aroslav: Blog

Breathing has been important to me for several years now. Well, all my life, I guess. It's such a simple thing. Air goes into your lungs. Oxygen is extracted into the bloodstream. Blood circulates through your body to feed cells (like the brain). You exhale the waste product air. And it all happens automatically. It is an involuntary response.

Except when it isn't.

I'm learning to deal with COPD and occasional panic attacks when I think I can't get enough air. They are lessening, I think. But this post isn't about that. It's about meditation.

Back in the 70s and early 80s I participated in several meditation exercises and ultimately developed my own creative visualization meditation that I am trying to get back to. I called it 21 Breaths and it was/is focused on consciously breathing and letting that act release the mind and enter a healing state. It has gotten me through countless crises in my life. The toughest part is remembering to do it and let it work its magic.

And now, I've found that consciously controlling twenty-one consecutive breaths is a real challenge that I have yet to succeed in. I'm hoping that entering this meditative state will help me control my COPD, but also that it will return a contemplative state that I have lately been missing.

Now, that's the content for this blog. But, if you are interested in following the creative visualization of 21 Breaths, I've included it below.

Inhale as you imagine the scene in the step description. When it is firmly in your mind, exhale slowly.

Breath 1: You come to a park where a juggler is entertaining. The juggler has three red balls and you watch them as each rises into the air and falls back to the juggler's hand.

Breath 2: Beyond the juggler are two green trees. They grow from a joined root and you place a hand on each tree to feel it's life and how much it gives to the world in terms of oxygen and beauty.

Breath 3: You step between the trees and discover a rustic stair between their roots leading down. You place your right foot on the first step and determine to take the journey.

4-9: You consciously visualize each step in this rustic stair as you place your foot on it and descend into the darkness. Is it rough? Smooth? Creak? Have a scrap of carpet on it? Each step is different. Don't forget to switch feet! You started on the right foot. You will end on the right (seven total steps/breaths). Right, left, right, left, right, left, right.

10: You step out and off the bottom step onto a wooden deck. You can see here but there is no apparent source of light.

11: Before you is a door carved with mystical creatures of all description. But it has no apparent doorknob or handle. You place your left hand on the horn of the unicorn and your right on the wing of Pegasus and the door swings open.

12: You step through the entry into a pool room. The water in this pool is magical. You could breathe it. You approach the steps into the pool and grasp the handrail preparing to back into the water.

13-19: Like the steps between the trees, you visualize each step down into the water. Starting on your right foot, you go down seven steps until the water completely covers you. The water fills your mind and body.

20: Turning to float on your back, you see a string dangling. When you pull the string, light floods the pool and your mind. It illuminates the subject you are contemplating. Is it a problem in need of a solution? Poor health? A relationship? Whatever the problem or subject of your meditation, it has now been illuminated.

21: Surrounding you in the pool and in the air above it are tools. They may look like your normal toolbox but they all have unique properties. A wrench might be needed that tightens a loose knee joint. A spoon might measure the appropriate amount of sympathy for a friend. A pump might extract the phlegm from your lungs. Whatever your problem or issue, visualize a tool you can use to fix it or understand it. When you release this breath, let the tool do its work and accept the solution.

Relax in the pool as long as you wish. It is your sacred space and will always welcome you. Go there to heal.

There have been times over the past month when I wasn't really sure. Times when I'd wake up at night gasping for breath, my mouth so dry I had to pour water in it, and my lungs coughing up crap I didn't want to see. And it wasn't enough to have this happen at night. I'd be working away during the day and suddenly gasp as I realized I hadn't been breathing. Panic and hyperventilation set in as I tried to get lungs filled with air. /sad story

Went to a doctor Friday and she said there was no pneumonia, even though there was fluid in my lungs and a bronchial infection. Put me on good drugs, including an inhaler and I've now gotten two successful full nights of sleep. I'm thrilled and while it's not at a peak yet, my energy seems to be returning. And I only had to pay $350 for drugs! Medicare plan D would have cost three times that and I'd still have a co-pay.

So, I'm still working. Chapters of Double Team (Book 5 of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins) are moving back and forth between my editors and me. It might have turned a little dark as I struggled to breathe, but it's beginning to return to the light. In case you are keeping track, I'm now working on Part XVIII, chapter 221. I think there are another ten chapters to go in the story, but I've been fooled before and my editors think there's another whole book to go. Sheesh!

In the next couple of weeks, I hope to get my book, The Volunteer, up on SOL (Wayzgoose). The big issue I'm having is how to divide it up into postable units since it was written as a single long (55,000-word) narrative-exactly the kind of thing SOL tells authors not to do.

The Volunteer is a journey inside the head of a chronically homeless man-in a less politically correct age we'd have called him a hobo. Gerald Good, known now only as G2, volunteered to trade places with a homeless man, believing he would quickly work his way back to prosperity. Ten years later… twenty… thirty… find G2 alone in his head and his boxcar.

