Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 30

Update on Kolya the Kitty

Thanks, guys, so much.

We've raised a substantial amount of money (1,500 USD) - and the vet says that maybe the cat doesn't need an operation, which means much smaller costs than we feared (original estimate was 2,800-3,300 USD).

So, if all goes well and Kolya can pass the thread without having to go under the knife, the amount we raised will be enough to pay for the procedure.

Thank you so *very* much.

Here's an update from Gil.


Thanks again! The power of the internet is an awe-inspiring thing.

On behalf of a friend

Okay, I try not to do this as often as it might be required (there's a lot of scarcety out there). But this one's pretty close to the bone.

My very *very* lovely co-writer 's cat has swallowed sewing thread and needs surgery. Since Gil's a poor student, that surgery is like 1/6 of their yearly income. Gil's already selling off their books to pay for it and getting a second job.

If you enjoyed Collateral or The Trick Is (both here), which are both free and co-written with Gil, and if you have a buck left over, please consider donating it to Kolya's surgery fund. You'd be helping an immensely talented author and a close personal friend of mine who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me through some rather unpleasant times back in 2007.

More info and a photo here.

Thank you very much.

Trust issues

Following up from my piracy post, I am reporting piracy links to my publishers. And I'm only publishing with publishers who send the DMCAs on my behalf. That's why I'm giving them a big chunk of my money: for cover, editing, and maintenance of my rights (and our income streams).

I will not publish with publishers who will not take an active stance there. Which, incidentally, will see me team up with some new players this year and next, and discontinue sending submissions to others. It's as simple as that. If the publisher can't be bothered to defend its (and my) rights, I can't be bothered to submit to them and give them 75-50% of my money.

I have 3 hours or so a day to write. I know authors who spend a lot of their writing time fighting pirates. I prefer to let somebody else deal with it so I have my head free to, you know, actually put words down.

Now, I get sent a lot of piracy links from fellow authors. But one incident shocked me a little. A fellow m/m author sent me a link with a note that basically read "I thought you might be bothered to defend your work" and added "oh, and by the way, your friend X of Facebook is a known book pirate. You might want to rethink your "friendship"."

I emailed "X", asking her very factually and calmly, I think, if she was pirating books. She responded shocked and dismayed. I then didn't follow that one up, but it got me thinking.

Here's what I have arrived at: It's entirely possible that some of my friends and readers pirate my books. Basically, I can't know what people do in their bedrooms at night. Just because I send them free books or wristbands or whatever doesn't mean they are incapable of sharing my book with a few thousand of their closest friends and show their love and support by taking away my revenue and even taking the work for free that I charge for. (I'd think that more than a million words in freebies would be enough, personally.)

After thinking it all through a few times, and I admit I really struggled with writing while fighting my very emotional responses and the knee-jerk reaction of "fine, I'll stop publishing, then and write for myself and fifty or so of my own friends" (yes, that's always a possibility, and I'm not the only one who considered writing only for themselves and their friends) - I got over it. I got over my ego and hurt feeling and trust issues. In the end, nobody but me gives a fuck about my ego, and I better live with that. The stories need to come out.

Also, I simply can't live in a way that makes me automatically mistrust everybody. I can't look at my couple hundred Facebook friends, wondering who might be a pirate. There's no way for me prove who is a pirate and who isn't. Some people might pirate some books and buy others. I can't live my life in mistrust and fear - and anger, never forget the anger.

Writing is hard enough as it is, and complex enough. I can't lose sleep over pirates or fretting over people sending their PDF of one of my books to their friends. I have friends who can't afford my books. Some are frail and poor, others are students and poor, others are jobless and poor. I'm giving a lot of books away to them - because, hey, they are friends. I'm not charging a close friend, who's shared their work and life and writing with me. I'm not a penny-pinching asshole, and I can't imagine a world where I see thieves and pirates everywhere. I can't worry about it, because it would severely hurt the writing.

I can't listen to the paranoid who denounce other people, either. I can't peddle in suspicion and mistrust. It's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell the goddamned story as best as I can (and I leave the piracy issue to my publishers).

/End rant.

Not so generic thoughts on piracy

I've mentioned several times that I have fairly complex responses to the whole issue of piracy. I used to make mix tapes of music, for example. As a student, I ran a fair amount of "handed-down" software and never asked where it came from (but then, Microsoft was "uncool" and the big evil, and I guess I felt a bit cool not giving evil Bill Gates money I didn't have). Hey, we're talking early to mid-nineties here.

My appetite for music certainly exceeded my budget - I still spent more money on music and books than on food, which, BTW, is pretty much a pattern of my life. Granted, my music expenses have gone down since I subscribed to Spotify... I was one of those very heavy users that was "cannibalised" into the subscription model. Basically, the music industry is losing money because I'm on an "all you can eat" plan via Spotify that costs about the amount of one CD a month.

