aroslav: Blog

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!

I once thought I wrote hot stories. But the weather here in Idaho has me outdone by a long way. It's been 107 degrees all afternoon today, breaking records by 13 degrees. Yesterday's 105 only broke the record by 10 degrees.

The remedy? Tomorrow night is the resort chili cook-off. I don't have a single recipe, though I have several ingredients I use repeatedly. Hot food for a hot day--it's supposed to be over 100 again tomorrow. I'll probably plug my kettle in outside so I don't have to heat up the trailer. I'll call it "Redtail Chili" because if it's from Devon Layne, it's supposed to be hot.

Haha. Okay. Joke's over. Turn down the heat, please!

There was some good discussion in the Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain comments that I've tried not to participate in because I don't want to accidentally give any spoilers in the comments. Mostly, that comes from my inability to shut up at the right time. It also sparked some conversation with my editors, though, and it helps to keep us all focused.

Without referring further to the story, I'll give some of my data regarding the dystopian vision of the future held by a huge number of Digital Natives (born after 1997). The writer of the following message is near the cut-off, though technically still considered a Millennial. I thought, however, that his honest assessment was spot on and I see it only amplified as we reach down to age eighteen, like the characters in Dark Side.

Why do we want to die?

It's kind of a joke, and kind of an expression of a very real feeling of powerlessness and dread.

As a generation we are crippled by student loan debt. Can't buy a house because the housing market is a catastrophe. Trapped in meaningless service sector jobs, gleefully exploited by large corporations, not unionized, and feeling the full force of wage stagnation. Retirement seems like a hilarious fantasy. And that's just the economy.

The US is a cultural wasteland. Our movies are remakes of remakes and the cynical reselling of our childhoods back to us. Our computers and social networks actively spy on us. We're always connected, yet statistically very isolated. We're going to be around when the full effects of climate change set in and start fucking shit up. Our taxes are wasted in fruitless military adventures overseas while our politicians refuse to take real action on the exploding costs of education and health care. Our national politics in general are in absolute shambles.

Personally, my life (age 26) is going quite well. But as a cohort we don't really have much to be optimistic about. There is much to be concerned about, and many potential futures to dread.-from Zeebuss

Generations are not defined by the literal time it takes to mature and reproduce like it might be with dogs or orchids. In human generations, the seemingly arbitrary cut-off of 1997 as where the Digital Native generation starts is based on those who can remember 9/11 and those who really can't. So, consider what this generation is all about. They are twenty-one years of age or less. (When my generation was in that age range, we were burning draft cards and bras. We were marching in the streets for civil rights. We were putting flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere. We did not remember World War II.)

Today's 18-21-year-old does not remember 9/11
Has never known privacy and has no real understanding of it outside of sneaking behind the garage to smoke pot (and that will be photographed and posted for everyone to see on flickr)
Never had a phone with wires
Always had a cell phone and a home computer (probably was given Mommy's smart phone to play games on while shopping
Never knew broadcast television (it's always been cable, OnDemand, and satellite TV)
Never bought an entire CD to get one song they wanted (yet have a library of over a thousand pieces of music they like, or did when they bought it)
Stands a one-in-six hundred chance of having had a live shooter in their school during their twelve years of education (those starting school this year stand a one-in-three hundred chance) and believe no one cares enough to stop it
Have had more live shooter drills in school than fire drills (of course, my generation had duck-and-cover drills to protect us from nuclear holocaust)
Will spend upwards of 100-150,000 for a four-year college degree that will get them a $40,000-a-year entry level job
Or, elect to do a job that does not require a degree and struggle to work their way up to $15 per hour in wages
Either way, they will start their working life either in debt or in crippling debt
Will live with parents as long as possible (BTW, the parents of today's 18-21-year-olds are mostly not Millennials, but the tail end of Gen-X, sometimes referred to as Xennials.)
Have no hope of ever buying a home, retiring, or being able to afford marriage
Fear having children because that would truly be the end of hope
Have never known a time when the US was not at war someplace in the world
Consider the world, and especially the US, to be a corrupt and hopeless place

At the same time, they want to go to concerts, buy cool clothes, smoke pot, drink to the point of alcohol poisoning, and discover true love via sex. All of those are an escape from what they consider reality to be. Like all such escape mechanisms, they are self-defeating as they consume the limited cash resources that they have and spiral back into more hopelessness. But any attempt to tell them they should save their money and not spend it on all that frivolous stuff is responded to with disbelief that we of the older generations would take away the little joy they have in life.

