aroslav: Blog

That means I have a fresh bag of Tootsie Rolls, a new can of Stephen's Gourmet Dark Chocolate mix. Plenty of Cafe Vienna, and a new computer. Not so sure about the wisdom of that last item, but last week, a crack in the case of my laptop became a break and a chunk of it fell off. This new one has "issues" that I'm dealing with. Most of the time, though, it lets me type.

"What..." you may ask, "are you writing for NaNoWriMo this year?"

I might answer.

Of course, the short answer is that I'm writing the fourth book in the "Photo Finish Trilogy," F/Stop. Yes, and there will be a fifth book, too. Some trilogy.

My Sausage Grinder tier patrons, who want to see what I write without the benefit of rewrites and edits, will start getting access to the new draft Tuesday evening. I'll be making daily updates to my draft, and they can follow along almost as I'm writing it. Of course, the first drafts of Shutter Speed and Exposure will remain available to Sausage Grinders throughout the month and probably longer.

I don't want my Wayzgoose/NathanEverett patrons to languish. I'll also be posting the rewrite draft of my Steven George and The Dragon sequel, Steven George and the Terror for patrons. That one is not a NaNoWriMo entry because I entered it in first draft back in November of 2008. It's been sitting in my files patiently waiting for a rewrite which is now in progress. Editors can expect that one before they see F/Stop. It's much shorter.

This is my nineteenth consecutive year of participating in NaNoWriMo, and I have "won" every year. That means I completed 50,000 words of a new book. Add to that, nine "Camp NaNoWriMo" successes. Most of the books I've written while producing 2,271,924 words in those eighteen years, have been published. I am grateful to each of you who have found it in your hearts to buy one of them. Thank you!

Aside from all that, things are peaceful in Las Vegas. Have met up with my friends Al and Donna and we have already been to two shows: Reckless in Vegas, and Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Both fun shows.

I got the dental implant taken care of last week, so I shouldn't have any more problems with that. The rent is paid. I think I'm ready to roll.

Here's an interesting tidbit, though. Maybe you'll give me a hand. I hope you've read and voted for your favorite Halloween contest stories--or will tomorrow when they are released. Last year, my story didn't place. It was a Wayzgoose story called "The Burgundy Chamber." I'm thinking now of expanding it. I could create a whole series of short stories with this cast and setting, or I could do a novel that launches from this point. I've started doing research on some of the holes in the short story. It is intentionally vague about time and place, but it liberally mixes things up. If I turn it into a real novel, I need to know the time and place of the story, and a lot of backstory on the main characters. I'll probably need to find a Victorian country mansion to model the house on that fits with some of the preconceived notions I've already painted. I'd guess there is a good three months of background work and plotting to do before I jump into that story, but if you've got ideas, let me know.

Happy Halloween!

Bob says a fond farewell to all today. The final chapter of Bob's Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon has been posted.

There was an error in the initial posting that indicated the story was to be continued, but that has been corrected. Chapter 73 is the final chapter and now says "The End."

There are always a few messages that come in at a time like this from people who want to know if it will continue. Well, I've already prognosticated things into the 2030s and I'm afraid that in order to go further, I'll have to wait fifty or a hundred years to find out what Bob does next. As soon as I see that, I'll write it up and post it.

So, now there is just one aroslav story being posted for a while--Full Frame, book one of the Photo Finish series. Don't worry, though. I foresee another Wayzgoose story on the horizon. And I still have another Photo Finish story to write in November. What is an ending is always indicative of another beginning!

Enjoy!

I heard you on my wireless back in '52
Lying awake, intent at tuning in on you
If I was young, it didn't stop you coming through
--The Buggles, 1980

I've been really enjoying everyone's comments and email that started with whether Nate in Full Frame could hear WLS Chicago out in Tenbrook, IL, and progressed to people sharing stories about where WLS could be heard in the world or what other AM stations were listened to back in our youth. What great stories!

In fact, they fascinate me enough that I've opened a channel on my Discord (Aroslav's Stories), just for people to record their AM experiences. Where were you when the great DJs of the 50s, 60s, and 70s were broadcasting. I even had one reader tell me that he was listening to the radio during FDR's famous "Day in Infamy" speech that put the US in World War II after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

I think one day, if comments keep coming in, I'd like to put the whole collection up here on SOL and on my website, either as a story or in a blog post.

I can't give you the Discord address in this post or it won't appear in your feed. It is in the comments on Full Frame and, of course, I'll supply it if you request it. I do hope you will join the conversation.

I'm still in the Seattle area this week and will be in transit back to Las Vegas next Sunday. It seems it's been a busy two weeks since I came up here, with the flying trip to Indianapolis last weekend. Good times.

