Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 235

Run, run, run...

Spent the last couple of days running around trying to see friends while I'm still here. Damn, they live all over the place. But I did get to have a good Indian meal with my good buddy, Brad Rushing, Adam Lima and Sharon Rushing. Then I saw my German actors friends, Thure and Patricia Riefenstein for a little while and then had dinner with Karl & Carrie Armstrong. That's all I had time for, dammit.

I'm headed home on a noon plane, tomorrow, and I don't want to go. Buffalo's just a place to stay, right now; it'll never be home, not like LA. Even after driving from Torrance to Ontario to return some things on behalf of the company, and then from there to Topanga, in the middle of evening rush hour, I still felt right at home.

Oh well...at least Buffalo's cheap to live in. And Niagara Falls and Toronto are not far away.

I'll work more on OT en route home, tomorrow. I've kept myself close to NY time while out here, so that won't be so bad Friday morning. And I'm almost done with Cipro so I can start having tea, again.

Small pleasures for a small person who ain't so small... [image error]

Maybe I gots my model for Jake...

I heard from Jordan; he's open to me using his face on the cover of OT. I sent him some possibles to see if he's okay with those...and if the photographer is. that'll be the next fun step -- finding out how much this will cost.

I really like this image of him, by Jean Quelquejeu.
I lightened it up a bit so I could see the line of it; it's really dark and coppery and amazingly hot. But none of this guy's photos had him in a shirt, and I don't wan to distract from what the story is about by suggesting it's an erotic novel. There really isn't much sex in it.
This photo by A Olivier is nice for positioning, and there's one in suspenders that can be made to look like he's in a shirt, but I can't do anything about the beard. Jake's got a goatee, and that is that. Besides, I think Jordan looks best with that kind of facial hair.

So...I found a number of others on his portfolio that are good. This boy's been busy. It's them big, brown, wary eyes that did it, I bet.

The job went a lot smoother than I thought it would, today. We're almost half done. Wow.

Oh, and on a side note of self-contratulation -- The Cowboy King of Texas is in the Top 100 of the Emerging Screenwriters' Competition. Woo-hoo!!

Now back to our regularly-scheduled bitchin' an moanin'.

In LA

Saw the job. It's gonna be hot, nasty and tiring, in a tiny space with no easy access to loading the truck. Ugh. And of course, this being LA the parking's a nightmare. Screw it. What writer doesn't suffer for his art?

Packed planes coming to LAX. I changed in Phoenix, which is normally a simple thing to do. Today, for some reason, Phoenix had fog! FOG! In the desert! I've never heard of such a thing. What's more, it was so thick, we had to circle till it burned off a little, and when we did land, it was hard. Flights were being delayed and cancelled. The terminal was packed. It was crazy.

It was a long flight -- 4.5 hours -- so I got more work done on OT...and I better be careful. This time through the explanation, it made sense to me. I still have the last two chapters to re-re-re-re-work or polish, depending on my mood. And then I'll go through the whole thing , again. If it's still working...

I heard from a French photographer about Jordan, and he asked me to write in English because my French is so crappy. He's right; I really should figure out the time to work on that, again. Mais, je suis un homme imaginaire...

Oh, damn...the people in the room above me are elephants...

And another face I'd like...

But probably cannot get. Not for a price I can afford. He goes by Jordan, and he's done work for artists like Exterface and Pierre et Giles. He's been in DNA Magazine. He's got a resume out the azz...but damn, he'd be good...
In some of his images, he has a goatee. And his eyes carry a haunted, wary look that fits. He's in his early 30s, now, but I saw some images of his late 20s -- he's got his own website -- and he's got the profile.

I got more done on OT, today, as I did two weeks' worth of laundry. I reworked the ending to better fit Jake's story, and I can see where to adjust things to illuminate that, even more. One guy who got cut got added back in, and I'm closing in on 118K in wordage. I'm back to hopeful I can get a decent draft done, soon.

Had to stop to pack for tomorrow. My plane's at 7:50am, meaning I have to be at the airport by 6:50, which means I have to get up at 5:45. What's positive is, once I'm in LA, I won't be getting up for work till the equivalent of 10am.

That, I can live with.

New face needed...

I think I'm as ready as I can be for my trip on Sunday, paperwork-wise; tomorrow's the day I do errands like inform the bank of where I'm going and get my travel sizes and do laundry so I'll have clean clothes to take. Tedious nonsense that means running around. That gave me the chance to start looking for another face for Jake, this evening, and I found some interesting ones...though none exactly right.

I happened onto a site called CanStockPhoto, and a photographer who's come close to what I'm looking for...and who may be open to working up one just like I want.

This one is interesting for his expression and eyes, but not enough of a goatee. Still, he'd work; he's got a decent growl going. I'd just have to get rid of the racket and arm.

This guy has the goatee, nose and eyes, but he's a bit soft. Still, for the cover his expression is also good, in a surprised and wary way. I bought a license for both at $8 each for a quality file. That's a bit cheaper than Shutterstock and you can buy them individually instead of having to get 5 to get the decent price.

I do like this one of Jon Gomez, who does self-portraits. His face is damn close to Jake's, but his beard is full. I may contact him -- he lives in Brooklyn -- and see if he has anything similar to this, only with a goatee and wearing a shirt. This is not going to be an erotic novel, so I don't want to give off the wrong impression.

Much.

I go Portugal...

Bought my ticket, today. Be there 5 days, with a car for three of them. This may prove interesting. I'm thinking back, and the only literary reference I can recall to Lisbon is in Candide, then he gets there just after the earthquake of 1755 and is nearly executed as a heretic, or something. It's been a while since I read the book. Of course, there's the last plane to Lisbon, where there's a Clipper to America, in Casablanca.

