aroslav: Blog

Maybe even a relief if you're tired of hearing from me. Soulmates finished serialization this week. Now the entire 40 chapters are available on SOL and the eBook is available on ZBookStore, the rebranding of Bookapy for adult content. And here I am with nothing new ready to release. So I won't be posting anything new for at least a couple of months before Forever Yours is finished and edited.

Thank you to those of you who reached out to tell me you enjoyed Soulmates. Several of you asked about a sequel. There is nothing currently on the horizon. I anticipated returning to the characters for further adventures, but the reception of Soulmates was kind of lukewarm. I have other stories that people liked a lot better and are waiting for sequels to, so I'll be focusing my energy on those stories for the foreseeable future. I'm spending more time writing and editing my future stories and less relying on inspiration.

It's getting hot here in Las Vegas. 98 degrees at the moment. That means it's time for me to head north soon. I expect to have things closed up here by the end of the month and will be flying up to Seattle the first week of June. My daughter is in a production of Once Upon a Mattress and I want to get there before it closes. I'll be spending most of the summer in the Seattle area except a week-long trip I'm making to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario in late July. I'm definitely enjoying my summer forays into Shakespeare and this summer will include Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, and As You Like It. Non-Shakespearean shows will include Sense and Sensibility, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Forgiveness.

I expect to return to Vegas in mid-August, but if it is unbearably hot, I might drive up into the mountains and just hide for a couple of weeks. Amidst all the travel, I intend to be writing and finishing both Forever Yours and Drawing on the Bright Side of the Brain. Three other projects are vying for my attention when those two are completed. We'll see which one wins. They include a rewrite of Bob's Memoir, Volume 3 that extends the story considerably and will be available when I release the Signature Edition hardcover of the trilogy in December. I've opened my files for A Place Among Peers and will rewrite the draft of that sequel to A Place at the Table. It might be time to write a fourth volume of Wonders of My World, the travelog of erotic adventures I've had while on the road since my round-the-world trip (Seven Wonders of the World on SOL or Border Crossings on ZBookStore). While I slowed down some, I found some pretty wild adventures that I'm sure I can exaggerate.

I'll try to continue my weekly blog, but that might take a break this summer, too. We'll see.

Don't panic! I'm not dead! I'm just being quiet for a while.

This is number 111 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I DIDN’T MEAN TO LIE. Honest. I made the statement in good faith, but things didn’t work out that way. I know. This is, like, the 5,000th time, but I promise, I’ll do better next time. Please forgive me.

Of course, I’m not talking about the words of a famous politician. I’m counting the number of times I’ve told my editors, “One more chapter. Maybe two.” Eight, ten, or twenty chapters later, I’m asking if they think I should divide the story into two volumes and go back to where I originally thought it would end.

I’m really terrible at this!

If I recall correctly, that’s exactly what happened when I started writing aroslav’s Team Manager series. I intended it to be three volumes, covering Dennis’s sophomore, junior, and senior years in high school. It was all going to be about basketball.

Then, I reached the end of basketball season in the crew’s sophomore year (SWISH!) and it was only March! I couldn’t just skip over the next six months until basketball season started again. I continued the story of their sophomore year with SPRINT! This went into track season and through the summer following. I managed to rein in the story line so that COACH! and CHAMP! wrapped up each of the following two years, even though technicalities of what was legal forced the last volume out until September.

The thing is, when I said it was almost finished and wrapped up SWISH!, I really thought I was ready to start COACH!, not another entire book before I got there. I just lied a little.

SPRINT! and the entire Team Manager eBook collection are available on ZBookStore. This was formerly Bookapy, but the previous incarnation has been split so that adult-oriented books are offered only through ZBookStore. At the same time, all my Devon Layne and Nathan Everett books are offered through ZBookStore, even though the Nathan Everett books are not ‘adult’ titles.

What brought the whole discussion of lying to my editors to the forefront was a recent question from my number one editor, Pixel the Cat, regarding how long my current work in progress would be. I’d just sent him a batch of chapters through chapter 32 of Forever Yours.

