Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 16

Weekend bullets

The biggest news of the week for me was Sunita retiring her Vacuous Minx blog. Sunita has been one of the voices in the general romance/m/m blogoverse I respected the most. Our takes on books and the genre overall runs pretty much along the same lines--and I was following that blog religiously, much more so that larger or more specialised sites. Sunita could always be trusted to speak sense and find an interesting angle on a story, so I'll miss the blog terribly. At the same time, I understand the need to interact more with "MeatSpace", or the outside reality. I've had bouts of online fatigue and have wanted to chuck it all and take up extreme horseback knitting or competitive rose-breeding. Less neuroses that way, I'd assume. So, farewell, Sunita. Hope to see you in MeatSpace indeed.

I'm pretty proud of myself for not reading reviews for two weeks now. It's a small step for a review-oholic, but I'm already feeling the relaxation kicking in. Staying away from all manner of Goodreads-and genre-related drama has overall reduced adrenaline levels in my system. I don't constantly battle the "fight-or-flight" response and thus wrote almost 30k words in the time I'd have spent fretting. I did "like" a couple reviews, but those popped up randomly on my update stream and were all positive reviews of books that I know are good (such as Skybound). Nothing anybody can say about Skybound is news to me, I've fretted and laboured over that story, and it's the best I can do. Period. A friend called it "your moment of brilliance", and I take it, because I agree. I don't even care how much it sells; it's the highest I've reached. It's like climbing the K2--you really only need to stand up there and look at the other, smaller mountains, and that's it. It's a solitary pleasure, and the dangers and suffering and pain are part of your flesh at that point. Nobody can take it away. It's 150% solipsistic--nothing outside really matters. People reading it and enjoying it is great; the primary battle was between me and that story.

Abigail Roux made the final round of DABWAHA. That event has pretty much seen me "vote-whoring" (oh, I also did it when Goodreads was looking for reader favourites, just remembered that), which is a practice I normally detest (and have gone on record saying so). In this case, I think it's a valid battle, however--m/m has too often been treated as the red-haired step-child of romance, but what it lacks in volumes, sales rank and money (a different blog post for another day), it has in passionate, savvy readership. Cut and Run is the gold standard in m/m, and no book would deserve more to go all the way. (For the record, Josh Lanyon would have been great, too--he's one of the best, longest-established authors we have, and I respect him enormously.) So I'll keep supporting S&S to the final round. If we can get another 2k votes, it's a no-brainer. Even BIG romance authors struggle to mobilise their fan base to the same extent as our genre can kick ass when it's a worthy battle. It's the power of online and network, yo. In addition, it couldn't be a more deserving, lovelier author.

Other writing. Two days ago, LA Witt and I finished our undercover cop story, which currently runs to 100k. I've stayed away from cops because I know nothing about US-based law enforcement. Right now it's "curing"--it's awaiting a couple decisions (exact background of one of the leads), an polish and an overall naming of some minor characters. (Yes, we have a character who is just called "[brother]"--mostly because I want a "speaking/meaningful" name and inspiration hasn't struck yet). I think we'll be able to wrap this this month.

To relax, we co-played Gears of War 4, which is visually beautiful. The plot is kind of thin, but every level and battle is beautifully designed, so it just never got old. It really rewards team-play, so LA and I just busted ass keeping each other alive. Playing this with somebody on co-op made all the difference, too (Apparently, EVERYBODY on Amazon disagrees - but I had fun). Essentially, now I want to write post-apocalyptic hard guys, and hopefully the dialogue will be snappier, too. (Considering this is Baird's game, many of his one-liners were kind of lame, but then he didn't have straight-laced, serious Markus as a foil). And Cole almost had no lines at all, which is a damn shame. (Since I got to play Cole, I was kinda hoping my character would have better dialogue). Biggest triumph: I FINALLY KILLED A BERSERKER. (Berserkers are kind of traumatic for me, as they kept messing me up in all the other games up to now. THIS TIME I KILLED ONE!) I kinda liked Paduk, who's your typical deadpan Russian (and the big scar in his face/arm worked for me too. What's not to love about a guy who goes: "This is not a weapon, it's a comrade!")

