aroslav: Blog

I heard you on my wireless back in '52
Lying awake, intent at tuning in on you
If I was young, it didn't stop you coming through
--The Buggles, 1980

I've been really enjoying everyone's comments and email that started with whether Nate in Full Frame could hear WLS Chicago out in Tenbrook, IL, and progressed to people sharing stories about where WLS could be heard in the world or what other AM stations were listened to back in our youth. What great stories!

In fact, they fascinate me enough that I've opened a channel on my Discord (Aroslav's Stories), just for people to record their AM experiences. Where were you when the great DJs of the 50s, 60s, and 70s were broadcasting. I even had one reader tell me that he was listening to the radio during FDR's famous "Day in Infamy" speech that put the US in World War II after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

I think one day, if comments keep coming in, I'd like to put the whole collection up here on SOL and on my website, either as a story or in a blog post.

I can't give you the Discord address in this post or it won't appear in your feed. It is in the comments on Full Frame and, of course, I'll supply it if you request it. I do hope you will join the conversation.

I'm still in the Seattle area this week and will be in transit back to Las Vegas next Sunday. It seems it's been a busy two weeks since I came up here, with the flying trip to Indianapolis last weekend. Good times.

Mostly, I'm writing as much as possible, but these last couple of chapters have been slow going. I'd guess Exposure will still require a rewrite before I'm done... at least of the last half. I don't think I've set up the climax well enough throughout the story. That's book 3 of the "Photo Finish" series that I intended to be a trilogy and now will be a quadology. Or maybe even a pentology. I'm sure you know what those are.

I'll be devoting NaNoWriMo in November to writing book 4, F/Stop. If it goes as long as the others, there's no chance I'll finish it in November, but that still means this is a great time to join my Patreon at the Sausage Grinder tier ($10/month). Not only do you get advance access to Full Frame, but you get to see what I'm writing in the raw unedited form each week. I'm keeping the first drafts of Shutter Speed and Exposure accessible to Sausage Grinders throughout the drafting of the next book.

When I'm not typing, I'm watching Div III Women's Basketball. The season starts in three weeks so I'm watching archived copies of last season's games. If you'd asked me a year ago to name a Div III school or team, I couldn't have answered the question. I never would have thought that I'd know all nine teams in the American Rivers Conference, their mascots, and at least one player on each team. My personal fan favorite is Simpson College Storm in Indianola, Iowa. But really, I'll cheer for all the other teams in the conference.

The player whose style and skill I modeled Natalie after in the "Team Manager" series will be playing for the Northwestern Iowa College Red Raiders this fall. That presents a dilemma for me because the Raiders are an NAIA team, so I'll have to learn some of their teams while I'm watching this fall.

Should I try to follow my alma mater's Div II team, the UIndy Greyhounds? That would be the loyal thing to do, right?

And all this while I'm studying photography and society in the late 1960s and early 70s. What a job!

I'm always a little wired on the days when I release a new book. Today just happens to be more so.

When I live with a bunch of characters for six months while my story takes shape, and I learn about their challenges and victories and heartaches, I start getting very impatient to share that with other people. While I made the decision to hold publication until the day that the Team Manager Series concluded, Full Frame has been finished since May and in various stages of rewrite and edit as I worked on the next two books in the "Photo Finish" series.

Comments and email coming in with the first posting are all about how I described the signal of WLS in western Illinois as weak and strongest at night on Nate's transistor radio. Yes, WLS was one of the strongest radio stations in the country, but I maintain, based on my experience growing up in northern Indiana with a crappy transistor radio in 1962-1968, that terrain and equipment quality affect the reception as much as signal strength. I'm sticking with the statement as written. That was my experience. Reception improved when I moved to Indianapolis.

I certainly wasn't expecting that to be the biggest issue, but I'm glad it was so simple.

There's a review by johnny69 up on SOL already, so if you're hesitating about reading, please check it out.

Aside from that, I'm currently in the airport in Indianapolis, waiting for a flight back to Seattle. I've been here the weekend for my UIndy class of 1972 fifty-year reunion. It was good to meet some old classmates and other graduates of the University, back when it was ICC, Indiana Central College, who knew my family, especially my mother who was the first ordained woman in the Methodist church in Indiana (not Illinois). It was fun to swap stories and reconnect.

I even picked up a story or two that I could integrate into Nate's experience at Columbia College Chicago in a future volume. I've also figured out who was in the picture that I'm currently using as a cover for book 3, Exposure.