Sex is a cheap pleasure, but my generation-the generation of free love-has pounded into them that sex is dirty, that it is a form of abuse, that it can't be enjoyed in a way that doesn't require one party being used by the other, and that it inevitably leads to AIDS. We have convinced girls, transsexuals, gays, and non-binary people that men cannot be trusted, and then we proved it. We have further done our best to keep quality sex education out of schools (abstinence only), to deny reproductive health services, and to convince both males and females that sex is nothing more than a marketing tool.

Is every Digital Native so despondent? Of course not. We are a diverse culture. "Smart Girls" will find a 40-year-old electrical engineer to seduce and graduate from college at sixteen. Or win the lottery. Some will truly be so smart and dedicated they will rise to the top no matter what. Some will already be members of the privileged class whose parents will support them, pay for college, house them, and get them started in life. As we move from Gen-X to Millennials as parents, we find fewer and fewer who are capable of doing that as the gap between the economic classes widens and people who were once upper middle class discover the erosion of the economy has moved them down and widened the gap between them and the upper strata they aspire to. And those who were just at the edge of making it find their savings gone, mortgages that consume 50% or more of their income, health services increasing in price as health benefits are reduced, and mounting credit card debt that was only supposed to see them through a tough spot and became a way of life.

Dystopia? Only if you define the reality of our world and society today as dystopian.

I thought that I was going to finish the first draft of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain this morning. I am halfway through chapter 40 and realize there will be at least one more. Maybe two. Damn characters have their own story to tell and often won't shut up until they've had their say. And with seven lovers and a few more volunteers, I have to be fair and let each of them get their cookies, right?

Well, without giving away the story, suffice it to say that I was writing about Baroque Porn. Specifically, porn based on Jett's interpretation of Poisson's Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan. I was trying to envision how such a scene would evolve and Baroque music came flitting to mind. With that thought came Bach, and suddenly I had a silent porn film conducted and performed to Bach fugues. In order to properly visualize that, I had to listen to an entire hour-long concert of Bach played on a huge pipe organ.

What a way to begin my day.

I've since progressed to listening to Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream Op 61. For some reason, that reminded me of Rachmaninov. I found a delightful performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 featuring the lovely Anna Fedorova. Now I have her rendition of Piano Concerto No. 3 cued up and ready to play as I continue writing. I swear she has an orgasm while she is playing Rachmaninov! It's been a musical morning.

And I plan to continue writing this morning. I intend to have Dark Side complete by the weekend, and if that means I have two more chapters to write, I have a lot of work to do! I produced 6500 words yesterday, but I confess that 1200 were on LNDtH3. Part I of that story has been drafted and is in the hands of my story editor. I'm working on Part II. When finished, this is likely to be a work of some 150-200,000 words. Of course, characters… Who knows what their stories will tell?

I'm very pleased with the reception Wayzgoose is getting with For Money or Mayhem, so the sequel that I've not yet completed, For Mayhem or Madness, is rising on my list of important projects to get finished by the end of the year. 2019 is shaping up to be a very productive year as I have been producing an average of over 2000 words a day all year.

Speaking of the end of the year, I'm thinking of hitting the Florida panhandle from November to March. Anyone have experience and advice on that area near Pensacola? I've heard it gets chilly, but none of the weather history that I've looked at for the past two years indicates more that a few days of truly cold weather and plenty of days in the high seventies-ideal weather for sitting outside in the altogether, IMHO.

And I've heard that spring break at Pensacola Beach is as lovely as Ft. Meyers. Hmm.

We had a mini tornado rip through camp a few days ago. Damnedest thing ever if you ask me. Slightly more than a dust devil. I was sitting outside under my awning working on my laptop when the wind picked up. Really started to blow and shake things. I'm in a fairly sheltered location, so it was muted somewhat by the trees surrounding me. The skies were all clear blue without a cloud anywhere, but a little twister came right up the dirt road into our camp. One guy's camp table and umbrella ended up in the meadow about a quarter mile away and his awning is going to need some repair.

Five minutes after the wind started whistling, everything was calm again and you would think it was all an illusion. Still beautiful clear blue skies, 80 degrees, and calm as could be.

I have to mention my Patreon page. The folks who have joined my community really do a lot to boost me and keep me writing. Since most actually found me through SOL, I want to recognize them for all the support and advice they give me. Patrons in my Advance Release Community ($5/mo) receive all my stories at a more rapid pace and a bit before they are posted here. Patrons in my Sausage Grinder Community ($10/mo) get to watch the stories take shape as I write them. It's raw and unedited, but some people just can't wait. The comments I get also help me create a better story through the editing process. Those patrons are currently almost finished with Dark Side and are now well into LNDtH3 with weekly posts. If you'd like to join those patrons and get immediate access to what they are seeing, check it out at www.patreon.com/aroslav. Of course, I welcome supporters at any level and appreciate all the community members.