Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 24

The purity of fear, prejudice, and intolerance (the m/m rainbow has only one colour: gay)

I should be telling you guys about my Dark Soul blog tour. Or write a post about my lecturer at university who, I've learned today, died last August, way too young, a man I kept thinking of as "I want to be him when I grow up". RIP, Mr. Werth. You were (and still are) an inspiration.

Those will have to wait, however. What's been eating my brain (and you guys know it's bad when something is eating my brain, because then I brood and later come up with a lot of weird ideas) is this discussion on Dear Author, about fanfiction, slash and m/m and other things, but the discussion in the comments soon moved on to misogyny in m/m. The whole thing is interesting, and I'm not going to attempt a re-cap.

I believe the m/m genre is in a very large part, hostile to (fictional) women.

Back in the days - before November 2011, and boy, will I remember that date forever, even if those who "made it so memorable for me" - I'm trying very hard to stay civil here - have moved on and are pretending it never really happened - back in those days, the genre I write in was "gay only".

Not "gay gay", mind you, but "m/m", because the genre usually doesn't give a toss about depicting real life gay men. It's about the fantasy, stupid. Women in m/m writing are hated and loathed and reduced to the stereotypes of whore, bitch, fag hag, and disposable womb for the two men to get a child they can coo over without resorting to what fandom calls "assbabies" (a somewhat vulgar term for the concept of "m-preg" - or male pregnancy). Now, even the most gay scene gay guy I've met in my life has very strong female relationships; mothers, sisters, nieces, friends, friends and family of his partner.

Only gay men in m/m are stripped of female friends and family. The received wisdom is that "readers don't want to read about it". I've seen people loathe Jean, but I'd say Katya in Special Forces gets even more hate (this number is subjective).

It gets worse. Many gay men used to have sexual relationships with women in real life. Some were married to women. Fathered children. Oh wow, don't you dare write about that in m/m - people will not review you. The biggest, most important m/m blog out there will not review you if there's even one sexual encounter with a woman.

This abhorrence of what's called "girly bits" or "girl parts", or "vay jay" (the last expression makes me laugh; to my non-native ear, it's as bad as "her womanly molten core" from some horrendous m/f romance) is wide-spread.

They call it purity.

It's probably my cultural reflex, but using a word like "purity" for, in essence, erasing women, erasing bisexual men, and, if you think further, erasing trans* people (some of whom are men with "girl bits"), really gets my goat. Like it's something positive.

The hostility to trans* books is quite clear, too. I mean, here is a reviewer who reviews a book by a trans* guy ABOUT a trans* guy and says that it's not authentic.

And if a trans*/genderqueer book is written by an author who is too big (and way too good) to be ignored (you know, and wrote an award-winning book), they review it, but the comments immediately put the world back on its axis. It was a lapse, and it won't be a regular occurrence, Gods forbid we could actually include genderqueer and trans* characters in our oh-so-tolerant genre.

No, that's against the idea of purity.

Now, in my book, everybody can review on their blog what they want. People can post about how disgusting "vay jays" are and how authors are misleading readers, and how one m/f or m/m/f sex scene invalidates the whole book.

So, because there are three pages of m/m/f sex in Dark Soul, the other 306 pages are "sneak menage" and Dark Soul is no real m/m book (damn, and I thought Silvio being definitely coded as genderfluid in the third part would have given my game away).

According to some reactions, by not getting rid of Donata in Dark Soul, I've cheated, lied, misled my readers and I'm a liar, cheater and force my bisexuality down people's throats. The whole relationship between Silvio and Stefano is invalidated because they dare have fun with Stefano's wife for a night. It's a "let-down" and Silvio deserves better (yeah, destroying Stefano's marriage is clearly much better than his anonymous quick fucks that he normally goes for, TOTALLY agree).

I'm being told that I've misled people about this being an m/m romance, because, apparently, that's something that CANNOT happen in m/m romances, so I'm lying.

