Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 261

Twisty-turny-stuff...

Well...one bad guy I thought was a bad guy turned out not to be a bad guy and yet is still a bad guy...and that makes sense once you get to it. I think. But Jake's waging war, now, and he's in the mode of the enemy of my enemy is my friend...until the war is over. Then he'll turn the cannons.

I've decided to push on through to the end of the first draft, starting from page 460. Of course, that's based on pages done in 12 point Courier and double-spaced. I figure the final book will be just over 325 pages long. I don't know if I'm going to self-publish it or submit it to STARbooks Press. They said, a couple years ago, they'd like to see my next novel...but I think I'll still have to make sure they're still open, it's been so long.

Right now I've got a headache from a stiff neck and just want to sit in the tub for the rest of my life. I did do some ironing and watched another episode of "Firefly", on a friend's recommendation. This title was "Out of Gas" and I was taken in by how it jumped around in time. The resolution was a bit of a cheat, but redeemed itself by the final line. I think I might have felt differently about the show if they'd done things like this from the beginning.

Guess I will watch the rest of it.

Sometimes it takes a while...

Okay...today was interesting. I spent most of it working through my apathetic crap. Wasn't easy. I had to make myself do simple things like go deposit my paycheck because I got it a day late...and too late to hit the bank, yesterday...and I'd left my checkbook at home...so even though I really did not feel like leaving my apartment, I did. I also had to hit the PO to send off those free copies of David Martin and hope they will generate some interest on GoodReads.

I also half-heartedly tried to update some information on my books with Amazon...but what they told me to do didn't work. I did make some other things better. Sort of. Then I took a nap and woke up with a headache so ate and made potato leek soup for meals, next week, and balanced my checkbook.

Then I sort of wandered into working on The Vanishing of Owen Taylor...and saw some mistakes I was making in the narrative, not to mention a solid possibility that I was overlooking...and 'round about nine-pm I got back onto it...for a while. Now it's low-ebb, again.

When I get into these moods, it usually takes a long time for the residual sense of "Why bother?" to go away, completely. But I can finally sense it's finally drifting off. Tomorrow, I'm inputting corrections and changes into what I've already done on the book and aiming it to dovetail into a confession that will only be a hint of a confession. No Perry Mason crap here; my killer's not stupid. Neither is Jake. I have to honor that.

No, I don't have to...I want to. I fucking like Jake. He's a pain in the ass, sometimes, but he is what I wish I was. Funny...I have to build a fictional character to be the man I want to be. I wish I had been. Of course, I felt the same way about Curt, to an extent, but he's a bit on the crazy side, and I've always been more like Antony and Daniel and Eric...and...

Shit, look at what I'm doing -- mitigating a positive, definitive comment about one of my characters. I like Jake, who's a part of me, but there are all these other characters who really mean I'm nothing like him and WTF? Why the hell do I do that? Why can't I just let it be? Even when I read positive and glowing responses to my work (and there have been plenty), I think of ways to minimize their importance. Why?

Just one more aspect of my own private psychoses.

Yummy support

A fellow Texan at Yummy of the Day said he'd post a link to my new website for my books, so I worked this up. It took little effort or imagination...but I'm drained from all the work I've done for my books, this year. And the money I've sunk into them hurt. I'm not sorry I did it, but I doubt I'll ever make enough to break even.

The free book promo for David Martin's ended and now I have to send out copies to the winners. Most are in the US so that's not so very expensive, but one's in the UK. So there's more money into promotion. And it's wearing me down.

Tonight I was hit with a major slice of apathy. Which I guess was to be expected. I worked 11 hours straight to get everything done in time for the book fair shipments...and managed to screw up three times, just today. And I mean screw-ups that don't seem to be all that big a deal -- not getting a photocopy of a master airway bill before I FedEx'd it out and not getting a UK import registration number from another client -- but they may cause problems with Customs.

Making a living at a job where you're guaranteed to fuck up once a day doesn't do much for your self-esteem.

What it has shown me is, I would have fucked up as a director. I can barely write, so how in god's name did I ever come up with the idea I could direct a movie? They're little more than controlled chaos at a pace ten times worse than what I'm dealing with, now. It's amazing any of them turn out well.

But then again...maybe I'd have taken to it like a crazed Tasmanian Devil and become another Hollywood cautionary tale about excessive ego and madness.

Weirdness

Jake took me down a dead end and now we're trying to find our way back, so I only got 3 pages done, so far, and part of that includes the confession bit. Why does he do that? He knows it won't work. Too many aspects interfere with the natural progression.

