Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 158

80% done with the dust jacket...

Here's the synopsis on the front inside flap. Comments and critiques are welcome before I solidify this.
----

Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first printed in late 1865, but the illustrator so disliked how they turned out they were recalled to be replaced by a new printing. All but around 50 were returned and destroyed, and of those 50 fewer than half are still in existence.

Adam Verlain knows all about this because he’s a rare book cataloguer for a university in London, and books are his life. But when that university acquires a newly discovered copy of The Alice ‘65, he declines the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to pick it up. He has sworn never to leave his careful, cloistered world because his father was robbed and killed on a similar business trip. He only agrees to go when he is told the book will be brought to him at the airport, where he will be surrounded by security, and he can return home, straightaway.

However, from the moment he boards the plane, things start to go wrong...and then he meets the amazingly beautiful Casey Blanchard, the movie star who inherited The Alice '65. She will not let him have the book unless he accompanies her to a premier of her latest film for reasons that seem...well...quite odd.

But Adam has to go along with whatever Casey wants in order to get the book and keep his job...even as his world careens into a chaotic mix of a punk child, a too-cool henna artist, a protective mother, a drill-sergeant stylist, questionable edibles, mistaken identity, hysterical fans, Hollywood royalty, their courtiers and minions, maniacal LA drivers, an outlandish party, a drowning pool in the middle of Beverly Hills, a love-struck wild animal on a homemade veldt near Santa Monica Boulevard, 50 cans of salmon (no wildebeest; can't get that in LA)...and the horrible realization he’s falling heal over heels in love with a woman every man in the world desires, whom he knows could never love him back.

Or could she?--------
I've also finished inputting changes and will make one more pass through the meat of the story to see if it's ready...then it's done. I am so excited...and ready...

Oscars done

Happy about James Ivory and Roger Deakins. Didn't know Sufjan Stevens was up for one and wish he'd got it. Watched the program while inputting corrections to A65. I have the dust jacket almost done, too.

Here's the list.

BEST PICTURE
"The Shape of Water" *WINNER

DIRECTOR
Guillermo del Toro, "The Shape of Water" *WINNER

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Gary Oldman, "Darkest Hour" *WINNER

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Frances McDormand, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" *WINNER

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Allison Janney, "I, Tonya" *WINNER

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sam Rockwell, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" *WINNER

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
"A Fantastic Woman" *WINNER

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
"Call Me by Your Name" *WINNER

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
"Get Out" *WINNER

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT)
"Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405" *WINNER

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
"Icarus" *WINNER

ORIGINAL SONG
"Remember Me," "Coco" *WINNER

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
"Coco" *WINNER

PRODUCTION DESIGN
"The Shape of Water" *WINNER

CINEMATOGRAPHY
"Blade Runner 2049" *WINNER

COSTUME DESIGN
"Phantom Thread" *WINNER

SOUND EDITING
"Dunkirk" *WINNER

SOUND MIXING
"Dunkirk" *WINNER

ANIMATED SHORT FILM
"Dear Basketball" *WINNER

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
"The Silent Child" *WINNER

ORIGINAL SCORE
"The Shape of Water" *WINNER

VISUAL EFFECTS
"Blade Runner 2049" *WINNER

FILM EDITING
"Dunkirk" *WINNER

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
"Darkest Hour" *WINNER

You know you're close to done when...

You don't make as many changes as in the previous drafts. I just completed this last one and have a few, but not all that many. Mostly it's finding spots where I missed a period or typed in sock instead of shock, that sort of thing. Only about half a dozen. I'm going to do nothing but input the changes, this time, then do my backwards read to see if I find more typos...but I think I've gone as well as I can without spending a hell of a lot of money on it...money I don't have.

I'll also need to go through the printing setup to make sure there's nothing silly in it -- like a dash being all alone on a line below a paragraph or a single two-letter word finishing a line at the top of the next page. Things that can cause irritation and take the reader out of the story. I've got 3 weeks to get this right, so here goes.

