aroslav: Blog

That's one of the things that just happens when you live alone with a few dozen fictional characters running around loose in your skull. Sorry about that. Hope everyone who celebrates had a good day!

I wrote. Just like the day before and the day after. I'm writing my little fingers off. So far, 131,000 words this NaNoWriMo month. And today isn't over.

I've been busy on two projects, as you might be aware. The first is a Wayzgoose project that will appear here probably about May. Wild Woods is the sequel to the previously posted City Limits. I expect there will be only two books in this series, so all the open plot lines left in City Limits should get closed as I write the last three chapters of the Wild Woods this week. Then it will sit on my editors' desks fermenting during December and I'll start rewriting in January.

The second project is now being funneled to Pixel the Cat and Old Rotorhead for editing and I'm getting chapters back. Rotorhead has been on vacation in Europe but I expect he'll be getting his two cents in before I'm ready to start posting Part I here in January.

Double-Take is the story of an eighty-year-old man cast back into his fourteen-year-old body, only to find there are significant differences between the reality he knew as a kid and the reality he now faces. All his reasonable memories are intact, but it is his experience rather than his memory that he will need to get him through high school.

I'm having fun with it and comments from advance readers seem to indicate they are enjoying the story as it's being written. It's great to get that kind of feedback from my patrons.

Well, I just thought I needed to give you a little update.

One more thing I'll touch on and bury down here at the bottom so no one actually sees it. I try to leave comments open on my stories so readers can respond and discuss them. I don't participate in the comments section unless I'm asked a direct question. It's not a place for me to try to explain things or justify them. I pop in and answer. I read the comments every day, though.

I will cut off comments on a story if they degenerate into people trying to argue about things that aren't relevant to the story. C'mon, guys. I write plenty of shit you can complain about or argue about. Don't drag in irrelevant political arguments. Exchange Facebook addresses if you want to engage in that senseless shit.

I also greatly appreciate your corrections sent through email and I try to get them corrected as quickly as possible (which means after November). These come in as anything from someone spotting an incorrect pronoun or extra quotation mark to language experts who take the time to correct my German or Spanish or Latin or whatever else I'm pretending to speak. I really appreciate this as it improves the story for a wide range of readers. Keep sending those cards and letters!

Thanks.

Today, the final two chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain are in the posting queue. I didn't realize it until I checked my posting schedule this morning (at 5:00 a.m.). I've been so incredibly busy this month that I wasn't paying attention to my currently posting stories except to respond to emails.
Dark Side was something I conceived of a couple of years ago and just stewed in my brain until I finally came up with a story. I remember clearly driving through some little town in Oregon or maybe Arkansas and seeing a sign on top of a converted gas station for Jett Blackburn, Attorney. My first thought was 'What a great name for a character!' But I had no idea who the character was or did. He sure wasn't going to be an attorney!

And now here he is, finishing his first year of college, living with half a dozen girls who have adopted him as their own as he paints and displays their bodies.

I love to write about art and artists. I suppose that's because I always wanted to be one but just couldn't draw worth a damn. So, I started describing what I would paint with words. There's more than a little of me in the Pygmalion Revisited story, "1,000 Words". That story, in fact, was inspired by a review of Triptych by Teloz that began, "'If a picture paints a thousand words...', a phrase from a 70's hit from Bread; aroslav turns that on its head, and uses thousands of words to paint a picture."

Whether the artist was Doc Peters, Tony Ames, Art Etrange, or Jett Blackburn, the best I could do is try to make people see the vision of artwork that was in my head.

The challenge has been to give each one something unique in their art. Doc painted canvases. Tony painted murals. Art painted the blackness of his vision. Jerome Z sculpted in bronze. Grant Smith welded sheet metal. And now, Jett Blackburn does performance art in his underwear as he paints on the bodies of his girlfriends and models. Just another medium.

I certainly left room to continue Jett's story at the end of this. He and his girlfriends are just completing their freshman year in college. I have several courses of action for him to follow as he looks at a future where he creates great art but can't sell any of it. Well, thank goodness he's a meat cutter! I am so deeply involved in other projects right now that it will likely be at least a year before I get back to Jett.

Two major "other projects" are underway right now during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Under my penname Wayzgoose, I'm writing Wild Woods, the sequel to City Limits. I'm five chapters and 43,000 words into the story and feeling pretty good. Of course, it's rough draft material and like its big sister will probably require an 80% rewrite before I even start posting it here on SOL in May or June. Those who have subscribed to read it as it is written (daily drafts of new material) get to wade through the parts where I'm trying to prime the pump and get the words to flow. They are ahead of even my story editors.

