Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 14

Best laid plans...

In the world of Murphy's Law, soon as I gave myself space to think, work came roaring in. Three travel jobs -- one driving, two by air -- all expended beyond expectations. Then came assisting with paperwork for the NY Book Fair and, yesterday, Firsts London Book Fair, which messed with my me time.

I usually need lots of space with minimal disruptions to settle in and think about my next project, especially since my brain is all over the place, right now. Wasn't happening, so instead of even trying to kick back, with all that work, I focused on shifting all three volumes of APoS into paperback format, and set up the templates for the covers. But I still have no idea what the cover art will be.

And...I had one of my brilliant ideas: to emphasize the story Brendan dreams about him and Joanna living in a world without hate is the story he'll be telling to raise funds for the cause. This is how it could be, kind of thing.

That also worked into the reason he doesn't let her know he's still alive. He finally accepts what Father Jack and Colm have told him...that she was badly injured in the bombing and thinks he's dead, and it's better to leave that be. Knowing he's seen her like she now is would destroy her. So he backs away.

That meant updating the ebook and hardcover editions, as well, but now it's all done. I still found a few typos in each book, but I didn't bother correcting those.

One interesting thing that happened, just today, is I found out I'm a descendant from the Mayflower. By proxy. Robert Cushman, who helped arrange the voyage and was supposed to go along on a sister ship, is my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, on my father's mother's side. I doubt that counts in Boston, but it is a shock. And I now know that side of my family back to 1538, with Robert's father.

And that we're English, not Dutch, as I'd thought.

Pause

 I'm stepping back from writing and posting for the rest of April. I need to figure out what the fuck is going on with me and right now all I'm craving is space...peace a quiet...something where I don't have to do anything...don't have to even try to create anything. Vacation, I guess. 

So...later.

More of the opening chapter of DP

The voice was still drifting past when Mícheál appeared with one of those men. Iñigo. Brown skinned and swarthy, always smiling and willing to work. Good choice. 
Caoimhín put a finger to his lips and cupped his hand around an ear. Both of them heard the singing, but it was Mícheál who rolled his eyes and shook his head. He knew who it was.
Caoimhín motioned for them to wait, then he slipped away, heading through the thicket to the pond on the other side. Keeping himself hidden in the bushes, he saw a girl with black hair, soft skin and a lovely form on the other side of the water cutting reeds. Her skirt was raised and tucked into a woven line around her waist, and her back was to him, but he knew what her face looked like. Sharp and knowing, with dancing eyes that were the color of the sky and lips like cherries. 
Caera. 
But never before had he heard the song she was singing. 
Come to me my one so fair  Now that the sun is sleeping.  Join with me if you dare  Our love is for the keeping.  You'll be my only one.  Our dreams are never-ending.  Stay with me till the sun  To us her light is sending.
 He smirked, took a deep breath, and slipped into the water. So she would not see or hear him, he crawled across the bed of the pond, his eyes locked on her lovely legs, closer and closer, up to behind her before... 
He burst up and grabbed her around the waist. She screamed and fought him, then saw who it was and slapped at him to make him let her go. 
"Caoimhín, you never should do that!" 
He laughed, shook his hair free of water, and flopped back on a finger of land, nearby. "You shouldn't be off by yourself, like this," he said, grinning. 
 "She's not," came a voice from behind him. It was his mother, striding up with another bundle of reeds. "Why would you think she was?" 
He bolted up, embarrassed. "Sorry, Mama. We...um, we got a stag just the other side of those trees and I...I had to come see who was singing." 
Caera nearly wailed. "Oh, you heard--?!" 
His mother grew sharp, cutting her off. "And left your hunt in the open?!" 
"No, Mama, a couple of men are there. One of them your other son." 
The older woman stopped, to look at him, closer. "Mícheál? You left him--?" 
"He's safe. With Iñigo." 
"You should go to them, right now. Carry it back to the settlement." 
He smirked and cast Caera a wicked glance. "I will, if someone sings me away." 
"No, Caoimhín," she moaned, "it was going to be my present to you, when we joined, a surprise our first night together. But it's not right, yet, and now you've ruined it." 
Suddenly he felt the fool. "No, Caera..." 
"I should cut your throat. Now I must find something else to give you." 
He sloshed back into the water and all but knelt before her, saying, "No, please don't, Caera, it's wondrous beautiful." 
"You're just saying that because you ruined it..." 
"No, I swear to you. It drew me to you. Sing it to me, again, on our night together. Don't change a word. Please." 
She sighed then caressed his cheek almost smiling. "You can be such a boy, at times." 
He reacted to her touch as would a kitten being petted. "I will be your man. Forever and ever." 
She giggled. "On that, we shall see." 
Then his mother shook her head and swatted his back with her reeds, fighting a smile but still snapping, "Go back to your stag!" 
He chuckled and waded deeper into the water."I return the way I came," he said, then took in a deep breath and dipped under the surface. 
Caera untied her skirt and bound her reeds into bundles, keeping an eye on the far side of the pond, waiting for Caoimhín to appear...but he did not come out of the water. She finished all three bundles and still he had not shown. 
"Niahm," she said, her voice wary, "I do not see Caoimhín on the other side." 
"Did he come up for a breath?" the older woman asked. "He often does that." 
"I didn't see him." She scanned the pond. "Caoimhín? Caoimhín!" 
His head popped up above some reeds on the far shore and he called back, "What is it?" 
Even from this distance she could see a grin on his face. She huffed. "One of these days the water will take you and I will not be sorry."She picked up her bundles and turned to Niahm, still huffing. "He does this just to vex me. It's hard to believe he is the elder son." 
"His sisters spoiled him," said Niahm, in full innocence. She looked down the stream and sighed. "He should get that stag back to the settlement. The wind and sky are growing angry." 
Caera followed her gaze to see thick clouds in the distance rolling closer and closer, light dancing between them, to emphasize how tall and full of passion they were."Feasting will be in the hall, tonight."
------
It's about here where the Dagda comes wandering up, looking for shelter...and setting in motion the horror that will come.

