aroslav: Blog

...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.

Yeah, right. Isn't everyone? From what I've seen on my social media feeds (which I try to ignore as much as possible) everyone is expecting tomorrow to usher in the apocalypse. It makes no difference which side of the great divide you are on, we've convinced ourselves that if the other side wins, it's the end of the world. We either descend further into a fascist, white supremist dictatorship, or we are thrust headlong into socialistic ruin and lose all our guns.

That's why I'm starting the new serial, Pussy Pirates, tomorrow morning! We need something to celebrate, right? This story in Thinking Horndog's Swarm Cycle universe is just what we need on Election Day in the US because no matter who wins tomorrow, at least we aren't being eaten by alien monsters. Yet. And we can rest in the assurance that the future safety of Earth rests in the hands of computer game nerds and a bunch of porn starlets.

I knew hanging out with software developers and porn stars would come in handy some day. I had an IRL model for nearly every character, so now you can stack up your favorites and see if they appear in the story. Of course, I'll never say who was who, but you might hear the tip chimes ring!

If you are new to the Swarm Cycle, you can catch on pretty quickly just by reading Pussy Pirates. But you could also get a head start on the concept by reading a couple of Thinking Horndog's early stories in the cycle, like Average Joes and Pickup Number Eighteen. I've also provided handy references throughout the story for other stories in the Cycle that I've borrowed from or referred to.

What are they saying? Well, even though the story has been posting to my Patreon patrons for a couple of weeks, there aren't many comments yet. Here are some from other names you'll recognize, though.

"The Swarm universe is more interesting than I have given it credit for, at least as you have presented it." --Old Rotorhead

"I wondered if I'd have any interest in any Swarm Cycle story, even one from you. Turns out I love it." --Pixel the Cat

"I love it!" --Thinking Horndog

"You're a very ill man." --Zen Master

And tomorrow, you can start adding your own comments. Just remember, this has nothing remotely in common with contemporary Earth politics.

I've also uploaded the eBook to bookapy.com for your purchasing pleasure.

Enjoy!