Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 191

10,000+ words

A65 is still pretty sloppy, but it's getting there. And I'm finding it easier to alternate between Casey's and Adam's voices as the story goes along. It's almost like a conversation...or two different people taking turns telling you what happened to them once.

I'm on a train trip to NYC, tomorrow, so I'll have plenty of time to work on it. I love riding the train, and it's got power so I don't have to worry about battery life. I'm flying back, however, lat Wednesday night. I'll be in New York during the election, when there's threats of terrorism and disruptions and all that crap. Should be interesting.

I will be so glad when this vile election is over. If Trump does manage a win or the Democrats fail to at least retake the Senate, it's going to be 4 years of hell. The people I work for are thinking of moving to Canada if that happens. Setting up shop there. I don't know if that means I could, too; one of them is a dual citizen of England and the US. Guess we'll see.

Looks like no matter what happens, I'll be working till I'm 72. What joy.

Ping-pong

Looks like I'm using two voices to tell the story -- Adam's and Casey's. Shifting back and forth to keep it going. This will take some work and care to make sure they're both different enough to be clear without me screaming at the reader -- Aaaaaaannnnnnnnnd heeeeeeeerrrrrre's Adam!

And making sure it doesn't come across as silly and artificial. I think it'll just be finding the right moments to shift from one to the other and keep the flow going. I hope.

This is Casey's first bit, still on the meh, side, but it's a beginning ... since this is the beginning. Adam's just arrived into LA and already his plans are being rearranged:

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Adam looked completely out of place in Mom's convertible. Too pale with clothes too much like a wannabe-rebel uniform, suspenders adding just the right touch of perfect dorkiness. Which was better than I'd expected. Still, it wasn't quite right, yet. It needed something more, if my plan was going to work.

Then he got out and I saw his jeans were rolled up! And he wore happy socks ... whoa, with straight Oxfords? Really? Then he looked around, and his face did not match the outfit. There was a tenderness to his smile, an innocence in his eyes. I'd seen that look before, usually in actors who'd just gotten their first big role and were in awe at the possibilities it could bring. I thought for a moment that maybe I'd cast the wrong guy for my little play.

Mom led him inside so I slipped out of my attic room and down the stairs to the landing that overlooked the living room. I watched Mom lead him to the bar, saying, "Coffee? Tea? Bloody Mary?"

God, that joke was old in the Sixties.

He had just smiled and said, "No, thank you," and continued on to the wall of books I had across from the fireplace, saying, "Is the book in here?" All in a nice London accent.

Mom was already mixing herself some lunch as she said, "No, it -- it's somewhere else. In a box ... um ..."

Adam let his fingers drift over the books as he asked, "Box?"

"Yeah. One that's protective and ..."

"A clamshell, perhaps? Brilliant." And I would swear he hummed as he continued with, "Oh, aren't you some lovelies?"

Mom noticed it, too, and said, "You talk to books."

Adam glanced at her, his face open and happy as he said, "Hm? Oh, right. They're my life. Have you seen her?" He took a book from the shelf to look a bit closer. But he didn't pull it out by the top, like I would. He reached into the back and pushed the book out a little, then gripped the spine to draw it from the row of other books.

"Seen who?" Mom asked.

He opened the book to look inside, gently, tenderly, as he said, "The Alice -- um, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." And his tone of voice was surprisingly cool.

"Oh, right," Mom said, "Casey's book. Flipped through it on the crapper. Sure don't look like much."

He snapped the book closed and bolted over to her. I think he was horrified, because his voice almost cracked as he said, "She -- she kept it in the washroom!?"

Oh, God, mom could go on like this for hours, so I started down the stairs, saying, "Don't listen to my mother. She messes with people."

"Only boys, and only if they're cute." Then mom caressed Adam's cheek, making him glance at her ... and he blushed. He actually blushed.

He shifted his focus back to me to say, "Um, Miss -- Miss Blanchard, it's so nice to meet you. I'm Adam Verlain."