I've just finished my lunch at Champ's in the airport and am ready to get a cup of coffee and relax at the gate while I finish posting a bunch of social media stuff.

Enjoy!

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.

I wish to point out that this is an oversight on the part of book burners in every part of the country.

My books contain explicit descriptions of sexual relations.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect to be banned for that. What middle age white male in America doesn’t thrive on a good explicit description of sexual relations. Gotta get it up somehow!

Ah, but my books also include:

1. Strong defense of racial equality in all aspects of life, including relationships with people of other races, voting rights, and acknowledgement of racism in our everyday life in America.
2. Strong defense of women’s rights, including rights over their own bodies (Yes, including abortion) and access to medical services and prescriptions regardless of the bigoted religious beliefs of the provider or their employer.
3. Strong defense of non-“traditional” marriage, including same sex marriage, polygamous marriage, interracial marriage, and group marriage.
4. Strong support for those suffering from depression and any other “invisible” illness that incapacitates them or leaves them too weak to meet others’ expectations.
5. Strong support for LGBTQIA and non-binary humans, including their right to choose and live the life they want and or need to.
6. Strong opposition to gun violence, whether in civilian or military situations.
7. Strong denunciation of child trafficking and sex trafficking in every permutation in which it raises its ugly head.
8. Strong support for religious freedom, including my right to think all of them are pretty stupid and to be able to choose to ignore them without having their peculiar beliefs foisted off on me as law, science, or medicine.
9. Strong opposition to abuse in every situation, whether sexual abuse, child abuse, mental abuse, or physical abuse. Or animal abuse.
10. Strong support for science, medicine, and the teaching of history, the non-regulation of teachers (especially by concerned parents who have their heads stuck generally up their asses so far they can see the empty cavern where their hearts should be), free education of the masses, open libraries, and utter literary freedom.

I believe these pretty much account for the main reasons books have been banned. Hence, I submit to you that not banning my books has been an oversight in Texas and Florida.

However, Amazon has blocked two of my books, causing me to not release three more on their platform. They further made releasing Bob’s Memoir Volume 1 so difficult that I did not attempt to release Volumes 2 & 3 on their platform. I would count this as a banning, but all seven of those books are available on both Bookapy and Barnes and Noble.

So, I consider it critical that everyone rush right out and buy all forty of my eBooks currently available on Bookapy before an illiterate Texas or Florida fanatic has a visitation by an angel and gets around to banning them. Literary freedom and the rights of authors and readers everywhere are at stake!

And don’t forget—in two weeks, book number 41, Full Frame, will hit the eBook shelves, as it begins serialization here on SOL. Enjoy!

Well, we all survived the terror--I mean error--in the post of Team Manager CHAMP! this week that declared it 'Final.' Thanks to a quick fix by Lazeez, it was changed to 'To be continued' within an hour after I found out about it, but not before a flood of email and comments came in demanding to know what gives. We all survived and Chapter 30 posted this morning. There are still seven chapters to come.

Which leaves me the rest of the month to get everything ready for the launch of my new project on October 2. I've sent a dozen advance review copies of the first "Photo Finish" book, Full Frame, out and the first five-star review appeared on B&N's presale site this morning. I'm pretty stoked. The eBook will be available when the story launches on SOL on October 2 at all major booksellers, including Bookapy. The first chapters of Full Frame have been uploaded and queued for release. It will pre-release to my patrons on September 25.

But I'm busy working on the sequels. What a time! I decided book 2 in the series, Shutter Speed, had gotten too long. So, I cut it in half and made two books out of it with book 3 being called Exposure. Of course, you can't really just cut a book in half. I had to rewrite the new ending and then completely revamp the first five chapters of the second half, so it was really a new book and not just the second half of the old one.

I've written three more chapters of Exposure this week and expect there will be three to five more yet before I wrap that one up and start on book 4, f/stop. I'm pretty sure there will be a book 5 before I'm finished with this story arc.

I'll get to Mesquite, Nevada tomorrow, and expect to be in Las Vegas for the winter starting Thursday. Except I'm not going to just sit around Las Vegas in 95-degree heat for the next month. I'll fly up to the Seattle area on September 22 for about a month, but that time will include a flying weekend to Indianapolis for my 50-year Greyhound class reunion at UIndy.

It will be homecoming weekend, and I am reminded that I met my first wife while working on the freshman homecoming float in 1968. Good times!

As soon as I have a few minutes to spare, I have a couple more new story ideas. I just need to finish this one first.