Funny, I didn't get the memo where a) I defined this book as an m/m romance, and b) where somebody defined those rules and every single m/m author and publisher actually signed this definition and defined penalties in case of breach.

I guess after writing three pages of (damn hot) sex with a woman, I'll get my m/m romance writer membership card torn up now - something I haven't managed even after killing a protagonist and writing about murder, torture, brother-incest, PTSD, rape, racism, genocide - I've FINALLY accomplished the biggest crime of them all: written a mixed-gender sex scene.

Mum would be so proud.

Actually, she would be. She raised me to be able to look in the mirror every morning and look myself in the eye. And I am getting sick and tired of this blatant woman-hating that goes on in a female-dominated genre. I know amazing, kick-ass women; I'm the child of one. I'm friends with women who can mop the floor with most men out there. Human beings who had to do real battle for everything they have. Women who sacrificed everything for their children, who stood up to abusive men and told them to get the fuck lost. Women who worked harder, for less pay and less praise than a comparable man. Women who rebuilt bombed cities without heavy machinery, stone by stone, with their own hands, because the men were dead and somebody had to rebuild the country and in the hope for a better life for their children, male AND female.

But that leads far away - I'm just saying that women are awesome, and just as strong, resourceful, intelligent and kick-ass as any man. There is no difference in gifts and abilities.

But, to return to the matter at hand. The problem I'm seeing is not for my own sales (frankly, writing is a financial sideshow for me - if I wanted to make money writing, I'd have gone mainstream ten years ago). The problem I'm seeing is the biggest reviewers in our genre have decided that "vay jay" is "yuck" and writers writing about bisexual men who are sexually active on the page, and protagonists who are not in the full possession of XY chromosomes and a penis, balls and prostate (read: trans*men) are not actually part of the genre.

Make no mistake: In our genre, reviews are everything.

Publishers know this; authors know this.

What this leads to is pre-emptive self-censorship.

It reminds me of the situation in Nazi-occupied Paris (I'm currently reading a book about it). In Paris at that time, more than 8,000 books were published a year (more than in the UK or the US). Everything had to pass German censorship (the Propaganda-Staffel). At first, the German censors read everything. But reading that many books is a huge drain on resources, so what they enforced was self-censorship. The publishers knew what was forbidden, and they were "trusted" not to break those rules.

If you're a publisher and depend on the Propaganda-Staffel for getting printing paper AT ALL, you made damn sure that the censors never had reason to complain.

I'm not using this example to fulfill Godwin's Law that every internet discussion WILL bring up the Nazis. I'm using the example to show how insidious and easy self-censorship is. All you have to do is teach authors and publishers what is not desired and threaten - in so many words - to withhold the primary resource, whether it's paper, attention, or reviews, doesn't matter.

And you *will* have publishers who internalize these things. Authors will not write books that have absolutely no chance to get reviewed. They'll "tone things down". Publishers will instruct their editors accordingly. Authors will learn from their publishers that trans* or bi content is to be avoided.

The problem is when the personal taste (or: kink) of the big reviewers DETERMINES the genre, steers it and defines it. It's very often veiled, like "it's not that we don't like trans* stuff, but we won't review it", or "We'd review it, but we can't find anybody who wants to read that", "anything but "pure" m/m will be a DNF or an F or a 1-out-of-5 star review, or..."

And this is the attitude I really struggle to comprehend. If they don't have reviewers, they can find some, quite easily. If they believe that only the "fantasy version of gay", namely m/m, is worthy of reviews, then they really shouldn't display Rainbow flags on their blogs.

Because the Rainbow flag does NOT stand for exclusion. Any GLBTQQ activist I know would be ashamed to think that the Rainbow has come to mean "gay only" in ANY part of the arts; and, yes, our little corner, where we create pulpy little stories, is part of the arts and wider culture.

The Rainbow doesn't only have one colour. The alphabet soup "GLBTQQ" does NOT mean "gay only and everything else is ewwwww". It's not "gay-only voices, and everybody else shut up because you're not feeding our kinks."

