Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 62

Slow-going...

Looks like my trip to NYC the middle of November is going to be extended. Still waiting on final word from the client, but it means an additional 3 days in the city...well, in Newark. Need to finish working out the costing for it and see how that fits in with the clients preferences. I know the shop this is for and expect there will be no issue with costs; it's just getting some questions answered--that's the hard part.

Dug through more of APoS and only two additional typos found. Another missing "." and a missing apostrophe. Things like that are so easy to miss in a regular font but jump out at you in the larger. I'm finally at the point where this proofing is just part of the deal. I'm not pushing it. It's in the service of the final book. And I am going through it, again, to be sure, once this pass is done.

I'm also finding I am comfortable with 95% of what I've written. I'd made a couple of changes and edits, here and there to add to clarity, but overall it reads nicely. Smoothly. And it's helped that I've removed so many ellipses from the text.

I'm reminded of how I used to put a period after an em-dash, and sometimes a comma before. It was very 19th Century English and people commented on it. Strunk &White helped me on that. I'm also prone to using commas like a Victorian writer, which is no longer necessary.

Now the main deal is having paragraphs that go too long. Apparently, today's readers' attention spans are unable to drive through more than 6 lines of wordage before zoning out. It also interferes with speed readers. God, I wonder how they handle Faulker or Joyce?

At least I'm able to adapt and find a comfortable way of following today's guidelines without becoming slave to them. I have a very conversational style, and sometimes it runs on. But so long as it fits and makes sense, I'm good.

Unless I'm in a freak-out phase when nothing suits me.

No escaping the bastard things...

Typos. They are of the devil. Vile and diseased, with invisibility cloaks to hide themselves from you until you are fool enough to think you've conquered them and then it's all, Ha, ha, fooled you! Not once. Not twice. But, so far...9 times. And I'm only 25% through the text.

They're minor things. A period missing at the end of a sentence. A word not pluralized...or pluralized when it should not be. Another word that could be seen as meaning something in the vernacular but not what I intended, which I can't blame anyone for; I may have actually intended it when I wrote it but now don't think it was actually right in any way, form or fashion.

This is what happens when you increase the font size to double and go through your work step by step, taking breaks to keep from being caught up in it. I know it's human nature to fill in words automatically if you feel they should be there. For example: ...put it back where thought it went. Most would read that as ...put it back where I thought it went without realizing it. Because that's what the context suggests. But it still is a mistake and needs to be corrected.

Swear to God, finding mistakes like that in the middle of a paragraph sends me into cringes of horror. Three different people have proofed this thing, besides me, and none of them caught those typos. Only my anal assholiness is what's bringing them to my attention.

Now I feel the need to go through it, again, after I'm done this time and it's sat a month, and verify I caught them all...knowing I probably have not.

How the hell do major writers avoid this nonsense?

Freedom is...

As is my usual practice, working on APoS Derry has kicked my mind into gear and brought up a possible reason for why Brendan is so hated by his mother. He's not his Da's son. Not sure how far I'm willing to go with this, yet, but I've already set it up that Ma changed after his birth. She became obsessed with cleanliness. She was always distant with him. Discusses how the other children she bore were little trouble coming out, but Brendan took more than two full days. She's never happy with him.

What's more, he doesn't look like his father; he says he looks more like his mother. He has health issues no one else in the family shares. And he consistently goes his own way without real regard for the consequences.

The idea may have been creeping around in the back of my head for a while, now. I got a hint of it when, in New World for Old, he learns one of Paidrig's sisters-in-law was raped and treated like a slut to the point she killed herself. Even into the 70s and 80s, in societies as tightly moralistic as those in Derry, rape would have been seen as the woman's fault unless she was beaten to a pulp or killed, so him mother would never admit he's the product of anyone but his father.

Hell, in some parts of the US, it's still that way, despite the progress in thought. Even now, I hear the occasional story of a teenage girl being kicked out of her home for becoming pregnant, usually by God-fearing assholes. The same type that kick gay kids out while screaming they'll go to hell. The normal Christian crap.

If this does go into the story...and I'm not yet certain of it...I don't think I'll reveal it till the third chapter. That's subtitled Home Not Home, and I need to keep that in my head because it fits. Brendan is using an assumed identity and begins digging deeper into his family.

I've also worked out how Brendan hears his father tell one of his stories. I'd already flirted with the idea, but I know where to put it and how, and why no one's known about it. There was just the one; the rest, he was too drunk to make real sense. Same for when he sang. So the student recording him shrugged it off. The one good story is noted in their files, when Brendan calls to ask about it, and they let him hear and make his own copy. But the school administrators felt no need to seek out the man's family to let them know. It's not like the school was using it for anything.

