aroslav: Blog

I should have posted a long time ago but I've been busy writing. Yeah. I'm about through the first draft of Double Take book 2 (51 chapters). I'm sending stuff to my editors now and that means no break between Book 1 (Ending May 26) and Book 2 (beginning June 1 and ending October 29). Between that and writing/editing Wayzgoose's Wild Woods, I've been kind of busy. That will start posting here in mid-April.

So far, I've written over 300,000 words this year. And in the midst of that, Mike wrote to me to ask how my Swarm story was coming! Um… Slowly.

Well, I guess that's all the real news. Time to make shit up.

I can't believe it's already March 13. I have a month to get my income taxes filed. They should be simple, but deferred income from retirement savings (IRA) is all taxable and I have to come up with money to pay all the corporate bigwigs in the country for their tax breaks. Thanks for the tax relief.

I suppose I'll take a couple of days off writing as soon as Double Take 2 is finished and do my taxes. Then I should clean my trailer and get ready to move again since April 15 is also my departure date from Quartzsite, AZ. I've been cranking out so many words on my current works in progress that general maintenance has taken a back seat. I suppose one day I'll even have to wash dishes!

I should be celebrating! This week, Double Take captured and has maintained the number 1 slot in the Top 50 Ongoing Serials by Weekly Downloads. I'm thinking that means I should drink wine from a bottle one night instead of wine from a box.

My patrons, of course, are reading about ten chapters ahead of the posting schedule here on SOL ($5/mo tier) assuming they haven't downloaded the eBook and finished Book 1 already. The patrons who are willing to endure my unedited copy ($10/mo tier) are almost through Book 2 at this point. I'm working on the calendar of events for Book 3 so they'll have new material every week. They, after all, are the ones who make it possible for me to post all my stories for free, including those by Wayzgoose.

Because I know what living on fixed income is like, I stay committed to posting everything I write here on SOL so it can be read for free. If you want to support that effort, you can do so by becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/aroslav, or by making a direct donation at www.paypal.me/aroslav. I know some people have said they can't find me by searching, so copy the address and paste it in your browser. Amazon, Patreon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and just about any other major site you can think of suppress search results for sites containing adult material-even if you don't ask for safe search. You have to know what you want in order to get it.

That reflects on my decisions about how I publish books for a broader market. I don't see myself uploading any more books from Devon Layne (erotica) to Amazon. They will continue to be available to those who want them on my website at reasonable prices. My mainstream fiction (Nathan Everett) will be released on Amazon unless they arbitrarily decide my writing is too radical and thus a 'violation of Amazon's Content Guidelines' and ban those as well. Barnes & Noble now offers both eBook and print services for independent authors and have not (as yet) set themselves up as content censors like Amazon has. I'll continue to publish on the B&N site.

It will take a while for me to get my website (www.devonlayne.com) as robust as I want it to be, but I'm making more on sales there than I did on Amazon anyway, so I'll continue to release books through my site.

All that to say, all my stories will continue to be available on SOL for free, but those who are committed to supporting the author will still be able to buy the eBooks (and occasional paperbacks).

I should learn not to write blog posts after I've already had my quota of wine for the evening (a buttload) and so I hope you continue to enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy writing them! As long as I am able, there will be a steady stream of aroslav and Wayzgoose stories here on SOL.

It might surprise you to know I read what I've written. Sometimes when I'm reading a story on SOL, I sit up straight at something I've read and say, "Does this author have any idea what he just said?" Oh, in a different mood, I'd read right over it and, assuming the story was the least bit engaging, just pass it off as a mistake and no big deal.

But when I find something like that in one of my own stories, I go ballistic.

"How could I have missed something so stupid?" "How did I misspell that?" "When did I say she had a sister?" "Oh, shit! What am I going to do now?" Etc.

Not that it's usual to find real weenies in things I've posted. Old Rotorhead and Pixel the Cat clean up uncounted errors before I start putting the stories on line. Michele, Lyndsy, and Jason all do a fabulous job of critiquing and improving my mainstream storylines and character arcs (Wayzgoose) and Colleen and Margaret are phenomenally sharp proofreaders.

