Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 46

I ate some sugar-free cookies, last night, and there was ...

I ate some sugar-free cookies, last night, and there was something in them that my body did not like. I wasn't just hitting the bathroom; I had cramps and gas and felt somewhat nauseous...which is a big deal for me because it's been decades since I last threw up. Wasn't able to get to sleep till after 4am, and even then I woke up every 2 hours to deal with some irritation.

It finally settled down about noon, today, when I had hot tea and buttered toast for lunch. But I'm never eating anything sugar-free again. Fruit juice as a sweetener is okay, as is honey. No syrup or high-fructose crap. I may even get some frozen fruit and make my own compotes or something.

I managed to fiddle around with APoS-NWFO's formatting, today, and it looks like the book with be about 340 pages in 6x9" format. I can live with that. I also printed out a hard copy, but in larger font and more spacing, so it was over 400 pages. 

I had to go out and get a new ink cartridge for my HP printer, so walked down to Target. It was a nice day for it, and it's a mile each way, which is good exercise for me. But damn, did that tire me out. I just nuked some Stouffer's lasagne for dinner and that's been fine.

As for HP...I'm ticked off. I had a backup black ink cartridge when I started printing. I finished up the one in the printer, replaced it with the new one...and only got 120 or so pages from it before it ran out. I'm doing this in draft mode so it uses half the ink. I'm of a mind to send it back to HP and complain. The one I got at Target is the XL model...and I'm leery of it having all that much ink in it. The last time I used an XL cartridge, it was a different size from the regular one. Not this time...even though it says on the cartridge that it's the extended one.

Anyway, I finished my printing and can do the red pen edit. But I'm exhausted, right now, and my back is killing me from weariness.

Settling down

Took the day off from worrying about APoS-NWFO and did very little on social media. Instead, I'm reading Adrian McKinty's final Sean Duffy murder mystery, The Detective Up Late . I've read all the others--as well as Gerard Brenna's and Stuart Neville's works--mainly to get a feel for the syntax of Northern Ireland...only to find they're all set in Belfast, not Derry. That's like using the way people in San Antonio talk as opposed to Dallas. Not severe differences, but enough to matter.

The one real positive is Duffy is originally from Derry; he's just a Catholic cop in a hateful Protestant-riven Constabulary. AKA: peelers...RUC...the usual stupid people who think they're either smart or too butch to care.

I'm going to adjust the font and sizing, tomorrow, and print out a hardcopy to start going over in red pen. Make sure the changes I input in draft 7 work well enough...as well as check for typos, missing words and inconsistencies. Then send it off to be properly proofed and edited.

I'm liking the changes I made in this draft. It's funny, but putting Brendan back in the attic room for the last quarter of the book actually worked out better than him returning to the pool house. Maybe I'm paying attention to him enough to make this work, now.

Home Not Home is next. Of course, it needs a LOT of work, even though it's in 3rd draft. I have a section I need to add where Brendan learns his father was recorded by a college student while telling one of his stories in a pub and he goes to listen to it...and it's beautifully told. It was caught at just the right moment, before Da was too drunk to keep his thoughts in order.

He gets a copy and shares it with Eamonn, who's locked away in the H-Blocks. And despite him pretending to be someone else, the two brothers reconnect so that later, when it's suggested Eamonn add his name to the list of hunger strikers, Brendan has more cause to turn brutal to keep it from happening.

It's all leading to an ending that I'm not crazy about, but is necessary. Dammit.

Draft 7 is done

I pushed through, today, and hit the end of New World For Old just a few minutes ago. 145,566 words. It ends when Brendan find out out his mother's cancer is terminal and he needs to go home...and wishes he could avoid doing so.

APoS-Home Not Home will pick up from there as he makes plans for his trip and works out a way to keep from being found out. He knows the British still basically want to speak with him about the bombing, so he can't return as Brendan. Nor is he happy about being Brennan McGabbhinn. He has to do something else...and does.

