aroslav: Blog

My storyline consultant and I finally got together at camp after over a year of isolation away from each other. I started telling him about Team Manager: SWISH! He sat there with his mouth gradually dropping open. I knew he was from Iowa and thought he'd really get a kick out of the story being set near his hometown. But as I watched his face, I began to doubt myself and wound down.

"You won't believe this," he said. "My three older brothers were all athletes. Me, not so much. But, of course, I had to go out for the team. Got injured playing football my sophomore year. I kind of liked the athletic department and wanted to keep my hand in, so to speak, so I volunteered to manage the girls' basketball team. You would not believe the stories I could tell you. Those girls were the raunchiest bunch I have ever known. Way worse than the guys. I'd sit on the team bus kind of pretending to be asleep and just listen to them talk. Oh, my God!"

"Did you date any of them?"

"No. I was completely invisible to them. I learned more about girls than I ever imagined. When basketball season was over, I volunteered to manage the girls' track team. They loved having a guy to cart the starting blocks and shot puts around. And they were just as raunchy as the basketball girls only there were more of them. There is nothing you can write about them that would be unbelievable to me!"

Okay, so he hasn't actually read the book yet. We'll see if he pronounces it all believable.

A reader sent an email to me speculating that I must be from Iowa or be a coach as I knew so much about girls' basketball. Either that, or I did a lot of research. Then he casually asked, "How much time a day do you spend writing and researching?" Oh, boy.

The answer is that I spend an average of eight to ten hours a day writing and researching and editing and formatting. No, as a matter of fact, I don't have a life. In preparing Team Manager, I've researched the entire history of girls' basketball in Iowa, dating from 1924 forward, the creation of the IGHSAU, 6-on-6 basketball (abandoned in 1994), corn production in Iowa, hog production in Iowa, the Omaha District of the DEA, the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation, the relevant state and national laws on moonshine, the tournament schedules and results of the state basketball and track tournaments, eye surgery, corrective lenses, makes and models of AR15 type rifles, school year schedules, weather patterns, Title IX, driver's license qualifications, hay production and process, various tractor types and manufacturers, stretching and warmup exercises, SPARQ fitness testing, shared education programs with local community colleges, drug trafficking and sex trafficking, cheerleader competitions, sizes of basketballs, weights of shot puts, how to become a referee, Child Protective Services, athletic taping techniques, residential mental and behavioral inpatient centers, jobs for the handicapped, lethal doses of fentanyl and alcohol, wood chippers, Family and Consumer Sciences, sports management responsibilities, personal training vs. athletic training, choroidal folds, slang for female masturbation, and Old Mother West Wind stories. Just as a sampling.

It's not over. I'm nearly finished with the first draft of Team Manager: SPRINT! Twenty-eight rough draft chapters are currently available for my Sausage Grinder tier ($10/month) patrons on Patreon.

And in the meantime, I'm writing three other stories. The list above doesn't include my research for them!

Why? Because I really love to write and share my stories. With close to fifty published books, I'm often asked if I write for a living. The answer is, "No. I write to live." It's a passion and may be one reason I can't keep a relationship going for more than twenty-five or thirty years. A domestic partner would frown at my not taking the garbage out or vacuuming the floors.

All so I can provide entertainment for you and other old men around my age. Okay, and some women, too.

What's been great lately is that the weather has been so good, I've been able to sit outside and write part of the time. Feet up, coffee or soft drink in hand, and life stretched out in front of me.

Sometimes, I make people cry at what I've written. Let me tell you, there is nothing that will make you bawl more than going through the list and listening to the possible music for the father/daughter dance at her wedding in August.

Enjoy the stories!

No, I'm not talking about Tara AI in the last chapter of The Assassin, which posted today. Nor about any of the Swarm Cycle AIs 'helping' humanity. I'm referring to something far more sinister and far less obvious.

Vixen.

Vixen is the 'black box' that converts stories on SOL to the readable layout most of us encounter when we follow a story here. She has the best intentions. Stories come to her in all kinds of conditions and she applies her little algorithms to make them look decent on screen. Mostly all okay, unless she stumbles.

We've all seen Vixen stumble in one way or another, and most probably blame the author. Half a chapter gets posted twice or out of sequence? Don't blame the author! Vixen was drinking.

