Four of My Works Will Be Free on Friday, February 23.

Phil Slattery, 2015

On each Friday over the next few months, I will be giving away one or more of my works.

On Friday the 23rd, I am giving away A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, and my latest work, Nocturne.

A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, I offer a look into the minds of people who perpetrate horrors, from acts of stupidity with unintended results to cold-hearted revenge to pure enjoyment to complete indifference. Settings range from 17th-century France in the heart of the werewolf trials to the resurrection of the Aztec black arts to a medicine man’s revenge in the Old West to the depths of Hell to mob vengeance and modern day necromancy to sociopathic serial killers and on to alien worlds in the distant future.

In The Scent and Other 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.

In Click, Frank Martinez, a policeman with the Corpus Christi Police Department, has unintentionally shot and killed an unarmed man when called to intercede in a domestic violence case. To recover from the guilt while the incident is under investigation by the CCPD, Frank’s fiancée arranges for him to stay on a secluded island owned by her father’s former law partner. While dozing one night on a lounge chair in the yard, he awakes to find two hitmen slipping onto the island and breaking into the cabin. Are they after him? Are they after the cabin’s owner? Most importantly, how is he going to reach his pistol in his luggage in the bedroom?

Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover 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 he wrote during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of that time as 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. Kindle was published on February 15, 2018.  This is the first time it is being offered for free as a promotion.

All of these are available on Kindle at amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Poem: “Come with Me, My Love”

Phil Slattery, 2015

This is a poem I wrote in the late 80’s to early 90’s, most likely some time between 1988 and 1991, when I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, dating around and frequenting the bars in Old Town Alexandria.  I don’t recall the circumstances under which I wrote this, just the feeling of these being the emotions of walking home around 2:00 a.m. after closing time.

This is the opening poem of my first volume of verse, Nocturne:  Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover.   Nocturne will be free on Amazon Kindle on February 23.  I published it on Valentine’s Day of this year.

Going through my computer files tonight, I believe I have discovered some poems unintentionally left out.  Stand by for a second edition.  I hope you enjoy this poem.

 

Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of life and laughter
as empty as an empty
bottle rattling down a cobblestone
street blown by a chill
wind

Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of lust and passion
as lonely as a lonely
man pacing off a deserted street
under the brisk October moon
its cold light muted
in the mists

As the fog embraces you
like a one-night stand in a town
of dying dreams where
hopes lie scattered on the barroom floor
with cigarette butts and the dust
of endless roads

Bring me to that ultimate pleasure
in your all-consuming eyes.
Let us become one
and share the horrors of this
world
as only
lovers can.

 

 

 

The Second Edition of “Nocturne” has Just Been Submitted for Publication

Just now, I submitted the second edition of Nocturne:  Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover for publication on Amazon Kindle.  It contains about half a dozen poems not included in the first along with a few format/editorial changes.  I believe they make the work stronger and more powerful and much more poignant.  It should appear for purchase by Friday, February 23.  Visit my Amazon’s author page for a copy or to find out more about my works.

My Interview with KSJE Will Air on March 7 at 10:30 A.M.

ps4 SLATTERY
Photo from about 2007.

In February, I recorded an interview on my works and writing with “Write On Four Corners“, a program with KSJE 90.9 FM, the Farmington (NM) National Public Radio station.  The interview will air on March 7, 2018, at 10:30 a.m.  The interview covered a wide range of topics concerning my writing and my writing plans for the future including upcoming work.  Be sure to tune in.  The program was hosted by Traci HalesVass, retired assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at San Juan College in Farmington.  The interview will be available on podcast after the broadcast.

To celebrate this, on the day of the broadcast, I am giving away e-copies of all my works available on Amazon Kindle.  These include A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, Alien Embrace, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, Diabolical:  Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover.  Follow this link to my Amazon Author’s page to find out more about each work.

A Quiet Tuesday Night

Phil Slattery, 2015

Tonight is uneventful.

I was notified yesterday via direct message on Twitter that Namri’d Publishing of Edgewood, NM, is awarding me an advertising package of “two reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble and sharing of your book on Facebook and Twitter at least weekly for one month” valued at $100.  I have not heard of them and don’t know how they got my name, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  They asked for a copy of one of my books and a cover photo, so tonight I sent them A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.  We’ll see how this goes.  I tend to be leery of deals too good to be true, especially if they come out of the blue, but I do not see that I have anything to lose here either.  They are not asking for any money (at least at this point).  I looked up the company on the Internet, and it seems to be a straightforward, small publisher.  If things go as well as I hope, then this will be a good deal for us both and I will always be grateful to them for this opportunity.

