Tag: The Art of Writing

“Write Drunk. Edit Sober.” from Live to Write – Write to Live

Here is some good advice, but be sure to read the entire article.  “Suddenly Jamie” is not advocating boozing as a means of opening the doors of perception (as the Beat Generation and others tried long ago),  but attaining a certain mindset, a certain perspective, without altering the senses chemically.

Personally, I have tried writing while drinking, and for me it doesn’t work.  I can’t focus on ideas for very long.   My coordination is off making  typing impossible.   My handwriting (my first drafts and initial ideas are usually by hand) becomes increasingly sloppy.  And I soon fall asleep.   I do get ideas, but I can manage little more than to jot them down on a cocktail napkin.

For me, writing requires clarity of mind and I do my best work while sitting in a coffee shop in a hard chair at a table while drinking black coffee or soda or iced black tea and writing in a notebook. Sometimes, I write well, as today, on my laptop at home with the TV off, but sometimes I become distracted or my mind wanders.   Sometimes, not as often as I should though, I take some time to simply contemplate where I want to take a story and go smoke a pipe of good tobacco under the tree in my front yard or at the picnic table in the back, depending on where the shade is best.   Those places and non-alcoholic beverages I find help my mindset, but coffee shops (like at the Barnes and Noble in Midland, TX, or at the now defunct Hastings in Farmington, NM) tend to be my favorites.  Anyway, I digress.  I will let you get on with the article.

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Blogging can be scary. Some days, it feels like you’ve been pushed on stage and asked to do stand-up. The guy who was on before you totally killed it. The crowd was laughing in the aisles and peopl…

Source: Write Drunk. Edit Sober.

Grammar-ease: Passed vs Past and Other Confusing Words

In my editing endeavors recently I’ve encountered a lot of words that spellcheck doesn’t always catch and so it prompted me to share a few of them with you. Passed (verb) vs Past (prepo…

Source: Grammar-ease: Passed vs Past and Other Confusing Words

Fiction by Phil Slattery: “Murder by Plastic” (2013)

When Alan Patterson awoke, he found himself naked and duct-taped to a wooden chair with duct tape sealing his mouth. His head throbbed. The night was hot and humid and sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked a few times to clear them. He noticed a large, sharply dressed man sitting on another wooden chair a few feet away. The man seemed very serious and squinted through small, piggish eyes.

Glancing around, Alan saw that he was in a dilapidated warehouse. A half dozen younger, just-as-sharply dressed, just-as-serious men stood behind the seated man. One held a bucket of water. On a small work-bench  to his left, Alan saw a hacksaw, a blowtorch, pliers, a claw hammer, a skinning knife, and a meat cleaver. He also saw a dozen stolen credit cards he had recently bought from Joey “Snake Eyes” Abandonato and had intended to sell.

imageThe large man reached inside his suit and pulled out a driver’s license. He scrutinized it and then looked at Alan’s face for several seconds. “This is a crappy photo of you, Mr. Wilson,” he muttered. He tossed the license onto the floor. “You may not know my face, but you know who I am. I am Don Antonio Vespucci. I live down the street from you.” The Don gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as his entire body seemed to tense. He shifted in his chair and then, apparently trying to relax enough to speak, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m the father of the boy you ran down while speeding through our neighborhood three weeks ago.”

Alan’s eyes widened and he shook his head violently while trying to shout through the duct tape. “No! I didn’t do it! I’m not Steve Wilson!”

The Don raised his voice, drowning out Alan’s muffled protests. “I can’t begin to describe what you did to my family. No one should go through the agony of having a son die in his arms! Do you know what it’s like to get a phone call telling you your child is in critical care? Your entire world collapses in a heartbeat!” Don Vespucci slammed his fists onto the arms of his chair. Then he seemed lost in thought while he adjusted his tie and fought back tears. “Isn’t it strange how lives can change in a heartbeat? The critical moment in my son’s death lasted only a heartbeat. He ran into the street to get his baseball while his mom turned her back for only a heartbeat to say hello to Joey there and his wife Maria.” He nodded to indicate the man to Alan’s extreme left.

Alan turned his head as far as possible and looked into the cold, reptilian stare that had earned Joey his moniker. “Joey?” Alan tried to say under the tape. “No! Forgive me, Joey! Forgive me!”

The Don continued. “When Joey saw my son run into the street, he glanced up just in time to see you speed over my Tony Jr. He recognized your car, your rear license, and the back of your head!”

Alan wept as he tried to shout from under the tape, “Joey, forgive me! Tell him I was in Jersey then!”

