Yuletide greetings!

And, of course, by that I mean Happy Solstice! I’m headed for Seattle Monday for a quick trip to celebrate Yule hosted by my daughter (at her mother’s house). Will be back here in Las Vegas in a few days.

 

Solstice 2005

Mostly, the weather here has been sunny and mild. Warm all through November, but cooling down this month. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting on my patio in my new Adirondack chair writing. It will be mid-50s today, so I plan to get out there again this afternoon. It’s been one of the great pleasures of being in Vegas.

So, you might ask, what have I been writing?

I’m so glad you asked.

As you might remember, I have a long-running series posting at StoriesOnline.net called “Team Manager.” It was a sudden inspiration that struck me in mid-March, and by the end of May, I’d released Team Manager SWISH! online and as an eBook that instantly became my best seller of all time with over 900 copies sold so far! I know that’s a drop in the bucket for some of the authors I know, but it was a major victory for me and provided the down payment on my new home. Since that time, I’ve completed two more books in the series. The second, Team Manager SPRINT!, was released in October and Team Manager COACH! is finished and slated for release on February 1, 2022. Which means, of course, that I’m now busy writing the fourth book in the series, Team Manager CHAMP!, with a mid-June release in mind.

But wait! There’s more!

In addition to interrupting my writing of Team Manager with the writing and release of Jackie the Beanstalk, in July and August, I interrupted it again to write a 150,000-word tome for NaNoWriMo this year, titled Bob’s Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. As you can well-imagine, knocking out a work that long in such a short time (30 days) means there is a fair amount of re-writing and editing to be done, but I’m happy to say that it fills pockets of time while I’m focused on Team Manager 4 and even my rough draft isn’t half bad. I can usually figure that a NaNoWriMo book will require a 90% rewrite by the time it’s finished. It looks like Bob might only require 50%.

In between times, I’m still trying to make time for two other books that I interrupted in order to write the first Team Manager book and haven’t managed to get back to yet! I don’t think I’ll run out of words to write anytime soon.

 

Solstice 2013

So, as I head north for this quick Solstice break, I’m thinking of the three ritual questions that I always ask.

1.    What do you want to leave behind from this year?

That is a fairly easy question for me. I had my second heart ablation in February and I’m done with it. Haven’t had a bad flutter since. I hope I’m joining many others worldwide who are ready to leave illness, disease, and sickness of mind and body behind.

2.    What do you want to be remembered from this year?

That, too, is an easy one for me. The family and friends celebrated a joyful occasion this summer as my daughter got married. I am so happy to see the amazing young woman she has grown into and to welcome a fine son-in-law to the family. I love them to bursting!

3.    What are your hopes for the year to come?

Well, that one is always a tough one for me. Selfishly? I’d like a couple of new books to break old sales records. I’ll be happy, however, to see a year of friends and family, safe travels, and good health. It doesn’t really take that much to make me happy.

Whatever winter holidays you are celebrating this month, I hope you have a joyous time and that your own answers to the above questions prove positive.

 

Take a Walk Between the Worlds

 

That’s what I plan to do tonight. In addition to celebrating Samhain, I’ll be celebrating HalloNaNoWeen at midnight. Yes, I’ve been celebrating this for seventeen years now. At midnight tonight, I will begin my eighteenth NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). And how spookily appropriate that this year, I’ll be launching a story about a Demon. Just seems right!

The hardest part this year has been waiting for midnight tonight, because I just want to start writing! I’ve written 8,300 words of scene setting, world building, voice capturing, and outlining in prep, and I know there will be much more. All for Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon.

So, Bob is a demon conjured by an inept adept some 4000 years ago. The mage slurred the name Beelzebub during the conjuring and it came out Beetlebob. When Bob appeared, the mage died of shock, creating a convenient bridge for Bob to cross into the human world—a free demon. He’s been a happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) fellow ever since.

And like most of my stories, I’ll write just outside what is generally accepted regarding demons, history, famous people, gods, and primordial ooze. The story promises to be a little spooky, a little sexy, and a lot funny.

There are, believe it or not, people who want to read my words of wit in their raw, unedited form. I call them patrons. Devon Layne Sausage Grinder patrons and Nathan Everett Fifth Wheel patrons pay $10 per month and in November will receive daily updates on Bob’s Memoir! Furthermore, they’ll be invited to a private Discord channel where they can discuss the story and suggest future developments as I’m writing. If all goes well, there will even be a time designated during which I share my screen and you can watch the words take shape on the page!

Here are the links to join the pages. Either Patreon page will give you all the same benefits.

Nathan Everett: https://www.patreon.com/nathaneverett

Devon Layne: https://www.patreon.com/aroslav

The story starts—and invitations to discord come out—tomorrow.

So, what else is new? I’ve spent the past two weeks slowly making my way south from Sun Meadow in Idaho to King’s Row in Las Vegas. I’ve set up camp and am ready to write.

The location is very nice, quiet, and roomy. I even have a storage shed, so I don’t need to keep things in the back of my truck. Perfectly beautiful spot for my new trailer. I changed my route coming down after four days of rain in Winnemucca and news that Austin (my next scheduled stop) had snow and 23 degrees. After eating my fill of Basque food, I headed down US 95 to Hawthorne, NV for a couple of nights.

