Watching YouTube videos by Tom Nicholas, Ph.D student. First was a very interesting but brief look at the meaning of postdramatic theatre. Now a look at the meaning of “dramaturgy”. These are his first videos, but they are very well thought out. I recommend them. They cover “deep” subjects, but are clear, concise, and well-written and accessible to the layman. I am going to bed after this second one. Good night.
Author: Phil Slattery
Publisher, Rural Fiction Magazine; publisher, The Chamber Magazine; founder, the Farmington Writers Circle. I have written short stories and poetry for many years. In my careers as a Naval officer and in the federal government, I have written thousands of documents of many types. I am currently working on a second edition for my poetry collection and a few novels.
Update – February 24, 1:30 am
Finished watching “Hughie” by Eugene O’Neill a few minutes ago. Another one act play dependent on one character’s monologue, but interesting to see how Erie, a B.S. artist, was dependent on Hughie as sort of a one-man support group and how the new night clerk recognizes this and steps in to fill Hughie’s shoes.
Update February 23, 11:50 pm
Just finished watching Eugene O’Neill’s “Before Breakfast”. The outcome was somewhat predictable after the halfway point, but how O’Neill told a complex tale through the brief monologue of a single character was the most interesting part.
Friday Update — Beginning Research into Contemporary Theatre
I have been contemplating my play “Centaurs” and trying to work out what I need to change. It just isn’t exciting enough. It doesn’t involve the audience enough. I know there’s something missing, but I can’t pinpoint it. Therefore, tonight I have been surfing YouTube for performances of great plays and surfing the Internet for what are considered the great play of American theatre. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a generally accepted canon of the greatest American plays: “The Iceman Cometh”, “Long Day’s Journey into Night”, “Death of a Salesman”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, etc., with “Angels in America” probably being the most contemporary on most lists. Although all are terrific works, none seem to have something innovative enough to interest me. Therefore, I have started looking into contemporary theatre. This is turning out to be quite interesting. Contemporary theatre, based on the few videos I have seen tonight (and on past experience too, of course), seems to have the minimalist, dreamy, postmodernist, almost mystical qualities that intrigue me. I will continue my research for probably a few days to come, but I am already coming up with ideas about interaction with the audience and monologues. Combining those with my own past experience in public speaking and acting (I was once in two short Tennessee Williams plays), I feel I may be on to something.
Four of My Works are Free Today, Friday, February 23
On each Friday over the next few months, I will be giving away one or more of my works.
Today, I am giving away A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, and my latest work, Nocturne.
A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, I offer a look into the minds of people who perpetrate horrors, from acts of stupidity with unintended results to cold-hearted revenge to pure enjoyment to complete indifference. Settings range from 17th-century France in the heart of the werewolf trials to the resurrection of the Aztec black arts to a medicine man’s revenge in the Old West to the depths of Hell to mob vengeance and modern day necromancy to sociopathic serial killers and on to alien worlds in the distant future.
In The Scent and Other 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.
In Click, 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?
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 he wrote during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of that time as 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. Kindle was published on February 15, 2018. This is the first time it is being offered for free as a promotion.
All of these are available on Kindle at amazon.com/author/philslattery.
My Interview with KSJE Will Air on March 7 at 10:30 A.M.
In February, I recorded an interview on my works and writing with “Write On Four Corners“, a program with KSJE 90.9 FM, the Farmington (NM) National Public Radio station. The interview will air on March 7, 2018, at 10:30 a.m. The interview covered a wide range of topics concerning my writing and my writing plans for the future including upcoming work. Be sure to tune in. The program was hosted by Traci HalesVass, retired assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at San Juan College in Farmington. The interview will be available on podcast after the broadcast.
To celebrate this, on the day of the broadcast, I am giving away e-copies of all my works available on Amazon Kindle. These include A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, Alien Embrace, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover. Follow this link to my Amazon Author’s page to find out more about each work.
Poem: “Come with Me, My Love”
This is a poem I wrote in the late 80’s to early 90’s, most likely some time between 1988 and 1991, when I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, dating around and frequenting the bars in Old Town Alexandria. I don’t recall the circumstances under which I wrote this, just the feeling of these being the emotions of walking home around 2:00 a.m. after closing time.
This is the opening poem of my first volume of verse, Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover. Nocturne will be free on Amazon Kindle on February 23. I published it on Valentine’s Day of this year.
Going through my computer files tonight, I believe I have discovered some poems unintentionally left out. Stand by for a second edition. I hope you enjoy this poem.
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.
Four of My Works Will Be Free on Friday, February 23.
On each Friday over the next few months, I will be giving away one or more of my works.
On Friday the 23rd, I am giving away A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, and my latest work, Nocturne.
A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, I offer a look into the minds of people who perpetrate horrors, from acts of stupidity with unintended results to cold-hearted revenge to pure enjoyment to complete indifference. Settings range from 17th-century France in the heart of the werewolf trials to the resurrection of the Aztec black arts to a medicine man’s revenge in the Old West to the depths of Hell to mob vengeance and modern day necromancy to sociopathic serial killers and on to alien worlds in the distant future.
In The Scent and Other 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.
In Click, 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?
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 he wrote during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of that time as 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. Kindle was published on February 15, 2018. This is the first time it is being offered for free as a promotion.