So that's evenings/nights spent doing Something Else. Very relaxing. (And inspiring. I'm still working on how to plunge the earth into a nuclear winter and take it from there.)

For writing, I have more ideas and bunnies than I know what to do with. I really want to quit my day job so I can let them all out. Right now, I have no chance of keeping up with my brain, which is a damn shame. I'll be losing a great many stories that way, but it's just physically impossible for me to write 10k a day every day.

And still, it's the people who make it all worthwhile, from readers and reviewers to co-writers and cover artists. I've had amazing conversations in the last week which keep my brain active--there are so many aspects to what we're doing, and I'm still chewing on all the things that Remittance Girl said to me over coffee and panini in Foyles' Cafe last Sunday. (If you haven't visited her site, do. You're missing out on courageous, honest, beautiful and edgy writing. She's the queen of writing a hot edgy hetero scene--I'm studying her writing so I can learn how to write hetero sex, too, but she's the Best at it. Nothing like watching a truly accomplished worksmith cutting to the blood.)

Speaking of which, I'm back to writing the birds book. I have tea and cookies and painkillers, so I should be nice and productive.

"Aleksandr Voinov hates online fic"

I got a weird message today, which essentially ran "it's weird that people say you hate online fiction - you're written Special Forces, after all, and that's kind of online fiction, isn't it?"

So apparently there's an odd perception that I "hate" online fiction (the person said this rumour originated somewhere on Goodreads after I DNFed "Captive Prince", which indeed started as an online piece of writing).

Running back through the last interviews I've done, I can't see where I've given that impression, and to my knowledge, I've never said so. In fact, I admire a great number of "online fiction writers", many of whom are in fandom. I maintain that Gileonnen, for example, is one of the most talented authors I've ever met, and I've learnt a great deal about writing by reading their stories. There's no question about the depth of talent in that particular pool. I've read a great many online/slash/fanfiction stories, and Captive Prince is in fact only one of of many long capture/captivity/slavery stories posted in avenues such as livejournal. The fact it's "not for me" is my issue, not that of the book or the vast field where it originated.

At the end of the day, I've written a huge amount of online fiction, both fanfiction (such as Collateral), and "original slash", as they call it (Special Forces, several short works), and I've done this for literally decades. Some of my 20-year old online stuff slumbers even in a German archive, and I hope nobody ever finds it (I WAS just stretching my wings). I have no idea where that rumour comes from, but it's untrue. I much prefer a well-written fanfiction story to a bad piece of original writing. Quality knows no genre, it's as simple as that.

Captive Prince didn't work for me based on my inner historian and all the things *I* brought to the table - not the book (and possibly based on some narrative principles I'm adhering to and which I struggle to put into words most of the time). But Twilight, Games of Thrones, and the Wheel of Time didn't work for me, either, and those aren't online works or fanfiction or "original slash." Every reader is different, and every reading experience is different, too. An individual brain encounters an individual book, creating a unique experience. You can never read the same book twice they say and that's correct. One of my best friends adores Captive Prince, and I listen to people raving about Game of Thrones all the time. I can live with people liking different things, and I'm not thinking any less of people I love (like my partner, who really enjoys GoT) who love different books from me. I can even love people who don't like my writing, and I can dislike people who love my writing (it's rare, but it happens).

So, for the record: No, I don't hate online fiction. I don't hate self-publishers (in fact, I would have gone down that route, if Riptide hadn't been the better option for me). There's few things I hate, and often, it's a dislike (oysters are disgusting), not a hate. I'm 37 years old - at that age, I'm finding hate really quite difficult to rouse or maintain. The only thing that consistently gets my goat is authors not respecting their readers or their genre/craft, but these are everywhere, and, thank gods, pretty damn rare to begin with.

So let's all read some awesome books - regardless of where we find them.

