Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 53

And still it snows...

The only good thing about this nonstop snow, the last week, is it tends to keep me in. Like today. Soft and steady, but about to turn to rain if the weather report is right. So I made a plan to go back to the airport on Thursday to ask about my keys and check out the piles of snow in that area. Maybe the rain will have washed a lot away, and they might show up.

Of course, when I tried to call the local Avis manager to see if the SUV have been searched, the phone number on his card was not in service. And he's ignoring my emails. And I can't get through to the counter thanks to their robo-menu continuing to keep me in a loop that takes me nowhere.

I went ahead and got spare keys made, yesterday, so I'm covered, just in case. And I'm trying really hard not to turn into a Karen over this, but fucking Avis is not being helpful, and I'm a steady client. Preferred, already!

Anyway...I just set it all aside and today went through three more chapters of APoS-NWFO, putting me up to the beginning of chapter nine. The wordage is 135,400 and page numbers 606, in 12pt Courier, double-spaced, so far. In Times New Roman 10pt and a 6x9 format, that would work out to around 300 pages. I'm just over a fourth of the way through, so this beastie is going to be bigger than Derry.

I also did some posting on Facebook and Twitter as well as Instagram, and began the set-up for notices about APoS-Derry on Pinterest, too. Not sure what I'm doing there, but anything to get the book noticed. Once it's all set, I'll post the links.

I'm also trying to figure out a cover for NWFO. Something that will tie into Derry's cover. That's going to a be a load of work. Keep it in the same style...and then do one for Home Not Home.

So much to do...

Scrambled

I worked through two chapters of APoS-NWFO, including the one where Brendan finds out he's not Brendan, in Houston. It's ten days after he's become cognizant of his surroundings and family, and everything's been very vague, around him. His cousins call him Bren and they know he's from Ireland. He keeps to himself as he lets his mind and body settle, and avoids dealing with his aunt's two daughters as much as possible...because they are nosy, obnoxious and controlling.

Brandi is eleven while Bernadette is ten, but only ten months separate them. They look almost exactly alike, and are always arguing over something. Brendan catches their interest and they do things to mess with him...like pretending to be each other and sneaking into his room, during a sleepover...when he's sleeping...just to show him off to their friends. They know he talks in his sleep and they're also horrified that he eats a chicken drumstick with a knife and fork.

Brendan's bedroom is in the attic and has no locks on the doors. So he digs through the furniture in storage, up there, and finds some old wooden chairs to prop under the doorknobs to effectively keep them out. But not before they've started asking questions about Father Devil...who's the priest that molested his friend, Danny.

Brendan reads a lot to keep from thinking, but finally the call to fix a car gets him out of the room and out of the house. His Uncle Sean is having problems with an old Volvo 554. Takes him no time to start the car running, which pulls him out of his shell. He gets dressed, wanders around outside and is shaken by how rich and opulent the River Oaks area of Houston is.

He seems so well and good, when his aunt returns from grocery shopping she tells him a bit about his new life and he does a crash and burn in the kitchen, passing out. He's still not completely healed, and is now dealing with a massive amount of guilt.

This probably needs more work but it gets me through to the next part, him realizing he's free of the Troubles.

They come knocking...

I have so many stories that are pushing to be told, now that I'm back to working my way through APoS-NWFO. It's like they think I'll be open to dealing with them when I get stuck on a point in building Brendan's new life. Which is usually how I work. But I want this volume done and published by my next birthday so need to keep my focus on that.

Hewing to the emotional component of the story is helping me move along. Brendan's awareness is still shaky and his need to know what's going on with him still stuck in a vague limbo. All he knows right now is where he is, and that's sufficient. For the moment. Even though it's 6 months since that bomb, he hasn't really been given time to grieve over Joanna and the understanding two of his best mates were responsible for it.

He's got some Catholic guilt, as mentioned, and also some deep anger building within, about that. It pops out at odd moments. I think he's slipping into an existential contemplation of his lot in life and wondering why it happened. But his focus is still tenuous, at best. He stays in his room and reads to keep the reality of the world at bay, only coming out for meals...until he is called to repair a car, again. Which takes him out of the house for the first time.

We're still coasting with the story, at this point in time, giving Bren time to settle into a world he'd seen on television and thought impossibly rich. That the family lives in River Oaks, a very expensive area of Houston, adds to the dislocation. Going from poverty to a house of plenty on a wide, tree-lined street of great homes and the aura of peace and prosperity can be very disconcerting.