Again, the Don paused to calm down and assume a more professional tone. “Normally,” said Don Vespucci, “I try to meet all the new people in our neighborhood as soon as someone moves in. Unfortunately, I’ve been busier than usual lately and haven’t had time to visit anyone. Had I been able to introduce myself to you and had stressed, as I normally do, the value of family in my life and how I like things done in my neighborhood, perhaps we wouldn’t be here.”

Tears streamed from Alan’s eyes and he shook. “Please, take the tape off!” came out only as “MnnmMnNmMnmMm.”

“We might not have come to this regrettable situation if you hadn’t decided to scurry out of town like a cockroach when you found out whose son you had just killed. It disgusts me that you abandoned your family to save your life! You’re fortunate that I have principles so I don’t hurt anyone’s family. At this point, I have more respect for the rats that’ll feed on your eyes than I do for you. Had you come to me after the accident and accepted responsibility, I might actually have had some admiration for you. I still would’ve killed you, but I would’ve killed you quickly.”

Alan began to shake his head again as his eyes bulged from their sockets as he tried to scream “I just stole Wilson’s identity!” through the duct tape.

“Don’t waste the few breaths you have left. If I wanted to hear your lies, I’d have Joey take the tape off.” The Don breathed deeply through his nose and exhaled as if he were trying to relax. Anger rose in his voice. “What kind of idiot runs to Brooklyn where we can just snatch him off the street? You should have at least left the state.” Don Vespucci stretched out a hand toward Joey. “Gimme the hammer. We’re going to start with the foot that was on the gas and work our way up. Pete, keep the water handy. We don’t want Mr. Wilson to pass out from the pain. We want him to experience every heartbeat of this.”

Alan struggled against the duct tape and again tried in vain to scream through the tape, “I’m not Steve Wilson! I bought his credit cards from Joey just two weeks ago!”

As he watched Joey smirk as he handed a hammer to the Don, Alan remembered his last night with Maria at Noel’s Motel and began to weep. As she pulled on her clothes, she warned him: “Joey’s smarter than you think. It wouldn’t surprise me if he knows about us already. He has ears everywhere. Me, he’ll just beat, but you — well, just don’t let him find out.”

###

Just as an experiment, I thought I would post one of my own stories tonight and see what the reaction is.  “Murder by Plastic” has been previously published in “Everyday Fiction” (March, 2013) and in “Fiction on the Web” (October, 2015).

The Month in Horror Releases: September

Watch for these upcoming movies!

Ryan's avatar

It’s that exciting time of year, with summer winding down and fall just around the corner, where the genre saves its best for last. September is kicking things off strong, too, with the release of some of the year’s most anticipated releases—Rob Zombie’s 31, Demon, Blair Witch and so much more will be making an appearance this month, so buckle up! But before we get started, here’s what I watched in August:

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New Microfiction by Ryan C. Bradley: “Material World”

You feel it closing in all around you. It’s down the hallway with the slanted floorboards with their warped bulbs of hardwood. You can feel it as you jiggle the handle of the doors to your daughter’s room and it jiggles in your hand like a loose tooth. There it is, all around her.

"Oppression" by Isabella Quintana October 21, 2014
“Oppression”
by Isabella Quintana
October 21, 2014

Your daughter is the picture of innocence, rocking in a tiny chair, hugging her Barbie close. You think of the way she cried when she brought Barbie into the bath and the doll’s hair clumped and pulled off at the scalp when she tried to brush it and how happy she was when you spent the next week switching that Barbie out for other’s with more hair so your daughter thought that Barbie’s hair was growing back. When you looked again, the original’s hair was longer and fuller, and the others bald. You didn’t tell your daughter, but you switched it back.

How could this thing be in her?

But as you get close you feel the air around your daughter and it’s cold, like stepping into a freezer on a summer day.

You rip the Barbie out of her hand. She cries out. You tell her this is for her own good, and see the tears in her eyes. She is too young to understand. You snap the doll over your knee, and for a second you believe your daughter is safe.

There’s a static in the way it comes out of the Barbie into you. It adjusts to its new home, in a way that you never adjusted to yours. It is you now.

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Ryan C. Bradley has previously published fiction in The Gothic Blue Book V, apt, Pinball, and others. His nonfiction regularly appears in Wicked Horror, Dread Central, and Diabolique. In 2015, he won the 2015 JP Reads Flash Fiction Contest. His first novel, Friday the Furteenth, is being serialized at Channillo.com. You can learn more about him at https://ryancbradleyblog.wordpress.com/.

