Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 198

Last bit of the prologue to Place of Safety...

He was found off the Limavady Road, miles from where he’d normally be. His coat pulled down his arms with his hands bound behind him and every finger broken. His face pummeled into the mere hint of a human visage. Blood staining his shirt down to his trousers, the knees of which were torn and scraped, as if he’d been forced to walk on them or be dragged. Some said his teeth were all broken off, but the Coroner refused to discuss it. His only comment was that “Mr. Kinsella perished due to a gunshot fired into the crown of his head after enduring what may best be described as torture at the hands of his murderers.”

So his wake was held with a closed casket. And his burial was quick and paid for only through the intersession of Father Demian, the priest who’d so often visited the man’s home in times of distress in the years prior. And he comforted the new widow as best he could, but she would have none of it, wailing, “What’s to become of us? How shall we live?”

And how did we live? That part was simple. After his death, the first cash from the dole went all for food, instead of half for drink. The burned toast and weak tea he’d wept on about (like so many self-serving bastards) were replaced by porridge and milk. Now fish and chips could be bought off the shop on Waterloo Street as an occurrence and not a dreamed-about treat. Clothes could be bought, and even if they were second hand, under Ma's tight needle and thread they wound up better than the rags most other children wore. Debts could be maintained instead of ignored and the one good thing about having to deal with poverty on so consistent a basis was, Kinsella's widow knew how to stretch a penny the length of a mile. Well, there was almost a second good thing; because the widow had five with another soon due, the Derry Corporation was shamed into promising better lodgings for us, once the Rossville Flats were completed. If there were room still available on the queue, of course. Can’t make promises one might have to keep.

So the pure fact is, with Eamonn Kinsella’s death, his family was left better off than they’d ever been while he lived. And some old hens clucked viciously that the wailing offered up by his widow -- no, let’s call her by her right name, now; Ma...Bernadette, to her friends -- it was loud more from her sense of guilt for often having wished him dead than at the fact that he was. And while I may have agreed with them, it was wrong of them to cast judgment on those who’ve lost someone, even if that person held little value to all and the rest of the world. Only a man’s blood may determine the meaning of his passing...and me being his second son, I was allowed to think what the old cows had no right to whisper.

So yes -- I felt no sorrow at his death. I sensed even then it was for the better of us all, though to be honest with myself the feeling was colored by the recent occasion where he’d nearly crushed my right hand because I dared wish to keep the shilling I’d earned fixing Mrs. Cahan’s toaster instead of hand it across so he could have one more pint of porter. And never once since has my mind changed its belief.

But the problem was, Eammon Kinsella was born, lived and died in Derry (Londonderry for those who cannot be bothered to learn the city’s proper name). And upon his death a typical thing happened -- he was memorialized for who he was, that being a Catholic man, as what he was quickly passed from memory. And when it was discovered he was killed by two drunk Protestants who swore they’d only meant to have some fun with the Paddy and things had gotten out of hand (which was as high a pile of shite as could be imagined but, of course, was accepted as the most reasonable explanation by the Constables) he became a martyr to one and all who were Catholic. He was raised up as yet another example of the hatred sent our way by the Orange bastards who never missed a chance to flip us off. A poor family man trying only to keep kith and kin together as he slaved for the pennies tossed his way by Loyalist scum.

It would sicken the most forgiving of men.

Still, that would have died off as well but for several Catholic schools being attacked, that year. And the discovery of a band of Loyalist mental defectives who, sensing the growing restlessness of the oppressed in Ulster and the push already building for civil rights, stupidly thought killing a few of us would remind the Papists who was still in charge. They formed a new group called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers and were planning to become bigger and better than the Ulster Volunteer Force. Instead, they wound up murderers, banned and in Long Kesh. And thanks to them, during the summer’s marching season, when the Orange Proddie lads would toss pennies off the Derry walls to show contempt, as often as not they were met with rotten eggs, vegetables and fruit being tossed right back.

I’m proud to say I helped toss them, though it was more from the sport of it than the politics or symbolism. I even saw a overly-ripe tomato I slung up smack this one ginger-haired snipe full in the eye and send him wailing. Of course, I got only quiet satisfaction from it, for my mate, Colm, laid claim to the hit and crowed about it for days...which he could, since it was more his style of fighting than mine.