"It's Casey," I said. "Vincent told us about you."

Mom wasn't done with her fun, yet. She shot me one of her cool, practiced glances as she said, "No, he told me, and I told you, and you told me to tell him to tell us when Adam was coming, which he did. And I did. And then you misspelled his name."

I wasn't up for an argument, right then, so all I said was, "I called it from the e-mail, mom." And I kept walking around him, inspecting him. Yes, close but not quite ...

I can't find the voice for A65...

Adam's voice is nice for half the story...but it doesn't work for the rest. For Casey's story. And something about telling it in 3rd person is boring, to me. Tedious. Typical. And I have no idea how to find it except keep casting about. Writing. Fiddling. Pounding my head against that damn wall.

This is unusual for me. Normally I know exactly who's telling the story and how before I get going on it. The idea to have Ace tell Daniel's story in LD made it sing, so I got it done fairly quickly. HTRASG was always going to be in Curt's voice and POV. Same for PM, RIHC6, BC and OT; the narrators took over from page one. It even worked that way in French Connection Blues.

Part of the problem might be I'm out of sorts. I got paid late and I'm still owed nearly a thousand bucks in expenses. Blue Cross and NY State of Health, through whom I have my health insurance, cost me an additional $400 this month, due to a clerical issue, and I'm only getting half of it back by way of a credit to next month's premium; it's too late to correct the error and get the other half, even though I wasn't told about it till a couple weeks ago. My only recourse is to file an appeal and go through a lot of crap and paperwork and stuff...at a time when I don't need it.

And glorious Amazon.com -- they've got a couple of my books all screwed up and I've been at them for weeks to correct the problems...and they just keep getting worse. As of now, half the time when you pull up HTRASG or RIHC6 you get a page that offers the books at exorbitant prices, as if they're out of print.. Those listings should be through the marketplace, but for some reason even though the reps tell me it's being fixed, it isn't  And sometimes a page that actually indicates BC is out of print comes up. It makes me wonder if that's why the sales of them are down.

OT is doing all right, at least.

Frontloading...

I'm guilty of putting too much information at the beginning of a book or script I'm writing...which tends to confuse the reader and, I'm told, be a real turnoff. I had to fight myself to spread details for OT throughout the story, and I was only partially successful, I think. I won't know until I get some serious feedback.

To my surprise, I've sold a hardcover of OT. I worked that edition up mainly for my own vanity and self-indulgence...but hey, if someone prefers to buy it that way, no argument from me. In fact, that pleased me as much as realizing how much better OT was selling in Kindle (tho' this part was tempered by the fact that Amazon is causing me all sort of agita in how my books are listed).

Anyway -- here's what I've worked up for the opening of A65. It will change. It has to. Adam's a bit over the top...but I'd like to know if this voice is better for him or if the third person from yesterday worked better. Comments, anyone?
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My name is Adam Alexander Aloysius Verlain, and books are my life ... at least, they were until I was sent to Los Angeles to collect an 1865 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from an actress named Casey Blanchard and ... oh, bloody hell ... what am I doing -- joining a twelve-step program and trying to explain away what happened, as if I were an addict? How absurd.

I'm not -- an addict, that is; I simply love books. Especially antiquarian volumes of paper or parchment bound into leather and vellum. And incunabula and manuscripts and fine bindings by the likes of Sangorski-Sutcliffe and Nonesuch that enfold aged copies of great literature and elegant woodcut images. And private press editions, like Kelmscott and Grabhorn, despite the latter being of more recent issue than usually interests me. Oh, and there’s Dickens or Fielding in wrappers...and illuminated Twelfth-Century manuscripts with lovely hand-worked etchings and colour on their ancient pages ... and ... and ...

Hmm ... perhaps I am addicted. But it’s hardly a dangerous obsession, unless you believe breathing in the dust of centuries ... or skipping a few lunches and having your shoes mended instead of purchasing new ones ... all so you'll have enough coin to buy a slightly worn but still good copy of Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful that you just saw at a shop in Chelsea ... is harmful to health and well-being.

