For at least the next few weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at various times to see how that will affect book sales. For example, you probably saw the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each on a few days, sometimes in sequence, to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers.
What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Today, I am giving away copies of the e-version of my only poetry collection Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover in commemoration of the birthday of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, author of A Season in Hell (Une Saison en Enfer)
Nocturne is a collection of my poetry written from the mid-80’s to mid-90s, a turbulent, fluid time in my life in many ways, but especially romantically. I have taken many of the poems written during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of a narrator who descends from romantic love for a woman into a lonely world of alcohol and night clubs, where his only love is the night that envelopes him psychologically, emotionally, and physically. It is about 110 print pages in length and lavishly illustrated with photos I found in the public domain (no, those are not photos of me or my former paramours).
I have tried to make this a wonderful experience for the reader, exploring the bliss of love to the depths of despair and then to resignation to one’s fate in an existential crisis.
Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads!
Arthur Rimbaud age 17
While there, you might want to check out my other work on relationships: The Scent and Other Stories. In this collection of short stories, I explore the dark, sometimes violent, sometimes twisted, sometimes touching side of love, the side kept not only from public view, but sometimes from our mates. Set in the modern era, these stories range from regretting losing a lover to forbidden interracial love in the hills of 1970’s Kentucky to a mother’s deathbed confession in present-day New Mexico to debating pursuing a hateful man’s wife to the callous manipulation of a lover in Texas.
Current headline at Through the Gaps showing illustrations for “Shapeshifter”, “Decision”, and “Sudan”
Through the Gaps has just published my story “Shapeshifter” about a werewolf sighting in France in 1601. For the first time I have three stories appearing simultaneously in one magazine: “Shapeshifter”, “Decision”, and “Sudan”. All are reprints of early works. Many thanks once again to the wonderful folks at Through the Gaps. Shown is a snippet from their current front page.
I had never heard of Maurice Level (the pseudonym of Jeanne Mareteux-Level) before tonight, but after reading a couple of his short stories and a few critques of his work in general, I shall have to find more of his stories.
Level was a French writer known for his macabre stories, which were sometimes staged in the renown Theater of the Grand Guignol. Wikipedia says this about him:
“…Level’s short stories may be weak in characterization and motivation, but they are strong on obsession and violence. Their surprise endings are reminiscent of the stories of Guy de Maupassant. Many of Level’s stories were translated into English in the magazine Weird Tales. [1] As editor John Robert Colombo noted in Stories of Fear and Fascination (2007), Battered Silicon Dispatch Box French critics see Level as the heir of the Symbolist writer Villiers de l’Isle-Adam; British critics, as the successor of Edgar Allan Poe; American critics, as the contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft. Of this fiction, Lovecraft himself observed in Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945), “This type, however, is less a part of the weird tradition than a class peculiar to itself–the so-called conte cruel, in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations, and gruesome physical horrors.” Critic Philippe Gontier wrote, “We can only admire, now almost one hundred years later, the great artistry with which Maurice Level fabricated his plots, with what care he fashioned all the details of their unfolding and how with a master’s hand he managed the building of suspense.” Level’s stories, with their gratuitous acts and mindless brutality, may be seen as precursors of “thriller” fiction and “slasher” films.”
A few of Level’s works can be found on the Internet. I read two tonight: “Under the Red Lamp” and “Last Kiss”. They are quite brief and quite terrifying. In my view, the Wikipedia article above provides a good assessment of what I have read so far. Level begins a story with a first sentence that grabs your attention, then sustains the mystery throughout the tale, until you reach a sudden, horrifying, denouement.
I highly recommend investigating his works when you have the time. He is an excellent writer that deserves more recognition than he has.
Here are a few places to start:
“The Last Kiss” at Moonlightstories.magick7.com A husband, blinded and hideously deformed when his wife threw vitriol in his face after he threatened to leave her, intervenes on her behalf when the case comes to court, preventing her from receiving a long jail sentence. At his request she pays him an emotional visit in which she begs his forgiveness and somehow even manages to kiss him, whereupon … Well, not for nothing is Level feted as a master practitioner of the conte cruel. (Synopsis from vaultofevil.proboards.com)
“In the Light of the Red Lamp” at amalgamatedspooks.com “In the first shock of grief, you sometimes have extraordinary ideas … can you believe that I photographed her lying on her deathbed? I took my camera into the white, silent room, and lit the magnesium wire. Yes, overwhelmed as I was with grief, I did with the most scrupulous precaution and care things from which I should shrink today, revolting things … yet it is a great consolation to know she is there, that I shall be able to see her again as she looked that last day.” Now, six months after his beloved’s death, accompanied by the narrator he prepares to develop the photographs of the dead woman. Slowly the images appear – and a horrible tragedy is revealed. (Synopsis from vaultofevil.proboards.com)
“The Grip of Fear” at Google Books (I haven’t read this yet, but it looks interesting.)
Apparently, many of his works are still available only in French, but some (notably those mentioned above) are available in English. His better known works are: Those who Return, Tales of Mystery and Horror, Tales of the Grand Guignol, Les Portes de L’Enfer, The Grip of Fear, and L’Epouvante.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 