And there are simple things that most of us would never notice, unless you are the author. Today, for example, I read the last chapter of The Assassin after it posted. I do that routinely. When a chapter posts, I read it and often correct errors I've encountered. I'm sure you've found stories in your reading that leave you convinced the author never looked at what he wrote after the bits first hit the screen. But I do. And when I reached the end of chapter 27, it just stopped and I wondered, WTF happened? The last paragraph was missing.

Well, the paragraph was only two words, but it brought the story arc to its fulfillment. Vixen saw the words and assumed they were in error because they just repeated the name of the story. So, she eliminated them. Except, they were needed. They brought the story to a conclusion of self-realization and identification.

I quickly resubmitted the chapter with an explanation of what was intended and it was reposted within an hour, so I doubt too many readers caught the problem. And it might be one of those oddball things that only the author noticed anyway.

On the other hand, my new story, Team Manager: Swish!, started posting on Tuesday May 25 and I'm really happy with the reception so far. Over 200 eBook sales in the first five days! If you haven't read GMbusman's review of the story, please do. He captured the essence without any spoilers and gave it high praise.

I'm deep into writing the sequel, Team Manager: Sprint! I hope to finish it within the next couple of weeks so it can make the rounds of the editors. I'd like to get that finished and Wayzgoose's A Place Among Peers done. Both are two-thirds to three-quarters of the way along. But there's this other story that has begun nagging me at the back of my mind and last night I had to sit down and spew a chapter out just so I could concentrate on the other stuff again. When I can digest the concept into a pitch, I'll let you know. It's pretty off the wall.

I do hope this post finds you well and that in the midst of enjoying the sun, the beach, the barbecue, or whatever, you also take a moment to remember those who have given their all to protect our country. I salute you.

A long-time friend and sometimes RV co-traveler wanted to know if I have new travel plans now that restrictions from the Pandemic are being lifted for those of us who are fully vaccinated. Isolation hasn't been that different for me than normal life, really, so I hadn't given much thought to travel. I actually went to the lodge here at Sun Meadow to play cards this week. First time since 2019 and I don't remember much of that year because I was so sick with heart problems.

I have reserved a winter campsite in Las Vegas this year. Just hoping to be somewhere a little bit warmer than the Pacific Northwest. So we chatted and, being a storyteller himself, David started in:

"I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone. I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport--you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my children, friends, family and work. I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much for physical activity anymore. I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

"Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older. One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenaline flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!

"I may have been in Continent, but I don't remember what country I was in. It's an age thing. They tell me it's very wet and humid there!"

As he finished and we were laughing, I admitted I'd been in Sufferable on occasion. I'm sometimes subject to thinking I'm in Credible. Usually, however, someone points out that I'm in Competent. I was once in Carcerated, but was able to prove I was in Nocent at the time.

Whatever state you happen to be in, I hope you're able to laugh a little and that you are staying tuned here for the release of Team Manager: Swish! on Tuesday.

My dear old mom had a lot of oddball sayings, but one I remember her using often was when she said she was "tickled pink" about something. I did some lightweight investigation and discovered the term was known as far back as 1910 and seemed to be a variant of the much older term "tickled to death." This in turn may have dated back to the second half of the 18th century as the result of having something "tickle one's fancy."

In all three instances, "tickle" is used in the sense of finding something amusing, appealing to one's sense of humor or delight. None of them seem to refer to the common definition of lightly touching or prodding in a way that causes itching, squirming, and uncontrolled laughter.

That was an interesting etymology lesson for this beautiful, bright and sunny Sunday in Northern Idaho. I believe I was inspired to look all this up when I started thinking about how much I enjoy posting or releasing a new story-or even a new chapter of a story. It may sound weird, but I'm tickled pink to have started pre-release of my newest story, Team Manager: Swish! to patrons this morning. The really cool thing is that I'll be tickled pink when I have the public release on Tuesday May 25, 2021. That will include both the release of the first chapter of the book for serialization here on SOL, and the release of the eBook on Bookapy.

Woohoo!

I'm also very conscious of the quality of what I put out. I can't promise that every story will be appealing to every reader. I like to write all over the map when it comes to story genres. I look back at the most recent stories I've posted and find science fiction, romance, satire, do-over, occult fantasy, and (if I include stories by Wayzgoose) mystery and literary fiction.

