Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 37

In SA

I dunno what's happened, but San Antonio is making me unhappy, food-wise. I went to a Taco Cabana and they couldn't serve me because their system was down. So I hit a Jack In The Box for a couple tacos...and they were out of lettuce. I wound up meeting my sister and brother at another Taco Cabana up San Pedro and had my fix of enchiladas, rice and beans...which were only okay...but it was late, and I was hungry.

And I need to remember that San Antonio drivers don't believe in road rules. No blinkers. I'm in a right lane and want to turn left so I'll cut in front of you at half the posted speed limit and won't give you any warning. And those white line dividers are there to aim your car along, thus using both lanes.

Good thing is, my flights were nice and I got a lot of formatting done on HNH. I have 34 chapters in it. I also ran Microsoft's editor over it for spelling, grammar and concise wording. Flying home, I'll set up the chapter links to the table of contents and then I'll go back through it all to see if it makes any sense and how often I repeat myself. Then it's off for editing and proofing.

I worked out my ending to where I believe it will carry the kick I want, even though it's quiet. Almost gentle. Of course, I may be fooling myself. I've done that before, which is why I'm wary of being too certain of what I've written. We'll have to see how it works for readers.

I will admit, it's hard for me to keep from getting carried away with joy at how close I am to the finish of this full novel. Needless to say, Brendan is just as pleased to nearly be done with me. We've had a rough relationship...almost like living, breathing brothers...and I'm sure he'll be as happy as I am once it's completed and we both can relax.

And I can figure out what to do next...

100,970 words

Fifth draft is done, and I worked out my ending so it's not flat. I'm brain dead, now, and flying to San Antonio, tomorrow, so need to pack. Here's the moment Brendan stops taking shit from people who claim to be on his side. It's just after his mother has finally died.

----- 

I walked away from Altnagelvin into a growling darkness. The clouds were low and threatened rain. The wind was soft but still had bite to it. There was a curfew, but my bed was the other side of the Foyle and I’d already done my last vile deed for the day. So I set off walking. 

You see, after Father Jack finished Ma’s last rites, and as Maeve and Rhuari knelt by her bedside to pray, I took him aside and quietly asked, “When do you visit with Eamonn?” 

“I’ll see to it he’s informed—” 

“When?” I snapped, cutting him off. I had no patience for his excessive words. 

 He eyed me, irritated. “They’ll let me, immediately, for something like this but—” 

“When you see him, tell him his mother said she does not want him to join in the hunger strike.” 

“I’m not going to lie to him and—” 

Again, I cut him off. “Ma told me as she lay there dying that it was a mistake. That she did not want him to be part of it, and that he should back away.” 

“Brendan, it is sin to lie about something so vital—” 

“I’m not lying,” and it was an effort for me to keep my voice low enough so the others couldn’t hear. “You will tell him that it is his mother’s dying wish that he not do this.” 

He gave a sharp sigh. “You’re concerned over nothing. He’s only in the queue, and not even in the top twelve on the list, so—” 

“Tell him, anyway.” And I forced each word out like a near hiss. 

He gave his cool, condescending look then started to move away. “We’ll see.” 

I grabbed him by the arm and said, “Father Jack, do as I say or I will destroy you and everything people believe about you.” And I knew the second part of my threat was all he truly cared about. 

He spun on me, furious, and growled, “You have the nerve to say that to me? A man of God who—?” 

I nearly spat out, “How’s Father Demian doing?” 

“What?” 

“I hear he was shot. Not killed, merely castrated by a couple bullets. Some would say justice was served.” 

The look on his face became one of the purest anger. “What does he have to do with this?” 

“Right, I should refer to him by Danny Gallagher’s pet name, Father Devil. I know what he did to Danny, and God knows how many other lads he could get his hands on.” 

He barely kept himself in control, his voice a low vicious growl. “You are referencing something about which you know nothing!” And suddenly I noticed his light brogue was damn near non-existent. 

I smiled. “I also hear you were instrumental in getting him transferred to Nottingham. How many kids did he molest there?” 

The anger in his face shifted to sharp wariness. 

