Author Interview: Rachel Haimowitz

Today I'm very pleased to welcome the delightful Rachel Haimowitz to my humble blog. I first discovered Rachel when I agreed to read and review Anchored: Belonging for the DIK blog. After reading that book I was hooked and quickly read all her other m/m books. Since then I've got to know her a little better at her blog and on Twitter and found her to be a lively and witty lady. This interview is part of a blog tour to promote the release of Where He Belongs, a set of short stories set in the Anchored: Belonging world and which focuses on past events in the life of the hero, Daniel. The rest of the stops on the tour can be found at Rachel's blog HERE.

Enough waffling from me, let's get onto the good bit :).

On Writing

How did you get into writing m/m novels?
Through fanfiction, actually. It was one of those strange and amazing happenstances, you know, where an editor saw something I’d done and we just kind of connected. Next thing I knew, I had an invitation to submit.

You’ve published long novels and anthologies of short stories. Which do you prefer to write: short or long fiction? Why?
Onoes, don’t ask me to choose between my children! ;-) Because really, I love both. Long fiction gives you a chance to delve into something in depth, of course—to tell complex stories with complex characters. Creatively, that can be quite exciting and freeing. On the other hand, sometimes you’re quite thoroughly sick of a novel by the time you reach the end of all that writing and rewriting and editing some more, and you can’t wait to be done with it. You have other projects knocking on your brain, begging to be let out, and you have to keep telling them, “Three more months,” or whatever it is until the novel’s done.

So from that perspective, short fiction can be quite freeing too, because it’s quick and lets you play with lots of new shiny things. It’s not easy though; writing strong shorts is an art form all its own that I’m a long way from mastering. But what I particularly love about shorts as “spin-offs” from longer works is that it gives you a chance to revisit characters and worlds that you’ve maybe started to miss a bit, or that you had unanswered questions about. In Where He Belongs, writing those vignettes gave me the opportunity to explore little bits of Daniel’s past that, until then, existed only vaguely in my head. And in Sublime, even though that’s the first piece I published with Sir and Nicky, it’s actually the second one I’ve written. The first one was a 16,000-word single story of how they met, titled Master Class. (That story is releasing sometime this fall.) So the ten stories in Sublime were a chance for me to explore their growing relationship, particularly as applied to the BDSM dynamic between them, in satisfying little bits and snatches of pleasure and emotion and growing trust, without getting bogged down in complicated stories.

How much time do you spend writing each day (or each week, if you prefer)?
Not as much time as I’d like. Probably about 20 hours a week, unless I’m crashing a deadline, at which point I might be spending 60 hours a week. I do spend a lot more time at the keyboard than that, of course, since so much of being a writer is not just writing. There’s editing, and blogging, and chatting with readers, and promoting your latest work. Then there’s the day job, which is also writing and editing in my case, but I didn’t count that in my hours per week since it’s not time spent on my own projects.

What attracts you to writing in the fantasy genre?
Mostly, I think it’s the question “What if?” I’ve always been a fan of speculative fiction, not just in writing but in television and movies, also. I love the idea of the unexplored, the unimagined. And of taking those things and colliding them with bits and pieces of real life and seeing what kind of wonderful mess you can make.

What do you look for in a publisher?
Mostly to be treated as a valued partner rather than a cog in an author mill. That means fair royalty rates, no ridiculous rights grabs, reasonable contract lengths, no right of first refusal, never being forced to go to print with a cover I hate, and having a good working relationship with my editor. Editing is also very important, although I’ve yet to find an epub press that offers true developmental editing. Having been an editor in Manhattan publishing myself, I understand how much time and money true developmental editing takes, and that this market is often seen as too small to support that kind of expense, but I can’t help but think that if a press were to make the investment and the leap of faith, they’d find themselves selling a lot more books—enough to justify and support that kind of attention to detail.

On Your Books

Your novels have a definite slave/master theme. What draws you to that dynamic?
Tough to say what drives our kinks, but for sure that’s one of mine, both in fiction and in real life. I think it safe to say I was born with my sadistic streak. Even when I was a little kid, before I even knew what sex was, let alone understood how S&M might be a part of it, I was drawn to the concept.

After the positive reception to Counterpoint, how difficult have you found it to work on the sequel? Has the weight of expectation been helpful or not?
Oh man, STRESSFUL! But, you know, in the best possible kind of way. The reaction to Counterpoint has been so humbling and buoying and inspiring. When reviews started coming in and people started telling their friends about the book and sales started really picking up, it was the first moment in my life when I thought, Hey, maybe I can actually make a living at this. Of course, there’s also that pitchfork-wielding mob outside my door ready to kill me in inventively torturous ways if I don’t make the wait from last year worth their while in Crescendo. I’d like to think that’s driven me to write the best possible sequel I can. I’d hate to let anyone down.

