One of those days...

Long and not very easy. Voting went fast because I do it in the community room of my building, and no one was ahead of me. I heard I was #165 voting by 9am. But then I hit Quest for the bloodwork, fasting, and even though I had a 9:30 appointment I wasn't called till after 10am. And the person doing the draw had to play with the veins in my hand to get all they needed. Veins in my arm have long since hidden away. Got a nice little hematoma, there.

I shipped a copy of NWFO off to a cousin who'd asked for a signed one and had to patiently work with a PO Desk clerk who has a neurological disorder that makes her difficult to understand. I also learned because I had one digit wrong on the street address, books I'd sent to a friend were being returned to me. I'd used 12106 instead of 12108.

The office was easy, at least. Talked about the book fair in Hong Kong and how some dealers are ignoring the fact that things are different, now. Hong Kong is not really a free-port, anymore, and new rules have to be followed. Got labels and paperwork for my next packing job and was provided lunch. Beef on Weck from a sandwich shop near the place. It was tasty, but the meat was almost raw...and I didn't feel all that great the rest of the day.

My car's brakes didn't feel good, either, so set up an appointment to have them checked, on Thursday. Bumped getting my haircut till then, too. Got $140 worth of groceries and came home. Took a nap, and got started on reformatting HNH into an ebook...and found a typo. Of course.

I should have waited. I'm back to thinking the damn thing doesn't make any sense or is too simplistic. Too late to make any huge changes...even though I'm going to. One minor character is shifting from male to female because it makes more sense.

I'm impossible.

Damned rules...

Well, it seems in order for me to get a review done at Publishers Weekly, I have to send them an ebook version of Home Not Home. Which I'd forgotten about having to do the two previous times. So the next couple of days...well Wednesday and Thursday...will be taken up prepping one. Irritating.

It's not an easy process, to start with. But I've done it enough times to where it's no longer painful. Just time-consuming. And I can't really start tomorrow because it's voting day and I'm getting bloodwork and going into Caladex for a little while, then grocery shopping and getting a haircut.

I've been putting off the last part for as long as I could. I just didn't want to go out and around people until I had to, and that's what Tuesday's for.

I spent today working up the front cover of HNH and prepping the synopsis for the back cover. I'll need a photo for the back...but haven't found it, yet. Looking at this, now, I'm thinking I'll clean up some of the mess around the lad's eye, to make it clearer. Maybe over the nose, as well. But this is a good start.

Dear God, I'm hoping Harris slaughters that orange traitor, whose name I will not say or write. If he manages to cheat his way in, we're dead as a country.

I think this is it...

I have a really good feeling about this cover mockup. It's got the right blend for what I want -- young, almost blank so any emotion could be read into it. I added a highlight to his eye, but that's all. I'm going to let it sit a few days, but I do feel right about it.

After working on BC, yesterday, I went into blank mode, today. I was half-intending to go out for groceries, today, but just couldn't work up the impetus. Did get laundry done. Last of my paperwork for the jobs this past week. Got a lot of cash coming in but also a lot going out, since a lot of it's reimbursement for my expenses.

BC is still working its way through my mind. I may get back onto that, tomorrow. Or I may go get the groceries I need and a haircut, if anyone's available. And a salad. I'm not big on the green stuff, but sometimes I just plain want it. Hit Panera and get their Fuji Apple with turkey instead of chicken.

A cousin of mine told me she made tamales and suddenly I'm craving the damn things. But there is no-place in this town that offers the real ones, like you find in San Antonio. Small. Slim. Wrapped in a corn husk. Three good bites and it's gone.

The ones they make here are the size of burritos. Not the same thing. And they offer chicken. Sacrilege! Tamales are made with pork! That's like putting chicken in a chef salad. Turkey and ham should be the only meats...maybe with bacon bits...

Not that I'm being didactic.

Do I even inhabit my mind?

I pulled up my original Word doc of Bobby Carapisi, skimmed through it and pulled out the sections I'm keeping for the screenplay to put on a separate document. The next step is to go through that and slice out all the extraneous chit-chat and mental wordage I've put in it, thanks to Eric, Bobby, and Allen.

I'm also updating it from 15 years ago, when it first came out. Bobby now tells his story on his phone instead of a tape recorder. Eric doesn't take his long walk from downtown to Hollywood, anymore; too much of that area's been redeveloped and is now bland. And I chopped out Bobby's courtship of his wife, Donna, and will be combining two of Allen's remembered rapes into one.

There are a couple of TV talk show transcripts I need to figure out how to work around because they are long. As is Eric's ordeal while undergoing the gathering of evidence for the rape kit. At the moment, I'll be lucky to keep it at 150 pages.

