RIHC6v2 will be published soon

Got the proof, today, and a contract. Moving right along. Just waiting on the cover art.

Going through the first part of POS showed me that even though I have over 70K in wordage I'm just 60% done with the book...maybe 50%. In the part up to the point in the story that I posted, last night, I still need to introduce Joanna and set up Grianan Ailigh as a place the boys sneak off to, then have the October 5th confrontation occur. I also need the celebration that takes place after the British troops arrive, Operation Motorman, Bloody Sunday and the growing sense of betrayal felt by the Catholics as the British take the side of their oppressors. Right there is a good six chapters.

And I have at least half the second and third sections of the book still to write. Man...this thing may wind up being 150,000 words long, over 600 pages. I DO think I'm Tolstoy.

And in the back of my brain, Brendan smirks at me. My life now is to tell what is to be told, so I can't whine about it yet. Even if I did, my only acknowledgement would be a shrug from him. Write it first then see how you can cut...which doesn't work too well with me. I've found once my stories decide on a length, they stay damned close to it. "Bobby Carapisi" was 125K long till I trimmed it back to 120K...then broke it into two books and it wound up just as long as before I edited it down. Same for my scripts -- though those go by page count.

For example, I adapted the biography of Beryl Markham into a 160 page first draft then trimmed it to 130 pages, but only by removing an entire subplot and changing my style. It won me Best Adaptation at The Houston International Film Festival in 1991. Jeez...nineteen years ago. Did me a hell of a lot of good, that award. Not. The women I wrote it for lost the rights to Sydney Pollack, and he wouldn't even read my script. And he never made the movie. So...what was my point? Oh, I did a refresh on the script, a couple years back, to use as a sample, updating my style to my current one, and tried to cut it back to 120...but no matter what I did, it stayed at 130. So that's how long it is.

Such is life in the big city.