Not that I cared; I was also busy scampering after as many of the pennies being tossed at us as I could gather, not yet believing the change in my family’s fortunes would stick. I pulled together near a pound.

But someone saw me and knew me, and suddenly Bernadette and her wain’s were at the bottom of the queue for fresh housing, guilt or no. Now we wouldn’t be relocated till it was time to “redevelop” her street -- meaning clear it of all housing and put in dirt till it was determined what to do with the foul-smelling place. Meaning we kept living in that hovel for nearly two years more -- Ma and the girls in the front bed, me and the lads in the back -- as life settled into a fresh direction around us.

So that was my new beginning at the ripe old age of ten, feeling joyful and finally free even as the subtle reality of my bright new world surrounded me, waiting for the best moment to bring forth the fullest impact, growing closer and closer to an explosion of hatred and brutality made only the more awful by its happening in a supposedly civilized part of the quickly dwindling British Empire.

But I couldn’t see the build of history, then. So few can. Events occur that you’re a part of, but at the time carry no meaning beyond themselves. They just happen, and you either rejoice when all ends well or weep when it doesn’t. So my father's death only held resonance for me in the most selfish of ways – that I could now live my life happy and in the way that I chose, that of a child filled with hopes and dreams and prayers and promise, believing himself to be in a place of safety.

Continuing Place of Safety from yesterday...

His wife (my mother) was born a Farrell on Clarendon Street, near Queen. Her name? Bernadette, though I didn’t know this for the first eight years of my life, calling her only by Ma. She was small and dark, and to first glance seemed so fragile...that is, until you saw into her icy-sharp eyes then caught the hard manner in which she kept her lips pursed. Her hands still had the look of delicacy to them, with long fingers and neatly kept nails, but if you vexed her they could dig into your arm or neck with a ferocious strength, and her slaps could be as quick and stinging as Da’s fists. She was the first of two girls amongst five boys, not a one of them still living in Derry at the time of her widowhood.

Four sons they had to their credit, the first being Eamonn, Da’s namesake and growing to be his twin save for the searching eyes laid upon him by his grandmother. Large and brown, they held a careful vision of the world that could bring all but the hardest heart to want to comfort him. He was yet to be as large, but by his fourteenth year he had the solid feel of the man and showed cruel flashes of his temper and intelligence, so could lie his way into occasional jobs shifting coal at the Derry docks.

Then there was myself, Brendan, third born and named for the saint rumored to have landed on Greenland for some reason or another. Many were they who told me I must have been blessed with the same wandering soul, though I never understood why they felt it, for I’d never been away from Derry by that time. My looks I took more from mother, being small, darkly-fair and slim even for a lad recently turned ten years of age, and my way with fixing things I took from God only knows who, though I once heard Mrs. Rafferty, a neighbor from two doors down, say I must have been born to it since my hands were so neat and precise. My thick hair was so massed with curls, unlike the straight brown mops of the rest of my siblings, when Mrs. Haggerty, a friend of Ma’s on Lecky Road by Westland came for tea, once, she told Ma, “He has the look of a surprised angel and a watcher’s way about him, your Brendan, so you know he misses little and would say nothing about it.” Ma was asking her what to do about me, for my focus could get so extreme, were I fiddling with a clock in need of its springs being reset or a hoover whose motor was burned up, I’d not hear a word she was saying to me till she flicked my ear with her finger.

Her response? "No, I think he's just simple."

Following me was Rhuari, a year less than myself and my shadow in every way he could be, the little weasel. His face and feel were simple and direct, with small eyes and a long nose, a child with no time for fibs or even lies and who could spend hours watching me work my magic on a broken wind-up toy. He had yet to take the form or look of either parent, and Mrs. Keogh, of Doolin Street by Ann Court, was certain he was more from what she called “a friendship” Ma’d had with a certain butcher than from her own husband...though none could prove it; I only knew because I overheard her yammering with Mrs. Haggerty, who merely nodded with pursed lips, the old cows.