Massive interview and Happy Easter

Happy Easter, everyone (or your equivalent feast day/weekend)! I have a big interview for you here, which also includes a giveaway (thanks to Barb and gang, I had fun!).

I've spent the last couple days writing and reading, mostly, and the "birds book" is making good progress. A thousand words at a time means it's adding up, so I'm hoping to finish by end-April (or sooner) and edit by my birthday/first week of May, to be sent out to an agent. I have a short list of agencies (err, three), so hopefully something comes out of it - then again, I've landed two agents already in Germany, I can't imagine the rules of the game having changed so much in the meantime. 
Feedback on the novel overall is very encouraging - though my friends would say so, of course - and one of them compared it to Skybound in terms of intensity. Which is brilliant news and very flattering. I am writing this book with blood, and I still so often feel completely inadequate of the big themes and big issues I'm tearing open. I think it's the awe of the brain surgeon, looking at something way too complex that we still barely understand after he's sawed the skull open. If I manage to write on the level of Skybound maybe once a year or every two years, I'll be a lucky, damned grateful author.
At the moment, I'm enjoying being productive. Yesterday was pretty good with 14k written between LA Witt and myself on our shared contemporary (undercover cops being all sexy). I think we'll be bringing the guys home pretty soon. That's the difference between me writing alone (maybe 2k per day, if I work hard) and co-writing (5-7k each). One of them is hard, lonely work, the other fun. Both are absolutely vital to keep my mental balance and not bash my head too hard against the keyboard at times. If we're lucky, we might even wrap it up mostly in the next week or two, which gives me another novel for the end of the year or early next year.
Lying with Scorpions is germinating (don't tell Rachel), and might be a May project rather than an April project. It's amusing to see the birds books, a literary, well-behaved book, shoulder aside a muscular gritty fantasy novel, but I have no objections as long as the words keep coming.
And here's a youtube video I found utterly captivating, which suits my WWII novel very very well.

Thank you, and silent running

Thanks for all the support during #DABWAHA. Though I'm not progressing to the third round, that does have some positive aspects overall:

1) We did get some nice voting total numbers going for the m/m category. The m/m community seems a lot more mobilised and ready to get active than many m/f sub-categories. That was really cool to watch. I think, now that Abigail Roux has unleashed her minions, we'll see some huge-a** numbers. So, kudos to you, and everybody who voted on their partner's computer, kindle, cafe hotspot, and smartphone. Well done you.

2) I'm really ok with "losing" to Josh Lanyon. I respect him enormously as a writer and a person, and this way at least I didn't have to campaign against fellow Riptiders, which is weird when you're the publisher, so whew, akwardness averted. Also, I have no delusions about my standing versus Abigail Roux (whom I love and respect), so it's nice to get kicked out gracefully at this stage. It WAS damn nice though to win a round against a classic of the genre by a very good author. Tigerland certainly wasn't what German boxing calls "Fallobst" (aka: guys falling by themselves without much help needed).

3) I don't have to write a Silvio extra. Now, that may sound cruel or petty, but one of the reasons why I've been so quiet is that, after laying waste to London and taking almost three weeks off (not hanging out on forums much, not really responding to many emails, and staying off reviews), I've found my groove again and am writing (first time in six weeks or so that I'm making serious numbers). While most of that is currently going into the incredibly research-heavy Birds book, I'm also working on the Scorpion sequel (and will get skinned alive if I'm not delivering a decent draft by end-May, which is in two months). Lastly, LA Witt is leaving London tomorrow, and I expect her to be jetlagged for a day or two and then start writing again. We have a half-written cop story that needs finishing, and now we're both in the frame of mind to actually do that, so I expect to be working on three full-sized novels between here and end-May. Considering I have a day job and other activities going and am rarely a very fast writer (unless I'm co-writing), that's a huge amount of work, and writing about Silvio, tempting as it is, will have to take a backseat while I'm wrapping up the novels that people want and that I need to finish or I'll lose them, or the series suffers weak momentum. So, not having to add a fourth project to my already wobbly work pile is a huge relief, actually.