So why am I doing this? No idea. It's almost automatic. I did not consciously choose it. My thought, today, was to work up my expenses for the last three jobs and have those ready for Monday...even though I won't get reimbursed until the middle of the month, at the earliest.

I also need to prep for another packing job the week of the 18th. But playing with my book like a screenwriter doing an adaptation took preference.

This won't be the first time I've shifted a long book into a screenplay. I used two books about Beryl Markham to develop a 130 page screenplay about her life up till she flew from the UK to North America, and got an award for it. I just don't know if I can do that with something I originated.

So much of the story's emotional depth comes from the lives I build in each character. It's that way with all my novels, even the erotic ones. I write stories and characters, not porno-crap mean solely to titillate. Maybe that's why I don't do so well with them, sales-wise.

Why? Whhhyyyyyyyy?

I wonder about my brain, sometimes. The directions it takes without my expecting it. How plans I make get shattered because my mental processes refuse to speak to me until they can cause me the most chaos.

I stopped by The Corning Museum of Glass, today, and saw a couple new exhibits and got some ideas on how to makes Dair's chosen art form to be even more impressive when he makes his projects...and had a damn good butternut squash ravioli for lunch. Also learned Blown Away 4 has happened. But it's only on NetFlix. Dammit.

And then, on the final leg of my drive home, what did I do? Work more on the screenplay for Bobby Carapisi. 5 acts; 125 pages, maybe 130, max. Cutting the story to the bone.

Act One -- Eric's assault (alluded to but not shown), and how he's manhandled by the system of justice, despite pushing for justice. His drifts into drugs and prostitution.

Act Two -- Bobby's assault (also alluded to) but he was handled with kid gloves, letting him ignore the effects it's having on him. But rumors keep building.

Act Three -- Eric learns of how Bobby was coddled and hits the media, blowing the story up. Bobby is driven off the baseball diamond and commits suicide. Followed by Eric's guilt over his part in it and an apology to Bobby's mother.

Act Four -- Allen is sent to prison despite claiming his innocence. He insists everything was consensual. But Eric connects with him to tell his story...and investigates his claims, including speaking with a past victim.

Act Five -- Eric locates Allen's family and realizes he was brutally abused by them. He drifted into being part of the assaults, lied non-stop about who he was, and is self-destructive, now...but he finally admits what was done to Bobby

Epilogue -- Allen dies in prison, and Eric is on the road to recovery.

From left field...

So...the job this morning went nice and smooth and I headed straight home...well, to Corning because I'm visiting the Museum of Glass, tomorrow. Then going home. But as I'm driving along what has to be the most tedious stretch of turnpike in America, asking myself questions about Dair's window and other possibilities for HNH's cover...suddenly I started thinking about how to adapt Bobby Carapisi into a screenplay.

I don't know why. No idea where that came from. Just suddenly I'm working up a vague outline. Despite knowing this script would never get made, not in today's Hollywood. It's a story about two men--Eric and Bobby--who are raped by a third--Allen, and a couple of buddies--and how differently each is treated by the system of justice and society.

But I figured out how to tell it without actually showing the rapes. Focus on the emotional and psychological effects. There's Bobby, who's straight and cannot handle the aftermath so commits suicide, while Eric, who's gay, slowly comes to terms with what happened and finds a way back to balance. He also grows to understand who and what Allen was, and why, and winds up feeling sorry for him.

It's not a short book. 468 pages. But I'm thinking a script of maybe 140 pages. And not cheap to make. Bobby's a relief pitcher for an expansion team in LA, so there would be baseball games involved. Including one where he's driven off the field by fans who reject the idea he was sexually assaulted and accuse him of cheating on his wife with a man.

Maybe it's because Bobby's from Philadelphia. There's a pivotal moment where Eric apologizes to Bobby's mother for his unintended part in driving him to kill himself, and I saw a lot of houses that match the description I give of her home. I dunno. The book's been out 15 years...

It's just, I could not shake it and by the time I got to the Corning area, I had it half worked out.

Driving and thinking...

The drive to Philadelphia was just over 7 hours and on the tedious side. I'm too late to see the fall colors in the trees. A couple still had their leaves but most were barren or a dull brown. I wonder what that means for winter...

I think I'm leaning towards reworking Dair's Window into a readable form. I've read through most of what I'd already written, and it's like a long-form outline or treatment for a novel. The gimmick of having it told by a dead man is okay to start with, but then it drifts into too much exposition and not enough revealing the story as it happens.

That's what I tried to do with A Place of Safety -- having the story actually happen as it's being told. I don't know how successful I was, but I did get some good feedback on the first two volumes. 

One potential problem with what I've written is when Adam is telling of his life. He was kicked out of his home, at age fifteen, for being gay and made a ward of the state. Then he was housed with a good Christian man who looked after several similar boys...and secretly pimped them out to various older men. To which, the state turned a blind eye.

