Derry, Northern Ireland

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

Friday, February 25, 2011

Halfway there, finally

"Lyons' Den" is running right along.  I have the story up to where Daniel arrives at the cabin all set...well, as set as I can make it, for now...and have begun restructuring Van's interactions with him.  By adding moments of happiness between Daniel and Tad, it skewed the budding relationship with Van and something else came to mind so...that's what I'm focused on making work.

It was a nasty snow-storm day so I wound up not going in to the job, thus letting me have plenty of time to write.  I want to get LD done; I've been diddling around with it for too long.  Seems the post I did yesterday jolted me into seeing striking parallels in the US with Northern Ireland in 1967 and 1968, and my anger and exasperation can feed into Brendan.

When I said we're already into a civil war, I wasn't referring to the kind that happened 150 years ago but one more like the slow steady destruction of a society and its people, like in Northern Ireland.  Paisley's rants against Catholics back then are no more demeaning and vile than the rants of Tea Partiers against liberals and unions.  And for years, his ilk murdered Catholics with near impunity, like has happened here against Liberals.  The Left hasn't started hitting back at the Right like the IRA did against the fools who ran NI at the time...and against the British for taking sides...but it's still a possiblity.  A lot of people are fed up and sick of the spinelessness of the Democrats in charge.  That the Dems in Wisconsin had the nerve to leave the state in order to thwart that Koch Brothers puppet, Walker, is a shock to many of us on this side of the divide.

So...are we going to have our own 40+ years of anger and hate and bombs and bullets that don't stop until everyone is so sick of it all, they have no choice but to end it or slit their throats?  Even now, NI teeters on the brink of falling back into that chaos, though things are infinitely better than they were even ten years ago.

Meaning Brendan's calling and kicking my ass.  And he's right -- it's time to complete his story.  I have everything I need to lay it down in first draft and then begin touching it with the details of his life.  Should be fun.

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