Interestingly, I have passed through Edgewood many times.  For some time, my wife has lived and worked in Midland, TX, and when I go to see her, the most direct route from Aztec, NM, where I live, takes me through Edgewood.  Often, I stay the night at an America’s Best Value Inn in the town of Moriarty, which is just east of Edgewood.  Edgewood is about as typical small town America as they come, situated on the edge of the rolling plain just east of Albuquerque.  From what I have seen, it is a beautiful little community with a large nature park.

Other than that, I have collected some information together for my taxes and have been advertising my upcoming interview on KSJE (90.9 FM, March 7 at 10:30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time) on Goodreads and sending out a few invitations to listen to it.

I usually keep the TV on in the background, and these days it’s usually on YouTube, which I love for the wide variety of programming (admittedly, some is of dubious sources, but nonetheless entertaining), but you can also find great articles on topics you can’t find on regular TV, such as staging of classical plays like “Death of a Salesman”, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, “The Iceman Cometh”, or “Waiting for Godot”.  You can also find great biographies.  One of my favorite programs of all time was A&E’s Biography.   I can now watch its re-runs.  The biography of John Steinbeck is playing now.

So now I sit at my laptop, typing this article, having hot tea, watching Biography, and waiting for my wife to call.  After I finish this post, I will start my writing for the night.

 

Poem: “Come with Me, My Love”

Phil Slattery, 2015

This is a poem I wrote in the late 80’s to early 90’s, most likely some time between 1988 and 1991, when I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, dating around and frequenting the bars in Old Town Alexandria.  I don’t recall the circumstances under which I wrote this, just the feeling of these being the emotions of walking home around 2:00 a.m. after closing time.

This is the opening poem of my first volume of verse, Nocturne:  Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover.   Nocturne will be free on Amazon Kindle on February 23.  I published it on Valentine’s Day of this year.

Going through my computer files tonight, I believe I have discovered some poems unintentionally left out.  Stand by for a second edition.  I hope you enjoy this poem.

 

Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of life and laughter
as empty as an empty
bottle rattling down a cobblestone
street blown by a chill
wind

Come with me, my love
and I will show you
nights of love
full of lust and passion
as lonely as a lonely
man pacing off a deserted street
under the brisk October moon
its cold light muted
in the mists

As the fog embraces you
like a one-night stand in a town
of dying dreams where
hopes lie scattered on the barroom floor
with cigarette butts and the dust
of endless roads

Bring me to that ultimate pleasure
in your all-consuming eyes.
Let us become one
and share the horrors of this
world
as only
lovers can.

 

 

My Interview with KSJE Will Air on March 7 at 10:30 A.M.

ps4 SLATTERY
Photo from about 2007.

In February, I recorded an interview on my works and writing with “Write On Four Corners“, a program with KSJE 90.9 FM, the Farmington (NM) National Public Radio station.  The interview will air on March 7, 2018, at 10:30 a.m.  The interview covered a wide range of topics concerning my writing and my writing plans for the future including upcoming work.  Be sure to tune in.  The program was hosted by Traci HalesVass, retired assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at San Juan College in Farmington.  The interview will be available on podcast after the broadcast.

To celebrate this, on the day of the broadcast, I am giving away e-copies of all my works available on Amazon Kindle.  These include A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, Alien Embrace, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, Diabolical:  Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover.  Follow this link to my Amazon Author’s page to find out more about each work.

Spring “Diabolical” Giveaway

Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge will be free March 2, 7, and 20; April 6; and May 1.

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 horrifying revenge for the death of his wife, daughter, and brother. Jack 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.

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.

Check back frequently.  More giveaways are coming in the near future.

Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Alien Embrace Giveaway on Four Days in March

Alien Embrace will be free on March 1, 7, 9, and 20.

Alien Embrace is the story of Logan Rickover, an officer on a spaceship set to explore the alien world of Stheno D. Captured by a xenomorph that wants to use him as food for its young, he must fight a battle for control of his own mind as the alien feeds him hallucinations to keep him complacent until its young hatch. Can Logan regain control of his mind in time to escape back to his ship?

Ron Baker, Amazon Customer, gives this story five stars and comments:

“This short has exactly what I like in science fiction: planet exploration and bizarre otherworldly aliens, in this case insectoid. The horrendous purpose the aliens have for the hapless astronauts who make planetfall to find the numerous previous missing exploration teams is grisly. I love the mystery of the planet and the authors device of alternating from the aliens bizarre perspective then switching to the astronauts point of view.”

Check back frequently.  More giveaways are coming in the near future.

Four of My Works Will Be Free on Friday, February 23.

