Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 114

Back in motion...

I finished inputting changes to another chapter, today, which puts me just over halfway through this part of the story. I'm counting in the fact that I will need to add a great deal to the chapter about Bloody Sunday and another incident that will hit Brendan before he departs Derry. Meaning this will be a good 500 pages of double-spaced Courier 12pt. I'm at nearly 104,000 words, and have little doubt I will hit 110,000 before I'm done. But it is what it is and the story is working,

The family has moved from Nailors Row, finally, to a newer house on Cliodhna Place, a street I made up. This image is from about 1970 and shows the gable wall that eventually became the Free Derry Corner, middle left in the blue circle.

Something that keeps coming up with Brendan is, he likes having a decent place to live. While on Nailors Row, even though the house was really derelict he did all he could to make it livable. Like he's nesting. This move, however, winds up positioning them close to where the Battle of Bogside happens. 

He's not a neat freak; he just wants to feel comfortable. And if that takes a bit of fixing up, here and there, so be it. He's also known by his friends and neighbors as the local Jew boy, because of how he is with money. Not sure what to do with that tidbit, yet.

I think when Brendan gets to Houston, he is going to crash into a punk phase. Mainly due to things that happen to him, there. I've got several notes about it, already, and it will carry over into his return to Derry.

I love it when the story takes off under me.

Close to madness...

Today was a weird one. I felt close to losing control a few times, over nothing. The only thing I could figure that might have triggered this mood was another of John Wayne Gacy's victims was identified by Chicago police...and it turned out he hadn't even been reported missing. His family cared so little about his disappearance, they hadn't even wondered where he was. But they had sent some DNA in to an Ancestry webiste to trace their own roots, and the cops were connecting with that as one way to track down the few unidentified remains.

The guy was 21 years old when he was raped and murdered. A nice open face. He was dumped in a grave with other unidentified victims of Gacy, and was only disinterred when the cops decided to go further with trying to ID them. Even now, there's some question as to whether or not he'll be returned to his home town to be buried, that's how little his blood relations cared.

I have something like that happen in my book Bobby Carapisi . One character is cut off from the family because he's gay, to the extent they wipe him out of their history, as if he weren't even born. It was a hard thing to write because I knew someone that had been done to...someone who killed themself because it finally became too much to bear.

At the time, people said his suicide was because he had AIDs...but he was handling that. It was knowing he'd die alone and buried alone that finally did him in. He arranged to have himself cremated and his ashes scattered in Lake Austin, so there would be no headstone. He joked that the lake's water was so damned cold, it might mitigate being in hell.

I wasn't part of that. I couldn't do it. I was weaker, then.

What being brought back to this did, however, was jolt me in the writing of APoS. The story is too goddamned polite. Brendan goes through hell, in it, and needs to better react to that. He laughed and brought me ideas on how to let him start breaking free of convention and gentleness. I need to find his music, and I'm thinking British Punk...but I'm not sure if that works for the late 70s. He's definitely not disco or pop or even acid rock. He wants his own sound, for the time. Something he brings with him from Houston back to Derry and becomes his armor...his protection as he regains his footing in the city.

Maybe I'll track down The Next, a punk band from San Antonio who played a lot at Raul's, in Austin.

Ideas are coming...

There is a moment I've written in APoS where Brendan and Colm are headed away from a demonstration that's been attacked by the British Army, and they get rousted at a checkpoint. Initially, I had it set up so Brendan keeps the both of the from being dragged off to jail by talking about fixing cars. He even gives a Paratrooper a quick guide on how to handle a leak in a Range Rover Defender.

It wasn't a bad moment, but it felt...I dunno...perfunctory, in a way. Then today, as I'm in the middle of doing laundry, I got an idea on how to make it more intense. By this point in the story, Brendan and his mates are 15. It's before Bloody Sunday, which happens a few days before Brendan turns 16, and Colm's arm has been hurt by a rubber bullet. Another of Brendan's Chinas, Danny, is now with them, even though his parents moved him to Armagh, to work for the Catholic Archdiocese. He shouldn't even be in Derry, at the time.

The British are rough with the boys, but Colm and Brendan are somewhat used to it. Danny is not. There are strong indications he was molested by a priest, so when one of the Paratroopers gets a bit too familiar, Danny starts to freak out...which is the fastest way to get killed. No one knows what happened to Danny, but Brendan suspects it and uses that to claim the soldiers harassing Danny have threatened to take him into a cell and rape him. And he does it loud enough for a group of people waiting to go through the checkpoint to hear.

