Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 259

Quickie...

Like an idiot, I left my MacBook charger at the hotel and didn't notice it until I was checked into the airport and ready to do some work...and couldn't find it. First I tried to call the rental car to see if I'd left it there, because then I could just go out and get it before my flight. They wouldn't even answer their phone. So I checked the Best Western and they said they found it. I'm hoping it's the same one. Thing is, they won't send it to me till Monday. So either I buy a new charger or I make do till then...and the little buggers are $80! I can use my desktop for a week.

Not much going on in Indiana. I drove around downtown Indianapolis and saw they have a little river-walk, of sorts, and some nice riverside museums and such, but they don't do a whole lot with the actual river.

I think of Austin with Town Lake (AKA: Ladybird Lake) as the model for a great riverfront. St. Louis has a good one, as does New Orleans. And San Antonio's river-walk will never be equaled, no matter how much the city tries to ruin it.

But overall this town hits me as one of those places I think most people would want to escape from. Wide and open and generic.

Since I was done with everything by noon, I considered driving down to Bloomington to see where Breaking Away was shot...but as much as I love that movie, I couldn't see doing it. The town I was in picking up the books was so much like it in the movie...I think I got satiated.

Now I'm waiting on my plane...which doesn't take off for another couple hours. I should be home about midnight, again. And I have done the outline for CK. It's a script. I'll shift everything over to Final Draft this coming week. Not sure what I'll do with it, yet...but that never stopped me, before.

First, however, I may sleep all day, Saturday.

En route to Indiana...

I'm sitting in Baltimore's airport waiting for my flight, and BWI just went down a major notch in my estimation. I can't buy a bottle of Dr. Pepper anywhere in this terminal, anymore. Fountain drinks usually taste more like Mr. Pibb (which I despise) but that's what I had to make do with. That's what my life boils down to, now -- whether or not I can find a bottle of DP where I am.

I didn't get home, last night, till after midnight thanks to gridlock on JFK's runways; I actually saw it building when I noticed flight after flight after flight lining up to taxi to a runway...and barely move. If I'd been on the 10:55 flight, I'd probably still be there.

This set of jobs in NYC were rough, but got done on schedule...and that's no thanks to my Google Maps navigation. En route to my packing job, yesterday, it seems I got caught in a delayed program that didn't tell me to do stuff until it was too late for me to do it. I wound up heading the wrong way on the 678 and it was telling me to go straight, but that would have taken me right back where I came from, so so I ignored it and got off and turned around...and then it kept on like nothing had happened. I finally shut it down and started it up, again, and it was happier. Coming back it was good, too.

I have to admit, the damn thing does come in handy. The street I needed to turn on was surrounded by construction and had no sign to designate it, so I'd have missed it had I not had the navigator yelling at me to turn left here.

I have gotten more done on the outline for CK, though not as much as I wanted. Last night, I was so tired and so upset about my dinner being crappy, I couldn't really think until I had some raspberry sorbet from Pinkberry. Self-indugence works. Then this morning I had two cups of tea before I got on the flight to Baltimore, so I was able to work on the plane...and figured out some better lines for Carli and Zeke when they're doing their emotional dance. They're turning into very taciturn characters...in a good way, I hope.

The more I get into it, the more sure I am it's gonna be a script, first. It doesn't seem to want anything more...which is unusual, considering what the stories I connect with usually want done.

Well...unusual for me.

I know where Taylor Swift lives...

...in NYC, and if she paid $22m for that penthouse, she's got WAY too much money. I was made privy to this information (even though I really don't care) by the man whose books and memorabilia I was packing. I was done and waiting for the driver to show up to get them, and the client was tossing a fit because the guy was running late and couldn't find a parking space...and somehow that came up. I think because he was trying to let me know he was worth a lot of money because his loft just doubled in value, thanks to her.

But I gotta tell you -- I took one look at that building, and looked down at the entrance to it, and looked at the other buildings, and I thought, "Bitch, you got took." But then again, we are talking about a city where townhouses sell for nine-figures...and I do mean nine. The penthouse on top the Woolworth Tower listed for $110m.

That one, I can almost understand. It's an iconic building and is remarkably beautiful. I even made reference to it in my horror script, Darian's Point -- Thomas, the lead male, is a successful architect in Boston who wants to design buildings like it. Oh, I should note: DP is set in 1910, when the building was still in the idea stages. I also hear it's a 5 level penthouse. But still...the notion of spending that much money on a place to sleep is just ludicrous to me.

Must be why I still live like a college student.

Too pooped to piddle...

Gonna sit in a tub and dream about taking early retirement...and wonder if I do CK like a bodice-ripper, if I could make enough money to live comfortably in some other world.

Carli's kills were all for love...
Would this work as a cover and quote? Will women buy it in droves? Or men? Should I set it in 19th century England or the Middle Ages? Maybe Viking times; give Game of Thrones a run for its money.

Do I sound loopy enough for this?

Non-stop week...

I'll be in NYC Monday - Wednesday then in Indiana Thursday and Friday. Racking up the miles and points. Worst part -- I have to get up at 4am for my first flight. Gag...I am NOT a morning person. I wouldn't bother going to bed only I head straight to the first packing job from the airport; don't even check into my hotel till after I'm done for the day. Lots of DP tomorrow.

