Releases

The word "release" is one of those instances where English pwns German. In German, the word for a book release is "Veroeffentlichung" (making public, so like publication)--and that works too. There's a distinct sense of "right, guys, have at it!" in the word. From the pretty lonely pleasure of, uh, my head, and co-writer and a handful of betas and the editors and proofers, it's out there. Doors/windows are wide open. There you go.

"Release" has the word "tension" built in as the implied pre-state. Tension release. Relief. Also, "hey, dog's off the chain!"--it's a lot more active, in a way, and maybe focused on the moment you press the button--and let it all go. At this point, the story has survived the "You call THAT an idea?" and the "I should be writing something else" and the inevitable "crap, what do I think I'm doing" and "why is this shit so hard" and a million doubts and a hundred moments when I think about taking up golf or something instead of writing.

So, yeah, release. Scorpion is back out. It's actually still one of my favourites, and I readily accept a huge burden of debt to Glenn Cook's "Black Company" (I pay homage in the book several times) and a number of other fantasy novels I've read (some of those have fallen to my horrible memory, but a big influence on me overall was Tanith Lee). I prefer my worlds low-magic, though I can totally see a fantasy world that has a lot of magic. (Actually the world I built while I was running GURPS table top roleplaying games, so that one is high magic and actually pretty damn epic.)

I've told the story a few times, but if you own the first version, you don't have to buy this one. I've cleaned it up (with the help of my great editors, Gordon and Rachel), but the book is essentially the same. It was pretty strong when I handed it to Dreamspinner in late 2010, it was published in a pretty strong form in May 2011, then got pulled in December 2012, and is now back out, shinier and cleaner than ever before.

I'm tremendously proud of it, and I'm really glad Riptide took a risk on a re-release. It wasn't that I was unhappy with that first version--it was that I wanted to clean it up to write the rest of the series that's most definitely lurking in there. (And I have been doing!) Of course, if you're a completist, I'm happy to take the cash and thank you kindly.

(Also, book 2 is done and handed over to my editor. I'm having a couple days off to relax and EDIT ALL THE OTHER THINGS.)

Then, If It Fornicates is out, a 42k novella set in the Market Garden, and following If It Flies.

While If It Flies was more Spencer's journey to realising and accepting not only that he was a submissive but also in love with a prostitute, If It Fornicates is all about Nick, who has to come to terms with giving up his independence. Their story/ies  really took that shape and felt like two very separate entities, so that's how they were written: two sides of the same coin, in a way.

To be honest, after the first one I had some serious doubts whether writing "formal BDSM" is the right thing for me. My guys are usually all about the power exchange, some are masochists, but I've stayed pretty much away from the typical dungeon/club scenario--one of the reasons being that I'm much more interested in character exploration and power dynamics than the usual "whip me, fuck me" fiction, which is a dime two dozen. Just because it has leather and whips doesn't mean it does anything for me--and after Rachel's and Cat's "Power Play" series, I was pretty intimidated. Now, that's a fine exploration of character right there. But If It Fornicates seems to click better with readers, so I'm relaxing a bit there. (See, I'm bringing it back to the whole "release" thing.) It's not under my control anymore. There, have at it. I hope you enjoy it.

There's more coming: "Capture and Surrender" is the first full Market Garden novel and is currently being edited.

"Unhinge the Universe" is our WWII novel (I've seen the cover and it's really really nice--keep you eyes on the Riptide newsletter, where it will be unveiled).

Then we're working on a long cop novel (100k), which we're currently cleaning up.

And over the weekend, we started work on If It Drives, likely another novel-length story about two characters who make a brief appearance in If It Fornicates.

So the plate is full, the pipeline loaded. I've done some short fiction recently, but the pendulum is swinging back towards 60k+ now--Lying with Scorpions is pretty substantial at 84-85k, and so are all the other projects. I might need to write a short story to clear out some lingering ideas, but above all, the engine is running and words are being made. And that's really the main thing. Life's too damn short, anyway, so I better get cracking.

And now for the finale (and an aside on gender/race/cultural diversity in fantasy)

I've been making words on Lying with Scorpions. After a quick re-plot that de-tangled a new plotline from the ending, I can now say with some confidence that LwS will clock in at 82-85k words in first draft. That number can go either way by about 5-10% in edits, so it's going to be longer than Scorpion by a fair bit. (That one has 72k.) Generally speaking, 5% is the more normal mark, but I do have a pair of very good and pretty radical editors on my hands here, so nothing's safe.