Don't call your intolerance, fear and prejudice "purity".

I believe it's time to discuss this, without prejudice, fear and intolerance. We are the other colours out there, and I, for one, will never self-censor myself to just one colour. I'm way more than that.



ETA: I'm turning off approval of comments for sake of discussion, but I *will* delete abusive comments.

Finished with Dark Soul (print)

I've spent the last few days frantically going through the whole Dark Soul series (on paper, because I see issues best on paper). Here's the pile:


It's a huge amount of text, and I was mostly looking for typos and issues (just in case), and I found some things I wanted to change and make consistent. Also, I used a metaphor twice that should only be used once per book, so I took one out. I also made some things consistent that weren't before.

Luckily, I had some help from the God of Writers:


Lord Ganesha is really somebody you want yon your side in that kind of paper battle. (Papierkrieg, as the German saying goes).

The changes will be applied to all the single files, too. They are absolutely minor, but we still decided to re-convert and re-upload the individual episodes. We're not quite sure about the timing of the print book; probably in summer, since we have a really full pipeline. I do want to bring some books over when I'll be at various conventions, however. In any case, re-visiting the whole series and read it in one go with a couple weeks' distance was a bit of a trip.

Now I'll focus on my next novel. Here's some eye candy from the period and location:

Beating the deadline

We've officially beaten the deadline at work, and some things I was fretting over worked out just fine. I guess over-fretting is better than under-fretting in any case. I'm just getting ready for my four-day weekend around my partner's birthday, which should see some relaxing and some catching up.

Right now, I'm using the quiet time at work to proof-read (again) the complete Dark Soul collection for the print edition. I'm 2/3 through my print-out, and there's enough I want to change (repetions, mostly, and a minuscule amount of "flab", or empty sentences) to make the extra pass worthwhile. Ideally, I'll finish that particular project today or maybe early tomorrow.

In house news (and you wouldn't believe how much thought and energy went into house-related things recently) I've decided to hire a lanscaper (landscape architect? What are they called in the UK?) to draft a concept for the garden. Nobody ever had a concept for that garden, and what concept somebody might have had was never followed through - there are abandoned plants in the back, overgrown by now, that were never taken out of their plastic pots, so nobody ever bothered to actually put them in the ground...

So I'm sucking it up and decide to treat the total re-vamp of the garden as a necessary re-vamp of the biggest room in the house. I've seen some samples of plans on the website, and while all that looks really outrageously expensive, it also looks like I want it. After visiting a friend's house over the weekend (and sitting in her garden), I really want a place outside to work and have guests.

So, the same brain that puts together stories is now mostly concerned with what kind of plants I want in the garden and whether to rip out the large white rose tree... bush ... forest - or cut it back and try to save it. For the most part, I've settled on more camellias, a bonsai display area (meaning I need to acquire some outdoor bonsais), and a hazelnut bush/tree. I also have a concept for a sandstone patio in my head, but whether I can afford the kind I want remains to be seen. And then big planting pots with herbs and maybe a raised bed or two (fresh potatoes taste awesome, after all). So, the older I get, the more I turn into the archetypical Taurus - happy mostly when surrounded by pretty and expensive things and both arms up to elbows in soil or with lots of plants around me. (Speaking of which, I need to get one for the office.) Also, Spring makes me restless - stuff is growing and flowering already, and the sense is very much of "now or never" or "now or next year", and I'm impatient.

On the writing front, it's quiet. I'm in editing mode, and I hope to switch over to research mode over the weekend. I got the second part of a DVD documentary on my setting, so that'll need watching and should put me back in the mood to write my WWII novel. The good news is that I've already researched so much that basically nothing in the first part of the documentary comes as a surprise.

And of course, I have a few novels to fix and a pile of developmental edits and there's the Riptide submissions inbox, which needs some love and attention.

The long weekend is perfectly timed.