I've set myself a task for the week -- to have a solid outline for Carli's Kills by Sunday. I worked up a very loose 15-line one while doing laundry and saw where changing Zeke's situation in the story works better. Once it's done, then I can let it gestate while I dig back into Owen Taylor. Should be easy enough. HA!

I'm still locked on Logan McCree as the image for Zeke -- except for him not missing a leg. Alex Minsky did lose one in Afghanistan and now models -- both underwear and regular clothes -- but he's all dark-haired and I see Zeke as blond or sandy. It's important for him to be as close as possible to my mental image.

Still, this is a good one for Zeke. Totally. Plus Logan is German and has haunted eyes.

Hmm...it sounds like I'm swinging strongly back to making this a script...

Cleansed the palate a bit...

Sort of lost today...wandered here and there online...did a little cleaning up...let my brain float like it's in the middle of a pool of still water under a midnight sky...and then Carli and Zeke showed up.

I wrote a scene where they're at a target range, and I do mean scene. I wrote it almost like it's a moment between two alley cats sniffing each other out to see if they're friend or foe, revealing nothing but what they have to...and not even that, really. Action movie dialogue. Here's the first couple pages:

Carli takes apart a pistol, checks it, cleans it, puts it back together, fires at a target. Misses. Zeke shrugs, "No big deal."

"Barrel's warped." Carli says.

"That's your excuse?"

"Stand right behind me."

He does. She aims at the target...but just a bit off-center -- bulls-eye!

"How could you tell?"

"Way it kicks."

"Try this."

He hands her his AK-47. She checks it.

"This is your baby."

"What you mean?"

"Doesn't need cleaning."

She loads, checks the site, makes adjustments and -- BAM-BAM-BAM! Bulls-eyes.

He nods. "When I was over there, I heard stories. This one unit had a girl sniper."

"GIRL sniper?"

"Word was, she could hit your spit in the wind, from a thousand yards."

"When you were deployed?"

"Second tour was three years back."

She nods to his leg. "That happen then?"

He shrugs a yes. "Army says they got no female snipers."

"They're right."

"How long you been out?"

"Long enough. You?"

"Bit longer. Why're you here?"

"Why're you?" He just looks at her. "Your accent's north country, not desert."

"...What're you up to, Carli?"

"Couple beers, if you are."

"Tell you my life story?"

"That's the only way you get mine."

"Thought it was ladies first."

She pinches one of his tits. "I'm no lady."

"You don't care about...?" He raises his bionic leg.

"Zeke...shut the fuck up and kiss me."

Amazon v. The World of Publishing

Don't feel like writing so I stole this from Slate.
----------------------
Bringing Down the Hachette
Publishers could have thwarted the latest Amazon power grab. They didn’t, and books will suffer for it.
By Evan Hughes
Amazon is digging in for a lengthy fight with one of the Big Five publishers, Hachette, and flexing its extraordinary market muscle while the two companies negotiate a new contract. It’s understocking Hachette books so as to create shipping delays, cutting discounts, suggesting alternative titles to buyers, and even refusing to take pre-orders, foreclosing a major sales opportunity. If you want to give Amazon your money for the forthcoming pseudonymous J.K. Rowling novel, sorry,you can’t.

Neither side is officially discussing exactly what it is they are fighting about. But allindications and industry chatter suggest that Amazon and Hachette are revisiting the pricing and revenue split for e-books—the same contentious issue that prompted the 2012 price-fixing suit against the Big Five publishers, from which Amazon emerged more powerful than ever.

The publishing industry is cheering for Hachette to hold the line and has denounced Amazon’s anti-Hachette tactics almost unanimously. So have prominent media figures, to the point of declaring boycotts. (The New York Times’ new publishing beat reporter, David Streitfeld, tweeted, “Nearly 8000 tweets of our story on Amazon/Hachette. Still looking for one that takes Amazon’s side.”) The blockbuster writer James Patterson, an indie-bookseller advocate and, by no coincidence, a Hachette author, blasted Amazon in a speech on Thursday at the BookExpo America conference in New York. Even former supporters have turned on the online giant for blatantly contradicting its stated mission—“to be Earth’s most customer-centric company”—by sticking it to book-buyers as a ploy to gain leverage.

But the publishing world that is speaking as one against Amazon is really made up of two principal factions: publishers and authors. Their interests are not identical, and authors should consider the possibility that the publishers have contributed to the difficult situation they now face. Literature could end up suffering for it.

The crux of the issue is that in recent years, e-books have been more profitable for publishers than print books, despite the substantially lower price tag. But they’re less profitable for authors of new releases. This is not a well-known fact, but one group to have noticed is literary agents, who are in the business of ensuring that authors (and they themselves) get their fair slice of the pie.

Diet Coke is not going to get worse if Walmart drives a hard bargain. That’s not necessarily the case with books.