But it irritates me no end when I have to go back 30 chapters or so to correct something that I've just made impossible with where I've taken the story. Take this little tidbit posted earlier this week in Double Take: "I've got an older sister, too. She's in service this year so I don't get to see her much." Wait! Rebeca has an older sister? A little tidbit that I have totally ignored for the next seventy chapters!

That's not unreasonable for the development of the story arc. Rebeca is revealed through her relationship with Jacob. Her sister is away in Service. But suddenly I have a plot point that needs to get developed in the next book (3). And in seventeen months since Jacob's transmogrification, Beca's sister is only mentioned once.

And how did I even discover that?

It's part of my writing process.

I write very fast. Typically, between 3,000 and 10,000 words a day. This week, I totaled 37,000 words. But writing them isn't all I do. Here's the step by step process:

1. First draft. When I'm thinking smoothly, it is not unusual for me to write a chapter of Double Take in a day. Not every day, but the 3,500-word average length of those chapters is a day's work.

2. I immediately post the chapter on my website for my $10/month patrons to read. (patreon.com/aroslav) They want to see the material as it flows from my pen, as it were, and will overlook typos and story inconsistencies just so they can be reading Chapter 76 today while SOL fans are reading Chapter 14. Yeah. They're that far ahead. I call them my Sausage Grinders.

3. I re-read the chapter, usually over the course of writing the next one or two. I focus on story things and often go back to correct things that I spot later. What color is Beca's hair? Light brown? Why is she referred to as a blonde in this chapter? Inquiring minds want to know.

4. When I've accumulated an entire 'Part' of chapters (usually 10-12 chapters) I gather them all together and send them off to Rotorhead and Pixel. The list of these two guys' clients is a Who's Who of SOL authors. Some of the best and cleanest stories on the site have been through their watchful hands. Which I know is a mixed metaphor, but they didn't edit this.

5. When the chapters are returned, I compare and consolidate the notes.

6. I hand-code every individual chapter in html. I do that for a couple of reasons, even though Vixen sometimes ignores my careful coding. First, I think it gives me better output on SOL, but more importantly, it helps facilitate the quick conversion to my own website and to eBook. So I code the correct quotation marks, the character entities, the bold, italic and line breaks that are needed. Many times during this process, I discover formatting corrections. A quotation wasn't italicized. The poetry all ran into one line.

7. I read the chapter in a browser. Everything up to this point has been done in Word or in my html editor. Believe me when I say that you see the story differently in a browser. That means that I make corrections to this draft. It's typical to see a missing quotation mark, for example. And I hate when the same word is used too frequently within a paragraph. Half the time I need a different word and the other half it should be cut completely. Sometimes, I still see sentences that are so poorly constructed I have to completely rewrite them. But I do, correcting the html before I upload the chapters in the queue for posting (three or four months from now).

8. The Doctype on SOL is simple html. My website is coded in xhtml. That requires some amount of conversion, however, my having converted all entities when I originally converted to html and saved them as UTF8 characters makes the conversion process go pretty smoothly. My website has a different look and feel than SOL, so I open the page in the browser to take a look once more. I've added contents and navigation to the page and I check to make sure it all works and that all the graphics I use between scenes have all appeared. I scan through the document again and occasionally still see a stray typo or missing format. At this stage, when I correct it, I go back and correct the SOL version, too.

9. I upload the new pages in my own queue for posting to my Advance Release ($5/mo) patrons. They want delivery of the story faster than it comes out on SOL but aren't willing to put up with the raw text of the Sausage Grinder. For example, today they are reading the end of Part II: Inculcation (chapter 22) while SOL readers are reading chapter 14. (patreon.com/aroslav)

10. Three to five months down the road, the chapter posts on SOL. I read it. After it's posted. Sometimes I still find an error or a reader sends me a message about one. I correct it if it seems important. Other times, I'll simply say, well that's what's in this version. I'll correct the eBook.

So, that's my easy ten-step process for writing the stories that appear here on SOL and on my own website. There are another half-dozen steps involved before I release a commercial eBook and paperback. It's not perfect but I'd put any of my books up against a Dan Brown commercially published best seller and come out with fewer errors. One of my own story editors was so appalled by Brown's latest work that she marked up the entire first chapter and sent it to him asking why his editors let this go out!

