aroslav: Blog

I had an 'episode' this week. That's not like watching a new episode of CSI New York. Or Episode 20 of Midnight Diner on Netflix. This was an episode of my heart reaching and maintaining a rate of 177 bpm Monday night. My heart hasn't been at that rate since my cardioversion October 1 last year. When I checked my blood pressure and heart rate Tuesday morning, it was still rocking the tempo, so I called the doctor. Explained to the nurse who returned my call what the symptoms were and that the rate seemed to be slowing as of mid-afternoon. She said she'd discuss it with the doctor and get back to me, but if it spiked again to go to the emergency room.

Got a call back from the doctor Wednesday morning, at which time my heart rate and blood pressure had both stabilized, a little higher than normal but within range. He said he thought it was just an anomaly and could have been related to the heat, which had been near 100 the past week. He did, however, give me a prescription for a drug that would reduce the rate if it spiked again. If that didn't work, I should go to the emergency room.

I'm thankful that I haven't had another episode since Monday night. I don't plan to have another for a long time. But it put me on notice that I've been screwing around with my weight and diet. At one point this winter I thought I was retaining water but it turns out I've been retaining wine. I've cut back how much wine I drink at night, and have been experimenting with Japanese cooking. I've dropped three pounds this week and plan to do some more. If you want to look at my cooking lessons, they're on my FirstExit0 blogspot.

In the meantime, speaking of episodes, I've been rewriting my Swarm story, Pussy Pirates, after it was reviewed by the Swarm authors. I'm pleased with the progress and just realized last night that I need to add another episode between two existing ones. As neither of my existing editors have experience in the Swarm Cycle, I'd like to find another editor/proofreader for this story. It will go back to the Swarm authors for review, but I could use a good critical grammar-nazi who actually knows proofreading without getting caught up in the story. LMK.

So, having updated all my blogs, websites, and Patreon tiers today, I'm ready to get writing. I also need to finish Wayzgoose's For Mayhem or Madness this week and start feeding it to editors. Whoopee!

Speaking of editors, they are already bogged down with The Props Master 2: A Touch of Magic, so I think I have time to develop a little further before I send anything else off.

It's a time of transitions. Adams' Apples will end on Friday and Double Twist will end on Saturday. On Tuesday next week, the final volume of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins," Double Team, will begin. Wow! Seems like I've been involved with that story for a long time. In fact, since November 2018 when I started writing it.

I'm thinking at the moment that maybe I should collect all the comments on the story and publish them as a different story, just for the entertainment value. Few have anything to do with Double Twist.

As has rightly been guessed, Double Team deals with Jacob and his pod's two years of National Service after they leave high school. It's not all a bed of roses for the Octave Domestic Partnership. It seems there are surprises around every corner as they get ready for service.

Have a great week!

There seems to be some concern this morning that Double Twist and "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series might become too political with the posting of chapter 190 today. I'm not sure what to say about that. Other than, as Jacob said after releasing their The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly special back in Chapter 136 (Double Tears),

"Is political satire going to be the future direction for Marvel and Hopkins?" one of our viewers asked.
"Not necessarily," I said. "This piece came together after an extremely stressful time for all of us here. And, I suspect, for everyone in the country. It was timely and appropriate. Next time we are going to be back in a very intimate chamber setting to play Shubert's Fantasy in F minor. We'll have all the details on that up on our site soon. But we do like performing with costumes, dance, and storyline. There will be more of that whether it's seen as political or not."

If you'll remember, back in Chapter 134 (Double Tears), the sitting president attempted to postpone the inauguration of the newly elected president because of the national emergency. He was overruled by the Supreme Court. I want to remind you that Chapter 134 was written on April 22, 2019, and was posted on SOL on February 14, 2020. Both of those were long before any president actually suggested a delay in elections or inauguration. The chapter had nothing to do with the current political environment.

Today's posting of Chapter 190 of Double Twist was also written a long time ago. According to my records, June 21, 2019. That was the same day I was celebrating the release of Wild Woods in Seattle. I say this in order to emphasize that nothing in this story is intended as a commentary on current politics.

Jacob and crew are, however, political in their world. In their world, there is only one party and the issue that drives his political commentary and activism is National Service reform. He will continue to drive a political campaign based on that single issue. And he will discover that people with power will oppose him on the grounds of what they will lose. I believe that is pretty much a universal situation and that the phrase "Who owns the government?" is one that is asked in nearly every country in the world. And perhaps, in all the worlds we can invent in fiction. As one reader suggested in a mail message to me this morning:

Could it be that the answer to "who owns the government" is the same "who" that owns the governments of most of the world's national governments? Upon reflection of the real life I've experienced I'm certainly open to considering that as a viable thesis.

I don't know the answer to that question in our world. I've allowed Jacob to discover layer after layer of answers that are accurate in his world. It's a different world than ours, though I'm obviously influenced by what I see and hear as an author. I'm not a prophet. I will mention, however, that in Jacob's timeframe and world, Chapter 190 takes place in February of 2022.