Last would be Kieran, born but three months after the death of our father and the better for it, growing up never to know the question of whether or not he’d meet the end of Da’s fist or the back of Da’s hand. He came early, as if impatient to get started, and the whole of his life would be as tainted by that need as his looks were tainted by Ma with none of Da noticeable about him.

Second born was Mairead, who what many referred to as “a handsome lass.” Straight brown hair down the middle of her back, practical in everything from clothing to housework, with no time for foolishness. Her size and mine were near matches while her face took the length of our father’s and her eyes never held anything but hope and love for us all. She could take Da’s slaps and curses without a twitch to reveal her true thoughts about him, and was better at deflecting his anger from Mam than were I or Eamonn the younger, and by the age of thirteen was already blessed (or cursed, if you prefer) with a figure well-noticed by boys half again her age. She knew it and laughed at them over it, seeing them for the child-like men they were as she faced the world like a full-fledged adult with an adult’s burdens.

After Rhuari came Maeve, but six years old and so obviously the sister to him, Mrs. Keogh’s gossip extended to her, but that situation was quickly disposed of. For by the time Maeve was set into motion, the gentleman in question had long encamped for Australia and the prospect of a better life. And the truth was, both she and Rhuari had the look of our mother’s sister, Maria, who went by Aunt Mari. You could tell even from the photos she’d send from America. So Maeve was spared much of the nastiness that had been whispered his way, and she grew to be quite happy and content.

There were two miscarriages after her, whereupon the one doctor Ma finally saw severely warned her against having others. But the church being the church, meaning science and sense had no place in man’s day-to-day life, that advice was ignored. A woman is there for her husband and God will decide who lives and who dies and to interfere with that in any way was hubris of the most blasphemous sort. Which is why Kieran came along to be the last.

That so many were crammed into a maisonette of two-bedrooms up and a sitting room and kitchen down, only half-wired for electric and a toilet outside, was not considered unusual for those in the Bogside. Hundreds of households exactly like it spread over the rolling hills that faced the Derry walls and up the hill to St. Eugene’s, white curls of smoke drifting from their coal heating into the sky, laying a haze of ill-tempered air over the city. And each was packed tight with sometimes as many as three families, since housing was short in the area, even more-so with a redevelopment underway that tore those houses down before their replacements were built. Some families were even housed in caravans so small and cramped, a simple paraffin heater was capable of suffocating the inhabitants.

But that was how things were, that February in 1966. Cold and blustery and wet. And the fact that Eamonn the elder’s body had laid in that ice for a full day and night before being discovered helped to preserve him. Of course, it also made it difficult to set an exact time of death -- though sometime between midnight and five in the morning was decided upon, and probably closer to the latter number. For his passing had been neither a quick one, nor easy.

Polished beginning of "Place of Safety"

This is sort of the prologue...but I'm debating calling it that:

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Those who knew Eamonn Kinsella -- and were being honest with themselves -- had to admit that had he been born but ten miles to the west or north, his murder would have been seen as the fitting end to a hard and brutal man. That he drank too much was not the problem; so did most of the men in his pinpoint of the world for it was often the only comfort offered in their existence. Nor was it that he was quick to temper when a pint too many wandered into his heart. Sometimes anger was the only emotion men like him were allowed to hold forth with. And if his wife was seen at market with a fresh bruise over one eye or across one cheek, well...she, herself, was not one to be known for gentleness. Besides, occasionally the only way a man can claim he still is lord and master in any way is by proving it to his missus. But when your sons come to school with plaster over a split lip or a cast on their limbs, and your daughters wear long blouses to hide the markings on their arms, and when a priest is called to quiet the house twice a week, on average -- well, there was something that was simply and plainly wrong.

He was a big man, Eamonn Kinsella, and he knew it and used it against any and all. Though drifting into sloth, he once had worked as a navvy in Belfast, and despite it being years since his last position, his hands remained callused and beefy, his shoulders stayed broad and restless on a frame that stood above six feet, and the strength in him allowed no question of it. His dark hair, bleak eyes and long face brought to mind tortured poets and sad accountants until made lively by drink. At those times, he took on the soul of the devil's fire and fury in all its righteous evil, and it was best to keep away from him. On more than one occasion, his fist sent a man across a table or to the floor for nothing more but that he sipped a pint too loudly while at the counter next to him.

