WIP – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

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.

Update October 24, 2020: Progress on Shadows and Stars

Over the last few days I have been working on Shadows and Stars. Currently, I am editing a scene where Mikash and Daryn go to a festival of ivory in the capitol city of Janhalo. As I am not familiar with sculpting ivory, I did a little research on it yesterday. Right now, I am working on developing a better description of an alien city than the one I have currently. Therefore, I went onto YouTube and looked up “Unusual skyscrapers” to stimulate my imagination. The first video I found is really fascinating and has some humor (check out the unofficial names for some of these towers), so I thought I would post it here.

Take care. Wear your mask.

Update: September 30, 2019 Shadows and Stars

Selfie with Lotus in background near Arkansas Post, September 4, 2019

Over the weekend I made some important progress with my novel in progress, Shadows and Stars. Although I have over 80,000 words, there were still some large holes where I could not come up with a good plan to fill them. On Sunday, the 29th, I went to Ameca Mexican Restaurant to have lunch and took my notebook/journal for Shadows and Stars with me as I usually do when I go out to eat or have coffee. After eating (a delicious pollo Chihuahua by the way), I started writing another synopsis of the plot, which is something I do when trying to generate ideas. I try to reduce the entire novel to one sentence, one “elevator pitch”, or what you could find on the back of a dust jacket. The ideas started flowing and I could not stop writing for a few hours. I finally wrote one additional (and important) chapter of about 1,000 words, which I typed into the novel tonight. But, the important take-away is that I finally came up with the entire plot. Now I will continue expanding on that and refining it, until I have the first draft completed, which I hope will be by Halloween. Then I will refine that until I have the novel as perfect as I can make it. Wish me luck.