Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 60

No breaks allowed...

It seems to be a law that the second I take a break from APoS in any way, something happens to extend it. I'm driving down to Tarrytown, NY to pack a collection of books that includes a Shakespeare 2nd folio and leafs from a Nuremberg Chronicle. Hopefully not framed, but I'm still trying to get a real answer or photos from the client. I'll be driving down in an SUV with packing materials on a 6 hour drive that, thanks to probable snow, will take more like 7-8 hours.

So there goes Sunday, Monday and Tuesday as well as much of Wednesday, to do followup. I'll now have have sufficient time to think about NWFO in many ways. But not write on it. Though, instead of making notes by hand, as I usually do while driving down that direction, I'll record them on my phone. So I'll need to transcribe them when I return.

I finished the edit of my friend's piece and sent it off to him to see what he thinks. I was pretty light with the notes and only fiddled with formatting and grammar...but knowing how sensitive paranoid authors can be...

Tomorrow the sutures come out of my cheek, and I'm taking my car in for servicing. BUT...with my laptop in hand I can work on APoS while waiting for it to get done. And supposedly it's only going to take 10-15 minutes for my bit at the doctor's. Gonna rain all day. I think I'll get an enchilada lunch plate from La Tolteca to eat while waiting. It's serviceable Mexican food, and their guac isn't bad...

Aside from family, good Mexican food is the only thing I really miss about Texas. Well...that and good BBQ. And by good I mean really messy, lovely and all over the place so that you need a dozen napkins to keep clean. This is from Taco Cabana. I ate there, twice, while in San Antonio.

Disgustingly good.

Break...

I took some time away from chapter four of APoS-NWFO to do some proofing and editing for a friend of mine, in London. He's thinking of posting some stories, or possibly publishing them, and I said I'd go over them for anything that's glaring in the way of errors or confusion.

The MC's name is John, and he's a 40-ish ex-Army man who did time in Afghanistan with Her Majesty's Forces. He's now in IT and doing well, but his history in that country is beginning to break him apart, personally. He becomes very OCD...and it's fascinating. That's all I'm going to reveal about it.

I'm keeping in mind, grammar is a bit different in British English as opposed to American, meaning I'm going to go delicately, here. There are some spots where sentences are strung together with nothing in the way of punctuation that I'm reworking. And a couple of times I've noted (in red type) where some more detail or explanation might be useful. But I don't want to interfere with his vision or telling of the story.

It's not very long, yet. About 23,000 words. But it intrigues me. I'm hoping he will expand it some more.

I'm not really comfortable with Brendan's emotional reaction to realizing he's cut off from Ireland. His dive into thinking he's free almost immediately after he asks himself how he can live with the thought that he might have been responsible for Joanna's death. It doesn't sit right, so this break is also giving me time to rethink it. Maybe move the I'm free thoughts to later, when he's reading his sister, Mairead's letters to Aunt Mari and seeing how carefully she's letting him know what's going on in his home town.

We'll see how it goes, tomorrow.

Some of APoS-NWFO Chapter Four

This bit happens as Brendan has drug some of his situation out of Aunt Mari, and is reeling at the understanding he no longer is who he is, that he was snuck out of the country under another name. Flashes of memories hit him from nowhere, verifying what his aunt is telling him...

----------

I had to grip the kitchen counter to steady myself. No words came to mind. nothing to say.

Aunt Mari continued with, "Try to understand, that is how it had to be, and how it needs to stay, not only for yer own sake but our family's. That's why ya are now--yer name is now Brennan McGabbhin, my third cousin. From a farm in Donegal. I learned of him through my brothers. Seamus and Michael. Seamus is in Toronto and has met my niece, Mairead. Seamus is in Sheffield and knew the McGabbhins and heard of the accident..."

Accident?

ACCIDENT!?

My brain spun into chaos. What she was telling me made absolutely no sense. Seventeen years on this earth and I was not who I claimed to be? And I had not seen what I saw and...and... 

Danny looked around at me, startled, his eyes wide and I turned and started to run for the shop but I slipped on the wet pavement and the world vanished in a cloud of white smoke and fire and silence and I was lying on the ground and that leg was in front of me and its blood covered me and I was screaming from the pain and horror and Danny was grabbing me and forcing me to my feet and holding me as Colm punched me and... 

