separation, their friendship remained strong as they corresponded often and saw each other over breaks.
As they faced graduation from college, though, they worried that their friendship wouldn’t be able to handle the intrusion of the real world. They decided to write a book during the summer after graduation in order to give them a way of keeping their friendship strong.
“We were clinging to some of the childish things we cared for,” said Thomason. “And still care for,” added Caldwell. Caldwell said they wanted to take advantage of the time immediately following graduation when, “friendships crystallize.”
Their close friendship, though, did not mean that everything was smooth sailing. They described late night phone calls that would sometimes end in shouting matches. But the next day they would always return to their friendship, sometimes, as Thomason said, “with our tails between our legs.”
It was, in fact, the differences that have helped Caldwell and Thomason succeed. The book is a thriller about an esoteric Renaissance book called The Hypnerotomachia Polipholi a book that Caldwell took a class on while at Princeton. Meanwhile, at Harvard, Thomason took a creative writing class from Jamaica Kincaid, a well known fiction writer and memoirist.
“[Ian] was serious about academics. It was his love of history that he brought to the table,” said Thomason.
While Caldwell had brought the subject, both of the writers took immediately to the material. The two spent every day of the summer writing together. They would talk about the ideas and then split up the chapters, which as Caldwell described, ended up with half the chapters sounding like he had written them and the other half sounding like Thomason had.
As they continued, though, their technique evolved and pretty soon they were working together on the chapters, which led to more in-depth development. “We do different things with the same material,” said Caldwell.
The two admitted that they had no idea what they were doing when they started working on the book. “We didn’t know you couldn’t write a novel in three months,” said Thomason. “We were so full of confidence…we really benefited from ignorance.”
Caldwell remembered going to the Borders at Bailey’s Crossroads and looking for help. “I bought every book on how to write,” said Caldwell. “There was a huge gap in the self-help section,” he said.
It was quickly apparent that the book was not going to be completed by the end of the summer. Thomason went to medical school and Caldwell started working with a Northern Virginia software company. They continued to stay in contact and shared drafts of chapters by email. Their lifetime friendship stayed strong and their mission of remaining close after college was a success.
Six years after they started, they achieved another success they never expected, when their book was published, and later, when it debuted on the bestseller list.
As they stood next to each other in the Borders last Thursday, mobbed by friends, neighbors, and people they’d never met, the enormity of what they’d done dawned on them.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to see how people here received it,” said Thomason.
The stop at home on the book tour is especially important for the young writers because they are returning to the place that inspired them to start writing.
The memories of their homes in Fairfax County serve as much of the basis for their story. While the majority of the story is set in Columbus, Ohio, Caldwell admits that the choice of the setting was rather arbitrary.
“Those experiences are all taking places in the hallways of Glasgow and Thomas Jefferson,” said Thomason. “Everything we know about the place is constructed around our memories of the Northern Virginia area,” he said.
Thomason and Caldwell have already started work on a new novel. They aren’t fazed by the high precedent they have set for themselves. “I’m actually really excited,” said Thomason. “We feel like we’ve learned a fair amount…though we still have a lot to learn,” he added.
The two plan on continuing to write together. They see it as a chance to build on their twenty years of friendship. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to do this alone,” said Thomason. Caldwell agreed.