I went in for the kill. “That’s quite a little game you priests have—do something wrong and all you get is moved to another parish where you can start fresh and new, once again a man of God with no one knowing the better till you do wrong, again. It wouldn’t take much to reveal Father Devil’s evil, and how many times he’s been moved, and how neatly the church has kept it hidden. And all because you won’t give my brother a message from his dying mother. Is that the right thing to do, Father Jack? Where’s that milk of human kindness you so love to talk about?” 

He stepped back from me. Leaned himself against the wall, for support. Licked his lips a couple of times. He was trying desperately to figure some way around my brutally blunt threats. I kept my focus on him, as hard and cold as I could, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Maeve looking at us, a frown on her worn face. She’d be over in a minute and I wanted this settled before she got to us. 

Father Jack took in a deep breath and whispered, “What makes you think he’ll believe me?” 

“Because he wants to,” I snarled back. “And I mean it—if Eamonn joins with the strikers and he dies, I will send your soul to hell on earth. Do you understand me?” 

He straightened himself and looked me up and down, his mask back on. “You’ve become quite an evil man, Brendan Kinsella.” 

“I learned from the best.” 

Disdain flashed across his eyes. “And to think I thought you the weak one.” 

I had to laugh at that. “This is how strength operates?”

So close...

I will be done with this draft, tomorrow. I have one chapter to write, linking two sections together, and then this draft will be complete. As of now, it's over 98,000 words. And rolls along.

I'm not happy with the ending, just yet. I don't think it achieves the emotional wallop that I want. It's just a bit too quiet. Initially, I had Brendan becoming a killer...but while that would have been a massive shock, it was wrong for his character. He would never do that, no matter what. He knows the futility of it.

What I've substituted it with, however, is quiet to the point of nearly invisible. I need to think it through, more carefully. More consistently. Link it with everything else, more completely.

Well, this volume is getting at least two more drafts. But I think it's structured in the right direction. I can think of a couple things that need to be added, but overall it's a lot closer to Brendan's story than the previous drafts.

Saturday I'm heading down to San Antonio for my nephew's wedding. I was supposed to fly down, today, but I'd have been changing planes in Tampa. That was not going to happen, thanks to Milton, so I fixed it. What the heck...changing it like this save me some money and let me get in a position to finish HNH.

That's a good trade-off.

Still fighting self-doubt...

I got so focused on writing, today, I worked myself into a tension headache. I've got a heating pad on my neck and shoulders, at the moment, and that's helping some...and I'm going to take a double dose of Advil. 

What's good is, I've only got about 160 pages left to rewrite and and one more chapter to develop, and I'll be done with this draft. It'll still need work, but it's a lot closer to what it needs to be.

Looks like It will be up over 100,000 words, which is good. The first two were over 140,000 words, each. Depends on how the new ending works. And if the bit between Brendan and a ghost isn't too far off the beam. It figures in, later, but I'm not sure I've got it working right, yet.

I ran into a short period where I wondered if I had any idea of what I was doing with this part of the story. Which segued into wondering about the entire book. I have books on the Maze prison that tell a lot about it but not details I really need. Like what the visitation room looked like. Or where actual parking was upon arrival to the main gate.

I played around with in in a way I hope will be okay, but I honestly don't know. So far, the best method I've found of dealing with details like that...aspects of the society and rules and regulations...is by keeping it tightly focused on Brendan, who doesn't pay much attention to such things.

His descriptions are basic and broad, unless it's directly affecting him. Sometimes he's caught in the beauty of the moment and grows a bit poetic, but it's not extreme. At least, I don't think it is.

He's coming across as a bit autistic, but low on the spectrum. Awkward socially and easily focused on fixing things, he gets truly obsessed with the minutia of it. Which works into his friends knowing even though he's been told not to try and find Joanna and refusing to help him locate her, he will focus on doing so, anyway. Won't let it go.

And it will lead to the ending that I think will work best...hope will...who knows...

Still advancing...

I got another chapter written for HNH, where Brendan is taken to visit his brother Eamonn, in the Maze Prison. It's not long, just 7 pages, right now, and I'm guessing on a couple of aspects of how they'd meet with him in the place...but it feels right. So far.

I'm nervous that this part of the story is becoming an advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes, but it's what Brendan smokes and he's finding they help break the ice with the soldiers at checkpoints and guards at the Maze. They're available in Derry, but cost close to twice as much as things like Gallagher Blues, which Brendan used to smoke, so only the better-off people can afford them.