I was staring at the ceiling, a cold rag to my head, my heart pounding like the devil. It took me a moment to realize I was stretched out on the kitchen floor. Aunt Mari was kneeling over me, a portable phone held to her ear by her shoulder as she tried to shove a pill in my mouth. 

“...When he just keeled over,” she was saying when I half-choked on her fingers and she noticed and shifted to, “Wait-wait-he’s comin’ ‘round. Bren? Listen, son, can ya hear me?” 

Hear her? It’s as if she were screaming at me, my head hurt so. But I nodded. 

"Here, take this. Take this. Under yer tongue." 

I accepted the pill as if I'd been trained to do it. 

“Can ya get up?” 

I’d rather have done anything else but, only something told me I had little choice. So I forced myself to rise, slowly, to where I could sit. The rag fell off and it was bloody. 

“Aw, shite, I hit me head?” whispered from me. 

“On the counter.” She turned to the phone. “We can make his appointment, if ya think we should.” She nodded. “We’ll head straight over so Carla can check him. See ya soon, doctor.” 

She hung up and turned back to me. “Can ya stand?” 

Again, I’d rather not, but now it was a case of damn me if I'd give into it. So I took hold of a chair and pulled myself up, Aunt Mari hovering over me in case I fell, again. 

“I’m a right mess, aren’t I?” I croaked, almost laughing. 

She wet another towel and pressed it to my head. “I should’ve held off tellin' ya all that. Put it in a way that wasn't so confusin'.”

“No, it's not you. I understand, now. I'm just not me.” 

“Don’t be sayin' that,” she said, her voice quick, soft and tender. "Ye...yer here as Brennan McGabbhin, yes, but this isn't forever. It's only to protect ya. For a while." 

Protect me? Protect me by making me a lie and... 

I sat in a chair, my shirt so clean and starched it cut into my skin, and hands held me in place till just before a photo was taken, when they released me and I wavered and the click-click-click of the camera laughed through the silence before I tumbled over and... 

And Aunt Mari was still talking. "It was the only way we could get ya away from all that--all that horror, by it not bein' you. It's true, some people were very unhappy about this, that I grant." 

Unhappy? 

"He belongs in a grave." 

"He didn't know anything about it." 

"He was there to warn 'em! Little traitor!"

"He's already half-dead. Finish it off." 

And Ma screaming, "You do anything to him and I will make your lives hell." 

Ma? Fighting to keep me alive? Why? You'd think she'd be happy I'd be gone, never to vex her, again. 

"I flew over to accompany ya here. Just a lad needin' medical care for his heart and mental health, and glad I could help, is all. Fortunate enough to have family in a city with the best in heart specialists. And physical and mental..." 

My head was reeling as I tried to look around and... 

I slipped on the wet pavement and the car vanished into whiteness and I flew back and hit the wall as dust and filth and bits and pieces of metal and engine rained down on me and I was in a dark room on a bed, sweeping, as the pillow came over my head and I could hear Ma's voice snarling, "This is what you want, isn't it?" 

I felt ill. Stomach slamming hard against my insides. Glad it had been hours since having that sandwich. Or had it been? 

Aunt Mari was telling me, "Then with Brendan havin' already left, there was nothin' to connect the family to that--to what happened."

Already left. My note. The rail ticket. I had gone...and the remains of me were now taken away. Like refuse.

The whole of Ireland spread out below and wind whipped through the golden silk Joanna called hair and her cheeks were as bright as rubies and she took my face in her hands and kissed me and surrounded me with the scent of spearmint and it felt like home. 

Home. No home.

I had to grip the counter to keep from falling, again, as I murmured, “I’m not to go back.” 

“Now, that’s not what I said, Bren.” 

I managed to chuckle. "Bren. Always called Bren, here. Now i see why." 

"It was just to keep it as simple as possible," she said as she removed ice from a tray. Then she wrapped it with a small rag and held it against my forehead. "But things'll work out and soon ya’ll be home. Once memories are settled and cleared." 

Memories settled? In Ireland? 

I must have laughed, for she smiled and said, "Much better. So till that happens, it’s best if we focus on makin' ya well and strong, again. Now give us your shirt and put on another. I’ll set this one to soaking, see if I can get the blood out.” 

As Mrs. Kieffer took Danny's bloody jumper and he pulled on my coat and... 

