Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 80

Forward movement, again

I worked the new stuff in and am now through to chapter 6 of New World for Old. Brendan is overjoyed at his exile. He can now do as he wants, he thinks...but that is quickly cut down when he learns he's overstayed his visa and that presents a problem that needs to be handled before any plans can be made. It winds up being a lot more complicated than that, but that's all for later in the book.
What matters is breaking through the logjam. For now. His brother, Eamonn, gets busted by the Army but Brendan learns it's for being part of a weapons smuggling operation. Initially, it was going to be arms from Libya, but then I remembered Qaddafi's people were pissed off at the IRA in 1973, so I may shift it to Poland. That's who you get Semtex from...the explosive. But it's not what was used in the bomb that Brendan was caught in. It's far too stable.
I'm in the office the rest of the week to assist in the run-up to the NY Antiquarian Book Fair, handling EU and UK dealers who cannot remember from one fair to the next how Customs works. Of course, things are a lot nastier, now, thanks to Brexit. Before that stupid move, we could use the UK as a safe route for transporting books into the US for book fairs. Now we have to deal with a half-dozen different countries' regulations and paperwork, and none of it's easy.
Brexit has also killed some major antiques fairs in the UK, because it's so much hassle and expense to ship items for display in and out it's not worth the time or money. Masterpiece has been canceled, this year, and that was a major fair. But without the EU dealers, it dropped to 40% of what it was and no one wanted to bother.
It's the same in Hong Kong. China messed it up and killed the China in Print Fair. It was a lovely, high-quality book fair in the perfect venue, but no one wants to deal with the new requirements to get it going, again, after Covid. So...stupidity reigns supreme.

Well...I may have an answer...

All of the angst from yesterday's post kept me up till nearly 4am...but I may have found an answer to the problem. It's not yet a complete answer, but it kicks that can down the road to Book Three. Here's what I got:

How did Brendan get to his Aunt and Uncle's?He is about to leave Derry, on his own, when he is caught in a horrific car bomb. His left arm is dislocated and 3 ribs broken, lacerations on his face and head, and a concussion. His rucksack was still on his back when the bomb went, which kept him from being more severely injured. Still had his passport and money. 
The car was left in place by two friends of his--Danny who's also cut up but not badly, and Colm. It wasn't supposed to explode until much later. They rush Brendan away to a safe house on the border, near Strabane, and send word to his mother. She comes and fights to keep him alive against those in the Provisional IRA who want to bury him. She contacts her sister and brother in law, in Houston and they agree to take him. PIRA goes along with it so long as he will stay away.
He's slipped across the border south of Strabane and held in a farm house near Drumcroy. A doctor is brought in and finds he's suffering from Akinetic Catatonia and his heart is acting up. He needs time to heal from his wounds and near heart attack.Aunt Mari and Uncle Sean use their money and connections to give Brendan that time. 
He's provided a passport under the name Brennan McGabbhin, thanks to a farming accident that killed a man and injured his son, in Donegal. That was nearly a year ago, but it's still usable. Aunt Mari travels over to take him from the Irish Republic to Houston. He gets a 3 month medical visa due to heart and emotional problems, then an extension, then overstays. 
So the story in Derry becomes: Brendan Kinsella has left to find work, as verified by a note and money left behind for his mother. And while there are rumors he's dead, no one really knows. Ma even tells his brothers and sister she thinks he's probably run afoul of PIRA and is buried somewhere. Mairead, his married sister in Toronto, has an idea of what really happened but plays along to keep Brendan safe.
And Brendan, now Brennan, is exiled.
I still haven't worked out why Ma protects him after being so nasty to him for so long, but I have ideas. We'll have to see what comes up in Book Three. 

Why?

I'm stuck in wondering why Brendan is snuck into the US instead of just being put in a grave. Why would PIRA go through all that trouble? How would they even know a way to contact his aunt and uncle and assume they would agree to it? Or...how would his aunt find out about this in time to stop him being shot and buried? He would be a direct link back to his family and his brother and friends, if he was allowed to live.

Does it have to do with his father? Anything that happened with him would have been nearly 25 years before the bombing, when the IRA was regrouping and trying to figure out who they were, again, after WW2. Their next border campaign to break the NI away from the UK wasn't until the middle 50s, right around the time Brendan was born.