That was in Quebec. Adam escaped it by going to Vancouver and finding work there. The thing is,  that could be seen as child pornography. I don't detail what happens, but it is an issue I need to think about, these days. Especially as regards teenage boys. The MAGAt crowd loves to scream about that while ignoring how its own members molest little girls.

That said...it's an important part of what makes Adam the feral creature he is, when he connects with Dair, and how he changes. Even as he brings out the best in Dair's art. So I need it for his character.

Hmm...I wonder if I'm aiming to be too genteel...or maybe I'm just cowardly...

My age is telling...

The last few days have been really vicious on me. I was keeping myself on East Coast time with my body clock but apparently my inner workings didn't like that. It started with my flight to Seattle winding up being nearly 45 minutes late. So I didn't effectively get to be till after 3am, so I think I got adjusted to West Coast and just didn't realize it.

At the Seattle Book Fair everything was going great...till one dealer lost his labels and couldn't figure out if he'd packed them or thrown them away. So I scrambled to find a solution that only pissed off other people. But couldn't be helped. Also, one dealer was going back to London but I could not find a heat-treated pallet to build them onto (it's required for int'l shipments), so that's something else that needed to be taken care of, Monday. When I could not be there.

Because Monday, I was getting up at 5am to catch a 7am flight so I could get to San Francisco early enough to handle a pickup. And I really felt like I was getting up at 5am.

Then the pickup went completely wrong and I wound up having to bring 32 boxes of books down a very awkward set of stairs to pack them into my car. Fortunately, Avis handed me a Dodge Charger (with 70,000 miles on it!) but that trunk and back seat were big enough to handle it. And at the warehouse, I packed the container they were being shipped in.

By the time it was all done, I was exhausted, yet still had to get up at 6am for an 8am flight home. I had to leave that early so I didn't wind up getting home at 1am, because tomorrow I'm driving to Philadelphia.

I'm too old for this shit.

What's good is, during the prelude to handling Seattle, I managed to search Shutterstock for some images...and this is getting close to what I want for the cover of A Place of Safety-Home Not Home.

There's another image of this same model, who looks a lot like an Irish actor I thought would be good for Brendan, where his head isn't cocked, at all. I'll check that out later.

Right now...I need to water my plants and take a shower and sleep.

Think, again...

I swear...I get all excited about an image and work up a cover with it and it's exactly what I want...and then the next day I find something better. Maybe. Not sure yet. Not 100% on this particular face. Or the lack of hair on his head. But...I do feel better about the feeling behind this one, where he's sort of vanishing into the wall.

I'll be like this for a while until I find the one that works. The cover for New World For Old is maybe a bit on the bland side, but it fits the story so I still like it. And having each of the images on the HB framed, and showing a slow progression of Brendan from boy to young man, fits for me.

I may keep tinkering over the next week. I'll be handling the move-out for the Seattle Book Fair on Sunday then hopping down to San Francisco to deal with a pickup of more books, then flying home and driving to Philly for another. so the week is taken up by traveling and business. I won't have a lot of time to relax and focus, a bit.

Thinking about the paperback covers...I halfway expect to go a lot simpler, for them. Not sure yet. I'll need to buy fresh ISBNs to use.

God, I've sunk so much money into my novels. Artwork and graphics and editing and set-up and details...and I'm nowhere near breaking even. I'm happy people are reading my work...and I get mostly good feedback on it all...but it'd be nice to actually make some serious revenue, for a change. Pay off my debts before I die.

Yeah, right, that's gonna happen.

I think I have my cover...

I was searching through Shutterstock for images of the Troubles in NI and not having much luck. Nothing was catching my eye until I inadvertently scrolled too far to the bottom and noticed the wall with IRA Ghost written on it. I added the No at the top.

I saved it and went looking for something or someone to put in front of it and, after a huge number of wrong directions and a couple of guys who would work all right...I found this model in a different pose. Just head and shoulders with a light on half his face. I dug into his images to see if the light was better placed...

And this is what I caught. I had to shift the image 40 degrees counter-clockwise and remove the color profile to make it work...but I really like this mock-up. I'll post it on Facebook and get some feedback. See if anyone agrees with me.

I set up HNH with the Library of Congress for a copyright and LCCN. And I have a couple of queries out regarding getting reviews for the book. Next step is to get my template for the cover from Ingram.

I don't want to start doing the ebook format till I get my notes back from my editor. I've got a solid Table of Contents in the HB format, but that doesn't shift to ebook. All they want is links between the ToC and chapters. But I'll be having plenty of fun making corrections in the text and do not feel the need to do that in two different files.

Getting closer and closer...