The opening chapter...

What I posted earlier for Darian's Point Begins (don't like that title but it works, for now) is the prologue. This part will be the opening chapter, taking place five years earlier than Caoimhín's death.

----

Caoimhín had just felled a stag when he heard the sound. A soft voice whispering on the morning air. He was in a thicket of shrubs and trees, and the stag was a lucky catch. The first hint of cold was in the air, and this would help feed their clan well for days. The fun part would be hoisting it back to their settlement. 

That was where Mícheál came in handy. He had developed the idea of a post to slip between the stag's bound hooves, determined the best thing to do next would be tie its antlers to the post, and had arranged padded props to make it keep high enough not to drag any part of the stag on the ground. He was also willing to help carry it, but he had not yet been through enough summers to end him being on the scrawny side. So Caoimhín had sent him back to the settlement to have someone bigger and stronger come to help. It was not long after when he heard the sound of...

A lone female voice singing. 

Nothing unusual about that. Women often sang as they worked. They used it as a way to keep track of each other and let their children know where they were as well as to make the day's chores less tiring. But they were usually in groups.

Caoimhín had to keep with the stag's body, so that wolves or hawks could not tear into it, but the voice was calling to him. It was too unusual...and too familiar. He listened carefully, and determined the sound came from a pond on the other side of the thicket. Near to where the water flowed past the tree named Aoibhinn. 

Which made no sense. It was farther up the stream than their women liked to go, and besides...they did not fish; men did. Women gathered berries and planted barley and washed tunics and tended to children as they sewed and tanned hides, while men handled the challenge of casting nets and hauling in their catch or hunting food for winter and carrying it back to be made use of. 

He chuckled to himself. If Mícheál heard him speaking that belief, there'd have been an argument. The boy was foolish in his idea that women could do anything a man can do. 

"I have helped our mother repair our hutch," he'd snapped, "and she chased away a fox that tried to take our chickens while you and Da were out enjoying yourselves on a hunt." 