Jesus, there's a lot that happens in this volume. I'm torn between doing draft 8 and just sending it out to get feedback, first, to see if it's working. Now would be the time, since I want to publish it in about four months, and I'm only just beginning to pull together the cover artwork.

I honestly think I'm at the point where I'm looking more for typos and aspects of the story that don't work for a reader, so it's best to just send it out and deal with the response. Brendan's a bit unsure about it all, but that doesn't matter, right now. I'll be doing another rewrite once it comes back so why the fuck not do it right?

I'll decide tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or after the eclipse.

Chef Kyle

I made an apple pie. I used premade crust, but the filling I did on my own. Peeled 'em. Cut 'em up. Mixed 'em with a dash of lime juice, melted butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. And it tastes really good. Still kind of juice-heavy, but I liked it.

I did this because as I worked--and watched the pie cook since I didn't want it to burn--I figured out a bit more about APoS-NWFO and wove that in. Added a bit of an explanation as to why Everett is friends with Brendan, Also introduced him to Evangelyne and Jeremy. Brendan's in the process of regaining control of his life, so of course events have to kick the blocks out from under him.

Doing all of this added another 500+ words to the story, but its flow works a lot better for me. I'm down to the last 80 pages, so I should be done this weekend. All set before the eclipse.

Buffalo is going to be in the center of it as it passes over New York. I have an ophthalmologist's appointment that morning, but should be home well before it starts. Everyone's freaking out and thinking the nutcases will be roaming the streets like zombies.

This isn't my first eclipse. I was in San Antonio when one happened in October 1978. It wasn't a total one, as I recall, and was late in the day...but it got everything dark for a while then light again before night fell. I was working at a downtown newsstand waiting to hear if I'd be admitted to NYU's graduate school of film. Didn't see a single zombie.

NYU accepted me, but in one of the dumbest things I ever did in my life, I turned them down when they wanted me to go the full three years and start over in 8mm when I'd been working in 16mm. I was remarkably stupid, somewhat arrogant, and rather an asshole, back then.

My books are too long

Apparently, A Place of Safety is turning out to be way too long a novel, according to the publishing world. Normally, a novel is 60,000-100,000 words. For the whole damn thing. I'm close to 290,000 for these two volumes, with another 70,000+ coming for volume 3. Maybe that's why I couldn't get anyone interested in them--publisher or agent.

BookLife did call Derry a long book. But in hardcover it looks right and I don't think I could have cut any more than I did without hurting the story. Same for New World For Old. It's pretty much registering at 145,000 words, no matter how much I do. And that is fine with me.

However, it does limit me in ways I wasn't expecting. Some book groups won't let me set Derry up with them due to length. And it is kind of expensive to buy in hardcover. $32.95 in the US. New World For Old with be just as expensive, if not more.

It's just, I do not want to rush Brendan's life due to some arbitrary limitations on book size. He has three segments in which to tell his story--all three of which have been written, with one published, and one still on track to come out around my birthday. The last should be done by the end of the year. And that will be it, for him. No more space to expand upon his life, as if it's not expansive, right now.

I'm 2/3 done with draft 7 of NWFO and am back to feeling comfortable with how it reads. Brendan's more contemplative in this part. More introspective. And he's actually kind while also being as angry and wary as a feral cat...and unwilling to be trampled upon. He's fighting to regain control of his life and finding it's not so very easy.

And that makes him angrier.

Jeremy returns...

I think I worked out the problem with Brendan following the waitress' death. I'll go through it, again, tomorrow, but it does feel more organic to the story, now. More connected instead of perfunctory. I actually got through to the Fourth of July 1974, after Jeremy's returned from Israel...where he fought in the Yom Kippur war.

He's changed, and Brendan can see it in him. They're now two young men who've seen people die, up close. He shows up at the pool house to spend the Fourth with Bren, because the fireworks now remind him of death and not celebration.

