writing – Page 8 – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Update: June 6, 2019, 4:08 a.m.

Occasionally, I have issues with sleeping. Tonight is one of those nights.

I typed some notes I made recently into Shadows and Stars... earlier this evening, watched a little TV, and then tried to get to sleep around 2:00 with no success. So I played a video game until just now and I will try to sleep.

Shadows and Stars… is gradually taking shape. I had a couple of ideas for it while watching TV earlier. Some ideas about society and life as a whole seem to be taking shape as the novel progresses. I suppose it’s because I am thinking along different lines, because Shadows and Stars… involves an alien world (not like the “grays” though; more like Earth people with a few differences) and I have to think about what an alien society would be like. I want to make it different enough to be intriguing, but yet similar enough that readers can easily see the comparisons and contrasts with our world. The aliens also have to have an alien perspective on the universe and on life in general, so I am trying to develop some radical breaks with the way our society views things. I am starting to come to some realizations about our own world, things that we take for granted, but which might seem bizarre to an alien. As part of this approach, I am developing characters with radically different thinking and viewpoints than we have or admit to having on Earth. As an example, one of the alien characters is a reclusive monk named Sato, who lives alone in the deep forest. When two of the main characters come across his cabin in the forest, the main character, the protagonist, Daryn, notices several parchment scrolls of Sato’s meditations lying around. Sato allows Daryn to read part of one. Following are Sato’s observations. I may add more later. Note that Sato calls himself “mad”. He uses this sarcastically and ironically, because it is what the supposedly civilized people of his world call him, because he doesn’t fit in to their society. In reality, he is very astute, but no one recognizes this.

I came up with these in a variety of ways. Some are my own observations and conclusions. Some are derivative of philosophical principles, quotes, or statements or other stuff (for lack of a better term). I tried to make them mystical sounding and somewhat confusing, like something you would expect an alien recluse/philosopher to say when he is penning his thoughts in his primitive, remote cabin in the woods in the dark of night. Remember: I tried to write these from an alien perspective and these are only a few of his “musings”.

Let me know what you think.

The Musings of Sato the Mad

Lies are truths wrapped in shadows; truths are lies drenched in sunlight.
The beast that eats me is evil, but I am evil to the beast I eat.
A man believes not what he needs to believe, but what he desires to be true.
More gods dance in the night than roam in the daylight.
As with man, there are fewer gods on mountaintops than in valleys.
Just as corpses are nectar to maggots, so are lies to despots.
All hearts are red.
Does a lizard need to remember yesterday?
The gods I trust loiter beyond the trees pelting me with flies and hornets.
Perhaps there was a day when the sun did not rise, but I do not remember it.
Spirits of the dead and candleflames of the past loiter with the gods beyond the trees.
Mud gives us something from which to raise ourselves.
The spiritual man is a warrior, and, in the city, like a warrior, he is too engaged in battling his enemies to engage in thought.
Unlike man, insects do not kill those of their own species for pleasure.
Healthy animals kill only out of need.
To a dying man, diamonds are only pretty stones.
Some insects live twenty years underground as grubworms, before emerging into the daylight as flies only to live just long enough to spawn then die. Men think of this as the mature stage in the life of the fly, but to the fly is it not death? His life has been underground. Perhaps a man’s life is only the death stage of his existence and his actual life, much longer, sadly forgotten, was before birth. Many would like to believe this is the grub stage of our existence and we will be flies in the next.
If I am reborn into another life, will that life be in the future? Could it be in the past? Could I be my own ancestor? If I am reborn into the future, I could be my own descendant. Could I be reborn as someone in the present on the other side of this world whom I will never meet? Perhaps I have already been reborn as someone I met yesterday or whom I will meet tomorrow. Perhaps I will be reborn as a brother sperm who never made it to my mother’s egg.
Wicked, wicked Sato, whose thoughts flow like a raging river through the kingdoms of past, present, and future to swirl through the ocean’s depths to envelop the monsters of the soul!
To rule nations, ply the leaders’ minds with the wine of lies they desire.

Update: June 5, 2019 5:22 p.m.

I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, though I had a couple of ideas. Too tired from a busy workweek so far. I am hoping to get something done this evening. My conscience is weighing upon me. I feel guilty when not writing. Anymore, writing is the most exciting thing I do.

I am experimenting occasionally with different ways to stimulate ideas as well as my writing. One is to make the writing more realistic not only by writing about past experiences and expanding on them (like Hemingway), but by trying to live the story as much as possible. For one work-in-progress (WIP), I set part of it in Farmington, so that I could go to the places I mention and see and experience what the characters would see and experience at the time described in the book. Parts of Shadows and Stars… is set in desert or plains areas like those around where I live in the Four Corners area. Come to think of it, there are mountains north of here around Durango, CO. I should set some of the book in the mountains in areas similar to where I have hiked.

