aroslav: Blog

This is number eleven in my blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

I don’t make a secret of my multiple writing identities. I publish under the name of Devon Layne (aroslav) and as Nathan Everett (Wayzgoose). I consider them divided by the concept that Nathan Everett doesn’t write erotica. Although there are a few steamy scenes, I turn the head before the consummation most of the time. So, I’m going to use one of my Nathan Everett books as an illustration for this post.

The writing community often talks about an author needing to “kill his babies.” This has nothing at all to do with abortion, so step down off your soapbox and give a listen. It means that sometimes you have to edit or rewrite something in your story that you really really like, but it just doesn’t work for the story. Could be a scene, a sentence, a concept, a location. But you love it like a little baby. Whatever it is and no matter how much you like it, it deserves to have a red pencil mark drawn through it. You have to kill it.

Back around 2007 or 2008 when I was still getting my boutique publishing company (LongTale Press, now defunct) off the ground, I attended a writers’ conference in Seattle. There was a social time and I chose to sit at a table with a topic marker that said “Thriller.” For a while, I was the only person there, then one of the speakers came to the table to join me. It was my first encounter with spy thriller author Gayle Lynds. For the better part of an hour we discussed what made a thriller and what we were working on.

I’d recently started planning a novel I was calling “Gutenberg’s Other Book.” I said it would revolve around what happened to the Library of Alexandria. Gayle confided that she was also working on a spy thriller that included a secret library. Her book, Library of Gold, was published in 2010, just a little before mine was. Before her book had gotten very far, the title was changed to The Book of Spies. Mine was changed to The Gutenberg Rubric, and won the second prize in the thriller category at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Literary Competition. It is now, finally, also available on Bookapy.

Gayle advised me to be very careful with my research because people were hyper-critical about any historic or even mechanical detail that was out of place in a thriller. I’d been researching Gutenberg and the Library of Alexandria for over twenty years, so I set about carefully constructing my story. I began writing on January 1, 2009. By August, I had 45,000 words, and hated most of them. I’d carefully plotted a plausible rescue of the library that moved it from location to location for several hundred years until it came to rest in a secret and mysterious location in Turkey.

I interspersed that tale with the story of a librarian who was drawn into the mystery of the location by a hint he’d found in an old manuscript. Of course, some wanted to find the secret location to preserve it, some to destroy it, and some to profit from it. It should have been exciting. But it wasn’t.

I sent my 45,000 words off to The Book Doctor, Jason Black, and asked him what was wrong with it. His words were disheartening.

“Start over. Cut all the stuff about where the library moved over the centuries. It’s stuff you need to know to write the book, but none of your readers need to know it. Then start with some action and steal their shoes!” I’ll talk about the last part next week. Where I got stuck was “Cut all the stuff about where the library…”

I’d spent years working out those details. I’d researched shipping routes, conquests, legends, and myths. I’d read a history of ink that spanned forty centuries! It was over half of what I’d written so far. It was my baby!

And I killed it.

The book turned out very successful, though every time a native German speaker reads it, I get a different set of corrections for the few German phrases included in the book. But there are only allusions to the long history of movement I’d researched and written. I needed to know all that in order to write the book with a realistic foundation. My readers didn’t need to know it at all.

It’s not the last time I scrapped major portions of something I’d written that I really liked. I was some 40,000 words into Devon Layne’s LNDtH6, El Rancho del Corazón when I scrapped the entire draft and started over. When I wrote Nathan Everett’s City Limits, I rewrote and changed over 80% of the book in the second draft—and believe me, some babies fell on the cutting room floor.

Those things are not all lost and gone forever. When I wrote Devon Layne’s Bob’s Memoir, 4,000 Years as a Free Demon, I resurrected some of the material I’d researched about the Library of Alexandria and made saving libraries a passion of Bob’s. I have one little interchange between two unnamed characters that’s just three sentences. I’ve been saving it for two years, waiting for a place that I could use it. Until I find that place, it stays in the nursery. I can’t force it into a story where it doesn’t fit, just because it’s clever.

Ultimately, the goal is to make the story a better read. It’s one of the reasons I don’t understand people who say they just write for themselves, but then subject readers to what they’ve written. If you are going to offer what you’ve written to people to read and enjoy, then someplace along the line, you’ll have to kill your babies.

I mentioned another bit of advice The Book Doctor gave me when writing The Gutenberg Rubric. Next week, I’ll investigate "Stealing Their Shoes."

This is number ten in my blog series about my life as an author of erotica. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. If you are able, I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

From Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5:
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.

Why do I kill people in my stories? I know of authors who start off with hundreds of characters just so they will have another one to kill off in the next chapter. Game of Thrones comes to mind. Even when a favorite character was killed off, readers and viewers got to the point of just fast-forwarding past the event and continuing with the story. My instances are relatively few by comparison and I feel each one serves a purpose that shapes the story. But they are still hard to deal with.