This starts a situation building, and Brendan keeps adding to it in ways to let Danny know he's going to be all right. Finally, an officer comes over to put an end to the commotion and Brendan continues with the lie. Makes it sound as real as he can.The troopers let Danny go, and the catcalls and curses coming from the crowd convince the officer to send Brendan and his Chinas on their way. It's not till they're away from the checkpoint that Brendan realizes what he's done and begins to panic. Now Colm, who's been quiet through the whole thing, has to take control and lead him home, Danny right next to them. I like it a lot more.

This sets up Brendan's quick-thinking and willingness to use lies to cover for himself and his mates, even in the face of the threats of the soldiers. Which happens, somewhat, in Book 3.

Researching...

Today was spent gathering details about Derry. My main focus is from February 1966, when Brendan's father is found dead, to October 1972, when he leaves Derry for Houston. The trick for this entire section of the story...which will be a book unto itself...is to keep it his perspective while still maintaining some awareness of the culture and Derry's people. This is why I'm doing so much reading and researching; I want it to come across as right as possible to someone who's lived in Derry all their life.

I've already been told that's impossible, and it came from a man I befriended online who actually has lived through it. He shared some info with me, but his attitude is I've set myself up for failure because I'm not from there. And no matter how careful I am, I can't possibly get all the details right.

His comments were part of the reason I've had so much difficulty convincing myself I should plow ahead. I have just enough of a writer's ego to think I can tell the story well, but not enough to get over the hump of well not being good enough.

So...I bounced around a lot and had arguments with Brendan as he kept pushing me to do it. And I'm now at the point where it's actually going to get done. I will have the first volume of this trilogy out in 2022, hopefully followed by the Houston section the same year. Because...as he keeps telling me...it's HIS story, not the city's. Nor is it a biography or historical fact. It's historical fiction, and if I put too much detail into it, I will make it unreadable.

I was in Austin when James Michener had his crew of researchers come in to get him information to put in his novel, Texas. And they got him tons. If there's anything Texans love, its stories about themselves and their glorious past. I tried reading the book when it came out. I made it through maybe 200 of the 1000 pages before I gave up. It kept putting me to sleep, there was so much to it.

If there's anything I do NOT want to do with A Place of Safety, it's put people to sleep with an overload of detail.

Dismal day of nothing much

I am getting to where i do not like to fly, anymore.My trip to Portland was a series of mishaps, thanks to American Airlines, and a lot of angst that was really unnecessary. And expense.

My flight leaving Buffalo so delayed, I was going to miss my connection to Portland so had to change flights, then buy a seat on the new flight because the cheap ones were all used up. My flight leaving Portland was late and hit DFW's runways at the time it was supposed to be at the gate.

But then came 15 minutes of taxiing to get to that gate, and then I had to change terminals, and I was hungry and needed to pee, but managed to get to the gate as my group was boarding. All set to depart on time...except the plane had mechanical issues and had to be swapped out, so we had to de-plane.

And then change terminals, again. I'd never been to DFW before, but found they have a shuttle that travels over the tops of the buildings to switch you around. The good thing is, I found time enough to hit the men's room and get a grilled cheese from Panera. I finished eating just as my group was called.

THEN, I was seated next to a couple of old women who were MAGAts. they honestly thought Marco Rubio was smart and the former guy did a lot for the US, like control China! I wound up watching Rocketman so I could drown them out. It was that or toss a fit and wind up on a no-fly list.

The movie was interesting, and Taron Egerton was good as Elton John. It took up most of the flight time, and finished when the old ladies were dozing. Wore out their jaws, I guess. But we didn't arrive till way late and that totally messed me up so I didn't get to bed till 3am. Made today worthless.

On top of it...I'm coming down with something...in my nose and throat...and think it's just a sinus issue. No headache and just my usual old man body aches. But I'm playing it safe and getting a Covid test on Sunday, at Walgreen's. I do not want to wind up a carrier of that crap when I'm supposed to go down to a house where elderly people are and pack their books, next month.

