aroslav: Blog

...and it's space-faring president, too. I remember a T-shirt back when I was in college with a picture of a mouse giving the finger to an eagle swooping down to grab him. The caption was "One last great act of defiance."

That's the way I feel every time I think of Amazon's temerity in refusing to release some of my books. The trigger for my ire this week is the 2017 non-release of Hearthstone Entertainment, Book 7 of the Living Next Door to Heaven saga. They simply locked it and told me it was in violation of Amazon community standards. They didn't like the cover. They gave me no opportunity to correct the problem or even say further what the problem was. I defied them by releasing the book on my own website and giving it away for free. So there!

But now, I'm releasing the whole series on Bookapy and in other venues. So, I've continued my great act of defiance by making the book available for free! Yes, you can download Hearthstone Entertainment from Bookapy or other sites (except Amazon) for free. If you started buying the series at Amazon years ago and got cock-blocked by their stick-up-the-butt reviewer, now is your opportunity to download the newest release at no charge.

Based on the sales of the other volumes, I estimate they cost me about $200 in royalties. So, I'll show them and just give the book away. (And provide a link to Bookapy in volume 6!)

Oh, yes. It's available today. Go get it!

In other news, I received word that my new trailer is scheduled for me to pick it up on 9/9. I'm thrilled. And spending my time packing up the current trailer so I can move out. Planning to get as much out of the trailer as possible this weekend as I have a professional cleaner coming to scrub it down on Tuesday.

If you know anyone in the Coeur d'Alene/Spokane region in the market for a fifth wheel trailer, send them my direction. Asking $10k, OBO.

I'm incredibly excited about finally having a delivery date for the new home. I ordered it back in April! Even when it came off the production line, the mfg. said it was still missing something that they expected to install before it shipped. I trust them???

I spent a few hours on the phone trying to get various doctor's appointments set up before I leave for Las Vegas in mid-October. Ha! My primary care physician's next available appointment was in January 2022. The colonoscopy folks were booked out until late November. Called three different dentists before I could get an appointment. What a circus.

But I'll show them! Right. I booked appointments with other doctors in other locations and will have to go through the inconvenience of meeting a new doctor and going to a downtown location so that I can get tuned up before I leave town.

Other than that... The day is bright and sunny here in Idaho with an air quality index of 2!!! (I can breathe!) Now I need to start sorting clothes into storage, wear, and Goodwill bags. Have a great week!

I admit, I'm proud of the amount of research I do for my stories. In writing Team Manager SWISH!, I learned an incredible amount about Iowa and about girls' basketball. I've tried to be faithful to details, going so far as to model my high school after an actual town and school in Iowa, translate the images and uniform numbers of a basketball team, and even look up some actual game and tournament results for the games I chose.

Still, I've had a number of Iowa residents challenge bits and pieces of the story, offering advice on how to make it more real. In most cases, I've managed to make corrections in my manuscripts and follow the advice of my readers.

However, today I discovered something that was never spelled out in the rules I read or the games I saw. I might have figured it out if I'd even had an inkling of an idea that there was a problem. I had none until a reader sent me mail this morning with an interesting tidbit.

"I know that there are variations in some of the rules basketball is played by, but I'm pretty sure that nowhere would a player be permitted to have a number on his or her jersey higher that five. Acceptable basketball jersey numbers would include 0,00,1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,20,21, and so on with the highest number on a players jersey being 55. A player having the number 17 on her jersey would probably be cause for a technical foul being called every game she played in."

I stopped to think. All the Angelines have jersey numbers that have no digit greater than 5. All the college teams I'm currently researching have no jersey number with a digit above 5.

But Wait! Kobe Bryant wears jersey #8! Shaquille O'Neal wears #36. Dennis Rodman wore #70 for the Mavericks, #73 for the Lakers, and #91 for the Bulls.

Yep. Sure enough, there is no limit to the numbers for players in the NBA. For high school and college, though, the rule book clearly states no digit on a jersey higher than 5. Apparently, this was established to make it easier on the refs and scorers. When calling a foul, the ref displays the tens digit on his right hand and the ones digit on his left hand. Only five fingers on each. So, indeed, jersey #17, worn by the tall captain of the Temple Divas in chapter 32 is illegal.

I've submitted corrections to the chapter online, but it will be a while before a new version of the eBook or print book is released. I'll correct it there eventually.

I love readers who read carefully and care enough to let me know when I've screwed something up. I'm not that proud!

I barely got my Patreon updated this morning before I hit the road and headed East from the Seattle area. So, I didn't put out a notice that I've started posting the four books of LNDtH2. Book six, El Rancho Del Corazon, is out today. I see some people have already discovered it and made their purchase. This is the book in which the Clan of the Heart makes its move after high school to start their college careers. If they can figure out a place to live, how to continue producing Brian's Young Cooking television show, and can survive the groups who still think the ranch is party central.

Now available on Bookapy! (And of course, those other sites.)

Here's something that's such old news, you've probably forgotten. When I first released this series back in 2017, Amazon decided they wouldn't release book 7: Hearthstone Entertainment. They froze it and sent me a warning that it didn't meet their community standards. I tried to get a response as to why and what I could do to correct it. The response I got was simply to say they didn't like the cover and some material on the inside. No ability to mitigate or correct or explain. The cover is part of a series of ten that are all by the same artist and in the same style. Apparently, Hearthstone Entertainment just got a reviewer with a stick up his butt about erotica.

As a result, I offered the book free on my website. Unfortunately, I believe many people never found it. I'll be doing the same with the new edition. Next weekend, I'll offer it for free on my site, on Bookapy, and elsewhere. Everywhere, in fact, except Amazon. Poo on them.