I've been working late thanks to being the only one at work to do stuff, right now...so that may be part of the problem. We've got four fairs needing to be picked up this week and entered into the UK by Tuesday, next week. I get home and I'm wiped.

I feel rather like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, wishing he had a brain.

Police don't just lie in the US...

This is an amazing story about cops investigating two murders who convinced several people they'd helped in a murder but just couldn't remember it...scary...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_7617/index.html

Rebootingly done

I did some adjusting on the banner and sent it off with a link to my webpage for these books. I also changed some links on my site to take potential buyers to Kobo instead of a page that merely offers more links. Go Daddy isn't that easy to use when you're setting up...but it's very easy to do updates. On that score alone it gets kudos from me. The previous setup was damn near impossible.

I know the banner's a bit cluttered, but that's deliberate. I want these suckers lumped together, finally, so people can see I've got more than one offering or one place where my books can be bought. For all its self-righteousness, Amazon's offering everything.

Now I can get back to OT and finish it up. An idea I had long ago about how to reveal the main killer but tossed aside has resurfaced, and works. But it changes the motivation of everything...and that's cool.  Because in the long run, it makes the reasoning behind what's happening even more vicious.

Ah, the joy of writing...

I did some adjusting on the banner and sent it off with a...

I did some adjusting on the banner and sent it off with a link to my webpage for these books. I also changed some links on my site to take potential buyers to Kobo instead of a page that merely offers more links. Go Daddy isn't that easy to use when you're setting up...but it's very easy to do updates. On that score alone it gets kudos from me. The previous setup was damn near impossible.

I know the banner's a bit cluttered, but that's deliberate. I want these suckers lumped together, finally, so people can see I've got more than one offering or one place where my books can be bought. For all its self-righteousness, Amazon's offering everything.

Now I can get back to OT and finish it up. An idea I had long ago about how to reveal the main killer but tossed aside has resurfaced, and works. But it changes the motivation of everything...and that's cool.  Because in the long run, it makes the reasoning behind what's happening even more vicious.

Ah, the joy of writing...

Sidetracked

I spent the evening setting up a website for my adult books, using my old kmscb.com domain. GoDaddy's updated its web designer so I had to learn it all over again, and while some parts of it are easier, others are impossible. For example, I can't change the names of the links in the main menu if I want to use a particular design. Irritating. But it's done. Now I have one place to send potential book buyers to that's separate from my other site.

I did this because another website is willing to post a link to my work. All I have to do is send in a banner...so I worked this up --
It's a bit chaotic, and deliberately so...and I think I may rework it. I like the face being on the left and the figure on the right, now that I think about it. And the link embedded in it will be for my one site instead of having to make do with sending people to directtextbook.com or Amazon or anything.
Wish I could afford to do some real advertising in specified spots. Not just for these books, but also David Martin. I tried the ad thing with facebook and that got damn near nothing. I've got a giveaway going on GoodReads, but I don't know if that will do anything, yet. It doesn't end till Sunday. I've sent out post cards and copies of the book...and it just sort of sits there. I wonder if I did the story right?
Maybe I'm not the type who should write children's books...

452

That's how many pages I now have...and maybe fewer...but I dumped the entire last chapter because it just prolonged the finale without any purpose. Instead, I moved one confrontation up, chopped out a minor sub-plot that meant nothing, and now I'm probably 90% done. One killer just got revealed and another is on the way...and then the denouement.

But this leaves me blank of brain, so instead, I shall show you how NOT to pounce on a cute boy who's doing a belly roll in his "Risky Business" style home...
See what I mean?

Feeling better about it...

I've gone through nearly 300 pages of OT and so far only the first couple of chapters were in need of serious work. The rest has been detail work with a bit of info-juggling. I like what I've done, for the most part -- letting character determine the speed of the plot as opposed to rules and regulations for writers. I am getting rid of some redundancies, but overall if builds in a way I like. Nothing forceable about it.

I am honing Jake's manner of speech, more. He's not as verbal as Antony so that is something I'm keeping in mind as I go through. It means getting rid of a couple of nice descriptions, but they just didn't fit into the way Jake talks.

I still found time to find out Conchita Wurst won Eurovision for "Rise Like A Phoenix". Coolness. That means that next year's Eurovision Contest will be held in Vienna.


Conchita's got a great voice, but this song would be perfect for Shirley Bassey.