Paul O'Brien's Blog, page 5

The Words for Bucks Campaign

It took a while but it ended up better than I could ever have imagined.

As most of you know from reading the blogs and tweets - I am a wrestling fan. I have been for twenty-five years. I am also a writer. I have been for fifteen years. In all that time I have always wanted to write a wrestling story. I’ve tried to write a wrestling play but the stage was too small for me to tell the story I wanted tell. I’ve tried a screenplay but a first time writer would never get the kind of budget needed.

So I settled on a novel.

I wanted to write a book that read like an organised crime story but was set in the territorial days of pro wrestling. More about that here.

When I began to write it my number one goal was to get it to Mick Foley. He was one of the last huge names to make through the wrestling territory system, he has wrested everywhere in the world, he is a best selling author is his own right - and he’s always been my favorite wrestler.

As friend and comedian Brendan Burns calls him, “The most compelling man in wrestling.”

So how does a playwright from Wexford in Ireland get a multi time world champion, multi time New York Times Best Selling Author and a WWE Superstar to endorse his book?

Well, it started here:

(Can I just add that me favouriting my own tweets was to make it easier to find them for this blog)

(Seriously)

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At the time Mick was raising awareness for RAINN and he tweeted that he would mow people’s lawn, come to your birthday party or host a wrestling party in your house if you made a good donation. So, I, as one of his 350,000 plus followers, threw my little tweet into the sea of other tweets. I also imagined when he saw ‘wrestling themed book’ he moved quickly along.

But, the next day he replied with this:

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My head nearly blew off my shoulders. I named my first dog - Cactus Jack - after this man and now he was going to read my “wrestling themed” novel! So I sent my pages and waited.

Then this happened. Foley decides to leave TNA.


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With his departure and rumours of his return to WWE I didn’t want to bother too much with a follow up. He was starting up really rev up his comedy dates too and I was starting to think that I might be onto something with the book. I had been keeping in contact with him here and there but his schedule was also so crazy that it felt off to contact him.

So I decided to let the line go cold and wait until the book was finished and take the risk of cheekily asking Mick to read the whole thing.

While Mick was lighting it up as a stand up and his return to WWE was all but signed, I was trying to get noticed on Twitter. Every writer blog I read said I needed a presence. It was going well.

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The book though, I felt was going really well. I was getting great feedback from my beta readers - most of whom hated wrestling - so that was a start. I also began to think of contacting Mick in earnest again.

Particularly when this day came.

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So I waited months before I emailed him again. It was a while since we last spoke so I wasn’t even sure he’d remember me. I had been following his twitter feed and saw just how many requests are made of his time. Signings, readings, comedy dates, benefit nights, wrestling events, birthday retweets, wedding retweets, retweets, retweets.

But, I clicked send and waited to see what might happen.

He sent me an email that included the following:

Paul,

Congratulations! Anyone who finishes a book deserves to be very proud. I would be very happy if you could sign a book and send it to me.

Mick

Woot! Woot! He was still interested in reading it. I was worried about leaving it all that time - nearly a year from the time I first contacted him - before getting back in touch but I’m not ashamed to say that I looked much like this in front of my desk.

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So I signed it as requested and sent it away on the long trip across the water.


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And then - the wait. The agonising wait to see what someone who come through the territory system thought about a book set in that era.

A couple of weeks later at 4 in the morning my phone beeped. Best. Email. Ever. (Redacted for embarrassing praise and spoilers!)

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And he also posted this:

(This one was favoured because I thought it was awesome)

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Which lead to another late night/early morning beep and Mick sending me this.

The legendary Foley tech skills and generosity on display in one single clip!

So here we are. I had admired Mick’s charity work for many years, and in particular his work with RAINN. I work in a non-profit also that deals with substance misuse and criminogenic behaviours. I was only too delighted to reaffirm my offer of donating to RAINN. After all, this is how we got this ball rolling.

So I wanted it to be 50%. I want to help out. I want to say thanks. And I want to say that Mick Foley is as cool and generous as everyone says he is.

Now - enough of my fanboyism - let’s raise some money for RAINN.

GET YOUR COPY HERE.
AND GET YOUR FACEBOOK BANNERS AND TWITTER BACKGROUND HERE.

Mick Foley Endorses Blood Red Turns Dollar Green

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to WWE Superstar, wrestling legend, 3 time heavyweight champion, 5 times New York Times best selling author and my favourite wrestler of all time - MICK FOLEY!

I'm working on a blog that details how this all happened at the moment but for now I got this in my email one night.

He was on the road with little technological means but still took the time to make this video and send it to me.

We're working on something really cool together that I'll post in a couple of days. But for now....

Mick Foley endorsing my book, Blood Red Turns Dollar Green.

