Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 264

My five top freebies...

Yummy of the Day put up his Top 5 Freebies -- i.e. male crushes he'd love to be with -- and challenged others to do the same. So...here are mine:

1. Chris EvansHe seems to take his beauty as a lucky joke, which makes him even sexier.
2. Rodiney SantiagoHis abs may pay his rent, but what holds me is his non-stop joy at being alive and knowing what he has may not last, so best to make the most of it now.
3. Aidan TurnerCharismatic to the extreme, even when being a murderous monster...he could talk me into spending eternity with him.
4. Ryan GoslingA goof who thinks he looks goofy and can't see that's what makes him gorgeous.
5. Joe ManganielloHe epitomizes what I always wanted to look like but never could because I'm pale skinned, easily burned, and have an awkward body construction thanks to childhood issues.
As for the rest of my day...it was spent working on Carli's Kills. A little restructuring, and suddenly the first 20 pages shoot past. I also turned one character from male to female. Much better.
Helps that I got my laptop power adaptor back, today. Only cost $66 to ship. For $79 plus tax, I could have gotten a new one, had them just snail-mail the old adaptor back to me and had it as a backup if I ever pulled this same boneheaded stunt, again. I'm an idiot about money. But then, aren't most artists?

Hey, I called me an artist.

Lesson hopefully learned...

I keep finding out that any time I try to save money, I wind up spending more. Latest case in point -- getting my laptop's adaptor back. I'd heard nothing from anybody about it since last Friday, so I called the hotel to see if it had been sent and if they had a tracking number. The plan was for them to send it COD and I pay for postage when I get it. The hotel told me the Post Office returned it to them because there was no one to sign for it. That doesn't even begin to make sense.

I don't know exactly how COD works, but if they sent the package on Monday, would it have gotten to my place and back to Indianapolis by Thursday? I seriously doubt it. Also, why wouldn't the carrier leave a notice for me to come pick it up from my postal station, and give me time to do that? I'm supposed to pay for a COD with cash, when I don't know how much it is and whether or not the carrier will have change?

But I accepted their explanation and asked them to send it to me via FedEx. This time, I got a tracking number...and found that it's costing me almost as much as buying a new one. I'd have done better to leave the airport, rent a car and drive to the hotel to pick it up. I had plenty of time, but I thought that would be too expensive. So I've been without my laptop all week because I wouldn't spring the $40 for a car.

But that's how it usually works. I used to buy pre-owned cars and just pay to fix them when they broke down, as pre-owned cars will. Until I had enough of it, bought my Honda Civic brand new...and I'm still driving it nearly 16 years later, and for one hell of a lot less overall than doing the used car thing.

Same for shoes -- I got a pair at Target that looked right and felt comfortable enough...until I wore them to work all day and into the evening and got home to find bruises on the tops of my feet from where the crease in the faux-leather pressed into my skin. All they cost me was some of my points from Best Western, but I could have used those for something else.

So now I need to figure out how to pay for a pair of new shoes in the brand I like...which ain't gonna be easy. I used to buy them at Macy's, but the damned store doesn't offer "wides" anymore, and the ones they do offer are just a hair too narrow.

Plus I need new pants and shirts...I haven't bought clothes in a couple years and it's starting to tell on my appearance. I don't look homeless, yet...but I'm getting there. Thing is, I'm still too deep in debt from publishing my books to be able to afford anything, right now.

Friday's proving to be the 13th, all right.

Oh...sigh...

I will be so glad when I get the power adaptor to my laptop back. My desktop is slow, at best, and when I'm trying to do anything on the internet, it stops dead for several seconds at a time and I get the spinning beach ball of death. Maybe I need a new relay; I've had my current one for 4 years. Isn't that a lifetime for wifi technology?

I'm calling the hotel, tomorrow, to find out if they have a tracking number for the shipment of my adaptor to me. It shouldn't take this long, really; I was only in Indianapolis, not exactly Alaska or England or anything. I'm halfway afraid they haven't sent it, yet.

Worked more on Ck but only added a little. I need to print the outline I did so I can reference it more easily. Keep me on track. Something the story's doing is shifting a bit to my non-linear style -- with Carli remembering things that led her to where she is, now. I don't know if I want that; it seems to be a problem when people read my work and I don't do A-B-C-D style.

I've cut back on how much I eat. I've always done light at breakfast -- juice and some herbal tea, a breakfast bar about 10am. Around 300 calories. Lunch under 400 calories. Diner about 6-700 calories. Couple snacks of 200 calories...so 400-500 more. 1-2 DPs -- about 250 calories (I drink a combination of Dr. Pepper 10 and regular, which works well and cuts my calorie intake in half). That's under 2200 calories a day, when I used to do 2500-3000. Hasn't made a hint of a difference in my weight. Unless I go for starvation mode, I don't think that's going to help me drop any of the pounds.

Starting to consider liposuction...

Elegance...

They sang this in a train station, in Germany...so wonderful...
I have a CD of another Icelandic group -- Edda -- that I bought by mistake but was mesmerized by it, when I listened. These harmonies give Gregorian Chants a real run for their quality.

Cutting...cutting...

Chopped another page and a half from what I have, so far, on CK and rearranged a bit of the outline I'm following. I also added back a character I'd chopped because it worked better to have them in. Well, I hadn't so much cut them as reassigned them so all I had to do was assign them back to where they were to begin with.