Well, this was all interesting-to me. I suppose I lost most of you before #1 above. If you made it this far, please take away this understanding. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I care about what I write and I want you to enjoy it without obstacles.

No, it's not a new story. Just this blog post. I've spent a week in the shadows of the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. In other words, immersed in porn. With my six associates, we explored new products, hot DVDs, seminars on Social Media use and techniques, managing adult businesses, and legal issues in producing (and getting paid for) adult content. I gave away a few books to fans who recognized me. Oh. And we hugged a lot of models, actresses, and cam girls.

I suppose that is what everyone is most interested in. So, I took lots of pictures and have created a private webpage to share them with you and my patrons. You'll find all the dirty little pictures at www.devonlayne.com/avnx/.

But I thought I'd share a few anecdotes from the expo.

1. We made arrangements for Loralay Katz to start her porn career with fledgling actress Cheyenne on Saturday. Mark had everything set and ready to roll, tested the camera angles, tested the sound, and had a script/storyline prepared. Cheyenne called at 1:00 before the 2:00 shoot and said she was sick and couldn't make it. Cancelled. I don't doubt that she was sick. Late nights and too much alcohol will do that to you.

2. On a casual stroll through the exhibits when Mike and Sue got to town Wednesday, I stopped for a pleasant conversation with AlluringAli25 (check out ManyVids or IWantVids). This cutie got my engines revving as much with her talk as with her sexy look.

During our conversation she read my badge and asked about what I write. She got pretty enthused but qualified it by saying she only liked to read paper books. "Can you say 'Author Devon Layne'?" I asked. She repeated it. I pulled a copy of Art Something out of my bag, autographed it, and handed it to her.

"You're giving me a book???" she exclaimed. "You can so touch my tits!" That was an offer I wasn't about to refuse.

I caught up with her again Saturday and said that in the excitement I failed to get a picture and could she pose. "Yes, and for a tip, I'll take my top off before you start squeezing." I have some very pleasant memories now and photographic proof to keep me reminded.

3. When my daughter visited me a month ago, we talked about where I was going with my writing and why I was coming to Vegas. I mentioned wanting to provide storylines and even scripts for a new breed of adult video (or old-going back to when porn usually had a storyline instead of all this gonzo shit). I mentioned wanting to work with Bree Mills. "Dad, Bree Mills only works with women," my daughter responded. "You know about Bree?" I asked. "Well, yeah!"

On Thursday, I related the story to Bree, whom I have known in passing for two years. She immediately grabbed a T-shirt that said "I like girls who like girls" for me to send to my daughter. She also said that she was interested in hearing a story concept from me and gave me the site address to submit to. In case you don't know her, by the way, Bree is one of the top director/producers in the business today with 35 award nominations under her belt. She founded Girlsway Films and is now a principal in AdultTime.

4. "You have actual stories that we could film?" asked a producer I'd never heard of Tuesday night. "We need stories!" Well we exchanged cards and information. Could be a good reason to visit Columbia where the guy is located.

5. Parties were not as exciting this year as in the past. Seemed like a very mellow crowd who were mostly engaged in going to private parties.

Until Friday night's White Party. We all got dressed up. The women looked sexy and the men looked good. I, of course, have an entire white outfit that I put together for this, including a white plantation hat. I'm sporting a very full (white) beard these days and tucked a cigar between my teeth before making a tour around the party.

I started getting stopped by random strangers asking to have their picture taken with me! Once is a fluke. A dozen times is something else. And when Mike and I went out to the patio where there was a fire going and we could light our cigars, the people (mostly female but some men as well) kept coming up to get their pictures with me. Several made sure that they were in very close contact. I think I handled more female flesh that night than I have in the past five years!

About 2:00 a.m. we went down to the bar in the middle of the casino to have a drink and smoke another cigar. A guy came from across the casino to shake my hand and say he just had to come and tell me how I rocked that outfit. "Did you know you look like that actor in Jurassic Park?" he asked. Well, shit! Was that why I was getting hit on so often? Fifteen minutes later another random stranger, not even there for AVN, walked up to me and asked if anyone had told me I looked like the owner of Jurassic Park. He also said I rocked the look much better than the guy in the movie.

