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 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. 

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.

Windows 8 is effing scary

Apparently, Windows 8 decides when to update. It's not even telling you in advance. You can't switch it off or defer it. This is the total - utter - reduction of the computer user to the state of toddler. "There, there, we know what's good for you, don't you worry your pretty little head."

So, when I switched on my computer, the teal background turned purple and the system informed me I was logged into a temporary account and wouldn't be able to access my files. I couldn't get online, either (so not even to work on a file in GoogleDocs). My desktop background (where I have my current files) was pretty much empty. No files reachable OR visible.

Some hyperventilation later, I assumed it was the update. No progress bar told me how long it would take. Gods be thanked for my iPad to keep me entertained. I'd actually sat down to get back to work on my birds book. When the Muse is singing like a banshee, I want to write NOW. Windows 8 thought that was unacceptable. Or at least that update was much more important than me getting back into my file.

*shakes fist*

Can we find a way to not treat users like complete fools with only two brain cells rubbing together unhappily, please? What next? Computers who enforce the 40-hr working week or switch off mid-flow because they are concerned we're not getting enough sleep? (OVER MY DEAD STINKING CORPSE, BILL!)

Harrumpf.

Now back to writing the birds book. It's hard-going enough, without rebellious technology stepping on my dick.

The value of short

Sometimes, I write short stories. Short stories, as described by a writer friend of mine are like little shards of glass lodged in our brain that you can only pull out by writing them down. Remembering her saying that, I try to remember whether she was talking about poems or short stories. For me, that's kind of the same thing. I can't write poems worth shit, though I've written a few until I realised I'm very much a prose writer and I'll never be anything more than a dabbler in poetry.

Still, sometimes that sense of urgency (or: bleeding in your brain) comes over me. A thought. A voice I can't shake. An image. ONE image. My Muse is being stingy - it's NOT a novella, it has no real plot (just an arch, because short stories still have a structure), it's not a novel, it's not a seven-volume fantasy saga. I won't spend the next 2.5 years of my life pumping out words. I'll ... just end up bleeding quietly on a page for a weekend, or a day, or a week.

Short stories come to me as perfectly formed pebbles of ancient glass washed onto a shore. There's almost no point to ask what they were - they are perfect in the shape that they are. (Usually, they are glass bottle bottoms, I've learned, but that's neither here nor there.) I accept them in their shape. My mind has dealt with stories for twenty-five years. It can tell the difference between a short story and a novella and a novel. I sometimes go wrong - Deliverance was actually a small series, Burn could easily be a novella, but that's me trying to write to specs, which usually goes hilariously wrong anyway.

Maybe it's like digging up a dinosaur. You find a bone. After some more digging, you can tell whether it's T-Rex's pinky or the leg bone of something much smaller. The work of digging remains absolutely the same. There's no difference for me in writing shorts or novels. If anything, it's much easier to fuck up a short story than a novel.

As my very wise friend said: "One weak word ruins a poem, one weak sentence ruins a short story, one weak chapter ruins a novel."

The margin of error is the difference. A gap of a centimeter might mean nothing when you're building a ship, but means everything when you're making jewelry.

Ships and necklaces are different things. Both take different skills. They are both desirable, in both cases you're making something to a purpose. Sometimes I have crazy ideas and can't push the Muse away, and then, I assure you, the same brain that wrote Skybound wrote Quid Pro Quo (my parts of the latter, anyway). I embrace the variety. I literally cannot say what I'll be writing next, because the Muse is like a high-speed train and I seem to ALWAYS stand on the rails, back turned towards it. It's not always coming; sometimes I stand there for days and weeks (busying myself editing, usually, going about my life). But when it comes, there's no negotiation.

Short stories happen to me. I don't ask for them, and very often, I don't get to negotiate how much of it I want. For example, I'm not withholding the novel "Skybound" from my readers, because it doesn't exist, not in my reality, it doesn't. (If it exists in YOUR reality, you have my blessing to dig out those bones...  they weren't in the ground I covered.)

There's no competition. I'm not "wasting my time" on shorts when I "should be" writing a novel. If the novel rolls over me, it will. I can carve diligently for months and years on a novel, if that's its natural speed. I'm not going to ruin my T-Rex skeleton with hastily blowing it out of the rock with TNT.

Sometimes, I can hold two or three different things in my head at the same time. Sometimes, I get sidetracked by TEH SHINY. That's fine. I'm allowed to enjoy my work and follow my joy every now and then. I'm not a stone-grinding slave somewhere, I'm not a worker screwing in little monitors all day, seven days a week. My brain is allowed to play, because that's part of the joy of my work. I get assembly line-style work at my day job, but they pay me for it and I get pension and medical.

And I love the little things I build as much as the big things. It might sound like sacrilege, but if all of my work burned in a fire on the internet, I'd hope to save Skybound, of all things. (Silvio can fend for himself in that fire. There's no fire strong enough to exorcise that little demon.) There's no competition for me between Skybound and Special Forces. One has given me nothing but joy. The other - much less so.

I do wonder when small forms (poems, short stories) have become "less valuable" than novels. I've never before encountered the attitude of, put bluntly, and so common on Goodreads: "I loved this, but it was only a short story, so I'm only giving it 3 stars." (No, this post has not been brought on by a review of one of my shorter works - I've seen this for a long time and I remain flabbergasted by it.) Since when is quantity = quality?

Similarly reviewers who write things like: "This is badly flawed and needs 500 pages cut out if it, but it's so big, it's a five-star read."

Is it the emotional attachment you build while reading a gazillion pages? Is it an attempt to slap the author ("stop selling me short things, I want a novel, and if I keep griping over the shortness, you'll write one, won't you? Why aren't you at your desk yet?")? Is it an inability to appreciate small things for what they are? Or is it a desire to reward novel-length work for length alone? The logic goes like this: Only novels can be 5-star reads, and even a very good short story can only get three stars, because I can't possibly give a short story five stars AND a novel five stars, because I just prefer novels?

(And I agree, short stories are not novels, but personally, I rate anything I rate on its own merits. I rate a poem as a poem, and not as a "not-novel", which would mean it can't help but fall short anyway, because I do tend to enjoy reading novels more than poems. However, few novels have punched me in the brain like some poems. For delivering that famous two-inch killing blow, no other form does it so well than a poem. Hell, a single sentence can do it, but it'll have that "concentration of force/intent" that makes a poem in the first place.)

Maybe it's even money, though personally I'd rather pay 2.99 for a very good short story than a dog's dinner of a 250k self-published novel. I wouldn't read the latter for free, because really the only irreplaceable thing you can spend on this planet is the time of your life it takes you to read.

It's difficult.

But when I feel the rails vibrate, feel that wave of energy cresting in my soul, I honestly don't care. I only hope, whatever's coming over me, that it'll be good and that I'll be able to do it justice with what powers I have, few as they may be.