My one real accomplishment today was getting a cover arranged for my copy of Russell Stetler's Battle of Bogside. A fake Brodart made from a sheet of light mylar and some strips of paper, to protect the dust jacket. I'm behind in my schedule for reading, now, but between this nose and my crankiness, I wasn't going to retain anything, anyway.

Still...as they say, Tomorrow is another day.

Nature's resilience

I was in a part of Oregon that was hit hard by wildfires, last year, and while there were barren hillsides with nothing but tree trunks left to remind you a forest once covered these mountains, I also saw trees with scorched sides still sprouting green. A lot was destroyed. You can still smell traces of the smoke, and piles of burned logs were everywhere. I lost count of how many place I passed that had one been homes and now were just free-standing chimneys, or where new houses were being built. But there was still so much left, it startled me.

This is the area I was in, the driveway off the road. The house was spared but a shed holding irreplaceable archives was destroyed. And looking up I could see where branches that were once thick with leaves were now barren. But above them, the trees continued to grow,

When the climate finally turns completely on us, the planet will continue to build and grow and develop. We cannot destroy it, no matter how hard we try. New species will come up from the depths of the ocean to take over the land. It may take millions of years, but it will happen, and it will be as if we never existed. It's only our unimaginable arrogance that lets us think otherwise.

I finished Eamonn McCann's book and have copious notes from it, to reference. Tomorrow's trip may be spent reading Battle of Bogside. I tried to start it on the trip here, but zoned out so watched Cruella on American's entertainment system. Hmph, re-imagining Cruella DeVil as a hurt orphan who just wanted to design clothes but then went out for revenge over the death of her mother. Spread over more than 2 hours. Amazingly produced and the costumes were amazing, but the script was very ABC...

I went to Powell's, in downtown Portland, after I was done and found a couple more books I wanted. One deals with the British Army's excuses for its atrocious actions in Northern Ireland, as written by a British officer. This should be interesting. The other is another account of the hunger strikes of 1981. That's not as demanding, at the moment, because it's happening in Book 3, when Brendan returns to Derry.

So...tomorrow to home...

Back to A Place of Safety

 I've submitted both Porno Manifesto and Find Ray T to c a couple of places, to see what happens. Just a start. FRT is my mainstream piece while PM is my fuck you piece, and I'm having fun with it. The response will say a lot about how I should proceed.

So now I'm back to working on APoS. First plan is to finish Eamonn McCann's book while on my trip to Portland, then dig back into The Battle of Bogside by Russell Stetler. I really should get a Brodart cover for the latter book; the dust jacket is very worn.

One interesting aspect of having taken some time away from the first book is, getting back into it I'm beginning to take a different view of Ian Paisley, the man who led the intransigent Orange Men/Protestants against the Catholic push for civil rights. I'd viewed him as a demagogue, a radical sociopath in the manner of Mussolini, more than Hitler or Stalin...but I'm beginning to see that isn't exactly accurate.

Paisley gave voice to a group of people who'd been told all their lives, and all during their parents' and grandparents' lives, that they were the true owners of Ulster. They'd been given deference and bribed with homes and jobs for generations, to the point it wan't so much expected as just the way things always were and should be. It wasn't even habit; it was their world, and Catholics wanting to share in it was seen as an attack on the very fabric of their society.

Which is part of the reason they did so much to actually hurt their chances for peace by toppling one centrist Unionist leader after another, and why they felt it was all right to attack a group of peaceful kids walking down a country road. They saw them as a danger to all they held dear. Giving even an inch would have been unthinkable to them...and so they destroyed everything they thought they were protecting. It wasn't until both sides were worn out by the death and destruction that they came to terms with the new reality. Only took 30 years.

We can see the exact same thing happening here, with the former guy (I will not use his name) tapping into the same sense of fear and frustration in too many people in the US. Mostly white, but not all. Mostly poor and ill-educated, but not all. And you can see it building to the same conclusion -- violence and death, thanks to ineffectual leaders and the conniving politics of too many in state legislatures and Washington.

To my horror, this should prove quite interesting...

Finally...

 Not only is FRT done and formatted correctly all the way through...it's 115 pages long and I'm happy with it. I now need to figure out what I'm going to do with it. First thought was competitions...but I'm so out of that I'm not sure what's worthwhile, anymore. Research must be done.