I have been toying with the new website format. I haven’t received any submissions yet. I enjoyed being an editor, when I was working at it more diligently than I have in a long time.

I have already programmed The Saturday Night Special out to August and much advertising of my works through the end of June.

I am listening to the CD “The Best of Cusco” (1997) right now as I take a brief break. I really enjoy this album. In 1997, I was just out of the Navy and trying to establish myself as a photographer and a writer (I meandered off that career path sometime back to my regret). That was in the age of film cameras and I was doing some work for a small magazine in Kentucky among other things. I had my own dark room set up in my sister’s house. I loved working there and I played this album a lot. Anytime I listen to it now, I can visualize the red darkroom light and the mingled smells of developer, stop bath, and rinse. I loved the creative process of photography. Watch a photo form in the developer was always like magic. I never tired of it. Digital photography, which was just coming onto the scene then, took all that away.

Update: Major Changes to the Website

After some deliberation, I have decided to make a couple of major changes to this website.

I will be taking submissions of literary fiction of all genres and announcements for publication on this website. Please see my submissions and announcements page for more details and guidelines. There will be no pay in the foreseeable future. You will have, however, all the glory that comes with being published on this website. They will probably be published on Friday nights.
I am changing the name of the website to Slattery’s Magazine, so that the publication credit will look good on the resume of anyone published here.
I will be focusing less on horror on this website and will be leaning more toward mainstream and popular fiction. That does not mean that I will not publish horror. I love good horror. I will just be throwing other genres into the mix.
I have removed the pages focused on horror and migrated them to The Chamber Magazine, which is also accepting submissions. The guidelines are close to the same as these, but focused more on horror and on flash fiction.
I am restarting the Saturday Night Special feature that I ran for 43 installments a few years ago. It will run on Saturday nights, of course, at 6:00 p.m. eastern standard time (11:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time–i.e. in London, England). In accordance with the website changes, I will incorporate more mainstream literature into it, though I will initially re-run a lot of the original horror stories until I can find some good mainstream stories. Originally, I ran stories from prior to 1923, the year of institution of copyright laws in the US, in order to avoid copyright problems. I will probably continue to do so. I will focus on what are generally considered to be classic short stories, e.g. by Poe, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and others.

Stand by for more updates as they occur. Check back frequently.

Update: June 4, 2019, 5:52 p.m. — Major Changes to the Website

After some deliberation today, I have decided to make a couple of major changes to this website.

I will be taking submissions of literary fiction of all genres and announcements for publication on this website. Please see my submissions and announcements page for more details and guidelines. There will be no pay in the foreseeable future. You will have, however, all the glory that comes with being published on this website. They will probably be published on Friday nights.
I am changing the name of the website to Slattery’s Magazine, so that the publication credit will look good on the resume of anyone published here.
I will be focusing less on horror on this website and will be leaning more toward mainstream and popular fiction. That does not mean that I will not publish horror. I love good horror. I will just be throwing other genres into the mix.
I have removed the pages focused on horror and migrated them to The Chamber Magazine, which is also accepting submissions. The guidelines are close to the same as these, but focused more on horror and on flash fiction.
I am restarting the Saturday Night Special feature that I ran for 43 installments a few years ago. It will run on Saturday nights, of course, at 6:00 p.m. eastern standard time (11:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time–i.e. in London, England). In accordance with the website changes, I will incorporate more mainstream literature into it, though I will initially re-run a lot of the original horror stories until I can find some good mainstream stories. Originally, I ran stories from prior to 1923, the year of institution of copyright laws in the US, in order to avoid copyright problems. I will probably continue to do so. I will focus on what are generally considered to be classic short stories, e.g. by Poe, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and others.

Stand by for more updates as they occur. Check back frequently.

Update: June 1, 2019, 2:50 a.m.

I did some writing at Olive Garden tonight after having supper. I just now finished typing it into Shadows and Stars Lying down. It was only about five hundred words, but the idea for it has been bugging me for the past several days.

In Shadows and Stars Lying Down, the protagonist, Daryn, and his bodyguard, Sero, walk upon a monk’s (Sato’s) cabin in the deep forest. I am really fascinated by the possibilities to describe the new religions and anti-religions that exist on this planet, so I spend sometime developing them, though I do not want the novel to be dominated by them by any means.