"A hunt is not fun," Caoimhín had snapped, in response. "It's very hard. Tracking beasts for days only for them to get away before you can throw your spear. Carrying those we do manage to catch back on our backs." 

"Of course. That's why you take skins filled with Mead and spin tall tales around the fires, at night. It's so hard." 

"Wait till I take you on a hunt. You'll see." 

"I'm happy to go on the next one," he'd said, far too nicely. "I have an idea for how to make it even easier for you." 

Caoimhín had to laugh. "And already you're telling us how to do it." 

Mícheál was an unusual boy. His head filled with thoughts and ideas. Their mother relied on him, greatly, to help her keep the settlement in order when the men were away, and the young ones amused. Of course, his sisters had often treated him like a pet, but it had been his ideas that protected their clan from a raid by an unknown group of men, who'd come ashore, not far away. Dark, ugly men who stank of too being long away from the earth. One of the older men who was keeping watch over the area near the water had seen them arrive and brought the alarm. 

Too many of the clan's men were gone to the hunt for a good defense to be set up, so first the women and children were made safe in the cave under Feidlimid's thick base, where its roots intertwined and hid the opening even better. Then Mícheál had convinced their mother that slaughtering and roasting a couple of pigs would make for better protection.

When the Dark Men had appeared at the settlement, the smell of the sizzling meat had caught their attention. Granted, their language was strange, but some words were similar enough to get the point across, and being more hungry than anything, the men had happily feasted and drunk and laughed. They had even worked with Mícheál to make the stone spearheads Caoimhín used better. By the time the hunting party returned, they were almost part of the clan. 

When questioned by Caoimhín about what he had done and why, the boy's response had been, "It was far better than trying to kill them all; we'd have been slaughtered." 

Their father had praised Mícheál for his quick thinking, and had brought him along on the first hunt after the cold was gone, despite Caoimhín's protests. The only thing positive about that experience was, he'd been less trouble than expected. 

But it seemed the long nights that came and the harsh cold and the white flakes of water drifting from the sky was not to the new men's liking. So most of them left on the first warm, clear day. 

Two remained because each had each joined with a woman of the clan and soon would be a family. They’d happily helped on the hunts, and what was better...they had accepted Mícheál almost like a brother and kept him busy. 

So it had worked out. Fortunately.

Bloody me...

I'm putting Misdemeanor aside, for now, and turning back to Darian's Point. I know what I want it to say and do, but it just ain't doin' it. I may have started a story that can't be told in the way I want, and my pretensions won't let me work beyond that.

I think half the reason writing APoS took so many years is because I just wasn't good enough to do it, yet. Still too locked in a commercial, Hollywood-style of storytelling, where there has to be a major event every chapters and shifts in the storyline to keep the reader engaged instead of just following the life the characters are leading.

I needed a willingness to let the story breathe, which was very hard for me because of my pre-conceived notions as to what should happen where. But it led me to an ending I think is far more meaningful and true than my initial one. The one I would have insisted on even 5 years ago.

Darian's Point is a bit like that. Gothic horror is a lot more forgiving when it comes to what a story has to be in order for it to be told. Book 1 will lay it all out. Book 2 will show it closing in on the end. Book three will finalize things. Nice and simple.

Here, again, I know what the story is from A-Z; I just need to write it. Do it well and with some depth, but not to the extent where it's symbolic of anything, really. I mean, there will be some...but not on the surface or even first sub-level. Just...there.

Maybe I think too highly of my ideas and abilities. I dunno. I just know that after a while you need to stop beating your head against a brick wall, because all you'll do is bleed. And that serves no purpose.

Back and forth...

This video...this is me, right now...which should be Hi Ren but YouTube is fucking around with it. It's a schizophrenic video of Ren arguing with a character in his head...

Feeling really out of it. Have been since the 1st, and it’s got me so down and confused and unable to think or write or anything.It seems the story I planned for Misdemeanor is being chucked aside for something that would make Simon the equivalent of a sad, dead faggot.

Which I will not have.

The issue is, I can’t figure out how to get around him insisting he approach Paley outside the convenience store. As he's currently laid out, he would never do that with a strange man. Especially not in a town he never wanted to go to. He wouldn’t even do it near his home. It doesn’t make sense, for him.