A story without chapters, we follow whatever G2 thinks of as his present at the moment. In delving into his non-linear life, perhaps we can discover what separates the chronically homeless with nothing from 'normal' people who constantly collect and consume.

So, that was depressing. I think I need to write a good sex scene. Jacob and Rachel, here I come!

Yes! I want your time travel story. But before you dig out the manuscript you wrote in 1826, let me explain what's going on and how you can participate in this once in a lifetime opportunity. Twice if you're really a time traveler.

Page 1: Like everything I write, there's a story to this request and possibly a story at the end of it. It starts with a peek into the writing process.

I was happily minding my own business and writing 30-40,000 words a week on my multiple works in progress. Doug and I were sitting around the campfire early this spring talking about my Devon Layne erotic do-over story Double Take. Then out of the blue, he tosses out, "You know what would be neat? A time travel story. Suppose there was some kind of vortex floating around that seemed to follow this one guy. When it catches him, he's randomly caught up in a time distortion and plopped down at some other time in history. Past, present, future."

"That could be interesting," I mused. I'm not sold on it yet.

"Well, in each time he's plopped down, he makes friends, enemies, lovers… maybe has a harem. Then he gets caught again and they all disappear and he has to start over sometime new. Maybe he's able to take one person with him but he's left everyone else behind. Eventually, he starts piecing together the stories of the people he left behind and what happened to them."

Doug gets enthusiastic about ideas like this and soon had me caught up in it as well. He had snippets of what could happen.

He's being shot at on the Gettysburg battlefield and all of a sudden a guy next to him whispers, "You're supposed to fall down." He realizes he's no longer in 1863 but in a 2018 reenactment.

I started thinking about what could hold it all together. Then he hit me with one more thing.

"You can't start writing it yet. You have to finish Double Team (Book 5 in that series) and Stocks & Bondage (New Deb Riley mystery) first. When you are off traveling around the world this winter, pick out some interesting locations where he could end up. Think about what he's encountering. And we'll talk it over and you can start writing sometime this winter."

You see, the last time Doug made a suggestion for a story I was working on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and was going to wait a few months before I started the new thing, but it was shiny and characters started talking to me and I sat down and wrote Living Next Door to Heaven: What Were They Thinking? immediately. He doesn't want to risk having me get sidetracked when I have other projects to finish. So, I agreed that until I take off in October, all I can do is brainstorm and make notes.

Page 2. We were sitting by the campfire enjoying some particularly good scotch a few nights ago when Doug said, "You've got a pretty big network of fans and patrons. Why don't you ask them for ideas of times and places they'd like to time travel to and why? Just a short snippet. No do-over stuff. Can't go back to when you were eighteen and got drunk, tattooed, and enlisted. This is all about going someplace sometime that you think would be interesting to visit and having an adventure there."

I have two different blogs, two Facebook accounts, two Twitter accounts, two Patreon accounts, and several hundred fans. So that's why I'm setting about calling for your ideas about time travel. Here are the rules:

Let's keep it simple. Message me with the subject line: "Time Travel." State when you would like to time travel to (past present future), where you would like to be when you arrive, and in 100 words or less, why you would like to travel there/then. Include your email address.

I'll collect these and start making sense out of them while I'm jetting around the world this winter. Everyone who responds with an idea, whether I use it or not, will receive a copy of the eBook that results-probably late next summer-so be sure to include a usable email address. I won't use it for anything else.

Right now, I don't know how long each adventure will be. I don't know the exact nature of the book, but I expect it will have humor, tears, and triumphs. I also expect that it will fall under the authorship of Devon Layne erotica, but it is also possible that I'll produce two different versions, one with and one from from Wayzgoose without sex. That would be a good trick!

Page 3: Keep those cards and letters coming, fans. And join my Patreon page to help me travel this winter and collect all those good locations and story ideas!

My daughter is 26 years old now. Hard to believe I'm old enough to have a daughter who takes her dad out for a martini on Father's Day. But at least 20 years ago, I learned an important lesson. When driving my daughter and her friends around, don't try to participate in the conversation. Just shut up and listen. It's amazing what you learn.

Over the years, I discovered the same advice is valid for driving my story characters around. I drive and listen to the voices in my head.

After the great turnout and reception for my book releases last Sunday, I had to return to camp in Idaho. I sold 25 books that day, including all but one copy of Wild Woods. I need to restock. We further celebrated on Monday as Jason and I smoked a brisket for eleven hours and had a dozen friends over for dinner that evening. Great conversations, lots of questions, new ideas. I went to bed with my head buzzing.