Sato is becoming something of a pivotal figure in at least the first half of the novel. So I have Daryn and him discuss Sato’s beliefs briefly, but then I have Daryn read from one of the journals that Sato keeps. Here are a few bullets from Sato’s writings to give you an idea of what they are. I invented these based on my readings from philosophy and theology. There are several more in addition to these.

Mud gives us something from which to raise ourselves.
The spiritual man is a warrior, and, in the city, like a warrior, he is too engaged in battling his enemies to engage in thought.
Unlike man, insects do not kill those of their own species for pleasure.
Healthy animals kill only out of need.
To a dying man, diamonds are only pretty stones.
Some insects live twenty years underground as grub worms, before emerging into the daylight as flies only to live just long enough to spawn then die. Men think of this as the mature stage in the life of the fly, but to the fly is it not death? His life has been underground. Perhaps a man’s life is only the death stage of his existence and his actual life, much longer, sadly forgotten, was before birth. Many would like to believe this is the grub stage of our existence and we will be flies in the next.

Maybe I will post more tomorrow. I hope to spend most of the day writing.

Update: May 31, 2019

I didn’t make any substantial progress with the novel last night. I did manage to type up about a thousand words. I have found that once I get into my creative zone (which wasn’t last night), I really don’t want to stop writing down new ideas and plot lines.

In the novel, I have a alien scientist named Mikash on a planet called Zaigosh. Mikash needs an assistant, so that they can have a dialogue to reveal Mikash’s thoughts and plans. I have named this assistant Psotto, but I have yet to develop him at all in terms of character, which I want to do. I need to examine what the plot demands of him.

Yesterday, a former colleague/acquaintance was showing me and some other his new Tesla, which has a computer screen vs. a dashboard. This was a mind-blower for me in a couple of ways. On Zaigosh, the cars are all magnetic levitation driven with computer screens instead of dashboards. I thought I was being very forward thinking in coming up with this idea, only to find out that Elon Musk has already done it. Am I so far behind the times that my ideas of the future are already part of the present?

Update: May 30, 2019–Visit to Texas

Working on “Shadows and Stars Lying Down”. May 24 or 25, 2019, in IHOP, Midland, TX

I have been down in Texas over the last several days and returned on Monday. I didn’t get much writing done, though my wife took a few snapshots of me working my sci-fi novel at an IHOP in Midland about 11:00 pm.

I had named the book originally Jacob’s Ladder as a working title, then decided on Shadows and Stars, but have decided on Shadows and Stars Lying Down, as the protagonist’s name is Daryn Tsela Jacob. He is a Navajo, whose middle name means “stars lying down”. I gave him the middle name Tsela out of coincidence, not recognizing the connection with the book’s title (I just wanted

Reading Kerouac’s “Desolation Angels”, Midland, TX, May 27, 2019

an obviously Navajo name), but which my wife recognized and thus suggested the expanded title. I liked it, because it gives the novel a mysterious connotation. I hope it will intrigue the public and make them pick up a copy to examine it.

My wife, Fran, picked up a few books from the local library book exchange, two of which I immediately latched onto and started reading: Kerouac’s Desolation Angels and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

Here’s photos of she and I having dinner.

Dinner, Ray’s Italian, Midland, TX, May 26, 2019. Appetizer: Escargot Provencale. Iced tea.

Fran, my wife. Dinner, Ray’s Italian, Midland, TX, May 26, 2019. Appetizer: Escargot Provencale. Iced tea.

Update: May 11, 2019 Using Facebook for Publicity

For some time, I have been tinkering with a way to generate publicity for my posts on Facebook personal page. When deciding who to request to be a friend, I look at two criteria.

First, I look at how many friends we have in common.

I select people with whom we share at least one hundred friends (this is a purely subjective and arbitrary number). This tells me that he/she is not a creep. It is essentially like having a hundred references. The closer to having zero friends in common, the better the odds that person many not be someone I want to deal with regularly. At least, that’s my experience. In the past, when I have decided to befriend someone with whom I share no friends, I sometimes regret the decision.

This also helps build a solid network. If I befriend someone who shares one hundred friends with me, when I post something that goes out to my, let’s say, two hundred friends, and then my new friend reposts it, that posts goes out to our one hundred friends in common twice, plus to all his friends that we don’t have in common. If he has one hundred friends in common with me alone, the odds are good that he has a lot more friends which we don’t have in common.

Now imagine how many people your posts will go out to if you have 500 friends with whom you have 100 friends in common with each of them. If only two or three people share one of your posts, the word about that post will start to spread among all those friends in common plus all those friends you don’t have in common. Hopefully, it will create something of a snowball effect.

