Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 109

Sometimes threats work

By declaring I'd start drinking if I didn't have a breakthrough in this mental roadblock for CK, Carli and Zeke agreed to stop pissing around and I got some writing done. Part of what helped was me returning to page one and going through the stuff I'd written, already. I'm up to page 60...and Carli's fucking nuts.

Which I mean in a good way, unless you've done her wrong.

The opening is till pretty much the same, with her killing Stasi, but her seduction of Grady got a lot more intense and, dare I think it...fun. Until he's drugged and staked out in the desert, waking up as Carli finishes cutting his jeans off. Then she discusses circumcision as noted in the Bible, since Grady's not cut, before masturbating him. Finally, after he's cum, she shows him the video of Lara's rape...then circumcises him. And all that will be in the first 40-45 pages of the book.

Needless to say, this will not be a children's story or wind up in libraries.

But I sort of think that was the problem I was having with it. Carli wants to bust loose, and I'm scared of that. Same goes for Zeke. He's not a rapist, he's a decent guy, but he's also part of Dax's gang and helps in the drug-dealing. Not overtly or directly, but by remaining silent and hiding the money for Dax. So he's not a complete innocent. But he is the most vulnerable person in the story.

The first time he and Carli officially meet, it's after 2am, he's sitting on the porch of his trailer playing his guitar, wearing only his shirt and undies. He took his jeans off to remove his bionic leg. His dog, Loki, is there and he has an M-16 available for protection, but if he needed to run, he couldn't.

Then Carli comes up, and there's a strong suggestion she's thinking of doing to him what she did to Grady. Because she thinks he was there when the rape happened. But Loki won't let her near him, so she has to make up a story about being a student at the college and having PTSD...and back away...for now.

Not sure how they'll wind up in love, yet. Might be just as crazy as the rest of it.

Time for desperate measures?

I'm still locked in place on Carli's Kills, so if something doesn't break through, tomorrow, I'm heading across the street and getting a shot of bourbon or cognac. See if that helps. My own little version of a reboot, I guess. Except I rarely do it. I don't drink that much. A beer with dinner, sometimes. Occasional wine. But 99% of the time it's DDP or hot tea. I'm very low-key on that.

Part of the reason is, I once got so drunk I blacked out. It was in college, and I was working nights at a restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. After a rough evening, one of the waiters and I decided to see who could drink whom under the table. After 6 or 7 or 10 straight shots of vodka for me, with him doing scotch, we called it a draw.

I was closing, so I made sure everything looked great for the next day. Let out the dishwasher. Locked the door and made it to the ladies room before I hurled. I don't remember a thing after that until I woke up in my own bed, undressed, the next morning. Worst hangover ever. Probably alcohol poisoning. 

But if that wasn't bad enough, my car was parked in its spot by the front door. Very neatly parked. I had driven home like that. I could have killed somebody or myself. Freaked the holy hell out of me, so I cut it. Haven't touched vodka, since.

The closest I came to repeating it was when I was having trouble with a script, Find Ray T, many years ago. So I bought a six-pack of Corona...went through it in a weekend, so got another...and wrote the first draft of that script in 8 days. Buzzed the entire time, but not ever quite drunk. Fastest I've ever done it. And the structure of the script has stayed the same, ever since.

So maybe I need to do something similar with CK, because I am out of patience with this writer's block crap.

It's Christmas...woohoo...

 I am not in a festival mood...but maybe this will change things.

Okay, Santa Baby, let's get this show on the road, already!

Chaos extended...

Nothing done. Wheels spinning in the mud. Going nowhere. Finally gave in and watched Gosford Park, for the umpteenth time. It's one of my go-to movies. I also bought the new 007 and need to pick it up at B&N, tomorrow, preferably by noon since it's Christmas Eve and the whole damn city's going to be nuts.

GP's Synopsis, via IMDb.com:

Set in the 1930s, the story takes place in an old-fashioned English country house where a weekend shooting party is underway. The story centers on the McCordle family, particularly the man of the house, Sir William McCordle (Sir Michael Gambon). Getting on in years, William has become a benefactor to many of his relatives and friends. As the weekend goes on, secrets are revealed, and it seems that everyone, above stairs and below, wants a piece of William and his money, but how far will they go to get it?


This is one of my comfort movies, like The Big Sleep and Shakespeare in Love and Topsy-Turvy. A story I can come back to over and over and still enjoy. Robert Altman was robbed at the Oscars, that year...giving it to Ron Howard! Fucking OPIE! A journeyman director. Gag. I stopped paying attention to the awards or critics choices or even screenwriting classes, after that.
But that's the problem with awards; they rarely go to the one who deserves it. For example, I actually got angry when Sidney Pollack was given the directing Oscar for Out of Africa instead of Akira Kurosawa for Ran.