Essentially, the DABWAHA campaign cost me some time (it's HARD to concentrate and stay off the internet when you're nominated, in my case for the first time), but it's good that it's over now and I don't have to put in any more time or effort, because my plate is full, and that's not even covering dessert or snacks. That's one of the reasons why I'd really like to quit my day job, because my time is spoken for when I do my writing, and all promo/interviews/emails/comments is cut from that small block of time I have for writing, and I've always held it that the proof of the writer is in the writing, whereas the rest is just extra.

Which brings me to another thing. I've pretty much managed to stay off reviews (apart from a number shown to me or that I knew would be extremely positive), and I do wonder if my recent surge in wordcount is related to that. I used to beat myself up over reviews, read them daily, used them to procrastinate, but I'm no longer doing that--I stay deliberately away. It's a bit weird to see how deeply ingrained it was, and the old reflexes are still there, but I'm managing pretty well, all told.

For the record: I'm immensely grateful to people who do review my stuff--THANK YOU! And reviews certainly help selling books, especially if they are posted on Amazon or review blogs. (Goodreads seems to have less of an impact.)

While my brain has several modes ("writing", "day job", "depression", "kick-ass optimism", "critical analysis/editing"), I'm trying to keep my brain now in "writing" mode, which is "silent running", to take a term from submarines (the German term "Schleichfahrt" is actually much cooler). I'm largely under the surface, doing my thing, and out of sight, out of mind, for the most part. This can get eerie for people who know me as "out there all the time", but is really my productive mode, which is essentially incompatible with my "loud/out-there mode".

I will eventually come back with a novel, and hopefully three, even though one of them might not see the light of day for a long time, as I'll be seeking agent representation for it. (May work, may not work, but I promised the Dude I'll try.)

That's not to say you won't get a Silvio story, it just means not yet. That character isn't done with me, but similarly, you deserve better than a half-arsed thing I put on the page while my brain is being eaten by three novels at the same time. 

#DABWAHA Round 2 - please support Silvio!

Okay, the amazing thing has happened and Dark Soul has beaten Tigerland. But the real opponent is Josh Lanyon (&Co)'s Irregulars.

Now this is apparently the stage where the fighting gets ugly, so I'm offering to write a free Silvio story if Dark Soul beats Irregulars. Please vote here: http://dabwaha.com/2013/03/23/round-2-set-2-march-23-1200-1159-pm-cst/.

Thank you!

(In other news, I'm busy re-writing the start of Lying with Scorpions aka Scorpion II. I have a deadline, which is end-May.) 

The voting has begun & update

I've been remiss about updating everybody on all the things that are going on - mostly because I stayed away from the internet a lot and then returned and despaired over the big pile that had accumulated. ANYWAY. Voting for DABWAHA has started, so do vote for your favourites: http://dabwaha.com/.

In positive news, yesterday I've handed in Scorpion to be proofed and laid out, so all of that is on track. I'm hoping to really get into the sequel in the next few days (my hope focuses largely on the weekend, when I don't have a noisy team around me at work and should actually be somewhat rested - though Saturday is a birthday party and Sunday I'm meeting friends, so I guess it all might not be as productive as I'm hoping right now). Essentially, I'll try and look at outlining again, because right now, much of it is a muddle and the book doesn't have enough momentum to be written without one, so I'm back to the drawing board and trying to make use of the roughly 15k words I had before the book stalled (one of those where I got critique way too early and then decided writing something else would be easier than facing the terror f re-writing and re-drafting everything).

Right now, I'm mulling a few options, for example, to use a multi-POV, but somehow, the whole thing has always been about Kendras, and though he's not the most riveting POV I could imagine, he still has the farthest to go/to develop, so I think I'll stick with the single POV for the moment. Mostly, though I need to see some good progress, like a 5k writing session and a twist or turn that I love that that I didn't see coming. In any case, I'll sit down and try to make it happen, but first, I'm meeting a couple m/m peeps at Brick Lane for a curry and a chat, tomorrow I have evil dayjob-related work to catch up on, and the weekend is booked. Hopefully I can still cram in an hour or two. Above all, I need to seriously re-write those 15k, and especially the first scene, so expect me to ramble on about the process some more. This is the first time a second book has been such as bull to wrestle. 

