Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 2

Stop the changing, already!!!!

Why the fuck do things have to be so complicated? And changing, nonstop? Making plans is a lesson in futility, it seems...I mean, lately...and I don't want to have to deal with it all.

I want a guy like this to come to my home, fix me dinner, give me a rub-down in every way you can imagine as I whine about how fucked up I am, serenade me into a good mood, and then leave.

If I ever make a billion dollars, I'd hire one to do just that. Dressed in the same outfit...well, not exactly. I don't like those undies. Basic white CKs or a nice red Speedo, instead.

I've had a thing about red Speedos since the assistant scoutmaster of my troop wore one to go swimming on a camping trip...and I told him he was gorgeous. Which he was. But then, I was only twelve, so I may be coloring more beauty into his memory than was really there.

Still, it got me removed from the Boy Scouts. Not that I cared. Two years in that and cub scouts, and I still had trouble remembering how to tie a square knot. I wrote about that, once; I should revisit it.

Anyway, my plans next week are redone, thanks to there still being a bedbug issue on my floor. Or maybe above or below; you never know with those damned things. I got a notice the exterminator was coming on Monday...right when I was getting a home visit from United Healthcare then planning to hit the airport to fly to Houston.

So, rescheduled the visit, found out changing my flight to Sunday, instead, would cut $18 off the price of the ticket and an extra night's hotel room would only add $90...so got the okay to change it. I'm now set to start packing on Monday instead of Tuesday.

I'm thinking of diving into book four of Blood Angel, since it's already worked out. I need to change a number of details in it, for consistency, but I've got another 17,000 words already written. Beginning, middle and end, with Gabrielle being a total bitch.

We'll see...

Am I a bit autistic?

I wonder if I am, sometimes. I exhibit a few of the signs, but nothing intense. I have to force myself to maintain eye contact. It's near impossible for me to make friends. I'm leery of doing something new and different, including seeing movies; I prefer to rewatch classics or movies I liked over and over again. I like predictability. I lose interest in projects quickly, once they become too demanding. And I hate moving anywhere that I don't know anyone.

This evening, I spent ten minutes in my kitchen trying to decide about making another peach cobbler with Bisquick...while holding the box in my hand. Couldn't decide between hot tea or another DPZ, to drink.

And yet, I can reach the point where I say fuck it to anything that's bothering me and do whatever I need to do. I can slowly...very slowly....make myself complete something that does mean a lot to me. Like A Place of Safety. But I was fighting myself every step of the way.

And when it comes to working out social situations, I can be amazingly stupid or dense or whatever. And fly off the handle if things get too hard to face or control.

But at the same time, I don't have many of the other symptoms. No hand-clapping or humming...though I do still brutally bite my nails, to the quick. And I'll go after the cuticles, too.

What gets me going through stories like Blood Angel and such is writing very intense sex scenes. Some nice. Most cold and cruel versions of rape. When I'm working on that I'm almost happy. I tell myself it's because I'm venting my anger or letting off prurient steam...but it's because I've never been willing to become that involved with anyone. It's my outlet for not having human contact.

Hell, not wanting human contact.

So...I watched The Thursday Murder Club and smiled and snarled about the changes they made. I hated what they did with one of the characters, turning him from a brute to a tragic figure. And then, since I had to sign up with Netflix to do it -- $20 a month for no commercials!! -- I rewatched The Glass Onion. Because I knew the ending.

This may be something I need to ask my Dr. about.

Creature of habit...

I'm going through my usual downbeat emotions now that Book 3 of Blood Angel is done. Dealt with it to an extent by trying to track down a magnesium cream that's supposed to relieve tingling in your feet, something I get every now and then, at night. I've been handling it by rubbing on Icy Hot with Lidocaine, which does well enough, but I wanted to see if this is better.

None. Anywhere. Not even Whole Foods or GNC. I have to order it online...and apparently Amazon has the corner on the market. Irritating. I did find a lotion so will try that out, but I get the impression it's not the same thing, exactly.

I may be getting new images for Blood Angel to use as avatars. The woman who's handling promotion for me thinks I need to change the dimensions to better suit D2D's wants, even though D2D won't distribute the books to anyone other than Smashwords.

