Thank You, Patrons!

I have to stop to thank my patrons since it is Thanksgiving Week. I’m feeling very grateful to those who contribute a little each month to my worthy cause: Me.

Well, yeah… in a way. My patrons at both www.patreon.com/nathaneverett and at www.patreon.com/aroslav provide what I consider to be three important services and I want to thank them for doing this.

1.    Thank you for helping me make my books available FREE for online reading at www.nathaneverett.com. Currently, three books are available for free online reading and I hope to have another formatted soon after the New Year holiday. This is important to me because I suddenly find myself sympathizing with old men who just don’t have the budget to buy a bunch of new books to read at the pace they consume them. I’m one of those, so I want to make a version available for online reading that doesn’t cost anything. My eBooks and paperbacks are still for sale through normal channels.

2.    Thank you for keeping me motivated. I have readers who are following the development of my two new books (one for Nathan Everett and one for Devon Layne) via daily updates during November. Knowing that I have promised something and committed to it is a very important motivator. I expect to have Wild Woods, the sequel to City Limits, completed by the end of the month. So far, I have about 67,000 words of an anticipated 100,000 written. Right on track! Add to that the continuation of development of Devon Layne’s serial Double-Take at 37,000 this month. That totals a whopping 100,000 words for the Month of November at the two-thirds mark. I’m still writing. Nonetheless, “winning” on NaNoWriMo began today, November 20. So, I verified my word count and here it is.

3.    Thank you for supplementing my diet with occasional vegetables. I do appreciate the added dollars when I go grocery shopping and although fresh vegetables are less common out here in the Arizona desert, there are a couple of markets where I can buy potatoes, carrots, jicama, turnips, and salad makings.

I’m working on enhancing my southern sunblock. I really can’t sit outside before one in the afternoon because I can’t work with the sun in my eyes. Fortunately, I spend a lot of afternoon time out here. I have drapes that will fit over the frame next to my door but so far, I just keep moving my chair around so I stay in the shadow of my magnificence. Oh well. A little advertising is a good thing, right?

And I will be moving my portable billboard with me during January and February when the big markets, gem show, and RV show are occurring. I’ll be spending a good bit of time at Readers’ Oasis Bookstore with a table and a pen ready to sign. I’ll have both Devon Layne and Nathan Everett books available so if you’d like a signed copy, just swing by the Oasis in January and February.

I’m very excited to have my daughter planning to join me for a week before Christmas. We’re doing some advance planning for this trip and have our permits ready for a visit to Cabeza Prieta Wilderness Area where Q’s first book, Race Through Fire, is set. Neither of us have ever actually seen the setting for her book so we watched the fifteen-minute video that describes how many different ways we could die out there and then acquired our backcountry permits. Hopefully, we won’t be out there for the full year that the permit lasts.

Weather here has been bright and clear with a little wind to keep things interesting. More soon!

NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is the redheaded daughter of literary world. She gains a freckle for every soul she eats. Mine has gone down fifteen times as of this year. Which is my excuse for not having posted last Sunday to let you know that I arrived safely in Quartzsite, AZ and am writing from my trailer in the Scenic Road RV Park.

I have a site that faces east, so I can comfortably leave my windows and doors open and sit outside to work in the afternoon. At the moment, it’s a sparse settlement here. Apparently, they expect the full-season folks to be here by this weekend as there is a meet and greet on Tuesday. Looking forward to that. The rest of the spaces will fill on a short-term basis with people here anywhere from a couple days to a couple months.

The concluding chapter of my journey down here, I’m happy to say, was a peaceful one. Coming down out of the Great Basin, I stopped to hike around Cathedral Gorge a bit. Well, I hiked around the parking lot, which gave a lot of views of this spectacular park.

Then it was on to Las Vegas for a night. I indulged in a buffet dinner and a buffet breakfast at the Main Street Casino where I also parked my fifth wheel. If you are RVing through Vegas and need to stay one or two nights, I recommend the downtown RV parks. Or parking spaces, I should say. They are too small to want to spend more than a couple of nights. I was barely able to get my slide-out deployed without interfering in someone else’s space. But for $25 a night with full hookups, the price is a real bargain compared to the dedicated RV parks on the strip or southside of town. And you are walking distance from the sights and sounds of the Fremont Street Experience.

For me, Vegas was my last stop to stock up supplies for the next few months. Like coffee. I bought several pounds at the only Costco I’ll see until I go back to Vegas in January for the AVN show. A few steaks and granola and I was set for the winter. After a night at Lake Havasu, I trundled into Quartzsite on Halloween and was ready to start NaNoWriMo on November first.

Almost. This is my fifteenth NaNoWriMo and I believe it is the first one that I was unable to stay awake till midnight on HalloNaNoWeen to get started. Not to be too concerned, however, since I was awake and hopping to start at 4:00 a.m. And from that point on, I was focused!

I did get out a couple of times. I had to get a post office box. I had to mail my ballot. And I had to go play pickleball with my friends from Sun Meadow. Just like every Tuesday this summer, except we all wore clothes.

By the way, I didn’t realize it, but if you go to the post office to mail a letter, you are the sender. If you’ve already mailed the letter…

So much for my imaginary adventures. Let’s get to the real world. What are Gee Evars and Karen Weisman up to in Wild Woods? Yes, that has been my number one focus since arriving in Quartzsite. I’m writing. So far, I’ve completed four chapters of Wild Woods, and another five chapters of Devon Layne’s Double-Take (shorter chapters). As a result, yesterday I crossed the proverbial NaNoWriMo Finish Line with over 50,000 words in ten days.

I don’t believe this is the earliest I’ve ever completed the 50k race. I’m pretty sure one year I made it by the eighth. But I’m still pretty proud of it. It looks like I might have finished first in both the Seattle region and the Yuma region. Yuma, with only 31 registered writers, is averaging a very high 15.6k per writer so far. Not bad!

Of course, the concept of finishing is relative. My current total of 57,281 includes 36,191 on Wild Woods and 21,090 on Double-Take. My real goal is to finish Wild Woods, somewhere around 100,000 words and get at least 50,000 done on Double-Take. I have subscribers to the rough draft of both books who are reading new material every day.

Yes, you can still subscribe, but only via Paypal at the moment https://www.paypal.me/aroslav. A $10 or greater contribution will get you the links to both stories. You can just ignore the link to Double-Take if you aren’t into adult erotica. Don’t forget to leave me your email address so I can send you the links.

Now, as the sun sinks slowly into the west over the tops of the neighboring trailers, it’s time for me to get back to the work you pay me to do. New books, coming up!