Sorry, you must be a member of this group to do that.
Done reading...
Well...I've gone through the nearly 1000 double-spaced pages of A Place of Safety and now have everything in my head as to what is needed, where. Lots of sticky-notes. Red pen corrections and comments. The usual crap. All three binders are on my table and I'm amazed at how much I've finally been able to do.
Book 3 -- Return to Derry -- is the one in the most need of work, then Houston, then Derry in Book 1. But that's how I work. I rewrite the beginning of my stories over and over and over while the ends tend to get short-shrift. Not this time. Every part of this book has to ring true for it to work, so I'll be redoing Book 3 over a lot.What's got me going closer on the story, a bit, is how the current political situation in the US so closely parallels Northern Ireland's. A group of radical politicians are trying to maintain power through lies, tricks, questionable legal maneuvers, threats, favoritism and intimidation...and I do NOT mean the Democrats. I haven't voted for a Republican in the US since 1980, and that one was John Anderson, who was running against Reagan for the GOP nomination. When it was handed to Ronnie Ray-gun, he left the party and so did I. I could see the writing on the wall, and damned if it hasn't come true, in spades...
Sometimes I wonder if that's part of the reason this story got going. I've been working on it for decades. A lot of time was wasted with me telling myself I couldn't do it because it's set in a part of the world I may have visited but never lived in and, honestly, I don't think I'll ever make it sound right for someone from Derry. I've even had people tell me it's not possible, but still I kept coming back to it. So I've finally accepted that I'm to be the author of this tale and am just telling it as best I can.
I have no idea why Brendan stuck with me through all the years of worry and fear and ridiculousness, but he did...and it's slowly moving towards being completed. I won't have it done this year, I know that, but next year...yes. 2022.
That will be a cause for celebration!
