aroslav: Blog

According to my stats page, this week my Homepage Access Count topped 1,000,000. (That's not all in a week. That's my lifetime count.) At the same time, my blog reached its 250,000th viewing. Wow! Thank you all. I hope you found what you wanted.

According to some of the email I got this week, that wasn't always the case. So, I'll posture myself and do a little lecturing. No. Let's call it sharing what I know because this stuff is complicated.

Last week, I reposted the entire Model Student Series, complete with edits and re-organized books. As a result, the previously three books in the series became six books in the series. If that wasn't enough, Books 1, 4, and 6 bear the original publishing dates back in 2012 and 2013, while Books 2, 3, and 5 bear the 2020 publishing date. So, going to my page and sorting my 41 stories by date does not put the books in reading order.

There are two ways to figure out the order. The first is to access my homepage and locate any of the Model Student stories. At the top of the description, it will have a highlighted link that says Model Student and a number, 1-6. That number is the order of the book you are looking at.

The best way is to click that link. The new page displayed will be the list of all the Model Student stories in reading order. The far left column, which is untitled, contains the number of the book in order.

Why is it so complicated? Because I'm stupid.

When I originally wrote the series, I had no expectations for it other than reading on SOL. But when I released the story in eBook and print, some years later, I discovered the books were just too long for getting people to buy them. So, I broke up the first one into three books and the second one into two books. When it came time to update the series on SOL, I didn't want to delete the original three with all their scoring info, so I just added the new ones and updated the originals. That gives them the out-of-sequence dates.

Okay, so what's next?

Well, I'm not going to do that again! The only other story that would potentially create that kind of hassle is Living Next Door to Heaven and I'm not going to update that story at all. If you want to read it as ten separate books instead of three long serials, you can do that on my website or by buying the eBooks.

I am in the process of re-editing the Wonders of My World series and posting it on my website. I won't be updating it on SOL. The changes are two-fold. First, I've re-proofread everything and corrected any errors. Not terribly significant. Second, I've added in all the photos of my travel and tall tales. Those will only be available in the online format on my website where I can store the photos and keep things together. US Highways will start appearing on that site next week.

There is something new in the works. New to you, that is. It's actually a Wayzgoose book I published in 2011. Next week, I'll begin serializing Steven George & The Dragon under the author name Wayzgoose here on SOL. It's a young adult book, but at 70, I still get a kick out of it. A series of fairytales told as part of a journey by our intrepid dragonslayer. It's a fun read. No sex, like most Wayzgoose stories. However, some of the subject matter gets too mature for children. Think Grimm's fairytales, not Disney's.

Sweltering in Place

Temps here in Pharr Texas have topped 100 degrees three times this week with yesterday hitting 105. I'm looking forward to the relief of temperatures only hitting 90 this week.

Back in the early 90s I was teaching a seminar that included people from Alaska who had come to freezing cold Seattle to get warm. They'd been experiencing temperatures of -90F. We asked what -90 was like. The answer was, "It's just like -60, but faster."

Now I look at the temperature of 105 and can say, "It's just like 90 but faster." As my deceased mother-in-law used to say, "We'll die of heat prostitution!"

Be well, my friends!

If you are currently reading Model Student, Triptych, or The Prodigal, download them! Tonight, I'm going to upload the new version and it might be very difficult to find your place in one of the six books that will replace the three currently on the site. The new books will be approximately the following equivalents:
Current Model Student will become 1. Mural, 2. Rhapsody Suite, 3. Diva. In order to balance the books a bit, Diva will include a chapter or two of what is currently Triptych.
Current Triptych will become 4. Triptych, 5. Odalisque. That story was seriously way too long!
Current The Prodigal will become 6. The Prodigal.
I do not have plans to change or re-release the Triptych Interviews at this time.

In other news: I began posting Wayzgoose's Steven George & The Dragon on my site for Patrons. That means I'll start posting it here the first of May. If you want to join on Patreon to see things sooner, let me know.

Among the things that will be starting for Patrons soon is the re-edited and illustrated US Highways, Book 1 of "Wonders of My World." I'm including photos of my journey around the country. I'm having a lot of fun reliving it remotely since I'm still sweltering in place in Pharr Texas. 92 degrees with an expected high of 97 today. Highs in the upper nineties and into the 100s for the rest of the week. Sadly, it looks like I'll be another month here waiting for things to open up safely so I can travel north.

I'm glad I don't need groceries this week. Wearing long pants, long-sleeved shirt, gloves, mask, and hat can get hot. And no one can see my eyes because as soon as I don the mask my daughter sewed and sent me, my glasses fog up. One of the little things we do in life in order to keep living.

I am getting some new stuff written, too, but it's going a little slower than I hoped. I have eleven chapters of Adams' Apple written and ten chapters of Pussy Pirates in the can. I expect both to be around 20 chapters. The latter will be longer in getting to post because it will need to be reviewed by the Swarm authors for approval as part of the canon. And you know how I love to push the edges of established genres. It could take them a while to brow-beat me into submission. But they'll succeed. I have a lot of admiration for those guys.

