Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 11

Scorpion - very cheap

So, Riptide put Scorpion on a special promotion - it's currently $0.99 (or £.0.77) at Amazon com/co.uk.

Also, I'm running a price promotion for Return on Investment from tomorrow (I'm experimenting with several tools Amazon offers, to see the effect with my own two eyes, as it were). I'm still gathering data for the self-publishing. So, if you were hesitant/dubious, now's a good time to try those two. 

Tranced

Over the last four days, I've acquired a qualification in hypnosis (accredited and all). It's a four-day weekend, full-on course where you put people in a trance pretty much after 3 hours on the course. I've learned quite a bit about myself (one: still lots of garbage left over from my childhood that I should work with to release some stuff I no longer need - but that's no surprise).

I've done some beautiful work with some of my partners on the exercises. Found a woman who's also into power animals/shamanism and we shared one (Eagle, though my primary is Raccoon and hers was Bear), so we tranced each other on a shamanic journey. It was lovely hanging out with Raccoon again  -we were on a beach, playing with a red plastic ball. The trance was about expansion and empowerment, which seemed somewhat incongruous, but we rolled with it. I was aware of people watching, but, to be honest, I had too much fun just playing with Raccoon and the plastic ball. At some point, he gives me the ball (it even had teeth marks).

Afterwards, we talk in the group about colours in trance. And apparently "red" means "power". Cool. On the way to the course that day, I'm standing on a full tube train, and a guy with headphones stands next to me. And what's the one line I pick up through his headphones? That's right: Snap's "I've Got The Power!"

So that was me for the rest of that day:



But even the other stuff ended up being significant. While my partner tranced me about empowerment/expansion/growth, Raccoon was all about "Let's just have fun". And it became abundantly clear that that's my path. Empowerment/expansion will come as a side-line if I play and do what I enjoy and focus on it. It's a no-brainer when you write it down like that. (Though apparently it'll come with some teeth marks, LOL).

A French guy tranced me about the birds book (which is set in France), and it was beautiful, thinking of my books as trees that sometimes rest and then grow again. He took me down a path with all my books as beautiful trees and I loved that. (I don't remember much more than that, I was way, way down.)

I did the "authoritarian" (Estabrooks) trance with two other people who are really awful at accepting authority (two of whom from countries with recent fascist/totalitarian pasts, go figure). That was the most polite, "GO, SLEEP NOW! DEEPER" you could imagine.

And yes, we did several different kinds of trance, from the very common Erickson to Estabrooks to Elman. All slightly different in approach. The one I like best is half Erickson and half whatever I think the client will respond to best. But pretty much all of my favourite inductions (the part where you put somebody in a trance in the first place) are based on touch. Big surprise - I'm overall very touchy-feely anyway.

I helped one girl release a lot of stuff (there's a huge sense of responsibility when you make somebody cry - or very nearly cry) - going from smiling and laughing to sobbing in five or ten minutes is ... interesting. I ended up crying like a dog in one of the group trances. I always do when that trainer does that particular trance. It's very healing, but I'll be the one with tears running down my face for twenty minutes.

One thing that is apparently becoming my "style" is to go very specific about the environment I put people. The teacher says "content-free" is best, but that's very generic stuff that the other person's subconsciousness just colours in. I go pretty specific and describe actual impressions. Say, "content-free" is when they send you to "your favourite place", whereas I would put people in a specific environment - a meadow, a forest, a beach, describing flowers and light and sun/stars/moon. It seemed like the right thing to do - but then, I knew the people I was trancing and tailored the environment/impressions to them and they seemed to enjoy it (saying the imagery was "beautiful"). Because, let's face it, I'm a writer - staying "generic" would be "bad writing" in prose. It's a mindset/and decades-old training that's taking over as you improvise a trance on the fly. (No scripts - urgh.)

But I'll see if I can keep it more content-free with people I know less well. In any case, I'm looking forward to trancing writers/artists. The results should be amazing with people who are so good at visualisation. But I'm looking forward to trancing just about everybody. It's play time.

Fundraiser to support trans* dramedy show "Myrna" (plus free books)

I'm currently in day three of four of my hypnosis course and it's really good fun, so I'm a bit scarce around the intarwebs. But I am resurfacing there for a moment to draw your kind attention to this fundraiser: The producers of the trans*-themed show MYRNA are seeking funding for post production.