Just another casual slap against the Catholics.

Publication date set for APoS.

I've decided to self-publish A Place of Safety-Derry on January 2nd, 2024, in hardback and ebook. I'm not even going to consider doing a paperback edition till I have all three volumes out and available. As of now, it looks like the price will be $29.95 for hardback and $4.95 for electronic. Considering the blood, sweat, tears and sanity I've plowed into this tale, it's worth that, at least.

I'm also going to be doing all I can to get it noticed, in advance. Set up advance purchasing on Amazon and B&N, if I can. Get reviews from those who've read it. See if Publisher's Weekly will give me one, or Book Life. Maybe even take out ads, I don't know. I get inundated with people wanted to help my books gain an audience and get read, so maybe I should talk to some and see what they offer.

I know it's going to be a lot of expense and probably get little return on it, but I'm so deeply invested in Brendan's story, it has to be done right. I may fall flat on my face, but at least I'll have tried my best. Because this agent thing did not work, at all. Maybe I should be asking them to rep Carli's Kills. It's got MF sex, violence and rock and roll in it. That sells, they say.

I've also been thinking of turning Mine to Kill into as scary a suspense/horror book as I can, for next Hallowe'en. Horror also sells. I guess I should read more of Stephen King's works to get a better feel for what works in that genre. He's a master at it, like it's a sixth sense when he writes. I loved his early work, but I was reading for pleasure, not to learn. That has to change.

I've also decided to get a MacBook Air 13" with an M2 chip. Get a stylus and pad to use. License Word and Photoshop, which irritates me but is the only real way to go. If i do the Mac Mini, it's limited to my desktop, I have to get a new monitor and the cost is more for what is, essentially, less. It's not like I'm doing great art projects or extreme data crunching; I just need something basic and the Air fits.

Look like life is letting me move forward, finally.

Vaxxed and cranky

I got my Covid vaxx #5 this afternoon and am already feeling the side-effects. Slightly. Stiff neck. Hint of a headache. No chills yet but I'll be ready for them. My dermatologist's NP also burned off a wart...at least, that's what she said it was. Didn't seem like one to me...and it's still sore. Never had that issue, before. Irritating.

I'm going to get through a final check of APoS-Derry this week then set it aside and start working on Houston. As mentioned before, it's close to ready. Just needs some smoothing and consistency before doing a proofing and then sending it out to be dug through with extreme care. I'm hoping after the embarrassment of Derry I'll do better with Houston.

The structure is set. The characters are wound fairly tight. I'm playing a bit with Brendan's identity. He's brought to America under another name because the British have identified him as a person of interest in a bombing. But he can't be found because it looks like he just snuck off. But people begin to think he wound up in a grave due to injuries he suffered because he's never heard from.

So he comes to Houston under a false passport and name, as a distant relative needing care for his heart after a serious accident. All neatly handled by the powers that be in PIRA. and when he finally understands, he sees it as his deliverance from hell. His uncle still wants him to keep a low-profile, but he starts to rebuild his life, there.

Except he slowly finds that the hates and prejudices in Houston are no that different from those in Derry and drifts into drugs and becoming anti-social. His uncle manages to control him using threats to his younger brother, Rhuari, so it's like he's a prisoner to other people...again.

I didn't really intend for the story to go that direction, but Brendan is leading it, and where he wants it to go, I follow. I learned better.

Mirror images

There's two sides to me. Always has been, always will be. And they seem to be growing stronger and closer together. Maybe even drifting into bi-polar, albeit without the shrieking psychosis. One side likes to tell stories with meaning, if quietly so. Lyons' Den. Alice '65. David Martin. Even ...Owen Taylor.

The other side loves dipping into a darkness that's always been a part of me. From ...Straight Guy to Hunter and Blood Angel. Destructive, but not as much as they could be. I still have too tight a grip on that part and keep a little bit of hope in them all.

I've often said, the reason I write my darker books is so I don't become one with the black part of my soul. The anger and frustration and sadness it contains. And it does hold true for me. I've caught glimpses of it lying in wait to burst forth, but continued to make certain the bars were still in place to keep it trapped.

I try to be kind to people, to help push back against the unfairness of the world. I do what I can to support those who need it, even as the dark part laughs at me and says, It's a pitiful amount. You could do so much more. If I donate money, it's never as much as I could have. If I donate time, it's only the minimum, compared to others. Since I won't let the beast loose, it whispers in ways to hurt me.