I've had some inquiries regarding when book 5 of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins, Double Team, will be available for purchase. It looks like June 1. I'll post a note as soon as I have it up and ready.

I keep restraining myself from starting something else new. I've always been able to keep multiple projects in the air at once, but I have so many now that I need to try to stay focused on one or two. I think that's partly due to the quarantine and living in isolation. I keep having mental images of that one lone guy broadcasting the end of the world from a remote radio station, unaware that there is no one left to listen to him.

I'm confident, though. We're doing what needs to be done. A lot of the SOL readership is in the group of people considered highly at risk. We're old. I'd like to thank those of you who aren't for doing your part in protecting us. For that, I'll keep writing.

Since the beginning of quarantine, I've been trying to make more of my stories available for free to a broader audience. Most recently, that has included making a run through my published edition of the Model Student series, editing it, and posting it on my website. But I never updated the original version on SOL even to the published version when it came out in 2016. I'm trying to remedy that and have formatted the entire new edition for release on SOL--hopefully later this week. It's hard to believe I originally wrote and posted that story here back in 2012!

I do, however, have a question or two that you could help me with. First, let me explain that in order to make good stand-alone books, and in order to put them in print, I had to make several adjustments to where parts and stories ended and began. So, the breakpoints between stories are not the same as in the current version. Second, I brought out the original Model Student as three separate books, Mural, Rhapsody Suite, and Diva. The original version of Triptych was so long I had to cut it into two books, now called Triptych and Odalisque. The Prodigal continues to stand alone. So there were three serials originally posted on SOL and now they are six books.

The options as I see them.

1. Replace the current three books with six new ones. Each a standalone with the new titles.

2. Use Part divisions to post three as one in Model Student, and two books as one in Triptych.

Your feedback would be helpful.

In any case, the version currently on SOL will be gone. There were some cuts and rewrites of particularly gratuitous scenes to make the story acceptable for a broader audience, and a few names of minor characters were changed to protect the innocent (notably racquetball competitors). So, if you are particularly fond of the stories as they currently exist and don't want to see the changes (if you even care), I'd suggest you download the current books now. They will be changed by this time next week.

Since finishing The Prodigal back in 2013, I have written and posted thirty more books here as aroslav and ten more as Wayzgoose. I am grateful for your continued support and readership.

Just an irrelevant note: I went out yesterday for my bi-weekly groceries and monthly pharmacy run. My truck is getting four weeks per gallon at the moment. I've been having some trouble with ants in the trailer here in Texas, so while I was at the grocery store, I found and bought some ant killer. When I checked out the cashier held the package up and said with a straight face, "You do know this is for insects and not relatives, right?"

I hope you are weathering the storm, so to speak. Be well.

Devon

I'm talking about a story here, not a person. Today endeth the reading of Things I Never Told My Wife. I hope you've enjoyed this tidbit that I wrote to pass the time back in December and January. You know, back before we were forced to stay put instead of staying put like always!

I'm working on another story I hope to be of similar length, but I have to say I've not been overwhelmingly motivated to write. Usually, the words are bursting to get out and this week, nothing. I try to blame part of that on the two client projects that I have in that will account for about fifty hours of editing time. But, then there is also my personal project of editing and formatting the Model Student series for display on my website. At the moment, I'm about half way through the published version of Triptych, which is the first half of the story by that name here at SOL. When I published that work, it was so long that I divided it in two, Triptych and Odalisque. I'm debating whether I should re-do the SOL version. I've a feeling there were a number of changes between what is now "finished" and what is still on SOL. I'd have to take down the series and then repost the new books. Should I do that?

Because, of course, that would give me something else to do while I procrastinate on my other projects.

By the way, thanks to Allen, who recently re-read the series and sent me a hundred errors he spotted while reading. I'm getting those all corrected, too!

I hope you all enjoyed Things I Never Told My Wife. It seems strange to only have one story posting on SOL right now. Tomorrow, "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" chapter 151, which is book 4, Double Twist, second chapter, will post. Whatever will happen next??? BTW, Double Twist is mostly not a tear-jerker.

At the moment, I'm thinking of losing the weight I've gained while sitting on my ass the past month plus as another project I could procrastinate.

Be well, friends!

As promised, the first chapter of Double Twist was posted this morning, Chapter 150 of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins." I've just finished uploading the other 45 chapters of this story and have them in the queue to post every three days. While I was at it, I slated the first chapter (#196) of Double Team (Book 5) to post three days after this one ends.

I inadvertently left comments turned off when I posted the story and have corrected that now. Comment away! Voting will come online on April 14.

I've also been busy this week, preparing the first three books of the "Model Student" Series for online reading on my website. I'm attaching the appropriate links on the site now and they should be ready in an hour or so by looking at "Free Stories" at devonlayne. The first three books are a bit different than the version here on SOL. I split up the former first story of the series here on SOL (Model Student) into three shorter stories. I've done some other editing and correcting files as well. The new titles in the series are Mural, Rhapsody Suite, and Diva. They each have a colorful cover page as well.

Things are going good here. Be well, my friends.