Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 12

Back to the writing grind...

While part of me wants to take off from writing for the rest of the year, PvSH is making itself a nuisance. I wonder how the cops find out where Simon is staying after he's finally been freed from jail? Well, up pops a podcast reporter who tried to interview him. He was told where to locate Simon by his sister-in-law, who works for ReShawn's law firm, Kaplan, Wilde, and Green, and is homophobic.

Of course, Simon won't talk to him, so the reporter goes to one of the cops involved in the case, to get his side, and inadvertently lets him know Simon's whereabouts. A snippet of which winds up as part of the man's podcast.

ReShawn sees the podcast, can't get in contact with Simon and finds the gravesite. He calls in the state police and they call in the reporter, who is live-streaming when he arrives...and is ecstatic at seeing Simon's body. It means his podcast will now go viral.

The state cops keep everything low-key, so the local cops don't know about the murder investigation until the live-stream explodes across the web and they're asked about it. Fun, fun, fun.

What this brought up is, how does ReShawn find Simon's body? Through an AirTag. He has one in his backpack due to a theft situation. The jail's guards claimed they didn't know where it was, when he tried to reclaim it after being released, so he used ReShawn's Iphone to track it and force them to get it out of the property room. Money in his wallet's gone and his laptop and phone are busted, but he doesn't cause a scene. He just wants to leave. And ReShawn uses that to lead him to Simon's grave.

I also rewrote Simon's death scene. Made it his POV...and it's...well, I'm going to make it as close to poetry as I can. Dream-like. It ends the chapter...and really the second act of the book...and I want it to kick ass.

So...The People v. Simon Halloran is moving along, despite me. I both love and hate when that happens.

Website work

Here are the new synopses I worked up for APoS' three volumes:

APoS-Derry

Derry, Northern Ireland, 1966 

Partitioned from Ireland since 1921 and dominated by Protestants, the Catholic minority has grown weary of the casual discrimination against it and begun a push for equal rights. One- man-one-vote. Decent housing. Good jobs. The most basic of requests. Yet these are still too much to accept, for those in power. Protests, confrontations and demonstrations erupt, growing more and more dangerous and violent. 

Caught in the middle of it all is Brendan Kinsella, a Catholic boy who is thought of as ... odd. The third of six children, he is quiet and observant, with an innate wariness and skepticism, and prefers to go his own way, even though that leads him into trouble, on occasion.

The story begins with the murder of his father just days after Brendan's tenth birthday. He is not sorry the man is dead; he was a vicious drunk who kept the family in extreme poverty. However, the man was killed by a pair of Protestants, which made him a martyr to Ireland and set Brendan’s mother, Bernadette, on an expanding path to Irish Nationalism. And she is dragging his older brother, Eamonn, with her.

Brendan, however, is reluctant to fall in line. So Bernadette constantly berates him as simple-minded, despite his knack for repairing just about anything, and seems unwilling to accept he just wants to live his own life.

Despite his efforts to remain apart from the growing turmoil, Brendan gets caught up in the countless civil rights demonstrations in Derry; the Battle of Bogside, where Catholics forced the Protestant Police Force out of their neighborhood; the arrival of British troops to separate the warring factions; internment without trial; and Bloody Sunday, when Paratroopers massacred Catholic marchers.

Mingled into this is Brendan’s budding relationship with Joanna, a Protestant girl from a well-off family. A relationship that must be kept secret to prevent any reprisals. She is pretty, fun to be around, has a life of relative ease, and is certain she is bound for university. She helps him see there is more to this world than hate and distrust, that his hopes, wishes and dreams could become reality, and they might still find a place of safety, even as their world careens into chaos. 

APoS-NWFO

1973, Houston

Seriously injured by a horrific bombing, Brendan is caught in an Akinetic Catatonia, where he is barely aware of what is going on around him. The Provisional IRA wants him dead because they think he tried to warn the targets of the bombing. The British Army believes he helped set the bomb and wants to interrogate him.

But a scribbled note he left for his mother, the UK passport he had just received, a job offer on a ship in Cobh, and the train ticket he had purchased, one-way to Dublin, all suggest he’d left town prior to the explosion. So that is the story all parties settle on.

In truth, while his wounds were being tended to, it was discovered he was born with a heart condition that needs attention. So he was snuck into the US using the name Brennan McGabbhinn, a distant cousin who died as a child, under a medical visa.

Kept hidden in an attic room in Houston, Texas, Brendan slowly mended out of sight of everyone except his Aunt Mari, Uncle Sean, and cousins -- Scott, Brandi, and Bernadette.But while Brendan’s body may be healing, his mind is still torn by horrific memories of that day; the understanding that Joanna, the girl he loved more than anything, is dead; that his family’s still caught in the brutality of The Troubles; and that he is not allowed to contact them.

