aroslav: Blog

I was thinking this week about how retirement (age) has made me forgetful about some things. For example, this week I totally forgot why I was supposed to be happy it was Friday!

I think there is also something about my brain running out of my fingers onto the keyboard. I went to take a nap and could not stop thinking about San Francisco--one of my favorite cities--the location of a scene I was writing in Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon.

Speaking of which... The writing of my current NaNoWriMo project is going well. I've averaged 5,000 words per day so far, which means the story is currently 70,000 words in length. Likelihood is that I'm about halfway through it. I've really enjoyed letting Bob take control and run on about his adventures over the past 4000 years. At the same time, I've had to do insane amounts of research in order to not sound like a total idiot when I'm talking about Alexander the Great or ancient India.

And then there is the sudden bouncing to, say 1955 San Francisco and the beat generation. Here's something funny. Back circa 2000 BCE, a fellow received some gifts from a god of war that included a drum. I didn't say much about the drum in that episode, but in '55, Bob gets enthused about the beat crowd in SF and pulls out his old drum to go join them. But I didn't know exactly what the drum looked like or how it was played. I just had a vague notion of what I wanted.

I sent a message to a drummer friend and asked if he'd ever come across an ancient Persian war drum that was held between the knees as it was played with hands and changed pitch when it was squeezed with the drummer's knees. If so, what was it called?

He wrote back that he'd check it out but it sounded like he needed to get one. Within half an hour I got a response to the question indicating he thought it was called a djun-djun and was most popular in West Africa, but extended all across Northern Africa and was probably around Persia as well. He sent a picture and it was exactly what I imagined the drum to look like!

So, now you know that the reason my stories sound like I know so much is all research. And asking friends who know things.

BTW, what coin was used as a monetary unit in India, circa 300 CE?

I was going to start by saying that I seldom get so caught up in a story that I have to stop everything else and just write until it is done. But, of course, that's a lie. It happens routinely. Last spring, I got the idea for a series about a geeky high school kid in Iowa. That was on March 15. I released the finished Team Manager SWISH! and started serializing it the 26th of May. And then I went straight into writing Team Manager SPRINT!

Then I got this crazy idea about a teenage wizard on an unorthodox adventure called Jackie the Beanstalk (Wayzgoose). It took a couple of weeks to get that written.

I immediately started back in on Team Manager COACH! (It started off being called SPIKE! but it isn't really about volleyball.) I got the first draft of COACH! finished October 27th and the editors have had a good time with it. It will be ready to post as soon as SPRINT! finishes.

It was important to get COACH! off my desk, because National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) started November 1 and I could hardly wait to get started on Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. Is it obsessing me as much as the other books I've named? Oh, yes.

As of today (seven days) I've written just over 35,000 words in eleven chapters. It's going really well and I'm churning out about 5,000 words a day on the story. I'm about to write the last chapter (of four) about the Trojan War, only not really about the war. It's mostly about what Bob was doing before and after the war. Setting a few myths on their ears!

This story is heaps of fun, from running away with the king's new bride, to becoming a king, to rescuing (and screwing) the most beautiful woman on earth. And what comes next? The hanging gardens of Babylon? The abduction of Julius Caesar? or will I jump forward a few centuries to Bob's time in Australia where everything tries to kill you! I'll know soon, but it is not likely that it will be a simple progression like a timeline could suggest. As Bob says:

"To clarify: Four thousand years is a fucking long time. I'm a simple demon. Don't read too much into that word. I'm not dumb. I'm just not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnimnemonic. That last is a word I coined to mean "all-remembering." I'm not. I remember some things as clearly as if they happened yesterday. In fact, I should tell you what I did yesterday. It was… not this part of the story. Okay? Besides, at this point I can't always keep straight what century some things happened in. There was a couple in which I was so drunk I really don't remember anything that happened. And then the time I was stuck in the infinity room for fifty years. Esmira…"

Well, you get the idea. I have no foreknowledge of when this book will be ready for release, but I'm guessing it will be sooner rather than later.

My "Sausage Grinder" patrons are trying to read as fast as I'm writing with about 5,000 new words posted on my site every day. Let me just say, we're having fun now!

The link to Aroslav's Stories, a Discord discussion group is https://discord.gg/8jgZrBVj
All fans and readers are invited to join the conversation.