I don't have an answer and I need one to continue. It will figure in everything, because even he is wondering this. He's ecstatic he's free...but he's also wondering why. There has to be a reason for this to be happening this way, and I've been glossing over it till now. Ignoring it, really. So I spent all day wondering and asking myself and digging and coming up empty.

Worked myself into a tension headache and made a pain in my middle right back even worse, so right now my head is killing me and my back won't let me move fast, at all. Can't blame that just on old age. It's all because I'm pushing to get to the end of this book and I need answers. And I'm not finding them. I'm even wondering if there is one. If maybe I've written myself into a corner with no way out...and will have to redo Book One completely. Shit.

Maybe sometimes there is no answer.

Brendan learns who he is

 This is part of chapter 4, where Brendan is told what's going on...

------

Aunt Mari drove up and honked at me, and I realized I was standing dead in the middle of the drive. I stepped aside to let her pass and followed the estate...no, station wagon back to the garage. Made it through the large gate before it closed and trotted up to her like a pet dog. 

“Look who’s out and about,” she said as she opened the door. 

“Aunt Mari,” I croaked, “this neighborhood...the space of it all...” 

“Oh, this is nothin’, Bren. What ya doin’ with that?” She motioned to the iron. 

“Thought I’d mend it. Spare you the need of a new one.” 

“I already have one, but if ya’d like to fix it, that’d be nice. I could take the new one back.” 

The rear of the car used some sort of amazing design to vanish into its tail and she pulled out bags of groceries, saying, “Take these in, will ya?” 

I nodded and carried two full bags into the kitchen. She followed with another. Since I still had the iron she had to open the sliding door. 

We set everything on the center counter. 

“Now you sit, lad. I’ll put these away.” 

“I could help you.” 

“No, it’s faster if I do it. I know where everything goes. And we've plenty of time before we leave.” 

"Leave?" 

“The doctor’s. Isn’t that why ya're dressed?” 

I'd had no particular reason to put on clothes; I'd just wanted to. But thinking about it, I remembered her mentioning at some time or other there was to be a visit. So I shrugged. “Is this all right, what I’m wearin’?” 

“Sure it is. He’s very informal, this man.” 

“You say I’ve seen him before,” I said and... 

The round blond lady dressed in white with a kind face caressed my cheek with the backs of her fingers and said to Aunt Mari, “Lord, his eyes...so big and hurt, they cut right to your heart.“ 

I tensed. Made myself turn focus to the iron. Began to inspect it, carefully. 

Aunt Mari was putting vegetables into the fridge so didn’t notice. “He's a heart specialist." 

"Was...was I having problems with it? My heart?" 

"A little. The pills ya got are for it." 

I nodded, still a bit uncentered. "There was mention of it, I think, when I was at Altnagelvin. But the doctor spoke with Ma, not me." 

She chuckled and said, "Ya were at Altnagelvin?" 

I cast her a confused glance. "Ma didn't tell you?" 

She started putting tins of vegetables in a pantry. "How could she? Yer doctor's name, here, is Gilbert, and he come here, a few times. Then I took ya to him, twice. He told us yer break from the world was good because it helped keep ya quiet and gave yer heart time to mend." 

"Was I so bad off, then?" 

"There were problems, but they've settled. Dr. Gilbert can better fill ya in on them." 

"I doubt I mended from being quiet," I huffed. "The B-girls say I was anything but." 

She cast me a smile. "The B-girls?" 

"Well, I...I can't tell them apart, yet, so..." 

Then she chuckled. "That actually fits those two. Ya'll learn how to handle them. And keep in mind, they both love to exaggerate." 

I shrugged and focused on the iron, not yet willing to accept the snippets of memory that I’d catch. 

"The doctor also said to be patient, with ya. That you'd regain your senses. Seems he was right.” 

"What was it wrong with me?" I asked, fingering the iron's back panel. "Was it my heart caused me to lose my mind?" 

"Ya didn't lose it, Bren. Ya got a severe shock and yer brain couldn't handle it so shut down, that's all. He said it was something like an akinetic catatonia." She dug more tinned goods from the bag she looked straight at me. “Do ya remember anything since ya got here? Any of it?” 