How to Get a Legend to Endorse Your Book from a Bedroom in Rural Ireland

My name is Paul O'Brien and I am a writer. I have been very fortunate in this area and I have also been unfortunate. At the beginning I went through a period of getting dream gigs and loosing them by this much.

Until one day I took a split second decision that really paid off.

A few years previous I signed with a great indie film company in New York but Lehman Brother’s collapse helped to make sure it never got its budget to get made. I also signed with a few great theatre companies but never made their stages. Commissioning officers left or got fired. New changes in management meant new ideas and new writers drafted in before I got the green light.

I've been paid well and paid nothing. I have been flown to meetings in New York and Switzerland and I've been stranded in Galway with no place to stay and no money to get home.

In my fifteen years paying my dues as a writer I got in front of audience after audience with my plays. Good nights, bad nights, big crowds and tiny crowds. Standing ovations and brutal reviews - all of that went into my learning how to tell a story.

But like I said, I have also been very fortunate. I have also been produced or commissioned by The National Theatre of Ireland, Druid, The Gaeity School of Acting and Red Kettle. I have written sixteen plays, two short movies, two full length screenplays and a book of awful poetry.

I have now also finished my first novel - Blood Red Turns Dollar Green.[image error]

After years of near misses and could-have's I also was weary enough to lay out a publishing plan. In the perfect world - who or what would I need to get my book into the hands of the readers who I thought my appreciate it most.

In my wildest dreams, with all the planets aligned, I simply wrote one name.

Sure, there were many people who I feel could have - and did - help me along the way. Great beta readers, great editors, great novelists giving me advice. But there was one single name at the top of my list.

That person was also one of the biggest names of all time in the world of professional wrestling.

I had no idea how to get to him, and no idea if he would be interested in reading - much less endorsing my book - of which I hadn't even started.

So I decided to begin, concentrate on quality of content, and stop playing fantasy football. There was no way in the real world that I would get my book to him. But that's the beauty of technology - most of us don't live in the real world anymore. Most of us split our time between the real world and our social networks.

Lucky for me - so do wrestling legends.

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Part 2 coming on Tues.

P.S. It’s not Jim Neidhart.

Another Fantastic Review

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The following is a review from Chris Pilkington for Collar and Elbow

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In our first ever novel review, we tackle a tale of deception, double crosses and above all else, money. Irish crime writer Paul O’Brien plunges into the murky waters of the late sixties and early seventies world of professional wrestling and emerges with an instant classic on his hands. Oh, and blood. Lots and lots of blood.

BLOOD RED TURNS DOLLAR GREEN is a book about wrestling. Except it isn’t. It’s an organised crime novel then, except it’s not really one of those either. Perhaps it’s a study in how far the human body and mind can be stretched before it reaches some kind of breaking point, yet it’s never explicitly clear just how much of the physical and emotional pain is real. It’s a character study of three men who are desperately trying to remember where the character ends and the man begins.

Set in the heavily protected wrestling industry of the sixties and seventies, Blood Red Turns Dollar Green is a fascinating portrayal of the lengths two promoters will go to in order to keep the world title in their territory. Danno Garland of New York and Proctor King of Florida form an uneasy alliance that seems doomed from the start, but as with everything else in this novel, nothing is quite as it seems. Caught somewhere in the middle is Lenny Long, an outsider looking for a way in.

The word ‘Kayfabe’ is thrown around a lot in the novel. We all know that word, right? A carny term used in wrestling to mean the protection of reality within the industry. And whilst the wrestlers and promoters huddle together to keep out the ‘marks’ such as Lenny , so too author O’Brien closes ranks around his two key protagonists Danno and Proctor, always leaving the reader second guessing their motives. As Lenny slowly starts to work his way through the minefield of the business, so too our own understanding of it starts to evolve. . In many ways he symbolises the modern, so called ‘smart mark’ fans we have all become. Sometimes he thinks he knows more than he does. Sometimes he turns down a blind alley and gets a sucker punch for his troubles. Sometimes he knows more than he thinks.

And it’s this constant drip feed of clues and misinformation that makes the novel so engaging. It’s so hard to put down because of the feeling that the next chapter may well be the key to understanding the whole sordid affair. It’s an uneasy read at times, the language makes it strictly for adult eyes only, and the violence is blunt. Nobody comes out smelling of roses, everybody has their angle.

There is plenty that wrestling fans will recognise in the book. There are shades of the whole Bret vs Shawn saga, a definite nod to Vince McMahon’s Machiavellian tendencies and is that a Kerry Von Erich reference? Yet, as cliché as it is to say it, I’m going to. “You don’t have to be a wrestling fan to enjoy Blood Red Turns Dollar Green!” There have been attempts in the past to write novels based in the world of professional wrestling but this is the first I have ever read that feels authentic. It’s neither patronising to the reader nor is it so far up it’s own rear end that only hardcore wrestling fans will understand.

