Triptych Interviews
aroslav
Saturday, July 18 (After Chapter 21 of The Prodigal)
Tony: Are you sure you want to do this?
aroslav: Fair is fair, I suppose.
Tony: You usually start out with the basics. Name, age, birthday?
aroslav: My name is aroslav, all lower case. I’m also known as Devon Layne. I celebrate my birthday on August 2 and I’m two years old.
Tony: You have no idea how weird that sounds. So let’s start with the name. What ethnic background is “aroslav?”
aroslav: Guinea pig. A number of years ago I adopted a cavy from a friend who was moving out of town. Sadly the cavy died after a couple of years. My friend named him Valsora. He was into RPGs and thought the name sounded noble and vaguely like a Norse hero. Quite a name for a three pound guinea pig. aroslav is the reverse spelling. I kept the lower case “a” but lowered the “v” so it wouldn’t be too obvious that it was a word spelled backward.
Tony: Now about your age and birthday . . .
aroslav: I discovered and registered at Storiesonline on August 2. That’s when I adopted the name aroslav. About two years ago.
Tony: Okay, then how old is Devon Layne, really?
aroslav: Even younger. I didn’t adopt the name Devon Layne until I started publishing my erotic romances on Kindle and Nook a year later.
Tony: So Devon Layne is a pseudonym for aroslav which is an avatar named after a guinea pig. I’m not going to find anything out about the real you, am I?
aroslav: You’re interviewing aroslav, not his alter-ego.
Tony: Okay. Let me just say that for a two-year-old, you’re pretty mature-looking. Let’s try a safe topic. When did you start writing erotica?
aroslav: About twenty years ago.
Tony: ? ? ?
aroslav: Writing’s not something you can start at the time you create your penname. It predates time. In fact, I have writings in my files that stretch back almost fifty years. They just aren’t by aroslav.
Tony: O-kay. You know, those of us in the story sound pretty normal compared to you.
aroslav: I should be so normal.
Tony: Back to writing erotica. How did that all start?
aroslav: My alter-ego who shall not be named was writing a mystery about playing blackjack in Reno.
Tony: Is that the three Bs story?
aroslav: The current draft is called “Blackjack. Blackmail. Blacklist.” Not a very thrilling title, though, so it will probably change again. Originally he was going to call it “Double Down,” but there are several books by that name and none of them are very good.
Tony: Okay. So?
aroslav: It came in the blackmail part. He was trying to figure out what each character in the book could be blackmailed about. You’ve got this thirty-ish computer programmer type guy whose real estate agent wife is smoking hot and loves to play sex games. That’s fine as far as it goes, but he decides to write about their trysts under an assumed name and post them online. Remember, that was a different era. He figures that if his wife ever found out about what he was writing, she’d divorce him; or worse yet, cut him off. The thing is, the author had to come up with a couple of stories that the character would write to post. That was the conception of aroslav, but not the birth. Writing about sex was a lot of fun but couldn’t be done in public, so to speak.
Tony: Did you abandon the stories completely?
aroslav: The characters and the stories kept coming to mind over the years of gestation and began to take on a secret life of their own. In fact, they became separate from the original BBB book.
Tony: Are you going to publish them?
aroslav: I did. When I read stories on SOL, I remembered the early stuff and frankly figured I could do as well as some of what I was reading. I thought the story had potential, so I toyed with it some more and developed it into a short novel. On December 2, 2011, I posted the first chapter and became an “author” on SOL. The story was called “The Art & Science of Love.” I didn’t know how the whole author/reader thing worked on SOL and was surprised that people just started reading it and rated it highly. Then people started really downloading it and I kept writing the full twelve chapters. I was engaged in some pretty heavy-duty shit in my life at the time and managed to lose myself in the writing. The story came out in November 2013 on Kindle and Nook. It’s been completely rewritten and both the characters and story-line enhanced.
Tony: I’m going to dig, aroslav. You’ve mentioned “heavy-duty shit” and in several of your blog posts you’ve talked about dealing with depression or how the Model Student series got you through a dark time in your life. What happened?
aroslav: It was his fault with the damned depressing shit he writes.