"Kill the bitch" - a couple thoughts on women in m/m fiction

Real life is currently extremely busy, due in large part to a madcap deadline we're all chasing at the day job (and regulatory requirements - I'm not going into any kind of detail, but things are a bit frantic at the moment). It's definitely the kind of frantic where a slotted-in free day is necessary to preserve sanity (and catch up with important stuff). My to-do list is a good 40 items long, and people are starting to send me reminders about stuff, so I'm way behind on most of them, too.

Anyway. Writing's so slow you could say it's not happening (no, not even the 500 words "minimum" I've set myself at the start of the year). Real life has swallowed that, too, but I'm pretty optimistic still - the Muse is plotting in the background.

One day, I want to blog at length about women in m/m fiction and reader responses to female characters. (I can use only the women in my stories, since I know them best, and get the responses pretty much directly). I'm not sure today is the day to do it; it's contentious like hell, and actually somewhat disturbing. I do hope I haven't created an "evil ex-wife" - the character that a huge amount of m/m writers seem to fall back onto when they need a villain and a knife-wielding maniac who jumps out of the bushes just as the two male lovers are about to set off into the sunset.

Then, there's Katya of Special Forces, a character who has my readers split about 70:30 in favour of hating her bones. (Amazing that Katya gets off far worse than Vadim, who's objectively committed far worse crimes than she has - and the one thing they did both, Vadim did with intent to kill and actually inflicted some serious injury, too).

I'm not sure how I feel about a number of reviewers hating Donata and wishing her dead so Stefano is free for Silvio. That sounds oddly like a gay relationship is somehow "better" than a heterosexual one - or is the "die, bitch die!" reflex somehow natural and conditioned into readers? Have readers read so many stories where the "old relationship" dies with the death of the previous partner that they expect it? Has it become a trope, a cliche, an expected turn of events, even "the way to do it"? (Yep, several people seem to expect Donata's death in part 5 - far more than those who expect either/or Silvio's or Stefano's death.)

I find that puzzling. As a bisexual writer, the "kill the woman!" reflex feels somewhat disturbing. I've been in love with women - gut-wrenchingly so. My best friends and business partners are women. It's entirely possible that I'll fall in love again with a woman. Just because a person is female doesn't make them "lesser" or "evil" or an "obstacle" in the context of fiction - not even m/m fiction (and how odd that women writers and women readers pour so much hatred out on women... but that ties into a different theory which I want to develop at some point in peace and quiet).

Katya had a number of hardcore haters, too, with people desiring the most gruesome deaths for her; how odd that her racist, rapist, genocidal husband gets off pretty much scott-free. Apparently the worst thing a woman can commit in m/m fiction is to love one of the main characters and have any claims over him.

That is an aspect of m/m fiction I will never understand - and I don't feel much like indulging the "kill the bitch!" reflex. I'm not doing it. I'm not killing any of these strong-hearted, courageous, tough women. Not one.

The dignity of labour

Today I'm staying at home to oversee the total revamp of my front garden - which involved putting up a brick wall instead of a moth-eaten fence, ripping out a cracked concrete walkway that kept one of the walls of the house nice and wet, put in drainage and rip out a number of old, berserking plants that were killing everything else and also made a gamely attempt at eating the house's foundations. With an Indian sandstone path laid (framed by bricks), plants and roots removed, gravel laid and a storm drain installed, it's all looking very good at the moment. My house is no longer the one with the ugly front in the terrace.

I'm rather looking forward to "Day Two" of the work, which involves planting a new tree (I'd say camellia) to structure all that empty space, and possibly removing the last bit of wood fencing in favour of another brick wall, and after that, I'll install a hanging basket with some flowers because the front of the house does look a little empty now. It's one of those things I've saved for and that completely transforms the front of my house. Also, the builder, who's currently doing a really good job in the front is going to give me a quote for a porch and revamp of the garden in the back, which then means I'll save money to have that done later in the year. To be honest, I really want a space outside the house where I could work if I wanted (especially in summer), and it was planned since we bought the house. It's a great house, but basically needed some investment in windows, boiler, front and back. Bathroom and kitchen are projects for next year, once I've secured the funding, as they say.