Blood Red Turns Dollar Green is a book about wrestling and everything that statement implies. It’s genuinely one of the best books I have read this year which is a very welcome surprise. It’s a captivating read from start to finish which deserves a place on your bookshelf…just don’t blame us if you’re not entirely sure which books to surround it with.

Both digital and hard copy versions of the book are available to buy from Paul O’Brien’s website now. Click here to buy yours.

My Important First Tout

I would consider this a success.

The Sorkin Problem

This blog contains spoilers about The Newsroom episodes so far.
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Dear Mr. Sorkin,

Where’s it gone? Why have you lost it?

Of course, I’m not talking about talent or skill or drive or reason. I’m talking about your main ingredient. The Newsroom looks and feels familiar - Sorkonien - but the top note that you used to hit with ease is not only lacking but is almost absent in full.

What happened?

I hear you on talk shows and see the puff pieces, and on them and in them you talk about the show like an old screwball comedy. Hence the prat falls, the ditzy comedy and the pretty women who love the heroic newsmen from afar.

I usually give in and love all that stuff. I mourned when the West Wing was over and felt cheated when they pulled Studio 60. Both shows, for me, were highly entertaining and fast and hopeful and flawed and aspirational and flawed. And flawed. Perfect.

The Newsroom though - I want to love it. I want to line it up with Breaking Bad and get my mind blown by two completely different worlds on the same night. Breaking Bad is holding up its end of deal. The Newsroom though - it’s kind of hard to watch. I don’t mind the lecturing(yet) and I can stand the lefty aeroplanes flying around, but one thing I can’t forgive is the lack of conflict.

Where is it?

Can anyone point out to me two major differing opinions in the whole newsroom? And what do the individuals who work there want? And what happens if they don’t get it? [image error]

Mr. Sorkin - where’s the conflict and where are the consequences?

In The West Wing there were ideological differences, staff differences, party differences, moral differences, philosophical differences. And there was a whole fictional world at stake because of those differences.

In The Newsroom everyone sounds the same. I mean literally. There’s the Old Sorkin who runs the news division, the Middle Aged Sorkin who anchors the news show, the Female Sorkin who’s the wind beneath Middle Aged Sorkin’s wings.

The place is full of fast talking, shouty Sorkins.

For instance. At the end of Episode 5 **********SPOLIER**************KINDA******************the whole building lines up to give a donation towards the ransom of a foreign kid who they enlisted for a news piece. Everyone single person lined up. What a nice gesture.

What a missed opportunity.

Even the guys from another show - who were waring over staff, times, shows etc at the start - were lined up. All of them smiling, all of them wanting the same thing - to do the right thing.

And this is the problem. Everyone is trying to do the right thing - the same thing - and it’s boring as fuck. There’s a couple of token attempts at friction towards Will and his crew - an evil station owner and a gossip reporter. But, so what? What’s the worst that can happen? They loose their job? A fabulously wealthy know-it-all and his recently hired nod-along minions lose their job?

Eh?

I think there’s the problem. It’s going to be really hard to create conflict here because the show was built on a fundamental flaw - reality.

It makes it almost impossible to create conflict on The Newsroom because unfortunately they ‘live’ in our world. They can’t set a bomb off in Time Square in the season finale or have the President shot at like they did on The West Wing. By their own rules it wouldn’t feel right to make up dramatic events that didn’t happen. Their politicians are real, their stories are real and their dates, times and events are real. They tied themselves to us - but in the recent past.

We already know that the aim of ‘telling the truth in the news’ was a failure. Oil spills happen, politicians get shot and the people we’re going to watch as they can do nothing to change it. They’re just observers as we were. The show now simply asks us to look at people who are witnessing what we have already witnessed - and their reaction to it.

It’s a show trapped in ‘fact’ in our world, where people talk quickly and walk into glass doors.

There’s no real conflict, no real consequences, no real reason to invest.

But I still really want to.

Fri 10th August - Big News

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Something really cool is going to happen here on Friday the 10th of August.

Are You Born a Writer?

People are born knowing how to paint or draw or sing. For me it was writing. I just knew how to do it and I knew I wanted to do it. I still had, and have, a load to learn but I think I was born with the basics.

I used to watch the latest Bruce Lee movie to hit our local video rental shop and I would immediately write part two of whatever I saw. Enter the Dragon 2? Check. Game of Death 2? Yep. I loved to watch and write, watch and write. I’d then cut a cereal box, fold it in half, cover it in a blank page, draw my ‘cover’ and ‘stitch the pages into it with twine. (My father was a fisherman and one of the best ‘stitchers’ I’ve ever seen.) Hey presto - I made a book.

