Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 52

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. 

The B-girls take over...

Brandi and Bernadette have been giving Bren the silent treatment because he won't let them come and go in his room as they please. But that didn't work with him, of course; he loves being left alone. So they're changing tactics...

------

After two weeks of silence, the B-girls decided it was time I be made acceptable to them and their circle of friends, for my general appearance was not cool. So a makeover was started, and I went along with it.

Why? I have no idea. I'd never cared about that nonsense in Derry. But their incessant nattering kept my focus on them and not my past life, so I let the fanatical two lead the way, with one condition--that we keep the price low. My ready cash was not so very great. 

“We could just ask mommy for her charge card,” said one. 

“Like for Joske's. Maybe Penney's,” said the other. “No Sears. No Montgomery Wards.” 

“Not Frost Brothers or Neiman's, yet.” 

“We gotta establish your style before we go upscale.” 

“What's upscale?” I asked, truly perplexed. 

“Designer duds.” 

“No upscale, at all,” I'd snapped. 

“Well, we're not talking Yves St. Laurent,” said one. 

“Or Christian Dior,” said the other. 

“He doesn't have men's clothes.” 

“I saw one of his suits at Holleran's.” 

“That was Burberry. From England.” 

“You don't know what you're talking about.” 

And off they went, no longer discussing designer duds for me. Thank God. Instead, first was my new wardrobe. 

“Those pants are just plain ugly,” said one, after I'd about given up hope of ever telling them apart. 

“What's wrong with my trousers?” I'd growled. 

“They're for old men, not boys.” 

“And nothing but white t-shirts?” said the other. 

“With stains on them!” 

“And holes.” 

“From cigarette burns?!” 

“You have to get out and be around people.” 

“But we don't want you to be embarrassing to us,” 

 “So this is for your own good.” 

“No hip-huggers, either.” 

“I don't know; David Cassidy still wears them.” 

“Not like he used to. They're closer to his belly button.” 

“I still think he'd look good in them.” 

“But they are so last year.” 

“Gracie Venable wears hip-huggers.” 

“Yeah, and look at her.” 

“Oh. Yeah. No hip-huggers.” 

Levi 501 jeans, is what it wound up at; not Wrangler, thank you. Dingo boots. Sandals. Madras button-ups and undershirts with pockets. 

“No tie-dies.” 

“Very last year.” 

“Worse, very 1970.” 

“Now that's just mean. We were wearing tie-dyes last year.” 

“You were. Not me.” 

“Now you're being rude!” 

And off they would go into one of their arguments, and they'd forget about me. 

Of course, I could not forget completely about Derry and Belfast, because it seemed every night's news carried a new atrocity. Constables and soldiers grabbed and murdered. Protestant workers, with the same done to Catholics. Bombs dealing death and destruction to people out and about at the time. Politicians nattering on and on with nothing to show for all their talk. Bleating from Westminster about how best to settle the matter and the planning of a new government beholden to none and all, after the June elections. Stories with little depth or understanding of what was happening. 

The intrusion of the B-Girls and their demands grew more and more to be a sanctuary against the arbitrariness of what was happening.So every Saturday, they'd be knocking at my door, ten am--until I growled a reminder that I hadn't got home till near four and needed my sleep so I could do it all, again, that night. So they shifted to noon, with time enough for lunch before dragging me here or there, on the bus. 

Fortunately, the little beasts had accepted that everyone agreed second-hand shops were cool enough to shop in. 

“Sarah Wakeman told us about this great one on Bissonnet,” said Brandi, one Saturday, “so we need to go.” 

“I'm working tonight,” I said. 

“Plenty of time,” said the other, pulling out a bus schedule. 

It took a bloody hour to get there. Then they dug through several racks of shirts and coats before finding a real leather bomber jacket in a wonderfully shabby condition, with a name sewn in it. Oh, did they sigh over that. 

“I bet this is from the Second World War.” 

“We're learning about that in history.” 