Some would answer in the affirmative, but they would not be book people. Nor would they be working as an archivist for a small but well-thought of university in London. And it's not as if I were the musty, aged academic sort using the pages of his library as walls against the world. One of my colleagues even told me, “You’re tallish enough. Trim without being taut. Open features that are pleasant but always seem ready to pose a question. A rather ordinary haircut, and I have to wonder -- have you even reached the age of thirty, yet? Oh, and please tell me those are prescription glasses and not just Foster Grant’s readers you bought at a pharmacy.”

They're Foster Grant’s. I’m far-sighted so only need them for reading ... though I did notice the last time I purchased some, I had to bump up from +1.50 to +1.75. I suppose I’ll have to see an ophthalmologist, eventually. As for thirty, that’s 10 months off, still. Dunno why it matters; it’s only a number on an artificial scale meant to cause untold misery to men and extreme agita in women, as though ranting and raving about something over which you have no control would make a difference once way or the other. Sometimes understanding the meanderings of mankind is beyond impossible ... and I do tend to ramble. Such is my lot in life, and I’d have no other.

Oh, I should mention -- that was Elizabeth Chaflin speaking, a fellow archivist whose specialty is 19th and 20th Century literature, and who is nicely-formed in every place that counts, physically, and who was giving me a wary eye at the end of her first week, as though she were trying to decide if I was worth paying attention to instead of merely being the lad in the cubicle next to hers. Who happens to keep finding excuses to talk with her. For some reason. I think she decided I wasn’t, but not having a firm answer means I can still bring her tea, whether she asks for it or not, and offer her a biscuit. Which she turns down only half the time. Hope does spring eternal ... especially since she told me I looked as if I belonged in that careful, cloistered world and made it almost sound like a compliment.

We work together along with another archivist named Bill, from whom you will never get his surname; he trusts no one. Not even me, and I've actually shared dinner with him ... more than once. He loves soups. Hot. Cold. Spicy. Sweet. Made from things that don't even work in Haggis. Anything you can imagine that can be cooked in a two gallon pot. His depth of field is books of exploration, adventure, discovery of South America and the Pacific realm. There are centuries worth of it. I haven't had the nerve to ask him if he's read much about cannibals of the South Seas, and I refuse to give in to my suspicion that he might overly enjoy the tales of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper.

There’s also Hakim Jappour, who has officially been archiving books three months longer than I have, and who thinks he knows every aspect of it that needs be known. If you doubt it, just ask him; he’ll tell you. He will also tell you he is very good-looking and should have been a star in Bollywood, but he's third generation English who grew up in Newcastle-on-Tyne, so when he gets into one of his more intense moments, his English quickly becomes unintelligible. He follows the Empire upon which the sun never sets, along with Middle-Eastern and South Asian philosophy and religions. Perfect match-up, on the surface.

The head of our department is Vincent Gurney, who’s been with the University since its founding in 1612. You may think I exaggerate, but not by much; he seems that old, that ghostlike, and that arch in manner. He either has one suit he wears all the time or three identical ones he swaps between while the others are at the dry cleaners. But he has a wealth of knowledge about any book that’s passed through the University’s archives, and what little he does not know for a fact, he knows where the facts are.

Last but not least is Jeremy Blackstone, who’s half scally-half-Cockney, massively tattooed, and full-on filled with his own sense of worth. Which has some basis in fact, I suppose; I’ve seen both Bill and Elizabeth cast him sly glances. He photographs the books for archiving, and I must admit, what he can do with that and PhotoShop is nothing short of phenomenal. On more than one occasion his eye caught manipulations in a snap we’d been sent of a book someone “had just discovered in the attic of their great-grandfather and was offering for sale.” Usually at an exorbitant price. There's a lot of forgery going on the book world, these days, and he's helped the University protect a number of smaller dealers who might have been taken in by such a trick.