In terms of software, once I had regular paychecks, I went strictly legal. In terms of music, I've bought a lot of CDs I had "ripped" files of, and I'm still buying my favourites. You could call me a reformed pirate, but I grew up in a day and age where the actual industries creating the content I wanted weren't threatened.

Now, true, the demise of the music industry is a lot more complex. One reason why their sales are down is because they were calculating from the very high levels of the years when everybody replaced their vinyl with CDs. It was, basically, unsustainable levels that then went back to normal. We "know" that a lot of musicians were treated badly by those who sell their music. Thankfully, all that is changing. Indie musicians and indie authors are increasingly taking the stage...build "fan bases" and thrive.

Well, "thrive" in the author space being a relative term. As an "insider", I know how many m/m authors have holiday homes and yachts. Pretty sure the number is about zero, unless they work high-flying corporate jobs, and *those* have the tendency of eating a person up so much that there's no fiction coming from that mind. Juggling a corporate career and writing is not easy. I've moved out of journalism because it was damaging my writing. And because working for a bank pays me 60% more, but bottom line, because I want to be a writer and need a job that doesn't kill my writing.

Unless with many other m/m writers, I can actually eat (or get my teeth fixed or buy a couple nice steaks) even if I sell no book at all. (For the record, my sales appear to be steadily growing, but at a fairly slow pace. I'm curious if "Scorpion" and "Dark Edge of Honor" will have an impact, one because it's universally well-received, and the other because it's from Carina Press, which has an enormous reach that not many publishers can offer).

I have friends who need the royalty payments to eat. To buy a new (or a better used) computer. Where selling books means the difference between having a roof over their heads and not.

To me, sales are basically validation... the only way I can "track" if I'm successful. Being ambitious and proud of what I do, sales is the main way for me to see if it's "working", but, bottom line of it all is... for me it's a game and not a matter of life and death. I will admit, freely, that I'd like to draw some writing income when I retire, and I hope I can retire before I hit 67, or whatever the retirement age is going to be for Britain. Dragging my 60+ year old carcass through the London commute is not very enticing. Yes, I'd like to retire on writing, but I'm not asking for a free lunch, and I don't believe the m/m genre will ever pay enough to match my corporate salary (with pension, and private healthcare). Also, I can see the holder of my mortgage, HSBC bank, get twitchy about the very uneven income stream of a small fry author. And nothing would give me more serious writer's block than actually *having* to pay off my house with the bucks I make writing.

Lastly, I can't ask my partner to subsidise a writer. That's not how my idea of a relationship works. Everybody is pulling their financial weight. Life as DINKS is pretty sweet, overall, and we can save towards retirement.

What annoys me about piracy then? For me it's a respect issue. It's crazy-making to read on a pirate forum "I love his stuff, he's so talented, can anybody upload everything he's written?" And a few hours later, the "complete Voinov" has 700 downloads. (No, no exaggeration, that's *exactly* what happened a little while back.)

I'm not sure how *you* express your respect and love for an artist, but I don't think stealing from them would be on the list.

Respect cuts both ways. I will write like you guys out there have a brain and can deal with morally ambiguous characters. I'm here to make you squirm, to sometimes challenge assumptions, I'm here to put a smile on your face, but not with a cheap joke. For you guys/gals, I'm writing my little black heart out. I respect you. I'm not dumbing down, not selling out. I'm not getting lazy. I'm working hard to edit, because I respect you enough that I know that a wrong comma or a badly chosen word grates on you as much as it does on me when I'm the reader.

I'm killing books that are not good enough. I will never write cookie-cutters, even though they are easy and fast. I'll never copy and paste my sex scenes from one book to the next. I'll always reach for the heart (and the throat, and the balls). I do that because I respect my readers. All I'm asking is that my readers - and that pirate was clearly a reader - respect me in turn.

Because it's easy - another "Scorpion" review

I wrote 450 words on the "two birds" book. And in my head the "outline" has taken an interesting turn. I think we have a love triangle (which shatters my hopes of telling that story in 30k or so... Godsdamnit).

Anyway, here's something that made me smile at my desk today.

"Scorpion is an outstanding alternate history novel, rich in scope; one that is presented so comprehensively and is written with such authority that it feels as though it might be a historically factual piece. It is a tale peopled by characters who, regardless of how well drawn they are, still have undercurrents and backstories to them that made me want to delve deeper into their lives and their thoughts."

Read the rest of the review here. Thanks, Lisa!

(And I just received a delivery of my wristbands for "Counterpunch" and the "Kampfgruppe Voinov" - both are pretty awesome.)

Scorpion reviewed at Jesse Wave Reviews

Got a shiny new review for "Scorpion" at Jesse Wave's review blog.