In the last two weeks, I also filled up my head/soul/mind with entertainment. I think I hunger most for "outside stimulation" when stressed out of my head and running myself ragged trying to hit a deadline. In preparation of the Books To Come, I finally watched "Band of Brothers", which was amazing (better than "Saving Private Ryan"--the ensemble cast really works). I read some WWII literature written by Germans to pick up the "tone/mood" of the time. Boell's "Silent Angel" was pretty good, but Gert Ledig's "Stalin Organ" has me struck dumb with the power of it; the latter compares with Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front". Both served in the German army and were rather too close to the things they write about in their books. I "gave something back" to Ledig by translating his article on Wikipedia into English--my small good deed of the day. (I have to hold Ledig's book in my head for a character of mine who goes to the Eastern Front. These would be things he's seen/done/heard about. It defies belief.)

I'm also finding that 180-200 pages of chiseled prose and condensed emotion is all I can take. Both books are short--due to paper shortages, one imagines, and also a lack of belief in "doorstopping for doorstoping's sake" - aka to make books large so you can charge a fortune for them, a trend that has made fantasy and sci-fi all but unreadable for me. Give me a great short book I'll re-read over a long mediocre, fluff-filled book any day. I have no patience for authors wasting my time, and it's a rare author who can fill 120-160k meaningfully.

Reading what Ledig, Boell, Greene and Faulkner achieve on 200 pages is humbling. I shall strive to reach a similar level of intensity, but that's a master's touch: shatter your whole world with that one perfect sentence that echoes in you forever.

I haven't recently broken the 100k mark with anything--not on my own. I've hit just over that mark with LA Witt in our upcoming cop story (which I can't wait to show you), but 40-80k seems to be my current sweet spot. And I'm not arguing that Skybound at 13k is the best thing I've ever done. Considering that short stories are harder to get right than novels, I'm really quite pleased.

In good news, I've had a very nice chat with my Japanese translator about the meaning/symbolism of the "basket scene" in Skybound and the overall Japanese market. She's working on a translation of Skybound for the Japanese magazine "Dear +", where, to my knowledge, Josh Lanyon was the first m/m author to be featured. I think I might be number 2, so it's a great honor for me and I'm immensely pleased that that little story gets to travel the globe. :) Clearly, I need to write more about German fighter pilots in WWII.

With regards to Lying with Scorpions--I'm on the last chapter. I've developed total tunnel vision at this point; I can barely think about anything else. Then again, I did write the bulk of it in six weeks. In the last chapter, something unexpected happened that makes something else work much better that I was struggling with. This is a series of books that defies me at every corner and the twists and turns come in so thick and fast I'm not even sure who's writing this book. The Muse is a maniac on this (cue: "Flashdance" video/song). The good news is, I'll wrap it all this weekend, just in time for my extended deadline, then do a polish on it myself (some stuff needs to be moved around) and off it goes to my editor.

More good news: Reese Dante made a breathtaking cover; in my humble opinion, it's even better than the first one. Oh gods, I love that woman. I'm posting a teaser below. The cover features Adrastes, king of Dalman. As you can see, he's very hot and very determined:

 The print version should be beautiful.

The thing I'm most proud about so far with LwS: the diversity of the cast. I have three gender-variant people who kick ass and are neither saints nor psychopaths and most definitely not victims. I have three-ish women as significant characters in the book who aren't whores or virgins and who very much do their own thing (yes, one was raped, but rape is an equal-opportunity crime in a world where power dynamics are played out on the flesh of both genders... it's part of the world and has been from the start. Yet, even this woman won't be defined by the rape and it's not her motivation for kicking ass.)

I have three cultures clashing--two coloured peoples who are so cool that I will have to sex up the white people now or they are losing the plot entirely. The Jaishani kick ass beautifully and very much drive their own agenda. Everything shifted when I decided that the Jaishani were technologically more advanced than the "pale people"--it's a decision with far-reaching consequences, too. For one, they are now perceived as a threat, and guess what, some of my characters turned into racist douchebags. Previously, I'd bracketed out racism, largely positing a multi-cultural society, but that was somewhat too easy. Some people will always feel threatened, and it's my response to the surge of anti-Muslim violence in Britain after the killing of the soldier in Woolwich; it's interesting to see responses unravel on Twitter while brainstorming for a culture clash. So, there. I hope it's not heavy-handed, but it was very much on my mind as I wrote those passages.