Here is a quote from an irate reader of “Living Next Door to Heaven 4,” Deadly Chemistry, who swore to never read any of my work again because I couldn’t be trusted.

Between a writer and a reader, a trust, an expectation is established. I have enjoyed that relationship, until Denise. Violent and cruel death has not been a part of any of your work I have read. … I say, the writer/reader relationship has been broken.

I’m not going to justify myself on this. I will have to say that the kind of relationship this reader described was entered into by the reader without the author’s consent. My only contract with the reader is to write the best work I am capable of at the time. And if you must know, I hated myself for that murder and for the murder that comes in part eight, Becoming the Storm.

Denise’s death was a significant factor in the development of Brian’s character. Brian was the protector of his clan and he failed to protect her. He blames himself for her death. And when he exacts his vengeance, he ends up with an act on his conscience that he can never admit to. It shapes his future relationship with Rhonda (Hannah). It emerges in Becoming the Storm when he responds to a campus shooting and loses another member of the clan. It drives him forward in his television show and campaign to bring an unethical journalist to account for vandalism and libel. I don’t think I could have written Brian standing up to Rhonda’s abusive boyfriend in The Rock if he hadn’t gone through that experience.

But how do I determine when a character is to die?

It isn’t easy. By the end of LNDtH1, Guardian Angel, I knew this death was going to occur. I developed the character of Denise specifically to facilitate that act when I introduced her in part two, The Agreement. And then I kept delaying the murder because I wrote a character that I truly liked. At the end of part two, I said to myself, “Not yet. She doesn’t deserve this.” I said the same thing at the end of part three, Foolish Wisdom. But when I wrote the title of part four, Deadly Chemistry, I knew I couldn’t delay it any longer.

And when it happened, I HATED myself!

She didn’t deserve to die. She was funny and loving and lovable and dynamic. I loved her! But the story would have ended in the next chapter if she hadn’t died. Her death shaped Brian’s response and his guilt that continued through the next five parts.

I don’t often have detailed outlines. I normally write so fast that I outrun an outline. I do, however, have a developmental arc for a story that tells me where I’m going and I knew there was going to be a campus shooting and one of the clan would die with several others injured in part eight. I once again wrote the character that would be kind and loving and not deserving to die. I developed the character specifically for that purpose. But when it came time, I couldn’t kill her. I chose a different character that was less major to the story.
I still hated myself.

Let me tell you about writing that chapter. I was camped on the Oregon Coast. It was already after ‘the season.’ No one else was in the State Park campground in October. I wrote the chapter while yelling at myself with tears streaming down my face. When I finished the chapter, I kept pounding out 5,000 more words just to get it out of my system. Then I slammed my laptop closed and didn’t open it again for a week. I spent that week wandering the beach, screaming my frustration and anger at the waves.

What’s more, a week after I wrote the scene, just seventy-five miles southeast of where I was camped, a disgruntled student at a community college killed nine and wounded eight more in a shooting rampage. The shooter matched the profile of the shooter I’d described in the story.

So why? Why introduce a horrific incident into a polyamorous erotica story.

There are some things that I write that people accept because they are so over-the-top ridiculous that they laugh and simply go with the rest of the story. Most of the love affairs in my stories are that. They are filled with what we’d love to have happen, rather than what we know reality to be. But the thing that sells that over-the-top romance and sex is the reality of the setting. If the entire rest of the story was a bland backdrop, none of the story would feel plausible.

And violence in our world is such a constant that we refuse to think about it unless it directly affects someone we care about. People offered thoughts and prayers for the blank faces that were killed in the Umpqua Community College incident. It didn’t touch them. But the death of a fictional character in Living Next Door to Heaven enraged them.

Good. It should.

I have often stated that there can be no happily ever after if it has been happily ever before. Or as Queen Elizabeth II (and others) once said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” I hate to write about it, but I cannot let this issue go unaddressed. Art exposes reality. It doesn’t mimic it or lead it. If you read my stories, you will have to deal with death, depression, anxiety, homelessness, broken hearts, discrimination, and disease. I write over-the-top fantasies in a down-to-earth real world setting.

Next week, if I still have any readers left, I’ll deal with a subject that sounds the same, but in reality is very different: Killing Your Babies.

This is number nine in my weekly blog series about my life as an author of erotica. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.

I’VE ALLUDED to some of the things I’m going to write about today in previous posts. Let me start by saying that ‘genre bending’ is not the same as ‘gender bending,’ so if your sensitive little balls just crawled up inside your pelvis, relax. This isn’t a Budweiser commercial.