So, that's really where my mind is at the moment (that, and wrapping up the edits of Dark Soul 5). However, there's a huge plagiarism debate raging in our little corner of the genre, kicked off by, as usual, Dear Author, on this post with 500+ comments.

After the "he did - he didn't", "you meany - you ignorant asshole" cycles of the usual plagiarism debate appear to have run its course (Godwin's law, the invocation of Nazi Germany was fulfilled, I'm "happy" to report), some people seem to be dismayed that TJ Klune "is getting away with it".

Personally, my own interest in the debate is that it quickly moved into the "quality debate", which I have a much bigger interest in, because, frankly, I believe the main thing holding back our genre at this point is the lack of quality editing, which includes teaching authors how to be better and eventually grow into real writerly heavyweights who can stand on the same bookshelf as good, solid, mainstream writing.

Plagiarism is an appalling act (I'd call it a crime, but technically, it isn't, I believe), but what strikes me most about it is that plagiarists are actually pretty unhappy. Let me explain. The last big plagiarism case I followed was the rip-off of James Bond and other novel series by the Big Guns into a book called "Assassin of Secrets". Little, Brown, NOT a small publisher, was fooled into buying what sounds very much like a "best of" of Ian Fleming and his peers. So, it happens to much larger houses than the very young publishers in the m/m space - which is not me insinuating that the current thing IS a case of plagiarism, and in the following, I'm moving away from that specific case entirely. It was just a starting point for some more fundamental thoughts.

Bear with me, I'm pulling this whole thing together in the end.

Plagiarism has happened in our genre before and it's not a trait of indie publishing at all, or the fault of any specific publisher. As a publisher myself, this is an absolute nightmare scenario and extremely damaging (which is why Riptide's contract is phrased in a way that we're financially protected from this kind of earthquake).

What I found striking about Markham (or even Manning, quoted in the Dear Author article right at the start) is that plagiarists are actually really miserable people. Markham's career is ruined - I don't imagine he can ever publish another thriller.

There's a long article about the fall-out from the Assassin of Secrets blow-up (I'm looking for the link and may add once I've found it), that details why Markham did it, what he felt, how it has affected his real life. There's a lot of self-loathing in there, fear of failure, and fear of rejection.

I don't think plagiarist are totally sane, well-adjusted or happy people. Based on articles and from what I've learnt watching cheaters and thieves, it's usually not them being brazen-balled egomaniacs (yes, some writers are sociopaths, but I imagine they are rare, because writing requires a level of introspection/self-critique that I don't think many sociopaths have).

It's them being terribly afraid that they'll be found out, and they can't even enjoy the fruits of their labour, because they know it's not THEIR labour. They are not writers. They are just thieves. Every time they get an email saying "I loved your book" should feel like a red-hot needle piercing their heart. They know they cheated, that they haven't achieved anything but fooling some good people and wasting everybody's time. Deep down, plagiarists are very unhappy people, even if they sell a lot of books, even if they get away with it. The fear of being found out and the fundamental knowledge that they act like scum ruins those sweet moments of success. In a funny way, plagiarism is its own true punishment.

There's a lot of dignity for a writer in writing; in working hard, in being disciplined, humble, critical, in doing all the work as it should be done. We're the last artisans - we'll be left when everything else is being manufactured by machines. Every piece we do is a piece of craft that bears witness to our growth as people and to every month of commitment to our craft.

I think we as writers can learn much from the Japanese "do" system - where constant practice strives towards perfection, even it it might never get there. Practicing one craft with discipline, humility and diligence is its own reward. In Kyo-do, the path of the bow, students take weeks and months just to learn how to stand properly, and I've heard that in traditional Kyo-do, you don't actually shoot your first arrow before you've gone through two years of practice. Writing can be the same - we write a lot before we're anywhere near aiming for a publisher.

