The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
I have been trying to come up with ideas to improve my marketing. I realize that none of my current works would ever be in the running for a Pulitzer or something similar, but I want to market them as best as I can and thereby improve my lot in life as much as possible.
As part of that, I decided today to take some of the pages from the (maybe temporarily) defunct Chamber magazine and move them to this website. The reasons for this are:
I need to associate myself and my works with the horror genre as much as possible. Ergo, I need to put more horror-related material on my website. The easiest and fastest way to do this was to move some pages from The Chamber to Slattery’s Magazine, which I am not updating currently. When I went to The Chamber to move them, I noticed that my following seems to have grown even though I have not been working with it. People are apparently coming to it for the information that is on there. This justifies my decision to move the pages.
This also brings to Slattery’s Magazine a lot of specific and obscure terms that can be used as keywords to draw more visitors to my site.
In addition, I am also changing the title slightly to see what effect that has on visitation.
I think I will also toy with putting up more horror-related articles and narrow the sites focus a bit. I may have gone too broad recently by opening the website up to any kind of literature. However, I will still publish non-horror articles, particularly if they concern my own non-horror works or other topics that may be of interest to horror writers or writers in general.
I will probably be making a few more changes as I contemplate a new strategy, particularly as I draw to a close on finishing my sci-fi/horror novel Shadows and Stars. This is a good time to get a jump on marketing that.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
The following works are now available at my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/philslattery.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
I started reading Equus awhile back, and, even though I was enjoying it, put it aside for whatever reason and didn’t get back to it until a few days ago.
This is a fascinating story, definitely drama and tragedy, but also something of horror as well. It is based on an actual event the author Peter Shaffer heard about in 1973. He wrote the play shortly thereafter. If you are not familiar with the story, it is set in England in the early 70’s. A psychiatrist interviews a 17-year-old boy, Alan Strang, who blinded six horses. Initially, the boy responds only in advertising jingles, but gradually he is able to tell of the events and motivations that led to his horrendous act. I have never seen Equus performed, though I would love to. The staging in the book is quite imaginative and I would love to see how it’s carried out.
I saw the film version with Richard Burton, which dates from the mid-70’s (as best I recall). It’s good, but not as good as the film adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which Burton also starred.
As you probably know, since July 1, I have put aside Shadows and Stars to work on my play Incommunicado. It’s about a man who retreats to a ghost town in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico for a drunken weekend of writing and escape, but ends up fighting personal demons.
I picked up Equus again primarily to help me format the script for Incommunicado, but going through the story again is eye-opening. I see nuances I did not notice before. I also now appreciate even more the creativity Peter Shaffer must have had when writing Equus. I also appreciate the staging more, because I can see how his minimalist design focuses the audience’s collective mind on the essential events of the play’s events and the Alan Strang’s story. I can also appreciate how Shaffer knew something of psychology or was able to learn it quickly in order to create a plausible, intriguing backstory for Alan Strang. Even Alan’s nonsensical, endless recitation of jingles has a reason behind it.
This will help me formulate some ideas for Incommunicado. I have got most of the first act down and parts of the second and third (I had originally planned Incommunicado to be a one-act play, but that won’t be long enough to get out my ideas). Most of the first act switches between monologue and soliloquy, with the main character, Quinn Gallagher, often addressing the audience directly. In acts two and three the focus will be on the dialogue between Quinn and a local woman named Suzie. Each act represents one day of Quinn’s weekend. Act 1 is his arrival on Friday. Act 2 is Saturday. Act 3 is his departure on Sunday. Of course, I am trying to make Quinn complex and intriguing. I am learning though, that for Quinn to have a complex and intriguing conversation with Suzie, Suzie must also be complex and intriguing and there must be some form of conflict either between them or between them and the world or some combination thereof. Otherwise, the play devolves into Quinn moralizing, philosophizing, and lecturing.
I am taking a minimalist approach to the set design and to the number of characters. In addition to Quinn and Suzie, there is only one other, Ruth Baxter, the owner of the Bed and Breakfast where Quinn stays. I might be more imaginative in set design now that I am reviewing Equus.
Of course, during this, I am also toying with how I can market the play now, and that consists mainly of mentioning in these posts whenever I can or in conversation. Choosing the topics discussed in the play will also help its marketability. I don’t cheapening the play by mentioning specific products (like I have seen in Stephen King stories), but choosing topics that have a universal appeal or to which many people can relate. For example, battling alcoholism is a major topic of discussion in Incommunicado.
If you get the chance, by all means see the play version of Equus (the option I recommend the strongest), read the book, or see the movie. There has been a recent production of Equus starring Daniel Radcliffe, and movie produced of it, but I have unfortunately not had the pleasure of seeing either. I will try to see both as soon as I can.
Don’t forget to like this post and subscribe to my website. I would love to hear your comments on this post.
I have a few minutes to kill, so I thought I would jot down a few random notes about what I have been doing lately.
That’s all for now. Ciao!
My wife and I discussed the Shadows and Stars cover tonight. Here is her idea of what it should be. Let me know what you think. I like them both. Hers is really good, I think.
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.
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.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 