It probably would. Many a mother in Derry had experience with doing that for their sons and daughters. Especially of late.Even for Danny. 

Bloody fucking Danny. 

He'd brought the car. Driven it with explosives delicate enough to go off if bumped wrong. Parked it there. And I was sorry it hadn't gone while he was behind the wheel.Me China...and I was sorry he hadn't been killed.Oh, God, that hurt so deep. 

I made myself focus and slip out of the shirt, held the ice to my head and started for the stairs. I needed to be to myself. Needed to think. Needed to understand. 

But Aunt Mari followed me so I had to tell her, “I’m fine, now. Thanks. I’ll be down in a moment.” 

“Are ya sure?”I gave her half a smile. “If I’m not returned in ten minutes, then you can panic.” 

She swatted me arse and headed back to the kitchen. 

I went up the stairs. 

All the way up. 

Slow, like an elderly man.My world spinning as I mounted each step. A stark despair whispering around my heart. My head pounding as much from the fall as from the realization that my past was now a danger to me and my family, and those I'd considered my best mates had brought it about and nearly got me killed. 

And had killed Joanna. 

A part of my mind told me Danny was not stupid enough to drive with any explosive that unstable. There'd have been a safety switch or latch or something that he would set once the car was parked.Which made his actions even more deliberate. 

Which only made my hatred of him worse. 

And Colm being there to collect him. He knew. And they both knew what hurting Joanna would mean to me. Yet still went along with it. May even have volunteered, in order to cut me off from her. For there was no question in my mind that if her Da had been killed while she was seeing me off at the train depot, I'd no longer have been a part of her life. 

Which brought up the thought that it had happened because of me. Never mind her Da was UVF, and they were responsible for Catholics being killed. Never mind the growling, howling, screaming anger between both sides, now. Then. Always. 

Maybe she was dead because I'd loved her. 

How in God's name could I live with that?How?

My usual expansion...

I'm working on chapter four, blandly titled Awareness, where Brendan finally learns he is no longer Brendan. It's kind of a mess, but that works well at the moment because his mind is in chaos. And Aunt Mari's explanation is somewhat incomplete. She wasn't intending to tell him till after he got a clean bill of health from the cardiologist he's been seeing. But out it comes and he forgets to breathe so collapses.

When he comes to, he's feeling not only confusion and embarrassment, but anger at finally understanding that two of his best friends, both of whom knew he was involved with Joanna, deliberately parked a bomb-laden car in front of her father's shop. Which leads him to begin to feel guilt, thanks to him wondering if his relationship with her was the reason they focused attention on her father.

He knows, intellectually, that it was really because her father was in the UVF and rumored to be helping kill Catholics. But in his heart, he thinks if he hadn't been friends with her she'd have been spared. But what's worse? Once he realizes he's been cut off from not only Ireland but also his immediate family, he feels relieved. Happy. He'd been trying to escape Derry when the bomb went off, intending to leave it all behind. Now he's completely free.

And conflicted. He holds his two best friends responsible for Joanna's death, and he is confused as to why his mother kept him from being killed by pissed off members of PIRA, since he was sure she hated him and would have welcomed his death. On top of this, he's only been back to himself for a couple weeks so is still fragile, mentally and emotionally. And physically, really.

The rest of this story is going to be interesting to write.

Back to life, back to work...

I dove back into APoS-New World For Old and am pumping up Brendan's sense of loss, dislocation and confusion when he regains consciousness in his aunt's home in Houston. I'm through chapter three, so far.

He's ensconced up in an attic room and it's six months after the bombing. Step by step, he's returning to normal, back to smoking, regaining his need to repair things in order to feel in control, and finding his aunt's two daughters are holy terrors.

Bernadette and Brandi. Ten months apart, in birth, but seeming like twins. They argue with each other all the time, except when they're harassing Brendan, whom they call Bren. Everyone calls him Bren. He thinks nothing of it, but in the next chapter is when he finds out it doesn't stand for his actual name.

I'd been dancing around him being told everything, but that's nonsense. He needs to know who and what he is in America so he can maintain the pretense. He's now a third cousin to Aunt Mari who was in a horrific accident in Donegal that set off heart trouble. He's in Houston to be treated by a specialist, on a medical visa under the name Brennan McGabbhin. Also orphaned, thanks to the accident.