“Do these complete it?” he asked.
“No,” I responded. “There will be another eight or ten chapters.”

I lied.

I didn’t know I was lying at the time. I had a synopsis and a list of things to be done in those eight or ten chapters, but as I kept writing and plotting out the timeline, I realized I could make it to the end of Part III of the story in eight or ten chapters, but not to the end of the story. I’m now expecting a Part IV of another fourteen or fifteen chapters! If it’s longer than that, it will be more than one book. Am I looking at another SWISH!/SPRINT! split?

I don’t know, but I hope not.

This is actually a symptom of a very real writing problem. I could finish the story in the originally predicted eight or ten chapters. But the last part would feel compressed and rushed. I would get unlimited comments about not tying up all the loose ends, not knowing how to end a story, and general disappointment. Not that I wouldn’t get the same comments if I wrote thirty-two more chapters and tied up everything neatly. I would still get those comments, but perhaps fewer of them.

It’s a two-edged blade. Part of the responsibility is on the author. The other is on the unwillingness of readers to let go of their favorite characters or storyline. When I finished the fourth volume of Team Manager: CHAMP!, I ended the entire storyline that I planned for the main character and his girlfriends. They were in a good place together, ready to face life after high school supporting each other. But I started receiving requests and demands for a continuation of the story. What happened then? How did they continue to make their sextet work? What happened in college?

Those are all interesting questions on the surface, but they aren’t part of the story. For example, Dennis is no longer a team manager. It would be silly to continue a story called Team Manager. Is there another possible story featuring the same characters? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What’s the end-point? Where does the story go? Do I have to keep writing the story until they all die?

The same is true of any lengthy story that captures the interest and hearts of readers. People are still clamoring for a continuation of Harry Potter as an adult after school. Fewer these days since the author proved to be an asshole to a substantial part of her readership. But what would the story be? The characters have proven their worth. They have defeated the primary evil in their world. They have paired up as couples. If there was another story, it would need to be substantially different, more sedate, and frankly boring.

This was supposed to be about lying to my editors.

I have a second work in progress called Drawing on the Bright Side of the Brain. I find it is helpful for me to work on two projects at once because I need to change focus occasionally, so I don’t get bogged down in one or the other.

I haven’t even told my editors about this project. That’s not lying, is it? It’s currently eighteen chapters and nearly 60,000 words. According to my story notes, I’m about halfway through the story. But am I really? Each time I open the file I realize the story is progressing faster than I thought it would. Do I dare tell my editors I have a new story of thirty-six to forty chapters and then wrap it up in thirty? Or twenty-eight? Or fifty?

So, I hold that information close to my chest (except for the world who reads this blog and the Sausage Grinder patrons who read the story as I write it), and find I am only lying to myself when I look at what comes next and how long it will be.

But there are other little lies I tell about my stories—mostly to myself.

Those lies are called my story outline and synopsis. I start with the idea and intend to write it, but then I discover that a different character has become more interesting than I gave her credit for. I don’t want to focus the story on someone else. Or I discover a timeline flaw and don’t want to backtrack. The story changes subtly from its intended direction.

According to my plot outline, Couple A-B will break up and character C will come into A’s life, bonding in ways no one else has. They marry and have a family. Then A gets killed by a jealous former lover.

But in reality, relationship A-B grows much deeper than I intended. I don’t want them to break up. They are a perfect pair. Scratch C from the story altogether and forget about the jealous former lover.

Now I have a very different ending to the story! How much of what I have told that should lead up to the first ending is now a lie? How much of the total story do I need to change? I want to be honest in how I deal with it, but can I be?

I have sometimes used the introductory tagline “I lie for a living.” I mean, if you read my books everything is fiction. None of it is ‘true.’ Except, as Steven King is purported to have said, “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” I would add that non-fiction is learning through information. Fiction is learning through imagination. Next week: “Lying to My Readers.”

This is number 110 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

“DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.”

“How do I know it’s small stuff?”

“It’s all small stuff.”

