Many have been told and honestly believe that writing a certain number of words each day is the surest way to becoming a successful writer. Even though I don’t deny it, sometimes I feel it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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.
The Most Beautiful Lines… — irevuo
“The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” – J.D. Salinger I have always considered these […]
Broken Covers – Jack Higgins
Monday musings on Australian literature: Tasma (aka Jessie Couvreur) — Whispering Gums
This week Bill (of The Australian Legend) is running an Australian Women Writers Gen 1 Week, through which he plans to highlight Australian women writers from our first generation of writers, which he defines as “those writers who came before the 1890s and the Sydney Bulletin ‘Bush Realism’ school, although many of them continued writing […]
via Monday musings on Australian literature: Tasma (aka Jessie Couvreur) — Whispering Gums
Five common words we’re all using incorrectly — At the BookShelf
Stark naked? Not quite… Shutterstock Simon Horobin, University of Oxford Many people think they know their main language intimately. But there are many words and phrases in English that people often use wrongly. Whether these erroneous uses truly count as “wrong” is up for debate – after all, a mistake that has become widely adopted […]
via Five common words we’re all using incorrectly — At the BookShelf
Echo: A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel — Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha
What the fuck? Last thing I remember was watching a strange, disc-shaped craft slowing to a hover over my back yard… A hot soccer mom tour guide gestures to me while addressing a crowd of her peers: “And so you can see, my fellow soccer moms, that we keep Kent Wayne, Man Whore Extraordinaire, inside […]
via Echo: A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel — Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha
Lycanthrope
I saw a clip on YouTube, a re-run of an In Search of episode on werewolves. Many years ago, the first horror novel I started but have yet to finish was called Lycanthrope.. It’s one of those works that once you have conceptualized it, it never goes away. It has been lingering in the back of my mind for probably over twenty years. I started on it, but never got too far. This is probably just as well. My fiction-writing skills then were rudimentary at best. Now that I am much more professional and skilled, I will probably take it up again eventually, though not right away. I want to finish Shadows and Stars and then The Man Who Escaped from Hell first and in that order.
In fact, I have another science fiction novel i started but never finished. Its working title is The Long Pig Inquiry, but its final title will probably be The Wreck of the Starship Essex. It is about collisions at lightspeed, travel between universes/dimensions, cannibalism in space, and the ability of people to override their feelings of mercy and sympathy in order to achieve a goal. I might finish that one after The Man Who Escaped from Hell. I have maybe 30,000+ words in it.
In any case, to help remind me to work on Lycanthrope, to start researching it again (I did a lot of research on lycanthropy and werewolves years ago), and to help set the tone and mood for it, I have started yet another playlist on YouTube. Of course, this is entitled “Lycanthrope“. Check it out if you get the chance.
By the way, there is a difference between a lycanthrope and a werewolf. A lycanthrope is a man who believes he is a work. This has been a recognized psychiatric disorder for many years. A werewolf is a fictional creature, a man who can change into a wolf or wolf-like monster.
I like werewolf stories, because they symbolize the duality of man’s nature, the eternal inner struggle of a person between the civilized, human, controlled side and the wild, primitive, animalistic side. I think this is a struggle all of us can relate to at one time or the other.
Rainer Maria Rilke: Archaic Torso of Apollo — Vox Populi
there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.
via Rainer Maria Rilke: Archaic Torso of Apollo — Vox Populi
PORFINIFIGUS — keithgarrettpoetry
Keith Garrett PORFINIFIGUS Where he comes from nobody knows, he does live, A myth, a fable, only a child believes, one who has seen. Along the riverbank of a small Eastern town in Maine, A place of play for a boy named Luke, this is no dream. Many fantastic tales he does tell, who will […]
Poems by Asoke Kumar Mitra — Galaktika Poetike “ATUNIS”
Poems by Asoke Kumar Mitra This Night My heart longs to join Into your song Today the autumn has come At my window Shall forgive you for the wounds Silent worship at the temple of midnight Strange light of the sky In your eyes Silent salutations My heart wanders In the restless wind I […]
I Cannot Be sure – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon — Megha’s World
Originally posted on parallax: dVerse Poets – Open Link Night Photo: found on pinterest.com “A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest … because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.” Terry Pratchett I Cannot Be Sure The darkly raven fixes me…
via I Cannot Be sure – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon — Megha’s World
What irks me — Reena Saxena
it always irks meinvasion of my own spacewhat irks more than thatrefusal to acknowledgemy right to personal space https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/sunday-writing-prompt-ugly-words/
Werewolf Week Continues: Byzantine Verse on Lycanthropy — SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
Surrounded by the Halloween spirit because I have small children and I like trashy television, I got interested (again) in continuities between ancient monsters and modern storytelling. Inadvertently, this week has become werewolf week. I started with a reference to turning into wolves in Plato. Then, led by the Oxford Classical Dictionary, I delighted in […]
via Werewolf Week Continues: Byzantine Verse on Lycanthropy — SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
Byzantine Verse on Lycanthropy for Werewolf Week — SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
There is a Byzantine didactic poem based on Greek medical treatises. Thankfully, it does not skip the good stuff. The poem is from a collection of didactic verses attributed to Michael Psellos of Constantinople who lived and worked in the 11th century CE. The text comes from the Teubner edition of his poems edited by L. G. Westernik […]
via Byzantine Verse on Lycanthropy for Werewolf Week — SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 