There, beyond the ripples of mouth, lovers sits & communicate, through the sprint in their lashes, flutter of springs. a translucent shadow defies time. for that particular moment. small things begin to dilate. too much convulsions, temperature drop, wrinkled grass land. A grasshoper watches sky detonating. laughters circulating the wobbly afternoon. A visceral face expanding. […]
Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover is a collection of my poetry written from the mid-80’s to mid-90s, a turbulent, fluid time in my life in many ways, but especially romantically. I have taken many of the poems written during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of a narrator who descends from romantic love for a woman into a lonely world of alcohol and night clubs, where his only love is the night that envelopes him psychologically, emotionally, and physically. It is about 110 print pages in length and lavishly illustrated with photos I found in the public domain (no, those are not photos of me or of my former paramours).
This is the first poem from the collection, entitled “Introduction”.
Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of life and laughter
as empty as an empty
bottle rattling down a cobblestone
street blown by a chill
wind
Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of lust and passion
as lonely as a lonely
man pacing off a deserted street
under the brisk October moon
its cold light muted
in the mists
As the fog embraces you
like a one-night stand in a town
of dying dreams where
hopes lie scattered on the barroom floor
with cigarette butts and the dust
of endless roads
Bring me to that ultimate pleasure
in your all-consuming eyes.
Let us become one
and share the horrors of this
world
as only
lovers can.
You can find Nocturne… and my other works at my Amazon author’s page: Amazon.com/author/philslattery.
I have tried to make this a wonderful experience for the reader, exploring the bliss of love to the depths of despair and then to resignation to one’s fate in an existential crisis.
Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or other social media!
While there, you might want to check out my other work on relationships: The Scent and Other Stories. In this collection of short stories, I explore the dark, sometimes violent, sometimes twisted, sometimes touching side of love, the side kept not only from public view, but sometimes from our mates. Set in the modern era, these stories range from regretting losing a lover to forbidden interracial love in the hills of 1970’s Kentucky to a mother’s deathbed confession in present-day New Mexico to debating pursuing a hateful man’s wife to the callous manipulation of a lover in Texas.
Two reviews have warm praise for Nocturne…:
J. Muckley calls it “Beautiful, Sad, Authentic and Vulnerable Look at Love and Loss” and gives it five stars, saying:
Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover by Phil Slattery is a deep and raw “picture” of experiencing love and lovers of varying type, capturing the moments of ecstasy and pain in a most beautiful way.
Slattery speaks with one voice as his words and pictures depict the full range of human love and loss that both tempts the soul to engage and urges the heart to resist. His opening quote by Augustine of Hippo captures this work perfectly: “I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love…I sought what I might love, in love with loving.” –Augustine of Hippo
The poems are mostly untitled and written in free verse form. The reader meanders through the past relationships as they ebb and flow through varying stages. The introduction poem tells of the types of poem you will soon encounter:
nights of love
full of life and laughter
as empty as an empty
bottle
The poem closes:
Bring me to that ultimate pleasure
in your all-consuming eyes.
Let us become one
and share the horrors of this
world
All in all, Nocturne, is a beautiful but sad read that speaks to the reality of love and holds nothing back. It engages the mind and the heart longing for lasting, meaningful love that always seems just outside of its reach.
P.S. Winn calls it “Great Poems with Pictures”, gives it four stars, and says:
I like this author’s poems which have a great feel to them. The book is about love but a lot more is included inside the pages. I like the photos the author included to enhance the poetry. A few of the poems held descriptive words about nature and I enjoyed the way the picture author paints in the readers mind is also displayed in the photographs that correspond with the words.
Check back frequently for updates.
I have done a lot of public speaking in my day. From 1985 to 1996, public speaking was one of my primary duties in my career as a naval intelligence officer. From 1998 to 2007, it was one of my primary duties working for the Interpretation division in Padre Island National Seashore.
In 1997, when I had been only a short time out of the Navy, I lived in my home town of Frankfort, KY, where I was trying to establish careers as a photographer and a writer. Neither was going anywhere initially, and, long story short, I joined the National Park Service. While living in Frankfort, I happened upon an opportunity to do the head shots for a small, local theater group. I became friends with them and before I knew it, was playing roles in two Tennessee Williams one-act plays, which were performed on the same nights.
The first was the role of the porter in “Portrait of a Madonna“. I did have some dialogue and I seem to recall doing well at the role, though the play ran for only a few nights over twenty years ago. Here is a production by the Chicago Actors Studio, if you would like to see their version. Ours wasn’t taped to my knowledge.
The second role was as Winston Tutwiler, the husband/drunk in “Lord Byron’s Love Letter“. My role consisted almost entirely of sitting on a sofa and being inebriated. I am not certain if I had any dialogue. It was fun though. I drank a considerable amount at that time, so I was a natural to portray a drunk, though I didn’t drink any for the role. If I recall correctly, I portrayed this role before my first appearance in “Portrait of a Madonna”. I was in a hurry to dress in costume before walking out on stage, and being naturally absent-minded, I forgot to zip up my fly! As soon as I made my entrance, I was to head to a sofa and flop down, half-heartedly listening to the other characters. It was then I noticed my fly being open. But realizing that this is not an uncommon occurrence among drunks, I stayed in character and blatantly zipped up as if it had been planned all along. I think I got a few giggles out of the audience. Here’s one performance of it. I don’t know who is performing in this video. My role was that of the guy in the green shirt.