Mostly, I'm writing as much as possible, but these last couple of chapters have been slow going. I'd guess Exposure will still require a rewrite before I'm done... at least of the last half. I don't think I've set up the climax well enough throughout the story. That's book 3 of the "Photo Finish" series that I intended to be a trilogy and now will be a quadology. Or maybe even a pentology. I'm sure you know what those are.

I'll be devoting NaNoWriMo in November to writing book 4, F/Stop. If it goes as long as the others, there's no chance I'll finish it in November, but that still means this is a great time to join my Patreon at the Sausage Grinder tier ($10/month). Not only do you get advance access to Full Frame, but you get to see what I'm writing in the raw unedited form each week. I'm keeping the first drafts of Shutter Speed and Exposure accessible to Sausage Grinders throughout the drafting of the next book.

When I'm not typing, I'm watching Div III Women's Basketball. The season starts in three weeks so I'm watching archived copies of last season's games. If you'd asked me a year ago to name a Div III school or team, I couldn't have answered the question. I never would have thought that I'd know all nine teams in the American Rivers Conference, their mascots, and at least one player on each team. My personal fan favorite is Simpson College Storm in Indianola, Iowa. But really, I'll cheer for all the other teams in the conference.

The player whose style and skill I modeled Natalie after in the "Team Manager" series will be playing for the Northwestern Iowa College Red Raiders this fall. That presents a dilemma for me because the Raiders are an NAIA team, so I'll have to learn some of their teams while I'm watching this fall.

Should I try to follow my alma mater's Div II team, the UIndy Greyhounds? That would be the loyal thing to do, right?

And all this while I'm studying photography and society in the late 1960s and early 70s. What a job!

I'm always a little wired on the days when I release a new book. Today just happens to be more so.

When I live with a bunch of characters for six months while my story takes shape, and I learn about their challenges and victories and heartaches, I start getting very impatient to share that with other people. While I made the decision to hold publication until the day that the Team Manager Series concluded, Full Frame has been finished since May and in various stages of rewrite and edit as I worked on the next two books in the "Photo Finish" series.

Comments and email coming in with the first posting are all about how I described the signal of WLS in western Illinois as weak and strongest at night on Nate's transistor radio. Yes, WLS was one of the strongest radio stations in the country, but I maintain, based on my experience growing up in northern Indiana with a crappy transistor radio in 1962-1968, that terrain and equipment quality affect the reception as much as signal strength. I'm sticking with the statement as written. That was my experience. Reception improved when I moved to Indianapolis.

I certainly wasn't expecting that to be the biggest issue, but I'm glad it was so simple.

There's a review by johnny69 up on SOL already, so if you're hesitating about reading, please check it out.

Aside from that, I'm currently in the airport in Indianapolis, waiting for a flight back to Seattle. I've been here the weekend for my UIndy class of 1972 fifty-year reunion. It was good to meet some old classmates and other graduates of the University, back when it was ICC, Indiana Central College, who knew my family, especially my mother who was the first ordained woman in the Methodist church in Indiana (not Illinois). It was fun to swap stories and reconnect.

I even picked up a story or two that I could integrate into Nate's experience at Columbia College Chicago in a future volume. I've also figured out who was in the picture that I'm currently using as a cover for book 3, Exposure.

I've just finished my lunch at Champ's in the airport and am ready to get a cup of coffee and relax at the gate while I finish posting a bunch of social media stuff.

Enjoy!

Wayzgoose: We’re here with author aroslav, also known as Devon Layne, whose newest story, Full Frame, will release to SOL readers on October 2. Happy 73rd birthday, aroslav.
aroslav: Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.

W: I’m glad no one else could hear you sing that. You’re a pretty prolific author, aroslav. Full Frame releases next week. How many does this make?
A: By my count, this makes fifty-six titles since my debut on SOL in 2011. That’s all under my identity as aroslav. There are seventeen others under pseudonyms. Hey! That makes 73 for my 73rd birthday!

W: How can you possibly write five books a year?
A: Once an idea gets in my head, I just have to keep writing until I get the first draft out. Full Frame is actually my sixth release in 2022. I’ve got two more in editing, but they won’t be released until 2023. So far this year, I’ve written a little over a million words.

W: So, your books spring full grown from the head of Zeus and you post them.
A: No, not at all. My first drafts are like everyone else’s. I usually do at least one rewrite and then I have an editing cycle that goes through four editors: GMBusman, Pixel the Cat, Old Rotorhead, and Cie_Mel. And several other readers check for specific content. Nightmare is a professional photographer who read for photographic details. Burka_Oz made a last pass and checked my eBook code. I reread and correct each time an editor returns a chapter. My books aren’t error free, but the quality is pretty good. And I don’t start posting them until they are finished, and I can pre-load the entire story.

