aroslav: Blog

I'm just absent minded. I have been so deep in my current writing projects, making up time lost while traveling to promote City Limits, that I have neglected to update blogs and other such stuff.

No more. At least not today.

Here is the exciting news: Two new stories starting in the next few days! One from Wayzgoose and one from aroslav. A little something for everyone.

Today (like right now), the cyber mystery For Money or Mayhem begins posting on Wayzgoose's page.

Dag Hamar is a computer forensics detective. He was thrown into the profession when he discovered the CEO of his company had not only stolen his girlfriend, but his retirement funds as well. Dag really hates a thief.

Now his mentor has asked him to go undercover in a credit card company to find out who has his fingers in the till. Dag pegs the Chief Technology Officer as the culprit but there's no evidence. And it looks like everyone in the company has something at stake in keeping him from needed information.

But Dag continues in his private business as well, helping a young man thwart a cyber-bully and discovering a real-life threat in the process. A threat that will extend to his girlfriend, her daughter, and her daughter's best friend. And that will bring down a cyber empire.

Discover how the two cases are related and join Dag as he is dragged out from behind the comfort of his computer screen and into the gritty streets of Seattle to stop a kidnapper and an embezzler.

No-sex. Mystery. Tear-jerker. 28 chapters, posting every three days beginning now: July 13, 2018.

On Tuesday, aroslav's new erotic artist story, Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, will begin.

Jett Blackburn is a Digital Native. Born after the turn of the millennium, Jett has never known a time when technology wasn't at his fingertips. He played with his parents' cell phones as a baby. A computer was in his room from the beginning of his life. He can't understand why his parents buy entire CDs to get one song they are interested in. He sends and receives more than ten thousand text messages a month. And his friends video chat through every aspect of their lives.

Jett and his friends have never known privacy. As a result, their online antics spill over into their real lives without boundaries.

But in all this digital world, what Jett likes to do is paint. Real paint on real canvas. And sometimes on his underwear. And his friends like to watch. As Jett's art begins to take shape, people are affected by his drawings and paintings that capture the soul of his subject. People are changed. Sometimes terminally.

Jett discovers real-life sex is even more satisfying than cyber-sex and a group of his female friends self-select around him to become his family as they head to their first year at the university. Jett discovers a new substrate for his art and a new venue for his performances.

Much sex. Coming of Age. College. ~40 chapters, posting every three days beginning July 17, 2018.

And this weekend is the Skin to the Wind Festival of Fun at Sun Meadow Nudist Resort. The RV spaces started filling up Monday and the campground is near capacity. There are nightly music events, games, seminars, pools, and cocktails. Tomorrow at 4:30 at the potluck patio party, I'll have a table for an author meet and greet featuring City Limits and other Nathan Everett titles. I'm carefully selecting what hat to wear as that will be the only thing I have on.

I've hinted a couple times at a new project I'm working on. Well, I'm only half a chapter away from completing part one of my new Living Next Door to Heaven installment: What Were They Thinking? It will enter the editing cycle soon and I expect it to post in August. This sometimes hilarious and sometimes sad account is about the development of Brian's Clan of the Heart as seen from the perspective of the parents of the fourteen-year-olds who sign The Agreement. Told from multiple points of view, Marilyn Frost, Anna Pratt, Rev. Gordon, John Clinton, Sly Cortales, and others look back at what they allowed their kids to do and ask "What the hell were we thinking?"

And that's life in the fast lane. Here in Idaho the temps have been in the upper 80s this week. I've spent most of my time outside with my computer as I write and wave at my friends and neighbors walking by. Seems that I get into a cycle, though. Heat. Lethargy. Nap. Repeat. I'm just sandwiching as many words as possible between naps!

Have a great Friday the thirteenth!

Visitors to www.devonlayne.com are currently being informed that my "Account had been suspended." According to my host (eHost) this is because, "As part of the hosting migration cleanup process, we have temporarily disabled all CPanel services. Your services will be automatically reinstated within the next 6-8 hours." I am waiting for the site to come up again so I can complete my own migration to a new host (justhost) as quickly as possible. Hope to have this resolved within 24 hours. Thanks!

I have nineteen chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain in the pipeline and I'm well into chapter twenty. Writing is going well at the rate of two or three chapters a week. I expect this to top out around thirty chapters. Pixel the Cat has already asked me about the scope of this story. "How many chapters, btw? I could see this becoming comparable to Model Student, with Jett and his harem (which obviously will grow) going through all four years of college."

