aroslav: Blog

In my story American Backroads, I talk about the first girl I ever really dated in high school. Her name was Lynn but I called her 'Heidi' in the story and wrote these and a few other paragraphs about her.

Thursday night after evensong, I smiled at Heidi as we stood to leave the chapel. She fell into step beside me. Who knew it was so easy to pick up a girl? I was panicked. I gestured toward the lake to suggest taking the long way back to our cabin and she nodded. It was still going back to our cabin, but there was a much shorter route by way of the road. Heidi never spoke, but even if she had, I wouldn't have heard her. The noise of my heart beating in my ears would have drowned it out.

As we walked, Heidi stayed close to me. Really close. Then the back of her hand touched the back of my hand. It was electric. First contact! And we stayed that way. We walked all the way back to the cabin with the backs of our hands touching each other. It was not until we opened the door and went in where all the other kids were breaking silence that I became aware of any other sensations in my body. All my awareness for the past twenty minutes had been on that square inch of skin that was touching Heidi.

In reality, she was the first girl I dated. The first girl I held hands with. We dated through the first half of my sophomore year and then just drifted apart. But that experience is one I have thought of often. It's come up a couple of times in my writing. I called her 'Rhonda' in my first published mystery, For Blood or Money. (It's the sequel to Wayzgoose's For Money or Mayhem that just finished posting.) It was Dag relating his experience in high school.

The dance ended and I walked Rhonda home. It was after 11:00 and we had midnight curfews, so we weren't talking much as we walked through the Ballard neighborhood where we lived.

Then it happened.

The backs of our hands touched as we walked along. Once. Twice. The third time they seemed to stick together and we walked with just the backs of our hands touching for nearly two blocks.
And we didn't say a word.

I'm not even sure I breathed in that whole time.

A sixteen-year-old boy can transfer every nerve ending in his body to a single square inch of skin that is touching a girl for the first time. Not that we'd never touched each other before. But for those two blocks, there was no other reason to be touching each other than that we wanted to.

And it completely took my breath away.

For forty years after that night, every time I thought of it everything around me stood still and I lived in that square inch of contact. It is the single moment in a lifetime that you realize that someone outside your own skin can become so important that the rest of the world disappears. And that first realization happens only once.

There is never a second first time.

A profound real-life experience from fifty-three years ago I've held dear ever since.

I've received word that Lynn/Heidi/Rhonda passed away after a long illness yesterday.

I can still feel the touch of her hand.

I got a big hole knocked out of my life this week and I'm still trying to catch up with everything I should have been doing for four days when I was forced to basically do nothing.

First let me say, I'm healthy. That wasn't the problem. Thanks for your concern.

My truck, on the other hand, was sick and chose to let me know that when I was fifty miles from home. In case you don't want to read the entire saga below, let me just say that I have learned a few lessons, including the fact that I will never again get in my truck, even to drive to the grocery store, without my SHTF bag, my cell phone, and my computer. This might have been a slightly different story if I'd remembered those items last Saturday.

Here's the rest of the story.

I went to a great cigar and wine event on the state line between Washington and Idaho near Coeur d'Alene. Fifty miles from camp. I was just going to be gone for a few hours. The event, Big Ash at the Loft, was fun. I won a beautiful humidor for my cigars in a dance contest. Then discovered the prize was for the worst dancer. Ah well. When I left the event, my truck refused to start. I had no phone.

Fortunately, I had friends who hadn't left the event yet and borrowed a phone to call AAA. AAA couldn't get it started. Friend said to have it towed to a repair shop a couple of miles away and he would pick me up. I could crash at his house until the truck was ready. Of course, the shop wasn't open on Sunday, but Monday morning I went down to it, explained the situation, and they promised to look at it right away.

They discovered the problem along with ten other problems that I really needed fixed before I head south for the winter and it would take two days to get it all fixed. ($1550). My friends let me stay in their guest room for the entire time but I had no cell phone, no computer, and no spare clothes. I was pretty much isolated from Saturday afternoon till Tuesday night.

Since then, I've been in catchup mode. I've just uploaded another eight chapters of What Were They Thinking? to SOL and queued them up, and have updated my website and Patreon page. I've launched into writing Sly Cortales's Story and it's going well.

And I've tried to answer my email.

One question got to me because I have been asked it frequently this summer. It has to do with what other sequels are in the works and what other things I might write.

Yeah. I have about fifteen to twenty stories I'm trying to put together or have notes on or are sitting in my "To Be Written" folder. Unfortunately, I have only ten fingers and 24 hours a day. Nonetheless, here are some of the projects I've been asked about and what my intent is.

1. Will you write a sequel to Living Next Door to Heaven? Yes. The 'equel', What Were They Thinking?, is in progress now. But I know many of the questions are really about continuing the story beyond book nine. I think this is a good idea and have long had the idea that the next book in that series would be narrated by Xan because it is really the story of the next generation.

2. Will you write a fourth book in the Strange Art series? I have a concept for a fourth book, but it hasn't really gelled yet. I keep thinking it will happen soon but it doesn't.