I want to dig deeper into making a genre—like sci-fi, incest, do-over, mind control, mystery, etc.—a universe—like SWARM, Damsels in Distress, Naked in School, etc.—or a story your own. Let’s take a couple of examples and have some fun.

I was recruited to write a SWARM story by a couple of authors through gentle suggestions saying they thought I should have something to contribute to that universe. I complained that I didn’t know a thing about the military and wasn’t likely to learn much. Zen Master wrote to me and said they had lots of guys who knew military stuff, but they needed more good characters.

I read every story (290+ at the time) in the SWARM Universe twice before I decided to set about writing something in it. It started with a simple premise of “Porn Stars Save the Universe.” I knew a little something about porn stars from hanging out with them at AVN and online. I had gained a lot of respect for several of them. I started highlighting places where other authors had opened the door a crack to things like a rebellious AI, people who refused to take service in the Confederacy, and the development of technology the Confederacy considered ‘outdated.’

When the first book, Pussy Pirates, was finished, the SWARM authors kind of took a collective breath and said, “Okay. We asked for it.” Omachuck, who had been significant in editing, latched onto the ideas and wrote them into his next story. But it was not a pickup and escape to the stars to do battle with the Sa’arm story. It was all earth-centric, with people who were non-military and below the grade that would have made them citizens of the Confederacy. The second book, The Assassin, I specifically released as “non-canon” so other authors would not have to deal with my version of the future of that universe.

I have had a weakness for do-over stories, but got really tired of hearing the same old same old from them. First, I set out to write one that would simply break all the rules. In Not This Time, my hero woke up at 17, not 14, the morning after making the worst mistake of her life. Yep. Her! She didn’t have perfect recall of everything that had happened in her former life. She recalled the things that had been important to her. And she had to make a new life out of the miserable mess of one she’d had, following her unwanted pregnancy.

Then I set out to sort of redeem myself with another do-over that would have an old man thrust back into his almost fifteen-year-old body. I just don’t have the stomach for fourteen-year-olds having great sex. “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins.”

I couldn’t just go with the genre, though, without putting my own peculiar stamp on it again. Jacob was back in what he could identify as his teenage body, but it was a different timeline in an alternate universe. People were familiar, but often in different roles. The timeline was after his first time on earth, so most of what he remembered could inform him about how to behave, but couldn’t make him rich by knowing the future. And the rules of the society were different, often including things he had advocated in his previous life. Now he had to live with them.

He ended up in a constant struggle between his old man self and his teenage self, so he could enjoy his youth. The old man kept trying to ruin everything.

The point of these illustrations is that somewhere in the story of our lives, there is room for an alternative version. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fites (the bitch) was determined to break me of the habit of saying that something was “just like this but different” in some way. I raised a hand one day and carefully stated, “I lost a pencil similar to this one, but with a red eraser.” Without ever actually hearing what I said, Mrs. Fites said, “It can’t be just like that if it’s different.” It was the first time I understood that teachers didn’t listen. Still, I often think, ‘Just like this but different.’

Within every story type, every archetype, every myth and scripture, there is room for a, “Yeah, but what about if they did this instead?”

When I wrote in the “Damsels in Distress” universe, my first question was, “Why do all the heroes have to be ex-military. Aren’t there other heroes in the world?” I wrote about Hero Lincoln who was a theatre major, paralyzed from the waist down after he was struck by a car while saving his niece and sister-in-law. That was a hero, and he fully deserved a trip to the healing chamber. He took an earthly caretaker with him and while he was still on crutches was sent off to rescue a damsel who didn’t really want to be rescued. His weapon was his crutch and a deck of cards.

The Hero explored a different part of the continent, once mentioned in another author’s book, faced some of the forbidden animals, dealt with disillusioned damsels, and had to knock one of them out in order to drag her back to Crossroads. There was lots of space to create something new in a well-established universe.

Inserting my own adventure in a history that sounded like it ‘could have’ happened was truly topped off in my Bob’s Memoir series. A 4,000-year-old demon travels throughout the world, inserting himself into different known stories from history and mythology. Frankly, it was one of the most fun books I’ve ever written!

I approached the myth of Pygmalion thinking, ‘If it happened to one artist, surely it has happened to others.’ So, I wrote a whole series of stories based around the relationships of artists and their artworks called Pygmalion Revisited. All had different media and stories, but all had the magical relationship of an artist and his or her artwork.

When people ask me where I get ideas for what I write, I don’t even know how to answer. How can I not have ideas about what to write? Look at any story—even in the newspaper or on Twitter—and then say, “Just like that, but this is different.” You have a whole new look at the genre.

With a little luck and the crick don’t rise, I’ll have a lot more stories to come. Next week, I’m going to deal with a very hard subject: Murder, He Wrote.

