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.
Taking a break from writing at Angel’s Peak Scenic Area, south of Bloomfield, NM, in 2018.
Because I got almost no sleep on Tuesday night, I was dragging all day and managed to get a few words written or deleted for Shadows and Stars.
I did manage to read through Nocturne… and to at least think about where I should place the newly discovered poems and how the two poems might change the entire collection’s feel.
There is another poem that I would like to include, but it contains one very vulgar word. I may just delete that line. The poem is still powerful, but maybe not as powerful with that line removed, which may be seen as the climax of the poem. Still, none of the other works in the collection contain an obscenity. I don’t want the collection to be known for this one obscenity, which might brand me as the pornographic poet. This one obscenity might also prevent people from buying the book, if they hear it’s in there. I am trying to make this work very poignant and sensitive, but this one word might offend and/or repel a lot of people. Using it in a collection like this jars the reader and wakes him/her up, which is good and adds a touch of irony to the poem’s and the collections’ composition. I probably won’t include it.
I have another I would love to include, but its graphic depiction of the narrator being seduced might also be seen as pornography, though it contains no obscenities. Alas, I will have to leave this one out, though I like the idea of the moment of shock that it brings to a sensitive narrative. I like to shock people on occasion, but using shock must be done with discretion or people become numb to it and it loses its effect over time.
Hopefully, I will make some progress tonight. Congestion is making it a little tricky to focus.
I don’t recall exactly, but I am at around 85,000 words for Shadows and Stars with my goal to be around 80,000-100,000. I think it will take another 10,000-15,000 words to wrap this up nicely. I will go over 100,000, if that is what it takes to tell the story.
I enjoy editing and toying with words to get my message across exactly as I picture it in my mind. Checking details to eliminate plot holes or inconsistencies is also a weird sort of fun. I can get lost in editing and time passes before I know it. It was in either “The Telltale Heart” or “The Black Cat” that Poe talks about the passing of so many hours “of the time that flies”. I love that expression.
Originally posted on Sudden Denouement Collective: gritty, my old friend. hello, ‘ello you fucking scratching things. i remember the walls and the pain of it but i couldn’t cut you out. we can bless each other in fallacy, but i refuse to not feel rough tears and forensic emotions we buried in a box of…
_ * Primer Lugar: Edgar Daniel Guillaumin Rojo. Estudia el tercer semestre de la Licenciatura en Filosofía, en la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. _ Estación Kamakura 俳句 _ 1) De Kamakura Las hojas en el suelo Mundo flotante. 2) Aire Daibutsu Movimiento de hierbas Flota la piedra. 3) La piedra alada Buda de Kamakura […]
Working late at night in an IHOP in Midland, Texas, May 2019 (photo by Francene Kilgore-Slattery)
I worked on my novel Shadows and Stars for some time this evening and added around 2,000 words. I brought some things together and worked on eliminating inconsistencies. Then while I was watching a re-run of an episodes of Breaking Bad’s third season and simultaneously, my lower back seized up causing great pain. I took some Ibuprofen and waited for it to calm down so that I could sleep. I did several stretches and various things to decrease the pain. The pain did start to decrease after a while, but I don’t know if the stimulus was my stretches or the ibuprofen.
In any case, while I was waiting for my back pain to ease up and I started ego-surfing the Internet. I found three poems I had published in Apollo’s Lyre (now defunct), two of which are fairly intense romantically speaking. I decided they rated inclusion in Nocturne, so I decided to publish a second edition of Nocturne. I then looked for some other poems that I hadn’t in there, but probably should have. I found a few of those. I then looked at my photo file and went online to check out a couple of public domain photos. They had what I wanted, so I determined to come out with the second edition of Nocturne. There’s not much to add, so it should come out in a month or two. These poems and accompanying photos will definitely ratchet up the collections intensity overall.
Do me a favor, I’ll catch you under my spell Delight my tastes with a cherry ice cream I want more and more from you, please offer Between us is a heavenly affection, daddy Dance with my body on a poetic rythm Increase my sensuality by winking at me Be deeply connected, discover my desire […]
This earth of tressed roots and rivers, fish-silvered oceans, sky, bird-woven tapestries of celestial hues, is the cradle of all life— ~it is not ours~ to unmake, to sully sky and sea, to eviscerate, for in the unmaking is our own ending, and when we have crushed the petals of the last […]
– Ricardo Venegas (San Luis Potosí, SLP, 1973), siempre ha vivido en Cuernavaca, Morelos. Estudió Letras Hispánicas en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM y la Maestría en Literatura Mexicana en la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, BUAP, egresado con Mención Honorífica. Es autor de los libros de poesía El silencio está […]
– ¿Cómo rescatar, para los lectores autodidactas del mundo, a Giacomo Leopardi, ciento ochenta años después de su muerte? La academia se ocupó de postularlo, hace ya mucho tiempo, como el máximo poeta romántico italiano. Pero se vuelve importante recordar que, durante gran parte de su vida, fue tan sólo considerado por muchos un paria […]
Richa Chaudhary herself is a very young and talented poetess and writer. She writes exceptionally well in Hindi, English and even more in Urdu. Getting such honor by her is no less than an award for me. Thank You so much Richa! Accept my heartfelt gratitude!