Regarding writing all that "diversity" (it's inherent in my world, not me being preachy--once I set some ground rules in Scorpion, this was the logical development), Heidi Belleau wrote a great post about writing characters that are not your ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation.

And I have a brain crush on Kameron Hurley, who examines "women fighters in fantasy". While the Lady Protector, Lady Nhala and Runner precede this, I kept nodding vigourously throughout the post. I have the academic background to know that women have always been fighters. I know real-life women warriors, including martial artists and re-enactors who kick ass and take names. I've seen women run in heavy armor and fight, and fight extremely well. It's what you do with the body you've been given, not the body itself.

I'm bored to tears by "generic fantasy" (white, cis, heterosexual, Central European), and I fully plan to stand and deliver in this genre and work out some issues I feel have energy for me and others. While I hope the Memory of Scorpions series is simply a good read, the world itself allows female fighters (even at times requires it), and gender identity isn't clear cut. In some way, I think that makes it almost futuristic--our own world isn't nearly there.

Cloudy, but on track

I didn't manage to do very much over the last couple weeks because I'm writing (and editing). I'm also somewhat limited by my new treadmill desk; as I'm getting used to walking while writing, my feet just simply give out after a few hours on it and I'm then doing Other Things and focus my online time on writing to make the best use of the time I do have.

I'm also in the "throw words on the paper" stage of writing Lying with Scorpions (LwS), the sequel of Scorpion. I'd conservatively estimated that LwS would be the same length as Scorpion (72k), but I'm now a touch under 60k and still have 7 chapters in my 20-chapter outline that are barely touched. So far, my chapters are between 3k and 7k, so I have about 21k to 35k left to write. Needless to say, while full-time employed, that's near impossible to pull off by 27th May (hey, next Monday!), but I'm giving it a good race. I'll definitely need another week, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like a Major Thing. For the most part, I'm keeping my head down and working hard.

There's also really no point hemming and hawing over the plot. A few chapters ago, I switched to writing with an outline (recently, I haven't been using one), and my wordcount is definitely up. I've also skipped out of self-editing a while back. Self-editing while I write just makes me question myself every step of the way--which so isn't good when I try to do 1-2k a day.

To hit wordcount, I essentially need to switch off the critical facility and "outsource" it to a couple friends who *will* tell me if I'm writing shit. At this stage, it feels like I'm in freefall while blindfolded--I'm out of the plane and approaching terminal velocity (in a manner of speaking, 1-2k/day is nothing for many writers). I have to trust that the outline holds, the chute opens, and my jump buddies tells me when I'm heading towards trees or a cliff, because on my own, I might not be able to see/avoid them.

I actually prefer to work differently--I edit as I go along, I write more slowly, I don't usually try to "get through that scene to make wordcount tonight", so this is a bit challenging. I'm halfway freaked out whether it's any good. I berate myself for ruining a good first book with a bad second book, I worry how readers who are invested in one particular character will respond to what I'm doing.

In short, I'm telling myself it's a horrific idea, how could I, why would anybody want to read this crap, etc. I'm also telling Rachel every day that nobody's going to buy it, but Rachel just shrugs and ghoes "whatever", which is actually pretty helpful in this semi-freaked state.

People aren't kidding when they talk about being their own worst enemy. There's nothing any reviewer can write later about this book that I haven't thought while writing it. When you wrestle your own angels all the way, reviewers are not actually that bad. Many of them are actually a huge amount more kind than that angel I'm dealing with, who is pretty much pitiless. All of this is an internal battle, and one I have to fight every time, so you'd imagine I'm by now used to it.

The good thing is, once it's written, a decent author and a good editor together can fix just about everything. I'm hoping to clean up the style/writing/repetitions and discover the book isn't hopeless. At this stage, I'm running blind, and I'll have to trust my buddies to get me to the end and then my editor to help me fix the structure (it's a slow book, and I fully expect to lose 10% in the final edit) and all the other aspects. It feels like a huge imposition to just write and accumulate words, but I have to separate those two styeps in my brain. Writing first, editingsecond. It's the mantra I used to preach when writing students were blocking themselves with fear and/or ambition (the combination is even worse).

