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!