I'm also sending my script version of Porno Manifesto out to a couple of gay-oriented production companies to see if they'll go for it. I worked up a synopsis --

Alec Presslea had friends he enjoyed, a career in IT that he loved, and his favorite bar (and bartender) not far from his condo. He had even escaped a toxic relationship in another town. He was perfectly content in his world...until he was gay-bashed by a carload of young men and almost killed. That is when his life took a turn towards chaos.
Once known as Mr. Vanilla, suddenly there were moments where, if he saw an attractive young man, a vicious animalistic urge would take him over and he'd become a creature on the hunt. The lustful intent in these episodes spooked him, but before he could get help to understand what was happening, he learned the police were shielding his attackers. Why? Because one, Freddy, was the son of a prominent, conservative judge. That is when he let the beast inside him take control.
Alec tracked Freddy to a college fraternity and quickly worked out that four other members had been part of the attack, that night. He stalked the guys, giving each of them a nickname -- Mafia, Soccer, Surfer, and Quarterback -- and used his technical abilities to sneak cameras into their fraternity house. He recorded their every move. Plotted and planned. Even prevented them from doing another gay-bashing.
At the same time, Alec began developing a manifesto to respond to the haters in the world. To confront any man who attacked him and his GBLTQ+ community. To answer a punch with a slug. Even force their abusers to become one with them. As part of his plan, he even joined one of the fraternity's parties and viciously raped Mafia, in his own bedroom.
A few days later, Alec convinced Mafia that Soccer was the one who had forced himself on him, and talked him into doing the same thing back to him. Then he manipulated the videos that had been recorded to make it seem as if they were just having sex...and posted them on Porno Manifesto, a website he'd developed that claimed all men were into gay sex.
Everything was going exactly like he wanted. However, even the most carefully laid plans for revenge wind up hurting the innocent as well as the guilty, something a part of Alec understood. Problem is, the rest of him was way beyond caring.
All that mattered was his Porno Manifesto.
 I guess I need to do the same for FRT, too.

Slowly...slowly...the end draws near...

Man, I'm fighting to finish FRT in FD. I'm at page 81 of 115 pages, and the program has gone complete squirrelly on me. I can work with it, but it's requiring a lot more effort. Line by line effort. Also, none of my keyboard shortcuts are working, so everything is point and click on the mouse.

I've gotten to where I don't only save it, I do a save as to reopen it and make certain it's being saved right. Doing this type of reformatting is tedious and mind-bending...but I'm getting there.

That said...I do like how solid the story is. And the characters are working with me to make it better. Something that happened, today, was a moment between Damon and his current girlfriend, Celia. It was supposed to end on a quiet note...but instead she got pissed and slapped him. And it made the moment work just right, because he was being a shit to her...albeit for good reasons. It also factors in better, later.

I could see turning this into a book. Explore Damon's background more, like with his parents. I toss off their influence on him with a couple lines in some dialogue with Graham, his director friend. That could be a whole chapter unto itself. And how his relationship with his ex-wife deteriorated, not from hatefulness or dislike or even falling out of love, but from a shifting of priorities on his part and her unwillingness to let that define her.

I love it when the characters do things for me.

The Writer's Law...

When you say, as a writer, that you will only make a couple of small adjustments to a work...maybe add in a line or two to help clarify the piece...you will quickly find you're fooling yourself. There is no such thing as a small adjustment when working on any project. I've reminded myself of this while working on Find Ray T.

My plan was to add a few lines of dialogue and expand a little on a moment 2/3 of the way into the script to heighten its humor...but instead the fates decided to fuck me over. Apparently, my old copy of Final Draft is screwed up. When I found the latest version of FRT, from 5 years ago, it opened up nice and easy. But the second I made a change, half my formatting fell out of whack.

It was insane. Suddenly, my dialogue was mixing in with names in half the the script. And no matter what I did...from shut down the program and reopen to save into a RTF so I could upload into Word to putting in page breaks to keep the bad part from infecting the rest of the script, nothing worked. So in order to make the minimal changes, I'm having to reformat each line. Scene heading. Action. Character name. Dialogue. Section by section.

I'm about 35-40% done, and it's tiring...but it's also giving me the time to smooth over other sections of the script that could use it. Removing superfluous words. Heighten other moments. So this counts as a new draft. When I am done, it will be sharper, cleaner, clearer, and (hopefully) funnier...and Damon more complete a character. Perhaps even believably heroic, at the end.

And I will do no more screenplays. I'm sticking with books, from now on.