Of course, next week is short and the weekend of no use. I'll be in Austin at my niece's wedding and will only have time on the plane, each way, to work on A65...but I can set up the electronic formatting on that. It's my hope to have the book off to Ingram Spark by Thursday to set up the hardcover and get a proof sent to me.

Man...I am so optimistic...

Make that 206 pages...

I shifted my Word doc into a PDF to use as a copyright file. I copyrighted the story in screenplay format, but it's changed a fair amount from that so I'm going to do it, again. It's only $30 if I do it online and is worth it. The book's mine till I've been dead for 70 years, so that might be good enough.

I've got about half my screenplays copyrighted, and all of my books. I keep saying I'll get every one of them done but it takes a lot more free time than I have, right now. I don't want to just dump them into the system and run.

I did get the OK on the changes needed for my Library of Congress PCN. It's now listed in their system un The Alice '65. It can be looked up under LCCN 2018901455. I feel very real.

If A65 does well, after I'm done with P/S I may shift The Cowboy King of Texas into novel form. That way I could explore each character's history a lot more deeply and still have fun with it. I owe better than I've done to that script; It's the first one that got me noticed as a screenwriter, and almost got me an agent.

Tomorrow night's taxes and me finding out how much I'm not paying the government. I'm still pissed as hell about that vile tax bill rammed through by the GOP. The positive thing is, it doesn't affect me till I do my taxes, next year, and by then maybe we'll have kicked the bastards out and revoked the damned thing.

Oh, I'm tired. It's been a long week and threatens to be longer, next week. I'm off to Austin for my niece's wedding, next Friday, and will see people I haven't seen or spoken with in nearly 7 years...some by choice. It's only for a couple days, and Austin is a respite from the rest of Texas, but still...

It'll be nice to be there for those I care about...

Closer...closer...

Looks like The Alice '65 will be 204 pages...including blank and title pages; actual story is 189 pages long. That's in a 5.5x8.5 size using Times New Roman font, 10 point and 1.15 inch spacing between the lines. I like how it looks so will probably keep it like that. This makes the spine .5 inches thick, in hardcover...slim, but not too slim...

The more I look at the cover, the more I like it. It's brighter and sunnier than anything else I could come up with, and I think the models for Adam, Casey and Gertrude are just right. It's a very off-the-wall kind of story, but with dark undertones...and I think this will help it. Guess we'll see once it happens.

I printed out one last copy to red pen, this weekend, then that's it. I'm doing a backwards proofing and figure that's as close as I can get without paying $500 to an editor to go through it in more detail...and considering I've had it proofed 3 times already and still found mistakes the proofers missed, I don't think it'd be worth the money.

I can't do anything on the book till the weekend because I'm doing taxes on Friday and have to get everything in order. I'm tempted to just not pay them, thanks to that disgraceful bill passed by the sneaky-assed GOP...who are finally realizing they screwed it up. The only joy I get from this spectacle is how Czar Snowflake won't let them change it. Why should he? They handed the keys to the treasury over to him and increased the nation's debt by a trillion bucks, to do it.

I so despise that party, right now, I don't even want to be around anyone who voted Republican in 2016.

Steven King's rules for writing...

I think I've broken half of them in The Alice '65...and I don't care...much...

1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."2. Don’t use passive voice. “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.”3. Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.”4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.”5. But don’t obsess over perfect grammar. “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.”6. The magic is in you. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.”7. Read, read, read. ”If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”8. Don’t worry about making other people happy. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."9. Turn off the TV. “TV---while working out or anywhere else---really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs.”10. You have three months. “The first draft of a book---even a long one---should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”11. There are two secrets to success. “I stayed physical healthy, and I stayed married.”12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”13. Eliminate distraction. “There’s should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.”14. Stick to your own style. “One cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what that writer is doing may seem.”15. Dig. “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”16. Take a break. “You’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.”17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. “(kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)”18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story. “Remember that word back. That’s where the research belongs: as far in the background and the back story as you can get it.”19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing. “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”20. Writing is about getting happy. “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”

I worry I'm going too dark...