Join aroslav's Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/aroslav?fan_landing=true
Join at the "Sausage Grinder" tier ($10 per month) to read the raw copy of Bob's Memoir!

It's October 31-Samhain. Or perhaps you call it Halloween. Fifteen years ago, I coined the term HalloNaNoWeen. Yes, it's the day before National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) begins. And I am waiting for midnight!

That's the tough part. Waiting. Over the past week, since finishing the first draft of Team Manager COACH!, I've been trying not to sit down and start writing my new novel. Instead, I've written some 8,783 words of "notes", including a timeline and event history, sample voice scenes, historical events and personages, what gods and goddesses Bob will interact with, and what it means to be a demon.

All in preparation to begin writing Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon.

And that isn't all the preparation. With the help of a different Bob (a fan here on SOL), I now have a Discord server with channels open for discussion and author interaction. You can join other fans and me there. I'll post the link in my next blog post, so scroll up to see it. Blog posts don't appear in the regular news feed if they include a link.

I'm hoping my Sausage Grinder patrons are preparing, as well. They get to see everything I write as soon as I can get it to them-at least weekly. In the case of Bob's Memoir, they'll get a daily link to what I've written on this story each day in November. It's raw, messy, unedited, and sometimes surprisingly fun! The first post will come out sometime tomorrow evening, Pacific Time.

The NaNoWriMo site says that during my past seventeen years of writing a novel or two every November, I've accumulated 1,922,298 words. I plan to tip the wordometer over the 2 million mark this month. If I can only wait long enough start writing.

Maybe I'll put on my top hat and go stroll through the Fremont Experience this evening to walk between the worlds and look at the costumes! Or I might even do laundry. Waiting is really hard!

Reader Bob-a different person entirely from Bob the Demon I'll be writing about in November (I think)-is helping me set up a Discord server so I'll be able to chat in a forum regarding stories, writing, or my current travels. (Today, that puts me in Winnemucca, Nevada where I've spent the weekend overeating Basque food.)

I don't yet know or understand how it all works, but Bob is helping me with things like categories, channels, roles, and levels. I have no idea yet what any of those terms mean, but I'm determined to find out. This is the twenty-first century, after all. I know several other writers on SOL have Discord servers and carry on discussions with fans and patrons. I should be there!

I expect to get to Las Vegas on Friday sometime and hope my site is better than what I ended up at in Winnemucca. My reservation, filled out for one RV park, was hijacked by another. There was no way to get it changed that I was willing to put up with. I just wanted someplace to sit and write for a couple of days while I ran to various Basque restaurants to eat my fill. Delicious!

I've been busy writing the concluding chapters of Team Manager COACH! (I think I have two to go) and making notes for the 30-day blitz writing of Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon in November. I'm having a "good time" figuring out how long a trip it is from Girsu to Babylon and whether Cyprus is on the way to Athens. Coordinating a historical timeline in twenty or thirty different parts of the world with a fantasy character's timeline and the map of his travels is proving complex and confusing. (Wait! How did he get to India?) Especially since Bob doesn't always remember what location came first, second, and third, or which country had the best wine. That is usually the country he forgot because he was drunk most of the time.

I'm coupling that with a few features that I'm blatantly borrowing from famous writers-usually with my own twist added to it. Take for instance, the infinity room. I'm pretty sure I remember a similar pocket of some sort from a Heinlein story, and I know Harry Potter's Hermione had a bag she kept more in than the bag could possibly hold. And of course, there are the bottles that genies supposedly live in. My twist is that Bob creates the room for all the books he collects. But having books, he also needs to build a library in the infinity room so all the books are neatly stored. A library needs librarians, so he has to convince some librarians to live in his infinity room. If they are going to live there, they need houses, stores, food, restaurants, crops, animals, and wives. And those all need other people to tend to the work. And it all needs to fit in a neat little satchel that Bob can close the flap of and carry as he flees town ahead of a jealous husband determined to get his wife back. And don't rattle the bottles in the wine cellar!

Welcome to the wonderful world of a happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon named Bob!

My writing project for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. (Sausage Grinder tier patrons will see the story unfold daily in November as I post the raw, unedited words pouring forth from my head.)