Well, if I contain this manuscript to thirty chapters and 100,000 words, it won't quite be the length of Model Student. I am, however, commissioning my daughter to design four book covers. This series, however, might deviate from the standard four years in college. There is ample indication that of the six main characters, more than one might not complete college. Possibly even Jett.

The big difference between developing this series and Model Student is the speed of my writing. I produced Model Student at a rate of six to ten thousand words a day. And there are places it shows. The same is true of Living Next Door to Heaven. But the rigors of getting a mainstream book ready for release and promoting it has slowed my writing considerably. Add to that the fact that I currently have five works in progress on my active list.

Two of them are on the shelf at the moment, waiting for me to start the long tedious process of rewriting. Pretty stories, but no action. It happens. Dark Side is my top priority and I'm maintaining an average of about 1200 words a day most of the time. I've also begun the sequel to Wayzgoose's City Limits. I'm not rushing that project as I have six months to get it written so I can release it next summer.

But the one that has surprised me is the unexpected sequel to Living Next Door to Heaven. At 10,000 words into this story, I can see that it's possible it could be two full volumes. Brian and his crew were mostly born in the early '70s. Which means that their parents were born in the mid to late '40s. Baby boomers. My generation. Yeah. Everything fun was still either illegal, immoral, or would get you pregnant. Focusing on the stories of the parents who allowed their sons and daughters to create a commune, sleep over with each other, have handfasting ceremonies, and live generally lascivious lives-What were they thinking???

My Patreon Sausage Grinder Community-those who like to see the raw meat ground up before Old Rotorhead and Pixel the Cat pack it neatly into skins and grill it until fit for human consumption-have been following along with the development of Dark Side on a weekly basis. When I get the rest of that story in the can, I'll start posting the raw copy of Living Next Door to Heaven 3 for patrons. As soon as Dark Side starts posting on SOL (early July?), I'll start feeding LNDtH3 into the editing channel and hope for a release time on SOL early this fall. So that's my project report.

Quick update on the progress of the release of City Limits. Pre-orders are being taken on both Kindle and Nook. Sigh of relief when I saw orders actually coming in! Orders will be filled by automatic download on June 23.

I still don't have a venue for a reading in the Seattle area on the 23rd, but will be reading and signing books at Chandler Reach Winery Tasting Room in Woodinville, WA on Sunday afternoon the 24th from 4-6 p.m. If you're in the area, stop in and introduce yourself. Enjoy a glass of wine and chat for a while.

On June 30th, I'll be at Book and Game Company in Walla Walla, WA signing books from 11-2. Stop by and chat. I'll be just inside the door. I'm currently working on an engagement in Spokane, but don't have the date tied down yet. More news on that soon, I hope.

And I'm beginning to get requests for blog appearances the week of June 25-29. My promotions person is working on that and hasn't given me the details on which blogs I'll be interviewing on or what days yet. I'm enjoying the partial reviews that are coming in by email, comment, and text message. Great fun!

You can keep up with my busy schedule if you're interested at http://www.nathaneverett.com/events.html. Hope to see you at one of them!

I've completed sixteen chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain and the first nine are in the editing cycle. Progress is moving along at the rate of a couple chapters a week. I'm expecting to start posting by the end of June. At last!

I feel a bit like I've been building up a backlog during the past five months. It was a real shock to me to realize that I haven't posted a story (from aroslav) since the end of January.
But that doesn't mean I've been idle. Just that the stories I've written are not yet ready for prime time. Which is why I started the Wayzgoose author page so I could show what has been taking most of my time for the past few months: City Limits.

In the meantime, I completed the first draft of The Props Master 2: A Touch of Magic, but I feel like it needs a solid rewrite before I put it in the cycle for release. And I've written part of a first draft cyber-mystery (for Wayzgoose) that needs to be reworked from the beginning rather than continuing from where I am at the moment. I've made a bunch of notes for a potential Swarm story, but have not been able to devote the mind-share needed to focus on actually writing that story. Perhaps later this summer.

Dark Side is more loosely plotted than either A Touch of Magic or For Mayhem or Madness. It follows the life and is narrated by young artist Jett Blackburn as he unexpectedly collects a small harem of girls headed to the same college and struggling with how to pay for it and survive in a world in which their X-ennial parents seem to have abandoned them. They are digital natives and live as much online as in the flesh. Yeah. I can write this.

But then there are the other projects that just won't let me be. I intended from the beginning that Wayzgoose's City Limits would be the first of at least two and possibly three books. So, I add a thousand or two words to the sequel, Wild Woods, about twice a week. It's progressing in typical first draft fashion.