Tony: And how was that connected to writing erotic romance?
aroslav: He writes and publishes mysteries and thrillers. They aren’t particularly sexy, though they occasionally have a nice love scene in them. The thing is, even though the detective comes out victorious and the mystery gets solved, it’s seldom a happy ending. He’d just finished writing a mystery in which the hero brings down a kidnapper and rescues his girlfriend’s daughter, but in the process the girlfriend is killed in a fire. Most of the book builds the relationship with the two falling in love and dreaming about a future together and then she’s dead. That’s when he realized his own life was a lot like that. I became an author of erotic romances so he could write something that ended with “happily ever after.”
Tony: You really keep these personalities separate. You refer to your alter-ego—or are you his alter-ego?—in the third person. Do you ever get confused?
aroslav: I’m a very different person than he is. I’ve tried crossing over, but with limited success.
Tony: What happened?
aroslav: After ASL was finished, I thought I’d continue with the art theme and post a story that was based on real life—his real life. That was “Art School.” It was too real. I got a lot of criticism for ending it on a downer, predicting that the artist never amounted to anything and divorce was in the offing. I ended up cutting the last two paragraphs and scores started climbing. It was short, though. Those who had read it had read it and weren’t going back to change their scores simply because I had repented. It was a valuable lesson. Not only did I want to write things that ended happily ever after, that was what people wanted to read. And forcing myself to go that direction helped me recover my hope for the future as well.
Tony: So you only write erotic romance now?
aroslav: That’s all I’ve ever written. He still writes mysteries and thrillers. We collaborated on a story here on SOL called A Painful Silence with limited success. I tossed all kinds of warnings up around the story so people would know it wasn’t the gentle romance they might expect from me and both readership and reviews reflected that. I removed it from the site. The first chapter is truly horror-filled. It gives me the creeps. Aside from that one story, I stick with the happy stories and he does the hard-boiled shit.
Tony: You had us worried in The Prodigal.
aroslav: That’s why there was a Prelude. I knew it would be the only thing that would get some people through the end of chapter ten.
Tony: Yeah. Thanks a lot. You put me through absolute hell for four months.
aroslav: You can’t really appreciate happily ever after if it’s been happily always before. Rising above adversity is what gives us all the inspiration to continue. You and Melody had to deal with Lissa breaking up with you. You had to deal with Wendy going through tragedy in order to rise victorious. You had to lose Kate before you could be happy with her. It ended well.
Tony: How did you come up with the “Model Student” storyline?
aroslav: Well, I’d thought that I would do some clever release of BBB and accompany it with a second volume of Doc and Rita stories as a sequel to ASL. But it was taking quite a while to get either one on track, so I decided I’d keep my name out there as an author so I didn’t lose readers. That’s how the disastrous “Art School” came about. I wrote a little ditty about a depressed art student who finds true love when he poses for the class and a female artist. One chapter—end of story. Your happily ever after was with Melody. I posted it and realized I’d set up this nice chemistry with Lissa, so I decided to write another chapter. By the time I’d written and posted that, people had started writing to me about how they loved the characters and wanted me to keep writing the story. Some even gave me ideas about where to take it. But each time I posted a chapter I thought that would be the end of the story. Until chapter five. You’d painted the mural, you were firmly with both Lissa and Melody, and you were victorious. Tons of email pleading with me not to end your story yet. I realized that I had a real winner on my hands. I had some great characters—you—and lots of sexy scenes and a chance to up the ante with the addition of racquetball. “Model Student” was a real challenge because I was literally writing it and posting as soon as I’d finished writing. I was posting two chapters a week people were downloading it fast enough to keep it in the top five downloads for two months. And top five scoring stories, too. By the time it ended, there was no question that there would be a sequel. I wrote close to 600,000 words that year and didn’t think about anything else. I was in heaven.
Tony: You could have let me win a championship, you know.
aroslav: You won four beautiful women and praise for incredible art. What more do you want?
