aroslav: Blog

Well, the year was a little bumpy getting started, but I think I’m moving forward again. January 2, I had to post to my patrons that I’d done no new writing that week! Almost unheard of. It had to do with my cancelled flight from Seattle to Las Vegas and getting out of town four days late, then having my daughter and her husband show up for five days the next day. Wouldn’t have traded that for all the words in the dictionary!

This week, I’ve gotten rolling again and managed to get two new chapters out. I'm ready to hit the keyboard again this afternoon. That work is on Team Manager CHAMP!, which I expect to be the last volume in the Team Manager Series. Don’t forget that Team Manager COACH! is slated to start here on February 1. The eBook will be released at the same time.

This is important:

I deleted a comment from the Team Manager SPRINT! comments last night. I deliberated a long time about it before I hit the trash container. I really don’t mind occasional political comments (which pop up every time a firearm is mentioned in one of my stories). I don’t mind being called out on my antiquated haying processes in the story. Sorry. My memories of haying are from 60 years ago. I was a little nostalgic.

What I don’t like is flaming. Flaming is anytime a reader makes a personal attack on another reader rather than on the content of a comment. You can cite all the studies you want regarding whether gun control works or not. Stick to the subject. You can send me YouTube videos on modern haying operations. Fine. But don’t start calling people names and questioning their intelligence just because they disagree with you. I’ll delete it. And if it gets too bad, I’ll close off the comments entirely.

And please, don’t try to tell me that infringes your right to free speech! I’m not passing any governmental laws about what you can and can’t say. I’m telling you that it isn’t welcome in my comment feed and I’ll kick it out. Your right to free speech stops at my ears.

Aside from that, I’m also having a great time working on the rewrite of Bob’s Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. I cranked out that story at the phenomenal rate of 5,000 words a day during November. Now, in rewriting it, I’ve discovered how much I left out! Usually, when I rewrite, I compress things and edit them down. This is turning out to be about 50% longer in the rewrite than in the first draft!

I just hope that everyone else finds the story as riveting as I do. I’m having a blast! Probably looking at March or April release.

Enjoy!

I'd like to say to start that I made it home to Las Vegas safely on Thursday afternoon. Everything at home is fine and now I'm doing the last bit of touchup before my daughter and son-in-law arrive here today. Cooking those blackeye peas and getting New Year's dinner ready.

I was going to just list my accomplishments for 2021, but then I heard about Betty White passing and just had to pause and think about what accomplishment really looks like--not just in longevity, but in a career and life that was superlative. RIP Betty.

Now to that little bit of accomplishment I managed this year. I put nineteen new books up on Bookapy (author Devon Layne and author Nathan Everett). Fifteen were republished in that they were older books that had never been released on Bookapy. Still trying to catch up with that.

The new books were The Assassin, Team Manager SWISH!, and Team Manager SPRINT! by Devon Layne and Jackie the Beanstalk by Nathan Everett. Those books also posted for free on SOL and in advance release to my patrons. And speaking of patrons, I released thirty-six books from my backlist as special editions exclusively given to my patrons. I love giving stuff away, and patrons make that possible.

SWISH! set a new sales record for me with over 900 copies sold on Bookapy, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble this year. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who have supported my writing through these sales. I hope you continue to enjoy my work.

I also released on SOL and on my personal websites, ten short stories. I'm enjoying digging through my paper archives and reworking stories that I wrote fifty years ago!

In writing new stuff, I produced a phenomenal (for me) 1,174,089 words this year. A little over 136,000 were words on my various blogs. 150,157 were the words of my NaNoWriMo project, Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. That book will be out this spring both as an SOL serial and as an eBook. I'm currently rewriting it and sending it out to editors.

So, I'd guess you'd say I've had a pretty good year in terms of using my isolation for the betterment of mankind. Or at least for the entertainment of the masses.

I now have 141 patrons on Patreon and they are beloved. I try to keep producing as much material as I can to keep their voracious appetites sated. And they provide for my needs in return. Their contributions are what keep me able to produce stories for free on SOL and on my websites. I am overwhelmed by their gracious generosity.

So there you have my year in words and stories. Here's hoping for a whole bunch more in 2022. I hope yours (and mine) is happy, healthy, and safe.

author Devon Layne aka Nathan Everett, aroslav, Wayzgoose

So, all ready for a Happy New Year? I've got to tell you, I just hope I'll get home by then!

I was at the airport after a treacherous drive Sunday morning, on time and ready to fly. The previous night, the temperatures dropped into the twenties and teens and we got several inches of snow. How many? It depends on exactly where you were, but at the airport I could clearly see six to eight inches.

We were slated to board at 8:20 for an 8:55 flight, but by the time I got there, the flight had been delayed until 9:40. With no pilot or flight crew having yet arrived at the airport, we were delayed to 10:40. That was about when the crew arrived. But they started hustling around and getting the airplane warmed up, so we were permitted to board a few minutes after 11:00. By that time, flight time had been delayed to 11:40. Deicer was sprayed on the aircraft and we pushed back from the gate.

