Here you will find the personal blog of Phil Slattery, writer, and publisher of Rural Fiction Magazine and The Chamber Magazine (currently on hiatus). Posts include musings, thoughts, updates on my work and anything else that I find interesting.
The Value of Discussing Catcher in the Rye Beyond the Classroom
I believe it [Catcher in the Rye] should be taught in high school because these are the issues teens face or will face once they go to college, just as Holden did. Once in college, students will learn how phony the world is, if they haven’t already.
Keep readingUpdate: November 21, 2025
I have been feeling the need to resurrect Rural Fiction Magazine. I have been thinking about this a lot and there is something I love about publishing, particularly publishing something that is intended to help people, and RFM is intended to help people relax and avoid stress during these trying times for not only the…
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Samples of My Writing
Looking over my website tonight, I realized that … there are no samples of my fiction on this site. Ergo, I decided to correct that.
Keep readingUpdate of November 17, 2025
I have recently decided to go ahead with my plans to create a second edition of my poetry collection, Nocturne (now available through Amazon). The second edition will include all the poems of the first edition plus some that were lost for many years….
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The Intersection of Faith and Reason: My Views on God
As some of my works have Christianity or at least some type of vague spirituality or metaphysics lurking in the backstory or surfacing here or there in a plot or in a character, I thought it would be a good idea to clarify just what my religious vs. spiritual beliefs are.
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Understanding Flash Fiction to Novels: A Writer’s Guide — Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part 7
If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that I believe that a work should be as short as possible, because, like a bullet, the smaller it is, the more powerful it is. I try not to have a preconceived notion of how long a story should be. I try to just write the story,…
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Writing for Decision Makers: Key Strategies Unveiled
From 1989 to 1991 I worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC. Part of my duties included writing short briefing papers for high-level Pentagon and State Department officials. As part of my training, I took a DIA course called Writing for Decisionmakers. Its aim was to teach analysts to write short briefing…
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Rohwer Relocation Center: A Hidden History
Full resolution photos of the current Rohwer Relocation Center National Historic Landmark were taken by Phil Slattery at Rohwer on July 5, 2020, and are downloadable from Wikimedia Commons. If that link doesn’t work, search in Wikimedia Commons for “rohwer relocation center slattery”. For several months, a lot of people were visiting my article on…
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Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 
Congratulations, Phil!
I have nominated your blog for the Versatile Blogger Award.
The rules of this award are at: http://bellnight.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/versatile-blogger-award-thanks-dear-kitty/
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I really like your wordpress page, very friendly, intriguing. Thanks for being so generous with your information and sharing! I too love horror. Brian Evenson. Is writing some of the greatest horror of our day. His ability to utilize perception, perspectives, telling a story from many points of view, or from unconventional points of view – to bring about the psychological commentary – the reflection of experience in disproportion to societal-realities. His writing, is masterful. – Check him out.
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Thank you very much. I will definitely check out Brian Evenson.
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Phil, we have an original picture from 1890 of H. H. Holmes and Benjamin Pitezel doing an autopsy over a cadaver. Please contact us.
Thanks,
Jacque Walker
Cedar Rapids, IA
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I’m curious. Why are you contacting me?
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Horror… I have to dabble on that for sure. And we have another thing in common, both have been in the military. Although I just got to corporal in the infantry, I hate water and boats. You’re very educated man and obviously very qualified for this job, and I also had to add that the last comment that this Jacque Walker said, it was kind of weird. But since you write horror,….that comment might actually give me and idea to write about.
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