Working late at night in an IHOP in Midland, Texas, May 2019 (photo by Francene Kilgore-Slattery)

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:

Visitors to my website on November 5, 2019, came from these nations.

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.