“Bombers flying over the Channel to destroy Berlin.” 

“Kissing the girls they leave behind.” 

“Sister Joseph played A Guy Named Joe in our class.” 

“I saw that one. So romantic.” 

Even though it was twenty dollars, it was settled I had to have it. And wear it home. And sweat my arse off in that bloody, never-ending Houston heat to the point I needed another shower. But it was that or listen to their chattering, and I'd melt before I do that a moment longer than needed. 

They also took much pleasure at filling me in on what the newest sayings were. 

“Cool is okay.” said one. 

“But groovy is dead.” 

“Radical is a fun word.” 

“So is awesome.” 

“But do NOT ever, EVER say What's up, pussycat.” 

“That's so middle-aged.” 

Fortunately, they never concerned themselves with music for me. 

“Boys have to find their own songs.” 

“Usually pretty bad choices.” 

“Seriously! Ramblin' Man?” 

“Saturday Night's All Right For Fightin'?” 

“Money? Really stupid.” 

“All barks and growls.” 

“And howls.” 

So they studiously ignored my eight-tracks...so long as I didn't play any of them when they were over. 

By this point, my curls had returned, but they weren't going to let me cut them...until they saw how thick and wild they became in the heat. Then they dragged me to a salon on West Gray, within walking distance, and forced this amazingly patient woman to make it smooth and well-behaved. Which extended to instructing me on how best to care for it. 

“A hundred strokes in the morning,” said one. 

“And a hundred at night,” the other added. 

“I'll go bald, like that,” I growled. 

“That's what Mommy told us to do.” 

“Are you saying she's wrong?” 

Both said with a great deal of hostility, but the woman working on me said to them, “Oh, but your hair is silk--” 

Like Joanna's. Blowing in the breeze. 

“--while his is more like cotton, and needs a different way to be treated. You don't wash a cashmere sweater with your sheets, do you?” 

That, they had to agree on. So the woman gave me a spiky sort of brush and said, “This'll be easier on you.” 

“Looks like what you use on a dog,” I said. 

She'd just smiled and winked, and the B-girls had giggled. 

I managed to catch the woman to one side before we left and whisper, “You giving lessons on how to talk to those two?” 

She'd giggled, patted my cheek and said, “Don't worry, honey, you'll catch on to it.”

Respite...

Watched a lovely film on DVD and relaxed after a long couple of days at the office. Made enough to pay my taxes. Tomorrow, it's back onto NWFO.

What's fun about The Farmer's Daughter is how it shows cynicism, double-dealing and fascism have long been in the shadows of American politics. Two more good ones are Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and His Girl Friday.

These are my space-holders, today...

Tootie my horn...

I now have three excellent reviews for APoS-Derry . All posted on Amazon. This is the latest I've seen:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly written and riveting!Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2024
Verified Purchase
I loved this book! Sullivan has created incredible
characters. I felt like I was in Derry experiencing
all these incredibly sad historical events. I can’t wait
for the next book in this series!!

I didn't notice it until today. Makes me feel good. Praise for your work always does. I'm hoping to get more reviews, but for now these work their magic.

I'm through 8 chapters of NWFO in this rewrite, and sensing it'll need more work that I expected. I went through the explanation of how Brendan was brought over, again, and tightened it up, some more. Then the B-girls -- Brandi and Bernadette, who like to pretend they're twins even though they're 10 months apart -- popped in with more of thier back-and-forth arguments.

I'd like to think it's humorous...two blond pre-teen girls always arguing with each other in nonsensical ways. But then they commit a serious violation of Brendan's space and act like it's no big deal, which nearly sends him back into catatonia. I need to fiddle with that some more, then maybe tomorrow I'll post it to see how it works in this format.

Found out today that a biopsy off my right calf was pre-cancerous, but had been completely cut out. So I'm fine. I guess this is going to be my life, from now on. Skin cancers here and there, thanks to my Norwegian heritage.

Happy, happy, joy, joy...