I just shook my head. The iron's back panel wasn’t easy to remove, but I managed to get off to reveal the connections. “Have you a knife I can use?” 

She handed me a strip of metal that held a razor’s blade. “This do?” 

“Aye.” 

I unscrewed the fasteners and got to work on cutting the wire and stripping off the casing so I’d have bald wire to reconnect to them. I slipped the newly stripped part into its holder then tightened everything down with the edge of the blade before replacing the panel. Finally, I looked around for an outlet to test it only to notice Aunt Mari staring at me. 

“What?” I asked. 

“Ya've not heard a word I’ve said,” she replied, a bit peeved. 

“When?” 

“For the last five minutes. I’ve been talkin’ along and ya’ve been offerin’ up an occasional grunt to suggest ya're listenin’, but ya’ve been so focused on that iron, ya haven’t heard a thing, have ya?” 

Shite. I shrugged. “I...I can get like that. On occasion, Ma had to flick me with her finger to snap me from it, but it’s only ‘cause she’d go on and on and I’d just stop listenin’.” 

“And ya think I go on and on like yer mother did?” 

“No!” Now I felt irritated, her making me feel awkward, like that. “I just...I have the habit of it when I’m workin’. I don’t mean anything by it.” 

“Don’t worry,” she said and rubbed my hair. “Lord, ya had such lovely curls, once. Ya like your hair like this?” 

I nodded. “I think I’d prefer it in this heat. I already feel the need of another bath.” 

“Oh, this is nothin’. Wait till August.” 

“August?” 

“That’s usually the worst month for heat and humidity, with September almost as bad.” 

I began to float, as if my feet were no longer touching the floor. I dropped the iron to the counter and just managed to ask, “Aunt Mari, when am I to go home?” 

She did not look at me. Just busied herself with folding the paper bags. “Oh, I...um, I’m not so very sure what’s to happen next.” 

I did not like the sound of that...the meaning of it...“Am I banished?!" 

She only sighed and put the bags into a cabinet drawer.She wasn't answering me. She was trying to avoid my question. 

I could barely breathe. "Why? What did I do?” 

She took in a deep breath and turned to me. “Nothing. It was just an accident and...” 

"Accident? It was a bloody bomb that took down half a...!" 

Her eyes grew sharp and she snapped, "No! Ya were nowhere near a bomb. It was a farming accident. Ya saw yer father decapitated and..." 

"What the bloody hell are you on about?!" 

"Whist that talk! Listen to me. Brendan Kinsella left Derry before that bomb. He had a passport and his mother got his note, showing he left. It was after that, when the bomb went off." 

Then it hit me. "You said I was nowhere." 

She very deliberately said, "We don't know where Brendan is or went. We've no way to contact him. You are Brennan McGabbhin, third cousin to me. From a farm in Donegal." 

“But I was...” whispered from me. 

"Ya were in a farm accident! Nowhere near a bomb." 

"But that's not true...it's not...not..." 

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, blood covering my face and screaming and Danny grabbed me and forced me to my feet and held me as Colm punched me and... 

I was staring at the ceiling, a cold rag to my head and 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 to her ear.“...When he just keeled over,” she said. "Oh, he's comin' 'round."

Stories...

I slammed into a nasty funk and it took me three days to get myself to where I could refocus on APoS. And I did it by going through the first three chapters, again, and finding Brendan's emotional core in them and heightening it. The story picks up 6 months after the bombing, but to him it's just a day or two. And he keeps having flashbacks to not only the explosion but its aftermath in as people try to decide what to do with him.

But while working on it, earlier, all of a sudden I had added in a quickie flash of what seemed like his mother trying to smother him, while he was injured, and is stopped by Danny. I didn't mean to, because this is a real trigger for me.

My own mother tried to smother me, when we were living in San Diego. I was six months old and sick...hell, I was born sickly...and she was probably going through postpartum depression, which wasn't paid much attention to, back then. She'd never been the strongest, emotionally, and she was close to the edge thanks to that.

