Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Brendan's directions

It's funny how things work, but just when I figure I know what direction I'm going next with this story, Brendan takes me down a side road and makes me aware of another aspect of it. This time, I thought I'd start in on The Battle of the Bogside in 1969, the incident that brought British troops into Northern Ireland. I watched an interesting BBC documentary by the same name (that left out a few salient facts and skimmed over others, but was fantastic for the archival news footage of Catholics fighting the RUC and the Protestants who came to help the constables) and already had an idea of how to approach it -- and what did Brendan do? He took me to months later, just as tensions are rising between the Catholic population and the British troops, to have a conversation with a mate of his who's spiraling into madness from his hate. Two 13 year-old boys trying to have an adult conversation and not really understanding how to do so. I didn't write a lot on it, but it's beginning to get the gist of their discussion over. I think. This one's going to take a lot of finesse.

Right now I'm waiting for a call from Kasey at J. Morrison Group to discuss the next section of the storyboarding job. Seems this one'll be working out images to fit the narrative, since there won't be a spoken narration to go with it. I'll be focused on that, for a while...but since this is already going to be a huge book, I'm not as stressed as I was about completing it. It's rolling along as it wants to, and I'm no longer pushing now that there's momentum.

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