I thought about making it so the hotel he’s staying in is across the street and has to pass Paley, then have the man talk to him, but it’s still too close to being a setup story, that way. And I want it organic. Nothing obvious. Besides, Simon wouldn’t react to Paley if he spoke to him. He’d just cross to his hotel.

There’s also how to handle Paley to make his arrest of Simon more believable. It’s not like I can make Simon black; cops make up shit all the time to excuse their harassment of African-Americans...and sometimes murder of them. But no way am I bringing a racial element to this. It's not my place.

Simon and I have been arguing over this to the point of schizophrenia. If I allow it, I have to rewrite the character...and I absolutely hate where that would lead. It's like he would be approaching Paley in hopes of punishment, of some kind. Which crushes the whole meaning of the story...that our system of justice is cold, cruel, and does not really care about the law.

That would also mean he’s initiating the events, which removes a level of innocence I want for him.

I thought about dropping the story and focusing on making APoS’ three volumes into paperbacks...then realized they would have to be priced at $20 each to make any money off them, and need to think about that. Same for making a paperback out of The Beast Dines Out.

So I’m stuck in a sort of limbo...dammit...and it's making me even crazier than I already am.

Fuck...

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I’ve been working on Misdemeanor and it had been coming together...until Simon decided to change an important part of the story.
His arrest.
He wants to make it more like it could have been just a misunderstanding. That he approached Paley to ask why he was stalking him in the store. And after that it becomes a he said/he said situation. Which on its surface makes sense...
But doesn’t work, because it really makes no sense.
1. It happens at midnight.2. Paley is in street clothes, not a uniform, so is like some random guy who could be dangerous.3. Simon is solitary. He shuns approaching people unless he absolutely has to.
Seriously, he would not just walk up to some random stranger in the middle of the night in a town he’s never been to before and strike up a conversation. That’s not his way. 
There's also the issue that if he does that, it changes the story’s trajectory, as currently worked out. But he’s adamant and I cannot figure out how to do it. 
So I’m blocked. 
I’m fucking blocked.
Have been for two days.On a story Simon brought me, laid out in a particular form, and insisted I tell. Except now he wants it different. Almost like a bait and switch.
The little fuck.

Bits and pieces...

Some of what I've been working on, for Misdemeanor...and I really do want better title. This happens in the second half of the Seventies.

-----

The first time he saw Doyle, Simon'd breath had stopped for who knew how long. Tall. Broad shoulders under a fine gray suit jacket. Yves St. Laurent, he learned later, from the very pricey Frost Brothers. A casual walk along an aisle of dust-ridden paperbacks made even more elegant by the perfection of his legs. 

Seen from behind. 

When he turned to come back another aisle, a soft pink shirt and flashy tie only enhanced the exquisite features of his face. Ice blue eyes. Lips pursed in just the right way. Clean chin sculpted by the heavens. He had to be an apparition, he was so gorgeous. 

He stopped in the action/adventure section of paperbacks and picked up a new copy of Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers. 

Without thinking, Simon called over, “That’s a good one. He wrote Airport, too.” 

Doyle glanced at him and picked up a slightly yellowed copy of that book and held it up for Simon to see. One eyebrow perfectly raised in question. 

Simon nodded, feeling completely idiotic. 

Doyle brought both over and said, “Haven’t seen the movie.” 

“It was on TV, last year. Maybe they’ll show it, again. Will that be all?” Doyle nodded...and Simon noticed his eyes were looking straight at him.“Uh, that’ll four-twenty-eight,” Simon murmured as he slipped the books into a bag. 

Doyle paid with a five, saying, “You new?” 

“What?” 

“Haven’t seen you here, before.” 

“Oh. Yeah. Just started. Part-time.” Why did he tell him that? 

Doyle nodded, accepting his change. “Still in high-school?” 

“No. No, Graduated in May. Started at SAC. San Antonio College.” More stupid words. 