Mad at me for not recognizing that your problems are real problems that are huge? Upset that I don’t consider the crumbling of civilization to be big stuff? Ready to fight over sexual identity, women’s rights, deportations, border protection, the war in Ukraine, salvation, racism, tariffs, democracy, civil rights, voter identification, government waste, autism, taxes, social security, health care, constitutionality, wokeness, gun rights, vaccinations, homelessness, pronouns, abortion, inflation, tourism, golf, football, basketball, or checkers?

Still reading?

Yes, it’s all small stuff. In fact, if all we had to deal with was any one of the things above, we’d realize it’s small stuff. Even terminal illness is something small. It affects when a person will die, not if they will die.

That’s right. It’s only when we collect the things up into batches we believe in or are concerned about and consider them all at once that we get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. It seems like a crushing weight that has to be dealt with in order for humanity to survive.

Individually? It’s all small stuff.

The Strange Art series will be released in July as The Art Étrange Trilogy in a single volume as part of my Signature Collection of print books. The series is about a young artist who is simply overwhelmed by life. His speech gets bottled up when he tries to speak to people. He is overwhelmed by his classes, even though he’s a good student most of the time. Strangers, lack of familiarity, and new circumstances are all triggers for panic attacks.

He’s on the autism spectrum disorder, what the secretary of health and human services wants to have registered, declaring of those on the spectrum: “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” Etc.

Well, Art is evidence that is not true, and though the story is fiction, the characterization is not. He simply needs to deal with one thing at a time in order to not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the things facing him.

The thing is that autism spectrum disorder was redefined recently, identifying a plethora of different conditions as being ‘on the spectrum.’ Asperger’s Syndrome. Rett Syndrome. Kanner’s Syndrome (also referred to as classic autism disorder). Pervasive Development Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. It’s not on the rise; we are diagnosing a broader range of disorders under the banner of ‘autism.’

And most of those affected will, indeed, pay taxes, hold a job, play sports, write poetry, go on dates, and live lives that are almost indistinguishable from others. Just as Art the artist does. When he learns to focus on one thing at a time, he finds life less overwhelming.

The entire Strange Art series is available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy.

No, this post isn’t about autism, but rather how a bunch of things get thrown at us at once and we start to panic instead of listening to one thing at a time.

Perhaps you have seen the 1907 photograph by Herbert Ponting of a Fakir in Varanasi, India lying on a bed of nails.

Did you know you can even buy a bed of nails online and practice lying on it? It is reasonably safe, and they are usually priced at less than $100. The weight of the person lying on the bed is spread across many points so there is not enough pressure from any one point to break the skin.

Imagine this person represents the people of the world (or just your family or community) and the nails represent all the problems of the world with which you are concerned. People don’t pay attention to panicked alarms because they are so numerous they (we) actually become comfortable lying on them.

The bed of nails looks overwhelming. They are so many that we feel hopeless to do anything about them. We raise the alarm about everything we see that is wrong, but no one listens. They have become comfortable lying on it.

But have you ever seen a picture of a person lying on just one nail?

Ridiculous, right? Because one nail doesn’t distribute the weight across the entire body. It focuses on one point and punctures.

When I say ‘it’s all little stuff,’ I mean we are so overwhelmed by the number of things that they all become equal and we are helpless to do anything. Perhaps it is not a sleep number, but in a way, the bed of nails becomes comfortable. We start shutting out the pain of so many things wrong in our lives, our world, or even our minds. We simply lie on all of them and can do nothing.

I’m suggesting that if you focus on one nail, you can make a real impact—flatten it, bend it, change its course. It doesn’t make a difference which nail you choose. It doesn’t have to be the same nail that anyone else chooses. But that focus helps you make the point. Continuing to drive it home day after day makes it irresistible.

It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else. Obviously, you do. But the mass of things you care about becomes the little stuff and you are able to actually accomplish something.

What does all this have to do with writing erotica?

I find that in the course of writing a story, there can be so much that needs to be dealt with that it is overwhelming. When I focus on one thing and resolve that, I can then move to another issue and resolve that. Trying to resolve them all at once leaves me unable to progress at all.