After the holiday

I've taken off nearly 2 weeks to show LA Witt and her husband London. We've seen a huge amount of stuff that I haven't seen in the nearly 8 years that I've lived here (Cutty Sark, National Maritime Museum, Tower of London, Churchill War Rooms, Hunterian Museum, Stonehenge, Roman Baths in Bath and SalisburyC cathedral) and some reliable crowd pleasers that I have (British Museum, Templar Church, St Bartholomew's, Museum of London, Natural History Museum, Science Museum). Also my usual book haunts and cafes. Essentially, we got up early, grabbed food and walked a lot. A LOT. Resulting, despite all the food and coffee breaks, in quite significant weightloss - that's how extreme we got.

Today is the first day I'm shifting down. It's the dude's birthday, so he got a new phone and new leather wallet and a Templar helmet-shaped penholder. We went into the town center and also finally addressed a couple health issues (we both have weak lower backs), and plunked down the cash for a memory foam mattress, which should get delivered next week. Dude then insisted I get a Swiss (aka: exercise) ball to sit on as a write, and I bought that one. Between ourselves, we managed to inflate it. One day I'll be able to stop bouncing on it as a listen to music, but that day isn't today.

Then I've been nominated for the DABWAHA tournament, where I start in the same category as Abigail Roux and Anne Tenino, which means there's no way Dark Soul is going to win, but that's okay. (I'm just breaking the rules; I'm supposed to trash-talk, but that's probably the one thing I don't like about professional boxers - though it sells tickets. It would also feel weird to trash-talk friends and authors of my publishing house.)

All that sight-seeing has refreshed my brain for writing, which is important. It's also led to some re-thinking with regards to how I measure success versus approval. See, I've blogged before on the difference about "critically acclaimed work" and "selling work" in our genre. It's nice to have extremely high ratings for a book, but my best work (Skybound, hands down, which seems to be universally loved by the - few - people who read it) barely sells at all, whereas sales of lighter, sexier reads are huge (well, huge by my standards).

(BTW, that's not meant to guilt-trip anybody - I'm just speaking about my experience here.)

That confirms a suspicion I've had for a couple years, but now I have cold, hard numbers to back it up. My best-selling stuff has sometimes extremely mixed reviews on Goodreads. Books that sell 40-50 copies a day on Amazon alone might even draw a lot of hate and derision, whereas books that have sold less than 500 copies in six months or more (say, one copy a day) get all the five-star ratings.

One suspicion is that Goodreads is great to connect to new readers and your target audience, but ratings there seem little correlated with actual sales. That's kicking some social media truisms out of the window. Essentially, Goodreads matters a lot less to sales than many book gurus seem to think. It's a place to connect, a great platform to be visible, but sales seem largely divorced from it.

Another suspicion is that obsessing over reviews is counter-productive in the clearest sense of the word. Negative reviews kill any desire to write. I know that makes me a thin-skinned speshul snowflake, but the line between happy and productive author on one hand and depressed, self-hating couch potato watching TV or sleeping on the other is often drawn by a reviewer. I'd never tell reviewers to shut up (essentially, a book is out of my hand when it's published, and no book pleases everybody - and if it does, it sells for shit), but I seem happier and more productive if I'm unaware what people are saying about my work. It took LA Witt plucking the phone out of my hand to realise that - she's totally right. No point ruining my writing session, my mood and my day by allowing negativity to hurt my desire to write. Essentially, I'm only answerable to the Muse and the story and then the editor. Beyond that, it's out of my hands.

So, the best I can do is to stay away from reviews. Checking reviews is also a huge time-sink, so not reading reviews from now on sounds like a big win-win. Of course I'll stay active in my various groups. I like the people there too much to just "vanish".

