“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle (Reviews Wanted)

To commemorate the birthday of famed alchemist John Dee, “Diabolical: Three Tales of Vengeance and the Sorcerer Jack Thurston” is free today.

Please go to amazon.com/author/philslattery or Goodreads or any other social media to leave a review.

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

I am a fan of the old school horror practiced by such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Edward Lucas White, and Arthur Machen.  I endeavor to make a story as terrifying and suspenseful for the reader as possible without resorting to gratuitous blood and gore for a simple shock or quick feeling of disgust.

This collection of three short tales is perfect for those who have only a few short breaks to escape into the hidden world of horror, black magic, sorcery, and anger-fueled revenge.

You can find this and other works at my Amazon author’s page:  www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.

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.

Show your appreciation for these stories by leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.

If you enjoy horror, check out my collection of horror short stories A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror: Stories of wizards, werewolves, serial killers, alien worlds, and the damned, which includes these stories.

call for bouncers — The Poetry Department . . . aka The Boynton Blog

Have you submitted a poem to the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest only to be disappointed by rejection? Well, if so, here’s your chance to show your stuff. The contest committee is teaming up with poetrynight to present Boynton Bouncers. Boynton Bouncers will be held at the Bellingham Alternative Library on Monday, August 12, 2019, […]

via call for bouncers — The Poetry Department . . . aka The Boynton Blog

Bella’s Babbles: Copy Writing Skills — The Bipolar Writer Collaborative Mental Health Blog

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.comAlthough I was editor in chief (EIC) of my high school newspaper, I have never had the greatest copy writing skills. When I was the EIC, my copy writer was amazing and incredibly skilled. As result, the product that we printed, the quality of the words on the paper, were the…

via Bella’s Babbles: Copy Writing Skills — The Bipolar Writer Collaborative Mental Health Blog

Read “Human Moments in World War III,” a sci-fi story by Don DeLillo — Biblioklept

“Human Moments in World War III” by Don DeLillo A note about Vollmer. He no longer describes the earth as a library globe or a map that has come alive, as a cosmic eye staring into deep space. This last was his most ambitious fling at imagery. The war has changed the way he sees the […]

via Read “Human Moments in World War III,” a sci-fi story by Don DeLillo — Biblioklept

“Diabolical: Three Tales of Jack Thurston and Revenge” is Available on Kindle and in Print

Please go to amazon.com/author/philslattery or Goodreads or any other social media to leave a review.

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

I am a fan of the old school horror practiced by such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Edward Lucas White, and Arthur Machen.  I endeavor to make a story as terrifying and suspenseful for the reader as possible without resorting to gratuitous blood and gore for a simple shock or quick feeling of disgust.

This collection of three short tales is perfect for those who have only a few short breaks to escape into the hidden world of horror, black magic, sorcery, and anger-fueled revenge.

You can find this and other works at my Amazon author’s page:  www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.

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.

Show your appreciation for these stories by leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other social media.

If you enjoy horror, check out my collection of horror short stories A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror: Stories of wizards, werewolves, serial killers, alien worlds, and the damned, which includes these stories.

Update: July 10, 2019. Word Count Blues

I now have around 64,000 words of my first draft of my sci-fi novel, Between 80,000-100,000 is my goal. I worked on it some yesterday and very early this morning when I could not sleep. I am working on it now, though I have had very little sleep over the past 2-3 days. Various things have been keeping me awake at night (too much tea before bedtime, basic insomnia, etc.). Unfortunately, once awake, it is hard for me to fall asleep during the daytime and I have to press on to nightfall in order to sleep. I am writing now until I can no longer stay awake and will essentially pass out in my bed.

Anyway, I have been thinking about word count.  Having set the desired word count for my novel, I find that at times I wonder: how in the world am I going to come up with ideas to reach my goal? At other times, I have so many ideas that I fear 100,000 won’t be enough words to express all my thoughts and I worry about how I am going to condense everything to fit within my limits.

One nugget of writing advice that I picked up long ago from the movie “Wonder Boys” (based on the novel by Pulitzer winner Michael Chabon) is that a writer must make decisions about what to include or not include in his/her novel. I am finding that to be very true. I have so many ideas at times that I know I can’t fit them all into 100,000 words, but if I try to go over the set limit, I will end up in the same situation as Professor Tripp in “Wonder Boys” and have a never-ending novel thousands of pages in length that I can never finish.

At times, when the goal seems nearly unreachable, I have to remind myself that I have written short stories nearly 20,000 words in length, and therefore writing another 20,000 for this novel is quite doable.

By the way, everyone interested in writing should watch Wonder Boys. Very entertaining with humor only a writer can truly appreciate..

Echo: A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel — Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Men have breaking points. Stick them in a cubicle and harangue the fuck out of them, take away all their opportunities to express their aggression, ring them in with a masterful cage of passive-aggressive bullshit, and repeat ad nauseum for forty fucking years… Well, you get the idea. Which is why I’m planning my escape […]

via Echo: A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel — Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Remembering Rip Torn’s “I . . . am a writer” speech from Wonder Boys — Literary Hub

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZYdm-iUIrZI%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent

Beloved stage and screen actor, geriatric bank robber, and Norman Mailer hammerer Rip Torn passed away on Tuesday, after a long battle with genteel society. He was 88. There have been many wonderful Torn performances down through the years, from his Tony-nominated early role as a sadistic young ne’er-do-well in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of…

via Remembering Rip Torn’s “I . . . am a writer” speech from Wonder Boys — Literary Hub

What the F$#K? Should You Swear or Not in Your Blog Posts? — The Art of Blogging

Odds are you guessed this terribly, terribly wrong. And if you guessed “Luck be in the air tonight” maybe this blog post won’t help you much anyways… Blogging using some cuss words has become quite trendy among some incredibly popular bloggers and social media users, but I’m wondering if it’s really worth it? Or beneficial? […]

via What the F$#K? Should You Swear or Not in Your Blog Posts? — The Art of Blogging

Book Review – No Sea, No Land (French title : Ni Terre, Ni Mer) by Olivier Megaton, Nicola Genzianella and Sylvain Ricard

Book Review – No Sea, No Land (French title : Ni Terre, Ni Mer) by Olivier Megaton, Nicola Genzianella and Sylvain Ricard

https://vishytheknight.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/book-review-no-sea-no-land-french-title-ni-terre-ni-mer-by-olivier-megaton-nicola-genzianella-and-sylvain-ricard/
— Read on vishytheknight.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/book-review-no-sea-no-land-french-title-ni-terre-ni-mer-by-olivier-megaton-nicola-genzianella-and-sylvain-ricard/