I've been keeping up this pathetic balance for years, and I'm fairly certain that the reason I don't go hard in supporting politicians I like, or howl to help Ukraine fight off Russia's terrorism, or even join demonstrations to beat back the growing fascism of the GOP is I'm afraid if I do give in to that passion, I'll get distracted and those bars will vanish and the monster in me will roam free.

Imagine Dragons has a song, Demons, that I've tried to configure into my art...to my work...but it's too raw. The words...the lyrics...are knives slicing apart my soul and I fear what they're whittling away the barriers I've put up. My one safe thought is that it's really too late for me to go batshit crazy, except in a stupid eccentric old man sort of way. Can't hurt anyone, that way. Not like I was hurt.

I'm not saying this well. It's vague and jumbled, thanks to the chaos within. Just nattering to settle the madness. Not easy to do. Just another freaky writer trying to figure himself out. It's just, both sides of me look at each other. Stare at each other. Lock eyes on each other. And the fight to keep them where they are gets really tiring.

NSFW 'Cause I'm not happy

I did the following to get my mind off the possibility that I've developed skin cancer. I had my annual visit with the dermatologist, today, and she took samples from a couple of probable spots for biopsies. I'll have the results in a week. I have other spots on my arms, neck and chin that are pre-cancer so will be using a special cream on them. What a joy. Outwardly I'm calm; inwardly I'm WTF???

Needless to say, I'm going to be doubling down on getting APoS done, just in case. And fuck trying to get a publisher or agent interested. That'll take too long and too much effort. What matters is the book gets out.

Anyway, to take my mind off it, for a bit, I wrote a little dittie that's very wicked. Maybe a companion piece to the one I posted with Freddy as the victim. We shall see. This is the image that set it going.

The hour was late before Ray headed homeFrom his brother's party, as held at Le Dome. The blues and blacks of the night's sharp monochrome Made him feel so easy, he thought he would roam Since he had a condo that wasn't too far. But he didn't notice when that big blue car Pulled out of the parking lot next to the bar And quietly followed him. Back doors ajar. He reached his street and as he started to turn The car pulled ahead of him. Too late to learn Four men were inside of it, and each did burn To force Ray to join in their weekend sojourn. So out they jumped and around him they did swarm To bind him and gag him. Then to his alarm, Into their trunk, he went. Oh, they meant him harm, And he knew he'd never escape them, through charm. For three weeks Ray vanished and could not be found. The fear grew that he was six feet underground. Then one day he showed up, and he looked half-drowned. "I'll tell you what happened," he said. "Gather 'round." His body was bruised and the scars on his back Proved without a doubt he'd been under attack. "Four men took turns beating me, in a room black, And raping me, each one a wild maniac. I spoke to one softly, and I made him care. Then I learned a secret that they did not share. The room was a cellar, and all its fresh air Came through a vent in the ceiling. So there I focused my efforts to set myself free. The black paint had hidden it well. I could see, That it was too narrow for someone like me But it proved an excellent decoy. That's key. So when one of them came in to have his sick joy, I hid in the shadows, and I did employ The sight of the open vent. I wasn't coy. He ran off to tell them that they'd lost their boy. He left the door open. I raced down the hall To stairs leading up and outside. Their footfall Was fast coming after me, and they did call For me to stop running. What I did was haul As fast as I could to a thick grove of trees And hid in there. Grateful for a gentle breeze. Then made my way here, keeping hidden. For these Madmen now wanted to kill me. So please, Let me have a good meal and bath, and then I Will lead the police back to where they do lie." And that's what Ray did. He was some kind of guy. But never did we learn those men's reasons why.

LA Bound?

Looks like the Mulholland job is a done deal, for the week after Thanksgiving. I'm expecting photos of the items the end of the week. Then comes working out the costings -- air fare, car, hotel, packing materials -- while someone else handles the costs of air freight. I plan to enjoy this one; it may be my last if not one of my last packing jobs.

I felt a lot better, today. More agent queries out, though I'm getting close to the end of the list. I have a feeling I'll be self-publishing all three volumes of APoS. Which is fine. I should focus on learning more about how best to launch it and what I can do to promote it. Not gonna be cheap.

Tomorrow is my yearly visit with a dermatologist, to make sure I'm not building up any skin cancer or other issues. I had second degree sunburn in Honolulu, when we lived there, so have to be careful. After it's done, I'm getting the new covid vaccine then hitting the Mac store to talk to someone about what setup would be best for me to get so I can easily do Photoshop and Word. I'm done with this MacBook Pro.