So far this month, I've written 23,000 words of my new do-over, Double-Take. My subscribers are getting a first look at that story, too, as the total draft is now over 100,000 words and 30 chapters. First look from Pixel the Cat as my editor shows that this story needs a lot less work than Wild Woods. I'm planning to begin releasing the first book of that serial in January. I'm really enjoying writing it as my character is sent back sixty-six years in age but into a timeline where nothing he knows about 'the future' helps. But his past experiences do.

Back in 1967, I had a heated exchange with UAW president Walter Reuther in Detroit. As a smartass teen, I said that I regretted not having his years of fast-talking experience. He responded, "I wish I had my experience and your years." Well, that's this story.

Since the first book (four parts and somewhere near forty or forty-five chapters and 150,000 words) will only get him through freshman year in high school, I expect I'll just keep writing this one from that point without a break. Expect an epic.

This also means that all my other stories will be concluding before the end of the year. Dark Side concludes today. Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? will conclude on December 28. Wayzgoose's The Gutenberg Rubric will wrap up on December 11. We'll start the New Year with a fresh clean slate and new stories. I'll post in the Wayzgoose blog about what to expect next there.

I don't expect to have a chapter posting every day in 2019 like I have had the past few months. If Double-Take progresses the way I think it will, it will be my primary focus for the next year or so. It's currently consuming me the way Living Next Door to Heaven did four years ago. That means I might have no stories concluding in 2019! Amazing.

The same is not true of Wayzgoose. There is another Dag Hamar book, For Blood or Money, that I will start posting after the first of the year and two more unpublished works in that series that I'm thinking I'll post as serials without going to print or eBook. Why not have new Wayzgoose stuff as well as new aroslav stuff. Yes, I'm sorry to say that none of the computer forensics stories have a particularly happy ending. Maybe For Money or Mayhem was the most depressing, but that's also the reason I started writing under the name aroslav. That's where happy endings are found.

And sex.

People are already asking if there will be another sequel to Living Next Door to Heaven. That's a definite maybe. Volume three has been all about the parents of Brian's clan. I have been making notes for three years about the children. Too early to tell if the muse is going to grab me by the balls on this story yet, but just think of all the kids that were born on the ranch and the stories they could tell. Don't know yet if this will be a single POV story or bounce around. We'll see.

I've written over 700,000 words so far this year. At least half of them are worthy of reading. I just need to decide which half. I doubt I'll be quite as productive in 2019, but one never can tell. I've kind of gotten in the habit.

Well, time to get back to what I do most. Writing.

Enjoy!

I am unclear as to what happens in Vixen's little mind sometimes. For some reason, all indication that we have begun a new part of Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? and the fact that we changed POV was eliminated from my post. Today's chapter 25 is a one-chapter Part IV to the story, narrated by Rose's mother, Maria Davis. Without that information you will be completely lost when reading the chapter. As I was.

This is more nerve-racking than waiting for Christmas when I was seven! Thursday this week is November 1 and I can hardly wait! First, and of greatest interest to my readers on SOL, I'll at long last be writing the much requested do-over, Double-Take. Here's the blurb:

80-yo Jacob Hopkins had a good life; it was just too short. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to do it all again? But when Jacob is swapped into his 14-yo body, it's in a different reality. First, he has to recover from having just tried to kill himself. Then he has to deal with all the things he discovers are just a little different in this reality. Experience will help, but his memory is history.

Yes, I'm taking another new twist to the do-over, but I think it is one you will truly enjoy. Join me as Jacob discovers that he has no idea how to act like a 14-year-old and that it is experience, not foreknowledge, that will change his life.

Well, I'm writing the story in November, and if experience is any indication, also in December and maybe January. This is likely to be a very long tale. That means it won't post here until at least January or maybe February. But you can get an advance look. My Sausage Grinder Patrons ($10) at patreon.com/aroslav get to read along as I write the story. There will be blemishes as this will be available before my editors even get a crack at it. I know you hate misspellings, homonyms, and consistency errors. So do I, and that's why we take so much time editing and rewriting my stories. But sometimes you just can't wait.

