I have been searching for royalty-free, public domain images that I can use in my works, particularly Shadows and Stars. Here’s my first idea for its cover using something from Pixabay. Let me know what you think. Of course, the proportions are for an e-book on Kindle, and I would have to modify it for a standard 6″x9″ cover, which I might do tomorrow. But you get the idea of what it might be like.
I am closing in on finishing the first draft of Shadows and Stars. It’s time for me to start (probably late) some of the peripheral tasks of producing a book. I think I will start designing a cover for one thing. I hope to have Shadows and Stars published by a big, traditional publishing house rather than self-publishing, but in any case, I will need at least an idea of what my vision of its cover should be, if, for no other reason, than to give the cover artists a starting point. I will go with whatever looks the best and expresses the emotional impact the best. At least that’s my initial thought. Any comments or suggestions? I am open.
As I develop ideas, I will probably post them here for comment. Of course, I won’t make a hard and fast decision until all is said and done.
I will probably need an agent as well. I should start checking the Internet and researching how to find and select an agent. I learned a little about this in the Farmington Writers Circle, but I need to get serious about it now.
I am not planning any parties until a publisher accepts it. I am just going to intensify my research in the final stages of producing a novel.
Hasta luego.
As I often do, I am having trouble sleeping tonight. So I have been surfing the net and going through my electronic files looking for some flash fiction that I recently wrote and that I would like to submit somewhere. However, in the process of doing that, I ran across some early works, one of which I thought I would share here. I have not published it in any of my collections. It was originally published in the online magazine “Six Sentences” over ten, maybe fifteen years ago. The main requirement for stories to be published in “Six Sentences” was that they had to be six sentences or less in length.
The story is entitled “Warehouses and All”. It is based on a true story told to me in 1989 by a woman who had been an assistant agricultural attache to the US embassy in Somalia. At the time, I was working in the Defense Attache Office in Cairo. One weekend, I decided to take a trip to Luxor to see the temple and Valley of the Kings. The lady and I shared a horse-drawn carriage for several minutes. I forget our destinations. In the story, I changed the narrator to an American ex-pat working in the Somali oilfields for various reasons. Otherwise, the story is very close to the story she related to me. As you can see, it was quite a challenge to reduce her story to only six sentences, but I believe I pulled it off well. If Six Sentences is still up and running, you may be able to find the original story. I received several compliments on it.
By the way, while I was in Luxor, I stayed at the Jolie Ville Hotel. Apparently, it is still doing well. I recommend staying there if you are ever in Luxor.
Warehouses and All
I met the world-weary expatriate American at a garden party in Egypt in ’89, several months after he had left the Somali oilfields. He remembered that outside his barracks near Mogadishu there had been warehouses full of rice donated by foreign charities to combat the perpetual famine. The impoverished, inept government had no trucks to distribute the rice and fighting among factions within the government insured none could be arranged while their arcane laws kept them from simply opening the doors. So the rice sat as starving women tried to glean the few grains they could from what had fallen off trucks hauling it in or from what had leaked out through cracks in the walls. One night he awoke to commotion and found that the warehouses were in flames. “The rice had sat so long that it had rotted, so the government burned it―warehouses and all,” he said with a look that spoke volumes about his exasperation with the world.
Hasta luego.
I got some good writing done over at El Toro’s tonight while I had a bowl of their excellent tortilla soup. I changed the plot to make major revelations about the characters of the two protagonists at the novel’s (Shadows and Stars) end. The final denouement should be very interesting. It’s not a plot twist. It’s more of a character twist, rather the twists of two characters.
After I came back home, I did some household chores, talked to the wife on the phone, and then I started re-thinking the covers for Alien Embrace and Click. I searched Pixabay (they have the best royalty-free images for my purposes), and found a couple of potential covers. The one for Click, required only adding title, subtitle, and byline. The one for Alien Embrace required some modification in Pixlr (a poor man’s Photoshop, but it does all I need and it does it well), but it turned out well. Here they are for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think. Now almost all my books have a person’s photo on them, except for A Tale of Hell… I will give that one some consideration. It may be difficult to find a photo of a person that captures the spirit of that particular work. The books will be updated with the new covers within the next 72 hours.
