aroslav: Blog

Okay, this is the story you didn't know you wanted to hear. It was nine years ago today that I finished writing Wayzgoose's For Money or Mayhem. For some of you, that was a depressing story. For me it was devastating. I absolutely hated myself! To top that off, I went to bed and attempted to cuddle up to my wife. Her response was to push me away and say, "I know you try hard but I'm just not interested." My world was crashing down around me.

As I usually do, I retreated into words. I desperately needed to write something with a happy ending. What better to have a happy ending than a romance? And what better happy ending than sex?

I went digging through my files and found a story I'd started twenty years earlier and put under lock and key because "I don't write stuff like that." Miraculously, I remembered the password. I opened the file and started working on it with some determination. Three days later, I posted the first chapter of The Art and Science of Love, my first erotic romance on SOL.

I didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't the flood of email I got.

"I read the first chapter so far and I really like your story. I like the way you got right into talking about sex without it seeming forced. I always try to have some sexual action taking place in the first couple of pages, otherwise you'll lose the readers before they get into your story."

"An excellent start. I find the characters believable and the plot interesting. I hope to read much more like this from you in future."

"an incredibly good story. educational too. i particularly liked that trick of relaxation and exhaling while penetrating a sphincter. i have been doing wrong...i guess that is why i do not get to do it very often. sadly."

"your story stands heads and shoulders above a number of others because your characters are more developed. to me, it's less important whether i like or dislike them than that i care enough about them to like or dislike them. and i think you succeed in that. also, while there are sex aplenty, it's a part of the story (that enriches it) and not the ONLY thing in the story."

I was a little shocked to discover I was a sex therapist, but the positive feedback continued through the entire posting of the story with over 10,000 downloads, and hundreds of emails. And I began to look up and see something positive in my life.

The Art and Science of Love was 50,000 words and posted unedited. Pixel the Cat tells me that reading that story was what made him contact me to become a volunteer editor (who has proofread every story since then). BlackIrish edited my works for a while before he was overwhelmed with the workload from Jay Cantrell. Old Rotorhead volunteered to edit my stories. I received encouragement from some of my favorite writers, like InvidFan, Crumbly Writer, and Gentle But Firm. And now I have 45 aroslav stories, thirteen Wayzgoose stories, and one J-Hop story on SOL. Nine years of getting great feedback and developing a wonderful relationship with my readers on SOL.

So, to celebrate the ninth anniversary of that first post, I've completely rewritten and re-edited The Art and Science of Love. Instead of 12 chapters and 50,000 words, it is now 18 chapters and 75,000 words. There are more painting and posing scenes and a deeper relationship between Doc and Rita. I'll begin posting the new version, The Art and Science of Love--Refresh, on Wednesday, along with my thanks for helping to lift me from my depression and encouraging me to keep writing erotic romance and adventure. The book will also be available on Bookapy.

Thank you all, so very much.

...and I'm happy for those who are thankful not to be.

What I'm truly thankful for is those who stayed home. May your effort be rewarded with an ebb in the tide of the pandemic. It took me nearly ten minutes slaving over a hot microwave to have my Thanksgiving turkey dinner ready and it was pretty darn tasty! I had great telephone conversations with family members and not once did one touch on politics or religion--two of my allergies.

And with that, I'll say that I'm counting down. Six more days until my ninth anniversary as an SOL author. I'm planning to celebrate with a new old release. Count with me now!

aroslav

That's my total NaNoWriMo words through the 14th, IF you don't count the words in my uncompleted eighth chapter of It Ain't Immortality, But... And that's only for my 'official' NaNoWriMo project. When you count the words I've written on my new Swarm Cycle story, The Assassin, my count shows 37,637 for the first two weeks of the project. I'd say that's not too bad. Might not be on a par with the days when I'd write the first 50k in the first eight days and another 60k during the rest of the month, but not bad.

Especially since I've got other irons in the fire. I've been working on a newly proofread and slightly edited version of The Hero Lincoln Trilogy in the "Damsels in Distress" universe. I never released those stories on my own website or in print and eBook, so these will be sorta new releases in January.

I'm also wrapping up work on A Place at the Table and plan to start posting that on December 22, three days after Double Team ends. And there's a little surprise project I plan to start releasing here on SOL on December 2, in celebration of nine years as an SOL author. You'll like it!

Be safe, be well, and put your damned masks on!

That's the NaNoWriMo tally as of last night on my new Wayzgoose story, It Ain't Immortality, But... I suppose I should get to writing for this week. I also managed to get 4,000 new words in on The Assassin, so I guess 20k for a week is pretty good. I'm pretty relaxed about it this year as I keep getting distracted by the beautiful view out my window here in Port Townsend, WA. Today is clear and sunny (though cold) and the view of Mount Baker is breath-taking. My Tier 3 ($10/month) Patreon members are reading along with both stories. I posted chapter five of Immortality and chapter 13 of Assassin this morning for them. So far comments are good.

I got my reserve computer back from the repair shop on Tuesday, which kept me distracted from obsessively watching election returns. The computer works but they were unable to recover any data from it. New drive. Fortunately, there are only a couple of things missing that I have to reconstruct. I guess I was pretty lucky. Now I have a remote drive attached to the computer and it automatically backs up everything that's changed once an hour. Now that I've locked the barn, please check around to see if any of my horses are running in your pasture.

I've been asked about finishing "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins 5", Double Team. One reader was concerned that I'd get tired of it and move on to something else without finishing it. Another worried that it would be a downer ending. I reassured both. While there's a lot of tension and action in Double Team (another reader called it a thriller), it's mostly a feel-good story. And it's finished. What I mean is that the writing and editing are finished. All the rest of the story, however, was written last summer (2019) when I was sick and just trying to finish the book before I died. It covers a lot of ground in the next month and a half.

I made a commitment to myself after writing Living Next Door to Heaven that I wouldn't start posting a book until it was finished. That's why I'm able to offer most of my stories now as eBooks around the same time they start posting as serials. I also upload all the chapters in the serial as soon as the first chapter posts, slated to post every three days. So, Double Team is all on the SOL site and the final chapter in the saga will be posted December 19. That should be just in time for you to nominate it for a Clitorides award. ;)

Pussy Pirates has also been uploaded and will post through January 20. And I have a surprise story that I'll start releasing on December 2. Not saying anything else about that right now. The new Wayzgoose story, A Place at the Table will start posting three days after Double Team is finished on December 22. Those are my plans for the rest of 2020. We'll see what the year does to mess them up next.

Hope the rest of this year starts to look up for everyone. Be well!

...that the new story I've started posting on US Election Day happens to be my 45th story on StoriesOnline and is titled Pussy Pirates. I assure you there is no connection or direct correlation between the story and the reigning POTUS (#45). Sometimes things just work out that way.