It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Sometimes even downright discouraging. You have so many ideas you want to share with the world. So many things you want to say. So much you want to try. But your job is demanding. You’re constantly juggling family schedules and obligations. You’re always heading off annoying interruptions. You wonder if you’ll […]
Date Of Event: October 3, 2019 (held annually the first week of October) Location: Downtown Salem (Congress St, Derby St, Front St, Washington St, Essex St, Salem Common) Summary: Salem’s Chamber Of Commerce kicked off the month long “Haunted Happenings” celebration for the month of October. Scores of heroes, monsters and kids came together to […]
Selfie with Lotus in background near Arkansas Post, September 4, 2019
Yesterday, I did no serious writing, taking only some notes during the course of the day. Most of the day was spent still putting up a few things after my recent move to Arkansas and doing a lot of laundry. I did come up with some ideas regarding some short stories I put on the back burner a year or so ago after deciding to focus my efforts on my upcoming sci-fi novel Shadows and Stars.
Over the last few days, I have been checking the stats for my negligible sales of my various short story collections. I thought it would be a good idea to produce a second edition of The Scent and other Stories after adding my short story recently published by FictionontheWeb.co.uk, “Be-Bye”. I thought of finishing another neglected story and adding it to A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horroralso. Then I went back over my drafts and decided that I need to need to finish up several stories, over the next several months, and put some on them into their own collections.
I have had plans to write some more stories featuring Quinn Gallagher, who appears in two of my shorts in The Scent and Other Stories and put them in their own collection with the working title of Tales of Quinn. As with the two stories where he is featured (“The Scent” and “The Slightest of Indiscretions’), these stories will be about the ups and downs of Quinn’s love life. Of course, “The Scent” and “The Slightest of Indiscretions” will be included in the collection. The one I will probably work on a bit in the next few days will be “Désirée”. I have ideas flowing for it now. I have not decided whether he will be seen in the background of one entitled “Fleur-de-Lis”, set in the Philippines in the late 1980’s. “Fleur-de-lis” is not far from completion.
Another group of stories that I have in mind are ones featuring Malcolm Flynn. Malcolm has not yet appeared as a character in any of my short stories, though he might be mentioned offhandedly in one or two at most. He is an important character in my horror novel The Man Who Escaped from Hell, which I intend complete just after I finish Shadows and Stars. I already have 80,000+ words for The Man Who Escaped from Hell, and was working on it until a few months ago, when the ideas for Shadows and Stars started pouring in and I was struggling to come up with any for The Man Who… So, I decided to focus on Shadows and Stars and come back to The Man Who…
Malcolm is a single, early-middle-age writer living in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is known in the clubs and social scene in Corpus in the early 2000’s, when some of the later action in the The Man Who… takes place. He becomes a close personal friend of the The Man Who…‘s main character, Jake Brody. I use conversations between him and Jake to bring out the inner turmoil of Jake and to give the reader a different perspective on Jake. I have always intended to have Malcolm feature in his own short stories, but not to gather them in a collection, although that’s not entirely ruled out. As with Quinn, a lot of the Malcolm stories will focus on the ups and downs of Malcolm’s Byzantine love-life, but it also feature some stories from the Corpus Christi club scene in the early 2000’s. I have always had it in the back of my mind to make Malcolm an important character in his own right, and I may do that yet, though I have no novels planned where he is the main character. Malcolm is an easy-going, savvy, Casanova-type. who usually wears a black suit sans tie, with a solid-color shirt, usually black or deep red. Often he wears a silk handkerchief in his coat pocket and he smokes small Nicaraguan cigars.
Currently, I have planned three stories to feature Malcolm: “American Dream”, “Nancy”, and “Carole.” I hope to finish “American Dream” before too long.
I have a few more science-fiction and horror stories in mind. One I hope to finish soon has the working title of “Charades”. It involves what happens to a captured alien general after his space fleet loses a battle with Earth forces over Denver.
Father Urbain Grandier, 1627
Two others are “Father Lactance”, a historical fiction which involves the witchcraft trial of Father Urbain Grandier in Loudun, France in 1634. Another, also based in history, is “Beneath Castle Bathory” (working title). This involves the historical Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is accused of the torture and murder of dozens of young servant girls, if not hundreds, around 1600-1612. Several movies and books have been written on both Father Grandier and Countess Bathory. I intend to give my take on each story. “Father Lactance” is not far from completion. I have yet to complete a first draft of “Beneath Castle Bathory”. Eventually, I will probably add them, as well as “Charades” to my collection A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
The only thing preventing me from finishing “Father Lactance” is that I want to read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun before completing it, so that I can further nail down the historical details and background.
Elizabeth, Countess Bathory
Anyway, most of the writing I did yesterday was jotting down some notes about my plans for upcoming short stories, which I did in my notebook for Shadows and Stars. I had intended to come up with and jot down some ideas for Shadows and Stars, but ended up writing down ideas for my short stories. Most of these I did while at dinner at El Canaveral Mexican Grill in Stuttgart, Arkansas.
El Canaveral has good food. It may be (I don’t really know for certain) part of the same chain as Ameca in DeWitt, Arkansas. Some of the menu items are the same. I had the pollo sabroso with rice and beans and a side of nopales (prickly-pear cactus) followed by a dish of Mexican apple pie. I do miss New Mexican and Texas cuisine. Nopales are commonly served scrambled with eggs for breakfast in south Texas. They can be found in other dishes as well.
I have always loved short stories, especially scary or mysterious ones, like the ones written by Poe or Conan-Doyle. This is one reason I decide to publish a weekly horror story or poem from the nineteenth or early twentieth century on this website each Saturday night at 8:00 pm. (Central time) in what I call “The Saturday Night Special”. Watch for it. Coming up on the 12th is Poe’s “Ligeia”.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 