eBook release: July 9, 2012
Word count: ~25,600
Page count: ~85
Thanks for joining me on the Incursion virtual book tour! Feeling lucky? I’m giving away three prizes to commenters on any of the blog tour stops. Comment on this post (feel free to ask questions!) and you might win! The first winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift certificate and a swag bag with assorted magnets, wrist-bands and other goodies. Two more lucky winners will receive swag bags as well. I ship internationally and will draw the winners from all commenters after the tour is over. Deadline for entry is 6/15/12. Please include your email address in your comment so that I can contact you. Enjoy!
Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!
Hi, thanks for having me! I’m Aleksandr Voinov, m/m and queer fiction writer and publisher (I co-founded Riptide Publishing). I’m originally from Germany, but emigrated to England, and now live just outside London, where I work in the financial services industry.
Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
“Incursion” happened when several ideas came together. Individually, ideas and fragments of thoughts are pretty harmless, but sometimes, they just come together in a way that starts a chemical chain reaction happens and the result is a story. The beginning of “Incursion”, for example, is taken in part from going for an interview in the financial district in London, Canary Wharf, and all the security hoops they made me jump through. Then there was a long discussion online about what constitutes a “real man”, and my thoughts immediately skipped to the question of “what does it mean to be human”, which is an interesting question when you take all the possibilities of sci-fi. And there is, of course, a voice. I get stories as voices, and I liked Kyle’s voice. In his own, acerbic way, I find him pretty funny. Or I just like sarcastic humour and competent characters who face difficulties or weird situations.
How do you create your characters?
They show up as voices in my head. I know that makes me sound a little crazy, but it’s the truth. Suddenly I hear a voice, and that voice tells me what’s going on (“Here I am, a crippled ex-pilot who has to hunt a shapechanger. I don’t even know what the guy looks like!”). I get to know them better while I gently engage them in conversation, and slowly but surely, I get a feeling for the person, and then I can write them.
What inspires and what got your started in writing?
I think writing is at least in part a compulsion. I mean, what other job or hobby makes you wake up at three at night in a work week to quickly scribble down an idea? My phone is full of badly-typed things I desperately wanted to remember the next morning about “Incursion” and half of that made no sense once I woke up.
I take inspiration from everywhere. It can be a person, or an anecdote, or a historical event, a landscape, but usually it’s pieces and fragments that come together and form a much more complex image, much like a kaleidoscope.
I got started as a teenager. I’ve always told stories (I distinctly remember that from Kindergarten), but I started writing them down when I was maybe 10 or 12. I never stopped. Meanwhile, I learned how to write and got the craft in place to tell stories better. But I think everybody who is a voracious reader has the potential to be a writer.
Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)
Most often, I write in my study, which looks out into the garden and beyond that, the park. I like to listen to music because music can manipulate what I’m feeling, and getting the mood of a scene from the word go is very helpful. I try to remember to drink (ideally water, but I have a fairly high caffeine tolerance), but it’s mostly about having music and some peace and quiet. I can write everywhere as long as I’m halfway sure people can’t watch me (I wouldn’t want to write a sex scene on a bus or train, for example, although I’ve edited them on paper while the banker next to me was kibitzing, which I found pretty amusing).
How do you get your ideas for writing?
They happen. I can’t tell what will inspire me tomorrow, or even in two hours. My mind is terribly busy, I read a great deal, read the papers, generally stay open to input from all kinds of places and sources, but a good idea has a certain “zing” to it, which can be as intense as biting your tongue (but more fun). If the idea keeps coming back and starts growing, it’s most likely something solid enough to work with. When I get the voice on top of that, it’s usually a real idea.
What do you like to read?
Everything. I read classics, I read books written by author-friends, other books in the m/m genre, queer fiction, and I read every submission we get at Riptide. I’m usually the first one to read anything that comes through the door.
I do read more non-fiction than fiction, though, because a great many things I’m writing require a lot of research (I’m foolish enough to try my hand at historical stories every now and then), and I am very interested in military and religious history and wider history, which again fuels my writing. I think as a trained historian, writing fantasy is possibly easier, because there are things I just know about how things are done in a pre-industrial society.
What would your advice to be for authors or aspiring in regards to writing?
It’s really important to bring a lot of different things to the table. A writer has to have faith, but also needs to be critical. At times, you need a really big ego (because boy, you’ll get some knocks), but you still have to be humble enough to learn your craft (and get things like character motivations and point-of-view and good style down pat) and then take edits from a good editor. There are many good authors who get stuck at their current stage of development because they don’t challenge themselves or don’t keep honing their crafts, or reject entirely the idea of getting edited.
Personally, the best authors I know are absolute workhorses that will keep working and editing and who understand that an editor is there to help them make the story better. So it’s a weird job—on one hand, you’re alone and have to drag yourself to the computer every day and keep that book in your head and work on it for months—and then suddenly it becomes a much more collaborative effort as you work with an editor. Personally, once I knew the writing basics, my growth as a writer was largely driven by my editors (and reading some fantastic books). I was lucky (and still am) to work with extremely talented people. Editors are the unsung heroes of our industry, so, if you get one, treat them well and show them gratitude and be open to work hard. Also, be sure to enjoy the process and make friends, because writer friends will keep you sane or provide help when you really need it.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Just to thank you for hosting me on your blog today. I’m happy to take further questions in the comments.
Blurb:
Fighting with your back to the wall is all well and good—as long as you’ve chosen the right wall.
When the local authorities ask Kyle Juenger to hunt a shape-shifting Glyrinny spy, he can’t refuse. After all, he can use the reward to replace his paralyzed legs with cyberware, and maybe even to return to his home planet. Besides, he hates the morphs—those invasive, brain-eating monstrosities whose weapons cost him his legs.
Kyle’s best lead is the Scorpion, a mercenary ship armed to the teeth. Grimm, the Scorpion’s pilot and captain, fascinates Kyle. He’s everything Kyle lost with his legs, and he’s from the same home world. He’s also of the warrior caste—half priest, half savior. But Grimm’s been twisted by life as a merc, and Kyle’s stuck undercover as a criminal on the run.
That doesn’t stop Grimm from coming on to Kyle, or from insisting he’s more than the sum of his past and his useless legs. But Kyle has other concerns—like tracking a dangerous morph who could be wearing anyone’s face. And as if things weren’t complicated enough, Kyle can’t tell if Grimm is part of the solution . . . or part of the problem.
Biography:
Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London, where he makes his living editing dodgy business English so it makes sense (and doesn’t melt anybody’s brain). He published five novels and many short stories in his native language, then switched to English and hasn’t looked back. His genres range from horror, science fiction, cyberpunk, and fantasy to contemporary, thriller, and historical erotic gay novels.
In his spare time, he goes weightlifting, explores historical sites, and meets other writers. He singlehandedly sustains three London bookstores with his ever-changing research projects and interests. His current interests include World War II, espionage, medieval tournaments, and prisoners of war. He loves traveling, action movies, and spy novels.
Visit Aleksandr’s website at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.com, his blog at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com, and follow him on Twitter, where he tweets as @aleksandrvoinov.
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