-----

By the time midnight was approaching and the gunfire and explosions were beginning to mellow down, Jeremy had settled next to me on the floor, both of us leaning against those totally useless bean bag chairs. Angus was asleep. We were on what I thought was the last joint, so he took another toke and offered me the remainder. I brushed it away. I was now at the point where no sudden pops or snaps could attack me.

He nodded and held it and a long sigh whispered from him.“Thanks for lettin' me stay here. Be here. Through all the noise and crap. Forgot how loud it can get. How much it sounds like-like...” His voice trailed off, then he murmured, “My folks're havin' a barbecue. Again. That's all they ever have in this state. Set off fireworks and I-I-I just couldn't...”

“I know,” was all I could think to say.

“It's all so different, here. All so changed.”

“I've not been here long enough to tell,” I murmured.

“It's not that. It's me. I was born here. So was my mom. Her folks came through Galveston back around 1910 or something. They were kids. Dad's from New York. They met when he did his residency. He decided to stay. And it was fine; nobody really seemed to care 'bout our religion. Now we get blamed for everything. Embargo. Hijackin's. Even Munich. Somethin' goes wrong, first blame the Jew.”

“Someone I knew once said, Too much blamin' and not enough accepting goin' on in the world.”

He let a near smile come to his face. “Don't have to know me to blame me.”

“But I can't see anyone blaming you for a thing. You're too mellow a lad.”

The smile finally forced itself to his face. “Never was.”

I just nudged him in a friendly joshing manner.

He chuckled. “It's true. I was a terror, in school.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Kids were kind of afraid of me.”

“How so?”

“Long story.”

“Got no place to be.”

He chuckled and settled deeper into the bean bag chair and this long gaze came to his eyes.

Danny's gaze.

I looked away.

“When I was in sixth grade,” he finally murmured, “this family moved in from Port Arthur and one of their kids was in my class. He found out I’m Jewish and started callin' me Christ-killer. Hell, I didn’t even know what he was talkin' 'bout till I mentioned it to mom. Man, she tossed a fit. Went roarin' down to the school, but the principal told her it was nothin'. Just kids being kids. Then he said to me--I mean, my mother dragged me down with her to tell him what I’d been called, and I was embarrassed like you wouldn’t believe.”

I chuckled. “Parents were made to cause their children hell.”

“No shit. Anyway, mom had him explain what it means.” He a gave a nice long yawn. “Two-thousand years ago the Jews had a guy named Jesus executed by the Romans. That’s why Christians call Jews Christ-killers.

“Now I already knew a little bit about this Jesus guy. The way Christians see him. That he’d been hung on a cross till he was dead, and there's some weird crap about him not really dyin'.” He nudged me to look at him. “We don't go along with that, but we're not as hard-assed as we used to be. Not at my temple.” He shifted back to his thousand mile gaze. “Anyhoooo, his explanation didn’t make sense to me.”

“Why not?” I asked, because truth be told, now that he mentioned it I remembered the priests and nuns saying the same about the Jews.

“'Cause, I knew my history. Romans ran the world, back then. Jews couldn't do a damn thing without their okay. So I piped up like a little smart ass, But the Jews didn’t kill Jesus; it was the Romans. You said so, yourself.” He chuckled. “Maaaaannn, you’d have thought I spit in his face.”

His chuckle became a laugh, and he took another drag of the joint's stub then sipped some wine before exhaling.

“Well, that principal bolted from his chair and yelled at mom, Get this little Jew bastard out of my office! Said it so loud, half his staff looked around. That's when mom rose and said, very sweet and cold, Unlike you, this little Jew is the product of a marriage.”

That made me laugh along with him. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Then she took me straight to a karate class and enrolled me in it, and said, Learn it; you’ll need it.” 

“Is that what you used on that drunk, last year?”