I also indulged myself in too much DDP, tortilla chips and Fritos bean dip as I watched. Not at all good this late, but it all made me feel a lot better. I'm not sure why I'm in this period of stasis except it has something to do with how Carli's Kills keeps blowing up on me, no matter what I do, and I want to be done with it.

Drives me nuts when this happens.

Quiet time of chaos...

I've had nothing to say the last few days so no posts. I did a quickie trip to Belvedere, IL about 60 miles west of Chicago to pick up some books, so didn't even take my laptop with me. I had my phone for internet stuff and a book to read for A Place of Safety. Flew into O'Hare on a dinky American jet, Monday morning...and out Tuesday morning on an even dinkier one. Both of which put a strain on me from having to sit in a cramped situation.

The drive to Belvedere was easy and minimal traffic. I got there on time, picked up 4 lovely antiquarian books, and left. Stopped at a toll road rest area to have an excellent Subway sandwich -- turkey club on white -- then on the way back passed what looked like a private ambulance engulfed in flames on the 90 West. So hot, even though I was in the middle right lane heading east, I could feel the heat. Fire trucks and cops were still en route to deal with it.

I continued on to a UHaul to buy boxes and got bubble wrap, went to my hotel and packed the books in as solid as I could. Then off to drop at Southwest Air Cargo...which was a chore and a half. Turned out, there was no signage to tell you where they are. I went to four different offices in this one building, asking, always being told it's across the building, before finally noticing a sheet of paper on an intake desk window that said they were around the corner; if I hadn't found it, then, I was going to drive 25 miles to Midway, where I knew its location.

Fortunately, I wasn't rushed to get the shipment to them...because I'd have missed any flight it was going out on, that night. At least I did get a dinner at Panda Express. I love their Beijing Beef and Spring Rolls with sweet & sour sauce. Then some hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts settled me down.

The tightness of the return trip to Buffalo, and no drink service thanks to light turbulence so I started getting dehydrated, initiated a tension headache in me that did not go away before I hit the bed 14 hours later. Early. I used to enjoy traveling, especially air travel. Now? It's just plain hideous. I'd rather drive or take the train.

Anyway, today was a meander through the paperwork for the job and catching up on other crap, so no writing done. I'll dig back into Carli's Kills, tomorrow, now that I know what the ending is. Again. At least, until Carli or Zeke get pissy about it...again...

But I did get more of This Man's Wee Boy read, on this trip, and something that's striking me about it is the casual attitude people seem to have in the story about the riots and people dying during the first days of The Troubles. A child gets run over by an Army vehicle and killed, and there's more talk about the events sending people to the madhouse than the loss of a little boy. Like it's just another day in the life. 

It's rather disconcerting.

Well, time to build a bridge...

What's funny is, it will be to an ending I wrote but no longer fits with the narrative. I'm closing in on 66,000 words and am at at the point where all hell is due to break loose...and I know I'll get close to 70K before I'm done. 

Maybe.

I'm not really happy with the direction it's taken. Suddenly, everything's gone in bizarre directions and I'm not sure what it all means...or how it will wind up. What used to be a clear, simple, straightforward screenplay is suddenly chaotic in the extreme.

And yet, it's not. It's unfolding in a logical way that just veers close to chaos and is forcing me to come up with moments to fit the scenario it's building. I've now got a bomb going off. A female sheriff about to make a major pass at Zeke. A proposition. The Arizona State's Attorney General involved. The FBI. A dangerous ex-con. The Arizona legislature. A drone being chased by hawks that think it might be dinner. Tire tracks in arroyos.

It's like I'm on the edge of letting the story go wild but still holding back in hopes of it making sense. I guess all I can do, right now, is finish this draft and then see what the fuck it is I just wrote. There ain't no tellin', no more.

But whine as I might, I am sort of enjoying the sense of anarchy about it...even if it is taking so damn long to write.

Not gonna make my deadline.

A packing and shipping job popped up, out of nowhere, and I'm flying to Chicago, Monday morning. Back Tuesday evening. So it looks like my original plan for finishing a first draft of CK by Christmas is back on, instead of getting finished by the 20th. Of course, what's positive is...I can read on the plane, each way. So in reality, I'm swapping days.

Today I worked through 3 chapters, at least, but I'm not happy with the last one I did. It's where Zeke and Carli finally connect in bed...and it doesn't flow. Feels forced. I'm not crazy about Carli's interrogation of Chase, one of Dax's drug dealers, either. So I may need to go back over those.

I know this is just a first draft, but if something's bothering me in the story, as I write, it stops me and I have to make it okay, again. I can't just plow ahead. I'm afraid it will wind up sending me in the wrong direction.