New Poetry by Marieta Maglas: “Evil Earths” (third of three poems)

Screaming voices shattering the inner mirror of love
Clattering to nothingness, searching freedom in space,
Bloody songs tightly warping their blue heaven above
In the thin and chill air disappearing without a trace,
O’er sad whispers wind whipping through the wounds
In the symphony of demons’ dreams as a hot disguise,
Bloody voices needing to build up stomping grounds,
Buried danger sprouting out to keep growing in size,
The salty tears of liquid souls forming watery waves,
Beauties in the road waiting to face with their fear of death,
Still screaming while drowning in the cold watery graves,
Tearing the silence with their groan and bleeding breath.
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Marieta Maglas
Marieta Maglas

Ardus Publications, Sybaritic Press, Prolific Press, and some others published the poems of Marieta Maglas in anthologies like Tanka Journal, edited by Glenn Lyvers, The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry, edited by Yossi Faybish, A Divine Madness: An Anthology of Modern Love Poetry, edited by John Patrick Boutilier, Near Kin:A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler, edited by Marie Lecrivain, Three Line Poetry #25, edited by Glenn Lyvers, ENCHANTED – Love Poems and Abstract Art, edited by Gabrielle de la Fair, and Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace and Love, edited by Madan Gandhi

New Poetry by Marieta Maglas: “Blind Reality” (second of three poems)

Hollow-eyed shades
of human beings,
human beings
cogitating on jazz music,
jazz penetrating the silence
of the bleeding angels,
angels in a fight for
the awakening of this blind reality,
monetization of
the objects & spaces, asylums,
sexual harassments
for anxious women, prostitution,
deadly ocean waves,
terrorist attacks and
Islamist militancy,
racism,
multiple vortex tornadoes
to damage gas stations,
ISIS’s strategies,
public executions, crucifixions,
vegetation fires,
emblazoned clothes
and precious stones,
children murdered
in egregious crackdowns,
meteorite impacts,
wars,
illegal immigration,
exposed naked bodies,
powerful quakes striking
near the plate boundaries,
changes
in refugee policies,
kidnappings, sales of
stolen artifacts, drugs,
protests blocking roads, landslides,
macroeconomic policies,
casino culture,
silent strategies of democracies,
food securities
for starving people,
food price increases,
Monsoon rains
and flash floods,
nuclear disasters,
smiling volcanoes,
human cells mixed up with
animal embryos,
sphinxes, thermal shocks
caused by global warming,
dengue fever, songs,
warming parties, temporary work,
seasonal unemployment,
low wages,
alcoholic cocktails,
ill people not displaying symptoms,
Zika and Chikungunya viruses,
birth defects, theatrical triumphs,
crime watchers,
new hairstyles,
glacier calving,
different drivers having
different styles to run their cars,
cars blinking their headlights
while their motors scream,
screaming trees and revolvers
that shoot up walls to write lyrics,
lyrics of jazz penetrating the silence
of the bleeding angels,
angels in a fight for
the awakening of this new reality.
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Ardus Publications, Sybaritic Press, Prolific Press, and some others published the poems of Marieta Maglas in anthologies like Tanka Journal, edited by Glenn Lyvers, The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry, edited by Yossi Faybish, A Divine Madness: An Anthology of Modern Love Poetry, edited by

Marieta Maglas
Marieta Maglas

John Patrick Boutilier, Near Kin:A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler, edited by Marie Lecrivain, Three Line Poetry #25, edited by Glenn Lyvers, ENCHANTED – Love Poems and Abstract Art, edited by Gabrielle de la Fair, and Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace and Love, edited by Madan Gandhi.

New Prose Poetry: “I am Assaulted.” by Larry Thacker

In constant struggle with some barely met
demon-god’s angels, just over my shoulders,
along the path of my spine, hovering near
my ears, observing every thought, watching
my faulty movements, keeping time on a watch
I hear ticking but have yet to find hidden
among my debris. Counting breaths. Whispering
their dreaded counting of days. Moving with me,
forever me. I have lost count of their faces.
Their choruses beg attention, un-focusing me,
in languages I’ve given up hope understanding,
an alien tongue lashing, familiar to maddening.
I catch only fragments of messages, tones,
inflections, infections. My struggle, a prayerful
resentment, to find a perfect key, my own
tabula meditatum psychonum. Something to eek
the translation toward wholeness – some gift to
weaken cracks into the sealed gate where they
stand hunched about, listening to my weakened
fists pounding on the other side. They command
my waking hours and somewhere in my dead
sleep, my dreams un-spared. They frighten
my inner workings, these messages, urgent.
I spot wings in the corners of my eyes, shadow-
wrapped in life’s clutter. I turn, they evade,
cleverly plunging from sight. This awful game
they insist upon. They distract me from my days,
a thirsty tick just out of reach, drawing my energies
almost too slowly to notice. Slowly, like the many
voices growing in the veins of ancient trees.
 I hear you, yes. Oh, by the gods I hear you…

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Larry D. Thacker is a writer and artist from Tennessee (US). His stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review and The Emancipator. His poetry can be found in journals and magazines such as The Still Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Mojave River Review, Broad River Review, Harpoon Review, Rappahannock Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the poetry chapbooks, Voice Hunting and Memory Train and the forthcoming full collection Drifting in Awe. He is presently taking his MFA in poetry and fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan College. More stuff at:www.larrydthacker.com

New Prose Poetry: “Remains” by Larry Thacker

I am bound to only the portions of books you’re paging through, a forced patience as you deliberate over the aged leather bindings and titles, of chapter and verse, of gradual plot developments and story arcs, the lovingly slow conflicts unraveling over black on beige onion skin thinness, so hauntingly unrushed even for me with the bottomless well of time in this shaded condition. Long uninterested in my own company.
 