All of these are available on Kindle at amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Poem: “Come with Me, My Love”
This is a poem I wrote in the late 80’s to early 90’s, most likely some time between 1988 and 1991, when I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, dating around and frequenting the bars in Old Town Alexandria. I don’t recall the circumstances under which I wrote this, just the feeling of these being the emotions of walking home around 2:00 a.m. after closing time.
This is the opening poem of my first volume of verse, Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover. Nocturne will be free on Amazon Kindle on February 23. I published it on Valentine’s Day of this year.
Going through my computer files tonight, I believe I have discovered some poems unintentionally left out. Stand by for a second edition. I hope you enjoy this poem.
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.
The Second Edition of “Nocturne” has Just Been Submitted for Publication
Just now, I submitted the second edition of Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover for publication on Amazon Kindle. It contains about half a dozen poems not included in the first along with a few format/editorial changes. I believe they make the work stronger and more powerful and much more poignant. It should appear for purchase by Friday, February 23. Visit my Amazon’s author page for a copy or to find out more about my works.
My Interview with KSJE Will Air on March 7 at 10:30 A.M.
In February, I recorded an interview on my works and writing with “Write On Four Corners“, a program with KSJE 90.9 FM, the Farmington (NM) National Public Radio station. The interview will air on March 7, 2018, at 10:30 a.m. The interview covered a wide range of topics concerning my writing and my writing plans for the future including upcoming work. Be sure to tune in. The program was hosted by Traci HalesVass, retired assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at San Juan College in Farmington. The interview will be available on podcast after the broadcast.
To celebrate this, on the day of the broadcast, I am giving away e-copies of all my works available on Amazon Kindle. These include A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, Alien Embrace, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover. Follow this link to my Amazon Author’s page to find out more about each work.
A Quiet Tuesday Night
Tonight is uneventful.
I was notified yesterday via direct message on Twitter that Namri’d Publishing of Edgewood, NM, is awarding me an advertising package of “two reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble and sharing of your book on Facebook and Twitter at least weekly for one month” valued at $100. I have not heard of them and don’t know how they got my name, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. They asked for a copy of one of my books and a cover photo, so tonight I sent them A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror. We’ll see how this goes. I tend to be leery of deals too good to be true, especially if they come out of the blue, but I do not see that I have anything to lose here either. They are not asking for any money (at least at this point). I looked up the company on the Internet, and it seems to be a straightforward, small publisher. If things go as well as I hope, then this will be a good deal for us both and I will always be grateful to them for this opportunity.
Interestingly, I have passed through Edgewood many times. For some time, my wife has lived and worked in Midland, TX, and when I go to see her, the most direct route from Aztec, NM, where I live, takes me through Edgewood. Often, I stay the night at an America’s Best Value Inn in the town of Moriarty, which is just east of Edgewood. Edgewood is about as typical small town America as they come, situated on the edge of the rolling plain just east of Albuquerque. From what I have seen, it is a beautiful little community with a large nature park.
Other than that, I have collected some information together for my taxes and have been advertising my upcoming interview on KSJE (90.9 FM, March 7 at 10:30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time) on Goodreads and sending out a few invitations to listen to it.
I usually keep the TV on in the background, and these days it’s usually on YouTube, which I love for the wide variety of programming (admittedly, some is of dubious sources, but nonetheless entertaining), but you can also find great articles on topics you can’t find on regular TV, such as staging of classical plays like “Death of a Salesman”, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, “The Iceman Cometh”, or “Waiting for Godot”. You can also find great biographies. One of my favorite programs of all time was A&E’s Biography. I can now watch its re-runs. The biography of John Steinbeck is playing now.
So now I sit at my laptop, typing this article, having hot tea, watching Biography, and waiting for my wife to call. After I finish this post, I will start my writing for the night.
“Lady Frankenstein and the Mummy’s Brain” from Drunk in a Graveyard
Scary Tales Publishing, who I’ve talked about in the past with their “Fractured Scary Tales” series, are back with a new release titles “Lady Frankenstein and the Mummy’s Brain.” Making its debut at the spring comics conventions at both Long Beach Convention Center in California and Kansas City’s Bartle Hall in Missouri, this new 20-page […]
via NEW! Horror Comic “Lady Frankenstein and the Mummy’s Brain” Coming Soon — DRUNK IN A GRAVEYARD
Watching Stephen King on YouTube
This evening I have been working on the second edition of Nocturne with YouTube playing in the background. Currently, I am watching “Stephen King, His Books, and Their Origins at Lisner Auditorium (published on Nov. 22, 2014 by Politics and Prose). I always love hearing about the origins of a writer’s works and King touches on several briefly followed by a reading from Revival. The most interesting part I have seen so far is his comment that he thinks plots are for weak writers. He follows his characters, so to speak, and doesn’t have an idea of where a book will end, so its ending is a surprise to him. Quite an interesting video. I recommend it.
Poem: “Come with Me, My Love”
This is a poem I wrote in the late 80’s to early 90’s, most likely some time between 1988 and 1991, when I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, dating around and frequenting the bars in Old Town Alexandria. I don’t recall the circumstances under which I wrote this, just the feeling of these being the emotions of walking home around 2:00 a.m. after closing time.
This is the opening poem of my first volume of verse, Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover. Nocturne will be free on Amazon Kindle on February 23. I published it on Valentine’s Day of this year.
Going through my computer files tonight, I believe I have discovered some poems unintentionally left out. Stand by for a second edition. I hope you enjoy this poem.
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.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 