So I'm working and writing and about 70% there, which explains why I've been scarce in other places. I'm bringing the herd home now, or at least, I can see the destination and have a rough idea how to get there. I j ust have to trust that this is/was a book worth fighting the angel for.

Good things come to those who wait

Remember my two little stories “Burn” and “Deliverance”? They were, after Special Forces, some of my very first works in the m/m space. They got packaged into anthologies and off they went. And while I was proud of them at the time—they did represent my skill level and my themes at that point in time—it only took about two years for me to grow to a level where I wasn’t happy with them.

So, recently, I’ve been clawing back rights (Scorpion, Risky Maneuvers, Transit, Clean Slate, First Blood) to fix them up and fix them up good. End-May, you’ll see Scorpion Redux, the others follow when I have time (and the co-writer, too).

Now, both Deliverance and Burn were short stories (6-7k each), but from early on I realised they weren’t. Now, they still had about 3-4 years on their contracts, but I’m an impatient one, and Burn screamed at me, wanting to be a novella (30k+), while Deliverance insisted it’s a novel (and the third part in a series of a three).

Cue me lying awake at night, grinding my teeth over the rights to them. I just hate having stuff out there that should be different, that could be better. I’m the type of author who loses sleep over missed chances and unused potential.

So after a process that took a while for several reasons (me dropping the ball a few times), the publisher of both stories has agreed to me purchasing the rights, and today I received the signed agreement from the other party. While we’ve both agreed not to disclose the terms—wow, it’s weird using one of my old journo phrases for my personal life, but I couldn’t help myself—I’ve bought my rights for the stories and am now sitting on those stories with lots of ideas where to take them. These stories are very close to my heart, so I’m incredibly relieved to have them back.

Riptide has already offered contracts for both (no, they do turn my stuff down sometimes, I don’t get a free pass), so I’m hoping that both will be out in 2014 in a way, shape and form that’s taking advantage of the full potential in those stories. They’ll be longer, shinier, and completely re-thought and re-worked. I’m really glad about that development and look forward telling you those stories as they should be told. 

Help me celebrate my birthday on 4 May (ask your fav character anything)!

Fourth of May is almost upon us (yes, I was born on a Sunday AND on Star Wars day), and while I will be a little scarce on this blog while I drive the herd home (aka, make tracks on Lying with Scorpions), I just stole an idea from glamourworld:

@aleksandrvoinov Give them some Q&A time with their favorite characters of your's?
— glamourworld (@glamourworld) April 25, 2013

So, the deal is this. To celebrate, you can ask your favourite characters everything. (They have to be mine, though, so only about half the cast of Special Forces). Post the question in a comment on my blog--both here and on Goodreads and the characters will answer. I'm taking some time off around my birthday, so I should get you the answers in a timely fashion.

(I'm also looking at doing a sale at Riptide, likely one or two of my solo titles.)

The unforgiveable crime of family

Every now and then, my life throws up "clusters" of meaning (or my brain turns it to meaning - after all, that's what plotting does - wrench meaning from random events). These are sometimes too random to spark a deeper interest, or even a blog post. Much goes on in my head that's just aurora borealis - impressions of colour, too ephemeral to make lasting expression beyond having been observed but fundamentally without much meaning.

A little while ago I met a reader and we ended up plunging some interesting family depths together. This gave me much to think about, but this review - really mostly the discussion around it - struck a chord today, so that's my blog post. 

Both my new friend and I shared an anecdote of a parent/grandparent telling us we weren't wanted and had contraceptives/abortions been available, we wouldn't exist. In my case (because I don't feel at liberty to talk about my new friend's experience), it was very clear to me from a young age that my existence inconvenienced my father. Essentially, he didn't want me, he never wanted me to live, and gods know whether he pressured my mother (27 years his junior) to do away with the impediment. I'm not putting it beyond him. All my mother's friends CONSTANT, mantra-like assurance "your mother wanted you so bad" and "you were all she wanted" makes sense. You don't tell that to somebody who has not been under threat by a potentially fetus-murdering father.