But then Doyle looked him over like a cat eyeing a mouse it’s about to have for its dinner, and smiled. “I’m familiar with it. So you work nights?”Simon just nodded.“Maybe I’ll see you around.” 

Then he licked his lips, winked, and walked out the door. 

And for the next three weeks Simon kept hoping he’d see him walk back in. 

Which he did, just before closing, dressed in a fine pullover shirt and tan slacks. It was still too warm for a jacket. He went to the adult magazines and picked through them, finally choosing a Playgirl and ignoring the glances cast his way by a couple of older men in rougher clothing who were pawing a Penthouse. 

Then ten o’clock came and Simon told him, “I’m closing, now.” 

He’d looked around, smiling. “You here, all alone?”

Simon nodded. “Just for a few hours.” 

“Seems dangerous.” 

“Nobody’s gonna rob this place. Get maybe fifty bucks.” 

“But you’re cute. They might take advantage of you.” 

Simon had no answer to that...until Doyle reached over, put a finger through a belt loop in his jeans, and pulled him close. “Is there anyplace they could?” 

Simon still had no words, but did manage to motion to a door in the back. 

“So maybe lock the door?” said Doyle. 

Simon did, and Doyle led him into the back...

Spooked me...

I had a bit of a freak out, today. There's more and more of me going into this story...and I didn't really catch on to how much till I wrote a section just after Simon's posted bond and been released. 

Walstead, the assistant DA assigned his case to prosecute, talks to him about a deal, which he flat out refuses it. "I've done nothing wrong or illegal and won't say I did just to make your job easier."

He's warned to think about it, because he could go to jail. He goes to the hotel, cleans up, and goes to the client's house, a guy named Northridge, to try and smooth over not showing up, that morning. He only says that something happened and he couldn't make it, but is still willing to o the job.

Turns out Northridge knows he was arrested. It's on the local news. And he uses that to manipulate him into not only making a list of the books, but packing them for shipment. He figures Simon will have to stay in the city for a couple extra days, anyway, to find an attorney and settle other aspects of the arrest.

Northridge also know's Walstead's father, also a lawyer, and warns Simon about how nasty they can be. "They leave me alone and I leave them alone. Best way to handle people like that."

Simon contacts Olivier, the UK dealer he's doing the job for, to say he didn't agree to all of this...but now he's trapped. And this flashes him back to the times Doyle would do the same thing...as did members of his family. Force him to do something he didn't want to do. He thought he was past all that, but his sense of obligation and empathy have roared in, and his self-control is focused on fighting the accusations against him, and he needs all of it.

To be clear, I have never been arrested, for anything. But for years I could be guilt tripped into doing things I didn't want to, and then I'd get resentful for allowing myself to be used. I'd use my love of books to help calm me...like I'm doing with Simon. Retreat into something that can't hurt you.

I can't let myself hold back in this story...but it is digging at me.

The usual changes...

I'm doing the backstory on Simon and Chris...and Chris changed his name. To Doyle Bergeron. His real name is still Jonathan James, which Simon doesn't figure out till much later in their relationship, but this works a lot better. Chris is on the common side and a bit bland. He also let me know he was born in Lubbock, and I can see someone from that town thinking Doyle is a high-tone name.

He's also changed his look, somewhat. I'm using Kyle King's image for Doyle, now. He's got a good expression and Simon wold go for him in a heartbeat. He's also a few years older than Simon, and has a wealthy sugar daddy. So the only reason Doyle would want him is to fuck and be worshiped by.

Until Simon inherits a bit of money from the sale of his grandmother's farm outside Natalia. It's just going to be seven thousand bucks, but that's nearly double a year's wages for him.

Only Doyle winds up with most of it and brutalizes Simon when he wants it back. Simon's younger brother gets some, too, and just ignores his requests for repayment.

That's when he decides to move to Houston and start over. Get away from Doyle and his family. And it works for several years...until Doyle finds him and draws him back in, this time because he's dying from kaposi's sarcoma and has no one to help him.

What's interesting is his experience with Doyle is what makes him strong enough to handle the situation with being arrested. I think. It's still early in the story building process.

More will change, I'm sure.