aroslav: Blog

This is number seventy in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I WROTE A LOT OF POETRY when I was a teen. I even competed in and won speech contests reading my own poetry. That was not technically allowed. The rules said ‘poems by a recognized author.’ When my speech teacher confronted me about it, she asked, “Who recognized it?”

It happened that she had read and studied the poems and then took it upon herself to guide me in their interpretation. She actually told me what the author was trying to get across in the poem and how I should read it in order to bring that meaning out.

“You did,” I answered. “You recognized it when you interpreted it to me.”

She asked no more questions about whether I could legitimately read the poem and I won the next speech contest.

I continued writing poetry well into my thirties. By that time, I was far more wrapped up in my prose and let poetry slide by the wayside. A business advisor once told me “If you aren’t a poet in your teens, you have no soul. If you are still a poet in your thirties, you have no brain.” I still kind of disagree.

I find that writing poetry significantly influenced my writing of prose. When I released my first long series of books, the Model Student series, back in 2012-13, I was quite consumed with the passion of my characters—whether I was describing Tony’s artwork or his racquetball playing or his love-life. I lost myself in the rhythm of the brushstrokes and the ball in the court.

One reviewer said, “Some of the writing, when describing Tony producing his masterpieces, is absolutely sublime.” Another said that one section had inspired him to write poetry. And I think back on writing that piece and realize I was wrapped up in the poetic rhythm of the story.

When I think of my most successful prose works, I find they share a foundation of poetic rhythm. The words came easily when I was in the flow and could feel the rhythm.

The individual eBooks and the Model Student collection are available on Bookapy. The paperbacks are available from major online retailers.

While contemplating what to write next this summer, I’ve been searching for that rhythm in a story that would capture the reader and allow the words to flow from my pen. And there are so many different rhythms.

I’ve watched a lot of episodes of the major talent search shows on television this spring, as I developed the final chapters of The Strongman (to be released in August). The shows feature singers, dancers, acrobats, comedians, magicians, dog trainers, and ventriloquists—among others. One never knows what one will see. I noticed, however, that the best acts have a rhythm to them, often accompanied by music, whether a musical act or not.

Certainly, there are certain songs that appear repeatedly in the auditions and even in the later performances. Why anyone still auditions to some of them, I don’t know. They have been preceded by a performance so definitive as to make comparison difficult. But still, they excel!

And I think that is what drives the best prose forward as well. No matter how many stories we have read about an underdog loser who finds his or her groove and becomes successful and popular, we still gravitate to the next one and read it to feel the rhythm all over again.

I was thinking about this recently when a quote came across my desk that encapsulated the feeling and the drive of writing to a rhythm. It is from famed author of the early 20th century, Virginia Woolf.

“Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand, here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928

I could not have expressed it better. I sit at my desk (a lap desk I carry on the road) and look at the chaotic mass of ideas I have for a new story that I can’t dislodge for lack of the right rhythm. Will this story have a bossa nova beat? A waltz? Cha cha cha? Big band swing? An R&B backbeat? When I find that, I know I’ll have a story that will keep me writing.

Thirty years ago, I produced a new age CD for a vocalist who really understood her rhythms. (Land of Ever by Elyra Campbell.) The sound engineer was great and we had many long conversations. He held that no matter what the genre of music, if he cut out everything but the groove (the rhythm section—typically but not exclusively on drums) people liked it. You might hate rap or country or classics, but if all you heard was the groove, you’d enjoy it. He tested the concept with a CD he mastered that did just that. I listened to and enjoyed over an hour of rhythm and was surprised that it cut across every genre of music. (This talented sound engineer is now a Russian Orthodox priest!)

So, I say this is even more important when writing erotica! The greater the passion that is involved, the more important the groove becomes. Relationships develop, flourish, and even decline to a certain rhythm. Let us not forget that even sex is a sometimes complicated dance that is most enjoyed when the partners share the same rhythm.

Here, then, is to finding the rhythm and soul in the writing. The words will follow.

I’m enjoying my little break much like people enjoy a vacation that they will need a rest from before they can return to work. It is exciting and exhilarating, but ultimately, I want to be doing something more. Next week, I’ll start exploring my current story ideas with “All Are Created Equal.”

Today the final chapter of Follow Focus, which is also the final chapter of the "Photo Finish" series, has posted. Thank you for your comments and email. It's been a good ride.

