David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 24

Big announcement time

The Bomber will be free for the valentines day weekend. This Saturday and Sunday the bomber will be free to download from amazon. Simply follow the link below on Saturday or Sunday and download my book. Leave me an honest review on amazon to let people know what you think.

This promotion is in anticipation of the upcoming release of my next novel Anvil Soul. Anvil Soul is a story about a priest in the small town of Temora. He discovers another priest in the town is molesting children, he must decide how to solve the problem when the police, the bishop and the people of the town do not believe him. Will he be able to save the children of this small town?

Anvil Soul will be the most challenging and confronting book of 2016.

 

Go here to get THE BOMBER: amzn.to/1KJV7pn 

The tree

There was once a tree that loved a boy, and the boy would water the tree everyday. The boy was careful to keep weeds away and would pick any grubs or caterpillars out of the leaves if he found them.

The tree was already large when he and the boys became friends, but this tree appreciated the things the boy did for him. Even the water, which was nice but unnecessary because the tree had powerful deep roots, became something the tree looked forward to receiving. The boy would sit in the shade of the tree after school, sometimes the boy would climb the tree and sit in the low heavy branches which were easy to climb because they were thick and straight.

Sometimes when the boy climbed the tree, he would kick off some small branches or break some bark and this would hurt the tree, but the tree ignored the pain, happy that the boy was with him.

Once the boy brought some friends to see the tree, and the friends jeered and laughed at the boy, this, they said this was a normal tree just like any other in the field and this tree was stupid, worse than the others because it grew in the middle of the field and stopped them playing ball games or using the field for real fun like football. It was a tree, they said, that should be cut down.

One boy then took a knife from his pocket and scratched a word into the tree. The boy saw this and they began to fight. The boys fought a hard terrible fight, until blood ran on their faces and the others, tired of laughing and screaming convinced them to stop. The strangers left but the boy sat against the tree and cried. The tree, seeing everything, was proud of the boy. He could feel the wound cut into his trunk and he saw the blood on the boys face and he knew that they were connected now, forever they were one.

The boy grew up but the tree did not notice nor understand what this meant. The boy would bring girls to sit under the tree and by now, the boy did not water the tree anymore, nor keep the grubs out of his leaves, but as he was a big tree it did not matter. One day the boy stopped coming. The tree watched for him but the boy never came back. The tree could not know it, but the boy had left town and was now a man, living his life in a far city. The tree waited, watching, seeing other people but never his boy. One night, after a huge rain storm, a strong wind came and shook the tree so hard that it toppled over in the mud. It’s broken trunk sticking from the ground like a broken bottle, it’s massive body laying crushed in the mud. As the tree, confused and broken, lay dying it’s thoughts were for the boy that used to love him.

Big announcement

This weekend Pen Name Publishing will be doing something special for The Bomber on Valentines day!

Stay tuned for the announcement later in the week.

It has everything to do with The Bomber on Amazon!

amzn.to/1Ta96Hv

 

Meanwhile my new novel Anvil Soul is drawing closer to being released.

If you would like to win a free advanced copy of Anvil Soul I will be having a competition this valentines day.

 

Come back on Friday to find out the details.

Death eyes

It was fair well and good bye

as my neighbor left home last night.

Our homes are so close together I can hear them and they can hear me

in everything we do.

Watching TV, cooking, fucking,

the sounds travel.

He left her last night. She knew,

he had decided to be with another woman or another man

I was not too clear on what was happening.

I went to her house the next morning,

stepping carefully through the white stones of their Japanese garden

they had built together two years ago.

I remember about six months ago

The weeds came up through the stones,

so I made up some poison and killed them for her.

He had stopped coming home

and the garden began to rot.

Knocking on the front door she took a long time to answer

but when she came

I found her

black and tearful;

death in her eyes.

She said little but let me in and we sat opposite each other

in the front room. The sun came in the windows and curled up on the carpet

to sleep like a cat. My left foot was in the light and it began to feel warm.