By the way, four of my books will be free tomorrow, Friday the 15th. Check them out at my Amazon author’s page.
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.
Tonight, I submitted my children’s book, Bobby the Brown Pelican, to Austin Macauley Publishers. This is a big publishing company. Their website says to expect a response in three weeks, which will be November 29. Wish me luck.
Bobby has previously been rejected by Shadow Mountain Publishing. However, it is uncommon to have a work accepted on the first attempt. I consider myself doing well if one of my manuscripts is accepted on the fifth or sixth attempt. In the past, when all rejections were sent by US mail, some writers proudly papered their walls with rejection slips. I am surprised that I have received as few as I have. I would love to be published by Austin Macauley, but if not, c’est la vie.
Bobby is a young brown pelican who is afraid to fly and to dive into the sea, which is the way brown pelicans hunt. His parents, particularly his dad, give him positive reinforcement and teach him to have confidence and to do what he needs to in spite of his fear. He follows his dad, who teaches him to fly, and then he teaches him to dive and catch fish. In critical points in the action, the narrator asks the reader what he is thinking and feeling in order to establish a connection between the reader and Bobby and to give any parent reading this to a child a chance to discuss how the child would feel and what he would do if he were in Bobby’s place. This book also helps parents talk with their children and help them overcome the fear children have of disappointing their parents. This books promotes interaction and discussion between children and parents on very basic fears common to children, such as of disappointing their parents, fear of being hurt, etc.
I will post updates as they occur.
Hasta luego.
Yesterday and tonight, I have made some progress in critical plot junctures in Shadows and Stars.
I went to Dumas yesterday to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. I stayed to have a good, tasty dinner of Enchiladas Verdes at El Toro. Afterwards, I stayed close to three hours to write. I got home around 9:30 or 10:00. I had a pain (muscle strain) in my right leg, so I took some Tylenol PM and lay down and listened to more of The Exorcist on audiobook until the pain went away and I could sleep. I dozed off at some point, then finally rose and went to bed around 1:30. Then I had an idea pop up around 2:00, so I had to get up and write it down before it escaped. So I didn’t get to sleep until close to 3:00. I had to rise at 7:00 to go to work. It’s a good scene, a fun scene that will mix together comedy, drama, and suspense into a few tense minutes. You’ll have to read the book to find out more. I don’t want to give away any spoilers.
Tonight, I went into Dumas to pick up some groceries. Afterwards, I had the special plate (chile relleno, tamale, enchilada, taco, chalupa, rice and beans) at El Toro, then stayed to write for a couple of hours. I made good progress jotting down ideas I have been having since this morning and filling plot holes in Shadows and Stars.
I decided to make a playlist for each of my works for sale on Amazon as well as for my works in progress. Though this will take some time, it will be interesting and fun…when I am not writing for whatever reason. I hope some of you have been listening to the playlists I already have up. I am really experimenting with trying to capture the mood of a work by producing a sort of soundtrack, hoping that if people listen to the soundtrack, they might become interested in the book. Sort of like when you buy a movie soundtrack at a store without having seen the movie. The soundtracks also help stimulate ideas or set the mood to work on Shadows and Stars. If you listen to any, let me know what you think. I am still tinkering with setting the tunes in an order that best captures the ebb and flow of the mood in the work.
I have only a couple of rudimentary test videos up now. I hope to make some headway soon in developing more professional ones.
I am really enjoying the audiobooks available on YouTube. I have really been catching up on my reading. I can turn on an audiobook, stretch out, and it’s like having someone read a long bedtime story to me. However, my bedtime stories tend to be quite serious in nature: works by Kafka, William Peter Blatty, Dostoevsky, Hesse, etc.
