Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 194

The things you find on facebook

So...I spent most of yesterday in the Derry Public Library, again, digging through old copies of The Derry Journal, trying to find out a few things -- like what the weather was on certain days and the price ranges of goods and what was actually being said in the paper about various events, including opinion pieces -- and reminded myself of the major limitations to microfiche.

To start with, they're usually bad scans of papers that are hard to read. But...after a bit of trial and error, I figured out how to make prints from them in ways that I could at least read what was being written. And the pricing of things like cars and blouses and shoes and meat were mainly pre-decimalization, so I have to go back to my notes to remember what 40' 6d is (I think that's 40 schillings and sixpence...but don't hold me to it.) However, I do know what movies were showing -- "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Dirty Dozen" on Brendan's 12th birthday -- and that an Irish girl named Dana, who lived in Derry, won the Eurovision Competition in 1970.

But no luck on the weather conditions or any information about where the bus depot -- bus centre was in the later 60s. Until I was at the station. I asked the people working there and got a big shrug. One said, "It's always been here, hasn't it?" Which was contradicted by his co-worker with, "No, this area but this centre wasn't built till recent." Which sort of fit into my memory from the first time I came here, in 2002; I took a bus up from Galway and recall the station seemed new, at the time.

However, I noticed Ulsterbus had a sign suggesting you go to their facbeook page to leave a comment -- and when I did that and followed a link to Foyle Street Bus Station and looked through the photos, there were some that were from the late 60s showing the place was right where it's always been, but entrance was straight onto Foyle Road and not the boulevard behind it -- the dual carriageway, as they call it.
My new photo isn't a very good one (I'd pretty much rejected it), but it does show that the buildings right behind the bus, this side of Guildhall in the old photo, are gone and the area made into a park. Dunno if that was from bombings or just redevelopment, but it's an interesting change.

Now I know one section I wrote -- when Brendan and his buddy, Colm, go to get some money off Colm's father and he sees Joanna, again, is all right. He's gotten dirty helping Colm's father fix his taxi, and for the first time starts thinking maybe it's a good idea to keep clean and neat, in case he sees her, again. Wants to make a good impression.

Which he does, later...which leads to major life changes...

Helpful...

I'm exhausted, but this has been a fruitful visit to Derry, so far. I've been to the Tower Museum, Free Derry Museum, Gasworks Exhibit Hall, Derry Library, The Guildhall...and Burntollet Bridge. And aspects I'd described in the story are close but too many are not quite right. This is why it's good to actually see the places you're setting your story in.

For example, I walked (and got rained on) the full 7 miles left to get to  Derry on the A6 (after the attack at Burntollet) and they are almost like what I said...but on the side of the road where traffic is headed to Derry, there's a sharp drop. Not a cliff but like a steep hillside covered in foliage. Something you can't see from maps or Google views or even a neat little video on YouTube that shows the full drive. This photo is proof. I took it head on and the road slopes down at about a 30 degree angle.

And wandering around the Bogside en route to the Gasworks, I found the logistics I was using for Brendan to get home, get a gun, and go searching for some men who beat him is too wide-spaced. For it to work means it has to be tightened or changed, completely.

Got lots of pictures of stuff just for me. Ran the battery out on my camera and damn near did the same thing on my phone. But here's one of the city from halfway up Fountain Street. That damned thing is a definite 45 degree slide down. You can tell by how the homes are practically stacked on each other, to the left. Needless to say, it's a one-way street going down.
The great thing about the library was finding books in the reference section that I want, getting their ISBNs and finding them online to buy. And the second-hand bookstores are also a treasure trove.

I'm hoping the airline won't weigh my bag on return...

Dangerous...

I did a read of Killing Moon as I did laundry, looking for typos and other things. Found a few but not many. Made a couple of changes. Emphasized the terror of a couple murders. And now think my script is into dangerous territory. So...I'm submitting it to a couple of horror script competitions. Just to be a shit.

I violated a couple of rules -- like making some of the characters who die nice people, and killing the hero 2/3 of the way in. There's also the attack on misusing religion to suit your own ends, and all the emotional and political connotations of someone being lynched. It's not your everyday horror film, and it doesn't count as grind or torture porn. It's a middle finger kind of script.

