aroslav: Blog

I'm a bit on the late side for posting on a Sunday, but my daughter arrived this morning and made Fathers' Day brunch for us. Then we spent the better part of the day talking about life, wedding plans, writing, movies, and TV serials. It was a great way to celebrate being a father. I hope you have had a good day, too, whether you are a father or not.

Turns out that I've been watching a lot of quest-based serials on Netflix. Shadow and Bone, The Untamed, and most recently The Shannara Chronicles. Those are the top of my "Continue Watching" list, but there are probably a dozen others. There's a reason I've been watching so many quests.

Jackie the Beanstalk.

I'm ten chapters into writing this new story and half the time I'm laughing. The other half, I'm thinking "How do I get her out of this one?"

Jackie is a fresh high school graduate, still in her cap and gown when she is given the keys to her grandfather's 1968 Ford Fairlane 500 Fastback 390. Jackie, her Aunt Misty, and her dog Roadkill jump in the car and take off following an old fashioned TripTik map into an alternate dimension. In this new dimension, Jackie is a Warrior Wizard encountering robbers, mountain monsters, ogres, rival clans, obstreperous customs officials, a stowaway princess, an adopted bobcat kitten, werewolves, ghosts, giants, and dragons--all on her way to rescuing the Sovereign's kidnapped son. As she travels, she discovers her magic powers, and the powers of all the weapons she carries--her cap and gown, honor cords, stole, basketball, and things she picks up along the way--including a pocketful of magic beans.

Probably not a children's story, because there is some language and adult jokes, but a fun read for adults who like to read YA novels. I'll release it as a Wayzgoose story sometime in July. I expect to finish the first draft in the next couple of weeks!

That's life in this corner of the world. Hope you are all well!

It's so beautiful out here! 77 and bright sunny skies. Of course, that means it will be 85 by late afternoon and might not be as comfortable, but for now it's perfect weather to lounge naked under the canopy.

I'm blown away by the sales of my new eBook, Team Manager: SWISH! I know that for some, 500 sales in a month is routine. An acquaintance of mine is on the NYT best seller list all the time. One of his distributors recently sent him a plaque celebrating his 250,000th sale through their stores. Of one title. I celebrate where I find cause. Even had a martini a few nights ago--first alcohol in four months. Wasn't nearly as good as I remembered.

So, I chose a different way to celebrate this week. I released Team Manager: SWISH! as a paperback. I wasn't intending to because just printing a paperback this size (590 pages) is costly. But I decided I wanted a copy for myself, so I put it together. It's on Amazon for $19.99 because that's what you party like when you're my age. If you'd like a signed copy, you can direct your inquiry to me. Price in the US will be $30. Not sure about elsewhere because I don't know how much it costs to ship to other countries.

I'm nearly finished with the sequel, Team Manager: SPRINT!, and have put it in the hands of my capable editors. They've been supplying me with a lot of ideas for the next volume, and I'm compiling notes. I'll probably start working on it early in July.

In the meantime, as if I don't have enough to write, I've been captured by a fantasy idea that I've started make notes on. The idea is gelling, but still in an unstable state. Here's what the pitch is.

Jackie the Beanstalk
A new high school graduate, tall skinny Jackie is surprised by her grandparents' gift of an unusual car. Her Aunt Misty and dog Roadkill jump in the car with her for an impromptu road trip that leads Jackie to the rescue in ever-increasingly bizarre circumstances. Is it all real? Or is Jackie hallucinating being a Warrior Wizard in a strange parallel universe?

I see this one as being humorous, very light on sex, and just plain fun, both to write and to read. I don't expect it to be an epic. Just a little something to fill the time while I'm developing the next biggie.

Guessing that's about everything for this week. Carry on.

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.