She is Japanese, he was from here in the city

and they had been in love.

Sometimes love is not enough.

I asked her some questions and she nodded and said things sadly.

A ribbon of black hair feel down her right cheek and her eyes

flashed at me.

Her heart is full of love, I can tell,

but her eyes are full of death.

It was then that I realized we would not talk much again and that this moment

might be all I ever get of her for the rest of my life.

So I spent as long as I could, sitting, talking,

before I had to leave to sit alone in my house.

Wishing I had someone like her.

The tree

The tree

pushing at the fence

bends the heavy metal posts.

 

I have seen loneliness

made beautiful

and love made abhorrent.

 

Look through the eyes

of Edward Hopper

and see the lonely rooms of New York come alive.

 

She is beautiful

her words are magic

her face is brighter than the sun.

 

One way leads to destruction

and the other

to extinction.

 

If you find a coin in the street

hold it, smile for luck

then give it to someone who needs it more than you.

 

 

The Tortoise

Today, while cutting back the branches of a large bush I have in the yard

A tortoise came slowly out of the leaves and stood in front of me.

He was unlike the tortoises I knew in the lake just down from my house

In fact I had never seen a tortoise quite like this one.

He had a yellow shell that rose to a black point

He had a large grey head

with old eyes

that bulged giving him a wise

handsome look.

 

He watched me for a while

like a man who sees an old friend on the street and waits

to see if the friend recognizes him.

He seemed very gentle

but I felt he had met a lot of suffering.

‘Hello Tortoise’ I said after a while

and then felt ashamed that I had spoken to him.

Not because he is a tortoise but because he did not seem

like the kind of being who should be spoken to without him having spoken first.

After a while of watching each other

he turned and wandered slowly back into his bush.

I stopped cutting it back then,

collected my shears and went back into my house.

I would leave his bush alone.

I think of the little fellow often, but I haven’t seen him since.

Hard covers and How to write a poem

My hard covers of The Bomber arrived today and I am excited.

They are real collectors items!

Have a look at my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamdavidosu...

Now how to write a poem:

 

Live a life where you do your best by everyone
Remember all the best times
Remember all the worst times
Make notes to help you remember in steps 2 and 3 if needed
Find love
Lose love
Sit by a window on a rainy day and watch the drops on the window slide to oblivion
Walk about a forest
Walk about the city
Buy a pen and a note book
Be aware of things you see, hear, smell and feel
Remember that person you liked five years ago? Remember that kiss?
Read a lot of poetry
Write, write, write

 

 

Pizza Poem 

I ate the pizza

we could have had together

but you left me

so I had the pizza to myself.

 

 

Fading light

She is a thin girl

in a pale blue kimono

it hangs around her body like a fragrance

and covers nothing.

I sit in the dark looking at her

she smokes a pipe

and blows blue haze into the gently lit room.

A little man with a yellow shirt comes along and offers her a drink

and then drops snow over her

and she smiles,

laughs

as the ice melts onto her skin and forms drops

that run down her golden brown body.

Like diamonds, the water runs past her breasts.

 

The man looks up, he is sitting on a hard bench

the men around him are smoking

the pungent smell of tobacco and sweat

the growl of too many angry people

locked together in a hot room.

In the distance the soft sound of laughing comes

through the window.

There is the sound of women talking in the street below

All the men, at once

fall silent and listen

they all hear the happy voices, the gentle laughter and think

about things they did years ago, far away.

Author interview: Mike Hansen

Mike Hansen, the incredibly nice guy and author of ‘When Life Hands You A Lemon’ agreed to an interview with me recently.

I found this interview extremely interesting, Mike has a lot of talent. (I too love Vonnegut and would have dinner with Abraham Lincoln).

Please tell me about yourself.

Well, where do I start? I was born in 1980 in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. My dad had just quit his habit of burning through three packs of Camel Filters a day and coincidentally developed serious migraine headaches all in the same year that I was born. I was born the day after Christmas, five days to spare in 1980 – I was the reason for the season that year.