But I do try to make each story a quality piece of writing. In order to get there, I currently have an alpha reader who basically looks over my shoulder as I write. I have beta readers, including a dozen or more patrons who look at and comment on works in progress. I have story editors who mark up content and suggest variants in how the story is written, where the story arc falls apart, where it is not consistent with the stated audience. Then there are line editors who look at sentence construction, consistency within the story, and places where confusion might set in. Finally, I have three incredible proofreaders who attack the story with gusto as they find missing quotation marks, homonyms, misspellings, variants, and bad punctuation.

Oops. I didn't mean "finally" as in the last shot. I personally re-read every draft, and don't simply "accept all" when an editor makes changes. And, since I do my own layout, I reread the story "one more time" in the format in which it will be published. Hence the past two days have been spent re-reading and correcting the three versions (SOL html, DevonLayne html, eBook) of Team Manager: Swish!

I found two things: 1) several dozen more errors that I corrected. 2) I enjoyed the story.

The author's recommendation doesn't necessarily mean you will enjoy the story, but I find that if I don't enjoy my own work, not many others will either.

Team Manager: Swish! is the first volume of what will definitely be two, probably three, and possibly more books about high school sophomore Dennis Enders, a myopic runt who finds acceptance, self-identity, courage, and love as the team manager for the girls' basketball team at Hugh Bartley High School in Bartley, Iowa. But the road is not easy for the abused teen nor his team, as bullies threatening kidnapping, rape, sex trafficking, drug dealing, and even murder stalk the team and its manager.

Add all that to the stress of high school, hormones, compromising situations, growth spurts, parents, and cliques, and you have the ingredients for a riveting tale. I believe you will be thoroughly hooked before you finish reading the third chapter.

According to one of my readers, this story is right in my sweet spot. Of another story he said, "Like a moth to the flame: a world where a protagonist ends up with a harem while challenging the status-quo. Irresistible, unavoidable."

Coming May 25, 2021

I intended to post my thanks and Beltane greetings yesterday and somehow got waylaid. I very much appreciate the recognition of fans in voting for Double Team as Best Do-Over Sex Story of 2020 in the Clitorides Awards. And thank you for the incredible honor of naming Living Next Door to Heaven as second place Classic Clitoride 2020. I certainly couldn't complain about being beaten by EzzyB's Rebecca Danced since that is one of my all-time favorites on SOL. I think I voted for it, too.

And a couple of days late:
Haroo, Hurray, the First of May,
Outdoor fucking starts today!
Or in my case, outdoor nudity as I've returned to my summer campground at the nudist park in Idaho. It's going to be a good summer here in nature.

Several people wrote to tell me the graphic org chart that should have been included in Chapter 18 of The Assassin was missing. The chapter has been revised and re-uploaded with the chart in a readable condition. I've also replaced the illustrations in Chapters 1, 2, and 7 with higher resolution graphics that can actually be seen in the story. Sorry it has taken so long for me to get that in place.

And just a bit of news. Editing and formatting of Team Manager 1: Swish! is nearly complete and I'll be working on the eBook this week. I'm already deep into writing Team Manager 2: Sprint! The serial is slated to start posting here on SOL on May 25, coinciding with the eBook release. It will end on October 1. Of course, my Advance Release Tier patrons will start getting it about 10 days sooner. I've been progressing at writing about a chapter a day and my Sausage Grinder Tier patrons are reading the rough draft at a rate of seven chapters a week!

The summer is looking like a very productive time for me, despite my making frequent trips to Seattle to prepare for my daughter's wedding in August. Never thought I'd see that day and I'm really stoked about it.

I'm also trading my fifth wheel trailer for a lower profile travel trailer about mid-summer. That one, I expect, will be my last retirement home. It has fewer steps up to the door and the interior is all on one level. Since I tend to stumble around in the dark several times at night, I'm looking forward to getting rid of the stairs to my bedroom. I've made a reservation to spend next winter in Las Vegas and feel like I will be almost far enough south to stay warm.

That's the news from sunny Idaho. Now it's time to go get my groceries. Enjoy!