aroslav: Blog

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!

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.