What had me going was the condition of Book 4 in the Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins: Double Twist. I use continuous numbering through the series, so I'd been working on Part XV, Chapter 190. I was up to about 150,000 words and getting worried. I still had half a dozen chapters to write in this part and if I continued on with Part XVI, the book would turn out to be 220,000 words minimum. An unwieldly tome.

The four books are already 683,000 words. The Bible is only 783,000.

BUT… I wasn't sure I really had a story for the years after Jacob and crew graduate from high school. And then "a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping…" It still didn't answer the question of whether it was a final part of Book 4 or a whole Book 5. And that is where my head was when I hit the road Tuesday morning for the 350-mile, 8-hour drive back to camp. (Why so long? Traffic congestion just getting to the freeway. Well over an hour to go the first 20 miles! That and old man bladder. I'm good for thirty minutes or thirty miles, whichever comes first.)

So, a bit dazed and with a Carly Simon CD in the player, I started listening to the characters talking and basically ignoring me. And they outlined three more parts to the story that got me excited enough to stay up Tuesday night writing the next chapter of Double Twist so I'd be ready to start writing Double Team on July 1. Tomorrow!

Friday, I completed chapter 195, the end of Book 4. Tomorrow begins Camp NaNoWriMo and I've committed to continuing to provide my Sausage Grinder patrons ($10/mo) with a chapter per day of the story as I have since the first of April. And yes, if you join up, you get access to all the chapters written up until now. Or wait until August 20, 2020 for Book 5 to start on SOL.

When I told my editors that I'd just decided there would be one more book in the series, Pixel the Cat responded: "You are either having me on, indulging in some high-quality weed, or have totally lost it. There is absolutely no bleedin' way the post HS National Service time will fit in one book. More like three. But then, you probably expected the pre-NS HS story to be only 80 or so chapters."

He probably knows my writing style better than anyone other than Old Rotorhead who, upon receiving the last fourteen chapters of Book 4, said, "I was going to write to you today to say, "Gee, you've been quiet lately." So much for that!" Two weeks since he returned the last sixteen chapters and he's goading me to write a little faster!

So, here's the way it's shaping up at the moment:

Book 1: Double Take, Parts I-IV, chapters 1-48. Completed posting 5/26/2019.

Book 2: Double Time, Parts V-VIII, chapters 49-98. Started posting 6/1/2019 and scheduled to end 10/29/2019.

Book 3: Double Tears, Parts IX-XII, chapters 99-149. Scheduled to begin posting 11/5/2019 and end April 2, 2020.

Book 4: Double Twist, Parts XIII-XV, chapters 150-195. Scheduled to begin posting April 5, 2020 and end August 17, 2020.

Book 5: Double Team, Parts XVI-XVIII, chapters 196 and following. Scheduled to begin posting August 20, 2020, probably ending before the end of that year.

That will make two solid years of posting every three days. Woohoo!

In the meantime, just for fun, I'm writing Wayzgoose's Stocks & Blondes. I also plan to post his (my) seminal work, The Volunteer, in the next month or two as Wild Woods has only three more chapters to post.

And if that wasn't enough, my story consultant, Doug, has started to badger me about an interesting concept in a sci fi time travel story that has me intrigued. But he's banned me from starting it until I finish Double Team. Probably the story I'll be working on as I travel around the world this winter. More about that soon.

So, there you have the plans. Let's see if the universe decides to disrupt them!

Cheers!

I like to base my stories on an actual calendar. It helps me keep Sunday from following Tuesday and gives me a frame of reference for school years, vacations, holidays, and even birthdays of the characters. I read a story once in which I'm sure the main character had three birthdays in one year. In fact, I have an entire Outlook calendar devoted to each storyline I write, including "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins". Often the calendars are for years past, but occasionally they stretch well into the future. For example, in Yelloweye, this week marks the high school graduation of Caitlin, Phile, and Mandy and the beginning of some of their most intense adventure. And I wrote that a few years ago.

I've also noted that Double Time begins on July 8, 2019. That means everything I've written for the rest of the series not only takes place in an alternate version of our world, but also in the future.

One of the fun things about writing about future events is that you don't need to be consistent with any current history. My prognostication is strictly from my imagination of what might happen, given the state of our world and the few things I've changed historically in Jacob's world. The big and obvious things that have changed in this timeline, of course, include the National Service, the absolute no tolerance traffic laws that levy time-fines rather than monetary ones, the complete lack of non-profit exemptions in the tax laws and flat tax, and the enforcement of absolute equality under the law. With those few changes to history, I'm not projecting my imagination into the future.

So, you can pretty much bet that I'll get most if not all of it wrong if you are comparing Double Time to our current reality. As the story progresses, the timelines will become more and more separate. So, maybe it's not necessary to critique my adherence to what is real in our world. By the same token, I don't think it would make any more sense to praise it when I get something "right". It's all just a story and I'm having fun making shit up.