So Dair's Window, books 3 & 4 of Blood Angel, and a couple more stories boiling up will just have to wait till I'm done. Hopefully, I'll still be capable of writing, by then.

Starting at the beginning

I jumped back to the beginning of APoS-NWFO to redo what I'd already redone 47 times because I finally connected with what's happening at the beginning of this part of the story. Brendan is like that tom cat that escaped the dogs and is now hiding and licking its wounds, giving them a chance to heal. I had it a little bit like that but realized I was being too quick and specific with some of it, ramming too much information in, so shifted it to follow his mindset as he comes out of his catatonia.

He now feels (and tries to understand) everything as it happens. The bomb going off was like yesterday, to him, and he only has fleeting, jarring memories of anything after that. So I'm working at conveying his confusion and uncertainty as he goes along.

Like the first time he sees himself in a mirror and doesn't know who it is:

Staring back was a hollow-eyed stranger on the cusp of starvation, from the way his bones showed, with scruff as a beard. Well, scruff in the places it would grow. His hair had been all but shaved. His skin was pale and scars were on his chest and neck and left shoulder as well as noticeable in his scalp, all well-healed. He reminded me of photos I'd seen of concentration camps in Germany. Liberated men standing around, gaunt and numb and...

And...

And it was me in that mirror?

No, that wasn't right. It couldn't be right. I couldn't look like this in only a few days. It must be I'm still caught in that nightmare.

This fits what I want...what Brendan wants...a lot better. I also removed some of Aunt Mari's comments that caused him even more confusion and focused on her noting he's there because he's seeing a heart specialist. Seems they finally caught on he's got issues with his ticker.

I'm going to use that as the reason no electro-treatments were used on his catatonia, that his doctor felt it better to leave him alone and see how he does. And that it's safer for his heart condition. I've even thrown in that he unconsciously repairs a fan that was in his room, making them think he is coming out of it.

I don't know if that is medically sound, but it works dramatically. And it is 1973, when some treatments for this issue have yet to be worked up. Consider it dramatic license.

Image is everything...

I think in pictures and try to relay them in words. Looking back over the stories I've written, even in college, I would do all I could to build an image in the reader's mind rather than go on and on about what they were thinking. Even in APoS-Derry, there are occasions where I slip into detailed description of something that's happening. (BTW, watch the video without sound. It's got an insipid song laid over it.)

Like when Brendan sees a pack of dogs corner a yellow tom cat in the courtyard of the Rossville Flats, planning to tear it apart. Disgusted, Bren flicks his still lit cigarette down at them, it hits one of the dogs, causing it to yelp, confusing the other dogs, for a moment, and that gives the cat a chance to escape.

That's a movie moment, to me. Difficult to convey in words, even though I try. I know I got a good review about my prose from BookLife, but I don't know how successful it's been in instances like that.

But I've always been that way. Like with a short story I wrote in graduate school about a couple having a fight en route to a political function. I describe the man's breath as so deep and sharp, he's fogging the car's windshield faster than the defroster could stop it. It's raining, and his wife is quietly hissing her words while focusing on the raindrops as they captured the white of approaching headlights and red of brake lights, in front of them. They remind her of blood, and it comes out one of their sons shot himself and their argument is over who's to blame.

She finally gets out of the car and he drives on, and she watches his tail lights seem to shatter when reflected in the downpour. Then she walks home, soaked.

I was trying for an emotional connection, but the professor said I should have delved into each character's mind instead of what they were seeing. Yet, here I am 40 years later, still doing it. I do reveal more of Brendan's inner turmoil in that moment, but is it enough? I don't know.

I just hope I'm getting the meaning of the story across.

Still snowing...

This is the kind of day...albeit, until now it would have been during a long steady rain in San Antonio or Houston, where I would make myself pots of tea, have cookies or pastries, and curl up in a comfy chair under a lamp to read.  I've been drawn to that all day, so no writing done. I'm wimping out and just discussing another writer.

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Anne Brontë,  Born OTD 1820 in Haworth, Yorkshire,  Author and the youngest of the Brontë children.