I may be overanalyzing things.

I also told that "black comedy" moment of yet another large family Christmas get-together going to shit - my family always congregated on Christmas to press each other's negative buttons with sledgehammers for a whole evening, and more often than not, there were shouting matches and old poison being dredged up from childhood ("You broke my doll! I loved nothing more than my doll!" - "Father always loved you most. Of course I beat you up when I could get away with it!"), and during one of those "Hell of Earth is Family" Christmasses, my grandmother roundly declared that if the pill had been around, "none of you would be here." (To her brood of eight children and at that point three grandchildren.)

Somebody essentially retroactively denying your existence - telling you you were a mistake, or an unfortunate development, that, given more convenience and access to funds/medical care/progress, you wouldn't exist at all is an oddly powerful shock to the system. Maybe part of the shock is a blow to our ego - our fundamental narrative that WE are the protagonist of our story, the dragon-slaying hero who'll free the princess, the lightbringer, the Chosen One, or any number of inner narratives that are fundamentally narcisstic and that get often mortally wounded somewhere around middle age, when no wise old wizard has led us to the magical sword and we left our parent's castle largely to be corporate slaves living from weekend to weekend, and we begin to suspect we're not the Chosen One but the Average Joe.

I can't yet make sense of it, and I can't pull all this into a conclusion. I'm absolutely in favour of people making choices about having or not having offspring. From that follows, obviously, that some of these choices might be wrong. A tremendeous potential parent might never have kids. A poor parent ends up with a stable full of them (my grandmother surely was an extremely poor, egotistical parent, almost a non-parent, since her brood was taken care of by nannies). But disclosing that we think it was a mistake TO the "mistake"? That's where I draw the line.

In any case, I understand a little better now why in my work I have so many father/son conflicts that often turn into extinction-level crises. It's me telling my (dead) biological father: "And fuck you--because I'm alive."

Fast versus Slow Writers (my $0.02, adjusted for inflation)

When we talk about fast authors versus slow authors, we sometimes might be tempted to think of one as a "hack" and the other the "auteur". The hack vomits up 20k a day, every day, and "floods the market" all by him/herself. The auteur hand-rears the goose that will eventually produce the sacred quill which which he'll write the perfect book.

Truth, I'm finding, is more complex than that. Every author has the same allotted time to work: hopefully about 70-80 years of lifespan, about 3-10 years of learning how to write. Everything else is individual.

Let's take two authors of the same age, who start at the same time. They roughly have the same amount of willpower and health. All "internal" factors are the same.

One of them has small children. Three actually. S/he might have to hold down a day job. Maybe a second one because the economy sucks. Maybe writing is their third job. Income is fickle from that. At least with the other jobs, s/he gets the same amount of money and can budget with that. Weekends are spent with ailing parents to help them stay on top of their house/garden.

The other one has bought a house pre-crash and suddenly finds her/himself in "negative equity" (owing more on the house than it's worth). The only way to fill in the gap is by writing and publishing fast and hard. Nothing says "Sit down and write, bitch" like a car payment or a mortgage or simply needing the money. Maybe essentials are taken care of by a partner who makes more money anyway and is A-OK with playing "breadwinner" while that writing gamble takes off or not. Both are childless and parents are in good health.

Both these authors will have vastly different productivity levels. Unless they share details about their personal lives (and many authors don't), we might not even know why writer A) has consistently delivered one book every year and writer B) publishes one every three weeks.

None of these factors are "their fault", some aren't even their choice, and yet they have a huge impact on how many words get put on the page.

In my case, I'm middling productive. I do more than a novel a year, and this year I'm doing 3-4 novels, and that's just the start. Among mainstream authors, I'm VERY productive. Among m/m writers or romance authors, I'm consistent, but not special by any means.


Factors that support my productivity:

- I'm young-ish and healthy. There are many authors who labour under physical and mental issues that I simply don't have, and I'm not yet feeling age. I'm born with a minor deformity in my lower spine, but considering many authors I know who have terrible back and joint issues, I'm robust and sound. If you spent almost every waking hour typing in some fashion, that's a huge bonus. I wrote not a word when my back was acting up.

- I'm childless. There are authors who have made a different decision and rearing children is Hard Work that screws with pretty much everything else (such as sleep, which has a huge impact on how well you concentrate). I've never had any desire to have children and am not missing a thing. It's a lucky accident.

