Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 98

Long drive...

I've driven between LA and San Antonio and Houston so many times, and that stretch between Junction and El Paso is deadly boring...but damn...between Chicago and Iowa city is mind-numbing. Open fields that may have been plowed or aren't being cultivated going on and on. Few truck stops and even fewer rest areas. And having Google maps keep trying to send me down toll roads because it might save me a few minutes wrecks your mental health.

I got the main job done -- 18 boxes off to the client, for delivery tomorrow -- but this one is more of a favor of an add-on, because it's going to be 4 boxes, max. But the donor can't pack this stuff, themself, so...I wind up drinking too much Dr. Pepper and chewing too many pieces of gum to stay alert while trying to get some thinking done about APoS...but Brendan wasn't having it.

The closest I came is him reminding me, once more, that the theme running through this story is about hopes and wishes and dreams and how they keep getting smashed. By events...by others...by themselves. Which is what happened with his parents. Which means a restructuring of his opening chapter...and maybe writing some of Eamonn Sr's stories. Maybe rework some from James Stephens' book...or make up some of his own. Have him share them with the family instead of just down at the pub in hopes of getting someone to buy him another drink.

Question is, how does that translate into his becoming a brute? And how do I work it so Brendan comes to learn about it, thus softening his memories about his father even as his mother is sharpening his awareness of her disdain for him?

It seems Rhuari, Brendan's younger brother, is the one shifting into a sort of creative mode by learning Irish in Book Two and starting to teach it in Book Three. And maybe Eamonn Jr becomes something of a wordsmith in his letters from Long Kesh, laying out a manifesto and talking about a political path to take.

I don't know...still ideas...

Chicago

Flight was on time and got everything I needed with minimal trouble. Even avoided the craziness of these drivers, who like to jut out from alleyways to half block cars on the street so they can scoot across. Almost got hit by one and received a very dirty look when I honked. Boxes are built for tomorrow's use, and I had Panda Express for dinner. My favorite even though it's really too rich for me. Makes my blood sugar skyrocket.

But it helps center me. Settle me. For some reason, despite everything going so easily I was extremely tense, and it's telling in my neck. I'm downing Tylenol like it's Tic-tacs and slathering Icy Hot on it, but that's barely keeping the pain to a minimum. Don't know why I'm feeling this way, I just am.

Read some of Eamonn McCann's book and got some notes out of it. He clued me int on what it was I was trying to understand about Derry people -- they are brutally sarcastic and love to undercut egos. They also do not take shit off anybody. The UVF (the Protestant version of the IRA) once threatened to kill any Catholic who was working for the government's health system, in the main office. So the full office, both Protestant and Catholic, went on strike to let the bastards know it would not be tolerated. It worked. The UVF put out a mealy-mouthed memo saying they'd been misunderstood.

I was mistaken in thinking Brendan needed an excuse to want to be to himself and not have many friends. I was thinking of making him slightly autistic or with a mild form of ADHD, but that's taking his choice away. He just doesn't want to play the game the others do. He has a few really good friends, both Catholic and Protestant, but one of the Proddy lads betrays him, viciously. Twice. So he just gets very careful about who's going to be his mate. He's wary, not sick or disabled in any way, and loyal...but only to a point.

I also think I'm being too harsh about Eamonn, Sr. Brendan's da. He's a man in his mid-thirties who had dreams and hopes and did what he could with them...until he was killed. He was a storyteller, a weaver of words into magical worlds but without the opportunity or resources needed to make something of it. And Bernadette can see that. But all Brendan can see, at first, is how brutal the man could be when he was drunk. I'm finding Eamonn will reveal himself slowly, and Brendan's mother will do the same...

I think...I honestly don't know, just now.

Stupid me...

I signed up for an online course in using Google Ads and YouTube to increase sales of my books...specifically Carli's Kills. It was a couple hours long...and the last third was a complete waste. I can't even use YouTube unless I have at least one professional video to post, and they suggest three. Meaning sink God knows how much money into working up a video for the book to go onto a format I rarely visit and don't really know will help me.