In the beginning...

NaNoWriMo begins today...and I still don't know whose voice I'm using for the book. I like Adam's, but that means alternating with Casey in the telling of the story and I don't like the idea of bouncing back and forth, in this one. That worked in Bobby Carapisi because of how I set it up -- first a long section on just Eric, then a long section on just Bobby, then back and forth in a way to keep the story moving forward...and that doesn't work for this.

I do like a section I wrote in third person, albeit not quite omniscient. Dealing with Adam reading The Blood of Others and talking about it with his mother (since his father had not read it). The moment takes place around the dinner table, and his brothers and sister needle him over it.

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He took three days to complete the book, which was unlike him. Normally once he began reading something, all else fell by the wayside. But this book was problematic. He found Jean to be tiresome in his questioning and Marie to be clingy, someone who feels incomplete without a man at her side, even as the world raced to war. It kept changing from first to third person, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, and the ending was a cheat. No honest reason for why she changed her mind about helping Jean, and no explanation as to how she'd been mortally wounded. As if it didn't matter. He told his mother all of this over Sunday dinner.

She smiled. "I thought as much. Do you remember when you read Anna Karenina, last year? How you'd come to me about passages you found exceptional?"

Connor laughed. "Levin reaping wheat with the peasants. It's poetry, POETRY, I say!"

Beryl laughed and swatted him then cast a look at Adam, as if to say, See? I'm telling him to be nice.

Mum gave them a warning smile. "You two will behave or you will see no dessert."

They'd both put on very serious faces.

Adam tossed them his best condescending gaze and said, "Actually, the best part of that book was when Levin and Kitty acknowledged how they felt about each other by using only initials traced into a felt table covering." Then he turned to his mother. "You didn't like The Blood of Others, did you?"

"I felt it a story about an indecisive man who was completely involved in his own thoughts, to the exclusion of others, and a weak, clinging woman who forced him to love her. All for nothing."

"But Anna and Vronsky give up everything for each other -- family, position, wealth -- only to have it fall apart."

"They did it for love ... or lust, if you prefer. Which at least was understandable."

"Is that you're going to do, Adam?" Beryl said in a voice dripping with honey. "Ruin yourself for a great passion?"

David did not stop eating as he said, "Only if it's a lad he plays footy with. He's the poof of the family."

"Don't be ridiculous," Adam shot back.

"Would that matter, David?" Mum asked, her face letting him know what his answer had better be.

He didn't even look up from his plate to see it. He just said, "Naw, he's our Adam. Don't matter one way or the other."

"Adam will love someone from afar," Beryl sighed, "and hope someday she'll notice and love him back."

"And wank him off in the lavatory," laughed Connor.

At that, Adam had taken his water and poured it onto Connor's plate. "No dessert till you finish dins."

"What the devil is wrong with you?" Connor snapped. "It's just water."

"Then lap at it," Adam growled, "like a dog."

Connor tightened his hand into a fist but Mum's smile shut that off. "Adam's right. Finish it."

Connor huffed and eyed his plate. "What is the dessert?"

"Angel Delight," said Mum. "Butterscotch. And I wonder whose favorite that is?"

He wrinkled his nose then took the plate and brought it to his lips ... and dumped it on Adam. "No, thank you."

"Then I'll take his," said Adam, not letting himself react. "And maybe I'll offer it to Patricia Conklin. You do fancy her, don't you?"

Connor rose. Adam did not move. Their mother stood and so very sweetly said, "I think you two boys need to be in separate rooms. Adam, your father's office. Connor, the telly. Lose yourselves in them."

Connor smirked. "Fine by me. Manchester's playing in half an hour." And he wandered away.

Beryl shook her head at Adam. "He almost hit you."