I would not stop crying and she had learned my father was fucking around on her. He'd even knocked up another woman. So she put a pillow over me and was pressing down when, apparently, someone dropped a pan in the next apartment and the sudden, sharp noise startled her out of her mood. She took me to a doctor. Found out I had spinal meningitis. I got meds. And she moved us back to San Antonio.

My folks were divorced a few months later. I didn't see my father, again, till I was 21.

When I was 10, she told me about this after one of her breakdowns. She was hospitalized a total of 5 times, starting in London. Twice in San Antonio. Once in Grand Forks, ND. And the last in Glendale, after she and my father had remarried and were trending towards divorce, again.

I handled it. I thought. I dealt with it throughout my life. But suddenly comes this attempt by Ma to smother Brendan, in his flashbacks...and I think that kicked me into this funk. I don't want to use it...but it's right for the story. It's right for Brendan. It's just...it's not right for me.

But it's staying in.

It's staying in.

Monday...fucking Monday...

Couldn't sleep last night, not till after 4am, so today's been a slug of a day. Pretty down. Did nothing-work yet still managed to find out my CPA didn't report $200 in prepaid estimated taxes to NY State. Money I'm due as a refund. Oh, and apparently Blogger went back through my blog postings...and I mean way back...and attached warning notices on two of them. From 2014. When I uploaded the first couple scenes of Carli's Kills in screenplay format.

I protested, and they've agreed that they overreacted, but it's not just fucking irritating; it's scary. This is how obnoxious social platforms are going to be, now. What was fine 9 years ago is On-no-we-can't-have-that, anymore. And it's ridiculous.

There's also all the bullshit about Marjorie Taylor Greene being on 60 Minutes, a program I stopped watching years ago, and TFG flying from Florida to NYC to face charges, tomorrow and the whole right wing uproar over that. CNN did a breathless moment by moment like was done when OJ did on his infamous chase in a Ford Bronco...and to even less effect.

Tennessee is kicking out 3 Democrats from the state house because they support gun control, but not a word in the MSM. Just on Twitter. Florida just enabled any fucking lunatic to buy and carry a gun, and barely a mention. Texas is trying to set it up so the Secretary of State can override the results of an election and install his or her own preference, and still nothing in the MSM. I'm so sick of this country.

Oh, Jesus, Sufjan Stevens' song about John Wayne Gacy is playing on KCRW. Perfect.

Piss poor writer...

Not very up, at the moment. Going through this rewrite of New World for Old, I'm finding stupid mistakes and repetitions and contradictions and it's kicking me in the balls. I can understand typos and even missing words, since sometimes my brain races ahead of my fingers, and while I try to catch them all I know I won't. Even though I'll have gone through it again and again. Then had it proofed. And gone through, again.

But in this I had Brendan calling Bernadette and Brandi, his cousins who act like they're twins but aren't, by their names when he can't yet tell them apart. And they like to mess with him, despite their mother's warning. Made obvious because I mention a few paragraphs later that he still can't tell them apart.

And it's set up he has an appointment with a doctor the following Thursday, but the way much of the preceding chapter is written it seems like events take place over a few weeks. Had to clarify that. But finding issues like this, even as I'm trying to make the book consistent and believable, hit hard at my self-confidence.

I'm still plugging through, but it's looking more and more like this draft is going to take some time. Good thing is, I only have one or two days lined up at Caladex to go over paperwork for the NY Antiquarian Book Fair. That'll happen around two weeks prior to the last weekend of the month, when the fair takes place.

I'm halfway tempted to drive to Toronto and have some Beijing Beef at a Panda Express, there. About 100 miles, each way, for fake Chinese food, but it's one of my obsessions and there are none in this area. Like Jack in the Box; none in the mid-Atlantic or New England states for some damn reason. Two of their tacos would be perfect, right now.