On top of this, I'll need to sink hundreds of dollars into working with Google Ads to see which one will be best for my work. And I need a stand-along platform for the book to link back to, for sales. Then there are the network backups and the response display and the target ad group and key words to use but also key words not to use but you won't know which is which until you spend more money...and now I'm depressed.

I wanted to understand better how to sell CK so I might be able to pay for a trip to Ireland...and no way in hell is that gonna happen. I'll need to spend God knows how many weeks or months just catching up to speed on how things work and sink myself even deeper into debt in hopes my one little mainstream erotic-suspense-romance-revenge-justice-thriller takes off...with no guarantee it will.

I'm currently set up for it to be in Ingram's catalogue blast, which cost me, too but actually has helped me make sales for things like my coloring book and such.

I've been fortunate in sales of my books. I've made my money back, plus some, on all but David Martin (my fable) and The Alice '65 (my MF Rom-com). The two books that are the most mainstream. Guess I'm a niche writer until I take a hardcore course in online sales and work out a formula for success in it.

I can't, right now. I've been avoiding APoS for too damned long and want it completed before I'm feeble of body and brain, which at the rate I'm going may be this time next week.

More and more...

Jesus, the paperwork is never-ending. I'm 2/3 of the way through this box and found a few things that were useful, including printouts of an email conversation I had with Martin Melaugh, PhD who's heavily involved with CAIN in Northern Ireland. They're a goldmine of information regarding the Troubles and politics of the times. I was hoping to find if he wrote a book about the time, but all I could locate was an anthology of thought pieces on the social attitudes in NI that included one by him. Still ordered a copy. Anything that will help me center APoS properly in that region is desperately wanted.

Since I'll be headed off to Chicago for a couple of packing jobs, day after tomorrow, I'm taking a book with me to read -- War and Peace in Northern Ireland by Eamonn McCann. I've read his War in an Irish Town and some of his other articles, and he's a contemporary of Dr. Melaugh so his viewpoints will be interesting...and, I hope, illuminating.

I also found an old interview I'd torn out of a Playboy Magazine that was with Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams, leaders of Sinn Fein, as well as an unidentified Provo. I know it was from sometime in 1988-89, because it references Adams as being 40 and he was born in 1948. Plus there's the ads for cigarettes and the hair styles of the women.

I'm still thinking about the situation between Brendan's parents, Bernadette and Eamonn, and what that entails. It will help determine what direction some parts of the book will take. I'm leaning into Bernadette disliking Brendan because she cannot affect him in the same ways she affects his father, brother and sister. He's growing closer to being slightly into ADHD, but undiagnosed. Just his actions. But I need to know more about that issue before working it in instead of going for a slight form of autism.

But it's all to make his a bit apart from everyone else, and partly why he has only a few close friends.

The joys of paperwork...

OMG, I have so many notes and printouts and articles dealing with APoS, it's close to overwhelming. I went to storage and pulled out a box of stuff I knew was packed with all kinds of stuff -- from copies made of the Derry Journal from January 7, 1969 to interviews with the wives of men murdered by the RUC during the shoot-to-kill phase of the troubles...which actually started up after Brendan's story is done, here...to pages and pages of my scritchy-scratchy handwriting with ideas and possibilities.

A lot of them I've already incorporated into the story, but there were some I'd forgotten. I've started up folders for each section of the book -- Derry, Houston and Return -- and that's helping me keep track. I found I actually had a printed copy of a book I bought...War in an Irish Town by Eamonn McCann, who was a big movers in the Civil Rights Movement...as well as printouts of emails I exchanged with him. It's been so long since I looked at them, I'd forgotten.