Which leaves me with some thoughts about career-planning. Luckily, I can write the light books that sell and the heavy books that don't but Must Be Written and Take So Much Time To Write It's Laughable. And I enjoy both, or I wouldn't be writing them. As I'm entering contented, financially stable middle age, my outlook and overall "mood" is much lighter and much more optimistic, which enables me to write more light-heartedly. The years of teenage angst are over, thank gods.

My main goal remains to quit my day job so I can do more writing, and that means I have to write books that sell enough to support me on a level that allows travel and US/UK conferences and no financial anxiety (nothing kills my writing faster than money-based dread).

Right now, my total monthly royalties are about 1/4-1/5th of what they have to be to even entertain that thought. And once I've hit that goal, the big issue is to maintain that cashflow - for 30 years, or the rest of my working life. I think I can realistically hit the level in 3-4 years, but that's a damn long time in the industry, and gods know what indie publishing looks like by then. So, there's the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns, and the latter are really the scary part.

So I'm thinking about branching out, hitting the mainstream the old-fashioned way (agent, Big Six publisher), writing the dark and the light as the Muse demands. There will be non-m/m books from me, there will be mainstream books, there will be experiments that sell "fuck all", as Brits like saying, and crowd pleasers that do and pay my mortgage (and entertain me in a total "free-for-all" way). I'm a trickster among writers - I can't say what I'll do next, and my range encompasses the grim and the gritty and the fun and easy (tricksters aren't always fun - they can be scary as hell). Not everything I carry around in my head is deep and demanding - I sometimes just like to have fun. Sometimes that laughter might be dark and painful, other days, it's that belly-splitting silliness that clears out the brain and lungs.

But what I do know is that reviews give me performance anxiety, and I can't find a better way to deal with that fear and doubt and self-hatred than to stay entirely away from reviews. If I want to feel awesome as a writer, I'll read some of my favourite Amazon five-star reviews. But from now on, I'm filtering my reality to protect the Muse and that fragile spark of "hell yes, let's WRITE!" It's not against reviewers at all, it's just something that works for me and is the best I can do. I may yet have a relapse, of course. It'll take discipline to break such a long-established habit.

Working on Scorpion II

I spent yesterday re-acquainting myself with the first 60-odd pages of Lying with Scorpions, the sequel to Scorpion. Before that, I discussed the plot with my partner, who's incredibly helpful in one way: we strongly disagree on some points, but his opposition helps me carve out and crystallise what I want in the book. He's the anti-foil, the anti-sounding board. I understand other authors have partners who are better at positive plotting, actually suggesting things that fit and solve problems, but I'm not moaning about mine. It does help, and he puts a great deal of thought and common sense into what he suggests, so it's all good, even if very few things he says actually make it into the book.

One of the things I worried about is how to complete Kendras's growth. He's still terribly dependent on his lover/future king, and that does seem like a violation of the Scorpion codex. I have a lot of thoughts about how to spin this, but essentially, it doesn't feel much like a romance at this point. The core relationship will get taxed and stressed to the max, and I see a "dark moment" that's really quite terribly dark. Above all, it's a coming-of-age story of Kendras, who takes the mantle of "officer" and everything else has to be subsumed under it. Not that I don't already know who his successor will be--if it comes to that.

Damn, I do like that world. I could tell you of the Jaishani ambassador or General Graukar, or a mysterious brigand called "Death", but I should really do that on the page. Essentially, I have so much plot that I might end up with two sequels. If that is the case, the point where I saw this book ending makes perfect sense. As my dude pointed out, the ending of the second part in a trilogy is the darkest point, vid The Empire Strikes Back: An unprepared Luke Skywalker challenges Darth Vader and gets his ass handed to him.

In this particular book, I'm examining the nature of empire building versus leadership. Considering I worked academically on Charlemagne and how he screwed over the Bavarians and the Lombards, I have some specific ideas on how that works, which may or may not colour my perception of "Empire". So, yeah. Lying with Scorpions is actually dark. I don't think I'll be quite as pitiless as George RR Martin to my characters, but it certainly doesn't look like an easy ride. I'm hoping it'll be an interesting ride.