W: Full Frame is about a young photographer who moves with his family from Chicago to a small Illinois town in the 1960s. Judging by your age, it could be about you. How much of the book would you say is autobiographical?
A: Oh, not much, really. I did move to a small town when I was in high school in the 60s, so the setting and some family experiences are similar. But beyond that, the story and the characters are all manufactured from my imagination. Sometimes they might bear some resemblance to me or people I knew, but I think the characters resemble the kids found in any small-town school in the Midwest in the 60s. That’s all it is, though. A resemblance.

W: So, you’re not an award-winning photographer?
A: Hardly. I did win a 4-H award in photography when I was twelve, but the similarity ends there. I take photos as a way to collect memories of vacations. Even those photos have little to recommend them.

W: What inspired this particular coming of age story?
A: I’ve written several coming of age stories in the genre of erotic romance and adventure. I think the age of the protagonist—almost seventeen—is a time of important discoveries, especially in relationships. As we get older, we have a tendency to romanticize what was, for many of us, a very uncomfortable if not downright painful period of our lives. So, I was searching for something to hang such a romanticized story around. Believe me, as far as the relationships in the story go, I don’t think I ever knew anyone who had a similar experience or even attitude.

W: Does that play well to your audience?
A: My audience, according to a survey I took, is mostly older men. I’ve learned a lot about them over the past ten years—especially, as I’ve become one. They want a story about a teen growing up who has a real talent of some sort and makes the most of it. As it happens, my readers seem to really enjoy stories in which the hero has an artistic talent. I’ve written stories about painters, theatre designers, sculptors, musicians, and actors. I think there is a mystique around them—artists are somehow extraordinary in their relationships. I was looking for an art for my new story and came up with photography.

Nate—the protagonist in Full Frame—becomes the 1967 equivalent of the selfie stick for many of his models. It helps that he is also a very talented photographer. He processes and prints his own photographs, so they don’t get sent out to the local drugstore where everyone can see them. So, the girls who pose for him feel a little freer—perhaps wilder. Because he’s the only one who’ll ever see them, right?

W: The Internet is forever.
A: Yes. But it didn’t exist in even a rudimentary form until the 1980s.

W: Do you have difficulty keeping track of terms or technologies that weren’t around back then?
A: Definitely! And if I miss something, you can bet a reader will point it out to me and to the rest of the world in comments. A good example dealt with what film was available. I had a problem with such a simple thing as mentioning the ISO of a certain film. Well, the ISO standard didn’t come about until 1974. Up until that time, we referred to the film ASA, or in Europe, DIN. Those were combined in ’74 to create the ISO standard. My main character could never have referred to the film speed as ISO100 in 1967.

What car did he drive? Did he have seatbelts? Was it legal to have an interracial marriage? How short were the skirts? I mentioned a character’s parents having met in college and married. I specifically identified what college because that college has one of my favorite Div III Women’s Basketball teams. Then I found out that at the time of my story, it was a men’s college and didn’t have women in it. Upon further research, though, I discovered that for a brief period in the 40s when this couple would have met, the college included a nursing school that was all women. The schools split a few years later.

W: You must have an interesting search history.
A: Many authors talk about hoping the government isn’t monitoring their search history. It gets pretty bizarre. My favorites directory includes the academic calendar for several different colleges; the 1969 draft lottery; weather history for Dubuque, Chicago, and Las Vegas; large format cameras; slang words for lesbians and bi women; Dr. Grabow pipes and tobacco blends; student protests in Chicago in 1968; Sears catalogs and wishbooks; property values; medical vibrators for treatment of female hysteria; popular 1967 drive-in movies; 1967-68 network television prime time schedule; and laws regarding student/teacher sexual relations in 1969.

W: Why would a reader want to pick up Full Frame?
A: I suppose I can’t just say that I wrote it and it’s good, so you should read it. I think the characters will pull you in and you’ll fall in love as if you were a teenager. If a couple breaks up in the story, you will be broken-hearted. At least until the next relationship begins.

But I hope that people who read this book are reminded of the era in which we marched for and demanded desegregation and civil rights for all, marriage equality and women’s equality, opposition to an unjust and unnecessary war and the draft that kept it fueled with warm bodies, and voting rights for eighteen-year-olds. Since a large segment of my readership comprises boomers, I hope they will all be reminded of what we struggled for in the 1960s and try to slow down the dismantling of what we worked so hard to build.

W: Thank you, aroslav. Once again, happy birthday. That book is Full Frame, book one of the “Photo Finish” series. The eBook will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookapy. Serialization at StoriesOnline begins October 2, 2022.