Although my website is not getting many views, the few I get are from all around the world. Today, I had visitors from:
The Arkansas County Writers Circle website had only three views today, all from Nigeria. Maybe someone from Arkansas is living in Nigeria. In any case, I am happy to have them visit me…unless it’s that phony prince that pesters people for money and promises them a fortune in return. I should find a spot in hell for him in The Man Who Escaped from Hell.
By the way, I am taking a break from reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. It’s too depressing. I am now focusing on finishing The Exorcist, which says something about The Jungle. Imagine a book so depressing that one reads The Exorcist for something more light-hearted and fun. After reading the first dozen or so chapters of The Jungle, I have to wonder how humanity has survived for all these millennia without cannibalizing itself. I know Sinclair worked in a stockyard as part of the research for the book, but after having done that and then sitting down to write it, it’s a wonder that Sinclair didn’t just hang himself or lose himself in alcoholism.
That’s all for tonight. Stay tuned. Hasta luego.
Just as I did in Farmington, NM, I am endeavoring to start a writers circle in my newly adopted home of Arkansas County, Arkansas. Although I have not yet researched the local area thoroughly, it seems there are no writers’ organizations in Arkansas County. I have started a website for the new Writers Circle, which I call the Arkansas County Writers Circle. I chose to go with the county name vs. a town’s name, because the towns around here are rather small and to have a sizable group to make the effort worthwhile, I will need to invite people from all over the county. We will probably meet in Stuttgart, the largest town in the county, but near the north end, or in DeWitt, which is in the center of the county. I reside near Gillette at the southern end of the county.
Of course, as no town for meetings have been determined, we have not had the first meeting. I hope to have the meetings as I did in Farmington, on the second Thursday of each month at about 6:30 pm. I will have to also determine the best places for posting flyers and notices as that seemed to work best in Farmington. I will also advertise on local community bulletin boards, with chambers of commerce, art organizations, etc.
I am also developing new social media accounts for the Writers Circle. I have one already on Twitter: @countywriters. I will probably also develop a Facebook page and a Tumblr account as well. Of course, the WordPress website will connect to those.
Unfortunately, in order to have the Arkansas County Writers website, I had to sacrifice and overwrite my Jack Thurston website. It was not getting much attention or traffic anyway. It was fun though. If you followed Jack Thurston, you were no doubt surprised to find your link to that was now the Arkansas County Writers Circle. My apologies for that. I made the decision suddenly and acted on it quickly.
There are several writers organizations in Arkansas, but there don’t seem to be any in or near Arkansas County. I have contacted the Art Center in Stuttgart. They don’t know of any (or at least the lady I spoke to didn’t know of any).
I have contacted the Arkansas Writers website. They will post an announcement about the Arkansas County Writers Circle in their news section on Monday, November 4.
If you live in or near Arkansas County, please let me know if you would be interested in participating in our Writers Circle. There are no fees and writers of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, journalism, fantasy, comic books, graphic novels, romance, action, horror, etc.) are welcome.
Even if you don’t live in or near Arkansas County, feel free to follow the website. I hope to have some excellent news and articles up soon.
One playlist that I neglected to mention during my most recent post on my playlists is one entitled “Tales of Hell“. As you know, I am working on a supernatural horror novel called The Man Who Escaped from Hell. In my research for the novel I have read a few books on hell, read several articles, and so forth (mostly though I will rely on my own concepts and imagination).
However, as I watch a lot of YouTube and I fond of horror and supernatural tales, I am collecting any videos on people who say that they have actually been to hell into a playlist called “Tales of Hell.” No surprises there. This will allow me to gain a few different perspectives, but it will also allow me to see the similarities between the stories. I feel certain that most people’s concept of hell will be the same because of cultural biases; hearing the same tales, myths, and legends; and because of certain archetypes in human psychology. If you have read Joseph Campbell or have seen any of his interviews with Bill Moyers from a few decades back, you will know that Professor Campbell that commonalities in religions and mythologies worldwide are due to commonalities in the human psyche.