The thing was - I grew up in a working class part of Ireland where writing books or plays was well, for someone else to be doing. No one I grew up with liked to write - must didn’t read if they didn’t have to - and no one in my family jumped out as a writer either. We had guitarists, artists, actors and singers - but no writers.

I always wondered as I was growing up where I got it from.

Then recently, my father found this in the attic of the home he grew up in. It was written by his mother who had lost her child to an illness.. She died before I was born, actually when my father was a boy, and I had only ever seen one photograph of her before. I don’t know why but she always struck me as a hard, cold woman. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I don’t know where I got writing from. But I would guess that it had something to do with this woman, my grandmother, Alice Fenlon. She was a woman with little or no education who felt compelled to write when she was heartbroken. I never met her but I would imagine wherever I got it from, she was there first.

New Office

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Some painted floorboards. A beautiful, helpful wife. Some MDF and 2x1’s. A handy father and bang! New home office. Hoping to write many new stories in here.

5 Mistakes Made by New Writers

Readers of this site will know that Blood Red Turns Dollar Green i s my first book - but, I have been writing for a long time. These are five mistakes I’ve seen writers in general make.

1. They don't want to serve their apprenticeship.

Most writers write a lot. They die, get murdered in reviews and play to empty houses or collect dust on the bottom selves. But they go back to their keyboards and write again. Something different. Something better. With new skill and lessons learned. And not because of a critic - because like any trade - the more you do the better you get.

Here’s a review of one of my plays. Well, two reviews of the same play reviewed on the same night, side-by-side in the same paper by two different reviewers.( click to open ) [image error]

Your first story should be terrible. It should be oversold, overly emotional(my first story was called 'Emotions.' Ugh. In my defense I was nine) and it should have a hundred problems for you to fix. This is how you pay your dues. This is how you become better. And this is how you learn to talk to your audience.

2. They have no patience.

Writing is all about the long game. The only thing fast about writing is the speed in which readers move on to the next story. The writing process, the submission, the editing, the formatting, the rejections, the release date(if you're lucky) all take a long time. I once got rejected from an establishment three years after they had already taken my work.

I read people online talking about releasing seven to ten books a year. They talk about the numbers, the volume of stuff they can put out to ‘maximize the exposure to the buyer.’ I just want to cry when I read that type of article or thread. More about that here.

3. They don't get out there enough.

This is directly linked to number one. Just because your mother/wife/friend or writer friend finally likes what you're doing doesn't make it good. It might just mean that they can't possibly hurt you again or they might all have horrible taste. Stand in your mother's living room. Observe. See, she's has terrible taste. So don’t be happy with what she says. If your confused as to whose opinion to trust, use this one rule - if you were made by them or they have seen you naked, they will lie to you to make you feel better/not kill yourself.

Take your book/play/screenplay etc and find a way to get it into as many hands/eyeballs/TV's as possible. No one biting? Do it yourself. I wrote, produced, directed and built the sets for my first five plays having never seen a play before. I did it because I felt I had worked long enough on the theory and I needed to get to the practical.

You need to get in front of a large crowd and fucking die. Be horrible. Then you'll learn.

4. They change. Not in a good way.

By all means read, observe and study how others do it. Then forget everything you’ve just read, observed and studied. You are not them. They are better at writing like themselves than you are. Find out why it’s important that someone listen to you. What have you got to say? Why are your words important or entertaining? If you can’t figure that out then I hear there’s a huge market in fan fiction at the moment.

Early in my career I spent a long time with excellent writers in the west of Ireland. I was totally sucked in by their skill and their turn of phrase. I then started to write like them - only badly. I left the next day.

Be good or be shit but for your writing's sake be yourself.

5. They expect too much too soon.

Again, see number one and number two.

Your first story shouldn't be a hit. That would destroy you. You don't have the skill or the experience to continue at that level. Be happy selling a modest number of books, or seats in a theatre, while you learn your craft. At least that way you will suck in front of less people, so when you do get good at your job not as many will avoid you based on past writing.

We've all seen the athlete who was brought up to the majors too soon. Loads of potential but no experience. What happens to that person? Do you want to be that person?

When I hear people talking about not having the motivation to continue because their first book didn’t make amazon’s top 100 I smile. Why do I smile? Cause it’s writing’s Darwinism. You’ve got to keep going and you’ve got to keep getting better, write more, write differently. And even after twenty years and twenty books, writing owes you nothing.

Don’t expect too much. Write because it’s what you do. The world will let you know if your good or bad enough at it to get paid.

I hope you do write though. It’s a wonderful way to spend your life - writing about someone else’s life.

Good luck!