Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 41

Moving on...

It's time to start focusing on the third volume of A Place of Safety -- Home Not Home. This is where everything comes together...but how much together, I have no idea, yet. There's a lot I've built up about Brendan's life that could use closure, to use that vile cliche. And it has to happen in a city coming apart, thanks to the hunger strikes.

Why is his father so difficult to understand? The man was violent, but Brendan's had indications none of that started till his birth...even as his Aunt's noted the arguments between his mother and father were ongoing before he was born. How is this reconciled?

And his father's semi-fame as a storyteller and singer. I have an idea of how to reveal that for whatever truth there is to it...but why didn't he share the stories with his children except when he was too drunk to do so?

There's the silence of his uncles concerning Bernadette and Aunt Mari, until the latter makes contact with them, again. And his brother, Eamonn, managing to keep himself strong while imprisoned in the H-Blocks, now in line to join the hunger strikers when another dies. Where did that strength come from, since he was not known for it?

The list goes on and on and I want to make it all understandable, relatable, if not fully explainable. It all has to lead to the ending to make it work...and, of course, I'm nervous about it. Nervous? Scared shitless, really. What I have now is only just over half the length of the first two volumes, and I want it ready by mid-October.

Am I setting myself up to screw it up? I don't know. I just know I need to push and write and then trim back to where there's nothing left to trim of what I've overwritten.

I'm feeling adultier, today, so actually worked. Dammit.

 Got full info on both packing jobs I'm prepping, and found I'd severely underestimated the weight in one. Fortunately, before I passed it on to the client. That would have been awkward. Um, hi, yeah, gonna cost you 50% more than I said. Sorry, but shit happens.

Then I spent lots of time...and lots and lots...on laying out the dust jacket for APoS-NWFO. This is close, but I think I'm going to adjust some of the type and try to figure some way to make the spine more visible. More readable.

The big black area is for a review I'm expecting to come in before the end of July...if it's good. God, what if it isn't. What if they say it's not as good as Derry? That it meanders or makes no sense or is self-indulgent? Crap. Maybe then I'll repeat the glowing reviews I got for Derry.

Because reality is, this story's set. Almost in stone. When I get the proofing back, the only changes I'm aiming to make are for typos and errors. No rewrites. I can get myself lost in that shit forever, and any good artist knows when to let go, no matter how much you want to keep trying to make it perfect.

Not that I'm a good artist...but still...

So it's time to start on volume three, Home Not Home. And I have a lot of ideas for that. Plus there are a numbers of things that happen in one and two that build up into three...and then end of the story.

I think this one's going to make people mad.

I don't wanna adult...

I got my drivers license renewed at the downtown DMV, very nice and easy if parking was a bit ridiculous. There's a massive garage across the street, half of which you can't park in. You have to go to the underground level. And several of the elevators up to the ground floor are out of service. Not lookin' good there, Buffalo.

But the process itself was easy. I proved my eyes still worked and paid the fee...and was done nice and quick. Which made me happy because I felt like crap. Still affected by that vaccination. I stopped at a pizza joint and had a slice and DP then came home and slept. For two hours.

When I do that, I'm extremely unmotivated once I wake up. But I still sent some emails for work and arranged for a review from Kirkus for APoS-NWFO, and started pulling together pricing for one of the jobs, even though I don't know exactly where it is. I have photos of the books on their shelves but that's it. Still, that lets me work out how much in the way of packing materials I'll need.

I've had it with the MAGAt crowd so I've started just blocking them. I just don't want to deal with it. I also had someone I used to know contact me, asking to catch up. I don't want to. She and her husband voted for that orange bastard in 2016 and I told them I can't be friends with people who support an organization that wants to hurt me. Haven't seen them since.

So I'm a bit perplexed as to why I'm being contacted. It seems rude to tell her, No, I don't want to call you. But the fact is, I don't. She doesn't have my phone number, anymore; I dropped that years ago. So I'm thinking about how best to handle it.

I like being left alone, and I've realized a lot of that's colored Brendan's world. A nephew of mine asked me what I meant by a safe place, and I said, Where people leave you alone to live your life. His response was, There is no such place. Which, as it turns out, is the theme of the books.

And he hasn't read any of them.

Rotten day...

Had a doctor's appointment and worked on prepping a potential job's costing, in Boston, so not focused on much else. At the doctor's I got a pneumonia vaccine shot...and it hurt. My whole body's aching, and I got a cramp in my left leg as I drove home. Which is not good. My car's a stick and he's a bit needy, in his old age.