“Aikido,” he smirked. “Karate got boring. Anyway, I was barred from the school. Nearly two weeks 'fore Uncle David made the district back down and let me back in. Mom kept me current with my classes, so that was no problem.” He was quiet, for a long moment. “Problem was with that little shit who called me a Christ-killer to begin with. He made friends. Gained converts. Lots of kids. Kids I thought were friends. They were callin' me that. Whisperin' it. And the kids who didn’t say it, who told me in private they thought it was awful what those brats were doin'? They let it happen.” He gave a long deep yawn. “And the teachers did nothin' to stop it. 

“Finally, that little shit and I got into it, after school. Right under the noses of three teachers. I think they thought it was time the little Jew boy got put in his place.” Another long pause, then a smile. “I broke the little shit’s arm. Compound fracture. That stopped the fight, all right. Blamed it all on me. I was suspended for a month. Little shit's dad threatened to file charges. My mother tossed another fit, but this time my father told her to shut up and see what happened. Then he took me to a shootin' range and showed me how to fire a pistol. We went once a day for a whole month. Thirty-eight revolver. Forty-five automatic, which hurt my hand with its kick. Shifted to a Ruger ten-twenty-two.”

He looked at me, pretty much stoned. I wasn't far behind him.

“That's a rifle. Word got around. Mess with the Jew, he'll mess with you. You know what? When I went back to school, no one ever called me that name, again. Ever.”

I chuckled. “Sounds like you work better with the head to head approach in life.”

“Only after I’d had two months of karate lessons, five times a week. I mean, I wasn’t even beyond a white belt at that point, but I knew how to get that little shit’s arm over my knee and go snap. It was very impressive.”

“Jesus, Jere...”

He sat forward, still cross-legged, still staring at nothing.“Mom put down I'd won awards for my shootin' and had a black belt in Aikido. For the info. For the kibbutz. So when the Egyptian army started their build-up, I was grabbed and handed a GALIL and sent to Sinai. To stop any advance. I thought they were jokin'. Nobody thought the Egyptians were any good.”

I watched him just sit there, unmoving. Barely breathing.

“They were wrong,” whispered from him.

Shifting...

Well, what started out as a simple shift of this paragraph there and this page down here became a complete expansion and intensification of Brendan's reaction to the waitress' death at the hands of her abusive husband. Brendan withdraws completely from everyone, thinking himself a curse. Blaming himself for her murder. I had a bit where Todd, the bartender where Brendan worked, drops by to talk...but I think I'm combining that with Everett's visit.

The setup is simple -- the husband shows up at the bar, attacks his wife and Brendan, remembering how Paidrig was kneecapped by their mutual friend, Colm, grabs a baseball bat and smacks it against the man's knees. Breaks one, crippling the guy. Which is bad because the husband is a cop and Brendan is not legal.

Brendan sets her up at Everett's till she can convince her mother to move out of the city with her. But the husband uses police resources to track her down, rams her car head-on, and pumps five bullets into her before killing himself. And the whole city wonders why a fine, upstanding young cop went berserk while tacitly blaming the waitress for it all.

I'm using an infamous occasion in Asbury Park, NJ, about 7 or 8 years ago, where a cop was in a divorce, accused of abuse and pissed off over child support, so chased down his soon-to-be ex and killed her in her car while their daughter sat in the passenger seat. What made it horrific was, some fellow officers saw what he was doing and didn't even try to stop him. Then comforted him before they arrested him. All on video.

This mess crashes Brendan back to memories of his father's abuse of his mother, himself and his older brother, Eamonn, and sends him careening into despair. He sees himself as a curse, now that two women he knew are dead thanks to him. How I get Everett in to talk him back to humanity is something I'll deal with tomorrow.

Ophthalmologist blew me off about my stye. Just use hot packs on your eye and come in for your normal visit, next week. I so love being cared about...

I spy my stye...

Not a day for writing. Not when you're dealing with a stye on your right eye that makes it difficult to focus. My left eye is not my strong one, but the right is a bit puffy and nagging at me so I cannot see, very well. I'm calling my ophthalmologist in the morning to see if he'll work me into his schedule. 