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 80s is a lot like living through the plot lines of The Empire Strikes Back. It was cold, it was dark. It was hot, it was muggy. You start to come into your own and develop. You have some small victories, like the 85 Bears. But you have some major disappointments like the 84 Cubs and every Cubs and Bears team after that. When it was all said and done, you come out of it a man with your typical intergalactic daddy issues.

After surviving the 80s and Reagan, it was off to the glory of the 90s and the awkward teenage years and the discovery of music, muses and writing. In the 90s I went through a lot of self-discovery. I discovered Nirvana when everyone else did. Kurt Cobain was my gateway drug into the world of distortion and feedback. He led me from band to band as I developed my taste for music and the love for the written word and chord. This became my muse as I watched more and more movies. Movies from Wes Anderson, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, The Coen Brothers, David Fincher or PTA and I watched how they integrated music and I was fascinated.

I started listening to music closer and I would begin to see stories within songs and draw inspiration from the songs. I envisioned the song in a scene and it led me to write more scenes or to plan even more. These songs were writing my stories. I got pretty good at writing stories, so I did what any sensible person would do from a conservative family would do – I enrolled at Purdue University in their creative writing program and also their film studies program and threw in some communications for good measure. I excelled and got through pretty quickly and graduated in four years. My senior year something changed.

I went to Harry’s Chocolate Shop with my friend Erinn – she worked with me. She brought her friend, Laura. Holy fuckballs this woman was beautiful. I had to see her again so I went out again, and again, and again. One day she asked me who I was there to see and I replied, “You.” She pushed my chest and smiled the prettiest smile I had seen. She stole me away and three months later I had asked her if she would marry me.

Twelve years later she still smiles that way. This time it might be because our five-year-old son says a fart joke and then laughs at himself. Or it might be our seven-year-old daughter telling her that she is beautiful. Dammit, I am a lucky man. I have done something right in these 34 years to get here. Generation Xers are typically cynical – I’m cynical. That may be more of a product of the cold 80s. I hope whatever generation my kids are is less cynical. I know they help me be less.

What do you like to read?

I typically read anything that is realistic, if that makes sense. If it can happen and it is a decent read, then I’ll be into it. I tend to stay away from genre fiction because of that. I haven’t gotten into the post-apocalyptic/dystopian craze or the zombie craze because of that. For some reason my head just gets taken out when things like that are going on.

Now, with that said, Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author. I know what you are thinking. How can he be your favorite author if you don’t like books about dystopian societies or space travel or aliens and shit? Well, he is. His books aren’t about those things so, I think it works. His books are usually about the human condition or politics or existentialism which are books I really prefer.

I can also get down with some philosophy books. Give me some Nietzsche, Thoreau, Camus or Chomsky and I’ll be good for a few days. I think books should always tell us something about ourselves when we are done reading them. It doesn’t have to be a life shattering revelation, but like the character, we should see a little change by the end of the book.

What are you reading right now and what do you think you will read next?

Right now I am reading Further Out Than I Thought by Michaela Carter. As for next what I will do is go to Barnes and Noble and buy a Vonnegut book and play “book cover roulette.” What I do is walk up and down the aisles with no pre-conceived notions and if a cover jumps at me, I will grab it and read the back for the summary. If I like that, I will read the first few pages to see if I’ll buy it. I love doing this to discover new authors. That is how I ended up with Michaela’s book. I am loving it so far.

Why do you like to write?

Writing is very therapeutic for me. My mind is so active and I love the study of the English language. I love how you can take a few words and put them together to make a few sentences and those few sentences can make a few paragraphs and those paragraphs can become a story. How a story can become crafted in a way that evokes an emotional response is fascinating to me. And that is something that drives me to become better at it and to find new ways to craft stories.

Tell us about where you live now.

Right now I live in Carmel, Indiana. It’s a suburb of Indianapolis. You can obviously deduce that I gravitate towards suburban culture. I like closeness of people and availability of anything I want without having to make plans to get it. Spontaneity is essential to my preferred sedentary lifestyle.

