Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 32

Fascinating interview on celebrity, fame, and the media

i'm not a fan of Russell Brand, and it took him a while to get me even in this interview. But this is utterly fascinating.

Click on the Boing Boing video here. And do take the 14-15 minutes to really listen to him. Utterly fascinating, and very true.

I think, in a small sense, all this applies to writers, too. Of course, we are far more in charge of our public persona. Because basically we wouldn't help the Daily Hate Mail to sell copies. However, some of that instrumentalizing can be seen on some of the big blogs. There are people "making" and "breaking" authors' reputation.

The second main point of Brand gels very much with what I've seen, time and again, in author circles. The moment when authors believe their own press, they lose themselves. They turn into caricatures of themselves and begin to chase fame for fame's sake. Wise words, and a great warning for everybody stepping out into the light of public perception.

I blogged

Happy Easter! I've restarted work on my boxer novel and get warmed up to resume work on my historical WWII novel.

And I also blogged about fear over at Slash and Burn here.

Live in the Amazon.de Kindle store

Yay, great news, Germany has its own Kindle store now, and my books went live today here.

If any of you Germany-based guys know my books and liked them, reviews would help make it look less bleak. :) Thanks!

The same obviously goes for the UK Kindle store - still no reviews there.

Thanks guys, and happy Easter!

The three-day short story

Whenever I'm quiet, it means I'm writing. This week, I've been writing. I've been writing despite being on the ohmygods early shift, which sometimes happens when I get trained to do something. It means getting up at 4:30 and getting picked up at 5:00 by a bank-paid driver, and then starting work at 6. This kind of shift involves large amounts of strong coffee and a complete collapse of all nervous functions at around 13:00, with nothing remaining but the desire to go to sleep and take a week off.

(They do pay me well for it, though, and there's something fascinating and beautiful and dejected about London at dawn.)

So, yeah, on Monday, while I was feeling sorry for myself and my biorhythm, an Idea Happened. Before that, I'd been pointed at Storm Moon Press' gun kink submissions call. I While I've used weapons a fair amount in my previous stories, this was interesting because immediately I tought that this time, the weapon really needs to take center stage. Which was an interesting challenge.

The Muse agreed.

I ended up writing a 9k story in three days. Now, I'm happy with my wordcount if I make 1,000 words/day. 500/day is better than nothing. 1,500/day is what I call a "good day". 2,000 is noteworthy good. 3,000 is more like a weekend output, realistically speaking. Keeping that level up for three days while sleep-lagged is nothing short of miraculous. If Storm Moon Press likes it, it should come out in January 2012, so that's my first potential release for next year.

Downside of writing that hard? I didn't write at all yesterday and my brain is in that weird hazy state where it tries to work out what project to work on now. Or whether it can be bothered at all.

What I did do was help a friend who needed to cut 18k from her manuscript -by cutting the final 2k and wrapping things up on that side. Still a sense of accomplishment, and one item off the big pile of Things to be Done.

But boy, I'm ready for the four-day Easter weekend before me.

"Scorpion" just around the corner

It's real and becomes more and more real now. I have a cover, so the time of denial is over. "Scorpion" is coming out. (Yeah, books are real while being written and then when they are coming on - in between they fall in a state of "not quite real", when I tend to forget all about them.)

Anyway, the amazingly talented Reese Dante has created no less than 8 covers, three of which were totally different drafts and the others were variations on those.

I'm very happy with what she's come up with (go, have a look).

It's spot-on. My cover spec (always an exercise in helpless frustration about trying to translate an emotion into an image... I'm not a very descriptive writer) told Reese that Kendras was black and big and has blue eyes (that's what Jaishani look like in that world). And that he looks like a "mean motherfucker". Yup, exactly the words I used.

So, we can all agree that Kendras on the cover looks like a mean motherfucker. Or, as one reader put it: "Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley, but happy to meet him in a hotel room."

Hah. EXACTLY.

In my "real life", I've come out to my team in the bank. They were great about it (*waves in case they are reading*). Even offered feedback on the eight version of the "Scorpion" cover. I think that calls for a mini office celebration on release day. :)

Also, my eyes are fine. After LASIK, I have to admit that I didn't like reading and pretty much avoided it where I could. After editing 8 hrs/day in the day job, my eyes felt tired, worn out, and I had lots of blurriness at the short distance which made reading actually hard work - like consciously focusing on words. So I stayed away from reading. Thought and watched and observed during my commute rather than read. (Hence no book reviews and a huge pile of work I need to get through becouse I promised - sorry guys, I literally didn't see this situation coming).

I noticed these issues less and less, though, so I'll go back to reading. It's three weeks after LASIK, and my eyes are doing really well. Sometimes a bit of a dry/blurry feeling early in the mornings, but far less issues with near-vision blurriness. Thanks for bearing with me while I was healing.

Now back to work.

I blogged at Slash and Burn

I blogged over at Slash and Burn about my research into boxing.

Here's the entry.

Merchandise, merchandise

I've always wanted to open a Cafe Press store, but I just didn't have any excuse to do so. Well, now I do.

Ladies and gents, I present to you The Voinov Online Shop.

Despite the hefty price tags, I make onmly a "profit" of $0.50-1 per item, which I'll reinvest into more merchandise and the cost of running the store. I don't expect any riches anyway, but if anybody is desperate for merchandise, there's the place to go. I think I'll grab a couple T-shirts and coffee mugs, just because. :)

LASIK - one week later

I've had my one-week check-up with the opticians and my eyes are healing "well". The flap (the bit they cut open) has "sealed itself well", I can now rub/touch my eyes and if I get water in the eye (from, you know, showering), it won't be the end of the world.

This means that the most vulnerable time is over. I can relax a bit now (after hearing horror stories of scarred corneas). And I don't have to use any eye drops any more - which leaves me with the stuff against dry eyes, which I'll likely need a little bit longer.

Doc said my vision would continue to become clearer. Long-distance, I'm way better than 20/20 (two lines more). Short-distance, I have moments when my vision is really sharp and crisp, but it's temporary at the moment. However, if that level of quality becomes permanent, I'll be shocked in a very very good way.

May do light sports, no full contact stuff for another three weeks. That's OK. I can hold off on the boxing for another three weeks. :)

The "Great Soul" might have been bisexual - sparks outrage in India

The NY Times has an interesting article on Mahatma Gandhi, arguably one of the key figures of modern history. Specifically, it's about a biography about to be published - and that's already being banned in some parts of India.

According to the biographer, Gandhi was bisexual.

I need to get my hands on the book - not just because I'm more than happy to welcome Gandhi into our family (of sorts), but I'd be curious to simply learn more, and we seem to live in an age where biographies have stopped censoring anything that isn't cisgendered and straight, or marginalise this part of our lives.

One gay soldier they can't kick out under DADT

This is a very moving testimonial of the parents of a gay soldier who died in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The sooner the military catches up with the rest of society, the better.

I've been reading with shock and horror about the "Kill Team" that randomly killed Afghan civilians. I mean, I *knew* shit like that was going on (yeah, I have my sources) - I just didn't know it was so systemic. That "Kill Team" made a lot of baby Talibs, congratulations.

Those two stories are almost impossible to bear right next to each other, but that, for me, is war. We see both the very best in people and the absolute worst. And the latter is *not* the gay soldier.