aroslav: Blog

The five books and 237 chapters of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins have come to an end as of today. It's been quite a ride. I started writing the story in November of 2018 with no idea how long it would be until the characters took on a life of their own while I was getting settled in Arizona for the winter. Then I couldn't stop writing, pumping out a chapter a day for about eight months.

I hadn't reached the end of the story when I started slowing down in July of 2019. In August I found out why as I was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation. By the time I got to the end of the story in mid-September, I was only able to write for 15 minutes at a time before I'd fall asleep again. It was nearly the end of my story. I finally finished Double Team and went to Seattle to 'celebrate' my 70th birthday. Instead of celebrating, I was admitted to the emergency room and went in for immediate cardioversion. (They stop your heart and then restart it at the right rhythm.) I recovered.

I haven't been productive at the level of a chapter a day since then, but I'm happy to say that I've also produced the J-Hop short story "My Sex Slave" (https://storiesonline.net/s/22975/my-sex-slave) and five other serials that have been or are running on SOL. (Things I Never Told My Wife, Adams' Apples, The Props Master 2: A Touch of Magic, Pussy Pirates, and The Art and Science of Love--refresh)I also wrote a book by Nathan Everett (Wayzgoose) that will begin posting in this timeslot on Tuesday. A Place at the Table was posted in first rough draft last winter as "American Royalty". The story is so completely different than that draft after three rewrites that it will go up as a new story simultaneous to its release to the general public and SOL on December 22, 2020. It will be available in eBook form from Bookapy.

And I've not had a serious problem with my heart since October 2019. Knock on wood.

So, with the conclusion of Double Team, where am I going from here? I am nearly finished writing another Swarm Cycle story that will then be reviewed by the Swarm Authors forum and I'll completely rewrite. Then it will get posted here, I hope. The response to Pussy Pirates in that universe has been positive, so I'm very hopeful. I am doggedly determined to finish this new story, hopefully in the next week, so I can move on to another. I will begin one or more of several projects I've been toying with. We'll see where it goes. After all, I expect to spend most of the next four months in continued isolation as I look out across Puget Sound and watch the shipping traffic in and out of Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia.

Suffice it to say, I'm not dead and I am writing. More to come.

Thank you for your kind comments and reviews of Double Team.
aroslav

For some reason, I've felt like I was walking backwards into a headwind lately. I look at what I've been doing and I've been busy! I'm just not getting anything done. I got new tires put on my truck Wednesday and had to drive fifty miles to get them. Still trying to figure out the math that makes four tires at $244 each add up to $1,320. My calculator is broke!

Since I was in the parking lot, I went into Fred Meyer and bought enough groceries to last a while. Hopefully, till Christmas. Surprisingly, they all fit in my tiny refrigerator. I'm locked down now and am just hoping that my family and I can stay stably disease free so the five of us can have Christmas dinner together.

Then I realized that I'd also released The Art and Science of Love this week, both on SOL and Bookapy. I completed the final edit and formatting of Wayzgoose's A Place at the Table and have uploaded it to begin posting on SOL on December 22 as my official release date commercially. It will also be available on Bookapy and in paperback. Then there is my rewrite and first time eBook and paperback release of The Hero Lincoln Trilogy that will go public on January 15. That one is not such a rewrite that I'm reposting the story as a new serial, but I will update all the SOL chapters in the three Damsels in Distress stories in January when the books will be available on Bookapy.

Oh, yes. I reread and formatted the Strange Art series so I could put it on my website and will update all the files on SOL soon after the first of the year. That series, however, has already been released in eBook and paperback, so I have just a little more work to do to get it on Bookapy.

So, that's why I only got two new chapters of The Assassin written this week. This is another story in the Swarm Cycle that still needs to be finished, reviewed by the Swarm authors, rewritten, and approved before it will show up here. It's taken a couple of interesting turns but there is a lot of work to be done yet. It's going to cause a lot of "Wait a minute!" comments from the authors when I get to the part that embodies the title.

Writing on my other stories kind of stalled out this week, but none of them have started posting here, so you aren't affected. I'm just used to having a lot more going than I currently have. We'll see where the next week takes me!

Be safe. Be well. Wear the mask.

D.R. Peters, "Doc" to his friends, is an artist who also sells real estate. He paints lovely portraits of beautiful women. The women love their portraits. Doc loves the women. Everyone is happy.

Until smart and sexy neighbor Rita asks Doc to teach her the art of love, to which Doc willingly agrees. But he is caught off guard when the young research scientist begins experimenting with the effect of intimacy on the portraits Doc creates.

As his lovely assistant Rita teaches him the science of the art, Doc evolves a whole new and exciting style of painting that launches him into galleries and museums. He becomes an expert in the art and science of love.

This story starts today! It is eighteen chapters long and will post every three days. Enjoy my return to the story that started it all. A complete refresh of The Art and Science of Love posted here on December 2, 2011. There's plenty of sex in this story as well as a lot of getting into the brain of the artist.

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