I got another royalty check for The Lyons' Den. Not as much as last year, but it's something. Once I'm done with this first draft of CK, I'm going to read some online stuff about selling your books. I'm trying everything I can -- from the blog to Facebook to the website to getting other blogs to reference them...and it sort of seems to finally be making a difference...but I'm a long LONG way from Steven King territory.

I did a giveaway on GoodReads for David Martin -- 5 copies of the book shipped out for free to people selected by the website. The deal is, they're supposed to give it a review once they read it...but I'd gotten nothing, so far. Not sure if that means they didn't like it or they haven't read it. Being a paranoid writer, I lean more to the former than latter explanation.

It's muggy, tonight; I think I'll hit the pillows early.

Quick start...slow going...

After getting so much done on Carli's Kills, I've hit the slow zone...not that I care. It's slowly unfolding before my eyes, and Carli's helping clear out the unnecessary from the critical points in the story. So I go with the flow, for now...so long as the flow goes.

Zeke's doing backup for Carli, shaking his head when I get too verbose with him. He's not much of a talker, and I love to have my characters talk. But he's reminding me of a script I was writing with a man who'd escaped from Serbia, during the civil war.

We worked up 40 pages of him tracking some snipers, helping some local villagers capture one of them and exact their own revenge on him, and him then taking an American photographer hostage to force the authorities to release his brother. In all those pages, he had maybe twelve lines of dialogue. But then it shifted to America and we had no idea where to go with it.

I sort of did the same with KAZN -- until the ending, when the lead explains what's really going on. But there were some points where I went for pages without dialogue...so I know I can do it. I just need to keep my focus.

That's the hard part -- focus. I've been doing this for so long but have yet to figure out how to get anywhere with it in a way that I can actually handle. Sometimes I just can't get the passion fired up. It's so much easier to just sit and stare and wonder why I got nowhere...

As most writers do.

Quick note: Eric Cantor got canned. Apparently he was too liberal for the Tea Party in his district. Eric Cantor...too liberal? I cannot even begin to understand how anyone could think that. I'm happy he's gone; he is a vile excuse for a man, and the idea of Karma biting him in the ass is just too delicious. But the one replacing him is mentally ill, and that scares me.

But that's a large portion of America, today.

...And a bit with a dog...

Zeke got himself a puppy. Thor. He's the kind of guy who'd have a dog or two as companions. And any girl he likes would have to like the dog, too...and it her.

I added a few more pages, this evening, and dropped half of what I was going to transfer from book format. As the story's evolved, it's shed a lot of superfluous nonsense. First draft'll still be clunky, but tighter than my first drafts usually are.

Carli's also done something that surprised me, but I don't want to say what it is because I'm not 100% on it, yet...though she is. And she led me to a bit where someone gets pushed off a high place and falls to their death, screaming, then cut to Carli smacking a pool ball into a pocket. Our homage to Hitchcock.

I don't see this being over 100 pages long. I know the tendency these days is to make action-suspense movies 2 hours plus, but that's silly for a story this straightforward and clean.

At least, I hope it is.

CK Jumps Ahead

I spent much of today coordinating what I had for Carli's Kills -- shifting from book to screenplay format and revisiting what I'd already written as a script. Turns out I've got the opening 32 pages pretty much set, and the final 22 pages done, with a few bits in between and one section of the book part that still needs to be translated into Final Draft.

I'd forgotten I bought a license to use this image for the book's cover. but it so fits the story, I may use it to work up a faux poster or post cards or something to get notice for the script. I still want to use Logan McCree's face somewhere...though I've been looking at Alex Minsky a lot. I wonder how he'd look with blond or sandy hair? Maybe red-headed?

I don't know if he's taking acting classes, is the thing. I've seen Logan act and he's good, but he's German and has that lilt to his pronunciations. Of course, Zeke's Nordic...and they're all on the Baltic Sea...and it'd be funny to suggest a bi-sexual porn actor as the heterosexual lead in a female empowerment movie.

I also finished Firefly, and I'm glad I watched it all. Gina Torres' Zoe would be a good role model for Carli. All business but hot for hubby...which I can see in a shlubby, geeky, blond-boy kind of way.

I think Carli and Zeke are ready for the story to play out, because they're giving me ideas on how to streamline it and add depth without extra pages. I'm going to try and keep the dialogue like what I wrote earlier -- very terse and secretive, yet revealing in what it doesn't say.

Tall order for a guy who loves his words.

Laziness...

Achieved nothing today except working out expenses for this week of trips...a 2 hour nap...and watching Gone With The Wind for the umpteenth time. Dunno why I did that except Scarlet O'Hara is one strong bitch when it comes to making her way through the world. Not even a bastard like Rhett Butler can keep up with her. Guess I wanted a touchstone for Carli.

Only Carli's more in control than Scarlet, and better able to handle herself when trouble comes. As it always does. I'm thinking of adding a bit where Carli gets grabbed from behind by a fellow soldier and she knocks his teeth out or breaks his nose with her elbow...and it turns out it was an officer. Of course, he says she attacked him without provocation and she  is drummed out or forced to resign or something. I'm not sure about this, yet...it's still in the vague background of the story...but it's leading up to something.

I was going to work this as a horror story with a revenge twist, but now I'm not so sure. That would intimate that Carli's a monster, and she's not; she's an avenging angel...and yet, the justice she meets out is fulfilled in a manner that's close to horror. At least, it is for the people who deserve it. Hmm...maybe she's got some of the devil in her, too.

No wonder Zeke's attracted to her.

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.