aroslav: Blog

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.

We're all a bunch of Yahbuts. I don't care how far right or left or center you are, you're a Yahbut. How religious or pagan you are, you're a Yahbut. How Black, White, Brown, Red, or Yellow you are, you're a Yahbut. How straight, gay, bi, or trans you are, you're a Yahbut. How rich or poor you are, you're a Yahbut. Our nation is populated with Yahbuts.

Name any social, legal, religious, or political issue and the person next to you will say "Yah but…"

"Black lives matter." "Yah but all lives matter."

"Beach parties have been spreading CoVid-19." "Yah but riots expose people, too."

"White male patriarchy is keeping women and people of color under their thumbs." "Yah but not all men."

"Racism is worse today than in 1965." "Yah but Obama didn't help it."

"Police need to step in and quell the riots." "Yah but they started it."

"A policeman killed a black man by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes." "Yah but a policeman killed a white man by kneeling on his neck for thirteen minutes."

"Hillary was responsible for Benghazi." "Yah but Trump colluded with the Russians."

"He's not perfect, but we need to get behind Biden." "Yah but we could all vote for Jo."

"The Bible is against homosexuals." "Yah but we don't stone divorcees."

"You need to wear a mask to stop the spread of CoVid-19." "Yah but a virus is smaller than a fart and your jeans don't stop that."

"Black people were held in slavery here for over two hundred years." "Yah but white people were enslaved in the Middle East."

It's almost as if people actually believe their apologetics (systematic argumentative discourse in defense (as of a doctrine). Merriam-Webster) mean anything. All they do is avoid responsibility for the current situation. They don't justify it and they don't offer a solution. But if you can find some shred of implied contradictory 'evidence,' then the problem stated isn't really a problem. Sometimes we even contradict and minimize our own evidence so we don't have to deal with it.

"There was a peaceful protest of a dozen students carrying BLM signs outside the store." "Yah but there wasn't a single person of color among them." (0.95% of the population of that town were Black, according to 2010 census data. Therefore, at least 11% of one of those people should have been Black???)

We just point out an unrelated, if factual, observation and assume that negates the problem presented or turns it into an irrelevant factoid.

"CoVid-19 has killed over 130,000 Americans this year." "Yah but abortion kills millions." (650,000 in the most recent year statistics are available.)

Look! I did it right there! I negated an abortion factoid by correcting the number to a much lower number. I didn't address abortion at all, but simply negated the assertion as irrelevant and exaggerated. We are all a bunch of Yahbuts! I have never met a person who didn't engage in this four-year-old's behavior. "He hit me!" "Yah but she called me a name."

It's really time for all the preschoolers running around in congress, the senate, the white house, the judiciary, the community councils, the police force, the churches, and our individual neighborhoods to grow the fuck up and start dealing with the problems instead of justifying them with irrelevant nonsense.

"Yah but…"

I've been excited about the new story by J-Hop I'm writing and posted about yesterday, but completely overlooked the fact that the book he was introduced in, Double Take, was voted Best Erotic Do-Over 2019 in the Clitorides Awards. This is Book 1 in "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" which continues to post currently with Book 4, Double Twist. Thank you to all who voted in this year's Clitorides. As the only awards for erotica I know of, the Clitorides are obviously the industry leader!

I'm putting that virtual trophy right there on my virtual mantle. I'd like to thank my mother, rest her soul, who is no doubt spinning in her ministerial grave and pleading with St. Peter for mercy on my soul.