As a special bonus for Sausage Grinders, they'll also get a first look at Wayzgoose's Wild Woods, the sequel to his popular City Limits. All Devon Layne/aroslav patrons receive equal access to Wayzgoose/Nathan Everett stories. The same is not true of Wayzgoose/Nathan Everett, patrons. That site does not give access to erotica or adult content.

Let's talk philosophy. Yes, I'm hoping a lot of people will join me by October 31. Ten of you could change the amount of coffee I drink each month as well as buy a tank or two of gas. But there is something more important than that.

I am committed to making all my books available online for free. Currently, I have thirty-six stories completed or in progress here on SOL. I have more stories that will make it here soon. The current serials will all complete by the first of the year and there will be a new experience starting soon thereafter. In addition to StoriesOnline, I make my stories available for online reading on my websites at www.devonlayne.com and www.nathaneverett.com. Keeping material available for free is very important to me.

I know-and I hear from-many readers who simply can't afford to buy the reading material they want. Squeezing out five dollars to buy one of my books could make a huge impact on their monthly budgets. I'm on a fixed income myself and I know the choices I make when it comes to paying for content.

What I'm really asking is for those of you who could to help me keep my writing free. Here's a sample of what that's meant this year. So far this year, I've written 643,000 words of new content. That includes City Limits, Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, and Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? It also includes close to 70,000 words I've already put down on Double-Take. By 31 December, I will have completed three aroslav stories and three Wayzgoose stories here at SOL.

Reviewer bill9900 said in his recent review of What Were They Thinking?, "Aroslav is one of the most proficient and prolific writers here; his talent is immense, and I cannot see how he can produce quality writing in such prolific amounts when he is limited to 24 hours in a day, like I am." Well, I have a split personality, Bill. Aroslav writes all day and Wayzgoose writes all night.

If you choose to support my writing on Patreon, be sure to choose the reward tier that matches your contribution. Patreon has begun limiting distribution of emails by tier and you would miss announcements of new material if you didn't choose the tier as well as the dollar amount.

Quick update on matters mundane. I am just about to leave Ely, Nevada headed south on the Great Basin Highway. It will take two days to reach Las Vegas and three more to reach Quartzsite, Arizona where I'll be spending the winter.

It has been a harrowing trip so far with mechanical problems on the truck (now thankfully tracked down and repaired) and a minor accident that could have been a catastrophe. A truck decided to pass me on the left as I was making a left turn. Fortunately, the only damage done to my vehicle was to remove my driver's side mirror. Presumably, his insurance is going to pay for the replacement, but my trip south has been much longer than I anticipated.

Nonetheless, you can join me by way of my travel blog and see the pictures at www.firstexit0.blogspot.com. I'll put up a new post this evening after I reach my stopover in the Great Basin.

Thanks to all of you for your continuing support and the many comments and emails I receive about my stories!

Vixen ate the Part number! I promise, I had it in the file. Anyway, I've re-uploaded the file with more definite indicators that there has been a change of speaker. This is now Janet Anderson's Story. Janet is Whitney's mother. It's four chapters long. Then the story will change POV again. Sorry if there was confusion when you opened it up this morning and thought it was still Marilyn speaking.

On the other hand, I woke up this morning from a dream that I had written yet another LNDtH story told from multiple POVs. It was the original cast but that's all I remember of it. The dream, however, was so real that I went to my computer and started searching for the file, trying to remember where I put the dang thing. Took about half an hour before I realized I didn't even really remember what I was looking for.

It was such a good story!

I don't really have much more to add. The week in Seattle has been good. I'm looking forward to getting my trailer back from servicing on Monday and getting packed and prepared for the road trip south. It's been chilly and rainy most of the week here in Seattle. Several errands to run today, including getting the tires on the truck rotated. Almost the last thing to get done mechanically before I'm ready to travel. As much as the truck and trailer have cost me this fall, I might as well have bought the ticket to Australia and left for the winter.

Tomorrow is the Washington Cigar and Spirits show at Snoqualmie Casino. It's become an annual tradition to attend with my sister. Good times!

And for those who are following such things, if you know the address, you can now read the collection of short stories Pygmalion Revisited on my website complete with all the artwork that represents the various artists and their work. It's at http://www.devonlayne.com/releases/pygmalion/ It hasn't been connected to the main navigation pages yet, so you have to know it's there in order to find it. Enjoy!

Well, with the story updated so you know it is Janet Anderson speaking in chapter 13, I'll relax and continue writing chapter 39. Away we go!