Yes, that means that I often need to backtrack as I’m writing and add something earlier in the story to support the next issue I’m dealing with. That’s okay. I’m still only dealing with one at a time.

I hit that point in my current work in progress this week. I looked at the number of things I needed to complete in the story and it was too much! It could (and will) all be dealt with, but I’ll be doing a lot of making sure each point has been set up correctly and that I successfully bring each one to a conclusion.

One at a time.

I don’t sweat the little stuff.

Sometimes my editors ask me for an estimate of how long the book will be when finished. Next week: Lying to my editors.

This is number 109 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

IT WAS BACK IN 1995 that I was first referred to (to my face) as a metrosexual. We didn’t have the benefit of online urban dictionaries yet, so I had to go to several hip friends to find out what the hell the term meant.

Turns out, it was a term coined by Mark Simpson in the British tabloid The Independent in November of 1994. Apparently, I was one of the first! By definition, it referred to a man who took care of himself. He had disposable income and spent a share of it on good grooming, exercise, and clothing.

It was true. I was a trainer and design consultant. I traveled around the country delivering lectures and workshops on publication design, production software, and color theory. My clients included major publishers, specialty design companies, and technology companies. I was on the road a lot. It was important for me to present a good image in front of my classes and clients.

I’d come a long way since the early 80s. I remember getting a new job as an executive assistant to the owner of a major real estate franchiser. When he found out I didn’t own a suit—I’d spent the past few years eking out a living in theatre—he immediately advanced me $200 and told me to come to work Monday dressed appropriately for the office.

I’m not sure he had in mind the brown herringbone wool suit I showed up in, but it was uniquely my style and he came to appreciate it. And the corporate gold jacket we were required to wear to official events went well with the suit pants.

Personally, I was in heaven. When I was growing up, my parents were the epitome of blue collar workers. Dad worked on the assembly line at Studebaker—when they weren’t either laid off or on strike. My daughter and ex-wife still wear a couple of his work shirts when they are painting, gardening, or engaged in a deep cleaning of the house, car, or garage. We lived hand-to-mouth, often on government surplus or unlabeled cans of Campbell’s soup my aunt picked up at the factory in Chicago.

In my mind, all the people who had nice homes (without six to ten broken-down cars in the yard) and cool stuff (boats, toys, 10-speed bicycles) worked in offices and wore suits to work each day. I vowed that one day I would be one of those people. My new job put me in their ranks.

As much as I set my mind to blanking out all memories of my unpleasant childhood, when I began writing the Living Next Door to Heaven series with Guardian Angel, I resurrected an idealized version of my childhood and neighborhood in Indiana. Nonetheless, some of the reality seeped into the story.

I remember the bullies, the rich kids, the church, and growing up in poverty. I remembered getting a ghastly paper route so I could earn enough money to have some things I could call my own: a radio, a trip to the dude ranch, breakfast when I got to school. In real life, none of that was mitigated by having multiple girlfriends, though a key incident in the story occurred between me and the ‘girl next door’ at a neighborhood beach party. That was just before she graduated and I moved away.

I first set my eyes on becoming a minister because that seemed to be a way to get respect in the neighborhood. The church provided a nice home for the minister. The minister always drove a nice car. The minister didn’t usually wear a tie, but he had a uniform with a clerical collar that was pretty cool. And there was lots of time to study and prepare speeches, which I dearly loved. I served as a minister for five years, at which time my wife and I went to grad school to follow our passion for theatre. I’d discovered that I was a pretty fine preacher, but a lousy minister. From there, I spent my life in jeans and T-shirts, building scenery and props.

Until I got that job at the real estate franchiser. Then I started wearing suits. Just like Brian, who started out in poverty on a Northern Indiana back road, became a television personality and always dressed nicely or not at all.

Guardian Angel and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven series (10 books) are available individually or as an eBook collection on Bookapy.