6. Lest I get a big head about it, I stopped at a grocery store Saturday dressed all in black, including black leather Stetson, and a vest. A random dude in the grocery store stopped and pointed at me. "ZZ Top!" he yelled. I think the Jurassic Park cosplay was much better.

7. And finally, at the Adult Novelty Expo, I was introduced to a fairly new alternative to Viagra in the form of a spray that you spritz under your tongue. I talked to the vendor and plan to try the stuff to see if it works. He said that if I included it as a major story element sometime, he'd see I got a lifetime supply. (Probably doesn't figure I've got that long to go!)

I guess that sums up the high points of this year's expo. Don't forget that you can see the photos from the show with me hugging and fondling a lot of girls (hand sanitizer is your friend) at devonlayne.com/avnx.

Enjoy!

I've made it to Las Vegas and am settled into a nice condo a mile from the Hard Rock Hotel and Convention Center where the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo starts today. My volunteer staff (Can you believe six people have come to help promote my books?) will be wandering the show, talking to models, and working to record the experience as we immerse ourselves in porn. I mean erotic art.

This is seriously tough work. Do you know how difficult it is for a writer to make every character unique and memorable? What do her breasts look like? How big are her nipples? How sensitive? Are they soft or artificially hardened? What scent is she wearing? What do her legs feel like? What do her lips taste like? I'm here at AVN doing primary research for my stories!

And I feel bad that you can't be here as one of my volunteers. Our all-access Industry passes get us into all the seminars like "Premium Platforms: Finding the Next Level of Social Media Marketing", and "From the Bedroom to the Boardroom - Bella French's Path to ManyVids CEO", and "What's the Big Idea? The First Annual Disruptors' Panel".

The show floor includes hundreds of products, talent, and services booths with opportunity to make contact with favorite stars. Yes, I plan to get a hug from Molly Stewart, Kendra Cole, Fallon West, and others. They are here and waiting!

The Adult Novelty Expo-our all-access pass gets us in there, as well-will feature some surprising toys, costumes, sexual aids, and other products that might surprise you. Do you need a pussy-beard? There's a vendor that sells a paste on bush for those who are shaved but want a little hair for the party. Are you in the market for a playroom swing set? One that you can strap your lover into and swing into her? Need new ropes? Any of our five hundred different dildo and vibrator models? I'll be carefully checking out those exhibits, too.

The real work is at the parties. Last night we attended an informal welcome party for the trade and engaged in a lengthy conversation with managers of a Cam Studio, Foxy Dreams, in Columbia who are interested in adapting my books and short stories into fantasy scripts. Yes? Who wants to see Art Étrange drape a model in his studio and have his way with her? I thought so. Tonight, we'll be at the Girlfriends Films 18th anniversary party and will be looking for more contacts.

It seems a shame you aren't here.

So, I'm making it possible for you to attend vicariously. I've opened a private photo display for my few thousand closest friends to see what I see each day of the expo. I'll upload new photos early every day (Pacific Time) and you can tune in to see them. The Pre-Show Registration Day photos are already up. It sets the stage for what we're doing here, but won't get into the real fun stuff until tomorrow. Bookmark the page and come back each day this week.

http://devonlayne.com/avnx/

Send me email if there are things or people you are especially interested in seeing and I'll try to get a photo. Let's party!

Tomorrow, my new do-over, Double Take, starts posting here on SOL. I'm very excited about it. Book 1 of 47 chapters is written, edited (thanks to Pixel the Cat and Old Rotorhead), and ready to upload for posting every three days. I'll upload the whole book in advance so you don't have to worry about me croaking and leaving it unfinished. I'm already sixteen chapters into Book 2 and I'm having a blast writing this adventure.

This story is a little lighter than some of my epics. Of course, there is teenage angst because there are teenagers. This has far more to do with an eighty-year-old in high school and dealing with a world that is not at all what he remembered.

Sex and the Single Freshman. I struggle with coding my stories for sex content with every story I write. I received a number of emails from people who said they got tired of all the sex in Living Next Door to Heaven. Another batch of readers wrote that the code 'Some Sex' was inappropriate because there was no sex at all in the first three and a half books of LNDtH. One went so far as to complain that I must not have much experience with sex if I thought what these kids were doing was still sex without penetration.

