I felt tired all day, although I did get about five hours sleep last night, which is normal for me.
I didn’t get any writing done on the novel today. I was too tired all day and most of the evening, and didn’t wake up or have any energy until I started updating my Amazon’s author’s page around 10:00 p.m. Earlier, I updated my ads for Nocturne and Click and A Tale of Hell and scheduled the posting of one of two for various times during this month.
I just finished reading the short story “Kansas City Ganges” by Henri Colt on FictionontheWeb.co.uk.
It’s a really neat little story. I recommend it.
Reading “Kansas City Ganges” felt really good to me. I guess I just needed to read something good. I have been watching movies and surfing YouTube of late. Sometimes I just need to hear/read a good story. Some of the most fun I have had recently has been listening to audio books and classical music on a German classical music station that I can get via the Internet. I was listening to Derek Jacobi read The Odyssey earlier. That is a really beautiful telling and a wonderful story. I can understand why it’s remembered after…what? 2,500 years? Hearing a master speaker like Derek Jacobi read it is a wonderful experience.
I have been listening to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in my car. It’s a struggle to get through it, not because of the narration or writing though. Both are great. But the story is so da—- depressing. I don’t recommend reading this if you are depressed or feeling down. It definitely won’t lighten your day any and it may nudge you closer to the brink. Still, it is a good story, expertly, if not beautifully written. I checked out Sinclair’s bio on the Internet recently and found out that his primary writing background was as a journalist. That explains a lot about his writing voice.
There are several audio-books that I need to just sit down and focus on and finish in one sitting. One is Stephen King’s Christine (if I can find disc 2). Another is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also have Methuselah’s Children by Robert Heinlein, though it’s not as intriguing to me as the first two.
In hardcover, I need to finish Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I just find it hard to sit down for very long and focus on one book. Follow me on Goodreads, if you want to see all the other books I should be finishing.
It’s almost 2:00 a.m. and I have to rise at 7:00. I must go to bed.
Good night.
Phil Slattery will read the beginning of his upcoming novel The Spy Who Escaped from Hell at the Farmington Writers Circle, 5:30 p.m. Thursday, September 13, 2018, at the Cosmic Café, 220 West Main St, Farmington (next to 
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 