Lots of details here.

And if that great cause weren't motivation enough to donate, LA Witt is doing a massive giveaway for books and stuff here, including a giveaway for a Kindle Fire pre-loaded with all her books (which is about a million books - but at the very least about 75-80). So a new tablet plus enough stuff to read for MONTHS.

Addendum:

I'm happy to offer the following rewards if you want to donate:

- an electronic copy of "Return on Investment" for a donation of $5 or more to MYRNA (just send the receipt of the donation to vashtan @ gmail com with your preferred format). Amount of rewards available: unlimited. (You don't save much money, but you do get a free book.)

- I'll dedicate an upcoming story to you for $50. Amount available: 10. (It'll take me a while to write that many, so please be patient.) In addition, I'll send you an electronic copy of "your" story. Length varies from short story to novel - will be first come, first served.

- Lori and I will write a story for you. We'll keep copyright - meaning, we still own it and can sell/publish it, but you get to be involved in the planning of it and will have it dedicated to you, with a thank-you note explaining how it came to be. This is great if you want a specific type of story, or specific characters, or a specific type of kink/setting/genre. We'll do our best to make it work. This is with the caveat that Lori doesn't do rape scenarios, and we both absolutely don't do bestiality or bodily waste products in any sexy kind of context.

A custom-made short story of up to about 7,000 words goes for $250. A novella (10-30k at least, but might be longer) goes for $1,000. Short stories available: 3. Novellas available: 1. Bear in mind we do need to own the copyright of the characters (that is, no fanfiction, and for all Special Forces lovers, no characters that I didn't create, so Dan/Hooch are right out, I'm sorry.) And we'll do our best to deliver all of these before the year is up.

Let's make this work. :)

Thank you very kindly for your attention and support. :)

Plans

I'm way behind on a great many things, so if you've sent me an email, my response might take a while as I get back into the groove of things. I didn't manage to do anything over those last two months, so no writing, barely any editing, and very little other stuff (like emails, mailing packages or even doing my taxes).

I'll have a guest over from today to Sunday and a four-day whole-day seminar from Friday to Monday, so I don't expect to be able to do anything else. (On the positive side, I'll learn hypnosis.)

Normal service should resume on 16 September. I'll wrap up three small projects by end-September, and then I'll aim at writing 10,000 words per week from 1 October onwards, or 40,000 words per month.

It's on the low side of what friends of mine are getting accomplished, but I'm making allowances for writing several historicals. They just take longer because of the research involved, and it'll take me several days to work out where I was going with them, anyway.

I can always up the wordcount - I fully expect to beat it.

At that rate, I should be able to write a novel every two months, which tallies with the goal of writing three solo novels per year plus two co-written novels, plus assorted small stuff (shorts and novellas). I'm not too worried about ideas - right now, I have about 30 projects I want to write, and I'm spawning another one about every week.

The biggest challenge will be to move my "creative time" into the day from the evening/night. I do like the guy I'm living with, so it'll be nice to spend more time with him without feeling guilty about writing.

I'll give this a go for a year or two and see how the market/industry develops. I might make myself available for temp/project contracts in corporate editing if the money's spectacular (and it usually is), but never again return to journalism - that chapter is closed.

I'm definitely feeling much better than I have in two months.

Resigned

As of today, I've resigned from the day job. I lasted pretty much exactly 2 months, so quitting while still in the probationary period, which means I'm out in a week (3 days, because I have a couple holiday days). I was semi-hoping I could last long enough to get another full paycheque out of it, but I ended up deciding that the latest thing I had to deal with wasn't worth the aggravation. Also, it's been 2+ months since I've written any meaningful amounts.

I call it Project Freelancer 2.0. I have it on some authority that "going freelance" often takes several attempts. Hopefully this one sticks. But the main thing I've learned from the whole experience is that I wasn't kidding when I said I don't want to go back to journalism. It's so not me it's not even funny (ie, it's actually excruciating).

So the target is to write 3 solo novels a year, plus 2 co-written ones. It's a schedule that'll keep me honest and engaged, but still allows for as much research as I want/need. I may look at some corporate/temp work down the line, but not this year. The job market is thawing, but I have two novels that are more urgent than any need for immediate cash.