So when HarperCollins, another Big Five publisher, boasted about its digital profits in a presentation to investors last year, literary agent Brian DeFiore seized on Harper’s own PowerPoint slide to point out that authors of new releases get the short end of the deal. On the blog of the leading agents’ trade association, DeFiore published a post headlined “e-books and profitability—What we’ve always said and publishers have always denied.” He noted that Harper’s chart neatly demonstrated that for a given title, the e-book is more profitable than the hardcover edition precisely because the author makes less money on it.

“Look at Harper’s own numbers,” DeFiore wrote. “$27.99 hardcover generates $5.67 profit to publisher and $4.20 royalty to author. $14.99 agency priced e-book generates $7.87 profit to publisher and $2.62 royalty to author.”

Looks fishy, doesn’t it? And the same basic math holds throughout the industry, including at Hachette.

A prominent industry analyst, Mike Shatzkin, has been arguing for some time that publishers ought to raise e-book royalty rates. For him, the point is not that this would be the fair thing to do; he just thinks it would be the best move strategically. By leaving royalty rates where they are, publishers have left their nice digital margins hanging out there for everyone to see. And when Amazon sees someone else’s healthy profits, it’s like a dog smelling a steak. As Jeff Bezos has said, “Your margin is my opportunity.”

What I suspect is happening right now is that Amazon is telling Hachette that they want some of that margin. If Hachette had spread some of those digital profits to authors in the first place, it would not be vulnerable to this tactic. What’s more, if Hachette had been the first to raise author pay, it no doubt would have snagged some marquee writers.

If Amazon prevails and gains revenue that could have—and should have—gone to writers, that would be a lamentable outcome for literature. The available pot of money in the publishing business is essentially divided up among three key players: the retailer, the publisher, and the author. To the extent that the retailer—in this case, Amazon—wins a bigger share, the other two parties collectively lose. Amazon disputes this point by arguing that its low prices and convenient Kindle platform make people buy more books, thus “growing the pie.” But it’s hard to imagine that people are going to spend more and more of their finite income on books just because Amazon is getting its way and thriving.

Among the three key players, the author and publisher are the ones devoted to producing interesting books, or at least trying. Amazon just sells the end product. (Its beleaguered publishing division remains a sideshow.) At heart, Amazon is basically a Walmart with some tech-company trappings. It is not truly a part of the book world. Amazon’s executives have never seemed sensitive to the fact that constantly squeezing the people who write and edit and publish the books could easily damage the quality of the books. Don’t you get what you pay for?

The Amazon–Hachette dispute is different from a battle over terms between, say, Walmart and Coca-Cola: Diet Coke has a set formula of ingredients, so the actual beverage is not going to get worse if Walmart drives a hard bargain. That’s not necessarily the case with books, each of which is a unique product. If publishers make less money on every book, they are going to pay people less to write and edit them, and talented people will decide to do something else with their time. Consider that it takes at least five years, and usually more, to write a definitive presidential biography. If an advance of $100,000 exceeds the budget that an Amazon-dominated world will allow, then the only author who can write such a biography must be either independently wealthy or subsidized by a full-time job, probably teaching at a university. In this scenario, there’s no such thing as a professional biographer—so there goes two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Robert Caro, responsible for the consensus greatest presidential biography ever written.

As a person who knows a lot of writers and editors, I would venture that brain drain is a real threat. If books do decline and become more generic because Amazon is hoarding the revenue, the readers will be slow to notice. How do you notice a great book that never gets written?

Evan Hughes, the author of Literary Brooklyn, has written about the publishing industry forWired, the New Republic, and Salon. Follow him on Twitter.
-----------------------------
I think Amazon's making a huge mistake, because first, it looks like Amazon's greedily grabbing for money that really ought to go to authors, and second -- there are so many other places people can go to for these books, now...places that are just as easy to deal with. Of course, the publishers are screwing the pooch, too, for not getting with the technology and dropping the price of their e-books and/or upping the royalties paid.
But it's kind of fun to watch billionaire brats try to out-bad-boy each other.

Don't eat salad...

I had one last night and I've had an unhappy stomach ever since. That's with me washing it and with a dressing of oil and vinegar. I don't know what the problem is, but it made me a very uncomfortable mess much of the night and today. I'm just now beginning to feel better. So much for healthy eating. From now on it's nuke everything.

I did input the changes I'd done for the first two chapters of OT. That's where most of the reworking is, right now, so I plan to print those pages up and do another pass at the story. Funny...I cut left and right, but added in...so I'm still at the same page count. That's the way it works, sometimes; the story determines its own length.

I think I'm still repeating information that does not need to be repeated, but we'll see how it goes after next week. I finally understand what the story's about -- abandonment. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, now.

I may take a sketch book with me on this set of packing jobs. My fingers are itching to do some scribbling, and doodling on my desktop calendar just don't hack it. But I'm also going to carrying 20 pounds worth of paperwork...so I dunno...

Still not feeling up to anything much...

This bird now sings uncaged...

A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Good food and an ok wine...

That makes me feel like kickin' back and sayin' nothin'...so I'll let Steve Hayes do the chatty stuff, tonight.

BTW, Sunset Boulevard won 3 Oscars -- for Story, Production Design, and Music. Gloria should've got it for Actress...and William Holden should've got a special award for Hot Bod, the little whore.