He's finding out there's a lot of contradiction in the information he's been pulling together about his family. He's always assumed they were all born and raised in Derry, but if his parents lived in Belfast till mid-1951, then both Eamonn junior and Mairead would have been born there. And he's got two names for his father -- Eamonn Kinsella and Edward Gorman. He needs to sort that out. Not sure about this...but it does add to his confusion.

I've cut a great deal, as well. The long, painful reunification with Joanna is gone, as is the moment she turns on him. And the lead-up to him being arrested by the RUC is shifted to a more believable place--the Peoples Wall down Fahan from Guildhall. It's a one-way now but I think it was both directions back in 1981. I'd better verify that.

Oh, I still have much to do for this...but it's getting there. 

I should quit more often...

Home Not Home is coming together, despite my best efforts. I've done a blunt but quiet conversation between Brendan and Father Jack as they drive to visit with Eamonn. I already have part of that meeting written; just none of the details filled in, yet. But it will also be quiet.

It's funny...but the story is aiming to have a quiet ending. I have one written that is shocking...and dramatic...and bloody. One with a horrible catharsis. Very meaningful and painful and all that gloriously melodramatic nonsense...and it's dissolving before my very eyes. Brendan doesn't like it, saying, That would not be me. Never me.

I'm still in the early understanding of this new direction. No symbolism acceptable. At least, nothing overt and obvious. Just...something simple and human.

My giving up on finishing the story within my timeframe must have jolted some aspect of my connection to it, so that I could finally see how artificial my initial ending was. I don't want to discuss what it was, just now. not until I know this is the correct way to go.

But it...it really fucking jolted me. I went quiet, myself, at the first thought of it. Soft and silent and afraid of it. And that is what gives it some legitimacy with me. The fear of it. No death and destruction at the end. Just...silence.

Just as the world is always, truly, silent in the face of man's horrors.

Re-doing my travel redo...

I'm flying Southwest to San Antonio, and anytime there's a weather event their system all but collapses. I do NOT want to be stuck at an airport anywhere trying to get a flight to my nephew's wedding. So, my brain caught up to my needs and I shifted my flight to Saturday, the day before the wedding.

I also upgraded myself to Business Class so I can get on first. And have a drink. Which I think I'll need. Then I rebooked my rental car and hotel, as well as canceling two others. All on points so I'm not losing any money and doing it within the proper timeframe. But now I feel a lot better about the journey.

I'll only be in SA Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday till 3pm, but hell...I don't like being in Texas, anyway. And it's going to be in the 90s, according to the forecast. Buffalo's down to the low 70s, now.

It saves me on expenses like parking and food, and gas and stuff, and I'll see everybody at the wedding, so this feels a lot better. I may be crying another tune, come Saturday, but until then...I'm kickin' it.

What's even better? I get a full 5 days to work on HNH...and I'm currently about halfway through this draft. I'm nearing the end of the hardest part. I have a conversation I need to write between Brendan and Father Jack while driving to The Maze prison to see Eamonn Kinsella, and that will be a beast, but after that, things shift into an easier mode...an area I'm already pretty comfortable with as written. Some detail work...but not a huge amount.

I may actually get this book done, this year. Not bragging, yet; just seeing light at the end of the tunnel, for a change.

Just call me bi-polar...

Something odd happened to me, today. I stumbled onto a reference to Professor Myles Dillon, who was once teaching Irish at the University College, Cork in the School of Irish Learning. Back in the 50s or early 60s, he recorded himself reading 11 poems in Gaelic, including one I'd used in APoS-NWFO -- Pangur Ban. Spoke the poems onto a wax record.

Dr. Kevin Murray, another professor at the school stumbled onto the record some years later and made cassette recordings of it...and it was lovely.

That segued into me finding out the men who handled the spoken Gaelic histories and stories were referred to a seanchaí, the bearers of folklore...so Brendan's father was considered one...which he finds out was under the name Edward Gorman, not Eamonn Kinsella.

So I pulled up the latest draft of HNH to add this information in, since I don't have memory enough for a Commodore 64...and before I knew it I was back into rewriting volume 3. It's at 94,000 words now.

Here I'd given up on finishing it, this year, and suddenly I'm back into it and feeling very solid. There's one section of chapters that will need to be rewritten a couple of times, and that's it. The rest is pretty well set. I'd given up over nearly nothing.