That's not to say all was evil about him. He could sing to make angels weep, mournful tunes of Ireland's ruined past and dead future. And he could spin tales wondrous to behold. You had to catch him between his second and third pint to get the best of it...but if you hit the rhythm right, he'd weave melodious tales of Grianán Aileach, the ancient ring fort but six miles and a hundred worlds away from town, or talk about the fairies that live in oak groves old enough to have seen the birth of Christ, even waking his children to share in these stories if he wandered home in a good enough humor, all brought forth in such perfection you'd have thought he lived through each and every one.

He may well have, for all the anger in him. It was hard to see how so much could be poured into one man in fewer than thirty-five years unless he had carried it over from a previous existence. But filled with it he was, and injustices both real and imagined danced forever through his head, all roaring to life at about his fourth pint. He could rage for hours about the horrors of being a working man without work in a land cursed by God, with a wife and five wains to feed. Barely living off the dole, they were, with naught but toast burned over the gas flame and tea made from twice used leaves for their breakfast. Rags on their backs. A two-up, two-down hovel of a dwelling on Nailors Row. No hot running water or steady heat or indoor plumbing. No prospects for a decent job as once he’d had, even though that one had been a cruelty to his back. Now all of life was a cruelty for such as him, and please won't you front me another pint, m’boy?

So it would go for hours at a time. And when the drinking establishments were closed and he tottered home to his six responsibilities (which some old hens said would soon be seven if they knew a thing or two about women) if he hadn't found just cause to floor a man in the pub, he'd find some reason to do so to his wife or one of his sons. All just to prove he was still who he laid claim to be.

And that was all anyone knew of him -- what he claimed by voice alone. Never was there word about parents still living or siblings anywhere, though the coroner mentioned an uncle of his situated in Jamaica. But so little information came with it, many grew to believe he was merely repeating gossip. Another story that circulated was, his parents and family died in the bombing of Belfast by the Nazis and he’d escaped only because he was in jail for petty theft. But that would’ve put him at the age of nine so he’d have gone to an orphanage and for all the complaints he had, never was there word of that, so once again it had to be gossip.

For reference...

This 8mm series of clips are from Derry in 1965, showing not only Nailors Row, where Brendan lived till he was almost 12, but the redevelopment that was going on at the time.So does this little clip from the same man...
I'm saving these for future reference. Same for this gentleman's videos in Youtube --
https://www.youtube.com/user/lukessum...

It's time...

My scripts are good. Jake and Tone are now out in the world and being seen. I've tried to get started back on what I thought would be a dangerous book about a man who needs redemption but doesn't want it. But I've realized it's a stall. It's me giving into fear. And self-doubt. Hell, brutal self-criticism before I've even really begun. Using a book that's borderline silly to avoid what I really need to face.

I am finishing Place of Safety, next. I am writing a full and complete draft of it before I go into anything else. Period. I swear to myself I will not be sidetracked...or let myself back down. Brendan whispers to me, again, and has shown me the ending of the book. He's waiting for me to prove I have some kind of strength left in me to take this through to the end.

I've been a coward for too long about this book. Fearful I wasn't up to writing it even though it's a story I've been chosen to tell, and even though I accepted the obligation to tell it. And here I've been trying to weasel out of it ever since.

Well fuck that. The world is on the verge of chaos. Civilization is beginning to collapse, just like it did in the 6th Century. It may take a thousand years to rebuild; it may take ten days. I don't know. All I do know is, I tell the story now or it doesn't get told.

And that is unacceptable.

Nyle won!

A man who cannot hear...
...won a contest based on sound as well as movement. And he won it fair and square.



No boundaries.

No limits.

No walls.

'Nuff said.

Congratulations to him and Peta, his partner.

Sounds of Silence

I've always been able to hear, but I haven't always listened. This was brought home to me by a single 3 minute dance, tonight, by a man who is deaf and does not speak, but has said so much more than I ever could think of saying.