"Oh? You think?" Then Adam rose, wiped himself off and sauntered into his father's office, a tight room filled with stacks of books recently purchased and being researched. And did not allow himself the luxury of collapsing into anger until he was safely away from everyone in a room where he felt safe. There, he figured he could quietly rant and rave for an hour, until Mum came to tell him it was all right for him to rejoin the family.

But fifteen minutes later, they received the call from the Newcastle constabulary. His father had fallen down a flight of stairs at the train depot and was seriously injured. Mum packed them all into her Peugeot and they raced up to be with him. Drove all night.

He died minutes before they arrived.

Getting reviews...

Wow. In my search to try and figure out how to better market my books -- specifically, The Vanishing of Owen Taylor -- I checked out some organizations that do reviews. Which you pay for. A LOT for. Each one.

Kirkus, which I'd already heard of, charges $425 for one review. You get it in 7-9 weeks. If you want it faster, there's a surcharge...and you get it in 5-7 weeks. You can post it to Amazon, B&N, and a host of other sites as well as on theirs.

Blue Ink charges nearly $400, as does Net Galley. Same lead time. You can get reviews for cheaper, maybe, through Independent Book Publishers Association; you just have to be a member ($200 per year) and they are unclear as to whether or not you can post those reviews to any other site...but I haven't dug all that deep into them, yet.

I do have one review of OT, and it's a positive one -- on GoodReads. One of the three people I sent a freebie to did it. Nothing massive, but it's there. I'm glad for that much.

It's funny -- How To Rape A Straight Guy has literally dozens of reviews between GoodReads and Amazon, most being positive but some being extremely negative...and just about all shocked at how they felt about Curt (the protagonist) at the end. It'd be funny if my first book turns out to have been my best book. It's still my best-seller...closing in on 3000 copies sold, though I'm guessing at the numbers sold by Nazca Plains based on the money they owed me and the royalties specified in the contract.

Right now, I'm trying to decide how I'm going to tell the book form of The Alice 65. All my narrative works have been first person, so far...so I'm tempted to do third, this time. I like the idea of the omniscient POV. BUT...Adam has a good clear voice and wants to tell his own story. Same for Casey...though not quite as adamant. I could do like the book version of Laura (which was told by 4 different people)...or what I did with Bobby Carapisi -- alternate between them. I wish I could figure out some way of having a first person tell it in third person, like in The Lyons' Den.

I guess I'll decide that on Tuesday, when I begin.

Rough week

Ending with a trip to the dentist, tomorrow, for a cleaning. And a trip to Chicago on Monday. And a drive to New Jersey the following Monday. And then Hong Kong...and me without a brain, right now.

But none of that matters as much as what's happened the last couple days. Working on A65. I don't want it to be a script. I detest having to cut to keep the flow of the movie going. Resent it. I think it's already become a book in my head, and I'm unwilling to do the adaptation into a screenplay. If that makes any sense.

Hell, does anything I write make sense?

Busy month ahead...

So I voted Absentee. I'll be at a packing job in Connecticut on the 8th. I'm also doing a day trip to Chicago and that hop over to Hong Kong for a week. Then after Thanksgiving is a possible job in Berkeley, again, not to mention a tantalizing one in Maine, up near St. Johns, New Brunswick. It'll be fun.

Of course, this is happening as I'm planning to do National Novel Writing Month, again, but I think reworking A65 into a book will be relatively easy, compared to OT...or not. I'm trying to make it funnier and more character oriented while still maintaining a semblance of reality about it...so I may be making it harder. I won't know until I get into it and start pounding my head against the wall.

But the challenge is just to hit 50,000 words to reach your goal. I used to say win, and they do call you a winner if you make it, but reality is you don't get anything from it except the push to get your next book done. Only I have 5 that aren't completed, yet. First drafts, barely, not revisited. I ought to sit this one out...but I like Adam and Casey and want their stories told, so...away we go.