If you could invite any person, alive today or from history, to a dinner party who would you invite and why?

It’s definitely hard to pick just one here. I would definitely like to have a good conversation and some cocktails with Lincoln. I would like the raw story about how his policies weighed on him personally. I would also be interested in speaking with him about his personal life.

What advice can you give to people trying to achieve their dreams?

Remember why you had the dream. You may get derailed or life may happen and your dream may take longer than you anticipated, but if you remember why you had the dream in the first place, you will always work towards it and ultimately achieve it. I believe fully in giving a work/life balance, so I was okay not always being completely focused. You need to know yourself and what you are willing to sacrifice for happiness, love and your dreams. But, if you remember why you had that dream when you were a kid, teenager or whenever – it will all be worth it when the reward ultimately comes in the end.

Can you tell us about your book, When Life hands you a lemon?

When Life Hands You a Lemon was sort of a mistake. I typically write about 20-something cynics who fall in love and have to change in a certain way through this process and hopefully during these changes, I let my readers fall in love with them at the same time. WLHYAL is the complete opposite of that. We have Dan Lemon who is a mid-40s man who is sort of having this mid-life crisis. When he was just a teenager his mom was taken away from him in an unfortunate car accident. His mom was his only friend at the time and she was a religious woman. From that day, Dan turned his back on God and lost his faith.

Back in the present day, Dan was running through his routine when he saw a car accident outside of his retail sales job. There was a death in the accident and his mind starts racing. It’s just one of those days he thinks as he and his coworkers go to lunch. His 20-year younger colleague Jonathon, begins his day of grilling by asking him about his love life and we get to see Dan on the hot seat for the first time.

After a bit of banter and reflection Dan returns to work and when he looks up from his computer he does a double-take when he sees three armed robbers taking over his store. His head can’t fathom what is happening and he is more confused when he comes to in a car with a blind-fold on. He had been taken hostage by the three armed robbers.

Norm is the leader of the group and Matt and Paul are his cronies. While these three are definitely flawed men, who represent a certain depth of evil, they do have their redeeming qualities. Norm essentially introduces himself to Dan by letting Dan know that Norm will kill him by day’s end. The book begs the question, if you had one day to change your life, what would you do?

During his hours in captivity, Norm talks non-stop on a plethora of topics from Orson Welles, to penis size, to what happens to you when you die. These are the central moments to the book – these nagging questions from Norm and how Dan answers them, or how he relates to them in a flashback. By the time we are coming to the end of the book I think we see a clear change within Dan, maybe even Norm as well. Dan literally stares his fears in the face when he is with Norm.

Can you tell us anything about what you are working on now and your inspiration for this?

Absolutely. I’m in the middle of a manuscript that I’ve named Mourning Skye. I actually originally had the idea probably in 2002 or 2003. The original idea would be about a couple that bonds over a woman that died in the 9/11 attacks. I still like that idea, but I took it a different direction and I think it will be a good read for you guys. This one definitely goes back to my roots. I kept the idea of bonding over a woman that died, but I dropped the 9/11 aspect of it. Burke dated Skye for a time and Angeline was Skye’s half-sister. Burke has a degree in psychology, but rather work as a bartender as he feels he gets more honest reactions from people. Angeline has just finished her undergrad in criminal justice and will be going to law school.

The two casually meet after Skye’s funeral and have a very inebriated encounter. The two hit it off, but things become complicated when Angeline is late. The two have to decide what is best for each of their future. Do they have the baby or terminate the pregnancy and cut ties.

Can you give us a quote from your favorite book?

“Fucking was how babies were made.” – Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

Or

“New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” – Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

 Buy you copy now, http://amzn.com/1941541224

WIN THE BOMBER

If you would like to win your own copy of THE BOMBER, sent to your very front door, follow the following link to enter the draw.

This time around it is only for US residents, but be sure to enter now for your chance!

Enter here!

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/159641-the-bomber