Back to 1.253978886204 or something

Okay, in order to make this work in my head, I rewrote the final part of APoS-Derry, after the bomb, and now I'm going through New World for Old to re-establish Brendan as someone other than who he is. He doesn't realize it, at first, because everyone refers to him as Bren or Cousin Bren. If anyone starts to get too specific about anything regarding him, his aunt or uncle quietly shift the conversation away from that.
I've worked through the first three chapters and it's doing well. Now comes the one where his aunt finally explains to him the reality of the situation...and rather than be horrified, he's relieved. To his own shock. He was brought over as Brennan McGabbhin, a third cousin from Donegal, in Ireland. Brendan has simply vanished and no one knows where. And they plan to keep it like that.
Something else popped into this that I'm a bit startled by. He's injured in the bombing and his heart is close to giving out, and there are discussions as to whether or not to finish him off. So Ma decides to end the arguments by trying to smother him, but is stopped by Eamonn and Father Jack. Bren only remembers snatches of it, as well as moments from the trip over when his medications were wearing off.
But this may lead to Brendan finding out why his mother treats him rough...and my current thought is, she tried to force a miscarriage and it didn't work, like had happened with other pregnancies. She did not want another child, yet here he is, and he's the one who gives her the most trouble. She doesn't hate him; she resents him.
At the moment, I've got Brendan being given Valium to keep him quiet, but I may change that to Librium. Still looking into the interaction with nitroglycerin tablets, since he has a heart issue. So far it doesn't seem like it's a good idea to mix the two. But something to keep in mind is this is 1972/3 and the research is not as conclusive about any of that, yet.
Of course, I only intended to work new details into small sections of the book. Never was gonna happen that way; I did one change here with led to another change there and now I'd doing a full rewrite of NWfO. It's just my way of writing.

Putting the brakes on...

I had to take a step back and let this jumble about how Brendan gets from Derry to Houston settle in my head because I was getting lost in it and probably making things worse. At least this little breather is helping me accept that the set up is simple while I'm still trying to complicate it.
As mentioned yesterday, Brendan was already leaving. He had his passport and has established a reason for his absence. He has no known link to the bombing. Things are in such chaos at that moment, no one can really say whether or not they saw him being carted off. So he's covered, there.
There are still those in the IRA who want to just put him in a grave, but that's stopped, quick. I had his sister in Toronto involved in deciding to have him brought to Houston, but that's now questionable. However, his aunt still makes sense. She's always had an interest in him and sent him money and things. She forces her husband to arrange it, with Brendan now under another name and being brought to the US for treatment of a heart condition, once his wounds are healed.
Which means Uncle Sean would probably have both of his passports -- the one he got for himself and the faked one set up to bring him to the US. So I still need to work out the way that's going to play. Or if it does. I'm not completely sure.
Another thing is, neither the British Army nor the RUC would be looking for him, to question. It's only later they learn he might have been there and seen it or helped in it. I know how to have that happen, and it adds a complication to Brendan's time in Derry, upon his return.
Oh, Lord...am I ever going to get finished with this book? Every time I think I'm close, I peel back another layer of complications.

Wow, edit city...

Man, I am doing a lot of cutting rearranging and slashing in Book 3 of APoS, which I think I'm going to call Home Not Home. But anyway, I used to have this massive scenario worked out where Brendan was snuck into the US under another name and people back home think he's been put in a grave by the IRA for messing up their operation and getting a few people imprisoned, but I dropped it because it's just silly and overwrought and made no sense.

Well, it's been so long since I dealt with Book Three, I'd forgotten how interwoven that plot-line is in the first four chapters, and I'm having a lot of fun cutting it out and still having the story flow. Because it's showing me my current idea of him traveling under his own name as Aunt Mari's nephew may not work.

I need to keep in mind that there was no link between Brendan and the bombing, so far as the British and RUC were aware. He left his mother a note saying he was leaving to work in Ireland, but didn't say where. He got himself a passport. And he was seriously injured and was taken to a safe house on the border, so he's not in a hospital for them to become suspicious. Why would they even begin to suspect he was involved in it?

While the IRA might be pissed off and wonder if he messed things up because he was seeing Joanna, they would quickly see it was all just rotten luck. Still, he does have to disappear. His injuries would raise a lot of suspicion if he went to a hospital, and his mental state is pretty much degraded after what he witnessed. So he can't be trusted not to give everything away. And to have him openly travel in that condition? No. I may return to the idea of him traveling into the US under another name. Meaning rework that into Book Two.

Shit, why can't I think of this crap while I'm in the middle of writing it and not have to do this dance with my thoughts over and over as Brendan doles out the information? It's irritating.

But better to figure it out now than after the book is published.