3. Where is the next Props Master book? I've written the fourth or fifth draft of A Touch of Magic, but it just doesn't please me yet. It's excitement is entirely metaphysical and that doesn't always turn the crank. Another draft is in the works.

4. Will there be another Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventure? That series is finished.

5. When are you going to write a story in either the Swarm Universe or the Naked in School Universe? I have about fifteen thousand words of notes and sample material for a story in the Swarm Universe but haven't developed it well enough to submit to the guardians of the galaxy. Frankly, the quality and expertise of those dudes scares me because I just write fluffy little things that tend to break universes. I'll get to it. NIS? Never.

6. Will you please do a real do-over? By real, that is compared to the tricks I played in Not This Time and "100 Days". Um… maybe. I have a concept, but you probably won't like the way I treat it any better than the others. There are aspects of the do-over that I really don't appreciate, notably wikipedic memory of everything that happened in the previous life and instant success in having any 14-yo girl desired because of his vast former life experience. Those are real deal breakers for me. But, I've another concept in mind that would perhaps change everything and still keep the excitement of a do-over alive. What if the dude went back to his 14-yo self but discovered the time had shifted? He has all the same friends and acquaintances he had the first time through, but the time has advanced to the present. His knowledge of what went before is just history. What he has is experience to guide him through this life, but not foreknowledge. Maybe I'll write that as soon as I have time.

7. Is Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain a one-off? I don't think so, but I'm waiting to see how people respond to it. It was slow getting moving but I think it's just hitting the good stuff in the next few chapters. It ends at the end of the kids' freshman year in college so there is certainly room for a sequel if I follow the typical school scenario. I even have notes on some of the scenes, but no storyline yet. Dark Side will conclude in mid-November. Then I'll decide whether it merits a sequel.

8. What are you writing for NaNoWriMo? I'm writing as Wayzgoose and will do the sequel to City Limits, titled Wild Woods. Making notes like crazy to get me through that and have had long discussions with my editor.

9. Other Wayzgoose projects? Yes. I have a dozen chapters of For Mayhem or Madness completed. That's the sequel to the currently posting For Money or Mayhem. I believe I will post my intellectual thriller, The Gutenberg Rubric on SOL (as Wayzgoose) starting sometime in October.

10. If you could just write anything you want to, what would it be? Um… That's pretty much what I do. The real problem has always been how to get more written faster. So far this year, I've written half a million words on eight stories. I'm currently posting three stories at the same time with a chapter going live every day. I have ten other story ideas that I've written a paragraph, a page, or an outline for in my idea file. It isn't a case of someone telling me what I have to write when, but simply a case of having time to get it all written.

So, there you have it. Currently writing: Chapter 27 of What Were They Thinking? What's next? I'll let you know when I get this one finished!

Doug finished the first nine books of Living Next Door to Heaven Monday and started in immediately with "Where's Book 10?" Then I almost forgot to post it. But, the first four chapters of What Were They Thinking? are up as of today.

This includes the Prologue that sets the scene for what is happening. Don't skip it. It's part of the story. This is one of the rare instances in which I don't have the entire book finished before I start posting it. It is really a number of different stories told by some old people remembering what it was like to raise the kids that became The Clan of the Heart and Casa del Fuego on El Rancho del Corazon. The structure of the book looks like this:

Prologue
Marilyn Frost's Story, Chapters 1-12
Janet Anderson's Story, Chapters 13-16
John Clinton's Story, Chapters 17-24
Maria Davis's Story
Sly Cortales's Story
Anna Pratt's Story
…and others

Please note that this story may seem a little inconsistent with LNDtH1 and LNDtH2 on SOL as it uses the names and events of the published eBooks released to the public. See my previous blog post about the decision to do this (https://storiesonline.net/blogentry/44949) and please help yourself to reading the second edition books online at www.devonlayne.com/lndth.html. The first seven books are up now and can be read on my site for free. With luck, Book 8 will be up early next week. Updates to the eBooks will come along later in the year, after this project is stabilized.

There may be a break between posting of each of the Parts depending on how quickly the rest of the writing goes. Had to do a ton of work on the earlier books this month, which slowed progress a little. It's picking up again now.

Hope you enjoy the story. Voting won't be turned on until Part I has finished posting at the end of September but comments are available. If you have an idea of a parent you'd really like to hear from, please let me know. Minimal sex in this story because… parents.

Remember back in the early part of the year when our legislature took a bold step forward to prevent sex-trafficking? No, I didn't think you did. We were busy being good citizens and making empty declarations about how Sex Trafficking was bad. Or we simply didn't pay attention at all.

The combined legislation of "Stop Enabling Sex Trafickers Act" (SESTA) and "Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act" (FOSTA) was passed and signed into law by POTUS on April 11, 2018 in spite of warnings of how this ill-defined legislation would be used to shut down sex workers and to limit the ability for customers to pay for legitimate porn. The broad terms of the acts have now reached into the written word as banks and other venues are using the legislation to restrict what you can pay for online.

