Robert L. Slater's Blog

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find all the elevens (11s) in this campaign. Some obvious, some hidden. Some just a click away [Hint: Only 1 click]. Some numbers, some words, some quantities. I’ll be post daily clues until someone finds them all!

1st Clue: Get the picture? [Some are unsearchable with the Find feature. They might be in some of the graphics]

2nd Clue: You spin me right round, baby right round… [Some times you’ve got to look at things upside down]

Here are the first words I wrote about Lizzie Goodin-Guerrero. I found them in a notebook about a year after I’d started seriously writing “Zombie Zoo” (the original working title that I knew I would never use for the novel. They were written in my Cursprint long hand, long before I got serious about writing the novel. Even this scene was at least six months after I realized that if I created a young female character encompassing the traits, styles, personality and histories of many of my stud...

This last weekend, after reading the news, I acted on an idea I’d had earlier and wrote a poem homaging [Is that really a word, Rob? It is now.) So here it is, version 3.20.

The post First They Came. Again first appeared on Deserted Lands Apocalyptic Books.

I found this diary entry on 1/11/21, Lizzie’s fictional 19th birthday, a year after I’d written it, right in the middle of the pandemic, 2626 days (7 years 77 days) after I started writing ALL IS SILENCE on 11/1/12 [Wow, I like number patterns and these are kind patterny numbers].

I came up with the basic concept and wrote a scene, “Lizzie and the Lima Beans,” on 8/12/11. When I wrote All Is Silence, I placed my pandemic start date as August 12th 2019.

On Lizzie Goodin-Guerrero’s fictional 18t...

I found this diary entry on 1/11/21, a year after I’d written it, right in the middle of the pandemic, 2626 days (7 years 70 days) after I started writing ALL IS SILENCE on 11/1/12 [Wow, I like number patterns and these are kind patterny numbers].

I had come up with the basic concept and written a scene about Lizzie and Lima Beans on 8/12/11. So in my head I placed my pandemic start date as August 12th 2019. [Actually the first draft had it set in 2018, but I changed that date by the time I publ...

I just finished entering edits based on my beta readers’ feedback for NO MAN’S LAND – Deserted Lands Book III, the end of Lizzie’s trilogy.

What duz ‘finished entering edits based on my beta readers feedback’ mean? Haven’t you finished this book three times already?

Uh, yeah. Good. Glad you asked. You’re right. I did. But it wasn’t ready. My sincerest apologies to the three folks who trusted me enough to buy it when it wasn’t ready. Jazzlynn, Jamie, and Mark, I sincerely hope this has been worth ...

As I work to cut NO MAN’S LAND from 115,599 words down to below 99,999 words, I’m finding scenes that don’t move the plot forward. Or at least not much.

After I released ALL IS SILENCE in 2014, I posted some cut scenes. Available here: 1st Beginning and the 1st and 2nd endings. All these will be released as an ebooks Boxed Set of all short fiction written pre-2022 (at least 1 unpublished that’s only been read by about 11 people), as well as a non-canon story where I meet Lizzie, plus some...

Why not‽

“But, Rob, I’ve been waiting 5 years on a cliffhanger for book III, and I want it now, now, now!”

What I mean is don’t buy my books YET.

Don’t despair, I have several solutions I’ll mention at the bottom of this post. You can jump there right away, but I’d really like you to understand why, and how you can help me best, if you so desire.

In order to become a successful as an author, I need to grow my audience. Obviously, if you’re reading this you’re a part of that audience...

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS for 2022?

Not resolutions, not dreams! But Goals.

I went to a Writer’s Conference called 20 Books to 50K several weeks ago. Unlike many writer’s conferences, the primary focus is on helping authors with the business side of writing. There are presentations on the craft of writing, but primarily it’s about marketing, networking, and business planning. Yes, treat your writing career as if it were a business, even if it’s only part time.

In my career as a high school teac...

11,111 new words in the last 11 days

On

NO MAN’S LAND

and

THE VOYAGE OF THE DECAMERON

This one goes to 11.

This is an update of my 11/12/21 post titled “This Left Turn Feels Write. 21 months ago, on 2/11/20, (1 month B.C. {Before Covid}), I started writing a project I’d been thinking about writing for nearly 4 years. By 4/4/20, I had written 22 section (approximately 2,222 words each), finishing 1 nearly every 2 days. After that I only finished 2 more parts out of the eleventy-leven tota...