Writing a great headline means extending an enticing invitation to a potential reader. It’s not the whole story, nor is it an attempt to convince anyone to do anything other than to keep reading. That being said, it seems the blogging world is littered with poorly-crafted headlines. While many contain one or more necessary elements, other factors […]
via Five Mistakes to Avoid when Writing a Headline — The Art of Blogging
My novelette, Click, is available on Kindle and in paperback.
For either version, go to my Amazon author’s page: Amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Frank Martinez, a policeman with the Corpus Christi Police Department, has unintentionally shot and killed an unarmed man when called to intercede in a domestic violence case. To recover from the guilt while the incident is under investigation by the CCPD, Frank’s fiancée arranges for him to stay on a secluded island owned by her father’s former law partner. While dozing one night on a lounge chair in the yard, he awakes to find two hitmen slipping onto the island and breaking into the cabin. Are they after him? Are they after the cabin’s owner? Most importantly, how is he going to reach his pistol in his luggage in the bedroom?
Reader Charles Stacey gave “Click” five stars, calls it “A great suspenseful read and then a twist”, and comments: “Author has a wonderful ability to develop the characters using few words. Great foreshadowing to build suspense. And then a really outstanding twist at the end that left me smiling.”
An anonymous Amazon customer gave it five stars, called it “strong storytelling”, and commented, “This novelette is a quick and very entertaining read. It opened with a grabber (“Tell me again whey we have to kill this guy…”) and kept pulling me in from there. Frank Martinez is a cop trying to recover from a shooting incident in solitude on an island off the Texas gulf coast. T.J. and Benny are the bad guys. Their hunt and chase on the small island kept me in suspense. It ends with a surprise twist. Slattery proves here he is a good storyteller.”
While on my author’s page, check out my other works.
Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.
Check back frequently for updates or follow me (on the homepage).
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
I just now finished typing up the first draft of my new sci-fi short story, “The Charade”, 2,167 words. This will be set in the future, after a battle over Denver, during which US forces repelled an invading alien armada. The US commander has captured the alien commander and is interrogating him to an extreme. There is lots of subtext and intrigue and a twist at the end.
Earlier today, I wrote a one-sentence story and submitted it to Roarreadingseries.com. They provided the prompt “thrift store”. My story is probably more gruesome than they anticipated receiving. The deadline is May 5. Hopefully, I will hear soon after that.
Sliver of light shines Through the future’s open door May it confer peace *** Ah, my weekly poetry fix will have a different flavor until the end of the month! Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday is on a well-deserved Sabbatical, but she still encourages weekly syllabic poems. Since we’re writing forms of Japanese poetry, I thought […]
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 