Bear with me. Regularly scheduled service will resume once I've shaken the Kool-Aid from my ears.

Well, I lasted two months

Some people were asking how I'm doing with the new job and all.
I have two songs that answer that question:


So, yeah, I won't last the month. Now that that's decided, maybe my stress level goes back to a point where I can write again. Right now, I'm too stressed and tired after that 9-hr day plus 2.5 hrs of commute.

Next time I tell people I'll never go back to journalism, I won't even be swayed by a "brilliant opportunity" or a decent-sized pay cheque.

In even more positive news - here's an interview about the biligualness of it all. :) 

Four-Day weekend

I've taken today off to get a four-day weekend - mostly, I'm catching up with work. In the last few days, I've wrapped up the line edits for Counterpunch, and Lori and I sorted the line edits of No Place That Far. We're also making tracks in the 95k novel Lone Wolf for Riptide, which is urgent and needs wrapping over the weekend.

Just a few minutes ago, I pressed "publish" on the print version of Return on Investment, so this is kinda happy print version release. It hasn't come through on Amazon yet, but here's the Createspace link.  The process took a bit longer than I liked, mostly because I had to wait for the proof copy to make sure the book produces all right. And, I'm happy to report, it does. Once Amazon gets the data from Createspace, I'll let you know.

After sorting out the edits for Lone Wolf, I need to finish off my tax preparation. This year, I don't want to scramble madly through paperwork like last year. And my accountant is already sending me reminders.

And once these are all done and dusted, I'm a bit at loose ends. I'm hoping to wrap my short stories and then dive back into my WWII novel. The idea is to finish that by year end.

But yay, I get to delete a line on my spreadsheet. Return on Investment is 100% done and out there.

Too busy for my own good

There's line edits for three novels on my desk now - each one's urgent. (So yeah, why the hell am I blogging?)

I'm hoping to wrap Counterpunch tomorrow - it's only 53k (2k less than the last version), and the most urgent. Then there's Lone Wolf, which has about a thousand comments on it and clocks in at nearly 100k, and No Place That Far, which has 63k. Just thinking of how much time and concentration it takes to polish them up makes me slightly nauseous. I cancelled on a BBQ on the weekend so I get three uninterrupted days of work to do as much as I can. It might not be enough, but I'll try. (I wasn't keen on the BBQ anyway, so it's also a convenient escape from what will be geeky roleplayers and lots of alcohol.)

That's the remaining books until January 2015, and after that, things slow down massively, which is just as well. I don't really have time for editing, so it's probably only fitting I have no time/headspace/focus to write, since writing leads to editing, and any project just gives me a double whammy of stress and anxiety.

Emotionally, I'm low. I've written a number of whiny blog posts, and ended up deleting 70% of what I've written. Nothing I say will change a thing. In some ways, that's the saddest thing of all; writers must believe that words have power. Nothing feels sadder and lower and more powerless than silence.

Return on Investment - Update

It's literally that - I've just uploaded Return on Investment to Amazon and the file has already updated. No big changes - the cover should be a bit sharper now on the high-resolution devices, and we applied a minor fix to the cover page. The text itself stayed the same.

On that note, I've moved one large step closer to releasing the book in print. My layouter was extremely busy (likely still is), so it took a while for the print interior to be done. I uploaded the file yesterday and ordered a print proof copy to actually get a sample what the print book will look like. I expect it to arrive on Wednesday - if it's all good, I'll have to fill in some legal and financial stuff and I'll then publish the book, at which point it should become available. So, end-August/early September for a release date.

I'm also currently working on the line edits for Counterpunch, trying to cut down on some word repetitions, and I expect it to be done today, mostly because I have no other choice. I won't have time or energy during the week.

I'm trying to shake what's increasingly feeling like writer's block, but meanwhile I'm slammed with edits on two novels. I can't write much more about that blocked state without coming across as whining, and in the grand scheme of things, a blocked writer might be pretty pitiful, but it'll eventually lift and I'll go back to writing.