I found acting to be a lot of fun. I would love to do it again. The stage is really quite addicting. That’s probably why I have become fascinated recently with writing plays.
I have completed two small plays and I am currently working on two more.
The two completed ones are adaptations of my previously published short stories “Murder by Plastic” and “The Last Sane Man“. Both should be around ten minutes on stage. I am looking now for somewhere to have them produced.
The next up in length is one called “Incommunicado”. I have developed a different vision for it than I have had previously. I conceived of it maybe a year or two ago. It was originally about a man named Quinn Gallagher (yes, the same Quinn Gallagher as in my short stories “The Scent” and “The Slightest of Indiscretions”). In this play, Quinn has gone off to a ghost town in New Mexico’s Gila Mountains to write and celebrate being able to drink again after being on the wagon for a year after a DUI. He intends to stay drunk for the weekend. However, he finds he has enjoyed being sober, and this conflicts with his desire to drink again to escape life’s problems. One way is easy but ultimately self-destructive, while the other means tough self-discipline, but is ultimately more productive and rewarding. I originally thought of this more of an extended soliloquy, though I see now that I will have to bring in one or two of the local townspeople to add action and bring in more perspectives. I hope to have this play last about thirty minutes. I am shooting to have this done by the end of May.
The last and longest play I am working on is entitled “Centaurs”. It is about a man and a woman who are having an affair. Both are married intellectuals, but they find their intellectual sides conflicting with their animalistic desires. They have decided to keep this relationship purely physical, but they find themselves falling in love. I intend for this play to be about 90 minutes in length and be three acts with a lot of audience involvement.
I will try to update this website regularly about my stage work.
In this collection of short stories, I explore the dark, sometimes violent, sometimes twisted, sometimes touching side of love, the side kept not only from public view, but sometimes from our mates. Set in the modern era, these stories range from regretting losing a lover to forbidden interracial love in the hills of 1970’s Kentucky to a mother’s deathbed confession in present-day New Mexico to debating pursuing a hateful man’s wife to the callous manipulation of a lover in Texas.
To order yours and to view my other works as well, visit my Amazon author’s page at: www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Praise for Stories Contained in “The Scent and Other Stories”:
The Scent
“This story has a lovely dreamy quality whilst being unsettling too. It lingers on half processed emotional experiences and leaves the reader asking ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ – feelings that are familiar for so many people.”
“You wrote about something we can all relate to – how, out of the blue, the scent of something evokes a memory of something long past; and the emotions we felt at the time! A clever story …”
“This descriptive piece about remembrance, the thought of what might have been, is a common sad thread that will resonate with those have experienced the pain of that one love lost. Slattery’s use of scent was exquisite as we feel Quinn’s pain and hope that he finds his peace, at last.”
Decision
“Fantastic writing – I held my breath for most of the story. The descriptions of the countryside and the people were beautiful and the tension compelling. This could possibly be the start of a novel or a suite of stories. Thank you very much and good luck with your writing in the future”
“Suspenseful and engaging. The dialogue and descriptions kept pace with the action. Well done.”
A Good Man
“Lots of detail examining an old question of how do you judge a person’s life. It left me wondering.”
“Great job capturing the social climate of the sixties. Good choice for how to present the story – deathbed “confession” by the mother. I enjoyed it.”
The Slightest of Indiscretions
“Excellent writing brings this poignant story to life and makes the reader work to understand more of what might be. Very many thanks for a satisfying, emotionally intelligent read…”
If you enjoy poems about love, check out my poetry collection Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover.
In Alien Embrace, Logan Rickover, owner of a hardware store in a small town in Kentucky, has lucid dreams of life as an astronaut that intrude upon his life at any moment. Which of his lives is real? The quiet paradise of Danville or the terrifying jungle world of Stheno D?
Ron Baker commented, “This short has exactly what I like in science fiction: planet exploration and bizarre otherworldly aliens, in this case insectoid. The horrendous purpose the aliens have for the hapless astronauts who make planetfall to find the numerous previous missing exploration teams is grisly. I love the mystery of the planet and the authors device of alternating from the aliens bizarre perspective then switching to the astronauts point of view.”
I will be offering more of my works for free in the upcoming weeks. Check back often.
Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.
It rains. A phenomenon not unheard of. Quite common in London, from what I’ve read and heard. But it is not the water which speaks to me. It rains on a day where most of us would love to sit at home. And some actually do. But the job calls. The daily work needed for […]
https://videopress.com/embed/7BtL4Nui?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0
For those of you who don’t want to watch this video, or can’t, or don’t know… here’s what I am saying: As you probably know, all my blogging programs have the initial bit; the part where I offer feedback on your blog, analyzing all the aspects of blogging. Okay. So I am offering a sample […]
If you want to expand your book sales, one way is to increase your online audience by expanding your promotions to overseas.