Tony: Yeah. About that. Experience. Are you an artist? How do you know so much about art?
aroslav: In my heart I’m an artist and an athlete. I’ve taken college level drawing classes, including figure drawing with nude models. And believe me, they were never as beautiful as Lissa. It wasn’t difficult to translate my sketching a little something now and then into a story. On the other hand, he started life—in college—as a theatrical designer. I used a lot of his experiences in theater and translated things from the medium of theater to art. There was a lot of painting, drawing, technical drawing, and model-building, but never anything so inspiring as naked posing parties.
Tony: Play racquetball?
aroslav: Love to play, but just for exercise. Maybe I’ll pick up a few matches with readers as I’m traveling around the country.
Tony: Ménage e trois?
aroslav: Yes, but never quite the full-blown orgy you seem to enjoy. And never more than three. They are an inspiration for some of the story-telling. I’ve had a lot of experience romancing women and winning them. Considerably less success keeping them.
Tony: Why?
aroslav: As a friend said once, “Having multiple mind-blowing orgasms on demand simply isn’t enough for some women.”
Tony: Whoa! Okay. So are you going to write another story in the art world?
aroslav: Not exactly. Not immediately. I have in mind a couple more stories in the “Model Student” universe—one based on Amy “Amalia Want” Garnet and one based on the Oregon Trips, Sunday, Rainbow, and Willow—but they aren’t really art stories. I’m resurrecting some projects that he abandoned years ago that draw more heavily on theater and music, both college and professional. They are good basic stories, but lack some of the refinement that my experience thirty years later can provide. I’m also free to add the spice that can make things more interesting that he could never write. The stories are complex, covering a time-span of close to fifty years from the 50s to the 90s. Four volumes at the moment with a potential fifth. Of course, my favorite is the one set in the 60s. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll. What could be better? Theater and music are a cover for what’s really happening. I call these stories occult fantasy because the real action focuses on modern urban witches. That gives us even more opportunity to get naked than the college performance of Hair. I’ll be leaving for a cross-country, open-ended journey on August 10, 2013. Just about the time the last chapter of “The Prodigal” posts. I hope to start posting the new series in September or early October. By November, I plan to start writing the Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Mystery that I’ve talked about in the past. And he’ll be writing a new mystery, too.
Tony: So about that big journey. Is this a Devon Layne trip or are you taking the alter-ego with you?
aroslav: Let’s put this in perspective. Right now an avatar for a pseudonymous author is being interviewed by a fictional character. It’s getting crowded in the cab of the truck. Someplace along the line I’d like to reach over to the passenger seat and put my hand on a flesh-and-blood woman and if the flesh is soft and the blood is hot, it won’t make any difference which of us is driving.
Tony: But the reason you’re going?
aroslav: I no longer have anyplace else. My truck and trailer are my home, my office, and my entertainment. Fortunately, the business of writing and publishing is mobile. He hasn’t even met most of his clients. They range from New York to California and one is even backpacking through Mexico. As long as there’s an Internet connection, we can do business.
Tony: How are you going to do that?
aroslav: The trailer has an Internet satellite receiver and solar power. It’s really very high-tech and low-impact.
Tony: Thanks for taking the time for an interview, aroslav. I doubt anyone will actually read it, but at least we all know where you’re coming from now. Or where you’re going.
aroslav: It’s not about the destination, Tony. It’s all about the journey.
Tony: Say, wait. Could I ask you one more question?
aroslav: Sure, guy.
Tony: What happens to me now? Am I like dead?
aroslav: That’s the miracle of books, Tony. You get to live on that last page forever, wrapped in the love of Melody, Lissa, Kate, Wendy and the babies. You’ll never have a sleepless night or a crying child. No one will ever get fat or cranky. There will never be a bad meal, a hurt feeling, or a sassy child. There will never be a lack of sex or a clash of personalities. There’s just endless love and joy and fulfillment. That’s what “Happily Ever After” is all about.
Comments
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