My excuse for not concentrating on P/S is simple -- I do not want to churn out a non-stop downer of a book like Angela's Ashes. I know it won the Pulitzer and it's a testament to the human spirit and all that, but God it was a depressing read. I didn't see the movie; couldn't handle that, too.

So I'm using A65 to work on my humor. Find ways to make P/S...well, not so much uplifting as honest about how kids can be, even in poverty. Like Hope and Glory did with kids in London during the Blitz and Empire of the Sun did with a boy separated from his parents and put in a Japanese prison camp. Kids cope, usually a lot better than the adults, do.

But Brendan doesn't want to merely cope. He's got friends and family and a profession he enjoys and a girl he wants to marry. All he asks is to be left alone to follow his life. Nothing grand or brilliant, but a life where he can be happy.

If only the bastards would let him.

A pat on the back...

I'm rather proud of myself, right now. I went down to get my Saturday mail, today, and in it was a weird letter from my insurance company telling me they were charging me triple what I was charged, last month, and didn't explain why. It's set to be debited from my checking account on the 1st. And, of course, I can't call their customer service on a Sunday (I have to wait till after work, tomorrow, because I do not like sharing my personal life there) and it may be too late to stop the automatic charge.

This sort of thing throws me to the ground, usually. But today I shrugged it off, figured I'd call about it, tomorrow, and worked on The Alice 65. Reading my notes from the comedy class had given me some ideas, so I red-penned them into a printout of the script. All of them. Didn't let myself freak out, at all, when normally I'd crash into "WTF, how can I deal with this?"

Tomorrow, once I'm done with my phone call, I'll begin inputting the changes. They're not really big alterations...just ways of making Adam and Casey more interesting, emphasizing the humor better, intensifying the emotional moments...and clarifying a couple of story points I don't think I did very well but noticed as I was working. The one big change is, I added a dance sequence to the party, where Adam reveals his mother made him take ballroom dancing as a way to get him to exercise until he got interested in football...uh, soccer. So he can waltz, tango, cha-cha, and paso doble...just like on Dancing With the Stars...all super-mod and everything.

Takes Casey by surprise. The only reason the dancing happened was because she saw Lando and his new squeeze, Veronica, arriving to the party and she wanted him to think she really is with Adam when she's just been using him. But she's finding that he's not as much of a dork as she expected...and that she likes him. It's after this point they start revealing their secret lives to each other.

Ah, love, romance...who knew within minutes a love-sick panther would come between them?

Reworking and preparing...

A couple years back I took a comedy writing class where the scenes I wrote wound up developing into The Alice 65. I reread my notes and printouts from that time, today, to see if they could help me find a way to bring more humor to my work. Make some bits funny, even if the rest was dramatic or tragic or action-packed...and what it's done is give me ideas on bettering A65 when I do the book.

Some of them are humorous, but most are ways to deepen the characters, oddly enough. I mean, I know I'm never going to be the kind of writer who can put out a script or story like Something About Mary or Dumb and Dumber or Talladega Nights. The closest I've come is The Lyons' Den, which is another writer's tale taken to a farcical, almost absurdist, level...and The Lavender Curse, about a tough cop having his mind switched with his unloved mother-in-law's just before he's set to make a big arrest and she's to appear in a beauty pageant...which I thought was funny but apparently no one else did. And for which I no longer own the rights so can do nothing about.

I do have some funny bits in The Cowboy King of Texas...but that's really more of a dramatic-romance than a romantic-comedy-western. And is based on John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World; I just Americanized it.

That story is satirical from its inception -- a man who killed his father is elevated into heroic status by an isolated town, but when the dead man turns up alive, the town turns on the hero. My favorite bit is in the third act, when the father slips into town and no one knows who he is except one woman who's helping the hero hide the truth. As they're talking, people are beginning to link father with son, so she tries to make out like the father's gone crazy from drink...and winds up making people think she's the crazy one. And that setup's from the play.

Horace Walpole once said -- The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel. I guess I do too much of the latter and not enough of the former to figure out how to switch sides.