In a previous post, I talked about timing your posts to reach overseas audiences by posting them at times appropriate for your target overseas audience. For example, I live in New Mexico, which is Mountain Standard Time (MST). If I want to time my posts, so that they post on the most populous part of Australia (the east coast), I have to first consider, when the most likely time Australians might be up, moving about, and looking for something to read. On social media, a common hashtag for book promotions is #FictionFriday. This is when a lot of people look for books to read over the weekend. Therefore, I might want to time my posts when everyone on Australia’s east coast, which is Australian Eastern Daylight Time is rising and getting ready for their day. Assuming they have to be at work at 8:00 a.m, I may want to time my posts to hit there at 7:00 a.m. 7:00 a.m. Friday in Sydney is 6:30 p.m. in Albuquerque. So, I post at 6:30 p.m. Albuquerque time. You can find lots of articles and maps on the Internet to calculate the time difference, but iPhones and other gadgets enable you to monitor the time in several locations at once.
However, now I want to discuss promoting your books/posts by using holidays, international and national.
There are lots of international holidays with which to time posts or promotions: Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, New Year’s Day, etc. Everyone knows these. Many of these are religious holidays.
There are also a lot of lesser known holidays that you can use to target an audience depending on its topic, of course. One example is World Book Day, which is generally celebrated on April 23rd. Calendarlabs.com provides a good list of international holidays such as these.
Then there are the national holidays celebrated by your target country. Assuming you want to promote your book to English-speaking countries, the five major English-speaking countries are the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. English is spoken world-wide, so if you target these countries primarily, you will probably reach the vast majority of the English-speakers as well, though you may be a time zone off here and there. Of course, you can find exhaustive lists of holidays for each of these countries scattered around the Internet, but here are a few you may want to consider (the links are to a list of each country’s holidays):
Spring Bank Holiday, May 28, 2018
Boxing Day (in most English-speaking nations), December 26, 2018
Victoria Day, May 21, 2018
Canada Day, July 2, 2018
Labour Day, September 3, 2018
Remembrance Day, November 11, 2018
Australia Day, January 26, 2018
ANZAC Day, April 25, 2018
Queen’s Birthday, June 11, 2018
Boxing Day, December 26, 2018
Waitangi Day, February 6, 2018
ANZAC Day, April 25, 2018
Labour Day, October 22, 2018
Boxing Day, December 26, 2018
Remember that the UK consists of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, so you may have to consider the holidays in each of these separately. Also, some states and provinces may or may not celebrate national holidays in the same way or on the same date as the rest of the nation as well as having their own holidays.
As mentioned, these are only a few, actually a very few of the holidays celebrated in English-speaking countries, but I hope it gives you an idea of what is out there that you may want to incorporate into you posting and planning.
Please go to amazon.com/author/philslattery or Goodreads or any other social media to leave a review.
Jack Thurston is a retired professor of medieval literature and history. He is also a widower and father and a retired sorcerer who has returned to the black arts to exact revenge for the death of his wife, daughter, and brother. He has an intriguing position in the universe at a focal point of life, the afterlife, logic and reason, anger and hatred, the ancient and the modern worlds, grief and his attempts to escape grief through self-destruction. Though he wants to have the peace he once found with his wife, Agatha, he is pulled in many directions by circumstance and by his powerful negative emotions.
I am a fan of the old school horror practiced by such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Edward Lucas White, and Arthur Machen. I endeavor to make a story as terrifying and suspenseful for the reader as possible without resorting to gratuitous blood and gore for a simple shock or quick feeling of disgust.
This collection of three short tales is perfect for those who have only a few short breaks to escape into the hidden world of horror, black magic, sorcery, and anger-fueled revenge.
You can find this and other works at my Amazon author’s page: www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Currently, Jack has a Twitter account (@jthurston666), where he has attracted a small following and where it has only recently been revealed that he is fictional. Jack has his own blog at jackthurstonblog.wordpress.com (a work in progress) and his own e-mail at jackthurston666@gmail.com.
Information on more social media accounts and other characters (as they are developed) can be found at: philslattery.wordpress.com. Please interact with him at any of his social media accounts as you would with a real person.
Show your appreciation for these stories by leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.
If you enjoy horror, check out my collection of horror short stories A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror: Stories of wizards, werewolves, serial killers, alien worlds, and the damned, which includes these stories.
Characters With Special Powers
http://daveastoronliterature.com/2019/05/05/characters-with-special-powers/
— Read on daveastoronliterature.com/2019/05/05/characters-with-special-powers/
The Soul of Wine — Carlos Schwabe
http://biblioklept.org/2019/05/05/the-soul-of-wine-carlos-schwabe/
— Read on biblioklept.org/2019/05/05/the-soul-of-wine-carlos-schwabe/
Lady Dementia
http://spelkfiction.com/2019/05/06/lady-dementia/
— Read on spelkfiction.com/2019/05/06/lady-dementia/
About Today
http://easydiet.blog/2019/05/06/about-today/
— Read on easydiet.blog/2019/05/06/about-today/
About You
http://easydiet.blog/2019/05/06/about-you/
— Read on easydiet.blog/2019/05/06/about-you/
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 