"I was excited and curious to read this story because at some point I considered myself a huge fun of this author. However I then realized that while I have read a lot of titles which he co-wrote with others, I was actually not familiar at all with his individual style outside of one short story by him (and that story was actually my least favorite out of all his works). I was looking forward to see if I liked him as much as when paired with someone else.

I did. I could not put this book down. It is a twisty action/adventure, which takes place in the well-drawn fantasy world, and I thought the world building was awesome."

Read Sirius' review here.


And just because it's happened today, too, "Dark Edge of Honor" has been chosen to become an audiobook on Audible.com. We don't know when it's going to happen, but, yeah, it's been chosen. More when I know more.

Now I'm gonna talk a bit to Yves.

Quick update on "Scorpion 2"

I just had a rather panicked email from a reader asking me if "Scorpion 2" was, quote "happening at all".

Short answer: Yes, it will happen. Promise.

Long answer: I was sidetracked. I have around 15k useable words at the moment and I have a ton of ideas, and I'm almost sure I know how it ends, but the Muse is still very much in "discovery" mode. That's when books slowly solidify out of that diffuse mist of "ooooh, I want to write" and actually take shape. This is a critical stage that cannot be rushed. There's no way to shorten that period. Basically, it's still incubating. While I have the general "set-up", or the starting situation with most major players in position, I need to get to the main developments/main plots, and while I have a ton of material, I have no real clue yet how the pieces fit together.

What does that mean?

It means that the book will be written. A book will only *not* be written if there's not enough material to write it. If I have no ideas and no passion. For Scorpion 2, I actually have both. There are a lot of secrets that I want to tell and reveal, and I do love my characters (I can't wait to share Runner, Blood and Graukar with you, and shock you with the demise of the high priest - because that'll certainly shock the hell out of me).

Now, what has sidetracked me?

Around a week ago, I had a sudden flash of inspiration. I was finally working on "Scorpion 2" again, and suddenly I had this idea that is about WWII and Paris. And I had the movie. A voice (his name is Yves). I fretted and freaked out, and then my partner said: "Hey, you're not living off writing, follow the energy - do what really excites you."

A-fucking-men.

(It is, BTW, the thing I tell young writers asking me for advice what they should write... I tell them to write the one that keeps them up at night.)

Now, I wanted to be all dutiful and serious and hardworking and give you guys "Scorpion 2", but basically it's not *quite* ready yet, not quite ripe, and I'm being selfish and rather than push "Scorpion 2" through, I really want to write the new story, which I call, affectionately, the "Two Birds" book.

I hope you'll forgive the delay, but I promise you a better sequel if I can play with this one first.

Anybody joining me in licking this guy's neck and throat?

Generous writer that I am, I'm sharing my (and Rhianon's) guys with you. The book is "Dark Edge of Honor" and it'll be out in August from Carina Press:



Ah, just what was missing from the day.

After the war

I'm still "between books". I've been playing around with "Scorpion 2", but it's still in the teeth-pulling stage. It's moving slowly, 3090-800 words at a time, and some days not at all. I'm writing, kind of, or at least going through the motions, adding words to other words on the page.

Does it grab me and refuse to let go? Not really. Not yet. It needs a lot of faith and momentum to get there. And it's hard to muster the faith if you don't know what shape it is taking. IF it will take a shape. With every book, that's a big bet of dozen of hours of work. Much of the stuff ends up unfinished and with hundreds of hours of work wasted.

My brain is incubating a new, fresh idea, unconnected to anything else. I think I'll let the muse play with that, before I finish the other projects. Right now, it's more important than ever to find that passion and energy. And that's what I keep telling other writers: to follow the energy.

So, I'll start on this pretty soon. These slow periods are times when I plan and plot and think, and do otherwise very little.

Three day weekend (redux)

It's easy to lose a book. Something doesn't go quite right, the book is set aside, suddenly, two years have passed, and by now, you're a lot more interested in other books (like the one you're currently writing or the one that's coming up). Years pass. The characters turn into strangers. The book's gone.

I have a ton of books in the drawer. There's the financial trilogy which will likely never happen the way I imagined things in 2008/9. I think I have a novel and a novella there, and both need HUGE amounts of work. There's the menage and its prequel, there's the historical WWII novel (still around, still kicking, and still unfinished) and some other projects that are "cool ideas" at this stage and nothing more. I tend to be drawn towards the new over the old. Research books for the "new" are piling up all around me. You'd have to see it to believe it.

But above all, I'm putting work in to finish with the past and move into the future without guilt constantly dragging at my feet. I think I would be able to move faster that way. I might even tackle ROI again, the first book I did after "Special Forces". While "Collateral" saved me from burnout and from hating writing, ROI was what Germans call a "Befreiungsschlag" - a (violent) move to free oneself (usually from a superior enemy force). For that alone it deserves to be finished up properly. As it's not a romance in the conventional sense, I figure I might have to go down the self-publishing route, but that's OK. I'm done with conventional publishing, anyway.