How many years is car years in human years? My Civic's a '98 DX Coupe, and every time I think of getting a new one I go on a packing job, rent a car with electronic everything and remind myself why I don't want to replace him.

Everyone I know who has a car built in the last 10 years is having trouble with its electronics. Parking brake freezes in locked position. Sensors start misreading. Windows stop working. My little beast has a handbrake, no sensors and roll up windows, and still runs damn good. I don't want to lose that.

Anyway, I've been achy all day and unfocused. Near headache. Cranky. I hate it when I'm like that. Nice to stay in since I got home just before the rain came pelting down.

At least I'm getting good response to the latest cover workup for APoS-NWFO. It fits, more and more, in my view. I have another potential packing job in DC so once I get done with that, tomorrow, I'll start working up the full dust jacket.

Just learned Rian Johnson is coming out with a new Knives Out movie -- Wake up Dead Man. Kind of a clunky title, but Daniel Craig is back as Benoit Blanc, and that makes me giddy. Andrew Scott's signed on, too...so this should be fun. Hopefully, Hugh Grant will also be there...baking...

I wish Netflix would release their videos in DVD format...the bastards.

Finally, I think I got it.

I tried several different layouts with different images to work up the cover of APoS-NWFO...and didn't like any of them. Making Brendan the centerpiece, in his Houston phase or look...it kept coming across as a young adult novel. Something about a troubled boy (which he is, but that's beside the point) or a teen romance. Gag.

So I looked at the passport one I'd worked up...looked closer at the photo I'm using of Brendan...and went back to basics. And I think this is the strongest one. Adding in the scars and a bit of mess to his hair, surrounding him with a frame...it carries a deeper emotion than any of the others could even have possibly achieved.

I'm asking for feedback on Facebook, but I have a feeling this will be the front cover. And one of the images I worked up will do nicely on the back. Now I just need to get Publishers Weekly to agree to do a review of this volume. If they won't, I guess I'll get one through BookLife. And I'll hit Kirkus up for one, too. See how that works.

I set up an author page on Kirkus, as well, with links to some of my books. Focused on the more mainstream ones, since they get the least notice from the other sites I publicize on.

Y'know, it's amazing how tired you can get just screwing around with your laptop, all day.

Slight changes make it a lot better...

I redid the image for the cover of APoS-NWFO and it's a lot smoother. It's closely aligned with the last quarter of the story, when Brendan goes punk. But...and this is a big but...I'm not 100% on it, yet. I like it, but don't really feel it's completely right. I don't know why; I don' have any other ideas floating around. I just look at it and think it's...I dunno, too troubled-youth-ish?

I mean, reality is, that's a bit of a description of the story. Brendan is troubled, throughout, and trying to find himself...and getting smacked down everywhere he turns. So I'm not sure that this image is all that wrong. Maybe I need something simpler.

It's not like I don't know the story. But nothing is leaping out to help me along. Focus on this or that instead of the other thing you're doing. But no a word from story or character. Maybe I've done the whole story wrong.

Shit, I know what the problem is. This cover has an Ordinary People feel about it. That's not what I want. It's Brendan's story and he's got to be the one who draws a potential reader in, no fake references allowed.

But how? I'm at a loss.

Fuck, I'm gonna start whining in a minute.

Possible cover...

Spent the day digging through Shutterstock for images to fit an idea I had for the cover of APoS-NWFO and came close to giving up. That site is so poorly organized, you have to go through six different steps to get even close to what you're asking for. But this is what I came up with...and I do like it.

The image of the boy I found after asking for teen boy low angle head and shoulders and getting nothing but bland, smiling youths...but one was interesting enough, so I pulled it up and then clicked on the link to similar images. Those were better, several of which were actually Eastern European guys...but another's expression fit the mark okay enough to dig into. (I'm saving these into my catalogue as I go and have 2 dozen).

Linking to the similar models page led me to a link of brooding guys in the woods, not just of him, so I backtracked and did other images of this model to find city, country and backlighted...but a few were against a brick wall. And his expression was the most interesting. I screen-grabbed a copy of it (with the Shutterstock watermark all over it), removed the wall and cropped it to just his head and shoulders and that was working for me.

So...I went looking for a house. Seeking houses with gable windows didn't work. Seeking houses of the 70s did work. Seeking houses painted white didn't work. Then I remembered a line from Miracle on 34th Street, when John Payne talks about getting married and buying a nice Cape Cod home in the suburbs. So input Cape Cod...and there it was. Full house and in wood instead of brick, like I describe it in the book, but workable.

