Author Interview: Aleksandr Voinov Part 1

Today I'm very pleased to introduce Aleksandr Voinov to my blog. I'm a great admirer of his writing and have read all his m/m books, except for the verrrrrry long Special Forces which I know many of you have read and enjoyed. Speaking of very long, Aleks has had so many fascinating and interesting things to say that the interview was rather long, so we've decided to post it in two halves, one today and one on Thursday. Today's questions are all focused on Aleks as a writer and Thursday's questions will be more specifically about certain books and his plans for the future.


So without further ado, it's on with the questions!


How did you get into writing m/m novels?

I started in the German speculative fiction mainstream – epic fantasy, cyberpunk and science fiction (but my first sale was a horror short story). My main characters were always gay or bisexual men, but to sell any book at all, publishers kept telling me to “tone down the gay stuff”. When I looked at getting into the thriller and/or historical mainstream, publishers and agents suggested I write “strong women” rather than men, let alone gay or bi ones. What I kept hearing was: “Your talent is wasted on the niche – write what everybody else is writing and you’ll earn big bucks, we’ll even put you into hardcover.”

I tried, gods, I tried, but my “strong woman in Medieval Germany” novel never got further than 30 pages in, and every single page got me one step closer to a nervous breakdown. I hated it. At roughly that time, I was leaving Germany for good, and started the transition from writing a bit in English to writing mostly in English. Looking around on Livejournal, I seemed to have acquired a huge amount of friends in the slash community/ies and other m/m and gay lit writers. When I checked out their work (like Erastes’s, Alex Beecroft’s and Kirby Crow’s) I realized, woah, there seems to be a way to write what I write and actually find a few readers.

So I ramped up “the gay” that the spec fiction publishers made me tamp down to the level that I damned well wanted it to be. It was a lot like coming home, I loved being able to write sex without getting reviews on Amazon that said “eeeeewwwww, the cool main character is gaaaaaaaaayyyyy! Readers beware!”

I focused a lot more on the romance plot, and flipped the romance sub-plot over to turn into the primary plot, and I revelled in all the freedoms I suddenly had. I submitted my first stories, almost all of them got accepted, and I’ve just continued on that track.

How difficult do you find being a British author in a US dominated market?

I’m actually a German author in Britain writing in (somewhat bastardised) British English for a global audience. Talk about a double exile! No, joking aside, I had trepidations that I might not be able to write about Americans and Americans might not care at all what I have to say (and, absolutely, most of our readers are from the US). That said, I didn’t find that to be such an issue. My reader feedback is very international. I’ve received emails from Singapore to Russia, Italy, Finland, Indonesia and Pakistan, amongst many others. Also, Americans, contrary to the cliché that is being peddled, actually are interested in cultures and countries not their own. Half of the tourists I hear in London are Americans.

Notably, many international readers – for want of a better term – enjoy that my cast is also pretty international. That ranges from Russians telling me I “nailed” that Russian character to an email like: “Thank God, one author who does not write about white middle-class suburban Americans only!” from a Chinese lady.

Which do you prefer to write: short or long fiction? Why?

I’m one of those writers who have no clue what they’re getting themselves into when they start a story. I compare it to being an archaeologist on a dig: You scrape and brush pieces away and then you find a bone! Excitement! But whether it’s something small and manageable like an eohippus or a T-Rex is something I find out as I keep digging, and usually when there’s no turning back.

I’m suddenly 20k in and realize, nah, it’s not a novella, I won’t be done anytime soon, as it has just sprouted sub-plots, and one character is not who we all think he is. I do like Deliverance at around 7k words just as much as Scorpion at almost ten times that. A story finds its natural shape, and an important skill is to find out what that is. Michelangelo said he was only “freeing” the statues from the blocks of marble. It’s in there, you can feel it, but it takes experience, I think, to really sense the shape in advance. That said, I’ve been wrong at times. Scorpion was a novella and then things hit the fan. And then it worked hard to become a series.