This month, that is being felt by providers of adult content on Patreon. In the name of preventing sex trafficking, US banks are automatically denying payment to websites providing adult content because they might be sex traffickers. The following notice to providers of adult content on Patreon was received today.

You may be aware that last month there were some issues with declined payments, and confusion caused by patrons seeing a new descriptor on their bank account. We've been working hard to limit the amount of disturbance you might experience this month, and for a full recap of what we've been up to with payment processors and you can read a blog post from Tyler, our VP of Operations.

To give you more info, we've started working with multiple payment processors to be able to continue successfully processing adult content creators. As a result, we moved the processing for adult creators to the UK. Unfortunately, this means some of your patrons may see a 3% international processing fee for their pledge. This is determined by their bank, not by Patreon, and every bank treats these things differently which makes it hard for us to assess who will be affected.

Here's some information to share with your patrons in case an issue arises.

If your patrons are having any trouble, here's what they can do:
1. If their bank suspects that the Patreon payment is fraudulent, a patron can call up their bank to confirm the payment is theirs and genuine.
2. If their payment failed, they can follow these steps or switch to a different payment method.
3. If they are seeing an international processing fee, they can switch their pledge to a different bank that doesn't charge for international payments.
4. They can reach out to the Patreon support team to get account specific help.
Here's what we'll be doing:
1. We'll reach out via email to any patron who receives a "declined" payment with info on what they can do and how.
2. We will continue Patreon's proactive practice of retrying payments throughout the month.

The simple fact is that US banks are using SESTA-FOSTA to decline payment for any adult content. It is worth noting that when I searched SESTA-FOSTA online, my Verizon Internet connection immediately slowed to a crawl.

This bill, which sounds good on the surface was passed by both parties with only two Senators voting against it and only twenty-five congress-dweebs opposed. Yet we are seeing how banks, service providers, and websites are using this as a means of censoring content all the way down to the written word.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/what-is-sesta-fosta-bill/

I just want you to know that we are under attack for even providing words that contain sexual situations. I expect the announcement from Patreon to be only a taste of what is to come. Keep in mind that Craigslist, Reddit, and many independent sites have already shut down rather than risk the penalties this Act has prescribed. I expect that Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Lulu, and other publishing sites will also start censoring our words.

None of us are safe from censorship!

It's a monumental day for me because it has been a monumental amount of work. I'm releasing the second edition of Living Next Door to Heaven, Books 1-5 in preparation for the release of Book 10, What Were They Thinking?

Where are they?

Well, they are still free, but not located here on SOL. This has been a very difficult process figuring out what to do and, like everything I say, there is a story involved.

When I wrote the Living Next Door to Heaven saga, I did it as a thank you to readers here on SOL who had rescued me from deep depression during the writing of my series Model Student. That is still my major purpose for LNDtH. But while writing, I found myself steeped in my own history, memories of times long ago, and images of people I grew up with. I got carried away and used a lot of names that were very close to the names of people I'd grown up with, places where I lived, and events that sort of happened.

When I finally released the series as eBooks on Amazon a year later, I realized I couldn't publish the book for the general public with all those recognizable names, even if the descriptions, situation, and storyline were completely fictitious. (Yes, people I knew from that era have bought the eBooks!) So, I created a released version of the story and did a significant edit of the material. I also added back a few scenes that were cut to meet SOL standards, cleaned up some timeline issues, and generally improved the story editing.

That means when I start posting What Were They Thinking? next week, people might be confused by characters and places they don't remember from the original series. (WHAT??? Rhonda is now Hannah? But I like Rhonda!)

The conundrum is that readers on SOL, who I wrote the story for in the first place, became heavily invested in the original characters and I don't want to change the story here to match the changes I made for Amazon. (WHAT??? Joanne is now Jessica? But I like Joanne!) Nor do I ever want to get in the position of making readers of free editions feel like they have to buy a new edition to see the real story.

So, to make a long story longer, I've decided to leave Living Next Door to Heaven 1 and 2 untouched here on SOL, complete with errors, spelling problems, and timeline issues and to release the 2nd edition free on my website for those who are confused by the names and events in What Were They Thinking? and want to re-read the story with all the edits. I've done a complete re-proofreading and have taken a lot of care to make the books readable and easy to navigate on my site.

I will not be updating the Amazon and Barnes and Noble versions for a while yet as I'm more focused on getting WWTT written and the free reading versions up on my site. When the .mobi and .ePub versions are finished, they will also be available for free on my site.

There's my long story. What Were They Thinking? will begin posting on SOL sometime next week. It probably won't be available on my website until it's finished here. Right now, Books 1-5 (Living Next Door to Heaven 1) are ready because the first part of WWTT runs in parallel with these five books. Hopefully, by the time the second part starts, the Books 6-9 (Living Next Door to Heaven 2) will also be available.

I know this decision and method leaves me open to criticism and to about a million other suggestions of how I could have handled it, but this is the one I've chosen and I invite you to take a look at the stories at http://www.devonlayne.com/books.html.

Thank you to all readers for continuing to be a major support in my life and source of unending ideas, encouragement, and well-earned criticism. Onward!