This is number sixty-nine in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I HAVE BEEN WRITING almost non-stop for the past ten+ years. In that time, I’ve averaged some 800,000 new words per year. Since 2013, I have published fifty-eight erotica novels and ten mainstream novels to join the three I had out prior to that time. Wow! Sixty-eight novels in eleven and a half years. And a variety of short stories and essays!

I have a new novel anticipated in August. But that marks a bit of a slow-down this year. I expect only three new novels to be released this year, rather than my average of six a year. If you are an old fan of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew and read the massive number of volumes in those series, you know that several different authors wrote under those names over the years. Not so with me. I wrote and published sixty-eight novels under two different names, but the same author.

I’m only seventy-four years old and am not planning to retire anytime soon. But I might need a short vacation to recharge my batteries. Even God rested on the seventh day. So they say.

I believe I’ll take July to think and plan. I’m going to Alaska the last week of July and expect to breathe a lot of fresh sea air on the voyage. I want to see glaciers before they are gone. I want to visit the coastal towns. And I want to inhale inspiration.

I have to say that having heart problems back in 2019 changed my view of travel a bit. I found myself staying longer in one place and nearer to places where there was a good medical infrastructure if needed. Three years ago, I settled in Las Vegas for the winter and spent six, then eight, then nine months there before hitching up to wander for the summer.

This past December, I flew to Seattle for a two week visit over the holidays. I ended up staying four months as the cardiologist installed a pacemaker and followed up with a couple of procedures that would help it keep time.

And this summer, I left the trailer parked in Vegas and just took off driving northward in my truck for the summer, staying in cheap motels (which are nowhere near as cheap as I remembered), and eating cheap meals. I’ve worked my way from Las Vegas, through California, Reno, California, Oregon, and Washington. From here I’ll board a ship bound for Alaska. (That will make forty-seven states.) Then, in August, I’ll drive down the coast from the Olympic Peninsula, through Oregon, and down the coast of California, before cutting across from LA to Las Vegas. The redwoods, the beaches, the beauties.

By that time, I expect I’ll have an idea for the next great book, whether it is a Nathan Everett literary book or a Devon Layne erotic tale.

Lest you become concerned, I want to say that my new pacemaker is working flawlessly, I’m now on fewer drugs of less potency, and I’m feeling great. This is not my farewell message!

I expect to return to writing this fall, stronger, more inspired, and I admit, a little poorer than I am today. As is usual, I have twenty-something half-baked ideas in my files and I’m sure one or more of them will finally jump up and declare it’s time to finish baking.

In the meantime, I want to direct you to the stories I have still running at StoriesOnline (authors aroslav and Wayzgoose), and the library of stories I have available on my personal author sites for Devon Layne and Nathan Everett. I’ll be doing some cleanup on those sites and updating with current information. Stay tuned!

My life story continues to be about appreciating the journey without thought for the destination. At the same time, I support marginalized people of all sorts—whether it be old men, the disabled, the homeless, veterans with PTSD, immigrants, gender queer persons, women, children, the abused, those racially discriminated against, or those threatened by the loss of fundamental rights—which probably includes you.

Though I have long since woken up from my time under religious indoctrination, I still recognize the personal wisdom in the New Testament verse: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The rights of all suffer when the rights of the few are diminished. We cannot ‘give’ rights to one person at the expense of others. We can only give them power to ignore our rights.

I have made it to the Pacific Northwest where the temperature is significantly lower than the 116 expected in Las Vegas this week. I just hope my trailer doesn’t melt while I’m gone. Next week, I’m sure I’ll come up with some new meanderings of my mind to share with you. Until then…

This is number sixty-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I DESIGNED A BOOK for a client and got it online for him. Without going into detail, it was a long and painful process that he will never pay me for—regardless of his good intentions.

Three months later, he received his first royalty statement and contacted me immediately to cry about having made only $17 in the first month his book was on sale. Everyone wanted his book, but no one was buying it!

I looked at my own royalty statement from the same vendor for that month and shared in his disappointment as I had sixty titles offered and only made $60 more than he did!

There are lots of factors that go into book sales. One, which I have taught to my clients for years, is that once the author stops selling the book (like to write another) the book will stop selling. I’ve found this true even of some top-selling authors. They sell books at conferences and shows they attend and speak at. They sell books through social media. They sell books in every format and every outlet they can track down. They hold autographing events to sell books. And when they stop to go on a month’s vacation to finally get started on that sequel, they return to find their sales have dropped dramatically.

The problem is most authors (including me) are poor salespeople. They are not happy selling their books. It feels egotistical and uncomfortable. And it takes time away from the actual business of writing the next book. (As does editing, rewriting, and polishing.) We humbly list our books on sales sites and go hide in the basement writing the next blockbuster while people decided if our latest offering is good enough to invest $2.99, $4.99, $7.89 in acquiring for their personal library.