While working on A65, today, something fresh came up...as did something expansive. I'm doing everything I can to keep Adam smart and aware without revealing exactly what he's thinking, and it's proving to be pretty hard to find the balance. In doing this, I've found sometimes I ignore actions that should be obvious to him...until I've been through the story a dozen times and peeled back enough layers to where it's so damned obvious, a blind man could see it.

One truly glaring one is how it turns out Vincent lied to him to get him to go on the trip...all so the university could get the Alice '65 for free. Adam's not stupid; he'd realize that before too long...before he returned to England. He'd have to react to it, and it would color his growing relationship with Casey because he'd think she was part of it. And damn me, but I didn't see this until today.

This kind of crap kicks me in the ego more than any criticism ever could...because I can't tell if the character is telling me this and I'm not listening, or if he's keeping it from me because he doesn't trust me...which I know sounds crazy, but it's how I approach writing so I don't care.

CRAP! It won't take much to adjust but it's got me worrying, now, that the same thing will happen with Brendan when I dive back into Place of Safety. He's already irritated with me for taking so damn long to face the story, so it may wind up being a real MMA fest between him and me until one of us surrenders...and that story will demand even more honesty and willingness from me than a light work like A65 has.

Maybe that's why it's getting darker than a rom-com. Adam's past is tragic -- losing his father, the loss of their book shop, a brother who despises him, co-workers who look down upon him even though he's more knowledgable than all of them put together...well, except for Vincent. But the story is what it is...and if I refuse to let it become what it wants to be, I'll only prove myself unworthy of Brendan's story.

I'll be damned if I let that happen.

Stayed in so I could argue with me...

So I'm halfway done with inputting changes and still arguing with myself over the commas...and I decide I've taken too many out. A lot of them did need to be removed but some help clarify the sentence a bit better and need to be there and I think, initially, I was deleting for the sake of deleting. Now that I'm into the rhythm of the piece, again, I want those dealing with non-restrictive clauses to return...even if they're only slightly non-restrictive...if that makes sense.

Aw, the hell with it. English is a living breathing language that's not the same from one moment to the next. What works today won't work tomorrow and what was right last year isn't right this year so just go with what feels right and not worry about the grammar Nazis...which I wouldn't except I sort of am one, sometimes. But only in blatant misuse -- like you're for your or their for there and vise versa. That does drive me nuts.

For some reason I'm thinking I'd like to release The Alice '65 on March 24th, which is a Saturday and makes no sense. But...it feels right. So we'll see how it develops. That gives me just over a month to get everything in order. I did clean up and adjust the image I'm going to use for the online postings of the e-book..

What's fun is, I also cleared some unneeded files off my desktop and while doing so came across an old story I'd begun about the first time I felt a crush on a man. It was during a campout for scouts, something I hated doing. We were in Cypress Cove, which was about to be covered up by Cypress Lake, and I was about 12 or 13 and knowing I was different from the other boys. In what way, I had no idea, yet.

We were camped at a spot where two streams came together and the other boys liked to go swimming in a pool just down from there. I can't swim so I stayed in the rapids and enjoyed the beauty of the area. Towering cypress trees offering cool shade. Soft hills covered in scrub and mesquite. Water flowing lovely over white rocks. I hated how it was going to be destroyed, so I wasn't in the best of moods.

Then I saw our assistant scout master come down from the camp, ready for a swim. He was an airman with a wife and a second kid on the way and looked a lot like this porn model -- Pavel Novotny. I liked him and liked being around him, but it wasn't until that day that I began to understand why. He was wearing a red Speedo...and seeing him burst into the sunlight jolted me. I honestly forgot to breathe, for a moment. Then he stood on a rock to look around in the sun, seeming like a god viewing his domain, and I burst out with something like, "Jesus, Mr. Francis, you're beautiful."

He looked at me funny then came down off the rock and joined the other boys down in the pool...and I felt like I'd said something wrong. Sure enough, at the next meeting I was disinvited from the troop. Not that I cared; like I said, I didn't like scouting and knew I'd never go higher than 2nd Class thanks to the swimming badge being a necessity to advance, but it was still an embarrassment.