Thirty minutes later, we were back at the gate.

Visibility and weather conditions had closed in on us and it was not safe enough to take off. Well, better safe than sorry, right?

We kept getting announcements that it would only be a few minutes until around 2:15 when they opened the door and said we could get off the plane and get food and restrooms if we wanted, but to take everything with us if we deplaned because we might not get back on. I elected to stay onboard. The restroom was right behind my seat and I'd already eaten, so I opened my computer to work for a while.

A few minutes before three, everyone was hurried onboard again for immediate takeoff. We were back from the gate by ten after and waiting for deicing one more time. The deicing truck, ran out of fluid. It had to go back to the garage to refill. At 3:25, we pulled back up to the gate and were told the flight was canceled. There was a lot of hoorah about how we'd be automatically rescheduled on the next available flight or we could call Alaska Airlines ticket desk. Better yet, just go online to use our convenient app. Hah!

By 4:30, I'd collected my luggage and left the airport just nine hours after I left the house to go there. About five, I got an email saying I couldn't be automatically rescheduled and to call about future arrangements. I went online to reschedule, I was told it couldn't be done online and to call. I called. "Call volume is extremely high and wait times are long. To avoid staying on hold, press '1' and we will enter you for a call-back. You will not lose your place in line." I pressed 1.

The next morning, having not yet received a call-back, I called again. Busy signal. All morning. Early in the afternoon, I finally got through to the same recorded message. I stayed on hold this time. For over two hours! That's before I finally pressed one again in the vague hope they might actually call back. Not yet.

In the meantime, I went online and purchased the first available ticket (and only available ticket this week that I could find) for departure Thursday morning at 8:55. You probably have already looked up the weather report here in Everett Washington and know that our forecast for Wednesday night and Thursday is for more snow and cold. The high since Sunday has not gotten above 25F.

Now, I'm dealing with the flight insurance because I have four extra nights in Everett WA, meals, and emergency heart meds since I didn't have enough to last the week. I sit here and wait for the gods to smile.

I'll just mention, by the way, that my daughter and son-in-law are slated to arrive in Las Vegas to visit me on Saturday. I'd really like to be there to welcome them.

It's a landmark of sorts for me. Today, I've posted my fiftieth aroslav story at Stories Online. (That doesn't include seventeen from Wayzgoose and one from J-Hop!) And with the publication of the "Wonders of My World" series on Bookapy this week, I now have thirty-five books available there for you!

Today's story is the rather embarrassing tale of my experiences with strip clubs. Of course, the focus is on one particular strip club I encountered in Los Angeles, but I had to bring other experiences in as well, remembered from the deep and murky depths of my imagined past. As the subtitle says, "Based on the true story of Aroslav's erotic journey around America as told to Devon Layne." In other words, it's the memoir of the avatar of the pseudonym of the alter ego of the author. If you can parse that, you'll know exactly how much to believe!

And in other news

The year-end holidays are upon us, and I'm headed to Seattle Monday to celebrate Yule (the winter solstice) with my family and friends. My daughter is keeping the family tradition alive by hosting the dinner at her mother's house. It's the first time for her new husband to be exposed to the depth of our pagan rituals. It's the best holiday of my year. Joyous Yule!

Of course, if you are celebrating Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, Krampus Night, La Posadas, New Year's Eve, St. Lucia Day, St. Nicholas Day, Boxing Day, Ganna, or Makar Sankranti, I wish you a very happy holiday season as well!

I've been writing (surprise, surprise). In November I wrote an entire 150,000-word first draft of Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. What a rush! Now I'm piecing it together in a rewrite and discovering how much I left out in my rush to finish the story. The first part has gone to my editors and I'm thinking a possible March or April release.

I've also been doing a final read-through of Team Manager COACH! to prepare it for its February 1 release here on SOL. And I'm managing to get three or four chapters a week written on volume four: Team Manager CHAMP! At the moment, I'm figuring CHAMP! will be the last volume in that series, but my editors have learned long ago to expect that anything I write is going to be longer than I said it would be. We'll wait for the verdict on that one. It's scheduled to start in mid-June.

And there are other projects I'm trying to get back to, but even with the long nights, there is a limited number of hours in a day. I'm writing as fast as I can!

Oh, and January will see another "Wonders of My World" story!

Enjoy!

November is nearly over, and with it, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I'm feeling pretty good about my NaNo project, Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon, with 140,000 words so far. I've been averaging 5000 words a day! I plan to finish the story by Tuesday.

That doesn't mean it's ready for release, unfortunately. I'll start rewriting it at the same time that I'm drafting the next Team Manager book. Then I'll get it off to my overworked editors. Maybe we'll be ready to start posting in early January. Maybe.