Cropped that down, laid the boy over it, tried him looking right and left and preferred the former. Tried changing the direction his eyes were looking but a friend told me that makes him look like a serial killer...which it did. So now it's back to the original, and I added a couple of lines as potential scars. I also added a bit of emotion to it.

This sloppy cover is strictly a mockup. I think I need to work on the layout and maybe increase the size of his head in the frame as well as deal with the positioning of the title. If I go with this, I'm licensing the images to get them in much higher resolution, so it will look clean.

Let's see how I feel, tomorrow.

Head somewhat cleared...

It took me hours to convince myself to go, but I finally got in my car and drove to Niagara Falls, along the 324 and not the 190. The bridges charge tolls and I'm not set up for those to be charged to a credit card so they're a higher cost and I'm not paying that. Besides, River Road is more interesting.

(check my Facebook page for the video version)
The day was quite pleasant. 75 degrees with a nice breeze. Of course, there just had to be an event happening near the Rainbow Bridge to the Canadian side, meaning no parking available that wasn't $25 and up. So I drove onto Goat Island and went to that lot and visited the Canadian Falls.

I toyed with the idea of driving across to Canada for dinner, but then remembered it's a holiday weekend and a look at the bridge told me that would take forever, both ways. So I walked around. Looked at all the Indian and Chinese tourists and managed to clear my head, some.

I think I know what the cover's going to be, now. I need to play with it some, to make sure, but a house I saw on the drive that's for sale made the suggestion -- a low angle on Brendan, head and shoulders, the three levels of Aunt Mari's house behind him in a vaguely threatening manner. Dunno if I can pull that off, but I'll work on it, tomorrow.

All the walking and the sun wore me out, but it was good to do.

Need a new dust jacket cover...

I finished the ebook copy of APoS-NWFO and sent it off to Publishers Weekly, requesting a review. I've also started working on the dust jacket for the hardback. Got the template and set up the background...and find I'm no longer all that thrilled with the passport images I'm using. It feels too oblique. Almost coy.

I'm wondering about having a vintage UK passport and one from Ireland, pre-EU, lying on a table with a copy of his photo partially on them...but that seems just as artsy-fartsy. I don't like the idea of the portrait, anymore. It doesn't really speak to the story. So I'm at a loss.

I'm almost thinking of an image of Brendan standing outside Aunt Mari's home...framed like the picture of him in volume one...but I don't know how I'd set that up. Maybe something kind of like this. Maybe...bigger house or something...aw, I can't think.

I may go out and about, tomorrow...like over to Niagara Falls and just walk around. Haven't been there since before Covid. I've stayed home so damn much working on this, maybe seeing the Falls will clear my head. I dunno.

I also set up a trip to San Antonio for my nephew's wedding, mid-October. Had enough points on Southwest for free fare; all I had to pay for was the EarlyBird. Got three free nights in two different hotels, and paying partial for one. Rental car's at full price, but still...this'll work for me.

Okay...I'm doing my usual crash and burn after finishing writing a story. I'm signing off.

I may make my July 31st publication date...

I submitted APoS-NWFO to the LOC for copyrighting...and also submitted to get an LCCN for the card catalogue listing. Then I set up a page on BookLife for this volume and began reformatting it into an ebook to send into Publishers Weekly to (hopefully) get a review. That is up to them, and they rejected the first volume. But you never know.

The rest of the day's been taken up working on linking the Table of Contents to each chapter. That. Is. TEDIOUS!!!! It's a three-step process, in Word. Bookmark each chapter title. Hyperlink from each listing in the ToC to its corresponding chapter. Then hyperlink back to the ToC. And it not only has to be done right, but there's crap that comes with it that must be deleted.

So I'm about halfway done, but the good thing about this is it's also a way of verifying everything is in order...and lo and behold, I found a fuckup in the Table of Contents. I'd left out a chapter heading and mis-aligned the page numbers, after it. It's wrong on the copyright submission, but that's not important. The text is what counts, there. And that isn't changing...

Unless, of course, the person doing the proofing finds another fuckup. Which is not unimaginable.

Once all this is done, I'll be ready to set the book up with Smashwords and then, having the book jacket set, Ingram. And I can get onto volume three.

I'm going to do something rather arrogant. I was in contact with the Pulitzer Committee and learned I have until October 15th to submit APoS, if i want to. The two published volumes and a pdf of what I've got done on Home Not Home. And I'm going to do it. I know I have no chance against the big-boy books that get submitted, but just taking the chance is important to me, and to Brendan.

So I need to get my ass in gear and do better than my best...as if I haven't already.