What I learn about myself while writing (and trying to write better) is astonishing. I wouldn't learn any of this if I'd rip off a book or a story. I'd feel the other artist's passages like burning coals in my flesh (that's how I feel about some rewrites one editor did to one of my books, and once I have the rights back, I'm reversing that change). Above all, I'm aiming to be a better writer and the best I can, and that's a process of self-discovery and self-discipline that knows absolutely no shortcuts.

So, to bring this to an end - I absolutely believe that plagiarism needs to be called out and named and shamed and punished. (And, again, I'm not commenting on the current suspected case.)

At the end of the day, however, even the undiscovered and unpunished plagiarist suffers from their actions, because although they want to be nothing more than writers, they know they aren't real writers. They are impostors who are so terribly afraid and so weak and conflicted that only another writer's strength can provide enough armour. But it's not their armour, their strength, their beauty. They are like the guy in Greek myth, who, cursed by the gods, dies of thirst surrounded by water.

The beginning of the end

The first readers have read Dark Soul 4, and they seem to like it. Considering how anxious I was about it, that's a huge sigh of relief. Dark Soul 4 was written in blood sweat and tears post-November, coming out of a serious rage-induced writing block, and according to some private emails I got, nobody can tell the difference. The bullying assholes haven't damaged my story, thank gods.

And, aware that Dark Soul 4 is the turning point (with a dash of dark moment) in the "big arch", as I call it, we'll publish Dark Soul 5 a week early; it's scheduled three weeks from now. I see a lot of anguish over the waiting, and while I think that it heightens the experience in the case of Dark Soul (episodes need to stay apart), it would be cruel to linger for too long.

There are possibilities for spin-offs and related stories - I'm pretty sure I'll write some sex between Gianbattista and Silvio (set earlier, exploring how Silvio became Battista's "heir"), and I start getting threatening emails about a Franco book. That one should be pretty easy - kind of. Franco's story is a good ten years old, and I know how it goes, and his lover is still very present in my head (good thing - some characters simply don't last that long), so it's just under the surface. I'll have to build a totally new world, though because I can't deal with the research of the one where it's actually set in (I don't speak French and I can't just visit the location). It can be done, but it's something I'll do after my historicals.

What Dark Soul has definitely done was to create a desperate need for me to write more gay mafia stories (hell, I'd READ them, but they don't seem to exist!). And the fact that I'm feeding that urge with watching The Godfather I and II (and, wow, was Robert de Niro hot as Vito Corleone!), and there's Godfather III and Goodfellas on the list next. Mafia stories have a lot of things I like - power play, guns (well, danger, I like danger), social pressure, and so much happens between the lines. A nod, a silence, can mean so much in that world, and it's daunting to show those layers in a way that readers "get it". Some might not, but that's OK. So, yeah, there's the possibility for more. I'm especially tempted by the potential between a boss and a consigliere, but I'd have to build a whole familiglia, and for that I need more research. Taking this stuff from - highly inaccurate - movies won't work. So, there's another pile of research, and right now, that's a touch more than I have time for.

Speaking of historicals - I'm going to free Solange from Special Forces and put her into my WWII novel. I's just a supporting role, but I love that woman and think she'd make a fine addition. In my head, I'm sometimes a director and I like casting and re-casting my favourites. There are only very thin walls between stories in my head. Some are closer than others. Silvio is a character who effortlessly skips across genres and story lines, and he'll get a lot more play, but right now, I'm attempting to fall into that place in 1942, and I'm taking Solange with me.

In any case, I'll try to do some writing on the space opera and then do some plotting/outlining work on my historical novel today. After we've been out to hunt some breakfast, that is.