Rush forward a few years. In 2000, one of my co-workers asked for my ‘sartorial advice.’ I discovered that meant he considered me a clothes horse. When I went to work at Microsoft, I continued wearing suits or jackets and ties. I could go a month or more without repeating a tie.

At a division social hour, the vice president of the division came up to me and threatened to cut off my tie—actually calling for a pair of scissors. I explained to him that it was a $75 raw silk tie and if he had cash, I wouldn’t balk at him cutting it. He asked why I dressed in a suit. I answered that if he wanted me to work on a farm, I’d dress like a farmer. I glanced at his ‘work clothes.’

So, dressing nicely was part of my claim to being metrosexual. I always wore a hat—which might have been termed retrosexual, but I’ll let it be a contributor to my image. I also had regular appointments with my hair dresser and my manicurist and my massage therapist. One client said I had the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen on a straight male.

But recently, a commenter on Soulmates used the term disparagingly, scoffing at Jaime as ‘just a metrosexual.’ I’ve read the pejorative definition as being an effeminate or gay man. I don’t think so.

Like so many other terms in our language today, a faction of people who don’t want to be held to the same standard infer that the term refers to something repugnant to them, lumping other characteristics into the definition so that they can ignore the positives that they find uncomfortable.

Here’s my definition:

The term ‘metrosexual’ refers to a man secure enough in his masculinity to eschew the affected characteristics of manliness typically termed ‘toxic.’ He takes care of his body, his appearance, and his temperament. He is polite and respectful of others, especially those considered weaker or more vulnerable. He respects women and allows them the space to make their own life decisions, holding them to no less or greater a standard than men.

Anytime you would like to refer to me or to one of my characters as metrosexual, you have my thanks.

I’m considering a topic for next week that might get me in hot water. We’ll see. “Panicking Over Little Things.”

This is number 108 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

MANY YEARS BEFORE I became a born-again pagan, being saved from the clutches of organized religion, my career ambition was to become a Methodist preacher. Yes, when you read about how much of the Bible Brian memorized in LNDtH, that was based on my experience. I was able to quote chapter and verse and, in some cases, page number.

The summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I attended the Indiana Area License to Preach School at DePauw University, even though I could not receive my license until I’d turned eighteen and graduated from high school.

About thirty men were in the classes (all men), of whom I was the youngest and perhaps most impressionable. Yet there is only one lesson I still remember.

Among the men was a guy in his late twenties or early thirties who seemed intent on challenging everything. It seemed there was no subject on which he didn’t have an opinion or want to challenge an assumption or assertion. I liked that, as it seemed to be the direction my own life was headed.

Our pastoral counseling instructor was a kindly older minister whose name I have forgotten—I’ll call him Dr. Sanders. But his lessons on dealing with people in crisis and talking to parishioners when not in the pulpit were among the most interesting in the two weeks.

“Perhaps the most important thing to remember when counseling a person is to always leave room to respond,” said the old gentleman. I was certain he was well over seventy and was perhaps the gentlest soul I’d ever met.

“Dr. Sanders,” said the guy who challenged everything presented by every instructor we’d had. “What do you mean by leaving room to respond?”

The visage of the old man changed and hardened in front of our eyes as he turned on the questioner and said, “You think you’re pretty damn smart, don’t you!”

We were all stunned, including the questioner. Instantly, the old man softened again, and in his gentle voice said, “That just doesn’t leave you room to respond, does it?”

We all got the message. It was the most memorable lesson from that two weeks of instruction.

I have long since discarded all the theology we were taught in that time, but I have always tried to remember and practice that lesson. Like most of the best lessons in my life, I as often fail as I succeed.

I’ve been married and divorced three times. It wasn’t because of good communication.

I think social media aggravates the situation. I see massive amounts of stupidity—which I believe is the proper term for ‘meme’—that just makes me want to shout in the face of the person posting or reposting it. And let us not even glance at the comments on social media posts. I just want to lash out and silence the offenders.

Silence them. Not leave room for them to respond.

They will, though. The more positive I am that I have posted something irrefutable that should end an argument, someone argues with it.

We get divorced.