It's been years...hell, decades since the last time I had one. And that time I got an ointment to put over it to kill the infection. But right now eyedrops are only barely doing anything. Warm compresses have helped, however.

So what did I do instead, on Easter Sunday? I cleaned my stove. I was baking a casserole and it overflowed, making the oven smoke enough to set off the smoke alarm. Had to slam the windows open, get the fans going and punch the mute button three times to make it stop before the fire department was called. Talk about a comment about my cooking...

So the smoke is cleared out. Laundry done. Dishes washed. Casserole partially eaten. And nearly 3 hours spent cleaning the damn oven. That stuff was caked onto what I think was previous dinners' remains from before I moved in, it was so damn thick and crusty. Used two whole Brillo pads and every paper towel in my apartment to complete it.

I'd never paid attention to the base of the oven, before. When I baked something, it was no issue. Never even looked at it. But now it's clean. And my hands are raw. And my back is not happy.

But...I think I have an idea of what to do about Brendan's emotional turmoil over the waitress' murder. Currently, he talks about it with Everett on the phone. That's getting cut. I like it, but it's muting his relapse. I might be able to put it later, but at this point in the story he is having a visceral reaction to what's happened and is cutting himself off from everyone.

Maybe his talk with Everett is what begins to bring him back...

Difficult moments...

I'm not sure I'm doing a chapter in NWFO correctly. It deals with the death of a waitress Brendan works with at his uncle's bar, and it feels glib. Brusque. Almost like it doesn't belong...but it is necessary for the story. It marks him, because he'd grown close to her. Protected her against her abusive husband. And feels responsible when the man kills her and himself.

He'd been able to battle back his sense of guilt over the death of Joanna. Accept that her father would have been a target of the Provisional IRA no matter what, and that the bomb went off prematurely due to circumstances beyond anyone's real control. But this puts him back to square one.

So it's right, where it is. It's blunt and brutal.  But it's missing something to anchor it better to the story. And that's what today's been all about. Catholic guilt is all through it, sure. Depression. Would adding self-harm work within this? I don't get the sense Brendan would do that to himself. He's not the least bit suicidal.

He just takes it all in. Berates himself. Drinks and smokes and does pot and pills...but not to a massive extent. He gets angry and is hurt, but he's always been a step back from everything except when he's repairing something. Is that what I'm missing? I'm leaving him stuck in a form of limbo and not following through with his way of working?

I don't know. That also seems a bit trite. But it is closer to his normal way of dealing with life. I can't fix people but I can fix this radio.

I'll deal with it, tomorrow. I've got some kind of infection in my right eyelid and need to tend to that.

A third of the way through...

I reworked chapters 11 and 12 three times before I was happy with them. Lots of shifting around comments and combining moments to remove any trace of repetition. Brendan also chatters along, a bit, and I'm trimming some of that back. The word count is down to just over 145K from 146K and feels a lot better. I'm beginning to consider sending it out for feedback and proofing/editing when I'm done with this draft.

And officially speaking, this is the seventh draft, considering the amount of rewriting I'm doing.

I increased the size of the document I'm going through to 200% and it shows errors a lot better. I'm also using the mouse that fits with the Caladex PC laptop I have. It has a little connector that I plug into a USB extension so the Mac can use it, and it is nowhere near as freaky when my hand goes near it, not like the Mac Magic Mouse is.

That thing, if I even think of moving my hand anywhere near it, all of a sudden I'll have scrolled down 2-3 pages and not know where I am. Or if I'm in Ps, it'll shift the image all over the screen and I spend half my time putting it back where I want it. And that's on the least sensitive setting. But the most ridiculous aspect of the mouse is, they put the plug where you recharge it on the bottom, so you can't use the damned thing while it's connected to a power source.

I don't know what the fuck is going on with Apple/Mac, but those people have no common sense when dealing with how people can actually use the great and glorious designs they come up with.