Author Aleksandr Voinov finds the rainbow connection

You know how we romance authors get frustrated so often by our exclusion from, well, pretty much everything to do with the publishing world except when it comes to supporting it with our book sales? When was the last time you saw a romance novel on a "25 books to read this fall" list — a list that wasn't about romance novels to begin with? Now imagine taking that frustration and ratcheting it up a couple notches or three. That's what gay romance authors are feeling. Here, author and Riptide Publishing co-founder Aleksandr Voinov shares his experience as an author of gay and bisexual fiction in an overwhelmingly heterosexual romance publishing world. (Oh, and by the way, Aleksandr's latest release is Gold Digger, available at Riptide and where e-books are sold.)

Aleksandr: I grew up in the '80s, surrounded by camp (I mean, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, big hair and bigger shoulders, even for women). In the late '80s, my own uncle (my favorite of the four) came out as gay — which was a bit of a sea change for me, the awkward teenager, because it confirmed, in a way, that I wasn't "quite normal" either. In a family with traditional gender roles and pretty low levels of education, some things were just not understood.

As a writer, I embarked on a five-book paperback career in Germany. These were adventure stories, action adventures, cool people doing cool stuff. I received reviews on Amazon saying, essentially, "Cracking read, but that awesome main character then HAD to turn out to be GAY! EWWW!"

My soon-acquired literary agent and a number of acquiring editors then told me that I might get away with a gay supporting character, but the German market wasn't ready for a gay main character.

Essentially, gay characters were OK as tokens — very much in keeping with Hollywood, where gay characters were typically victims being punished by death for their homosexuality, psychotic murderers, or the gay caricature: the shrill, hand-waving sidekick who's there largely for comic relief. Under no circumstances could gay characters just be and do. As an author, I'd gone against the expectation by having gay (or bisexual) characters be competent fighters, soldiers, politicians, or even mages, and the literary establishment told me it wasn't ready for it. I tried to "heterosexualize" my writing — and hit a wall so hard I barely managed to pick myself up again.

That, I think, is the Muse's way to punish us if we're not writing what we must. The Muse has the power to make us suffer if we're not telling the stories that are inside us — just to get a contract with a big publisher. I ended up writing for myself and a few friends, pretty much like I'd started, meanwhile coming to grips with my own identity and seeking out every scrap of rainbow literature and rainbow characters and other rainbow writers and shows.

And I got tired of the shrillness, the madness and death. It didn't match my own perception of rainbow people — gays, lesbians, queer, trans* people. They aren't funnier, they aren't more insane/violent, and they don't look or act like victims ready to die for their "sins." Instead, we're just people. We succeed and fail in business like everybody else, we fall in and out of love, and apart from possibly being a bit more scarred and thoughtful about our identities (though I've met shallow queens and sexist gays), we're just the same old people you'd get in any other group.

I decided then that my main characters would reflect that: how competent we rainbow people are, how strong, how beautiful and how sane (if often at a price). That trans* people aren't just about their internal or external genitals, that a gay soldier is still a soldier and that assuming that all readers are straight or homophobic or immature does them a disservice, too. We write to communicate. Assuming that the person we're talking to is a closed-minded radical who can't understand a story told about a non-straight person is an insult. Whoever can't deal with normal, healthy rainbow people in their reading will protect themselves from my writing; I don't have to do that for them. Or maybe they'll stumble across it accidentally, and maybe they'll hate it for what it is and what it represents, but that's fine. We grow the most when faced with the unexpected. And literature does hold the power to open people's eyes.

When I was searching for rainbow things — trying to come to terms with who I was and who I wanted to be — I was desperate for the message that rainbow people, too, can succeed and survive and thrive, that not all love means we have to die. Now I both write these things as an author and publish them as part-owner of Riptide Publishing, an LGBTQ press. I do this despite the fact that many still judge me a lesser writer because I write genre fiction with rainbow people in the lead. Despite the fact that literary agents continue to straight-wash us, despite the fact that Big Publishing would probably all prefer us to write heterosexual books about white heterosexual people for the assumed white heterosexual reader.

And I do this despite — and because — of the fact that publishers are taking even fewer risks than they used to, and "fringe" characters who are not white and heterosexual and following the traditional idea of gender are getting squeezed out between celebrity bios and "boinkbusters" cloned from Fifty Shades and all the other "safe bets."

Even now, as society grows more tolerant day by day, more open to alternate sexualities and alternate genders and alternate ideas, the bulk of our literature stubbornly refuses to reflect it, no matter how hungry readers may in fact be for such stories. And I know they are — my own sales and those of my publishing house prove this out on a daily basis.

For all the many frustrations of these struggles, they have made me a stronger person. Not feeling welcome in the mainstream made me look outside of it. People trying to push me one way meant I grew a pretty stiff spine, and eventually led to founding Riptide Publishing, which has no such preconceptions. Two people on the core staff are transgendered, two are bisexual, one is a lesbian; our authors are of all colors of the rainbow (and we do embrace our straight and cis-gendered brothers and sisters!).

We publish rainbow romances, and rainbow literary fiction — all with the guiding idea that we deserve better than death, insanity or ridicule. That readers deserve to open up the pages of a book and see themselves in the heroes and heroines within. That writers deserve to pursue such visions. That rainbow people can be the main characters in any kind of story, rather than sidekicks or victims. And that one day, nobody will think this is anything special or strange or different in any way.

Author Rachel Haimowitz, managing editor and co-founder of Riptide Publishing, contributed to this report. You can find out more about her and her books at RachelHaimowitz.com.

For more information about Aleksandr and his books, you can visit his website, AleksandrVoinov.com.