And that brings an odd sense of connection to my writing, since I just changed a script to be set in Casablanca. I know I posted this before, but it seems even more appropriate, now...

World goes round and round...

Feeling better...

Cipro's doing the job, even though it's the granddaddy of all antibiotics. I'm still worn out and a bit down, but that could be from other causes.

The photographer refused my request to use Guilherme's photo for the cover of The Vanishing of Owen Taylor. Seems my earlier work freaked him out. Oh, well...now I know what I'm looking for. I've got a couple of credits left at Shutterstock; I'll check there in more detail, but first glance is not promising. A full beard is NOT a goatee, and most of the guys are just ugly. Maybe I'll contact the photographer who helped me on the new cover for Porno Manifesto. He came up with a damn good image.

Man, February's shaping up to be an intense month. I've got the packing job at UCLA, The Miami Map Fair, a pickup to supervise in Dayton, OH, and a trip to Lisbon to plan...and that's on top of helping with the setup of shipments back to dealers from the Pasadena and Oakland book fairs (that's 130 shipments at one time, with customs paperwork to file on ⅔ of them). My co-worker, who can multi-task like you would not believe, is even a bit frazzled. For me, multi-tasking is chewing gum and typing at the same time...and even then I sometimes bite the inside of my lip.

That hurts.

OT's not getting done, yet

I got overloaded, today, with prepping for the upcoming book fairs and packing job. I also had an EEG, this morning, to make sure I have a brain; they say I do, but I'll wait for the results. And I'm in the middle of prepping a brief for the packing job I went to scout, which will be a fun one; I need that done before I leave on Sunday. And even better, I wound up with a urinary tract infection so spent half the evening at the doctor's late hours clinic and am now on Cipro. I will be throughout my trip to LA. MFSOB.

Oh, well...at least it wasn't cancer or a kidney stone or an ulcer or even my liver deciding it's had enough of me. I had a friend with Hepatitis B and his liver went nuts, to where he was in a hospital, hallucinating, for a week. Such is life in the big city. My new goal is to have a good draft before I head to Lisbon (yes, they accepted our bid!).

Anyway...here's some photos I took of the drive back.

 Naked trees stuck in snow.
A babbling brook that would probably make you into an ice cube if you even stuck your toe in it. My phone said it was was 8 degrees and wind chill -3. They weren't kidding.
And this is along the I-90. I don't know what it is, but I love the look of these frozen cascades. I missed getting a picture of the best one; it was nearly 60 feet tall, but there was nowhere to pull over and semis were barreling down on me. What makes that spooky is, I was going 70.

I also tried to do a video of me whipping down the I-90 at that speed. Can't use it, unless you take dramamine. But it is pretty country, and The Berkshires are magnificent in the snow.

It's just, since I'm under the weather, right now, I want winter over (and my non-stop typos to end).

Long drive home...

...It took 8 hours, thanks to snow and sleet, but made it back. Grumpy because I didn't stop for dinner and didn't like anything I had here, to eat...at least, anything that wouldn't take an hour to fix. So I had some tea and finished off some snacks I'd brought along in case I got snowbound.

What's good about these drives is, once I let my mind roam, I get ideas on stories I'm writing. What's bad is, I get ideas that show me I made some wrong choices. My ending for OT needs to be rewritten because I finally realized it's totally backwards. I like it...but it ain't right. Jake's actions on the last two pages are totally wrong. Dammit.

However, the new direction I'm taking it has given me the answer to the question that starts off the book. Which I didn't really have yet. I'd plugged in a response, but it was weak. Now? It's granite.

I better watch it. I'm starting to feel comfortable about how the story's playing out. That's always a bad sign, with me.

I had ideas for other stories, too. The Alice '65 is starting to seem more and more like a book in my head. Same for Carly's Kills. And I'm trying to figure out how to spend two months in Ireland to research both Place of Safety and Darian's Point. The latter to dig deeper into Irish mythology and research at the University in Galway. The former, returning to Derry and digging into the society that was theirs in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Hmph, sometimes I wonder if this is the direction I was meant to go, the whole time, and I'm just now seeing it.

Illness does not become me...

I made it to Springfield in 7 ½ hours, but it was a struggle. I barely slept, last night, thanks to this cold or flu or whatever, so stopped at every service area on the 90 between Buffalo and Massachusetts to keep from getting sleepy. I even drank a Red Bull. Not my favorite drink...especially in blueberry.

I rented a car to drive here, which I will be reimbursed for. It's a Nissan Juke 4-wheel drive and is not easy on gas, but I figured it's better to have extra traction than take the little-bitty Fiat I was offered. I can just see me trying to get through snow in that.

Problem is, the Juke is not very comfortable. The seats are on the hard side with minimal support, and it's difficult to position them in the right place for me to hold the steering wheel. It had cruise control, at least, which I kept at 5mph over the speed limit. That way, I was able to avoid getting tickets, because state troopers were out everywhere.

Leaving Buffalo, there were snow flurries and occasional threats of worse, but not enough to cover the road. Once I got past Syracuse, it was blue sky. I hear the storm is now expected tomorrow, hopefully not till I'm en route back to Buffalo. All I'm doing is scouting out a packing job's logistics; my goal is to be out of here by 11am.

It's a long drive, and I don't like doing it when I'm not feeling good...and I did not let a single writing thought enter my brain...but that's the way it works. And truth is, I like the solitude.

Sometimes.