Which is your favourite character from the books you have written?
I think that’d be Ayden, although it’s a close race with Cyke, the ex-Green-Beret-turned-white-hat-hacker who stars in the upcoming Break and Enter I co-wrote with Aleksandr Voinov (coming this December from Samhain). Both of them don’t hesitate to say what’s on their minds, and both of them are scarily competent. I have a huge competence kink—I love a man who’s crazy good at what he does, especially when it’s physical. And I’m a little in awe of people who always say and do all the things I wish I could say and do if I were braver.

I loved Anchored: Belonging, despite it being a difficult read at times. How did you get the idea for this book, and the character of Daniel in particular?
I was actually working in cable news at the time I started writing Anchored. It’s an insane life. You work 12 to 14 hours a day, and even when you get home you don’t stop working because of course you have to leave your phone on in case major news breaks, and you’re reading three papers and The Economist over breakfast. It was kind of soul-crushing, to be honest. I think it might have been different if I’d felt like the work was important, but it was all just, you know, Anna-Nicole Smith’s Death Fridge and endless partisan bickering, and it really just felt like being on a treadmill going way too fast that you could never shut off. I had huge respect for my team—these people are brilliant, dedicated, hardworking—but I felt like a worker bee, like I’d die one day chained to my desk while logging tape. So, yeah, that’s where that came from :).

As for Daniel? He was just sort of an amalgam of what I think cable news has turned into: a bunch of pretty faces who are slaves to ratings, so even though they might be—and honestly, probably are—stunningly brilliant and interesting people, they don’t get to show any of that at all. They’re stuck covering cheap, tawdry, meaningless things to sell ad space. That’s very cynical of me, I know, but I’ve been in the belly of the beast, and it ain’t pretty.

Sublime is a series of BDSM shorts centred on the same couple. Have you considered writing more or even a longer novel for Nicky and Devon?
Yes, very much so! As I mentioned above, I actually wrote a story about Devon and Nicky titled Master Class before I wrote Sublime. I don’t actually remember anymore why I put Sublime out without releasing Master Class first—maybe it wasn’t ready yet? I dunno. But you can expect to see Master Class sometime this fall. As for after that, I’m not certain. I have many stories about Devon and Nicky in my head, particularly the whole progression of Nicky’s training at Devon’s hands, but when and if they get written depends on a lot of things I can’t quite foresee yet.

You are very active over the internet with your own blog and twitter. How important is it for authors such as yourself to keep up an internet presence?
I have a hard time imagining how anyone can rise above the noise of the crowd these days without getting out there and staying out there, meeting readers and talking with them and learning about them as people. It’s also wildly entertaining. While of course I’d prefer it if people bought my books, I don’t approach it that way. I get onto Twitter and chat reading and writing and pop culture and kink and whatever else (these last couple weeks it’s basically been one long string of sharing X-Men: First Class fanfic links and pictures of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender ), and it’s great fun. Hopefully those folks will remember me when a book comes out, but if all we do is swap pictures of hotties, well, I’m okay with that too.

You have a new book coming out...tell us about it.
Where He Belongs is a collection of five vignettes exploring Daniel’s past, from the days immediately after his sale to NewWorld Media to the months following him landing his own show. For me, it was a chance to look at some formative moments in his life, and some not-so-formative ones as well—to just see Daniel being Daniel, rather than trying to be what he thinks others want him to be.

What’s next for you?
Release-wise, my next one is Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen (October 7, from Storm Moon Press), and then Break and Enter (sometime in December, from Samhain). Writing-wise, I’m juggling more balls right now than I probably should be. I’m working on edits for Crescendo, and I’ve just started what looks like a whole new series with Aleks Voinov that is probably best described as mildly paranormal military erotic romance. I’m working on a short for a Storm Moon Press anthology called The Weight of a Gun, and I’m in the outlining stages for the sequel to Anchored. I’m also starting to think about a third Song of the Fallen book, which will take place a few hundred years after the events of Counterpoint and Crescendo; I have a general idea of where I want to go with it, but none of the details have coalesced yet. And lastly, I’m working on a very exciting project with two other wonderfully talented M/M writers . . . but I can’t say anything more about it quite yet. Stay tuned, though—we’ll be making lots of noise soon enough :).

Thanks to Rachel for those interesting and honest answers to my nosy questions.  Where He Belongs is out on the 1st July, but if you pre-order now you can download two days early, which is today - yay!  Not only that, but if you order before the 1st July you'll be entered into a raffle to win prizes, the details of which are on the site - double yay!  Get the book HERE from Storm Moon Press.

You can also find Rachel at her blog HERE, at her website HERE or on Twitter at twitter.com/rachelhaimowitz.

And that's not all!  Rachel is kindly offering a copy of Anchored: Belonging to one lucky winner who leaves a comment, or if you have that book and live in the USA she can send you a swag bag of Belonging-verse stuff instead.