My folks didn't understand what had happened and no one in the troop would explain. I just told them I didn't want to keep going and they accepted it because it meant less expense. Then shortly after, we moved to El Paso for a year.

And it was in that vile hellhole that I started to see just how different I was from other boys.

Commas are of the devil...

My first sentence in The Alice '65 started the whole idea of commas messing with me just to have fun. It reads as follows...

Had Adam Verlain known what was in store for him, that Monday, he would have stayed home the entire week.

So comes the question -- is that Monday a restrictive or non-restrictive clause? It makes pretty much the same amount of sense if I remove the first comma and make it --
Had Adam Verlain known what was in store for him that Monday, he would have stayed home the entire week.
But...it doesn't feel right. I'd prefer to use on Monday instead of that Monday. Which brings up the question of whether or not I'm being reflectively Victorian in my use of commas or if it's really a better, clearer sentence with both commas. I think the latter but Strunk & White is being no help in determining which is right. Maybe both are and it just depends on what style you want to use. I don't know. I just know it seems better with both commas. So I'm leaving them in.
This took up twenty minutes of my time. If I'm going to be having existential crises at every comma throughout the book, I'll be 90 before it's done. And don't get me started on participial phrases.
I'm also reading up on the best way to format the book before solidifying it for print. I've got all the pages in order that I want; I just need to input this round of changes then condense it into the 5.5x8.5 form to determine the final page count...at which time I can start in on the cover. But I have to have a finalized page count before I can send in for the required template to use with that.
I've reassigned my last ISBN to the hardcover and will use the one I had put with the book for the paperback. On Monday I'm applying for a new CiP number for the Library of Congress designation. I'm also going to send it out to a couple of sites to see if they'll review it.
Hmm...it's starting to look final, now...

More inputting...

Tomorrow I begin inputting the corrections from this latest pass over A65, and I get to argue with myself over the placement of commas and incomplete sentences. Do they add to the story, interfere with the flow or are they just affectations? I got no idea, and Strunk & White is reading a bit on the old-fashioned side. I don't want it to read like a Victorian novel, with commas at every change of phrase, but some are necessary and probably more than most modern writers use...so I'll be having fun, this weekend.

Something I do want to keep in mind is, the corrections I'm making this go around aren't that extensive. The vast majority are just me questioning myself about grammar and trying not to kill my style in doing so...and fighting to keep the emotional connection with the reader at the top of the realm. That's the real hard part.

I think I'm at the point where if I do too much more, I'll kill the story. Edit the life right out of it. Right now, Adam's huffiness and Casey's secretive manipulations have a nice balance and glide along at a nice clip. I could easily bog it all down with too much extraneous detail and that's another fight I'll have with myself, this weekend. Does this detail further the story is a good way or is it there just to be there?

It's funny how many typos I keep finding through each pass, though. This evening I caught four that had been there for at least three drafts. Man...I could never be a proof-reader; I'd get too caught up in the story and forget to keep watch for errors, or I'd so hate the story I wouldn't pay attention. I'm trying to read a couple of books, right now, neither of which has caught my attention, so they've become a chore that I'm close to abandoning.

With one, I like the author and have read 3 of his other works, but this one is boring and predictable. Woman on the run with her daughters from an abusive husband who's rich and hires a detective who's got a past and needs money to find her and the kids and...gee, I wonder where this is going? And so tediously.

The other is a gay romance that burns so lowly and so stupidly, I have no respect for the characters. The author has a good style, it's just...too many excuses for the two male leads to not notice or pay attention to or do anything about the obvious attraction between them. I'm 2/3 of the way in and nothing of interest. Nothing. In fact, I want to slap both of them. Not a good place for a book to be.

But it does make me wonder about my own work and try to keep from falling into the same pitfalls. I think I have the action in A65 following naturally and normally, but you don't know till someone comes back with a decent review.

Or a rough one...