Adventures in self-publishing, 1 month later

I've self-published Return on Investment just over a month ago on 12 July, because it's not a romance (though it does have a love plot) and because the alternative would have been to finally give up on the book after it had already languished in a drawer for about six years. Since I will be writing more books like this - books outside the strict m/m romance category but distinctly gay, at times sexy, and with a love subplot - it seemed like a good idea to give self-publishing a try.

(Since then, I've been accused of basically feeling "too good for romance", and me saying "this is not a typical romance" as a cynical marketing ploy.
To that I can only say, I can only write the books I feel, and I don't always feel romances. When I do, I write them. It's basic author mental health - you can only write well what you feel. If I feel like sci-fi or fantasy or hetero books, I'll write them. Life's too short to write other people's books, and writing a book is too much work to undertake it for any other reason than because you gotta - at least that's my take on it. 
On the second point, I really wanted to make absolutely clear that Return on Investment is not a typical m/m romance so people who buy it hoping for a romance won't get disappointed. That's the problem when a lot of your work has been in a category - there will be readers who blindly pick up your next title, hoping for more of the same, and I've spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to explain that I don't write the same category or tone or thing over and over. There's no consistency. I frankly don't know what I'll write tomorrow. And I rather lose a few dollars than have justifiably pissed-off readers hunt me at conventions with pitchforks - not that my readers would, but you get the idea. 
It has nothing to do with marketing - actually I didn't do any marketing, having just started full-time day job again, and with my head elsewhere. Return on Investment emphatically is a book I published because the alternative would have been to take it behind a shed and shoot it there and put it out of its misery, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. That's all there is to it. I'm not James Bond villain who spends his days plotting how I can screw my readers. I'm a guy haunted by books and trying to share the decent to good ones to the best of my ability.)
Anyway, numbers. 
It's a full month now, and I have an update on numbers. This will get a bit less frequent now, as I'm planning to do another update after a quarter, 6 months and a year, and, if I remember, 3 and 5 years from launch. All of this is is a fact-finding, fact-sharing exercise, based on my theory that more information about sales is a good thing - and because there seem to be people out there who believe I'm one of those lucky souls who shifts millions of copies. I'm not and I don't. The good news is: I don't have to.)
So, book launched on 12 July, so I'm pulling data up to 11 August. (I launched the book in the UK afternoon, so it's not exact.)
For that 31-day period, the numbers are:
24 copies refunded356 net copies sold (royalties: $4.11)266 copies "loaned" (royalties: ~$2) via KU/KOLL
Money-wise, it has recovered its costs of $500-600 and I'm well on the way to getting enough money from this release to fund the next one - which I expect to cost $1,500ish, as I'll be hiring my favourite editor.

The country breakdown is:
US: 223UK: 73Germany: 33Canada: 9France: 6Italy: 5Spain: 2Mexiko: 2Brazil: 1Japan: 1Australia: 1
Or: US: 223Europe, without UK: 46Europe, with UK: 119Rest of World (RoW): 14
Predictably, Germany is the biggest market for me in Continental Europe. The US globally by a huge margin, but I'm quite heartened that, together with the UK, it's about 60% of the US sales. It does confirm my suspicion that I have a strong base in Europe overall, possibly because of the more European flavour, which is based on what countries and mentalities I know reasonably well and can write about with some authority. 
In terms of UK sales, ROI has occupied the #1 Financial Thriller bestseller spot for about 3 weeks out of 4 (possibly more, I didn't track it exactly) in the UK Amazon shop, holding its own against an Amazon-published title and a whole raft of much cheaper titles of decent length. That shows Financial Thrillers in the UK is a tiny category where few sales (=> 73 in that month) can get you to the top spot. I found that pretty fascinating. I'm also not convinced I sold more than a few copies to thriller readers, though I gratefully noted that lots of people with financial backgrounds of some description who also read romances seem to have enjoyed it.
It's important to note that 60 of those 358 copies were sold on launch date. As predicted, I'm currently selling 5-10 copies a day, but there's a slight downwards trend. There are days when I only sell 2 copies. If Return on Investment performs as other books of mine, it'll keep going at that level for a few more weeks, and then taper off to maybe a copy a day or less - the good news is that those sales are possibly forever, or "money nobody has to work for anymore". Long tail. It's all long tail for me. One copy a day is still about $120/month for me, minus fees and taxes. Every little helps to push the mortgage down or fund some travelling.