Anyway, it's done. And I'm hitting a time for change in my writing and such. I'm not renewing my postings of The Alice 65, Marked For Death, and Carli's Kills on Inktip. It's proven to be worthless, for me. The one time a production company downloaded a script to review, I wrote to them and asked about it and they didn't have the courtesy to even write me back. E-mail me. Anything.

Reality is, the vast majority of producers and such on InkTip are minimal people looking to find a script to take to another real production house and try to set up. You IMDb these people and they have maybe 1 or 2 credits for shorts or TV. So it's not worth the money to keep going.

Now I'm off to Derry to do my research, and I've got my list of things I need to check out. If I get half of them addressed, I'll be doing good, since I'll only have 2 real days there. Can't afford any more.

Story of my life.

Well...I've done it...

I put every bit of spit and vinegar I could into Killing Moon. Got a lot of shit out of my system ... and it's brutal. Obnoxious. Cruel. Maybe even offensive. No ... probably ... and I love it.
It’s set in North Carolina’s backwoods country ... you know – that lovely land where  Deliverance  took place. A bible-thumping preacher named Avery makes a deal with the devil to raise a demon in exchange for him killing 5 innocent people and getting a crowd to kill 1 more for all the right reasons. He claims it’s to prove the reality of evil but he’s really doing it to save his son from drugs.

His first kills are 2 girls his son was getting high with. Then 4 college kids – Mike, Joe, Lissa and Troy – arrive to spend Spring Break at Troy’s father’s cabin by a nearby lake. Lissa and Troy are a couple, as are Mike and Joe ... if Mike can get over thinking he caused his brother’s death in a car wreck. He keeps having visions of the guy’s bloody corpse.
But it turns out Mike is the only one capable of stopping Avery before he achieves his goal. Avery senses this, blames him for the murders, and rouses the town to hang him…in front of live cable news feeds. Kind of hard to stop a demon when you’re dead.

So, yes ... I’ve got every cliche in the book of horror movie-making -- kids on Spring Break at an isolated cabin, screwing each other and having oblivious fun as a serial killer lurks nearby ... along with a religious villain, gay heroes who actually do have sex, a lynching at the hands of a “Christian” mob, a church burning, and while Mike is now white, Joe is Jewish and from Texas, and learned how to fire a gun when he was called a “queer Christ killer.” All in 92 pages.

It’s like Friday the 13th done by John Waters, albeit without the scatological references. Never gonna get made, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s done and it’s mean, and I love it.
Woo-hoo …

Light at the end of the endless tunnel...

I felt good enough to try and break my writer's block by working on something other than Place of Safety...and it seems to be helping. I have a horror script -- Killing Moon -- that is about as in-your-face as can be. It's got a preacher as the villain and the hero, who's half-black, gets lynched by the white townsfolk after a sermon by the preacher works them up...as the media stands by. Oh, and the hero's girlfriend is Jewish and from Texas, so learned how to shoot a gun at the age of six, after she was called a Christ-killer. No chance in hell of it ever getting made, but it gives me pleasure to just let it rip.

Another possibility was working on my gay serial killer book set in London...but I couldn't get going on that. It needs a lot of work, too, and would take a major shift away from PS. I'm not willing to go that far to break my block.

I'm still achy and my neck is bugging me from sneezing so much...as are my sides...but it's not as much as it used to be. And I took a nap when I got home so that seemed to help, too. And I sound like an old man talking about his ailments. Jesus, when did I turn into a cliche?

I wanna go back to the Armadillo...

Still feel like dirt

I'm fighting this beast but it's too soon to say if I'm winning or if it's taking a breather before it makes a serious counterattack. Right now, my nose is so dry, it hurts, but that's lessened the irritation of my throat. And I'm seriously pissed off, still, instead of morose or numb...so maybe that's good. And it's probably good I live alone, right now.

I remember the first time I visited Ireland...back in March 2002. My first night there, I went into a fish & chips shop on the pedestrian walkway to have a decent serving of the stuff. It had picnic-like benches and people would share the table without knowing each other. Well...as I was eating, this Irishman sat across from me, and he had the worst-sounding cold. Sniffling and snorting breathing like a Mack truck. I wrapped the remains of my food up and left as quick as I could...but it did no good. I started feeling it the next day, the little prick.

