Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 67

Synopsis for the dust jacket

This is my first pass at a synopsis for the dust jacket's inner flap:

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All Brendan Kinsella wanted was to be left alone to live his life. He has hopes and dreams, but he slowly comes to realize that history has a way of intruding on one's plans.
It is 1966 in Derry, Northern Ireland. The Catholic minority has begun their push for civil rights against discrimination by the Protestant majority. One-man-one-vote. Decent housing. Good jobs. But even these minimal requests are too much for the ones in power to accept, so the push back and forth grows harsher and more violent.
A Place of Safety begins with the murder of Brendan's father mere days after his tenth birthday. Because the man was a brutal drunk who kept the family in extreme poverty, Brendan is not sorry he is dead. But he also has a difficult relationship with his mother, Bernadette. The third of her six children, he is the one she constantly belittles as simple-minded, despite his knack for repairing things. He is also quiet, observant, and consistently goes his own way. Even though it sometimes leads him into trouble.
Over the course of more than six years, the story follows Brendan through: 
• the Civil Rights demonstrations in Derry • the attack on peaceful marchers at Burntollet Bridge• the lead-up to The Battle of Bogside, the following August • the arrival of British troops to separate the two warring sides • the re-introduction of internment without trial• Bloody Sunday
There is also Brendan's growing relationship with a Protestant girl, one that has to kept secret for fear of reprisals -- from both sides -- as he fights to find a place of safety in a world careening towards chaos.

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I ordered my new laptop, today, but won't have it till October 25th. Doesn't give me a lot of of time to work up the dust jacket before submitting to Publishers Weekly for a review. I'd like a review I could add to the book's dust jacket. They're kind of picky so won't guarantee anything, but it doesn't cost me a dime. Going through BookLife would be $400. Can't afford that, right now.

Set to have my skin cancer cut out on December 14th. Six days later, I'm flying down to San Antonio for Christmas with the family. It'll be my last visit to Texas. Like Florida, I no longer feel safe there. But I can handle 5 days. I think.

I'll concentrate on eating lots of real Tex-Mex and BBQ.

Done, again

Okay, finished this proofing of APoS-Derry and it's at 139,107 words. And I am beat. But I'm off to Seattle for the book fair, on Saturday, so am going to start another proofing, but this time on a PC. It shows Word docs differently from Mac, and that is a good thing. This last pass will be to make certain all the commas, apostrophes, em-dashes and quotation marks are right. There have been issues with them, in the past.

That may be a bit on the anal side. Because like with the quotation marks at, for example, the end of some dialogue that had an extra space after an ellipsis or an em-dash, it would be facing the wrong way. But I've stopped allowing any spaces after em-dashes and ellipses. I just want to make certain.

I'm flying JetBlue so they offer a bit more legroom than Southwest does, so I can deal better with a laptop. And while the office PC I have is bulky, it's better suited to my needs, for this.

In a 6x9 format in Times New Romans with 11 point font, it should be around 350 pages long, in hardcover. If I keep the price at $29.95, I make less than a dollar a book at a 55% discount. But I can't go 40% because a lot of independent book stores won't carry it and Amazon gets nasty about their percentage, and I don't want to charge over the magic $30 till I have to.

I considered setting it up through KDP, but I keep hearing horror stories about Amazon and self-published authors. Things like claiming the book they publish was plagiarized from them, if they also try to set it up in Kindle. Having their earnings disappear. Questionable reporting of sales. And all sorts of difficulty getting it corrected. Ingram's not perfect, but I can deal with them. I've dealt with Amazon in the past and really do not want to have to do so, again.

Issues...

 Betyween the horror in Israel, the terrorism in Ukraine, the fact I am having my (probably) first bout of cancer, and my head feels like it wants to fall off my shoulders and roll away, it's all I can do, right now, to keep proofing APoS, so just thought I'd post a nice story I found on Tumblr.

And here we go...

A bit off-center, right now. Got a diagnosis that one of my biopsies came back with basal cell carcinoma. Which is a relatively mild skin cancer requiring it be cut away. It's along my jawline, so I may wind up with a sexy scar I can claim I got from a sword-fight or something, but at the moment I'm not really with it. God knows what this is going to cost me, monetarily.

That's it. I just can't concentrate, right now. I got some more done on APoS beforehand, so that's good, but I'm gonna hermit, for a bit.

Moving right along...

I'm 40% of the way through Derry, to the point where Brendan is heading out to join his brother, Eamonn, on the People's Democracy March from Belfast to Derry. It started New Year's Day, 1969, and is due to be completed on January 4th--walking 70 miles in just under 4 days.

It was undertaken to highlight the need for fair treatment and housing for Catholics, in Derry. Protestant Loyalists have caused disruptions along the way, but the marchers are refusing to retaliate, hoping to illustrate that it's a peaceful march.

Brendan suspected there would be trouble and learned a number of people were taking a bus to a village called Claudy to join with the marchers on the last leg of their journey. His mother refuses to let him join them, so he sneaks out and walks towards the town...but never makes it. He happens upon a group of men preparing rocks and cudgels to attack the marchers with and cannot get past them.

He tries to warn people, but no one believes him. Sure enough, at Burntollet Bridge the marchers are attacked by crowds of Loyalists and helped along by the Constables who were supposed to keep the peace. Dozens were hurt, but the march continued. They made it to the Guildhall, in Derry, and then all hell broke loose once people learned of what had happened.

I took some poetic license and had Brendan find a few of the injured in a car that ran off the road. He helps get them to Altnagelvin Hospital, about 3-4 miles down the road, and there he learns Eamonn was badly hurt but will get better.

I've done that walk, myself. Took a bus to Burntollet Bridge and walked back. It rained half the time, and I stopped at a petrol station to have an okay slice of pizza and a coke, but made it in about 3 hours. I also stayed mostly dry since I had a poncho with me. Worked well.

It's pretty country, and hilly, and doing that walk shifted that part of the story a little. That's why I keep going back to Derry, to make certain I'm getting at least some of the logistics right. Of course, the road is well-paved, now and there's more development along it, but it served me well enough.

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.