I am so thrilled and humbled to have received your vote for the 2022 Clitorides Awards. Coach was selected as "Best Romantic Story." I am always pleased when you enjoy my stories. Thank you again!

This is number eight in my weekly blog series about my life as an author of erotica. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.

AN OLD ADAGE in the writing business is to “write what you know.” If you know police procedure, then write a procedural mystery. If you know insider politics at the national level, then write about a corrupt senator. If you know military strategy, write a war drama.

If we took that far enough, only serial killers could write about Gacy. Only an art thief could write about a theft in the National Gallery. Only an astronaut could write space operas. And only an elf could write high fantasy. Writing what you know might not get you where you want to be. It certainly wouldn’t me. I needed to write what I wanted to know.

I took some art classes in 2005, and then, in 2010, I wrote a story about a painter who made love to his models. My second major story was about a painter who was depressed because he felt like a fake. He painted watercolor and oil and murals and frescoes. I’ve never painted at that level. I have suffered from some amount of depression and I suffered with my daughter’s depression when she went off to college. I’d have to say, I wrote what I wanted to know—maybe what I needed to know about handling depression—not what I knew.

During my travels in 2014, I met a one-time neighbor of mine from back in the days I was in junior high and before. He was older than I by half a dozen years. I’d given him my card and he invited me to stop at his farm in Southern Indiana the next time I came through the state. I did the next year and spent a very pleasant long weekend dry camped under an old sycamore tree on his farm. We often relaxed together in the evening with a little drink and I discovered he’d been reading my books avidly.

“Devon, I’ve known you for fifty-five or sixty years. We were neighbors. During that time, my daddy and I raised cattle and horses. We farmed over a hundred acres. I’ve been a farmer and rancher all my life and I still have fifty head of cattle out in the pasture. I know cattle and horses,” Mike said. “And I know you never had a ranch or a farm! So, in that whole erotic paranormal romance western adventure series, how did you know so much about ranching?”

Mike was truly puzzled and amazed. He went on to cite passages where I wrote about how much dry feed it would take to winter cattle, how the price at auction worked, and how many acres were needed for a herd of horses.

How did I know that stuff?

“Mike,” I said, “it’s called research. You worked for a while as a county extension agent. Well, they’ve got those up in Wyoming, too. A friendly bunch who were happy to answer questions. The librarians at the Coe Library on the University of Wyoming Campus pulled down plat maps from 1866, a contemporary history of Laramie written in 1872, train schedules for the Union Pacific, and a record of who the area ranchers were and how much land they claimed at the turn of the twentieth century.

“The school system transportation department was happy to tell me details about how long the bus ride was from Centennial to Laramie, how many kids of what ages were on the bus, how many stops it made along the way, and what they did in bad weather. Research is how I learned about the ranchers’ opinion of the introduction of wolves into the Yellowstone and Rockies and the adversarial relationship with the Forest Service. Research brought me Cheyenne legends, the migratory patterns of buffalo, and the troop movements of the cavalry that massacred the Cheyenne at Sand Creek. It’s all about research.”

Well, of course, it was also infused with what I did know. Laramie Wyoming Bell was a Cheyenne girl I went to school with the summer of 1966 in Colorado. Never forgot her beauty, her gentle demeanor, or her name. And never managed to find her again, no matter how much research I did. I hiked many of the mountains in that range. I rode horseback through some of them and owned my own horse for a few years.

But there are also subjects I avoid because I don’t know anything about them. I’ve learned my lesson with some. In Blackfeather, I mentioned a girl firing a Henry.44 rifle in 1866 and its kick bruising her shoulder. “That rifle wouldn’t bruise a baby! It had no more kick than firing a.44 revolver. That’s all wrong,” wrote a gun person. I believe that was the last time I wrote a story that specified any kind of firearm!

I don’t know military anything. I sometimes have to write about a person’s rank or pay or training, and when I do, it takes hours of research, reading the memoirs of people who served at the time, running it by my editors who served at the time, and trying to wrap my head around what that was like. And I still get it wrong at times. My hero in the Hero Lincoln series was unlike any previous hero in the Damsels in Distress Universe. He was not former military. He was a crippled magician and juggler with a theatre degree. I understood that.

The same was true when I wrote two stories for the SWARM universe. Even though the stories talked about creating a militia, it was a very unmilitary organization. I avoided anything that smacked of regular military. Not because I’m opposed to those stories, but because I don’t know anything about it.

So, if you ask me if I write what I know, my answer is yes and no. Personal experience creeps into everything an author writes, but—as I had to explain to my older sister—having written about a good and caring father didn’t mean that I had a good and caring father. It was more what I wished I had.

And that, I could imagine.

Next week, let’s talk about the exciting topic of genre bending.