Now that you've had the announcement, suffice it to say that I'm home in my trailer in Idaho. And I'm happy there is mild weather and good air. This past week, a fire broke out in the state park and forest area just a ways south of here. This is all tribal land, and the volunteers responded immediately. They were joined by seven other teams, including air support, and by yesterday, the Toetly Fire was fully contained. They held it to about 750 acres and lost only three primary structures. The farthest north the fire reached is about a mile and a half from my camp.

I'm going down to the tribal office tomorrow and make a donation toward the feeding and equipping of the fire fighters who are still on the scene making sure the containment holds.

Later this week, I'll be calling my RV dealer in Yakima to try to get a date for delivery of my new trailer. The last I heard it was slated to come off the production line on August 24. That's Tuesday. Of course, it has to be shipped from Southern California to Yakima before I can get it and there are--you guessed it--fires between here and there. I'm just hoping they will be able to give me a delivery date sometime Labor Day week.

Until then, I'm back in the raw and pumping out more words on volume three of Team Manager. My Advance Release Patrons ($5/mo) received the final three chapters (43-45) of Team Manager SWISH! this morning. In two weeks, they'll be starting on Team Manager SPRINT! That is slated to hit here on SOL just after the first of October. Of course the Sausage Grinder Patrons ($10/mo) who don't care if there are typos or incomplete sentences, are gobbling up chapter 20 of the third volume this morning in its raw unedited condition, straight off my keyboard.

Thank you to all who read my stories, whether as patrons, book buyers, or serial readers online. I sincerely hope you are enjoying these words.

I've been contemplating a huge psychological issue this week as I drove twice across the State of Washington after my daughter's wedding this week. Now I'm sweltering in her non-airconditioned home pet-sitting while she and her husband take their honeymoon cruise and suddenly I am moved to contemplate the issue further.

Have you ever started a thought with the phrase "I just know he's going to..." I know I have. There's an old story about a man who had a flat tire on a country road at night. He looked in his trunk and discovered he didn't have a jack. Inconvenient, but all he needed to do was walk to the next farmhouse and ask to borrow a jack. He could see a light in the windows and thought it looked friendly. The farmer would say sure and to please bring the jack right back. Or better yet, he might say, "Let me give you a hand with that," and drive the man back to his car and help him change the tire.

As he walked toward the farmhouse, the light in the window went out. "Oh, dear," the traveler thought. "He's gone to bed. Now he'll be irritated that I woke him up. He'll probably want to be paid for loaning me a jack. Well I'll show him. He's so unneighborly, I'll offer him a quarter.

Then he'll probably say, "A quarter? You wake me up in the middle of the night and want to give me a quarter? A dollar! That's what you need to give me." I can't believe the gall of this farmer. He wants a dollar to loan me a jack for ten minutes. I'll tell him! "Sure, I'll give you a dollar! Not one penny more you old skinflint. Your jack is probably rusty and won't work anyway!"

By the time he got to the door, he was all worked up. When he knocked loudly and angrily, the old farmer poked his head out the upstairs window. "Who's there? What do you want?" The traveler with a flat tire was so worked up by this time that he shouted out, "Just keep your stupid rusty old jack, you miserly skinflint!"

Of course, there's a reason I've thought of this. I've been wondering how much our own imagination of the terrible way things will turn out in a story prevents us from enjoying the story as it's written. I know I do it. I start reading a story or watching a television series or a movie and there comes a point when my expectations jump ahead of me and I think, "I can see where this is going. There's going to be a lot of angst and someone's going to die and they'll have a huge fight and they'll break up and he'll cheat on her and he'll lose his job and and and...

Sometimes I put myself back in my kennel and relax so I can enjoy whatever comes. Sometimes I close the book, turn off the TV, or get a divorce. Oops. That might have been a really nice story!

I guess that's enough random thoughts for the day. Enjoy your Sunday!

By the way, want to borrow a jack?

If you've ever seen the musical Fiddler on the Roof, you know what that phrase is all about. When did my little girl grow to be so tall? In just a few hours, I'll be walking my baby girl down the aisle, as it were, to hand her off to her new husband. The aisle, in our case is a hundred-foot-long path along the lake to the dock at the point where the ceremony will be held.

The yard and garden and courtyard (my ex-wife's home) have been transformed into an enchanted land and I've hung some three thousand faerie lights in the bushes and trees to welcome the guests. We only have a few dozen things on our to-do list this morning before we can actually get dressed for the wedding. Last evening I spent half an hour practicing the father/daughter dance (to The Beatles "In My Life") and didn't do half bad. She asked me if I was going to cry all the way through it because she was likely to. The answer is yes, of course.

I've had a really great time the past ten days helping get ready for everything. It's been hectic and I'm sore and tired, but I am incredibly excited about the event this evening. I'm sure you will all appreciate the fact that I haven't done much writing this week. I'm hoping to do some catch-up for the next two weeks and get back on track. I'm eleven chapters into the third volume of "Team Manager," SWISH! and really want to get rolling on it.

Not to mention being eighteen chapters into the next Wayzgoose story about Liam Cyning, A Place Among Peers. Oh, and don't forget the sequel to Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain that I'm thirteen chapters into. I have a lot of writing to do!
But not today. Today, I will be out of touch for the next several hours as I celebrate with my family. Lift your glass for us if you are so inclined!

As usual, I almost forgot what I was going to say in today's post. Chapter 27 of Team Manager: SWISH! is up this morning and everyone has to deal with the aftermath of the drug raid and the injuries that were inflicted-physical and mental. I hope you will find it cathartic.

Yesterday, chapter three of Jackie the Beanstalk posted. That story is getting complicated for Jackie as everyone expects the Warrior Wizard to go out in the storm to face the Mountain Monster and rescue the child. Jackie just wanted a good night's sleep.

Enjoy the reading!