Her second novel and the most shocking of the collective Brontë novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published under her nom-de-plume, Acton Bell, and sold out in six weeks. 
Anne’s depiction of alcoholism, debauchery and what May Sinclair, a member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League, described in 1913 as “the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband” reverberated throughout Victorian England. It is considered one of the first feminist novels.
Anne lived for most of her life with her family apart from attending boarding school for two years when she was 16, and a six year spell as a governess in her early twenties. Her mother, Maria, had died when she was barely a year old and in Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë, their father remembered her as precocious.
When Anne was four, he had asked her what a child most wanted. She said, “Age and experience."
The Brontë sisters like many women writers at the time published their poems and novels under male pen names so that their work might be taken seriously in the male-dominated literary world of the 19th century: they were Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Anne’s first novel, Agnes Grey, was published in 1847 under the pen name Acton Bell. It was based on her own experiences as a governess. Agnes Grey wants “to go out into the world; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my own unknown powers” but has to deal with instances of abuse of women and governesses, oppression and isolation. 
Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published in 1848 went further. The book describes how the protagonist Helen Huntingdon left her husband to protect her son and support them both by painting. This flew in the face of all social conventions and English law.
Until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, a married woman was not legally a person in her own right; she was just an extension of her husband. She could not own property, sue for divorce or have legal custody of her own children. Mr Huntingdon had the legal right to force her to return, to have her charged with kidnapping for taking her own son, and with theft for supporting herself on her own money since all of her income legally belonged to him.
“Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways," scribbled Anne Brontë in pencil at the back of her Prayer Book.
Anne met with fierce criticism for her work despite its huge popularity. Even her sister Charlotte said the portrayal of Mr Huntingdon was overly graphic and disturbing. Anne merely remarked mildly that she "wished to tell the truth" and stuck to her guns. After Anne's death at the age of 29 of tuberculosis, Charlotte prevented further publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, writing: “It hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer.”
The last word to goes to Anne: “When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts – this whispering 'Peace, peace', when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.”-------I got this off an anti-trans site called Attagirl, on Xitter. I like what they wrote about her, even though I despise what they stand for. I'm not a plagiarist.

Insanity...

Tried to upload this but not having much effect. But this is today's weather...all day.
I'm getting old. Driving down and back between Buffalo and Tarrytown wore me out. The job, itself, was fairly easy. 117 volumes, in the end, and some of them really lovely. I had all the materials I needed, just. Left a little paper and a couple of unbuilt boxes with the client, at his request, so only brought back a roll of bubble wrap.

I took toll roads all the way there and back instead of hopping off at Syracuse, using the 390 and 17/86, and going through Binghamton. It's a bit longer and increases the toll cost, but it felt better, to me. The drive back was slow due to the weather that had been in Buffalo on Sunday finally making itself known along the Hudson Valley. And I mean all the way back up the 87 onto the 90 and nearly to Syracuse. Saw 2 jack-knifed rigs in the Southbound lanes of the 87, with traffic backed up for miles, so didn't hit faster than 50 all the way to Utica.

I'd thought I might break the drive up and do half of it today, but something told me just go. So I did. Left Tarrytown about 1:15 and got in about 9:30. And my video shows it was a good idea. Transferred everything from the SUV to my car, in the parking lot, and got home about 10:30.

The only truly bad point about this trip is, I lost my keys—apartment and office. I parked the SUV behind behind my car in long-term parking, dug my keys out of my backpack and put them on the dashboard. Passenger side. I’d brought my shovel on the trip, just in case, so dug my car out of the snow then went to get my keys and they weren’t on there.

I looked everywhere – in the SUV, in my bags, in the snow around the SUV, nothing. And no one had come around, at all. I was tired and cold and figured they’d fallen into one of the open bags I had on the passenger floor and I was just not seeing them in the mess. So I used a spare key I keep in my wallet to open the car up. I also stashed a set of house keys in my car, in case I ever lock myself out. For once my paranoia about myself paid off.

I was able to shift everything over to the trunk and turn the SUV in. After I looked through it, again. And still didn’t see my keys. I took the shuttle back to my car and looked around, again, but no keys. So drove home and dumped out everything...

And still no keys! Checked my trunk, today. No keys. I have no idea where they went. I drove back to the parking spot in Long-term (and yes, it was just like you see in my little video, all the way) but it was too windy and snowy for me to find anything.