Second, I seek out friends with whom I have an interest in writing and being an author in common. I decide this very superficially, but I think effectively. I look for people who have a book they wrote as their avatar or have the title “author” or “writer” in their name (e.g. John Doe, Author). This tells me they are serious about their writing as it take a high priority in their lives.

Now, I am developing an overlapping network of authors and writers that will probably be interested in anything I write about writing my works or writing in general.

I also post a lot of humor, about writing and otherwise, to keep my posts fun and entertaining. No one will want to keep up with someone boring.

I welcome any thoughts or ideas you have.

A Little Bit of Trivia: My Acting Career So Far and My Upcoming Plays

I have done a lot of public speaking in my day. From 1985 to 1996, public speaking was one of my primary duties in my career as a naval intelligence officer. From 1998 to 2007, it was one of my primary duties working for the Interpretation division in Padre Island National Seashore.

In 1997, when I had been only a short time out of the Navy, I lived in my home town of Frankfort, KY, where I was trying to establish careers as a photographer and a writer. Neither was going anywhere initially, and, long story short, I joined the National Park Service. While living in Frankfort, I happened upon an opportunity to do the head shots for a small, local theater group. I became friends with them and before I knew it, was playing roles in two Tennessee Williams one-act plays, which were performed on the same nights.

The first was the role of the porter in “Portrait of a Madonna“. I did have some dialogue and I seem to recall doing well at the role, though the play ran for only a few nights over twenty years ago. Here is a production by the Chicago Actors Studio, if you would like to see their version. Ours wasn’t taped to my knowledge.

The second role was as Winston Tutwiler, the husband/drunk in “Lord Byron’s Love Letter“. My role consisted almost entirely of sitting on a sofa and being inebriated. I am not certain if I had any dialogue. It was fun though. I drank a considerable amount at that time, so I was a natural to portray a drunk, though I didn’t drink any for the role. If I recall correctly, I portrayed this role before my first appearance in “Portrait of a Madonna”. I was in a hurry to dress in costume before walking out on stage, and being naturally absent-minded, I forgot to zip up my fly! As soon as I made my entrance, I was to head to a sofa and flop down, half-heartedly listening to the other characters. It was then I noticed my fly being open. But realizing that this is not an uncommon occurrence among drunks, I stayed in character and blatantly zipped up as if it had been planned all along. I think I got a few giggles out of the audience. Here’s one performance of it. I don’t know who is performing in this video. My role was that of the guy in the green shirt.

I found acting to be a lot of fun. I would love to do it again. The stage is really quite addicting. That’s probably why I have become fascinated recently with writing plays.

I have completed two small plays and I am currently working on two more.

The two completed ones are adaptations of my previously published short stories “Murder by Plastic” and “The Last Sane Man“. Both should be around ten minutes on stage. I am looking now for somewhere to have them produced.

The next up in length is one called “Incommunicado”. I have developed a different vision for it than I have had previously. I conceived of it maybe a year or two ago. It was originally about a man named Quinn Gallagher (yes, the same Quinn Gallagher as in my short stories “The Scent” and “The Slightest of Indiscretions”). In this play, Quinn has gone off to a ghost town in New Mexico’s Gila Mountains to write and celebrate being able to drink again after being on the wagon for a year after a DUI. He intends to stay drunk for the weekend. However, he finds he has enjoyed being sober, and this conflicts with his desire to drink again to escape life’s problems. One way is easy but ultimately self-destructive, while the other means tough self-discipline, but is ultimately more productive and rewarding. I originally thought of this more of an extended soliloquy, though I see now that I will have to bring in one or two of the local townspeople to add action and bring in more perspectives. I hope to have this play last about thirty minutes. I am shooting to have this done by the end of May.

The last and longest play I am working on is entitled “Centaurs”. It is about a man and a woman who are having an affair. Both are married intellectuals, but they find their intellectual sides conflicting with their animalistic desires. They have decided to keep this relationship purely physical, but they find themselves falling in love. I intend for this play to be about 90 minutes in length and be three acts with a lot of audience involvement.

I will try to update this website regularly about my stage work.

Update: May 1, 2019, 1:23 a.m.

I just now finished typing up the first draft of my new sci-fi short story, “The Charade”, 2,167 words. This will be set in the future, after a battle over Denver, during which US forces repelled an invading alien armada. The US commander has captured the alien commander and is interrogating him to an extreme. There is lots of subtext and intrigue and a twist at the end.