Little token of affection from the London Tube

I bet London's transport network is a field day for epidemiologists (sp?) worldwide. The kind of nasty you can pick up because your neighbour coughs his or her lung out over your shoulder is impressive. Now, I do have the typical Taurus (I've been told) constitution; very hard to kill, generally, but my weak area is the whole breathing apparatus plus sinuses. I went to work first day with really bad sinuses, then they cleared up over a few days, and then my boss's boss fell ill. Then my boss. Over two weeks, it's been closing in, and I've done my level best to fight it off. Everybody's coughing and sneezing - same on the tube, bus, train.

It was only a matter of time. And the problem in my job is that I have to be sharp enough to catch a missing "bn" for "billion" in a financial edit (it does make a difference when editors mess up). What I edit every day requires me to be 100% sharp. Even 80% would do it (as long as I'm not the last pair of eyes on the edit). Today, I'm down to 50%, which means enough coherence to read a bit and go to the supermarket to acquire some soup (and remember to take the change). And write a quick blog update. But otherwise I'm woozy and headachy and surrounded by used paper tissues. It's a sorry sight.

To add insult to injury, the slice of vegetable quiche I found in the shop tastes like cardboard. Which is probably more my fault than its maker's; taste buds are on holiday while my brain's dribbling out of my ears. So I'll stick to mainlining hot tea, coffee, orange juice and cough syrup. Sounds like a balanced diet to me.

Yesterday, the rest of the plot for my space opera came together - which, as usual, led to a discussion with my partner. Now, bless him, he's patient and supportive, but he's incredibly focused on plot, and unless it's an awesome plot, he's all "bleh" about it. Anything. Books, films, and definitely my (or his own) writing. The gods were having a laugh, teaming me up with a 100% plot person. So, after some digging on his part, I told him the plot for the space opera novella I'm working on. And then we had a bit of a shouting match over the ending. He wants me to end it where my very specific ideas have run out (very much the dark moment in the story, where things look really bad). Whereas I do like to get characters out alive and halfway happy. I do think the main character kinda deserves it, too.

So there's the argument between a plot-driven reader and a character-driven author. The author wants to reward the characters for a "good effort" and all their struggles by showing them a way out after the big "oh shit" moment. The plot-driven reader can't care less about the characters and is totally focused on the twist ending - up to the point where he really only wants the twist and no real "afterglow".

I'm not yet sure how to resolve the issue. When I tell him that I don't actually *have* a clear ending, I get "yes, you do! You told me the twist, and every word after just weakens the impact! You'll ruin a perfectly good story" as a response. No use telling him that I'm still 10-15k away from the ending, and books change as I go along, with pieces falling into place before me like in a jump-and-run arcade game (anybody still play those?).

I honestly don't know; my brain's too mushy to work out a solution to that issue right away. In the end, I'll have to trust Mister Muse to put the missing pieces into place. It's not like I can sell a gay sci-fi story to the mainstream, regardless how kick-ass the twist is. If fantasy readers are unready for gay characters, then mainstream sci-fi is probably the last bastion of the "clenchies" as I like to call the "YIKES, GAY CHARACTERS!" homophobic fanboys out there.

On a side-note - the friend whose book I was proofing/helping to edit when I wrote the last few updates has landed a Big Name agent with it, so if anybody kept their fingers crossed for my friend, thank you. The goods vibes helped. :)

Tying up loose ends

Last week was all about editing - I didn't write a single new sentence. I cleaned up "Dark Soul 5" (now sitting on the desk of my editor at Riptide), then edited a short co-written piece, which is now with the co-writer for a final check. I'm a right-brain/left-brain kinda person. I either edit or write. I've tried editing one book and writing a new one, but my brain can't handle that double stress. I'm either living in one story, or in another, not in both.

So, right now, I'm in limbo, "between books", which is a place like "between job"--lots of options, usually some soul-searching, and generally things slow down a great deal. I clean my study, throw away papers, re-arrange my books (the research books for the finished books get stored further away from the desk to make way for the new ones), attempt to catch up with my email (usually hopeless mission, but I'm trying at least).