This was done as an agreement to keep Bren alive. Mairead, Aunt Mari and Ma forced a deal down the throats of PIRA, with Uncle Sean's reluctant help. But part of that deal is Bren must be kept away from Derry because the British are seeking him for questioning. They believe he knows who set the bomb that went off. It's that or he goes in a grave, and there are some in PIRA who would prefer that.

So he's given a new name, removed from Ireland, completely, and the word is Brendan Kinsella left Derry before the bomb went off. Which no one really believes, despite his note saying that was what he was doing and the train ticket he bought. He's exiled...and it thrills him.

APoS is up and soon to be running...

Ingram must not have anything happening, right now, because I've already gotten my e-proof and gone over it and authorized it for printing. I also ordered 3 copies to make sure it will come out all right. Date for publication of the hardback is still January 16th, but the e-book is available.

I went over it and found one error -- a missing period. I'm debating going through the trouble of replacing it over that, because it doesn't affect the meaning of the two sentences...

And by writing that last sentence I decided to redo the e-book, as well. Now they match, completely. It just puts me at the back of the line for final acceptance into a couple of providers. Not sure which--Apple Reader??--but that normally takes just a few days.

To center myself, again, I made potato soup, and it turned out pretty good. My one issue with it is this time I used cubed ham instead of the thin deli slices. That did not work so well. The taste is fine, but having lumps of ham to chew in the middle of the soup just isn't the right way to go.

I've also watched the last episode of Shetland-Series 8. Ashley Jensen seems to be taking over from Douglas Henshall as the DCI of the islands, which I wasn't so sure about. I'm used to seeing her in comedies like Ugly Betty and Agatha Raisin. She is on the lightweight side, but she gained ground as the story went along...through 6 episodes.

I made a note to myself that if the person I thought was the killer (by episode 2) did it, I'd be unhappy. And I was, dammit. Seems the British have lost the art of making a murder mystery a real mystery, like Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell did, so they keep using the same outs, over and over. I've seen it in Midsomer Murders and Vera, as well. No one will ever think THIS person did it. And sometimes it's just plain stupid as well as irritating.

That said, it was a better series than the last two, which were padded to a ludicrous degree to make them series-length, and which became so predictable it lessened my respect for the characters.

Uncentered...

I had to get up early and go in to an outpatient surgery center, this morning, to have some Basel skin carcinoma cells cut out of my cheek. It didn't hurt much and only took just over an hour, but it's thrown me off. Which isn't hard to do, anymore.

They say they got it all and I'm due back next week to have the stitches removed, so healing should go well. But it looks like a caterpillar on my face. 

I couldn't focus on anything afterwards, so went back into APoS-Derry to check on something and found the table of Contents was wrong. Half of it was off by 1 number. NOT cool.

So I went back through it and found another had the old name of a chapter in the ToC. Being a paranoid freak, I then went through every page and number to make sure it was all okay before contacting Ingram and uploading the updated PDF.

After checking it, twice more. Now I'll need to verify the Smashwords version, as well. Shit.

I can't fucking believe it. I went over that story so damn many times...and still there are major blunders. This does not bode well for the next two volumes. Probably means a mental decline or cognitive abilities are worn out. I don't know.

I don't remember having this much trouble in my other stories.

All set up, I hope...

A Place of Safety-Derry is set up on Smashwords and is going through the process of migrating to other outlets, like Kobo, B&N and Apple. Those take a few days. I don't know if Amazon will offer an ebook from them, since they're so obnoxious about Kindle. And they've gotten worse in the last year or so. Therefore...for those who have a Kindle reader, Smashwords offers the ebook in a format it can work with. I priced it at $2.99, which may be too much for some people to pay, but it is what it is.

I went through all kinds of nonsense with Ingram Spark to set up the hardback version of the story. First they wouldn't let me past a certain page during the inputting of information till I contacted customer service and asked why. Meanwhile, I'd logged off and it sat for an hour. Then when I went back in, it was fine.

But they do have this ridiculous attitude about color profiles in my black and white text. There are no photos in the book. No color bits. It's just text on paper. But apparently that has some form of color profile that they can see and I can find nowhere when I search through Word. So I simply okay'd it and we'll see how it turns out.