Makes me feel really good about myself...sure does. More like I'm too easily led into hysterics by my sense of inadequacy. So we'll see what happens.

Of course, there's another category 3 or 4 hurricane headed for Tampa on the day I'm set to fly through there to go to my nephew, Andrew's wedding. So I spent the evening moving my trip to San Antonio up a day to go through Baltimore, instead. Cost me the last of my points, but it's worth it.

Florida's getting a pounding, this year. It's as if God is telling them their current government needs to be done away with. Of course, the MAGAts won't see it that way, but it is what it is.

And I'm happy to be going nowhere near that state.

Reading can be good...

Reading other people's writing can be very illuminating, and assist in your own. I finished Madison Square Murders on the flight home, last night, and while I enjoyed it well enough, I noticed how reticent C S Poe was with his information and storytelling.

I liked how he set up Everett Larkin, the lead detective in the cold case squad, as someone barely in control of himself due to a traumatic even nearly 20 years earlier. It gave him a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, which is both a blessing and a curse in his profession...and was new to me.

Apparently, individuals with it can remember the day of a week a date fell on as well as details of that happened on hat day, for every day of their life from childhood. But they might also have no short-term memory.

Because of it, he fights to maintain a sharp control of himself and uses tricks to maintain the ability to work with others, to the extent his nickname around the station is Grim.

Of course, slapped up against him is Ira Doyle, a forensic artist for the PD who's as loose and easy as possible in opposition to Larkin, but who's sensitive enough to now how to deal with him and his quirks...almost to the point of saintliness. It's a commonplace arrangement in fiction.

Well, a storm uprooted a tree in Madison Square Park, in mid-town Manhattan, revealing a skeleton wearing a death mask.They pair investigate, find the body was put there 18 years ago, and soon come to suspect they're dealing with a serial killer.

The mystery is laid out neatly. Larkin's issues with his husband's selfish demands seems a bit much but doesn't really detract. I'd have had an easier time believing Larking was on his own, thanks to his mental state. This just seemed like loading on the problems for him to make him more sympathetic. But no big was.

What was a significant issue was how sparse the revelation about the event that brought on the man's HSAM was so minimal as to almost not be there. Even though it's an important part of his makeup. It was tossed aside in just a couple of sentences.

I guess Poe wanted to hold it back for book 2 in the series, but that's a cheat. Spending the whole book building up interest in this aspect of a very damaged man who's just managing to cope, and then not honoring that interest with a full and complete explanation as to what happened, was just plain wrong.

But...it reiterated a problem I'd had in a book or two, myself, and reminded me to take care. You aren't just honoring the characters in your stories, you're acknowledging the needs of your readers.

Change of plans, again...

Packing job got canceled after I arrived out here. For stupid reasons too -- who's providing insurance coverage for the shipment. When no decision could be made, the job was scrapped and I took the packing materials back to a warehouse to prep for returning them.

What that did was leave me with 12 hours till my flight to return to Buffalo. I spent a couple hours at an In-n-Out by LAX watching the jets land and take off. It's amazing how much fun that can be. And their #2 combo, animal style, it just plain lovely.

I also managed to have a couple of Jack in the Box tacos. What I did NOT get to do was figure out where to recharge the electric vehicle Avis gave me. It was a good little SUV, but I was down to 62 miles in range and Google maps kept taking me to private recharging stations that I could not access. So I turned it in, early, and have been at the airport since 3pm for an 11:30pm flight.

BUT...they got good wifi. And I was actually able to find an outlet that I was able to get to work, so I could recharge my phone. For some amazingly stupid reason, I'd left the cable for recharging my phone at home so had to buy a new one. Which I got at Target for $7. But it got a bit scary how low I got before I could juice up.

One big positive about this is I didn't work myself into a sweaty mess, packing those books and then shifting them into a container. That would have been awkward on an overnight flight.

I'm currently reading a book I'd downloaded...Madison Square Murders, a murder mystery with a couple of gay cop detectives set in NYC that's interesting. Sometimes the writer gets a bit too carried away in the telling of it, but so far it's interesting. I may well finish it before the flight boards. no telling.

But right now I need to pee and in this piss-ant terminal 5 at LAX the men's room is in a gully in between four overpriced restaurants.