I still don't understand the relationship between D2D and Smashwords, because the books are actually linked through Books2Read...but so far it's been going okay. 

I finished reading The Thursday Murder Club and enjoyed it, for the most part. I'm not a fan of adding details to the description of a character halfway into the story, and it did scatter about a lot, and I feel the revelation about the murders at the end was a cop out. But I'm still going to join Netflix to watch it...unless it's available on some other platform.

I suppose I could also get to work on Blood Angel Book Four...but no enthusiasm for it, yet.

Done, again, and now for Four...

 Here are my new avatars...

BA-1 ... When Léonidès met Gregory and his friends, his life was complete...until they raped and murdered him...and he became a Blood Angel, the highest caste of vampire, and they became his pack.

BA-2 ... In 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war, Léonidès thinks he's found a fellow Blood Angel to be his mate...a handsome cuirassier named Franz. But for that to happen he must get approval from the Oiym council, and the man has to be willing.

BA-3 ... Leon is denied permission to turn Franz so decides to offer him to Gabrielle in exchange for Dmitriy. But The Council may have other plans, especially Luahl...who’s never liked Leonides.

New covers for all?

Today I worked on the avatars for Blood Angel's 3 volumes, so far. And this is what I'd got.

BA-1 Léonidès in rough form.

When Léonidès met Gregory and his friends, his life was complete...until they raped and murdered him...and he became a Blood Angel, the highest caste of vampire, and they became his pack.

BA-2 Franz looking pretty close to what I want.

In 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war, Léonidès thinks he's found a fellow Blood Angel to be his mate...a handsome cuirassier named Franz. But for that to happen he must get approval from the Oiym council, and the man has to be willing.

BA-3 Revelation too. Léonidès' plans explodes as he notices fractures in the Oiym Council and wonder if he might be able to take over.

Consistency in image to go with them being part of the same story.

I can change the thumbnails without issue, in an ebook; I just need to verify I can update the text without using another ISBN. All I want to change is the Phots by part of the title.

Next is BA-4 Betrayal, and after than BA-5 set in WW2, BA-6 set in New Orleans after Katrina, and set in modern day.

This work?

I perused Shutterstock and found a nice series of vampire images from this one photographer that might work well for BA-3's thumbnail or avatar. This is my first go at one, just to see how it looks. It's pretty damn specific as to what the book is about.

The hanging figure needs to be more distinct, and maybe a bit of blue on the blood-soaked image. Not 100% on the font, either; it's bland but easy to read.

I think I'm going to redo the first two avatars, as well. Make it more obvious they're about vampires and not a romance or something dark but not much more. I tend too much to the suggestion sort of imagery than the kind that will catch a vampire-lover's attention.

I may do it for Dirc and the Dyarvos Bones, as well, to emphasize the SF/Horror aspect of it.

If I do combine all the parts into a single paperback book, I'm thinking I may add in illustrations to help carry it along, like was done in Victorian times. I'd have to work in pen and ink because Color printing would be prohibitive and might lessen the quality of the book. Even if I do it in hardcover.

Hmm...I wonder if it's too late to work up a 2026 calendar of images for BA, so far? Offer them online, myself. Or even of all my books to be colored in...

Something to garner attention for my work...

Calming down...

Got 90% of the reformatting done on BA-3 but started feeling weird. I hadn't eaten on schedule, today, so thought that might be it. Heated some of my potato soup and that worked nicely for my stomach, but when I checked my blood sugar 2 hours later, it was 255 and my BP was 160/96. I make that soup rich but that seemed excessively high.

So I stopped everything and kicked back to read more of The Thursday Murder Club. No surfing the web or snarling at MAGAt assholes who are proud Felon47 is destroying the country. That brought my blood pressure down to 135/83.

I also had some tea and muffins I'd made but were burned on the bottom. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn't get a fair reading on my blood sugar, but I do feel better.

I think tomorrow I'm going to track down the psd file of the first two avatars for BA and steal the title lettering off them, then work on making the image I posted yesterday as its cover. Keep the feeling of the first two going.

