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.
I want to give a shout-out to all the writers (worldwide) out there for helping relieve stress and bolster the human spirit. These are particularly difficult times for everyone given the spread of the Coronavirus and its increasingly severe effects on the economy and on in life in general along with the bizarre and depressing political news that increases with each day, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on.
As I read more and watch more TV (particularly YouTube) with the increasing isolation and closure of so many restaurants and other public gathering spots, I come to realize how important a role writers play in our daily lives. Writers enable readers (as well as themselves) to escape into a more pleasant world, depending upon the genre of course. In all cases writers at least offer distractions in which the public can become immersed for a time and take its mind off the daily anxieties and fears around us. This is important, because taking our minds off our worries enables us to relax, however briefly, and allows us to heal psychologically and emotionally, both of which have healing effects on our bodies. These days, this nation and all others need healing in every sense I can imagine.
Redemittel für den Beschwerdebrief Beschwerdebrief b2 Redemittel 1. Einleitung: Ich schreibe Ihnen wegen folgenden Problems: Ich möchte Sie auf folgendes Problem/ folgenden Missstand aufmerksam machen: Als ich Ihre Anzeige las, war ich sofort begeistert, deshalb habe ich mich angemeldet. Bezüglich unseres Telefonats vom… Vor zwei Wochen habe ich bei Ihnen… bestellt. Wir sind seit langer…
I want to give a shout-out to all the writers (worldwide) out there for helping relieve stress and bolster the human spirit. These are particularly difficult times for everyone given the spread of the Coronavirus and its increasingly severe effects on the economy and on in life in general along with the bizarre and depressing political news that increases with each day, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on.
As I read more and watch more TV (particularly YouTube) with the increasing isolation and closure of so many restaurants and other public gathering spots, I come to realize how important a role writers play in our daily lives. Writers enable readers (as well as themselves) to escape into a more pleasant world, depending upon the genre of course. In all cases writers at least offer distractions in which the public can become immersed for a time and take its mind off the daily anxieties and fears around us. This is important, because taking our minds off our worries enables us to relax, however briefly, and allows us to heal psychologically and emotionally, both of which have healing effects on our bodies. These days, this nation and all others need healing in every sense I can imagine.
I love this quick videos from #TheSchoolofLife on YouTube. I hope to post more of these in the future. Albeit superficial, they are entertaining and very useful for gaining quick information on a writer or topic that you are not familiar with. So, if you hear of someone in passing and you know absolutely nothing about him, you can quickly look them up and get a rough idea of their lives and works.
I have been negligent over the last few weeks regarding posting the Saturday Night Special as I like to do. Tonight, I would like to resurrect it, if only for the night, with one of my own creations: the poem “Faust”. This is one of the first works, poem or fiction, that I ever wrote. I wrote in in probably 1991. I remember it was a summer’s day and the weather was beautiful, but I had a drive to write poetry in those days and I decided to stay in until I wrote a poem. I decided to write on the German legend of Faust as it had always fascinated me.
So I stayed in my living room that beautiful day for eight hours until I had this finished. What I did after that, I am not certain, I probably searched the Poet’s Market (no Internet back then) for that year until I found a possible publisher. I did not have a personal computer then, so I typed it up and submitted it by USPS, which was the only option then. I do not recall how many times I submitted it before it was accepted, but it wasn’t many. I may have even got it on the first attempt, which is rare. “Faust” was first published in February, 1992 by The Hollins Critic (for which I was paid $25, the only money I ever made from a single poem). It was reprinted by Blood Moon Rising Magazine on July 10, 2013 and by Literary Hatchet on December 22, 2015.
If you are not familiar with the legend, Faust was a German alchemist/scientist in the middle ages-Renaissance who sold his soul for knowledge. The legend was most famously made into a long play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and many consider it to be his magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature. Goethe published part I in 1806 and finished part II in 1831, but part II was not published until after Goethe’s death.
“Faust” is probably my favorite poem of all the ones I ever wrote.
Faust
Quiet.
All is damnably quiet.
I can hear the spiders spinning in the darkness,
the breath of a rat against the stone walls,
a cockroach crawling through the sulphur-laden air.
The roaring silence fills the air like the grumble of the sea.
Pitiless Eternity.
But a second ago he was here,
he whose eyes glowed like falling stars in bottomless pools,
he with the comforting voice of the practiced whore.
My wounds still bleed, my sleeves are still wet.
The rats have yet to smell the droplets on the floor.
For what have I been sold?
Square roots? Sines? Sums?
Will I profit knowing winds are not the breath of God
knowing the sun is not a chariot of fire?
knowing mountains are not the bones of giants?
knowing why the sound of pouring wine tickles the ear?
why lovers’ eyes sparkle as purest silver?
why cool grass and shade bring easy sleep?
Did Da Vinci paint with a carpenter’s angle?
Michaelangelo sculpt with a plumb?
I will be reduced to monotonous lectures and boring sums.
And should I escape eternal hell
I nonetheless lose my soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the Roman countryside by J.H.W. Tischbein
I want to give a shout-out to all the writers (worldwide) out there for helping relieve stress and bolster the human spirit. These are particularly difficult times for everyone given the spread of the Coronavirus and its increasingly severe effects on the economy and on in life in general along with the bizarre and depressing political news that increases with each day, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on.
As I read more and watch more TV (particularly YouTube) with the increasing isolation and closure of so many restaurants and other public gathering spots, I come to realize how important a role writers play in our daily lives. Writers enable readers (as well as themselves) to escape into a more pleasant world, depending upon the genre of course. In all cases writers at least offer distractions in which the public can become immersed for a time and take its mind off the daily anxieties and fears around us. This is important, because taking our minds off our worries enables us to relax, however briefly, and allows us to heal psychologically and emotionally, both of which have healing effects on our bodies. These days, this nation and all others need healing in every sense I can imagine.
Originally posted on Eugi’s Causerie: the fear of living days blur into nights reasons, I must validate home warm with comfort Reena’s Exploration Challenge?#132 Your Daily Word Prompt – Validate – April 24. 2020 -Eugenia featured image – lovethispic.com
Originally posted on Tao Talk: The first tale I thought of for Reena’s prompt today comes from a book I read so many years ago, “Dune,” by Frank Herbert. Youtube is a marvelous treasure-trove on any topic, so I went looking to see if I could find where someone recited the passage that has stuck…
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 