In 2007, two other authors and tech geeks got together with me to create a new publishing company called LongTale Press. It had a unique mode of operating that invited people to submit a portion of the book and then have readers vote for or against it. If it got enough votes, we would enter a publishing agreement.

In order to get things started and show that we were capable of editing and publishing books, we each agreed to launch a book on the platform, publish it, and put it up for sale. The book I put up was For Blood or Money—the first of my novels to be published in eBook and paperback.

An agent friend of mine pulled me aside at a writer event soon after we started the business and warned me that “You can be an author or a publisher. It’s almost impossible to be both.” I soon found out how true that was.

We did accept a book for publication and it had a modest success. But we each had other projects we were working on. I had a new book I was writing. One of my partners got a new job and a new relationship. The other was pressed with a tight release schedule at work. And I was laid off, struggling to find work for a 60-year-old.

We were all writing our next novels. We weren’t selling books. And the books didn’t sell.

In 2009, I acquired the assets of LongTale Press and started publishing books on a shared cost/shared revenue basis. Once again, I had modest success, but continued to maintain my principal ‘job’ of writing new books. In 2015, I closed the press for new clients and returned authors’ works to them to distribute elsewhere. Now I only edit and design books for hire.

And publish my own. After all, I had all the mechanisms in place to publish. Why not start releasing my own books on a regular basis?

Nathan Everett’s For Blood or Money, the first of my books to be published, is available in eBook from Bookapy, and in paperback from most vendors.

Ah yes, the glamorous life of an author.

I like to eat and am fortunate to have Social Security and a modest IRA from my days in the high tech industry. I live in a travel trailer with a total area of 225 sf. Alone. I eat a lot of packaged meals. And I sometimes pull the trailer from place to place to see interesting things.

I spend six to ten hours a day in front of the computer, writing, editing, and publishing my books. And mostly, I’m pretty happy. I’ve had some scary health issues, but they turned out okay. I have a dent in the back bumper of my truck, but it doesn’t affect the way it runs. And my books, still sell.

I started this blog a year and a half ago with the explicit intention of promoting one of my backlist books each week. I’m not much of a salesman, but half the battle is simply keeping books in the awareness of the readership.

The life of an author is not filled with glamour. Artist David Kramer recently shared this about art, and it is as true about writing.

“Artists are not like athletes. We cannot win Gold. We cannot ‘beat’ other creatives. We cannot come first. Sport is objective. Our craft is subjective. Creating to ‘be the best’ is a waste of energy. Instead, create to connect to the people who need you. Because they’re out there. Create in your way, because there is no right way. Take the pressure off, and focus on your unique brand of magic.”

So, why do authors write?

There is no universal answer for this. For most, it isn’t the money. In 2022, a full-time author had a median income of $10,000 per year from books in the US. Not quite enough to live on in most places. Considerably below Federal minimum wage. If coupled with non-book (editing, designing, patronage, articles, blogs) income, that number doubles, but is still not a living wage. And that is for full-time authors. The vast majority of authors of the 2,000,000 books a year published in the US are part-time authors with other employment.

There isn’t a lot of praise that comes from being an author. I have books that have sold nearly a thousand copies and have fewer than twenty reviews. I believe readers simply do not comprehend how valuable their reviews can be.

An author’s work is not respected, and is often considered “not real work.” It is half a step above (or sometimes below) “Would you like fries with that?”

I gave a copy of For Blood or Money to a friend when it first came out in 2007. It wasn’t selling and I had a bunch of them in my office. He read it and the next time we met he exclaimed, “It was just like reading a real book!”

WTF!?? He still didn’t offer to pay for it.

Oh, boohoo. So, if it is such a miserable life, why do it? God loves you and you can sit on your hands.

Many authors will say they do it for themselves and don’t care what other people say or think. It’s an entertaining hobby for them and, like a butterfly collection, some other people will be interested in looking at the specimens. I think the percentage of such authors is fairly low. Lower than their comments would indicate.

There is, however, something in the creative mind that demands release. We’d like AI to do our dishes and laundry so we can focus on writing, rather than doing our writing so we can focus on dishes and laundry. The story doesn’t require AI to be realized. It is inside the author demanding to be told.

I’ve often used the phrase, “I don’t write for a living. I write to live.” And I also strive to make my stories available for people who read to live. That is why all my books are available for free online reading, either at SOL or on my website. Nearly all my book sales are to people who have already read or are in the process of reading the online version for free!