I'm going back to my book, now. I'm enjoying it, despite Orman's writing style. He actually got a couple laughs out of me. There's one moment where a young woman goes out on a date with what I think is a personal trainer she met online...who doesn't believe in books, but thinks you should learn from experience and keeping an open mind.

As he eats a salad and has a protein shake! At an Italian restaurant! Sacrilege!!!

She's bored to tears so decides (in her mind) that she should kill him by injecting cyanide into a dough ball that came with the meals, but then realizes it wouldn't work because he doesn't eat carbs. It came so quickly, I laughed for a good minute.

I'm wondering if I should consider trying to write a quirky murder mystery using a pseudonym and see if that could bring in some good sales. I just need a fun gimmick. Ideas are welcome. Maybe an update of The Bobbsey Twins?

Done, again...again...

All the changes for Blood Angel 3 are input. It's now 17,135 words and ready for formatting and one last pass of the editor. Then it'll be up. And I will be fucking proud of myself for doing what I didn't think I could do.

True, that sounds a bit arrogant, but I don't care. It's not often I get to pat myself on the back.

I think I may use this image instead of yesterday's for the avatar. I like the feel of it, more. And there is another image I have that's potential...but this is more in line with the first two covers. I'll think about that, tomorrow.

I made blueberry muffins to celebrate...only the bottoms are slightly burned. Seems I can't cook anything in my oven without fucking it up, outside of a casserole. It's electric, and always gets hotter than I think, so I usually heat it to 25-50 degrees less than recommended and check early...but this time that didnb't work.

I should have just made a little cake and cooked it in my toaster oven. That one I have little trouble with. A chef I will never be.

Now to do dishes and cleanup. Back to reality.

Digging...digging...

I finally found an image I thought I had but had put away in a place to protect it. Did so well, it was hidden from me. But this could work as the avatar for Blood Angel Book Three-Revelation. Play with the color, a bit...though I also found another possibility that would work better in the initial color schemes. So we shall see. 

The one issue is, the font I used for the first two books' avatars is no longer available in Ps and I still can't find the psds of the titles so I can just capture the main words and transfer them to the new book. Or at least find out the name of the font.

I also found a couple of Word docs that I'd forgotten I'd written for BA. One was set in 16th Century Milan. Stephane is telling the rest of the pack about his trip to Venice, where he allowed himself to be kidnapped and raped by a pack of vicious monks before he fed on them and burned down their monastery...over the space of a week.

He also set up a couple of good business contacts and political connections. Even though he has the appearance of a college-age boy, he's been around for hundreds of years, already, so is pretty savvy. Not sure if I can use it, yet, but it was solid as a story and might come in handy, later.

I really need to go through all of my thumb drives and disks to sort through what I have and need and what I don't. I've done a lot of repetitive saving of documents and images, partly because I'm paranoid about losing them. But it's now at the point where I have a hell of a time finding anything.

Just proving to myself I'm chaos, defined, when it comes to this...

Red Pen done...

I printed out a copy of this part of Blood Angel and have gone through it with my red pen. A number of changes, edits, cuts and clarifications, all doable within a day. I'll get onto it, Wednesday.

Meanwhile, I've started playing with working up an avatar for the ebook. I like the idea behind this one, but it's kind of clumsy. Got a ways to go.

I have a number of things I have to do, tomorrow, instead of inputting. Insurance review, update checkbook, a pile of paperwork to sort, going through my computer files to get everything in order, the usual crap I just let pile up till it screams take care of this or you'll regret it.

I'm also doing what I can to push back against the vile actions of Felon47's administration and the rabid hypocrisy of the MAGAt Class. Not a lot, due to my health limitations, but what I can.

The one thing I can say that's positive about me at the moment is, this time last month I didn't think I'd be able to even write Blood Angel (Book Three) Revelation. Yet here it is, close to completion. I think it's because that let me give up on the idea of making Franz into a vicious creature Léonidès cannot control. That made his wish to swap the guy for Dmitry on the silly side. No more.

I should tell myself I can't do something more often; it seems to set my subconscious going to where I basically say, Fuck that. Yes we will.

And so I do.