aroslav: Blog

Did you miss me? Or did you not notice I was gone? Well, either way, I'm happy to have a new story start today. The Assassin is up and running.

The Assassin is a story in the Swarm Cycle Universe but I've listed it as "non-canon." This story will push into the future further than anything else in the cycle and when I do that, I necessarily create a history in its wake. It's non-canon so other Swarm authors won't feel bound to my view of what comes after Year 20. And my view is a little darker than that of most other authors. I don't think the future is quite the paradise that most seem to expect.

The story has, however, been reviewed and approved by the Swarm Authors Group and Thinking Horndog. Anything it says about the first 20 years is consistent with what has been written in the cycle so far. It's what happens next that has me intrigued.

While this story is posting, I'm busy writing two others and hope to have one finished and ready by the time this one concludes at the end of May. It's a sequel to Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain and is coming along fine. I'm not sure yet if I'll get a new title for it or if it will just be Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain 2. In this book, Jett and his harem face the hardships of typical sophomores in college, but it is complicated by things like job loss, money running out, a stalker, and the usual problems with interpersonal relationships. And a pandemic that closes the school. Yes, this is the 2020 year for our heroes.

I'm also moving along with the sequel to Wayzgoose's A Place at the Table. I think A Place Among Peers will heighten the tension between Meredith and Liam while they deal with a confab of Leaders at the University, all leading different directions. Because this has a much longer editing cycle than my aroslav stories, I don't expect it to begin posting until late fall or early winter. By that time, one of my other ideas will have taken hold and I should have something else to post for you.

So, here we go. Enjoy The Assassin!

I'm working again! No, not a job. I mean I'm getting some real writing done after feeling under par for for a couple of months. Got two chapters each of two different stories written this week and for the first time in a while, I'm pleased with the results.

The work brings me to a total of six chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain 2, and five chapters for Wayzgoose's A Place Among Peers. I feel like I'm back on an even keel again at last.

And I'm ready to begin releasing my new Swarm Cycle story, The Assassin, on Saturday this week. I've gotten pretty excited about that one because it's just character-driven sci fi. I don't think a person would need to be familiar with the rest of the cycle to enjoy the story. But of course, a familiarity with the universe is better. 27 chapters posting one every three days.

On a different note, I have five nominations in five different categories of the Clitorides Awards for the Best in Written Erotica. And a couple of them are a real surprise to me. Like Wayzgoose's American Royalty 1, Coming of Age nominated for Best Romance. That kind of blew me away. And aroslav has been nominated for both Author of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award. I'm thrilled to have been nominated in these categories. And thank you for nominating Double Team (representing "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series) for Best Do-Over Sex Story.

Perhaps the nomination I'm most excited about is seeing Living Next Door to Heaven nominated for the Classic Clitoride Award. Back when LNDtH was first completed in 2015, the Clitorides were still getting rolling again after a six year hiatus from 2006-2013. And that year saw some of SOL's heaviest hitters nominated in the same category for truly outstanding stories: G Younger, Dual Writer, Jay Cantrell, Oyster50, and Argon. I was honored to even be in the same competition.

There's been a resurgence in readership for LNDtH over the past year and LNDtH1 is now up to 1.15 million downloads. Maybe people were looking for something really long to last them through the pandemic. I don't know. I'm just honored that this story has been nominated in the category of Classic Clitoride.

I've scanned through the list of stories nominated in the various categories and they include some of my favorites. I'm ready to start reading some that I haven't gotten to yet. That's one of the best things about the Clitorides. Just reading the stories that have been nominated provides a list of great reading material. It was just a year ago next week that I checked into an RV park in Texas, not knowing that I'd be sitting there for two months before I could travel again and get back up north to my summer campground. I've read a lot this year!

Stay safe and stay well. And go vote for your favorites!

I've put the finishing touches on my new Swarm Cycle story, The Assassin, and have uploaded the first chapter for posting on March 13. I'm very excited about this story as it takes a very different (and non-canon) look at the Confederacy and its AIs.

I read a comment recently that said fan fiction comes in three varieties: "Sometimes fanfic is a love letter to canon; sometimes it's a polite disagreement; sometimes it's 95 things canon did wrong nailed to a door." I think the same can be said about a shared universe like Thinking Horndog's Swarm Cycle. The Assassin doesn't really fit any of those three categories exclusively. It's more like a nudge in the direction I think it should or is likely to go.

Several Swarm authors have engaged me on everything from the shape and origin of planetary militias to the division between Darjee and Tuull AIs to the deterioration of the sponsor/concubine/dependent society. When I looked at the process, for example, of female concubines having a child every two years or so, I thought immediately that a household with four concubines could have 28 dependents (or more with multiple births) under the age of fourteen at a time. All the time! At what point does the population of a planet go from 10,000 to 80,000 to 640,000 to 5.4 million? That geometric progression suggests only fourteen years until there is roughly a 7:1 ratio of children to adults. And at what point do concubines simply get tired of always being pregnant or suckling and just lie down and die? Given potential lifespans of 200 years and fertility for over a hundred, how is any mother going to keep track of who her fifty children are or where? Or the 350 grandchildren?