I hear your steady breath mouthing words as you read and it still aggravates hell from me. I would gladly hover here, over your shoulder for years, as this slightest presence, a forever company in poetry and story, word, letter, and pen, if I could but accomplish something more than some slightest benign breeze on the curtain. An afterthought after a boring day. An aftertaste after a sip of tepid wine.
But sometimes, when you have finally given in to sleep’s call in the early morning dark and startle suddenly awake to find that book turned to a different page than you remember, it is then I have just barely mustered enough of a whisper to turn the page, yet you have missed it and I am exhausted in this lost state. Again, undetected. Again, left to my own retched company.  
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 Larry D. Thacker is a writer and artist from Tennessee (US). His stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review and The Emancipator. His poetry can be found in journals and magazines such as The Still Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Mojave River Review, Broad River Review, Harpoon Review, Rappahannock Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the poetry chapbooks, Voice Hunting and Memory Train and the forthcoming full collection Drifting in Awe. He is presently taking his MFA in poetry and fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan College. More stuff at:www.larrydthacker.com
 

The Ghosts of M.R. James are in the Cards with “Monsters & Miscreants”

When I found out I’d be supporting a small, two person operation passionate about bring their love of M.R. James and gaming to the tabletop I tore off my pocket trying to get to my wallet.

Source: The Ghosts of M.R. James are in the Cards with “Monsters & Miscreants”

David’s Haunted Library: A Stitch Of Madness

dpwha's avatarHorrorAddicts.net

David's Haunted Library

28473957What do you get when you have a man driven to madness by an old urban legend, a girl who owns a rag doll that might contain the spirit of her dead mother and a man who may have just gotten a visit from the devil? You get A Stitch Of Madness by A.J. Brown. This anthology contains three stories that all have to do with someone going insane and having to deal with the consequences.

The first story and my favorite  in this book is Catherine’s Well, it deals with a man named Johnny who goes to prison after being accused of killing his best friend Buster. As Johnny tells his story we see that the truth behind the murder is much more complicated. What I liked most about this story is seeing how Johnny reacts to Buster’s decent into madness. At one point Johnny asks himself why he…

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The Farmington Writers Circle Meets Tonight

20151027_130831The Farmington Writers Circle meets tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Hastings Hardback Café in Farmington, NM.  The topic for the night will be how to generate reviews for your work.

The July meeting was attended by Gloria, Yvonne, Vicki, myself, and by author Delsheree Gladden (delshereegladden.com), whose website describes her as “USA Today Bestselling Young Adult and Romance Author”.  Delsheree provided some valuable insights into the world of publishing.

The Farmington Writers Circle is nascent organization of Farmington-area writers who are interested in finding or developing innovative ways of publicizing and marketing their works.   Meetings are usually round-table discussions, although occasionally a member will lead the discussion when it deals with an area of the member’s expertise.  The public is invited to attend.  There are no fees or requirements to attend meetings, which are usually held on the second Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Hardback Café. Writers of any and all genres or non-writers with an interest in the art are welcome.  For more information, contact me via this website.

Morbid Meals – Tribute to Shaun of the Dead – Strawberry Cornettos

Yum!

Dan Shaurette's avatarHorrorAddicts.net

MorbidMeals2EXAMINATION

20160718_191914For ice cream sundae treats in America we have King Cones and Drumsticks, but the rest of the civilized world has the Cornetto. In Shaun of the Dead, a couple of mates share a pair of Strawberry Cornetto cones which were bought while blissfully not noticing the zombies shuffling down the street. Good thing those Cornettos gave them the energy to fight off the zombies and defend the Winchester pub.

A Strawberry Cornetto is described as being “a crispy baked wafer coated from top to bottom with a chocolatey layer, combined with delicious vanilla-flavour ice cream and strawberry fruit ice, topped with strawberry sauce and white chocolate curls.”

That means we could assemble some from a quick trip to the shop to fetch:
Sugar cones, Magic Shell chocolate topping, strawberry ice or sorbet, vanilla ice cream, strawberry syrup, and white chocolate chips. I will describe how to…

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