In an attempt to regain his center he starts to repair items for the neighborhood help – irons, toasters, lawn mowers and the like. He also develops tentative friendships with Everett, a graphic artist, and Jeremy, a high school friend of Scott’s. And while he is not fond of the extreme heat and humidity of a Houston summer; he begins to believe he has found a place of safety in a city of wealth and promise.

But soon he comes to realize that appearances can be deceiving...and promises are not always kept.

APoS-HNH

Derry 1981 

Brendan is called home to see his mother before she dies of cancer. Using the chaos of the hunger strikes, he sneaks into Derry despite knowing the British forces still want to interrogate him over the bombing that injured him.

Now he must navigate the anger growing around him, even as he discovers he's been lied to about Joanna, learns his father may have been far more than a simple drunken brute, finds his youngest brother, Kieran, hates him, and he is caught in a very casual betrayal that could easily kill him.

Yet in the face of the growing turmoil and exploding violence he continues to fight to determine the direction of his life.

I took a day...

...And ignored the world. Well, pretty much. I was ensconced in my bed under the covers, with a nice chill breeze going outside and window cracked enough to whistle at me, using my art board to prop my laptop on, when I think about getting a lap table. I check online, and Michaels has them for under $10.

So I hop up, shower (since I didn't, last night), and drive the 4 miles over there. And get one. Then I think about a nice back cushion like I used to have, years ago, and find that at a store next door. And now I'm home and re-ensconced in my bed using the table and my cushion and feeling very cozy. I even have a cup of tea on the night stand.

My ass is getting to be a bit sore, but everything else is great.

I'm pulling together information for a guy I know to work up a website for me. Got samples. Got suggestions. Got links to Smashwords and Ingram Distribution. And got my last book cover set for APoS-HNH. Just waiting on the Kirkus review...which won't show till June 19th, according to their site.

Tomorrow's laundry so I won't have a chance to repeat this till early afternoon, but I'm enjoying it. I've started a beef/vegetable soup on the stove that's at the point of simmering. It's a holiday weekend so there is nothing that needs to be done for Caladex...though I did update the anticipated cost of flying down to DC for another pickup and flying home. Not much change. Just waiting for the dates the client wants. Last word was, it'd be in August.

Something I neglected to do while out was get the makings for tacos. I may need to hop over to a grocery store, tomorrow, for that. We'll see.

Careful what you eat...

I made some macaroni salad about 10 days ago, with carrots and green pepper and pickles and onion, and even threw in some chopped olives, mixed in some mayo and chopped eggs. I like how it tastes. Kept it in the fridge...but apparently it doesn't keep as well as I thought it would. I had some for lunch...and got sick a couple hours later. Which probably means I'd left it out for too long, sometime.

I wound up taking some Imodium to calm things down, and threw out the last of the stuff. Not what I needed, right now. I hate wasting food. So now I'm sitting in bed under some covers, feeling sorrier than usual for myself. And doing nothing. I've begun to think I'm just burned out with writing, for right now.

Well...I'm not quite doing nothing. I spoke with a guy I know who can work up a website for me. I just need to find an example of the kind I want to start him off. What I'm looking for is a simple site that will have an image of my books, a short logline, a pdf to download with a sample of the book, and links to buy the book at Smashwords and Ingram Direct. Build my promotional campaign off that.

But I can't find anything similar to it to show him. In the writing groups I belong to on FB, the writers all use the groups' blogs to link to Amazon for everything. I don't do Amazon, and none of them seem to have standalone web pages...so I have to keep looking.

I'm sleeping better, at least. And dreaming in the usual way, where I know I did but can't remember it enough to write it down. Except for one, this morning. One that sort of continued one I've had before, I think. In an airport that's like a Vegas Casino and no one is wearing shoes and I'm trying to find my gate but the bus has already left...the usual nonsense that makes sense while you're dreaming.

I almost got a couple of packing jobs in Belfast and Oxford, but the more I learned about them, the less likely it seems they'll happen. Just 6 boxes in Belfast, and might already be in bankers boxes. I've asked for more information, but they seem reluctant to provide it. So the universe is fucking with me, on top of me being in burnout.

I'm trying...

But not really succeeding. I haven't been sleeping well, the last couple nights, which makes my moods more difficult to deal with, and today the viciousness of the world just washed all over me. 

So I simply don't want to do anything. And that's a sign of depression, isn't it? Or is it just that I'm too much of an empath and the cruelty of people is finally cutting past my defenses?

I looked up what an empath is, to make sure I understood it right, and it's a person highly attuned to the emotions of others, often experiencing them as intensely as their own. Meaning not only can they understand the emotions of those around them but also physically feel them, absorb them, take them on and feel them like they're their own.