And I want to tell you, whether you buy a book, leave a comment, review the book, pass the book on to someone else, send me an email message, or simply enjoy reading it in your own private silence, thank you.

It is nice to have made the connection.

Wow! We are ready to start the second half of the year. Who knows what strangeness might enter my mind for the next blog post?

This is number sixty-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

MY EDITORS LAUGH when I tell them a book is nearly finished.

“One more chapter. Two at the most,” I say.

“Right,” they laugh.

Seven chapters later, I send them the final draft. It is just so hard to get to the end! For lots of reasons:
1) Too many unanswered questions.
2) Too rushed or abrupt to end.
3) Too many people asking, “But what about…?”
4) Too many things I intended to say earlier.
5) Too long a timeframe from the climax to “Happily
ever after” to skip everything between.
6) I don’t want to rush the characters’ relationship. They should have a chance to enjoy this.

That last one is more often the case than not. My characters are real to me and I don’t want to cut down on their enjoyment in order to move the story forward. This care for my characters manifests itself at times when I’m writing the all-important first love scene between the two. I’ll get halfway into it, then just before consummation, I’ll take a break for a day or two so the characters have a chance to enjoy what’s about to happen.

And still, I get comments from readers at the end of every story, no matter how hard I’ve tried to end it satisfactorily.

“That’s all?”
“What about the abuses you alluded to in college?”
“That was abrupt.”
“Finish it already.”
“Can’t wait to hear what happens next.”

I’ve commented about listening to reader feedback in previous blog posts, so I won’t go into that again.

So, when we’ve told the story we want to tell, how do we get to Happily Ever After—or in some cases, Happily For Now. That’s the ultimate goal of erotica, or at least of romantic erotica. The reader paid their money and it's time to feel good.

While the dramatic death of one partner might be a logical conclusion to a story, it is seldom if ever an HEA conclusion. To get to that conclusion, we have more story to tell. It can’t fairly be told in a paragraph.

I make an event log titled GETTING TO HEA. It could be expressed as a PERT chart (Program Evaluation Review Technique, developed by USN in the 1950s.) if one wanted to go deep into the analysis. In my instance, it is simply a list of things that have to happen in the story (including conversations, actions, world situation, etc.) in order to get to my happy ending.

For example: I’m currently writing a new story about an Olympic gymnast. I know the story has to end sometime after the 2032 Summer Olympics. In order to get there from the current point in 2028,

1. Three years have to pass as he travels the world seeking training from great gymnastic coaches.
2. He has to fail to make the team without actually failing as a gymnast.
3. He has to resign his life to the daily tedium of his work as a trainer and massage therapist.
4. He has to run into his old friend. (Sidenote: she has to be the only one left of her acrobatic team, one having left and one retiring.)
5. He has to realize that he’d be a lot happier helping his acrobatic friend than competing as a gymnast in the Olympics.
6. They have to audition for shows with a new act.
7. The director of the new show has to be his former lover.
8. He has to reunite with his former lover and find fulfillment in a favorable opening of his new act with his new partner.
9. HEA.

You would think with this chart of activities that are known, I should be able to sit and write it in an afternoon. In fact, I think 2-9 could be covered without rushing in two or three chapters. The problem is point number one. How do I deal with three more years of his life before he gets to the things he needs?

Fortunately, I’m not writing in a diary style. I don’t have to account for every day. That is a trap of that style of book. You can’t just skip three years and have him resume as if he hadn’t left off. Even in the plotted story, a blank period always leaves the reader wondering what went on during that time. Just starting a paragraph that says:

I decided to go to Japan first. Three years later, I couldn’t believe how time had flown.

How many of you would put down the book at that point? Raise your hand.

No. Without creating a detailed diary, I need to focus on two or three things that were significant in that time and tell their story, perhaps looking back from the point I was trying to get to all along.

The point is the author has to figure out how they are getting to HEA and then plot a strategy for getting there. In writing this blog post, I may have stumbled upon my strategy for resolving my current dilemma. One thing I know, though, I won’t just skip it. I won’t condense the timing and make it three months instead of three years. I won’t simply abruptly say, “They lived Happily Ever After, for now.”

What I will do?

I will spend some time working on the story instead of blog posts!

Ah the trials and tribulations of being an author. Sigh! If I didn’t love what I’m doing, I would no longer do it. And I will continue the blog, even though I’ll be traveling for the rest of the summer. Next week, “About Being an Author.”