I read a great obituary, today, about Reny Mandel Corren written by her gay son, and it was completely irreverent about her, her life, her children, everything...because that was how she was. Six kids, three husbands, an affair with Larry King, no bullshit, dying in El Paso...it was lovely and kicked me in the butt to make Carli just as wild a character as she.

Which will have to be layered in through other drafts, I guess, because this bitch is still aiming to be tragic, and not in a Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of way. Though that might help.

Still on track, dammit...

I had to spend part of the day working up a schematic for a possible job, which kept shifting on me, so didn't get started writing till late. But I managed to get through a couple of chapters of CK and feel I'm still within my scheduled timeframe. I'm at the point where Carli's going to learn Zeke was not part of the rape, but other issues come up and cause her even more confusion.

She's borderline nuts. Beginning to see herself as the fallen angel of death. That would be somewhat psychotic, wouldn't it? Shall I start calling her inner voice son of Samael? Hmm...doesn't really work, for me.

She and I did have a bit of a discussion about one of her peccadillos...that of slicing tattoos off her male victims. I wanted to drop that part but she kicked and screamed and said I was being misogynistic.

"Women can be butchers, too, you know!"

Reminded me of Ilsa Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, who was rumored to have Jewish men with interesting tattoos killed, skinned and incinerated, then their tattoos were made into lamp shades or the covers of books. Ed Gein also supposedly did this with skin from cadavers. I guess if you're going to be a crazy bitch, do it up right.

I have no earthly idea how this book is going to end, now. I've got three possibles. Zeke dies. Carli dies. Or neither of them dies. And each one would work within the story as currently constructed. So...we'll see what happens when I get there.

But I'm feeling very anarchic with this, right now.

How dark can you go and still be light?

Carli is really fucked up. And knows it. And doesn't care...which does bother her, a bit. But I'm at the point just after she's butchered another man...and she's only sorry about it because he wouldn't get it up for her. As in, an erection. Which would make sense. He's staked out in the desert, spread eagle, naked, and she's playing with a straight-edge razor blade. Also naked. After she's killed another man in the same way, that he knows of.

Did I mention this is getting to be a bit kinky, too?

She's still trying to decide if Zeke should be included in her quest for vengeance and punishment. She doesn't know if he was even there, the night Lara was raped. And him having only one leg tends to make Carli more hesitant about holding him as responsible as the others. But...she's not letting him go, just yet.

Still...the snarky aspect of the tone keeps popping in, so I wonder just how black and bleak I can make this and still treat it humorously? Oops...there goes a head rolling down the arroyo. Dammit. Now I have to go get it.

My two leads are still fighting for control of the story, and I'm letting them. I learned a long time ago not to get into a domestic quarrel. Neither one of them will appreciate you butting your nose in, and it will achieve nothing but make the fight go on longer.

A subthread that seems to be building in this story is the idea that sex is just sex, doesn't matter who you have it with. Carli even remembers being in Afghanistan with a Ranger unit as a covert sniper, and convincing the other guys they can get sexual relief from each other as well as from a woman. Even in a three way with her...when she wants to.

In fact, the reason Carli leaves the Army is because a Second Lieutenant decides she's going to be his partner, one night, and she breaks his nose. She's a grunt; that is not allowed. So she's given the option to take a general discharge or face a courts martial, and the does the former.

And now, with the help of her baby brother, who's a computer whiz, she's become Samael, the fallen angel of death.

I am getting CK done by December 20th

No ifs, ands or buts. Carli's joined in with messing with me and I'm not having it. She and Zeke can duke out their competing stories in the back of my brain once I have this draft done. I'm plowing ahead with it. Right now, it's 62,500 words long and I know I'm adding at least another 5000 to bridge into the ending. That's plenty.

If those two aren't careful, I'll shift Eldora, the sheriff, into being Edward and really add some kink to the end. Make him big, buff and beautiful, like this laddie, and have Carli contemplate taking him into her male harem. Which might actually fit the whole attitude of the story. But we'll see how my two leads work things out.

It's going to be a black humor-horror-thriller thing...just what, yet, I have no idea. The tone is on the snarky side and getting snarkier. Goofy, even? I've got one moment where Zeke and his dog, Loki, go into his trailer to search for Rin-Tin-Tin videos on YouTube. Just for the hell of it. FYI, there are lots of them, mainly from the 1950s TV show. Of course, Loki wouldn't be interested in Lassie; he's a doggie dog.

After this is done, I'm taking a break from writing and just doing reading till after the first of the year. I have a lot that needs to be done, in that arena, in preparation for the next draft of A Place of Safety. I'm honing in as much as I can on the ways and mores of Derry, between 1966 and 1972. I have a feeling I'll be doing a serious rewrite, here.

As if I've never done that before.