3/2/25
Life Changing
This is number one hundred one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHANGES in life go unnoticed. I am not even including in that a spouse’s new haircut, glasses, or weight. There are just things that people don’t notice, no matter how modest or life-changing they might be.
Take this blog, for example. This is the eighth posting of 2025. Yet no one noticed that the date of the previous seven was listed on my site as 2024! Not even my very careful editor! It was simple to re-upload all the posts this morning with the corrected date, but if I hadn’t just called attention to it, no one would have noticed that, either.
In fact, several of my books, both by Devon Layne and Nathan Everett, have had characters who swore they would pay more attention. Tony Ames in the Model Student series constantly fought to be more aware of what was going on around him. Brian Frost of Living Next Door to Heaven constantly struggled to even remember what day it was or the names of all his girlfriends. Wayne Hamel in The Props Master had a constantly muddled mind, kept that way by the witches who were ‘training’ him.
I think the most obvious was probably Nathan Everett’s City Limits and Wild Woods. Gee Evars, suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, stumbles into Rosebud Falls just in time to dive into a rushing river and save the life of a drowning toddler. And to lose his memory.
In this duology, I had to consider what memory loss meant. I didn’t deal with a deterioration like dementia or Alzheimer’s, but rather with the instant erasure of his past. And one of the things I think no one who read the book noticed was that he lost his memory when he crossed the city limits into town, not when he dove in the river.
So, what did he actually lose? He still had good language skills. He had good math skills. He could work in a variety of settings. He was a natural philosopher whose question was always whether a decision or an action would make him a better person.
After saving his nemesis, a preacher who attempted to have the town rally to drive Gee out, Gee is asked why he didn’t just let the man drown in the river that attempted to claim him. He asks, “If I had left him… had let him drown, would that have made me a better person?”
When children who had been drugged, brainwashed, and sold into slavery in the Wild Woods began showing up in the town, it was only a man with no memory of his own who could reach them and could understand the pain they were going through.
City Limits and Wild Woods are available as eBooks on Bookapy, and in paperback at other online bookstores.
I forget things, too. And I fail to notice things. So, I was a little taken aback when I was asked, “Has writing and publishing a book changed the way you see yourself?”
In a mirror?
Like several characters I’ve written about in the past—notably Art in Art Critic and Trayce in Soulmates—I avoid looking at myself in a mirror as much as possible. What I see in a mirror does not at all match what I see in my head.
I don’t think there is anyone of my generation who hasn’t met a high school classmate or walked into a class reunion and stopped to wonder where all those old people came from.
So, when you ask how writing has changed my life, I struggle to remember what life was like before publishing and what it is like now. The obvious answer is that I am older now.
In 2013, I realized that my ‘job’ of writing books was not dependent on my location. With my marriage falling apart, I chose a life on the road as a vagabond, pulling a travel trailer behind my pickup truck and just moving from place to place. I circumnavigated the US via different routes three times managing to miss Kansas on each circuit. I had to make a special trip to cross that one off my list. I still haven’t made it to Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont.
That life-changing move was tied to the publication of my first erotica books as I wanted desperately to have a ‘happy ending.’ In romance, that is often referred to as HEA, or ‘happily ever after.’ In erotica, I’m just satisfied with a happy ending.
When I launched my big move, my daughter refused to let me travel alone for two weeks until she was satisfied that I could take care of myself. During that time, we had a lot of good conversations.
“Dad,” she asked, “what’s the point? What’s the big goal of your trip? Are you just trying to find yourself?” Those sound much like the questions any twenty-year-old would ask. What is the purpose of life, anyway?
My answer reflected the answer of many people I’ve encountered since then—some of whom wrote about it long before I thought of it.
“It’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey.”
I think all my life up to that point had been destination oriented. Get the education so I could get the job so I could earn the money so I could afford a wife and house and family so I could retire and die. Sounds pretty fatalistic when I put it in those terms, but even my writing was goal oriented at the time: Write to get published to make money.
The big change that came over me was dropping the big goals, which were a reflection of what society told me I had to be in order to be real. Successful. A person of value. I still publish my books and the few royalties I receive are a welcome supplement to my Social Security. But I also make sure that all my books are available for free if you care to read them online instead of purchasing either an eBook or paperback. I had been reading other authors’ works online when I didn’t have enough money to buy them. I would make sure that everyone who cared to had access to my books.
My own website and Patreon page came almost as an afterthought several years later. Patrons subscribe to read my works before they are publicly released, or even to read them as I write them. But for those who are willing to wait for the release date, every finished book is still available to read for free online, either at my own Devon Layne website, or at StoriesOnline. As long as I am here to keep those sites active, my works will be available for free.
So, how has writing changed my life? I’m content to just continue the journey without a goal to drive me.
Another interesting question I was asked was whether I have a spirit animal and what it means to my writing. Now that’s an interesting question I’d never been asked before. Next week, “Quoth the Raven.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