I think Double Take has slightly more sex in it than the early books of LNDtH. Let's face it: Why would an old man want to go back to his fourteen-year-old body if it wasn't to fuck fourteen-year-old girls? At the same time, I think the 'Much Sex' code paints an expectation of 'real' sex in every chapter. And there isn't. So, I'll code this story once again as 'Some Sex' and when asked how much sex there is in the story, I'll just say "Enough.'

What's it about? I gave the very short blurb for the story in my blog post on Christmas. Here is the long synopsis:

In a classic erotic do-over, an old man gets hit by lightning, sucked into a wormhole, abducted by aliens, shot, electrocuted, caught in a terrorist attack, trapped in a fusion explosion, or otherwise meets his demise. In the instant before death, he is granted his wish to do his life over again, correcting the mistakes he made. He (almost always male) is returned to his fourteen-year-old body complete with all his memories of growing up the first time and near Wikipedic knowledge of everything that happened in his life.

Armed with this knowledge, he can correct his own life errors, become fabulously wealthy by either betting on obscure sporting events or the correct stocks or by stealing a later invention and introducing it early. His great experience and accumulated wisdom allow him to correct political errors of the past, eliminating terror attacks, stopping wars, improving border security, and holding down inflation. And let us not forget that this old man can now apply his accumulated knowledge of women to seduce all the fourteen-year-old girls he wants to because he's really only fourteen again.

Jacob Hopkins is one such old man. Life was good. It just wasn't long enough. At eighty years old, he is dying and wants to regain to his youth. He has no burning desire to change the world. He just isn't ready to die. And someone has decided that's okay.

But Jacob is in for a major surprise. His new life is in an alternate reality. Things just aren't the way he remembered. People aren't who he remembered them to be. And there is nothing he can do to change history. It's already past.

Starting tomorrow: January 11, 2019.

Here's my mad idea. As usual, I won't turn on voting until ten or eleven chapters into the story so people have enough material to make a judgment about what they are voting for. Let's say at the end of Part I: Transmogrification. That's eleven chapters.

I will, however, turn on public comments. And I plan to use them differently than in the past. Usually, I refrain from participating in the comments unless I am asked, as the author, a specific question in comments. Then I'm happy to jump in and respond. But I don't use the comment section to argue my points or to defend what I've written. I've written what I've written. Like it or not. That's what it is. Me mansplaining it isn't going to change the story.

I want to try something a little different this time, though. I'm going to try participating in the comments as Jacob, the main character. I always enjoy role-playing and my characters like to jump into my head at odd times anyway, so I'll occasionally post something at the end of a chapter from Jacob's perspective and respond to comments as if I were Jacob.

This great experiment might last all of ten minutes. Or it might be something I keep going through the whole story. We'll see.

Now here's the real question: How much am I going to cry through this story?

I know that I often have highly emotional scenes in my stories. Just having re-read and suffered with you through Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? I wept at reliving some of the horrid events of the original series. I'm not ready to utterly drain myself emotionally this time. I won't say there won't be sad parts or moving parts, but I'm not planning to kill off major beloved characters, break people's hearts, or send anyone into the depths of depression.

So, try to keep my spirits up and keep me happy for the next year or so, okay? I'll try not to transfer any of that into my story.

One way for you to acknowledge your appreciation for authors is to nominate favorite stories for Clitorides Awards. I say this on behalf of all authors, not just myself. If you've especially enjoyed a story that has sex in it and was concluded in 2018, nominate it for a Clitorides Award at https://clitoridesawards.org/nominate.php. Use your same log-in as for SOL. Some of your favorite authors' stories have already been nominated. G Younger, Michael Loucks, Oyster50, Al Steiner, Lubrican, rlfj, and new author ProfessorC. But the number of nominations is what gets a story into the finals when they are announced in March. Get on there and nominate!

I have completed three stories on SOL this year that are eligible for nomination. The Props Master Prequel: Behind the Ivory Veil, Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, and Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? Please do not nominate any of the three stories posted my alter ego, Wayzgoose. I appreciate your support, but those stories are 'No Sex' stories and are ineligible.

Thank you all for your continued support, your email messages, and comments. As many authors have affirmed in the past, your comments and email are all the compensation we get.

Enjoy Double Take!