What made me think this was seeing clips from the battlefield of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russia sends her men out to be slaughtered in a meat-grinder of death, some of them not even physically capable. That's awful, but what mitigated the evil of that in my mind was knowing about some of the horrors Russian soldiers have inflicted on the people of Ukraine. Evil, evil things. Inhuman.

Ukraine's fighting back in ways far more technologically advanced, using swarms of drones to kill the advancing forces. And this one clip showed soldier after soldier being tracked down by a drone...and running and trying to hide and waving off the drone and doing everything they can to keep them away...until it blows them to bits. Over and over and over.

I could feel those men's terror and desperation through the videos. Men who may have done unspeakable acts to civilians in Ukraine...yet I hurt at seeing them die. It's so cold and uncaring...even though it's probably the only way they'll be able to keep Russia from overrunning Ukraine and doing even more horrible things to her people. Like they have in the past. But I can't reconcile the horror of what I'm seeing with the need for it.

There's also the bill the House just passed, cutting Medicaid, SNAP, environmental protections and so much more. Which will cause untold suffering and death in America, and the MAGAt Class cheers while Democrats dither and lecture and whine. It's like we're trapped in a runaway train with no brakes and the end of the track in sight.

So PvSH is sitting there waiting for me to get back to it...and I just can't. I just can't.

Wellness...sort of...

I pretty much stayed away from social media and the news, today. It only pisses me off. Instead, I reviewed the e-proof of APoS-NWFO and found it's fine so approved it for sale on May 27th. Derry is now available through all the big boys, but also direct from Ingram at a discounted rate. That only works in the US and UK, but it's something to keep the price down for most people.

Working with Ingram and selling through a group like Amazon, I have to price the paperback copies high in order to make even a dollar a copy. Some of the older books, I'm not even making that much. Linking straight to Ingram to buy is a much better deal for seller and buyer, at 20-25% off the price.

I may order a dozen of each title, once Home Not Home is up and see if I can get local book shops to carry them on consignment. And I'm going to check and see if the public library would be open to adding the hardcovers to their stacks.

I spent hours trying to set up a website on WordPress, myself, for APoS hardcovers...and it looked okay, but when I hit Publish and tried to see it without having their website builder open, it just goes to the Let's get started page. None of what I did shows up. It does when go back into the builder, so I'm missing a step, somewhere. But I've watched Tutorial videos and got downloads of step-by-step manuals that do not really fit the current form of WordPress, and I cannot figure out what I did wrong.

I already know I'm technologically inept; no need to rub my face in it.

FWIW, I also wrote 1200 words for People v. Simon Halloran...known as PvSH, from now on.

Cover for the 2nd volume

Step by step I'm closing in on the finish of publishing A Place of Safety. Soon I'll just need to figure out how to sell it. I know I'll never make my money back on it, but that's not important. Having the story out and available is. So next comes publicity.

I'm already publicizing it in Ingram's catalogue. And I'm planning a website where I'll have it done for me because I suck at designing one. Clumsy and simplistic is my high end.

I'm taking tomorrow off from social media. It's too fucking depressing and wrecks my will to create in today's political climate. I know enough history to understand shit like what the MAGAt Class is pulling has been happening since the dawn of civilization...I even reference it at the end of Home Not Home when Brendan talks about the story of the Six Nations in Canaan, sometimes called the Seven Nations. They used God as their excuse to exterminate entire peoples, and wrote that as if it was a good thing.

Something else...in 2018 I wrote Underground Guy, a murder mystery being told by Devlin Pope, who is not a sweet kind man. One part of it deals with an asshole like DJT-Jr ripping off Devlin's family and nearly driving them bankrupt, as well as almost driving his brother to suicide.

What Devlin does to get their money back is NSFW, but prior to it is a meeting between him, the asshole (whom I named Griffin Faure), and their lawyers...where Faure's side lies and threatens and stonewalls...but finally agrees to a partial settlement. Not because it's the right thing to do but because Devlin uses their own lies against them. Gets just as hard in their face as they're getting into his. Even so, it's only enough to keep his company solvent till they can regroup.

This stemmed from stories I'd heard about Felon47 driving contractors bankrupt, to the point a couple killed themselves. That's 7 years ago and fairly well-known, yet the MAGAt Class still worships that man, despite how he's hurting them. I've come to see it's a defect in the human race to be like this. To follow the liar and spit on those who tell the truth...and that really depresses me.

The legend of Cassandra also comes to mind, and that's from before the Trojan War. So I'm working on uploading New World For Old to Ingram and prepping the website, tomorrow, and ignoring the world as best I can. I need the time to regroup, emotionally.

Fucking life...