Times of passion are often times when we just don’t leave room to respond in our arguments. I had to face this in some of the stories I wrote. In What Were They Thinking? the adults who parented the clan in Living Next Door to Heaven sit around on Memorial Day telling each other the stories of how they got involved in the clan and how they let their children get involved. When Marilyn (Brian’s mother) tells her story there were moments that were obviously hard to relive. Among them was Hayden’s confession that he’d had an affair and his plaintive conclusion, saying “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!” I [Marilyn] exploded. “We took wedding vows! I gave you everything. And you’re sorry? What did you do? Accidentally run into her on the assembly line and decide to put some parts together? How could you do this to me?”

In that paragraph of forty words, Marilyn asks four questions, but between the question and the attitude, there was absolutely no room to respond. Yes, the whole thing sounded kind of familiar to me. When you are in shock and grief and panic, you just don’t think of communicating. You lash out.

“You think you’re pretty damn smart, don’t you!”

Sadly, it happens to people every day. And as a result, it happens in my stories as well. I’m trying to make sure it no longer happens in my social media posts, but it does.

What Were They Thinking? and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven collection of ten books is available on Bookapy.

And that brings me to a topic I know many authors deal with daily: Handling criticism.

I have mixed feelings about reviews. On one hand, I don’t want to read them. They are known to be bad for an author’s morale, or a false boost to his ego. On the other hand, reviews are the single biggest thing that sells an author’s works. Even negative reviews bring attention to the book.

No matter what the review says, a primary rule is that an author should never respond to it.

I get it. If I read a negative review, my first thought is “Well, they obviously just didn’t get it.” But whose fault is that? I have successfully withheld my hand from responding at all, leaving plenty of room for others to respond.

I serialize all my stories and it is considerably harder to ignore comments by readers on chapters that are posted. This is partly because readers have a tendency to lock in on one thing that may or may not have any significant meaning in the story, and ‘discuss’ it forever!

In a coming-of-age story, I had a character mention that he could only get WLS Chicago at night when the weather was clear. Over fifty comments on that chapter revolved around where WLS could be received, what other 50,000 watt stations there were in the country, where various people were when they heard that station, and discussing the effects of weather and terrain on radio reception.

Honestly, the comments were fascinating, but they had nothing to do with the story.

I’ve made it my practice regarding comments to only engage when the commenter asks a question of the author, if comments become abusive, or if there is a technical difficulty I need to explain. That works pretty well and I don’t feel I’m ignoring my readers. I read all the comments on every story.

Email is the hardest yet most important kind of comment to deal with as an author. I receive email nearly every day relating to the story that is posting or the blog I’ve written. I read all the mail I’m sent, even if it is from someone who writes the same thing in every message.

These people have taken the time and energy to directly contact the author with their thoughts. Often, the message comes with a conclusion that says, “No reply necessary.” I appreciate that.

At least half the email I receive includes a question I need to respond to. I do so. Where is my Patreon address? Will there be another book in this series? Have I ever eaten at a particular restaurant in an area I’ve written about? I always respond to these messages and try to answer the questions to the best of my ability. They’ve left me room to respond.

Some email messages are just thank yous or notes of appreciation for making a story available. That makes up the majority of the remaining messages and I try to send back a brief “Thank you” to those people who have taken the time to tell me they appreciate my efforts.

Then there are email messages that don’t leave room for a response. They are simply venting about the current political situation, my ineptness as a writer, the terrible ending to a story, or how age is affecting my ability to focus. I just don’t respond to those. I don’t feel there is room to respond. The complaint is about something I can do nothing about. The book or chapter has already been published. I’m the age I am. There’s nothing about my political views that requires me to convince you I am right and you are wrong. It is what it is.

When there is no room to respond, I don’t respond. I’m not interested in starting a discussion or an argument about another person’s opinion.

Some comments that are intended to be insulting have the opposite effect on me. If someone calls me “woke,” I simply thank them. I know the actual definition of the term and it isn’t an insult at all. Next week, I’ll look at another term: “Metrosexual.”