I’m hoping I just missed them in that SUV. Avis had already rented it out, till Sunday, so we’re checking it in more detail when it returns. Which put me in a foul mood, the rest of today.

Nothing can be easy, can it?

I'm weird...

Brendan's arguing with me, again, and that makes me happy. Which is crazy, but...it also means he's as focused on making NWFO as solid as Derry is. And just to be an asshole, he's given me a deadline for publishing volume two of APoS -- my birthday. July 31st. Which means I'll have a whole 5.5 months to get it in order before starting the process of uploading it and getting proof copies. Shit.

I also need it to get edited. So that's even less time. But I don't want to make the same mistake as with Derry and send it out then find I needed to make more changes to make it better and on and on. But it's going to get done, come hell or high water, and I'll worry about A Place of Safety-Home Not Home after I'm done.

That part needs a lot of work so I can't see it getting done this year. I'll try...but it's only 60% of the way there while NWFO is more like 85%.

This hotel's nice, if a bit quirky. It's atop a small hill so has a driveway that snakes back and forth to get you up to the entrance. Got a refrigerator but no microwave. No dresser drawers, either. Still it's warm and fairly quiet, so long as I leave the heater off. That thing is rattling like crazy.

I took a drive by the location, just to get an idea of what I'm faced with. It's a new high-rise condo, all glass and angles, and it had several fire trucks out front, emergency lights going. Parking is a block away, and the boxes aren't getting picked up till after noon on Tuesday, so I'm breaking up the drive home, as well. Won't get in till Wednesday evening.

If I'm lucky. Travel advisory is still up on the 90.

Another road trip

Currently in New Baltimore, NY at a BW just off the 87. Got it on points, and happily so. Free breakfast till 10am and checkout at eleven. Looking forward to it.

It's good I left for this job, today, because Buffalo is now under a travel ban, probably through Sunday. It was kind of a rushed exit, on my part, since snow and wind were slamming me as I loaded the SUV. Took me 6 hours to get this far; still have another 2 hours to my hotel in Tarrytown, but I had begun to zone so this was a good stopping point.

Part of what made this trip so tiring was I didn't speed. The limit is 65 but usually I go 72, which doesn't seen like a big difference but, psychologically, it is. Albany is 290 miles from Buffalo and normally a four hour drive, for me. But the only time I usually go through there is when I'm en route to Hartford, New Haven or Boston.

Heading for NYC and area, I usually turn down the 81 at Syracuse, swing through Binghamton and Scranton to the 380 and finally the 80 into the city. It's shorter and faster. But this trip is into an area I haven't been through, before, so it just seemed to take forever.

I had a weird little time/space/continuum happen about an hour after I hit the road. I looked at my phone and it said the time was 11:54. I drove and drove then looked at my phone expecting it to be half an hour later...and it was only 5 minutes. The next time I looked, only another 5 minutes had passed. THEN...the next time I looked at the clock, it was half an hour later, but seemed like no time had passed.

Maybe it was because I didn't get ahead of the storm till after Rochester, which is usually an hour's drive but this time seemed like an hour and forty-five minutes.

Doesn't matter. I got work done on chapter one of APoS-NWFO, tonight, expanding upon Brendan's confusion as re returns to consciousness. I feel good.

Busy, busy...

The weather is looking too rough for Sunday so I'm heading out, tomorrow, and stopping south of Albany. Keeping to the toll roads all the way. They tend to be better cared for in bad weather. This way I don't need to rush, and I'll have food and drinks with me, just in case, as well as a blanket. May take my shovel, as well.

So today was spent prepping for everything to be a day earlier. Plotting out the fact that the job doubled in size. Getting additional packing materials. Refilling meds and having blood drawn. Groceries. Washing. Packing. The full deal.

I'm going back to the beginning on APoS-NWFO to zero in on issues that have come to light. Finally. I was having trouble with it...but I think I know why and hope to sort through it on the drive. One deal is making the flashbacks more centered on what Brendan's going through, at the moment. and cutting out the flashbacks I was using to fill in parts of the story.

I'm halfway wondering if I should drop the bit where he's been brought over under a fake name...but I'm getting resistance on that from Brendan. He likes the dislocation and dissociation it gives his character. He says in Derry I'll be Brendan Kinsella till I die, and now he's not. And while he feels the freedom it brings to him...he also resents it and fights to keep himself who he always was.

That's also missing from the story.