"DRAGONSHIPS: Bones of the Dragon" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Tor Books, 411 pages, $25

When Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis began writing together 25 years ago, it wasn't planned or solicited. It was barely even welcomed. They did it in a last-ditch effort to save the first novel-companion to the "Dungeons and Dragons" game, a project about which they both felt passionate.

When they realized that the writer who had been hired was missing the mark, they took matters into their own hands.

"Tracy and I took a weekend and wrote five chapters and a prologue, and since then I have never written five chapters in two days," Weis said. "Later, our editor said she read it mostly not to hurt our feelings."

But the gamble paid off.

The original writer was fired, and Hickman and Weis were given the job of finishing the book, with the original deadline, leaving them three months. Twenty-five years and 30 novels later, including five New York Times best-sellers, the two are still actively writing.

The duo's latest foray into the world of fantasy, "Dragonships: Bones of the Dragon," is the first of a six-book series that takes readers into the world of the Viking-inspired Vindrasi people, whose own mortal lives are thrown into turmoil after their gods go to war. This conflict between the mortals and their gods is what Hickman finds most fascinating.

"I think that for me, my favorite part of this particular series are all of the big questions — and these are the big questions that will take six books to work through," he said. "It's the question of the mortals of the world dealing with the gods of the world who have failed them and failed themselves."

Weis said she enjoyed researching the Norse people and learning about how they differed from stereotypes.

"We always think of them as barbarians because that's what we're told, but really they were more advanced than the medieval societies that looked down on them," she said. "The way women were treated was much better."

As Hickman is based in Utah and Weis lives in Lake Geneva, Wis., they write primarily using telephones and e-mail. However, Weis said the idea for this story came from one of the rare times they were in the same place.

"We were on a plane and we started talking about the idea of Vikings," she said. "Particularly, that Vikings had dragon-prowed ships and thinking what if it [the ship] actually turned into a dragon."

The two also have a set arrangement when it comes to who does what in the writing process.