The Basque delicacies included two things I would never have thought up to try. The first was to dish the Basque beans right onto my salad (on the advice of my waitress). I could have made a meal on that alone! Delicious. The second, equally unlikely, was prawns sauteed in cream sauce with some special spices and served over a bed of garlic mashed potatoes. I ate far more than I was comfortable eating. It was just so good!

I passed up staying at the infamous Clown Motel in Tonopah and was quite thankful I had my trailer tucked away in an RV park a couple of miles away. I had intended to stay in Beatty, NV, just 110 miles out from Las Vegas, but it was Beatty Days and every camping spot in the area was full until November 2! Who knew? That meant that I had a 220 mile drive from Tonopah to King’s Row on Friday, but I was still here by 1:00 and managed to get my trailer parked without difficulty.

I bought a lovely bottle of Saint Émelion Grand Cru to have with my prime rib steak and discovered I had either given away all my bottle openers or I’d hidden them so well I could no longer find them. My new next-door neighbor came through for me and loaned me a corkscrew. I know that is not a wine glass, but I’m a little short on glassware, too!

So, supplies have been acquired. First nap is out of the way. I’m nearly ready for midnight to come. Let’s get this party started!

Now, where did I hide my reading glasses?

One of the joys of moving into my new trailer and having my daughter along for the move, is finding out where she hid things as she helped move me into the trailer and get ready to roll. Of course, I can't blame her for everything I can't find. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that I tossed my reading glasses case in a paper bag as I was moving out of the guest room at M&J's house. When I got to the trailer, I tossed that bag in a bin of things I wouldn't need while traveling and strapped it down somewhere in the middle of my truck bed, under the tonneau cover. I'll uncover it in Las Vegas when I get there.

The memory foam mattress topper I got for my new bed still remembers being in a small box. This was only three days after I opened it, but it's still trying to remember what shape it's supposed to be a week later.

I had a great time visiting in Lynnwood before heading across the state to Idaho. Q, M, W, and J took me out for a lovely birthday dinner.

So much fun with Quinne and her mom. They joined me on the trip to Idaho so they could see the new trailer and "where Dad lives." They both thought the trailer was cool and even really liked Sun Meadow. Sadly, they left to return to Lynnwood on Sunday morning, and I turned my truck and trailer south.

I've made it as far as Winnemucca in the week I've been on the road. That's only 630 miles or so from Sun Meadow, but I follow the 2-2-2 rule most of the time. Never drive more than 200 miles in a day; always arrive by 2:00; always stay at least 2 days. This is my fourth day in Winnemucca, which is necessary in order to enjoy the Basque food.

Here are two things that would never have occurred to me until the server suggested them. At the top is the house salad: Romaine, celery, carrots, egg, tomato, parmesan and the house dressing that I'd compare to a spicy Caesar. The server suggested that I put the Basque beans right on the salad. Oh, my! what a taste sensation. I could have eaten that as my meal and been quite happy!

But, no. I had to follow the next suggestion for Scampi ala Diabla. Sweet tiger prawns, sauteed in garlic and butter, finished with white wine and sun dried tomatoes, cream and special seasonings to add a bit of fire. But get this: It's served on top of garlic mashed potatoes! Who would have thought to serve shrimp and cream sauce on mashed potatoes? So good! I'm still overstuffed from the meal, served with a glass of house red wine.

Of course, that was the second Basque dinner I'd had. Friday night's was served family style with six people I'd never met before who all became our family at dinner. I had the Solemo, pork loin simmered with garlic and pimento. I'm having the remains of that meal for Sunday dinner today!

Well, I expect to get to Las Vegas for the winter on Friday if all goes well. In the meantime, I have about two more chapters to write in order to finish my current WIP, Team Manager COACH!

I had to stop after 41 chapters and go back to edit and cut the equivalent of four chapters (around 14,000 words) before I could write half a dozen new chapters to get it where it is now. I'm pretty happy with it, but need to get finished before next Sunday.

Why? Monday is NaNoWriMo. I've been making notes and working on the timeline/outline for the story and am excited to get started on it next week.

I’m having a “good time” figuring out how long a trip it is from Girsu to Babylon and whether Cyprus is on the way to Athens. Coordinating a historical timeline in twenty or thirty different parts of the world with a fantasy character’s timeline and the map of his travels is proving complex and confusing. (Wait! How did he get to India?) Especially since Bob doesn’t always remember what location came first, second, and third, or which country had the best wine. That is usually the country he forgot because he was drunk most of the time.

I’m coupling that with a few features that I’m blatantly borrowing from famous writers—usually with my own twist added to it. Take for instance, the infinity room. I’m pretty sure I remember a similar pocket of some sort from a Heinlein story, and I know Harry Potter's Hermione had a bag she kept more in than the bag could possibly hold. And of course, there are the bottles that genies supposedly live in. My twist is that Bob creates the room for all the books he collects. But having books, he also needs to build a library in the infinity room so all the books are neatly stored. A library needs librarians, so he has to convince some librarians to live in his infinity room. If they are going to live there, they need houses, stores, food, restaurants, crops, animals, and wives. And those all need other people to tend to the work. And it all needs to fit in a neat little satchel that Bob can close the flap of and carry as he flees town ahead of a jealous husband determined to get his wife back. And don’t rattle the bottles in the wine cellar!

All part of the tale of a happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon.

Tier 3 patrons for either Nathan Everett or Devon Layne will be able to see this story as it develops daily during NaNoWriMo. Join us!