I'm building up a need to go spend a week in Derry, again, to dig through the library's archives and haunt the used bookstores there as well as in Belfast. I checked into it and a 10 day stay in mid-September would be around $5,000. Which I ain't got. I mean, I have space enough on a credit card...but the interest rate on that card is now up to 16% and probably will rise more. It's tied to the Fed's rate, and I already have too much on it from my apartment furnishing and eye-surgery, not to mention my long-term semi-employment. Dammit.

Maybe Carli's Kills will take off and bring in enough for me to go. I'd only need to sell about 3000 copies. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Weird day messing with me...

First learned Ukraine's entry into the Eurovision competition, this year -- Kalush -- won for their song, Stefania. And there are rumors of a coup against Putin due to his declining health and mental capacities. Both of which gave me a hint of hope and joy.

But then my sister in Texas texted me, asking about the shooting at a Tops Market about 4-5 miles from me. I went online and saw that ten were dead and three injured, all but two African American.

The white racist fuck who went hunting for black people in that market was from a town just outside Binghamton, and I've been through it so many times while en route to NYC or parts of PA and NJ. He had n*gger printed on his gun and a 100+ page manifesto posted on his FB page, but officials are still investigating whether or not to see this as a hate crime.

Seriously! They don't want to rush to judgement.

The killer was taken without a scratch on him, just like Dylan Roof. Not tasered once, despite having an AR15 next to him. Handcuffed and driven off in the space of minutes. By cops who shoot to kill any black man who dares make even the hint of a wrong move in their direction.

Sickening.

I did manage to get a schematic worked up for Brendan's home on Nailors Row. And I did more digging seeking what I'd worked up for his possible grandparents. But not a lot else done, today.

This world is going fucking mad...

Difficult day searching files

For me to solidify the situation in Brendan's family, in Derry, I need to know not only who his parents are and where they came from, in detail, but who his neighbors are and where they lived in proximity. So I decided to make a map of the area and note who's where and when. I do have the characters worked out and listed, who's with whom and such, but I need a lot firmer idea of Eamonn Sr. and Bernadette.

I know somewhere in my files I started writing out more background on the lives of his parents...but I'm having a hell of a time finding it. I've got a thousand Word files, alone, to go through as well as just as many images. I suppose I should just make some kind of order from them, because a lot are duplicates spread over at least five thumb drives and my external hard drive. 

I did finally find this map I'd been looking for. It's of the Bogside of Derry from before 1960. I know this because it shows an extension of Nailors Row that led up to Fahan Street, at the top center under that orange stripe, and I have a photo of that spot from 1961 showing they'd been torn down, by then.

I don't remember where I got it from, but I didn't put the colored stripes on it and the notes written there are not my handwriting. What's great is, this shows not only the plots of the houses but also their back yards and if they have a hutch/shed. I think I have another, somewhere, that is without the stripes...but it's God only knows where.

I'm going to add an 8th plot to that little curve across from Walker's Pillar and make that the Kinsella home. Then I'll need to do one for their new flat on Cliodhna Place, where they move before the Battle of Bogside.

What I'm also having to deal with is how some files have reached the point where I cannot open them, the format they're in is so old. At least, not on my laptop. I've got my MacMini so may try that version of Word. but no matter how it goes, this book ain't coming out till next year, at the earliest.