Right now I am speechless. If you want, the show's site has a poor-quality video of it. Maybe they'll put up a better one, later...but at this site you can get an idea of what it was, from prelude to finale...

Carli's Kills, redux

Today I reworked CK to change it up. Meaning all I did was make the sheriff a woman instead of a man. Didn't redo the story or action or even much dialogue...and yet, it altered everything. Now the ending is even more horrific...and acceptable. Funny how that works.

Then I read a shooting copy of The King's Speech, which won an Oscar in 2011 for Best Screenplay. It's got so much in it that I've been told one should never do in a script...it's like the screenwriting gurus are handing out misinformation. It's got CUT TO's and camera directions and tells the actors what to think and on and on. It's amazing.
I also watched Spectre, the latest James Bond film. It was fun, but the script was very lazy. Things happen because they have to happen to keep the story going. Anything inconvenient to the pacing of the story gets ignored -- like totally trashing several cars of a passenger train, during a fight, then being let off at an isolated stop in the middle of the desert, without a peep...or visible injuries. And the ending was so damned obvious, it was an insult.
So it's not the quality of the writing or the beauty of the structure that gets films made; it's finding the person who so desperately wants to make your script into a film, they won't take No for an answer from anyone. Nor will they care if all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. And that is like finding one particular grain of sand on a beach that's 5 miles long.
All the screenplay competitions in the world won't do you a bit of good for that. Well...they might help you narrow down the search...and even increase your luck in making the right connections to get to someone who will get it done...but only if you're lucky enough to hit the right reader at the right time. Because if you get someone who's sick of thrillers and is assigned one, you're getting harshness in response. Same for guys having to read rom-coms. And that is something I need to reconsider, because the damn things ain't cheap.
No...what gets movies made these days is a producer, director or actor who will fight to get your script made. Writers have no pull in Hollywood...which is silly, because Hollywood wouldn't exist without them. But try telling that to the powers that be. Well, I'm not wasting my breath, anymore. I'm aiming for actors who have some pull but aren't so high up the food chain, they are unreachable.
I'm aiming for Russell Tovey, Aidan Turner, and Chris Salvatore.

Rebooted, yet?

Okay, it looks like RIHC6's updated e-book is live; I've even sold a copy, already. However, I don't have the official word, yet...and expect Apple to piss and moan, but that's what weasels do. Enough of it, already; it's time to get back to writing...really writing.

Though I do want to expose more of my writer's ego, for a moment. I submitted Carli's Kills and Marked For Death to Table Read my Screenplay in London competition. They've been doing them all over the place, and while I doubted they'd help me achieve anything, it was worth trying to see if I could get a table read of one of them.

Neither one made the finals, which was fine. I was a bit surprised because MFD is set in London and has a good solid through-line, but NBD...until I noticed in the list of finalists are two scripts I've read -- both of them poorly written and packed with cliches -- and another screenwriter I know and whose work I'm familiar with...and enough said about that. My scripts weren't as good as those? Seriously? I feel insulted.

Fortunately, I saw the new Star Trek: Beyond trailer (I didn't see the first one) and it looks like the crew is back on track. Put me in a better mood.

If those fools can't tell a good script from a crap one, it's their loss, not mine.

I just love today's electronic age...

Seems I'll have to start over with my Table of Contents for the e-book of Rape In Holding Cell 6. After discussion with a techie at Smashwords, the decision is my file is corrupted. So...clear out the chapter links and re-input them. That'll take a day. Dammit. So much for my day of artwork.

I've updated my website -- www.kmscb.com -- to link the Vanishing of Owen Taylor page to Amazon. Not crazy about them, but they do make buying the book easy. And since it's now available through them, may as well join the crowd. They don't offer it in e-book, yet; they always have been pissy about that, since I don't publish through Kindle. So that link still returns to Smashwords. Which had no problems converting OT to e-book from a Word doc.

I found out, today, the copy of an actual 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that's going on sale at Christie's, next month, is the same copy I packed and shipped to the owner when I first started at Heritage. The catalogue even references Lou Weinstein as the broker who got the book for him. This is so wild.

I wonder how I can use this to get interest in my script, The Alice '65.