werewolves – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

A Tale of Hell Now Available at Your Local Bookstore by Print on Demand.

As of October 23, 2020, A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror is being printed and distributed by IngramSpark. With their immense distribution network of over 39,000 retailers, A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror is now available by print on demand. Be sure to ask for it at your local book retailer. It will continue to be sold via Amazon in Kindle and in print (though the IngramSpark version will be much nicer).

In this collection of published and previously unpublished stories of horror, I take you on a journey into the minds of people who perpetrate horrors, from acts of stupidity with unintended results to cold-hearted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 Old West to the present and on to alien worlds in the distant future. Order yours today!

A Tale of Hell Now Available at Your Local Bookstore by Print on Demand.

Update: Lycanthrope

I just now reached 40, 246 words on Lycanthrope. According to my scan of publishers on Duotrope, 40,000 words is the minimal word count that almost all publishers will consider a novel.

My best estimate currently is that I will need another 20,000 words to complete Lycanthrope. I have been working on this since the end of December. I stopped work on Shadows and Stars to pursue Lycanthrope because the ideas for it were coming fast and furious. They still are. I work on this almost every night.

I have recently come up with a couple of really good plot twists that should make this interesting. These will bring a supernatural element into the story.

Once I have the first draft finished, which should not be long now, I will do some editing, but I expect to do minimal revision. Of course, that could change. I am coming up with new ideas and I like subtle plot twists. I also like to leave some subtle clues hinting at a denouement, but these could be a red herring too.

This work is being increasingly intriguing for me.

For me, I see the events unfolding in my head and I just write down a description of what I am visualizing. Sometimes the characters take control and I just watch and record.

Hasta luego. I need to sleep.

Excellent Summary of Werewolf Lore

As you know, I have been working on a novel about a modern lycanthrope, called, appropriately, Lycanthrope. I researched werewolves sometime back as well as werewolf movies and videos. This video from YouTube’s Top 5 Scary Videos is an excellent, detailed, quick and dirty summary of werewolf lore from the historical perspective. I will post more werewolf-related material here as I come across it.

Update: Shadows and Stars, Lycanthrope

I haven’t written more on Shadows and Stars recently. I am deciding on a major revision or two and on the final length.

I have resurrected the first novel I worked on way back in the 90’s: Lycanthrope. This is my take on the legends of werewolves but set in present-day rural Arkansas. I am using stream-of-consciousness to make the story more immediate and powerful. I hope to end it with 50,000+ words. The writing is going surprisingly fast. I have been working on it for about 2-3 days and already have 4,000+ words, which, being stream-of-consciousness, I intend to edit or revise very little. The writing is straightforward now, but I hope to develop some plot and character twists to make it more interesting. It should be very interesting for those who enjoy character development and first-person point of view. I am striving to bring out the narrator’s twisted psychology.

I still have a couple of short stories I am working on and a play, “Incommunicado”, which is turning into a complex love story involving a man and a woman who are struggling with their inner demons.

I got a lot done on it recently when I traveled to Midland, TX, to visit the wife. I kept a voice recorder handy as I drove and took down a lot of notes and ideas, incorporating them into the script when I had time after arrival. I haven’t worked on it since returning to Arkansas though. I am going to experiment in developing it by writing up a long dialogue between the two main characters using stream-of consciousness/ automatic writing or whatever the popular term is now. This will hopefully lead me to new ideas and insights. Originally, this was to be a one-act play involving two characters. Now it will probably be three acts involving three characters. It will be set in the present in a remote ghost town in the Gila mountains of southwest New Mexico.