Route 66 through Claremore, Oklahoma is named Lynn Riggs Boulevard after its native son, the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, the book on which the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma! was based. That's one of the things I've learned since coming to Claremore a week ago to spend the holiday with friends. It's a nice little town with more railroad traffic through it than any place I've ever visited. Oil, grain, cattle, cars… There's a train through town in one direction or another about every fifteen minutes.
I'm at a nice campground next to the Cherokee Casino and Will Rogers Downs. Yesterday there was an annual 'Santa Cash' event at the casino that drew close to 2,000 people! I took that opportunity to go exploring downtown. I did, however, have the excellent prime rib dinner at the casino the night before.
But, of course, none of this post is about my current location or plans for Yule next Saturday night. It's about writing and the stories that are posting here on SOL and on my own websites. First of all, Part X: Transmutation, of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins started posting this week with chapter 113. This is in the third book of the series, Double Tears. My apologies that the Part heading did not post as it was supposed to. If you read before Saturday, it was missing. That has been corrected by Vixen. I've been very interested in the comments to the story lately, which include a lot of speculation regarding the type of governance in the Alternate America and some of the history that would lead to it. You guys are adding a lot more depth to that topic than I considered. Thank you!
People are also reading Wayzgoose's Stocks & Blondes. That story posted chapters 9 and 10 this week and voting was turned on. Once again, thank you for your comments and your votes. The full eBook is now available and instructions for acquiring it are in the end note. Stocks & Blondes will release commercially before Christmas in both eBook and paperback.
And then there is American Royalty 1: Coming of Age. It hasn't started posting yet, but once I have all the edits in from my excellent SOL editors, I expect to start posting it in mid-January. It is also a Wayzgoose story but this one has minimal sex instead of no sex. That book won't release commercially until June, after I've done a complete rewrite and have softened up the explicit scenes-of which there aren't many. You'll get the unexpurgated version here on SOL.
So, here I sit. I'm feeling so good since my heart procedures in October and November that it drives me crazy to not be writing, even though I have a client editing project in hand. I went to my idea file and pulled out a story concept I generated a few years ago. It struck me as funny so I started writing and am 13,000 words into it now. My Sausage Grinder patrons are already starting to consume the raw copy. Here's the blurb:
I was amused some time back when I was sitting at a table with several friends being entertained by a story of a guy telling how he became a nudist. He ended up by saying, "The truth is, I just like boobs." He looked around furtively and lowered his voice. "Don't tell my wife I said that." Well, his wife was sitting right beside him and rolled her eyes. "As if I didn't know." She lifted her own prodigious boobs in each hand and waved them at us.
Well, as things do, that got me thinking. What were some of the things you'd never tell your wife? That idea, which I'd put down in my idea files a long time ago, popped up in my mind and I had to just start writing. I have no idea where this story will go and no idea how long it will be, though I don't expect it to be epic.
So, if all goes well and the editors concur, I'd guess that aroslav story will start posting late in January or early February. I'm currently calling it Things I Never Told My Wife. It's a bit sexier than most of my stories with a sex event in nearly every chapter. I don't know if it will earn the moniker "Much Sex" on SOL, though. I'll have to see what happens as I write it. As a teaser, here's the first couple of paragraphs.
I met my soulmate when I was sixteen years old.
I've filtered my memories through forty years of experience since then and I'm more convinced than ever that Jesse and I were meant to be together. Of course, I never told my wife that. I didn't meet her until I was nearly thirty. It didn't seem important by then. Who ever marries his soulmate?
This won't be a daily diary kind of thing. It will be selected events out of the narrator's life that he never felt it was necessary to tell his wife about. I think it will be lots of fun.
That's pretty much my update for today. If you want a link to become a patron and read Things I Never Told My Wife as I develop it, drop me a line. Until next week, Joyous Yule!