My B&B had a bar downstairs, and when I told the bartender what had happened, she made me the best hot toddy ever. Said it would kill the cold. It knocked it back, that's for sure...and if I'd had another, I'd have been fine but instead I got busy looking the city over and taking a ferry out to one of the Aran Islands and driving around the countryside and going to the Cliffs of Moher...and the morning I caught my bus for Derry, I started feeling it, again.

I was sick the rest of my stay. And when I ran out of Tylenol, it was on a Sunday...and just try and find a place to buy drugs in Ireland on a Sunday. The only positive aspect of it was, the beginnings of the cold made me fussy and irritable, and probably contributed to me missing my bus back to Derry from Grianan Aileach, the circle fort just across the border...so I had to walk. And that's when Brendan began talking to me about Place of Safety.

And freaked the hell out of me. Fourteen years since then...that's how long I've been circling and working on this book. 14 friggin' years, and I'm still unsure of it. No, I'm unsure of me and my ability to tell the story honestly. Truthfully. Honorably.

And at the moment, feeling like I do...I really don't know if I'll succeed...

I got a cold

I haven't been posting the last few days because my bosses brought a lovely cold back from Europe with them and kindly gave the fucking thing to me. My joints ache. My nose and eyes are driving me nuts. My throat is close to being torn out, if it doesn't stop itching. And, of course, this happens just before I'm taking my unaffordable trip to Derry, NI. I'm so fucking pissed off, right now...

I haven't been sick like this in years. I've flirted with it, a few times, but when it's hard to breathe because your chest is angry at all the sneezing you're doing...you can't say it's a minor problem. I don't want to read or watch movies or TV or anything, let alone write on PS. I just sit and zone.

Of course, this is also when I get my latest dozen rejections from producers, thanks to InkTip. "Thanks but not what we're looking for." 12 of them in the last 4 days. The Alice 65 turned down by someone seeking romantic comedies. Carli's Kills turned down by producers seeking thrillers with a female lead and/or low budget. Marked For Death turned down by producers seeking action or thriller scripts. Same for Find Ray T. Not one of them getting past the pitch stage. I think I'm up over 500 rejections for the last 12 months.

I've taken so many classes on how to pitch and changed my loglines according to how "the experts" tell you to do it and even used a pseudonym for a couple of submissions, just to see if it was my association with my books that was hurting them. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Won't even read the synopses, so it doesn't matter how carefully I've crafted those.

Of course, in my current mood of illness, I'm prone to crashing and burning...as I've done. Making me think maybe it's time to admit it's just not going to happen. That I'm an okay writer but not one with that spark people want or the luck and ability to make it happen, even if I am mediocre. Maybe I should just stop. But I've tried that, before, and then I think of a new story and wonder if this is the one that might help me break through...

I'm fucking pathetic.

Read, not write...

I'm going through one of my typical writer periods where nothing I do makes any sense and what I already have done is on the edge of falling apart. So...instead of making myself work at fixing it, as I used to try and do till I was bloody from banging my head against the wall, I'm reading some of the books on Northern Ireland I have.

First one I dug into was Children of Wrath, by Michael MacDonald...and OMG is it dry and dense -- like a doctoral thesis that's been published and given away to friends and one of them sold it on ebay or something. In each section, he states his premise, outlines the details, presents facts to back those details, then restates his premise...but as a conclusion. Not one word about the Civil Rights March that was attacked at Burntollet. Barely a mention of Bloody Sunday, where 14 Catholics were killed by British paratroopers. But several references to Bloody Friday, when PIRA set of 22 bombs in Belfast, killing 9. Urk...I put it down once I read the section I needed.

Next up is Reflections of Derry, which is the third book in a memoir written a man named Philip Cunningham, who lived in Derry. It's actually quite nice and has some details I needed in it. For instance, the house he lived in as a newlywed was next to the house on Fahan that wound up as the Free Derry corner. He and his wife had the front bedroom of a terrace home occupied by his aunt, and only his room and the parlor, below it, were wired for electricity. The toilet was outside.