Earlier today, I wrote a one-sentence story and submitted it to Roarreadingseries.com. They provided the prompt “thrift store”. My story is probably more gruesome than they anticipated receiving. The deadline is May 5. Hopefully, I will hear soon after that.

Update: April 28, 2019 10:03 pm

It has been a busy weekend. Yesterday morning I spent much of the morning to maybe early afternoon making plans to complete several short stories and either add them to my existing anthologies on Amazon or to create new anthologies. I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening writing in various coffee shops and restaurants in Farmington. I intended to work on my sci-fi novel, whose working title is Jacob’s Ladder. Instead, I worked on a sci-fi/horror short story, on which I had a brainstorm for most of the day. It’s title is “The Charade”. It’s about the interrogation of an alien commander after his invasion armada has been defeated over Denver. For a short story, it will have a lot of intricacy and subtext. That’s all I will say about it for now.

The city of Aztec turned off the electric to most of the city, or at least our neighborhood, from 10 pm last night to about 7:00 this morning. Therefore, after I had spent most of the day in Farmington, I came home for a short while to feed the dog and type most of “The Charade”. Then I went back into Farmington for dinner at Olive Garden, then over to Lucky Breaks to shoot pool for about an hour before proceeding to Denny’s to write more on Jacob’s Ladder. If you saw last night’s posts, you know that I wasn’t too successful at that, because I was tired and couldn’t focus on writing. I couldn’t get a good “flow” going. Therefore, I spent most of my time on my social media related to writing. I had enough energy to do that.

I became very tired around 3:00 a.m. and headed home. Before I went home, I took a detour to Main Street to check out the hours for the Chile Pod, a very good New Mexican restaurant. I was planning to go there today for breakfast, but it was closed. I took the attached photo of Main Street looking east from the Chile Pod at 3:28 a.m. just because I had never seen the street so empty. There also seems to be a sort of desolate beauty about the street. When I used to do black and white photography in the 80’s-90’s, I used to take a lot of dramatic night shots of Alexandria Virginia and Washington, DC for the same reason.

I arrived home at about 4:00, and the electricity was out as announced. I had put some candles and a lighter near the door before I had left at 9:30 p.m. I lit them, sat up for a few minutes, and then lay down on the sofa to sleep, but never fell asleep.

When dawn came, the dog wanted out. I let her out. I lay back down, but couldn’t fall asleep for whatever reason. I felt very fatigued, but still had too much energy to sleep. Therefore, I surfed the Net for a while, including reading a few articles on using keywords and how to market books on Amazon. Then I worked on fine-tuning the administrative and marketing stuff for both my paperback and e-books on Amazon. I also worked some on finishing the paperback version of Nocturne. While doing that, I had a couple of ideas.

The first idea was to write and publish on Amazon a children’s book, for which I had the initial idea probably more than ten years ago while living in Corpus Christi. The original draft is on an old hard drive that I haven’t been able to access for about ten years. It is about a young brown pelican who is afraid to dive into the water for fish from about five stories up, which is what brown pelicans do. His father then has to teach him to overcome his fear. The young pelican also learns about trusting his father.

The second idea I had was to put together a collection of classic short horror stories and poetry from the ones I published on my website a few years ago in a recurring article called “The Saturday Night Special”, because I published them on Saturday nights. They seemed to be fairly popular. Most were stories from the nineteenth century, though a few were from 1900-1920, before copyright laws were established. Thus, all are in the public domain. I chose works from classic horror authors: Poe, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, etc. I started on that and had the first three stories in it, when, about 5:00 p.m., I decided to clean up and go have something to eat at a local Chinese restaurant. I took a notebook with me to write the first draft of the children’s book. See the previous article for photos of me and the notebook at the Wonderful House restaurant tonight.

I had hot and sour soup and pot stickers. While eating I read the news on my iPhone. Then I went to work on my book and didn’t put the pen down, with the exception of receiving a few calls from my wife (she is in Texas), until I had finished, which I did at 8:45 (the restaurant closes at 9:00). I then posted on this blog that I had completed the first draft and I came home.

Once home I started the laundry and started this post while watching a program on YouTube about the “Iceman”, Richard Kuklinski, famed mafia hit-man. It ended just now. Still no sleep. This happens occasionally and is not at all unusual for me.

I never managed to do the household chores I needed to do this weekend: financial planning, mowing the yard, cleaning the house, etc. Still, I got a lot done for my writing career.

This is the way it has been for me for a few weeks. I have had this drive to write, which grows increasingly strong with each day. I can hardly tear myself away from the keyboard.

It’s 11:24 p.m.. Still no sleep. Laundry is in the dryer. Going to bed soon.

Good night.

Tag: writing