It stops running off battery at 55% full. Just shuts down, completely, and won't start up until I have it connected to a power source for 5 minutes. The touchpad is becoming less and less sensitive. My mouse won't work on it.  One of the ports has crapped out. It's a poor, overly-delicate design for someone like me.

I have a company PC that I can use on trips, like to Seattle in a couple weeks, and to the Mulholland job. It's heavier but not as sensitive. I don't like how the programs appear on it, but they work fine so that's just me being finicky. Besides, the mouse works great, with it.

Just refer to me as another obnoxious kitteh who likes something till he doesn't.

Never again...

Still having issues thanks to that sushi, which Imodium is just beginning to fight, and now I'm dog-tired. Can barely keep awake. Probably should have taken a nap. Never will I ever eat that crap, again. Which is sad because I have a tube of Wasabi in the fridge that will probably go to waste.

Instead of the nap, I input the corrections for the last bit of A Place of Safety-Derry and it was way beyond simply being embarrassing. Another thing I'm never doing is sending anything out to be proofed till after I've done a big-font proofing, myself. As you can see, that's where I shift the type from 12 point to 24 point, blowing the words up on the page and making errors more obvious.

I've done it a few times on other works, like Blood Angel 1 & 2. I caught a lot of issues that way, so I think that helps, but we'll see. This editor is willing to do APoS-Houston. I'll find out if it really does do anything about my typos and missing words.

Something else that took up part of the day was a potential job up in the hills just below Mulholland, in LA. Not a huge job, really, but still waiting on more info. However, even working out the initial logistics is already a nightmare. For example, there are next to no hotels in the immediate area. Closest one is in Studio City, and would mean dealing with morning traffic off the 101 crossing to the Basin via Benedict Canyon or Coldwater Canyon. NOT what I would want to do at 8am.

I made that mistake one time, while living in LA. My mother got an extra job in a soft-core porn film shooting in NoHo and had to be there at 6am. We made it, no problem. I didn't grumble any, at her, but she knew I hate getting up before noon. Still, I thought at least I could return home and catch a nap before going to work.

Silly boy. By the time I got back to the 101 it was slow-going. I stupidly decided to cut across at Laurel Canyon since that was more direct and would get me out of the slow-going. HA! Got caught in near gridlock. Seriously. It took me over 2 hours to go from Ventura to Mulholland. In my Honda. With a stick. Uphill. I barely made it to work on time. And came very close to deciding to trade my car in for an automatic.

Don't wanna do that, again.

Eating healthy sucks...

I ran some errands today -- groceries, frames for pieces I want to hang, office supplies -- and got hungry so while I was at Wegman's I decided to have a serving of sushi. I'm not crazy about it, but I've found I do kind of like a California roll, and this one even said it's cooked. Besides, nothing else was appetizing and my other choice was to get a BLT at 5-Guys up the road. 

Should have done 5-Guys. I'm still sick from that damn sushi. I don't think it really was cooked, and it honestly did not taste all that great. Even with Wasabi and Soy Sauce. I had to come straight home once I felt my stomach rebelling.

This always happens when I try to eat healthy. Get a salad? Tummy rebels. Eat vegetarian at a restaurant? Tummy rebels...though not when I cook something at home, like with Amy's fake chicken patties. I make chicken parmesan with those and that turns out good. But it seems lately anytime I eat out in a healthy way, I get sick.

I can have a burger at 5-Guys and no problem. Chili-dog and onion rings at Ted's and no problem. Slice of pizza anyplace, no problem. But a meal at Chili's and I gotta be careful. Like people don't keep their kitchens clean. I'm better off eating at home. And it's cheaper, too, so there's that. Maybe my gut's taken a good look at my finances and said, Okay, we're cutting this nonsense out.

I did get the last of the notes on APoS so will input those, tomorrow. Another person upset at the ending. But it is what it is. They found some serious typos in Derry that no one else saw, including me. Excellent. I hope they'll be willing to do the proofing of Houston and then the last one, which I'm now calling Home, Not Home.

Now I'm cranky and sleepy. Gonna watch another Midsomer Murders episode just to moon over Nick Hendrix. No idea why I do, I just...do. He was even the inspiration for Finn in The Beast in the Nothing Room, though I doubt he'd appreciate knowing that, considering all he goes through in that book.

Sometimes I just plain do not understand me.