I don’t believe that anyone has actually been to hell and returned to tell the story. I think these stories are hallucinations experienced during the changes in brain functioning and body chemistry while being influenced by a person’s guilty conscience while that person dies. On those rare occasions that someone returns to life after being clinically dead for a few minutes, they report the experience of having gone to hell, but which is probably more closely related to the ultimate “bad trip”.
But my novel is a work of fiction, not a documentary. In it, I try to make a few points about life and death and the spirit and conscientiousness and several other things. The best way to do that is by showing the protagonist actually going through hell.
It will be interesting to see how this playlist develops. It will probably make a great horror anthology in its own right.
By the way, I have written around 80,000 words for The Man Who Escaped from Hell. I hope to finish it soon after I have finished Shadows and Stars. I put it on hiatus until I can finish Shadows and Stars because I have been getting more and more ideas for Shadows and Stars than I have for The Man Who Escaped from Hell.
I have added another playlist to aid in writing Shadows and Stars, During one part of the story, the protagonist, Daryn, and his guide/bodyguard, Sero, are trekking across the deep back country. Though trying to avoid people, as they proceed up a steep-walled canyon, they find a huge festival (think Walpurgisnacht) of believers in primitive religions occupies the far end, though they try to avoid it, a wrong turn takes them directly into its heart. The festival is called the Diegaro (the Gathering of the Great Gods).
So that I can whip up ideas on how to describe the Diegaro, I have started collecting the type of music that would be played there into a YouTube playlist entitled Diegaro. This consists of primitive, pagan chants, songs, and instruments but modernized. The songs are mostly strong and powerful (think The Hu), though I will probably also have some softer, meditative music in there as well (think Carlos Nakai). I will listen to these periodically and try to gain inspiration and ideas on how to describe the action at the Diegaro.
Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
Just as I did in Farmington, NM, I am endeavoring to start a writers circle in my newly adopted home of Arkansas County, Arkansas. Although I have not yet researched the local area thoroughly, it seems there are no writers’ organizations in Arkansas County. I have started a website for the new Writers Circle, which I call the Arkansas County Writers Circle. I chose to go with the county name vs. a town’s name, because the towns around here are rather small and to have a sizable group to make the effort worthwhile, I will need to invite people from all over the county. We will probably meet in Stuttgart, the largest town in the county, but near the north end, or in DeWitt, which is in the center of the county. I reside near Gillette at the southern end of the county.
Of course, as no town for meetings have been determined, we have not had the first meeting. I hope to have the meetings as I did in Farmington, on the second Thursday of each month at about 6:30 pm. I will have to also determine the best places for posting flyers and notices as that seemed to work best in Farmington. I will also advertise on local community bulletin boards, with chambers of commerce, art organizations, etc.
I am also developing new social media accounts for the Writers Circle. I have one already on Twitter: @countywriters. I will probably also develop a Facebook page and a Tumblr account as well. Of course, the WordPress website will connect to those.
Unfortunately, in order to have the Arkansas County Writers website, I had to sacrifice and overwrite my Jack Thurston website. It was not getting much attention or traffic anyway. It was fun though. If you followed Jack Thurston, you were no doubt surprised to find your link to that was now the Arkansas County Writers Circle. My apologies for that. I made the decision suddenly and acted on it quickly.
There are several writers organizations in Arkansas, but there don’t seem to be any in or near Arkansas County. I have contacted the Art Center in Stuttgart. They don’t know of any (or at least the lady I spoke to didn’t know of any).
I have contacted the Arkansas Writers website. They will post an announcement about the Arkansas County Writers Circle in their news section on Monday, November 4.
If you live in or near Arkansas County, please let me know if you would be interested in participating in our Writers Circle. There are no fees and writers of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, journalism, fantasy, comic books, graphic novels, romance, action, horror, etc.) are welcome.
Even if you don’t live in or near Arkansas County, feel free to follow the website. I hope to have some excellent news and articles up soon.