Right now, I'm helping a friend outline her novel, which should keep me busy for a week or so. Then the question is what to write next. I have the sequel to "Lion of Kent" on the schedule, which should be a full novel, but that means another boatload of research. That book has been postponed so often that I feel I need to do it now or it won't happen. That'll also mean going back to Deliverance and Lion of Kent and get back into the character. I have a couple medieval biographies here and a couple books on tournaments and medieval entertainers, so the research side at least is covered. I should be able to write all that in 2-3 months, possibly, depending a bit on the workload at my other two jobs.

There are a couple shorter stories I want to write in the meantime (I do like to write short things in between novels), but since I can never predict whether these are actually short stories or novellas or just pretend they are, I'm proceeding with utmost caution.

In any case, I loved writing the two contemporaries (Dark Soul and the co-project), and now it's time to change setting/sub-genre again.

Real life changes & update

A few of you know that I've changed jobs recently - so I went to interviews in December and January, and got the one job I wanted. With my skill set, I'd have been able to return to financial journalism or attempt to stay in financials.

While media companies were hiring (and I got a couple interesting interviews), the few I went to visit can be described as "young and hungry", and "hungry" tends to mean extremely hard work, and "young" tends to mean shit benefits, and, anyway, I didn't "click" with any of them.

With thousands of banking jobs (like mine) cut across the financial sector in late 2011 (and ongoing), I moved "sideways" and secured a copy editor job at a rating agency. I started work on Monday, and so far, I'm really enjoying it. Biggest challenge right now: To learn their house style as soon as possible. It's very different to my old team, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just different. It did mean I had a lot of time off, and that's now gone. But: good riddance. I do need structure in my day, and I like interacting with flesh-and-blood people. And this job will enable me to get some qualifications and bullet points on my CV, which should position me well to go back into banking, if I should so desire. Also, I'm now officially "comma police", which is quite amusing in many ways. The company itself is awesome--pretty good benefits, holidays, fantastic offices (with cheap and good catering), very nice team. I'm a lucky bastard when it comes to jobs and companies.

Also, I got a new boiler installed last week--two days of dirt, dust and noise (and extremely low productivity on my end), and not one day too early. The "Siberian" cold in London is absolutely biting. I'm so glad my heating's way more efficient now (and two rooms are noticeably warmer, thanks to new radiators - or "rads" as the boiler boys called them).

Also, just before I had to start work on Monday, I finished "Dark Soul" on Sunday night, and since then have been tweaking the fifth and last installment to make the most of it. I need to do an outline for a friend's novel, and edit a co-project, and fine-comb "Dark Soul 5", and all those should keep me pretty busy during February, apart, of course, from getting all the paperwork squared away (a gazillion background checks for the new job, paperwork for the job I left).

So, yep, busy. It's a good kind of busy.

On the writing front, that space opera is demanding face time, and there's a couple sexy shorts that I want to write about Silvio and Gianbattista, but I'll see if I can't push these away a bit longer. They'll attack me and bite me in the throat when I'm not expecting it, so I'm not too worried. I also need to get back into the research groove for the birds books.

And I'm keeping all my fingers crossed for a friend who's sent her 120k novel to a literary agent on Monday. Since I did a proofing check on that piece, I'm really nervous and excited on her behalf.

Next step is to do some more improvements around the house--the front garden could be fixed up to look less ugly, for example. I have plans for roses and tea bushes, and we need to remove some weird bush thing, a juvenile ash tree, a rickety fence and an ugly 1960ies concrete walkway up to the door. Now that I have a new job, I can even afford to have that done. It's been an eyesore for more than a year now.

Now, back to editing.

Buck Angel Interview over at Amara's

A guy I've admired from afar for a long time, Buck Angel, speaks about trans* issues, outing and other obstacles at Amara's today.

I can't possibly stress how important Buck is for the whole trans* issue. In my head, I've always referred to him as a gendernaut - somebody who goes places most of us never do, and vastly expands our understanding of gender and sexuality. Do go and check the interview out.