There was a certain man in Russia long ago...

Title courtesy of Turisas, who are rocking my inner ear right now. (The "Rasputin" cover is inspired, but my favourite song is To Holmgard and Beyond).

Much stuff happened in the last two weeks or so. Most dramatically, about two weeks - my date keeping is somewhat blurred - I put out my back. I had the crazy idea of sitting down, and my lumbar vertebrae then showed me what a horrifically bad idea that was. After a day spent in agony and pretty much motionless with pain, deliverance came in the shape of heavy-duty painkillers, in a hundred-pills pack. See, my Kryptonite is aspirin - all painkillers containing that stuff put me into anaphylactic shock. Which means Iboprofen, the weapon of choice, will have me choking as my bronchies shut almost down and go into shock if I'm especially unlucky. (Good I learnt that from taking a very weak aspirin somebody had given me rather than, say, in an emergency). The only chemicals my body can deal with is the whole opiates family. Which makes for a great trip, because that stuff has some interesting effects on my body.

Recollections then become hazy for four days. It *is* entirely possibly to be awake and staring off into space, unable to hold a thought for longer than five minutes and still be perfectly entertained and, dare I say, even happy. Content, in any case. It's all brain chemistry, and mine was messed up, yo. Since my attention span was only a few minutes, I spent that time on twitter and Goodreads. Pointless, but at least I felt less lonely and like I was interacting still.

Three days later, I was able to sit up. Four days, to stand, without my back seizing up despite the painkillers.  Another day before I braved the stairs downstairs, my legs were shaking so bad. Three more days before I reported back into work and attempted to sit for extended periods--to do some work from home. Another few days, and I replaced the heavy painkillers with paracetamol, and a couple more days to cut my dosage even further. Today, I'm "clean" -- my brain's back to working order, and I've even done some writing yesterday. A solid thousand words on my historical novel.

The main benefits of this exercise is, again, it's research. I'll be able to write quite clearly about horrific injuries to my characters based on being unable to move without nearly screaming. That's worth something. I also have a new appreciation for how nice it is to be moving, and how urgently I need to go to the gym. I did check in with a doctor in person after a week in - hobbling along the street, taking 15 minutes for a walk that's normally five - not that I checked my time *snerk* - and she mentioned that the very first thing I should be doing is to lose weight. Health professionals in this country can get quite direct and brutal when it comes to that. Funnily enough, both my dentist and my GP are tiny ladies of Indian extraction who take no prisoners and are scary and somewhat rude.

In any case, the painkillers had the interesting effect to kill all appetite, and I've already lost a solid eight pounds, so I figured I'll keep going and take those ten kilos or so off that I need to lose for an operation I want to have done soonish. Once my back stops being sore, I'm also back on the treadmill.

Writing-wise, very little has happened. When my back put a stop to it, I was about to edit two novels (the Market Garden novel and Scorpion), and wrap up a novella. Well, to edit, I need a clear head and the ability to sit for a couple hours, so nothing has happened in the meantime. What "sitting time" I had recently I spent on "working from home", and afterwards I was quite glad to get away from the computer and my beaten-up chair. (I need a new computer chair, but I can't quite make up my mind to buy an exercise ball - I do like having a little support for my back, although my partner swears by his ball.)

Anyway. The next few weeks will be about catching up again. And in two week's time, LA Witt and her husband show up in London... and then things should get really interesting. I bet we'll manage to be thrown out of a number of places. We're terrible together. Although, whenever we're close together, we end up coming up with cool shit, so gods know what we'll cook up while we're spreading fear and terror and silliness across London. Spending time with LA Witt is like being sixteen again. Not that I was quite that cool as a teenager. Or had quite that cool/crazy/outrageously funny friends. I actually spent my teens being depressed and near-suicidal, so this feels a bit like I'm getting a second shot at being sixteen, only now I have a paycheck and am a hell of a lot more happy.

Blogged elsewhere

I blogged over at Slash & Burn on clustering. You can find the entry here.