Wayzgoose: We’re here with author aroslav, also known as Devon Layne, whose newest story, Full Frame, will release to SOL readers on October 2. Happy 73rd birthday, aroslav.
aroslav: Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
W: I’m glad no one else could hear you sing that. You’re a pretty prolific author, aroslav. Full Frame releases next week. How many does this make?
A: By my count, this makes fifty-six titles since my debut on SOL in 2011. That’s all under my identity as aroslav. There are seventeen others under pseudonyms. Hey! That makes 73 for my 73rd birthday!
W: How can you possibly write five books a year?
A: Once an idea gets in my head, I just have to keep writing until I get the first draft out. Full Frame is actually my sixth release in 2022. I’ve got two more in editing, but they won’t be released until 2023. So far this year, I’ve written a little over a million words.
W: So, your books spring full grown from the head of Zeus and you post them.
A: No, not at all. My first drafts are like everyone else’s. I usually do at least one rewrite and then I have an editing cycle that goes through four editors: GMBusman, Pixel the Cat, Old Rotorhead, and Cie_Mel. And several other readers check for specific content. Nightmare is a professional photographer who read for photographic details. Burka_Oz made a last pass and checked my eBook code. I reread and correct each time an editor returns a chapter. My books aren’t error free, but the quality is pretty good. And I don’t start posting them until they are finished, and I can pre-load the entire story.
W: Full Frame is about a young photographer who moves with his family from Chicago to a small Illinois town in the 1960s. Judging by your age, it could be about you. How much of the book would you say is autobiographical?
A: Oh, not much, really. I did move to a small town when I was in high school in the 60s, so the setting and some family experiences are similar. But beyond that, the story and the characters are all manufactured from my imagination. Sometimes they might bear some resemblance to me or people I knew, but I think the characters resemble the kids found in any small-town school in the Midwest in the 60s. That’s all it is, though. A resemblance.
W: So, you’re not an award-winning photographer?
A: Hardly. I did win a 4-H award in photography when I was twelve, but the similarity ends there. I take photos as a way to collect memories of vacations. Even those photos have little to recommend them.
W: What inspired this particular coming of age story?
A: I’ve written several coming of age stories in the genre of erotic romance and adventure. I think the age of the protagonist—almost seventeen—is a time of important discoveries, especially in relationships. As we get older, we have a tendency to romanticize what was, for many of us, a very uncomfortable if not downright painful period of our lives. So, I was searching for something to hang such a romanticized story around. Believe me, as far as the relationships in the story go, I don’t think I ever knew anyone who had a similar experience or even attitude.
W: Does that play well to your audience?
A: My audience, according to a survey I took, is mostly older men. I’ve learned a lot about them over the past ten years—especially, as I’ve become one. They want a story about a teen growing up who has a real talent of some sort and makes the most of it. As it happens, my readers seem to really enjoy stories in which the hero has an artistic talent. I’ve written stories about painters, theatre designers, sculptors, musicians, and actors. I think there is a mystique around them—artists are somehow extraordinary in their relationships. I was looking for an art for my new story and came up with photography.
Nate—the protagonist in Full Frame—becomes the 1967 equivalent of the selfie stick for many of his models. It helps that he is also a very talented photographer. He processes and prints his own photographs, so they don’t get sent out to the local drugstore where everyone can see them. So, the girls who pose for him feel a little freer—perhaps wilder. Because he’s the only one who’ll ever see them, right?
W: The Internet is forever.
A: Yes. But it didn’t exist in even a rudimentary form until the 1980s.
W: Do you have difficulty keeping track of terms or technologies that weren’t around back then?
A: Definitely! And if I miss something, you can bet a reader will point it out to me and to the rest of the world in comments. A good example dealt with what film was available. I had a problem with such a simple thing as mentioning the ISO of a certain film. Well, the ISO standard didn’t come about until 1974. Up until that time, we referred to the film ASA, or in Europe, DIN. Those were combined in ’74 to create the ISO standard. My main character could never have referred to the film speed as ISO100 in 1967.
What car did he drive? Did he have seatbelts? Was it legal to have an interracial marriage? How short were the skirts? I mentioned a character’s parents having met in college and married. I specifically identified what college because that college has one of my favorite Div III Women’s Basketball teams. Then I found out that at the time of my story, it was a men’s college and didn’t have women in it. Upon further research, though, I discovered that for a brief period in the 40s when this couple would have met, the college included a nursing school that was all women. The schools split a few years later.
W: You must have an interesting search history.
A: Many authors talk about hoping the government isn’t monitoring their search history. It gets pretty bizarre. My favorites directory includes the academic calendar for several different colleges; the 1969 draft lottery; weather history for Dubuque, Chicago, and Las Vegas; large format cameras; slang words for lesbians and bi women; Dr. Grabow pipes and tobacco blends; student protests in Chicago in 1968; Sears catalogs and wishbooks; property values; medical vibrators for treatment of female hysteria; popular 1967 drive-in movies; 1967-68 network television prime time schedule; and laws regarding student/teacher sexual relations in 1969.
W: Why would a reader want to pick up Full Frame?
A: I suppose I can’t just say that I wrote it and it’s good, so you should read it. I think the characters will pull you in and you’ll fall in love as if you were a teenager. If a couple breaks up in the story, you will be broken-hearted. At least until the next relationship begins.
But I hope that people who read this book are reminded of the era in which we marched for and demanded desegregation and civil rights for all, marriage equality and women’s equality, opposition to an unjust and unnecessary war and the draft that kept it fueled with warm bodies, and voting rights for eighteen-year-olds. Since a large segment of my readership comprises boomers, I hope they will all be reminded of what we struggled for in the 1960s and try to slow down the dismantling of what we worked so hard to build.
W: Thank you, aroslav. Once again, happy birthday. That book is Full Frame, book one of the “Photo Finish” series. The eBook will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookapy. Serialization at StoriesOnline begins October 2, 2022.