A third book is Northern Ireland Scrapbook, published in 1986 and which is mainly a compilation of photos of NI from about 1968 to 1984, taken by soldiers and news photographers and locals. None of Eamon Melaugh's or Willie Carson's are in it, which I find interesting since they were very prolific, and its recaps of what was happening in the country are slanted towards taking the official line on most events, but it is a valuable resource. I bought it used and have had it for a while...and it shows. I've gone back to it a lot because it's very useful to keep the timeline in mind.

I've got half a dozen more books I haven't read, yet, so I'm going to drown this mood with detail and hold off on the writing till I return from Derry. Maybe by then I'll feel better about my efforts.

Maybe.

Secrecy abounded me...

I'm back home after a whirlwind trip to a place I'm not allowed to speak of for a client who insists on anonymity. Dammit. What I can say is, it was hellacious. I was expecting 75 boxes so allowed for 80; turned out to be 160 boxes and some loose items that were very fragile, not to mention a slim mounted piece of art that's 75 inches long. A 1-day job turned into 2 and the weight of the shipment doubled.

Fortunately, I'd booked my return to Buffalo on a redeye so I'd have time to visit a book dealer's new location. Well, that didn't happen. Instead, I was out by the airport all day and nowhere decent enough to be around to visit with anyone. I used the men's room to clean up a bit and put on a fresh shirt, at least. I had a t-shirt I'd brought along, just in case.

On top of that, I was so exhausted by the time the pickup and repacking and reconfiguring was done, I actually dozed on the plane instead of staying awake to work on Place of Safety. Totally zoned. Helped that I had a comfortable seat, for a change.

Such is life in the big city. One thing after another.

On the trip over, I did get some reworking of the bit revolving around Brendan's first interrogation done and have it closer to what I want. Still not there, yet, but now I can see a good direction for it and can let it sit while I shift over to other aspects of the story.

I'm headed over to Derry a week from Tuesday, and already I've got dozens of details I need to get answers for -- how were buses handled when coming from Dublin? How did goods arrive into Derry? What were the wages of the girls at Tilly's Shirtmaker? When did the last buildings along Fahan get torn down to make way for redevelopment? On and on and on. I could spend months there.

I made up a street for Brendan's family to move to not long before he winds up in America...no, that has to happen before Internment begins, in August 1971. It will be away from the area where Bloody Sunday happened, at the end of January 1972...just days before Brendan's 16th birthday.

I may work on the Bloody Sunday section, next. Get that done. It's a rough one, but necessary, because it's here that Brendan starts thinking he and Joanna should leave so they can live in peace. At 16 he could get a full-time job at a decent wage and she could go on to university. The one big thing is, her experiences as a Protestant girl, have been vastly different from his, and that makes her feel the need to step away from the chaos less intense. Plus she still has another year of school to finish.

God...just when I think I'm making headway I realize how much is left to do.

I love writing except when I hate it...

And right now we are not having a love fest. I've been trying to work out another way for me to get in the occurrences I need in Place of Safety for the story to advance while keeping it within the realm of reality, and the muse is not helping. Instead, I'm being messed with. It's irritating as hell.

I did manage to step back from having one character in it who was just a bit too much on the convenient side. In fact, it was a very easy method of handling Brendan while being not the least bit realistic, considering there's a curfew he's violating. So out it went and that put me one step closer. But I still need a reason for this pistol to be in Brendan's hand at this time...

Something I may do is shift up relationships in here. That might help. Right now, I've got Brendan's older sister, Mairead, living in Liverpool with her husband, Terry, and their children, none of them old enough to be left alone, yet. Maeve, Brendan's younger sister is 21 and studying to be a nurse...what they called a Sister. And things are prosperous enough for them to have a phone and live in a new place in the redeveloped area. Maybe I should reverse it, where Maeve's off in Edinburgh at nursing school and Mairead's home with their mother.

I dunno. I'm off on another job, tomorrow...a 6 hour plane ride...so I may just try thinking about it on that. It's a whirlwind job, coming back on a redeye so I don't have an additional night's hotel room. I'm getting tired of that. At least I've indulged in a higher-priced seat on JetBlue so there's room enough for me to relax and open my laptop and just start typing.

Sometimes writing gibberish and bullshit is the best way to find reality.