So, having ranted about my dystopian view of the future, I wrote a story that included the concubines simply overwhelming the sponsors. Roughly the first half of the book is completely consistent with the current Swarm canon. The rest of the book isn't contrary to the canon, but is beyond where the 300 or so stories in the current canon stop. So, it projects fifty years into the future of the cycle.

When I write something 'in the future,' it creates, of necessity, a history in its wake. I didn't want to tie the future of the Swarm Cycle to my view of what happens next, so I've voluntarily listed the story as non-canon. That means I'm not tying all other authors to my view of the future. I'm consistent with the canon up to the point where it peters out at the moment. Then, it's no holds barred as I paint a bleaker (but not hopeless) version of the future of the Confederacy in the next fifty years.

Am I writing anything else? Thank you for asking!

I struggled in the first couple of months of 2021 as I had heart problems again and underwent an ablation and cardioversion two weeks ago. The difference has been remarkable! I've been able to focus again. I spent a good bit of the first two months of this year re-reading the entire Florida Friends series by Dual Writer. Try it. You'll like it. Now I'm writing again.

I'm working on a sequel to Wayzgoose's A Place at the Table, currently titled A Place Among Peers. Not terribly far along yet, but I'm happy to be making progress. And I'm working on a sequel to aroslav's Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain. I'm happy to finally be making progress on both of these. My Tier 3 patrons on Patreon are reading these two stories as they develop. They pay the big bucks to read my mistakes. I'm sure both books will go through a massive rewrite before I release them here on SOL. http://www.patreon.com/aroslav

I started and abandoned two other books near the end of last year as the effects of being in atrial fibrillation disrupted my ability to concentrate. Perhaps when I get these two finished, I'll go back and look at the others to see if they can be resurrected.

During this period, I've also edited/proofread four manuscripts for other authors! I have seriously benefited from the volunteer time of other editors on SOL, so in addition to my professional editing, I've tried to give back a bit to the community.

So, there you have the life and times of aroslav. Still alive and kicking!

I do a lot of updating of websites, Patreon, and blogs on Sundays. It just seems like the right time to get everything up to date. So that's why you always hear from me on Sundays.

What's that? You haven't heard from me? Oh. I must have been dreaming.

In my dream, I told you all about the progress I haven't been making on stories I'm trying to write. I did finish my new Swarm Cycle story and it is now in the hands of editors and proofreaders who are having a good time polishing it up. The story is titled The Assassin and I hope to start posting it as soon as the final comments and corrections come in.

The other three stories I've started since November have all been stalled for one reason or another. Mostly a vague-headedness resulting from being back in A-fib and planning on another ablation later this week. Weather has not been kind, either as I've stayed in the Pacific Northwest this winter and aside from the six inches of snow the past few days, it has been mostly just cold, rainy, and windy. I seldom get out of my trailer. And finally... I got hooked re-reading Dual Writer's entire "Florida Friends" series. It was still too good to put down and I spent a lot of writing time reading.

I'm hoping to get my self focused this week once my heart stops running away from me. I've managed a few words on the sequel to Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain. I have a couple of chapters written on the sequel to Wayzgoose's A Place at the Table. With luck, this week I'll start making more progress.

In the meantime, it's Fat Tuesday. If I'm not mistaken, that means we get double tacos. Have a great Mardi Gras celebration!

I've been asked, both in email and in comments to collect the multiple story references in Pussy Pirates in a single bibliography so people could check them out after reading the story. I've been a little delayed in doing this as I haven't accomplished much in the past two weeks. But I got that button pushed today.

So, I've uploaded a new "Chapter 28" which is a bibliography of the stories I've referenced. Hopefully, the links, all to SOL stories, will come through as well. There were 13 stories referenced.

This is really a testament to all the Swarm Authors and to the rigorous monitoring the authors do of new material posted so it doesn't violate the "Swarm canon" of things that have gone before. Whenever I explored an aspect that might be near the border, I cited a reference to another author who made that possible. It's a great community to write in.

I've also changed the Bookapy ad at the end of the story. I put the ad up when I started releasing the story because the eBook was complete while the story was still serializing on SOL. The ad suggested that if you wanted the rest of the story right away, to buy the book. That caused at least one misunderstanding after the story was finished. While I'm all too happy to take your money to get the whole story faster than it posts on SOL, I will NEVER post a link to get the end of a story without finishing it here. I changed the wording of the ad so it is more understandable that the complete story has been posted on SOL and is also available as an eBook on Bookapy. If you've read the story here, there is no extended or new material in the eBook.

I'll mention as well that I have released The Hero Lincoln Trilogy in Lazlo Zalezac's "Damsels in Distress" universe on Bookapy. This is part of my effort to make all my stories available as eBooks eventually. It is not a new version of the story, though I may have corrected a few typos in the eBook. If you've read Sleight of Hand, Romancing the Clown, and Going for the Juggler on SOL, the eBooks are simply a means of supporting the author and adding the stories to your home library.

As always, thank you for your support in comments, email, and voting. If you've not yet nominated your favorites from 2020 for a Clitorides Award, now is a good time to do so. Look for the yellow bar at the top of this page!