How much time do you spend writing each day (or each week, if you prefer)?

Writing in my head – every waking moment. Being a writer is a way to think and see the world, being open to ideas all the time. It’s a stance more than a profession, in my book at least. Actually fingers on keyboards, or pen in notebook – I’d think around 20-30 hrs a week. With my 35 hrs work week, 15 hrs total commuting time, the commitments and what I laughingly call my “social life”, it’s probably good I’m a workaholic.

You often co-write with other authors. How do these partnerships come about and what is it about co-writing that you enjoy so much?

It’s case by case. Barbara Sheridan invited me into Risky Maneuvers to help her write the military character (who’d end up being Mikhail). Turns out, she needed absolutely no help at all, but we got along really well, so we wrote Clean Slate and First Blood next. I was chatting with Rachel Haimowitz one day, we were kicking ideas around – as writers often do – and we basically went “damn, we HAVE to write that now!” I asked Kate Cotoner for help with Lion of Kent – she has all the knowledge about the English Middle Ages that I’m lacking (I’m more focused on Continental Europe), and having two historians on the same historical is a great thing, in any case.

What great about it is that it feels a lot like somebody’s telling a story just for you. It’s awesome. Of course, to keep the story going, you have to help with the telling (that is, write your half), but it’s a lot like making stuff up we all did as kids. It’s completely playful and fun, and a real contrast to the daily slog and grind of writing alone.

You’ve written in a range of genres but which would be your favourite and if you were to write something in a different genre what would you choose and why?

My muse has a serious case of ADD – whatever I’m currently writing is my favourite. When I wrote Counterpunch, I was massively into sports books and alternative universe contemporaries. Right now, I’m on a history binge. When I’m so into something, it’s the bee’s knees to me. One genre to rule them all, that kind of thing. Then I’m done with the book or the books and feel I’ve said what I can say in that genre.

And then my Muse goes “LOOK! SHINY!” and I’m off in a different direction. Seriously, it would be a huge issue if I were trying to make a living in the mainstream – I’d need a new author name for every single genre I’d write, and that’s right out, because my output would be random and patchy in the extreme, even if I were five different brands, and nobody’s going to agent you if you’re all over the map like that. I don’t know how writers keep doing the same genre – I admire people who can write three contemporaries a year, every year, for fifty years, but I’d suffer like a dog if I weren’t allowed to play. Good thing that I don’t have to make a living from writing – I can stay an amateur and happily free and playing for as long as I want.

And my guilty secret is: I want to write one “literary novel” in my life. Just one. And just because my agent said I don’t have the chops to be a literary writer. I like to prove people wrong, and because it’s a genre that I really haven’t understood yet. It’s my own personal white whale that I’ll keep chasing across the Seven Seas, that’s clear. I guess we all need one unattainable – or at least stupidly ambitious – goal in our lives.

You are published by many different publishers. Why have you chosen to do that?

When I started, I asked my writer friends about which publishers they’d recommend. I got so many conflicting accounts that, when I collated them, the data wasn’t giving me a clear picture. So I did more research, and resolved to publish with all of the big names to be able to get an idea of the quality of covers, editing, and the number of sales (talk about applied insanity).

I always intended to narrow the number of publishers down to those two or three that are best suited for me personally, and now, two years later, I have that list. I might still give a different publisher a chance – I’m always open to places with good editing, good covers and a good reputation that are author-friendly in contract terms – so it’s not carved in rock. But I pretty much know what I want from a publisher and which ones can give me that.

Thank you, Aleks for those enlightening answers to my nosy questions!  Come by again on Thursday folks to find out what inspired Aleks to write some of his books and also to see what he's got lined up for 2012.


Also those of you who leave a comment on the interview either today and/or Thursday have an opportunity to win one copy of scorpion, one of counterpunch and one choice from Aleks' backlist.  Good luck!