Not much writing done, today. My doctor called. I may need to have my gall bladder removed, something learned when a scan was done of my liver...which is also not in great shape. I have a polyp in the former, along with gallstones, and the latter is fatty to a bad degree. Scarred and in need of time to repair itself.

Which pisses me off. I don't really drink, maybe a beer with lunch or dinner, now and then. Never did drugs...though I did try pot, once, but it messed with me like cigarettes did, so I never smoked. Either of them. I'm not very active but I'm not inactive. And while I'm not a great lover of salads, I've eaten more in the last six months than I had in the previous six years. And all I lost was five pounds and my body's taken a fuck you attitude.

All this denial and aversion to fun and games, for nada. I could've been an alcoholic writer blaming his craft for his drinking problem. Or artist using LSD to bring him visions for his canvas. Instead, I'm an old fart who's falling apart and have to fight to create decent stories, now. Makes me very grumpy.

I remember one occasion, where I wrote the first draft of a script...Find Ray T...I drank a few beers a day for a week to see what I'd come up with. And it turned out pretty solid. The structure was set. The characters, too. Details have changed and aspects were enhanced for humor's sake, since, but if you read the first draft and compared it to the final draft, you'd be able to see one flowed from the other.

I could've done that so many times. Maybe I should try it, again. I think I drank Corona, that time. Or was it Dos Equis? One or the other. And I held down a steady job at Book Soup...or did I take a week off? I don't remember that part. I just know the idea of an actor forced to help the Mafia find a snitch who was in Witness Protection came from watching Johnny Depp on a talk show, revealing he'd met Joe Pistone, the guy who was Donny Brasco, to research his part...and it fell together.

I like how it turned out...humor, action, suspense, romance...but no one else was enthused.

New new title...

Okay, I didn't really like Simon's Murder as the title because it was too Agatha Christie-ish. So came up with The People v. Simon Halloran. It's more connected to the story, since the whole thing begins with Simon being arrested for a Class C Misdemeanor, with an enhancement. It's claimed the event was within 1000 feet of a school, so a physical arrest and booking is in order...even though it happens at midnight.

I expanded on the memory Simon has of Doyle, drunk out of his mind and finding him in Houston. Simon sees Kaposi Sarcoma lesions on Doyle's leg and hip and realizes he has AIDs. Doyle acts like he doesn't know, but there's no question. Apparently, the man wanted to pass that disease on to him, and that's when he decides to make sure he sees the bastard die.

In fact, he wants to make certain Doyle suffers through the entire disease. The whole process. Which can take a couple years. I have a hard time with him being this way...but I can't change Simon's reasons and meaning. He is what he is.

But what that memory does, coming after his laptop's been wrecked, is show how...when he decides to do something, he does it. And he decides to destroy the people prosecuting him. Which he does.

There won't be anything big and overblown in this story. No grand revenge. In fact, it's seeming more and more like Simon lets them destroy themselves through their arrogance, blindness and homophobia. Some may walk away less damaged, but no one will be unscathed.

Setting myself up for a real fun writing project...and already wondering how I can add humor to it to keep it from being too stark or bleak. Not easy; I don't do funny well.

Simon's Murder...

I wrote nearly 1600 words of a scene where the DA tries to talk to Simon during the lunch break of the trial, and it doesn't go well. Simon refuses to discuss a deal and his laptop gets damaged thanks to the DA grabbing at him. In the middle of the trial. Of course, the DA takes no responsibility for it.

But it brings up the moment when Simon decided, many years ago, to make certain he knew Doyle, his abusive ex-lover, died from AIDs. The man found Simon living in Houston and followed him home, drunk out of his mind, peed himself in the middle of Simon's kitchen, and wound up vomiting on a prized stereo setup. Ruined it. And that is when Simon decided he had to witness the man's death for closure.

Which he does, but of course, it never works out exactly how you plan, does it?

I found this poem on Tumblr, I think...and it fits Simon. I copied it...but neglected to note who wrote it. Wasn't me...but it does speak to me...

and i think maybe i was designed to be alone.like my heart was never meant to fit into someone else's hands,like every love i have ever known was only meant to pass through me,not stay.maybe i was crafted with cracks too deep for anyone to fill,with walls too high for anyone to climb.i wonder,was I always meant to be the one who watches from afar?the one who loves deeply but is never chosen?i watch the world around me,see how people connect so easily,and i wonder if something is wrong with me—if there's a part of me that keeps me alone,something broken that can't be fixed.maybe i was made to be the one who understandsbut is never truly understood.maybe i'm just meant to listen but never be heard,to love but never be loved the same way.maybe my heart was made to hold more than it should,to hurt in silence while the world keeps going,not even noticing.if that's true,if i was meant to be alone,then i just hope i can learn to accept it.