Phil Slattery, 2015

On each Friday over the next few months, I will be giving away one or more of my works.

On Friday the 23rd, I am giving away A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, Click, and my latest work, Nocturne.

A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, I offer a look into the minds of people who perpetrate horrors, from acts of stupidity with unintended results to cold-hearted revenge to pure enjoyment to complete indifference. Settings range from 17th-century France in the heart of the werewolf trials to the resurrection of the Aztec black arts to a medicine man’s revenge in the Old West to the depths of Hell to mob vengeance and modern day necromancy to sociopathic serial killers and on to alien worlds in the distant future.

In The Scent and Other 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.

In Click, Frank Martinez, a policeman with the Corpus Christi Police Department, has unintentionally shot and killed an unarmed man when called to intercede in a domestic violence case. To recover from the guilt while the incident is under investigation by the CCPD, Frank’s fiancée arranges for him to stay on a secluded island owned by her father’s former law partner. While dozing one night on a lounge chair in the yard, he awakes to find two hitmen slipping onto the island and breaking into the cabin. Are they after him? Are they after the cabin’s owner? Most importantly, how is he going to reach his pistol in his luggage in the bedroom?

Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover 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 he wrote during those years and compiled them into a dark narrative capturing the emotional turmoil of that time as 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. Kindle was published on February 15, 2018.  This is the first time it is being offered for free as a promotion.

All of these are available on Kindle at amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Phil Slattery’s Sci-Fi Novelette “Alien Embrace” Will Be Free on Amazon February 16, 2018

My novelette Alien Embrace will be free on Amazon February 16, 2018.

Logan Rickover, owner of a hardware store in a small town in Kentucky, has lucid dreams of life as an astronaut that intrude upon his life at any moment. Which of his lives is real? The quiet paradise of Danville or the terrifying jungle world of Stheno D?

Ron Baker commented, “This short has exactly what I like in science fiction: planet exploration and bizarre otherworldly aliens, in this case insectoid. The horrendous purpose the aliens have for the hapless astronauts who make planetfall to find the numerous previous missing exploration teams is grisly. I love the mystery of the planet and the authors device of alternating from the aliens bizarre perspective then switching to the astronauts point of view.”

I will be offering more of my works for free in the upcoming weeks.  Check back often.

Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.

“Nocturne” Has Been Published on Amazon Kindle

On February 14 at about 10:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, I finished and submitted my poetry collection Nocturne for publication on Amazon Kindle.  It has been published.  A print version is in the works.

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.

Check back frequently for updates.

“Nocturne” Has Been Submitted for Publication on Amazon Kindle

On February 14 at about 10:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, I finished and submitted my poetry collection Nocturne for publication on Amazon Kindle.  It should appear within 72 hours from then.  A print version is in the works.

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.

Check back frequently for updates.

“Nocturne” Has Been Submitted for Publication on Amazon Kindle

On February 14 at about 10:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, I finished and submitted my poetry collection Nocturne for publication on Amazon Kindle.  It should appear within 72 hours from then.  A print version is in the works.

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.

Check back frequently for updates.

“The Scent and Other Stories: the Dark Side of Love” Will Be Free on Valentine’s Day, 2018

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.

To order yours and to view my other works as well, visit my Amazon author’s page at: www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Praise for Stories Contained in “The Scent and Other Stories”:

The Scent

“This story has a lovely dreamy quality whilst being unsettling too. It lingers on half processed emotional experiences and leaves the reader asking ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ – feelings that are familiar for so many people.”

“You wrote about something we can all relate to – how, out of the blue, the scent of something evokes a memory of something long past; and the emotions we felt at the time! A clever story …”

“This descriptive piece about remembrance, the thought of what might have been, is a common sad thread that will resonate with those have experienced the pain of that one love lost. Slattery’s use of scent was exquisite as we feel Quinn’s pain and hope that he finds his peace, at last.”

Decision

“Fantastic writing – I held my breath for most of the story. The descriptions of the countryside and the people were beautiful and the tension compelling. This could possibly be the start of a novel or a suite of stories. Thank you very much and good luck with your writing in the future”

“Suspenseful and engaging. The dialogue and descriptions kept pace with the action. Well done.”

A Good Man

“Lots of detail examining an old question of how do you judge a person’s life. It left me wondering.”

“Great job capturing the social climate of the sixties. Good choice for how to present the story – deathbed “confession” by the mother. I enjoyed it.”

The Slightest of Indiscretions

“Excellent writing brings this poignant story to life and makes the reader work to understand more of what might be. Very many thanks for a satisfying, emotionally intelligent read…”