Last night, I started listening to The Exorcist, read by its author (William Peter Blatty) on Youtube. This is great stuff. Blatty has a terrific voice for narrating horror. I recommend listening to it, particularly as Halloween is rapidly approaching. I am not far into it now, The narrative is approaching the evening party where Regan first shows evidence of her possession to the world.
Just a note to inform everyone that I am developing a YouTube channel. I have not posted any videos yet but will be posting a few test videos soon just to learn the ins and outs of the system and the capabilities of my rudimentary video and audio equipment.
In the meantime, I have put together a few playlists. If you want to view them, go to YouTube and search for “Phil Slattery” (of course) and playlist. When I did this just now, the first nine playlists that appeared were all mine. The others involving Zumba, etc. are from another Phil Slattery in Ireland or elsewhere. There are several Phil Slattery’s on the Internet, but very few involved in writing fiction.
All the playlists are for my own entertainment/ edification/ education at this point. However, two will be of interest to those following my writing. They are entitled “The Man Who Escaped from Hell” and “Shadows and Stars”. These are playlists I put together to help capture the mood of my novels in progress: Shadows and Stars and The Man Who Escaped from Hell, the work that is to follow Shadows and Stars. Think of them as soundtracks to novels similar to movie soundtracks. Were these two novels to be made into movies, these are the soundtracks I would suggest.
Hopefully soon I will be posting some videos concerning my writing and other interests of mine.
On October 18, I posted a comment on the “Writer’s Digest” article “How to Write a Science Fiction Novel” by Robert Lee Brewer published on August 19, 2019.
The article is well written and gives some good places for a novice to start exploring writing a sci-fi novel and coming to know its trials and travails. However, I had to throw in my two cents about writing science fiction and writing in general, because I started out reading books on how to write, but it helped me little. The thought that kept going through mind was that if the author of this book on writing was a great writer, why haven’t I heard of him? Why isn’t he making a living just writing fiction? Why does he need to write books like this. Yes, Stephen King wrote a great book on writing, but it’s hard to find another famous author who has.
The key for me to learning how to write has been to read great writers, read their comments on how to write, and to learn everything I can about English grammar (here I have an advantage over most because I have a verifiable knack for linguistics and have college credit in about six languages). The two books that have helped me more than all the others are The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and Webster’s New World Guide to Punctuation. Both are very concise and very short and inexpensive. I recommend them highly. Most importantly though is to WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! and READ! READ! READ!
Anyway, here is a link to the “Writer’s Digest” article for your edification and/or entertainment. My comments are currently awaiting moderation, but will hopefully be up soon. It will be interesting to see the responses I receive.
As soon as the comments come up, I will update this article.
On October 18, I posted a comment on the “Writer’s Digest” article “How to Write a Science Fiction Novel” by Robert Lee Brewer published on August 19, 2019.
The article is well written and gives some good places for a novice to start exploring writing a sci-fi novel and coming to know its trials and travails. However, I had to throw in my two cents about writing science fiction and writing in general, because I started out reading books on how to write, but it helped me little. The thought that kept going through mind was that if the author of this book on writing was a great writer, why haven’t I heard of him? Why isn’t he making a living just writing fiction? Why does he need to write books like this. Yes, Stephen King wrote a great book on writing, but it’s hard to find another famous author who has.
The key for me to learning how to write has been to read great writers, read their comments on how to write, and to learn everything I can about English grammar (here I have an advantage over most because I have a verifiable knack for linguistics and have college credit in about six languages). The two books that have helped me more than all the others are The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and Webster’s New World Guide to Punctuation. Both are very concise and very short and inexpensive. I recommend them highly. Most importantly though is to WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! and READ! READ! READ!
Anyway, here is a link to the “Writer’s Digest” article for your edification and/or entertainment. My comments are currently awaiting moderation, but will hopefully be up soon. It will be interesting to see the responses I receive.
As soon as the comments come up, I will update this article.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 