Rainbow Awards Winner

I saw yesterday that Dark Edge of Honor - co-written with Rhi Etzweiler - has tied (three-way) for best gay sci-fi novel in Elisa Rolle's Rainbow Awards.

That makes me (us) an award-winning author. :) (But seriously, I'm very honoured and more than pleased, especially for Rhi, who's an amazing talent and this was their first book - here's an author that deserves all the recognition there is, in any case. Great co-writer, extremely hard worker, good friend).

Also, this wouldn't have been possible without Deborah Nemeth, our editor, who helped us fix a number of pretty serious issues with the book (like, she made us completely re-write the last three chapters, which went from "WTF?" to "OMG" under her guidance).

And a great link that's worth watching for all blocked writers out there.

My week largely consisted of staring at a screen while blood was beading on my forehead. You really can't fault me for trying to break through this shit.

I did buy some "sex toys" from Cult Pens and promptly broke my new black Rotring Pro mechanical pencil (me and mechanical pencils have a long history of trench warfare, as the Faber Castell issue a couple weeks back has shown) just three minutes after taking it out of the packet. I broke it while trying to put in a mine from Koh-I-Noor (coloured mines, great idea, but they are going to break your MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE pencil, so stay the hell away from those mines, or at least only put them in a clutch pencil!).

On a sidenote, I'm officially in love with the Rotring tikky 3-in-1, which took me a while to figure out, but it's clearly magic and extremely useful for editing on paper.

Otherwise, very little else to report - sending off the first few Xmas presents and juggling a gazillion things (slight exaggeration, but I did stop counting at a million).

Dark Edge of Honor - the "Sergei type"

I've been wrapped up completely in a super-secret little project that is a lot of fun, too. And as it goes when you're having fun, time flies. It's already August, and I do wonder where the previous seven months went.

One of the things I did this year was edit/rewrite Rhianon Etzweiler's and mine "Dark Edge of Honor", which is our military gay sci-fi romance/thriller.

Here's the blurb:

Sergei Stolkov is a faithful officer, though his deepest desires go against the Doctrine. A captain with the invading Coalition forces, he believes that self-sacrifice is the most heroic act and his own needs are only valid if they serve the state.

Mike, an operative planted within Cirokko's rebels, has been ordered to seduce Sergei and pry from him the Coalition's military secrets. His mission is a success, but as he captures Sergei's heart, Mike is tempted by his own charade and falls in love.

When the hostile natives of the planet Cirokko make their move, all seems lost. Can Mike and Sergei survive when the Coalition's internal affairs division takes an interest in what happened in the dusty mountains of Zasidka Pass...?


It's a sizeable novel at 96k (and you can pre-order it here), and it presents a different version of one my favourite characters ever.

See, Vadim Krasnorada of the epic Special Forces series began as a paratrooper character named Sergei, back in 1995, when I wrote one of my first stories with explicit sex. Sergei burst onto the stage, scarred, messed up, clearly traumatized, and in that story I killed him in a restroom in Frankfurt, protecting a man who was most definitely not worth it.

The character has haunted me since then. I call him the "Sergei type", and he feels like somebody I know incredibly well. I used the character in many ways and incarnations. One of my print-published novels was about another "Sergei", in this case, however, he chose love and life rather than death. The main difference? This Sergei was less giving and more taking - but just as stoic as the first one.

One short story and one novel in, I still hadn't exorcised the "Sergei type". There was still stuff to talk about, still things he'd do and I found interesting. When the time came again that I needed a character to write something, I examined the character again and decided to use the "Sergei type" again - but this time, I'd make him a "golden boy", somebody special and admired (the other two Sergeis never were). I also made him very, very intelligent and pretty educated (the other Sergeis weren't - I'd assume one of them was almost illiterate).

That way, Vadim Krasnorada was born, probably one of my favourite characters. The rest is history - one million words of "Special Forces", all free here.

Yet, I *still* wasn't done. In "Special Forces", Vadim is about thirty, and he's already a tough bastard with combat experience and a lot of experienced that have hardened him against the world. He's also aware he's gay, and he's forcing other men to submit to him. He'd an institutionalised rapist when we meet him.

Yet, throughout the book, there's the hint of a different Vadim. One who's softer, more idealistic, who wants to believe in Communism and is all bright-eyed and idealistic. I do love writing idealists, and I do love the conflict between an ideology (any ideology - religion or political identity) and the individual. I can't stay away from exploring themes of honor, identity, duty, and I assume I'll do that for the rest of my creative life.

In short, there was no space to explore Vadim's younger years, his idealism and honor, his struggle with the political system he'd been born into. I wanted to explore those bits of the "Sergei type" - how do we mature and how do we become the people we are?

So, I teamed up with Rhianon Etzweiler (who was starting work on a military novel) and pitched her this idea. She welcomed me as a co-writer, and I brought the "Sergei type", now just "Sergei" - this time young, idealistic, very much still discovering who he is - while she brought Mike.

And this is how "Dark Edge of Honor" was born. I hope you enjoy it.

The time, the time

Currently I'm tied up in the massive Sekret Project that we can hopefully announce pretty soon - which means all the grey matter in my head is engaged, leaving very little space for things like socialising (I AM socialising a lot with my co-conspirators, of course).

But I'm still there.

It's 4 weeks until the launch of "Dark Edge of Honor", which I'm pretty excited about. I read the file on my e-reader the other day and actually couldn't stop. It's rare that my own books develop such a "pull" on me. After all, I still kinda remember what's going to happen.

And that's the year done (and we still have five months to go). Which means, basically, I have to get cracking on the marketing, the "promo", but I try to think of it not as advertising, but as telling all my friends about my new book. Marketing itself is soul-crushing for many writers, but these days part of the package.

In my real life, we've had some excitement - the financial markets were going/are going through some jitters at the moment, focusing on Italy. As the bank I work for has been caught up in that, last week at work was interesting and actually really quite stressful. I don't believe I'm losing my job, but senior management has announced "changes". Banks are slaves to the markets, and the markets don't behave in a rational manner. The more I know about the financial markets, the more I'm in favour of much, much harsher controls and some practices actually outlawed. We'll see if politicians ever grow enough balls to do that... I'm not positive.

Last week, we also got new windows and doors installed at Casa Voinov. We used to have really badly converted Victorian wood-framed box sash windows in a few places (one of which was really badly rotted underneath the paint) and two doors (garden and front) that were basically just a pane of wood and single glazing - the kind of door a vigorous child could kick down. Well, that's over now - with all the additional locks and bolts (all inside the door), we're locked down pretty tightly now.

The last remaining single-glazed windows were replaced with PVC windows that actually open (hence you can even clean them - I know, the marvels of progress), and which should prove a lot warmer in winter that the others. With last year's "cold snap", some of the rooms in this house were so cold that I didn't actually want to stay inside them for a long time. Which is unfortunate if you're talking about the study where I write or the library where I do my research.

Meanwhile, the "two birds" book is continuing - slower again, and slowed down by a short story I just need to throw onto the paper and hope to finish this weekend. I've taken today off to do that. There's also an editing project that needs doing by Monday, and a novel to feedback next week.

Life's busy, but that's good.

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.