Category: The Art of Writing

Information on the art of writing in general

“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle and in Print

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.

My Quick, Initial Impressions of Michael Crichton’s Next

On Monday I drove to Dallas to meet my wife and family and lead them to our new residence in deepest, darkest Arkansas. The drive is six hours one way. In Texarkana (about half way), I stopped at Books-a-Million for a quick break, to get some iced tea at Joe Muggs, and to find out if they had any new audio-books available. There I found Next (published in 2006) by Michael Crichton. At five hours length, it seemed to be ideal for the remainder of my journey to Dallas and most of the journey back (I picked up Pride and Prejudice on the return leg). After the end of the novel was  an interview with Michael Crichton, which was probably the best part of the audio-book, because it provided insight into how he got the idea for the novel and Mr. Crichton discussed his fascinating views on the insane world of corporate patenting and marketing of gene technology. It’s a shame that his views weren’t as clearly expressed and understandable in the novel as in the interview.

During the interview Mr. Crichton said that he wanted to make the book reflect the complexity of the issues surrounding gene patents and corporate ownership of genes. That came across very well in the book. Mr. Crichton touched on numerous topics, which made for a complex novel.  What did not help was that instead of focusing on the stories of a few characters, he seemed to bring in one or two new characters every few minutes (remember I had the audio-book).  Not until the end of the novel did he focus on a few main characters. I felt like I needed a notebook and pen to keep track of all the characters and the minor plots behind each, of which there seemed to be a thousand. Most of these plots focused on the legal and ethical problems of gene technology, which, while often intriguing, did not make for an exciting book.  Indeed, while the first few pages showed promise of adventure with a detective trying to surveil someone who had stolen several embryos, after that there was little true action until the last few chapters. There is some corporate espionage and black marketing of genes and theft of chimeras (mostly human-animal hybrids) to make for some excitement, but nothing as action-packed as Jurassic Park.

If anyone wants to know why economy of characters is important, he/she should read this novel.

Next was not so bad that I threw it out the car window. It did have its highlights and lighter moments and probably because I have something of an analytical mind (as my friends and acquaintances tell me), it did keep me intrigued and curious as to how everything would be resolved. However, for me it was something of a mild disappointment considering that it came from the author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and many other fine, entertaining novels.

Would I recommend this book to others? It wasn’t a waste of time, I will say that, but its focus on legal and ethical problems would probably bore some. I would recommend this to people who are interested in the law and issues behind the evolving world of gene technology and research and the corporate patenting of it or to people who are interested in the law and/or technology in general. Fans of Michael Crichton would probably find it interesting, but I doubt anyone would find it exhilarating.

I may write some more on this later, but these are my initial impressions. I have posted this review on Goodreads also.

Hasta luego.

 

 

“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle and in Print

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.

The lucky guy

Beautiful little poem. Unusually “concrete” (probably an old poetic term now) for short fiction, but the writing is clear, concise, sweet, while the wording is simple yet poignant.

Shreya Roychoudhury's avatarVirtual Marionette

Those were the days of our
premature adulthood when we used
to stay covered with people. Identity
crisis was slowly giving way to a
resplendent personality to grow and
stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Of all the faces that I came across
during those days, one stayed with
me. It is one of a kind, a face that
one cannot usually forget. I met him
accidentally at a gathering, on a
spring afternoon. His sharp eyes
narrated a million stories and I
reflected, seriousness can be
addictive too. He smiled at me and I
stood there, speechless. That day
witnessed an undying feeling. This
wasn’t as red as love, nor was it as
white as pure friendship. It was
something else, a deeper shade of
pink.

That meeting turned out to
be shorter than my
expectations as I had to
leave for another place but
our…

View original post 271 more words

Ernest Hemingway Claims The World Breaks Everyone — Short Story Scribe

The last scene of “War Springs Eternal,” was a dream and in the dream, the main character was Ernest Hemingway.{I had been reading a biography.} The dream was so vivid, that when I woke, I grabbed my cellphone, opened my memo app, hit the microphone icon and immediately dictated the details of the dream. I […]

via Ernest Hemingway Claims The World Breaks Everyone — Short Story Scribe

“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle and in Print

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.

Crawl: Gators and a Hurricane Are a Wild Combination

Here’s a neat review. So long as you don’t take them seriously, these cheesy, older flicks can be fun in an MST-3000 sort of way.