But the real overload started Friday night when I sat with a friend and a beer at camp. He's doing a lot of cross-country flying these days and needed a good long read to last through a few trips. He decided on Living Next Door to Heaven and is almost through LNDtH1 book five, The Rock.

"You have to write another book in this series," Doug said. I've heard that before. I've even considered what the storyline would be for Brian's daughter Xan to narrate the story of the children of Casa del Fuego. But Doug's next words surprised me. "We need to hear the story from the parents' viewpoint. You and I are both parents of girls in their twenties. How the hell would we respond to our girls if they were involved in the kind of multiple and very sexual relationships that the daughters and sons in LNDtH were in. What makes the parents amenable to giving their kids such incredible liberty?"

I've been mulling that over for the entire weekend. This morning I wrote 1,000 words of LNDtH3.

Shit!

I did not need to start that. Now it will progress in writing alongside the other stories I'm working on. And you won't hear another word about it for the next six months or more because it will take that long for me write, polish, and get a new story edited. Aren't you glad I told you?

There is, of course, a way that you could participate in the development and read the rough first draft pretty much as I write it-knowing that it is a first draft and unedited. It's one of the 'benefits' I offer my subscriber community at Patreon. I have twenty-seven patrons in my community at the moment. They receive various levels of rewards for their patronage. The $5/month level receives anything I publish, either here on SOL or on Amazon, a week before it is released. Not a bad deal for those who are really impatient to get their hands on each precious word I write, but you could have it the next week for free here on SOL.
The next level, at $10/month, though, is what I call my 'sausage grinders'. They want to see the bloody mess created. Those community members get to watch my work in progress. Yes, they have already seen and read fifteen chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain. They have already read the first draft of A Touch of Magic. They've even read my raw notes on the untitled Swarm story. And they get to comment back to me about what they are reading and offer suggestions while I'm doing the writing. Yes, over the next six months, those patrons will witness LNDtH3 taking shape as it is written-warts and all.

Eventually, the story will make it to SOL, after it has been rewritten, polished, edited, and proofread. I'm still very committed to releasing all my erotica here on SOL at no charge. I owe a great debt to this community for rescuing me when I was in black depression. I have thirty-one stories on SOL and that number will grow. But if you want to engage with my creative overload, my address is www.patreon.com/aroslav.

I'm in the Seattle area for a couple more days, working on getting some financial and business things taken care of. With everything else I have going on, I'm still maintaining an average this year of writing over 50,000 words a month. So there is progress.

Tonight, I hope to sit down with my daughter for an hour and choose where in South Texas I'm going to spend the winter. If you've got a great suggestion in the Rio Grande Valley, let me know. Until then, I'll be in Idaho!

Before I say anything else, let me add my condolences to Michael Loucks over the loss of his son. There is no way we can know the depth of that pain without experiencing it. My own child is about the same age as Jeremiah and hearing of your loss froze my soul. While I can't know your pain, I share your grief.

I made it to my summer campground on Tuesday after crossing the Continental Divide six times on the way home. It was a beautiful day and I wasted no time getting skin to the wind and sitting in front of my fire with a bourbon and a cigar. Seeing all my friends arriving and getting reacquainted has been a real lift to the spirits after the ten weeks of cold and wind that it took me to get here.

The first batch of chapters of Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain have gone to editor number one and I expect them back soon to forward to ed2. I'm pretty pleased, though I don't yet have an estimated length for the piece when finished. I'm 35,000 words into it and know that isn't very far for this story arc.

With luck, I might have something ready to start posting by the end of June. If the writing doesn't get bogged down and the editors don't throw it back in my face.

It seems that I've spent the better part of this year re-writing, editing, proofreading, and preparing to publish City Limits by Wayzgoose. But we are on target for a June 23 launch, so I guess it isn't for naught. Posting the pre-release version here on SOL has been helpful as people have written to point out errors that I can correct before release. Getting my Spanish corrected was a real help!

A lot of the process of getting ready for release has been getting Advance Review Copies out and preparing a website for my alter ego. I'll let him post about that whenever 'he' gets around to adding a new blog post. Wayzgoose is a nice guy, but he tends to get distracted. By me.

'We' are still looking for a venue in the Greater Seattle area for the release party. If you have a contact you can refer us to or would like to host the party on the 23rd of June, let me know. The week between June 23 and June 30, we'll be touring east through Washington and need dates and locations for a reading and signing in Ellensburg, Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene. Also accepting other suggestions like Yakima and Walla Walla, Moscow, Pullman, and Boise. I might be interested in doing a south trip in July or November. (Or about any other time.)

Well, I have my plate full of projects, so I won't belabor this one. Best to you!