The story is for entertainment purposes only.

I've been clearing projects off my desk one after another this month. So different than a year ago when I couldn't breathe and thought I was going to die. This year, the isolation of my campsite seems like a good thing.

So, there's about three more weeks of Double Twist until it comes to an end, which happens to coincide with the end of Adams' Apples. I have slated the beginning of the last book of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins, Double Team, to begin three days later. I've also 'discovered' one of Jacob's stories and have sent it off to editors. It seems Jacob was fascinated in his V1 life with the Swarm Cycle and decided to act out his own version by finding himself a sex slave. I'll post My Sex Slave about the same time Double Team launches. Watch for the new author, J-Hop!

In addition to that, my editors currently have in hand The Props Master 2: A Touch of Magic. Yes! I actually finished and revised the book that's been hanging around my desk since 1978! Soon, I'll begin the rewrite and completion of book 3, Child of Earth. Don't hold your breath. I've got other projects in the works as well.

I'm currently working on the long-delayed Wayzgoose story For Mayhem or Madness. This is another Dag Hamar cyber mystery and fits between For Money or Mayhem and For Blood or Money. It will probably be a somewhat shorter story than the others, but will fill a very important piece in the series.

And… I have the story edits for my upcoming Swarm Cycle story, Pussy Pirates. The Swarm Authors have checked it for canon violations and have offered some badly needed suggestions on things I know nothing about (like weapons and space travel). This is another story that will live on the periphery of the universe and not affect any of the existing stories. I'll be starting that rewrite in the next week.

So, I'm not just sitting around naked enjoying the beautiful outdoor weather here at my camp. I'm doing that in addition to sitting back in my recliner and typing out story after story!

And don't forget… My current story, Adams' Apples, is now available on Bookapy. Enjoy!

I talked to my friend the other day and he complained that I write faster than he can read. I can't help it. Once I get an idea I need to get it in words and get it out for people to read. And hence, there's another story in the pipeline. Starting today, Adams' Apples is ready for your reading pleasure.

Farce, satire, lampoon... Call it what you will. Back in January when I was sitting in a hotel in Tulsa waiting for my trailer to be repaired, I started going through my file of story notes. I needed something to write as I'd just finished Things I Never Told My Wife. I came across a very old concept. Back in the early 70s, my father-in-law (#1) gave me a very funny book and suggested I write a play based on it. I started work, but got bogged down in life and his daughter. My story note just said "Modernize Adam's Apple."

I couldn't remember the actual name of the book or the author, so I just sat down to start writing the story of a mass sterilization of all the men on earth except one. I remembered some names and some funny details. The cause in the original book was a nuclear power plant blowing up and destroying Mississippi, which no one cared about. But a new kind of radiation was released that sterilized all the men in the world except one who was a mile deep in a lead mine.

After giving that much of a lead-in, a reader wrote to tell me it sounded a lot like the book Mr. Adam by Pat Franks, published in 1946. I checked it out and indeed it was the book but by that time I'd already written over a third of it and was having a great time making up the weirdest crap I could about how the world would respond to a virus that sterilized all the men in the world except one who happened to be orbiting the earth doing satellite maintenance.

As I continued to write into March and April, I couldn't invent ridiculous responses to this virus that I didn't read about the next day in the news about CoVid-19. I kept getting more and more ridiculous and the news kept a step ahead of me. I tried to leave no group of people out of my lampoons--president (based on Stanley Kubrick's Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove), bureaucracy, the military, the press and media, religion, medicine, protesters, pro-life, congressional committees, Disney princesses, Homeland Security, domestic terrorists... If I missed anyone it was unintentional. But the result is now fully edited and ready for consumption. Hope you enjoy it. I'll post two chapters every three days.

Enjoy!

I don't usually post twice in a week, but news that composer Ennio Morricone passed away this morning at age 91 has hit me in the feels. Morricone composed the scores of over 500 movies, including the famous Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). I'm listening to his music on my YouTube playlist and will happily provide the link to anyone interested. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL54JVjPqRWsGVzXvVTO2GxRUKCBnbuSWZ)

Why do I have a whole playlist devoted to Morricone? If you read the most recent chapter of Double Twist, you'll know that Marvel and Hopkins are on a California tour in which they've chosen music by Morricone to start their revolution.

According to NPRs obituary this morning, "Morricone was off and running toward one of the most celebrated film-scoring careers of all time. It began with Il Federale in 1961 and continued through his collaborations with director Sergio Leone on a famous series of Westerns that included A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; and Once Upon a Time in the West. But that wasn't all he did.

"Some of his best-known scores included the political drama The Battle of Algiers; Brian de Palma's take on 1930s gangsters, The Untouchables; The Mission, about a Jesuit priest in South America; and Cinema Paradiso, about a young boy growing up after World War II with a love of movies."

Morricone was nominated six times and received an honorary Oscar in 2007. He won the Oscar for himself in 2016 (age 87!) for the score of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

RIP to this fantastic composer.