John Greco's avatarTwenty Four Frames

CrawlI live in Florida and every year for six months starting on June 1st and going through November 30th we are inundated us with hurricane preparation news and fears by our local weather gurus. They beg us to prepare, know your evacuation routes, have plenty of water, food and be sure important papers are wrapped in plastic bags, all just in case. While tracking hurricane paths has improved tremendously Mother Nature has a way of doing its own thing. Preparation is important, but six months of it is emotionally draining. We’re now in November and the season is almost officially over. By November you can start breathing a sigh of relief for six months before it all starts again. This hurricane season Cat. 5 Dorian devastated the Bahamas and just last season Hurricane Michael massacred the Florida Panhandle. The point is, hurricanes are not to be taken lightly.

View original post 357 more words

Writing that First Chapter: 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Starting Your Novel – by Anne R. Allen… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

I’ve had questions from several writers recently about how to approach a first chapter. New writers hear so many rules about what they must do in the first line, first paragraph, and first chapter that they can feel paralyzed, afraid to write a word. Let’s hope that NaNoWriMo is helping some of you fight that […]

via Writing that First Chapter: 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Starting Your Novel – by Anne R. Allen… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle and in Print

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.

Update: November 12, 2019, Busy Weekend and Veteran’s Day

Writing at IHOP, 2019. Photo by Fran.
Working late at night at an IHOP in Midland, TX, May, 2019

Saturday and Sunday,  I spent a lot of time organizing my house after the recent move. I wanted to write, but as my wife notes, I feel more like writing in a clean environment. I had never noticed this until she mentioned it sometime back, but she is absolutely right.  I spent two days cleaning and organizing and come Monday evening, I really felt the drive to write.

During most of the day on Monday, however, I spent exploring the local area up to Stuttgart looking for places to hold writer circles meetings for the Arkansas Writers Circle that I am trying to establish. Not much luck on that front. No Starbuck’s in this area and the one coffee shop I found in DeWitt (420 and Turnrow is the name of the shop) closes at 7:00. It is a very nice place though and I hope to go there when I can. It is a nice, clean environment for relaxing and writing.  The arts center in Stuttgart was closed when I arrived. I will try contacting them later.

I did visit the Stuttgart and DeWitt campuses of the Philips Community College in DeWitt and Stuttgart. I hoped to contact their English professors, who I thought might know of any writers groups locally, if any one does. No one from the English department at either was there when I arrived, but I left a card. This afternoon Professor Liddell (of both campuses) called and left a message saying that there are no writers groups in the area to his knowledge. He also said that he would help spread the word about mine and that I could call him with questions. That is a big step for this project. Thanks, Professor Liddell.

I ran a couple of errands and ended up in Dumas. There I went to El Toro Mexican restaurant to write up some notes and get some delicious tortilla soup (the weather here was cold and rainy all day). I spent a couple of hours there and then went home. At home, I spent quite a few hours, typing up the new material I had concocted at El Toro into Shadows and Stars. I ended the night’s writing about 2:00 a.m., but still have a little to do when I go home tonight. My original goal was to make Shadows and Stars reach between 80,000 to 100,000 words. I am now over 91,000. I am trying to wrap this up. I will probably have between 100,000 to 110,000 by the time I finish. This will be the first draft. Then I polish the first draft until I am satisfied, which may be a while.

Also, yesterday I received an email from Austin Macauley publishers saying they had received Bobby the Brown Pelican.  It should be about three weeks before I hear something.

This morning as I was prepping for work, I came up with a few more ideas for children’s picture books. I remembered that I had started another call Alison the Odd Little Alien about a little girl named Alison, who travels to another planet, where she learns what it’s like to be the foreigner/alien in another land. I got the idea from one of my wife’s pupils, who suggested I write a story about aliens after I read Bobby the Brown Pelican to them. It shouldn’t take long to finish it. Probably less than three weeks. If Austin Macauley accepts my work, maybe I will submit Alison… next.

2019 German Book Prize Winner — At the BookShelf

The link below is to an article reporting on the winner of the 2019 German Book Prize, Bosnian-German author Saša Stanišić for ‘Origins.’ For more visit:https://publishingperspectives.com/2019/10/sasa-stanisic-wins-2019-german-book-prize/

via 2019 German Book Prize Winner — At the BookShelf

Monday musings on Australian literature: Guest post from Bill of The Australian Legend — Whispering Gums

It’s been two years since I last published a Guest Post, for no any other reason than that the idea slipped off the radar as other busy-ness took over. However, during a recent email correspondence with (relatively new) blogger Bill, the idea re-popped into my head, and so I asked him, as he explains below. […]

via Monday musings on Australian literature: Guest post from Bill of The Australian Legend — Whispering Gums