1131 pages

This is how long A Place of Safety is, right now...and it's going to increase by at least 50% before I'm done. Of course, that's double-spaced in Courier 12 point on 8.5x11" format, with 1" borders, and I am aiming for 3 separate volumes. Still...it's massive, overall. It's just, I don't want Brendan to merely be telling the story; I want him to be feeling it and sharing his feelings with the reader.
The last section, Brendan's return to Derry, is far too quick and easy. He talks about a lot but this point in time needs to be highly emotional for him. He's cutting ties with his American family. His mother is dying from cancer. His brother is about to join the hunger strikers. Another brother is part of the IRA's youth auxiliary. And everywhere he goes in Derry he's seeing ghosts from his past.
I have one section near the end where Brendan is being hauled before an IRA council after having been interrogated for several days, thinking he's provided information to the British...that he's become a grass, as they call informers. But the interrogation was so intense, he honestly has no idea if he informed on them or not...and it looks like he will be shot and buried. I want this to be terrifying, even as Brendan is all but hoping for it to happen.
On top of this, I've got a multitude of post-it notes regarding all three sections, as well as red pen comments in the bulk of the text, to remind me of things that need to be or have been referred to and should be clarified. So I'm nowhere near the end of work on this. I'd like to think it builds to a solid, powerful ending...but I won't know until it's done. All the way. But...this is also just a second draft of the third section. It will grow deeper.
There's a whole bit I could add where Brendan finds out more about his father's life and it colors his interpretation of the man...but I'm still thinking about that. Suffice to say, things shift and change in ways that I hope are not predictable, aside from the push of history, at the time. I'd hate for this story to just seem derivative and superficial.

Oh...my...

The Houston part of APoS really does need a lot of work. Superficial. Skating along. Truncated moments between Brendan and characters who are important to him, who then vanish. Ugh...

This is my rendition of how Brendan looks at the end of the book, as he's about to leave Houston and return to his home. He knows he cannot go there as himself because he's still being sought by the British and the Police Authority in Northern Ireland, so will use a friend's identity.

But he also knows his old friends won't be fooled and word will get around, so he cannot stay for long...even though he has to return. I need to make this a gut-wrenching decision, for him, and it's not, yet. Nowhere near.

I shouldn't be harsh about my writing here, really. This section is only in 2nd draft while Derry is in 4th. But it's still awkward reading how casual this part is. Granted, it has to cover more than 7 years of his life, but it needs to lead up to his return to Derry and why he's going even though he no longer feels a connection to the city...even as he feels homesick. A dichotomy that needs to be handled carefully.

I do have moments I'm pleased with...like a confrontation between Brendan and his Uncle Sean that is brutal in its blunt honesty about his situation. Brendan learns he has no control over his life, and his attempts to regain it have not only been fruitless, they've put a member of his family in danger, in NI.

Damn, I'm reaching for the stars with this book, and I'm so nervous about it. I'm not a straightforward writer, like Hemingway and Faulkner and even Tolstoy. I have to work and rework and re-rework my writing, over and over until it reaches a point where I'm happy enough with it to let go. Hell, CK went through a dozen honest drafts before I could publish it...and that's a much shorter, much simpler story.

But...it's gonna take what it takes to work, and I can't stop till it agrees with me that it does. And it's not agreeing, right now.

Book 2 -- Houston

I've read through half of book two of APoS and it's moving along but is a lot more superficial in places, though I'd already started making notes as to what was needed, where, so it's on its way to being there. I know what I'm aiming for, in here -- parallels to happenings in Derry at the beginning of the Troubles -- and I can see the groundwork laid. There are also notes for aspects I need to add to book one.

Brendan's personality is shifting, thanks to the trauma he's been through. Smokes more. Pot and cigarettes. Drinks. Does pills. Seeks oblivion. Yet has flashes of anger that boil out of nowhere at the same time that he's more casual about things. A lot depends on the circumstances and whether or not he feels like he's being put upon.

He's still isolated, but I'm not seeing much of his Derry attitude in here, and I'm not sure about that being a good thing...or bad...but his new mantra seems to be, Do it, especially if you don't want to.

For example, he gets talked into going ice skating in the Galleria...and becomes quite good at it because when he's finally able to slick around the rink at speed, it's like he's flying and leaving his troubles behind him.

But other occasions are problematic -- like sneaking into a gay bar with his cousin, Scott, when he's underage and in the US illegally. Things threaten to go bad but a gay man named Everett helps him out. It's only afterwards that he realizes what hell that would have caused his family, if he'd been caught by the cops.

I don't know how long it will take me to handle all of this, there's still so much work that needs to be done...but I do feel like I'm closing in on the complete story. And will...someday...