The dust jacket was another bit of back and forth. They insist on using only CMYK and I really do not like how the reds turn out in that format. They also howled about color profiles in that, as well, which I don't understand because the cover is in color. But I finally worked out how to handle it. Also, I was just flattening the image instead of merging everything visible.

But now everything is uploaded and I'm waiting for the proof to come through before ordering a copy to make sure it's all okay.

I've set the publication date for the HB on January 16th, and it's priced at $32.95. Any lower and I'm in the red, once printing costs, discounts and fees are taken into account. I'll be lucky if I sell 10 copies.

So much for my dreams of Stephen King sized sales. None of my books go anywhere near that.

Review for A Place of Safety-Derry

 Wow...just...wow...

BookLife:
Raw, pulsing with life and danger, and building to a hard-to-shake climax, this epic novel of growing up in a world gone mad centers on Brendan Kinsella, “a lad filled with hopes and dreams and prayers and promises” in Derry in Northern Ireland, in the tumultuous 1960s, when “Catholics were killed for being Catholic and Catholic schools were attacked by Protestant fools, all because the Catholic minority in the state had the nerve to want the same rights as any Protestant.” Those killed include Brendan’s father. The city seethes and divides as he enters adolescence, confused and fascinated by sex, roiled with complex feelings about his abusive “da”’s death, and all-too-familiar with phrases like “papist scum.” Brandon’s life is shaped by hatreds, bombings, checkpoints, and fleeting moments of connection and beauty in the rubble.

The likelihood of violence haunts both Brendan’s youth and Sullivan’s clipped, brisk, hard-edge prose. A civil rights march facing a line of constables “kept flowing, like a flooded river smashing against a jam of logs and refuse”; Brendan, the famous “fix-it lad” of his circle, laments “the vicious politeness I was being handed by people I’d been doing work for since I could first hold a set of grips.” Dialogue, too, is sharp, slicing, and convincing. The novel is long, but Sullivan, a prolific author in a host of genres, wastes few words conjuring the milieu, the prevailing sense of desperation, and the ugly but undeniable thrill of striking back.

Tense marches and confrontations at checkpoints abound, including one beauty in which women harangue soldiers abusing Brendan and co. with the finest Irish profanity. Sullivan is just as committed to capturing Brandon’s development in moments of relief, working at an auto shop and enjoying the occasional escape, with friends or eventually a lover, into what he calls a “new and amazing world of peace and tolerance.” Those reprieves make the finale all the more wrenching.

Takeaway: Wrenching epic of coming-of-age in Derry during the Troubles.

Comparable Titles: David Keenan’s For the Good Times, Anna Burns’s Milkman.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

Do I love my words? Or my characters?

I wrote a 14 page synopsis for New World For Old, laying out the main beats in each chapter and the flow of the story as I'd written it, so far. I took that with me to San Antonio and worked on it. Red pen everywhere. Notes out the wazoo, if I'm able to read my scurvy handwriting...and I feel a bit overwhelmed by the journey ahead.

I probably added the equivalent of five chapters and 20,000 words to the story...all to help build Brendan's journey into a quiet shore of gentle waves, but with riptide sneaking beneath the surface. I know that's a bit grandiose, but I feel entitled to it, right now. There is not one page of that long-form synopsis that is without commentary, and all the blank backs of the pages have directions on where to rearrange things or entire moments to add in.

Meaning I'm doing a page-one rewrite of this volume, right down to finding some better chapter headings.

I think the most important thing these notes did was to remind me that Brendan handles trouble by fixing things. Joanna even mentions it in Derry. It's how he maintains a form of control in his life. That's partly why, when chaos hit him at the end of Volume One, and there was nothing he could do...nothing he was allowed to do to make it better...he broke free of the real world to give himself time to fix himself.

I'd sort of lost track of that in NWFO, to an extent, but found a way back to it and will work that in, more. He already fixes his Montessa motorbike so it's better than new...but then he finds an even bigger project to help him deal with his mother's illness and conflicting emotions about it. He thinks she hates him and he's both sorry she's ill but also relieved and feels guilty over that relief.

It doesn't help that he's not Brendan Kinsella in Houston; he's Brennan McGabbhin. So his repairs are also a way for him to keep in contact with who he really is and not lose himself in an identity his uncle is forcing him to maintain.

I dunno if that makes sense, but I'm embarking on at least another 7 rewrites of this book. My hope is it will by the end of the last one.