- My partner is overall supportive and happy to entertain himself most days. Other partners are more demanding. Some can be needy and jealous, even aggressive.

- I have no financial anxiety. Nothing kills my writing faster than worrying if I can pay my part of the mortgage and whether I'll be poor in old age. I've been in that place and it's a place from where I cannot bring books. There are no books here, just black, horrible, soul-eating dread.

- My job is largely a low-intensity no-brainer. A more intense job (running a team, running a news desk or being a high-flying journalist, or joining a financial company in anything but a support role) kills my writing. I could do all that; in terms of brainpower and talent, it's all there, but I chose to work in a job that's only using 25% of my brain capacity at any given time, because 150% of my brain is taken over by writing and I'm essentially running my day job when I have a moment and overall CPU usage is down. This is common--I know highly talented, very smart, educated authors who work in jobs that are way beneath their capacity because their writing is more important. Their ambition is solely directed at writing, not at making the next rung of the ladder. It's the "bread job" and the "author biding their time". I'm definitely biding my time.


Factors that impede my productivity:

-  I'm full-time employed (40-hour week, 2.5-3hr commute three times a week, 2 days working remotely). This means work commitments can get in the way of writing (Christmas part, leaving drinks, work-related social events). Some days do get so intense that the only thing I want to do when I get home is sleep. Sometimes I do. While I might be able to live off what I'm making writing currently, it would mean placing  the vast majority of "breadwinning" on my partner's shoulder, which I simply cannot do; my self-respect is based on me paying my own way and being independent enough to walk away from any arrangement I've made. What I make currently is enough to pay my mortgage (unless interest rates rise, at which point I'm screwed), but nothing else much. No nice research books, no meals out with friends, no travel, and most definitely no US or overseas conventions costing thousands of dollars. Most months, I'd have to beg my partner for things like new clothes, and gym membership and phone contract would have to go.

- My partner (at times, I am spending an evening/morning/afternoon with him, because, damn, I like that guy and it's nice spending time with real MeatSpace people).

- Healthy diet. I've taken up cooking to feed myself better. That does mean some extra work in terms of cooking and cleaning up, but it's a matter of wellness for me now. Pottering around in the kitchen for an hour is a way to de-stress.

- Exercise. Some days, I go to the gym, lift weights or run, and come home and am mellow and tired and just have a shower and do email. This takes time away from writing. Exercise and diet take a significant chunk of my time, actually. I get home at 18:20, and cooking and housework can be up to 19:20ish, which is when my partner comes home. I might go to the gym (another 60-90 minutes) and return home and then be showered and changed at 21:00. At this point, I have 2-3 hours, tops, to write, and ideally I want to be in bed before midnight (though, Muse allowing, that doesn't always work).

- Social life. I like people and I like meeting them and hanging out. Especially book people. They keep my brain awake and focused on the outside rather than the inside. Then some people having birthdays, there are conventions, and some people ask for responses to their emails.

- Other duties. Sometimes, all writing gets choked off by something that might be more urgent. A round (or 15) of edits. Proofing--my stuff and almost everything else that Riptide puts out (I want to do that because I want to read everything that goes out). A battle with an asshole publisher over my rights (one of them has cost me some very good writing days with their bullshit). Me having promised to help somebody with their book (checking for German, an editing run between friends, a beta read).

I do get a LOT of mileage out of my 2-3 free hours a day, all things considered, and I'm certainly in a lucky and privileged position.

But all writing I do has to fit into the rest of my life, and the truth is, there's a limit to what even a disciplined author can achieve under his/her individual circumstances. Productivity is a balance of a hundred factors, and these are getting constantly re-arranged. My worst enemy might be my insistence on a "cushy" lifestyle, with pension, savings, a mortgage and far-distance travel to see friends, recharge my batteries and attend conferences.

Holding down a day job enables me to keep my dignity and pay my own way, because I don't believe people owe me a living--not even my partner or the state. I'm playing with the hand I've been dealt, and right now, that's the best I can play. I'm a slow author because I only have 5-10% of my time for writing--and I'm a fast author because boy do I get a good wordcount out of a relatively short period of "free" time. Not because I'm a hack or artiste--it's simply how my life is.