Weird, weird, weird little me...

I was in an apathetic mood, much of the day...which is an improvement over how I felt, yesterday.  But it's been quite the roller-coaster, and for once none of it's thanks to PS or my writing in general...but work on the book became non-existent, so it's involved, too...and this sentence makes no sense. Let's start over.

It started with a strange health situation, yesterday about noon. I started to feel sweaty then became light-headed and suddenly I was starving. I calmed it down by eating some dried cranberries and having a cup of hot tea, but then I began craving Mexican food so much, I drove 10 miles to an OK Mexican restaurant and had decent enough cheese enchiladas, rice, beans and guac along with a Dos Equis...and began to feel good, again.

I grabbed some groceries and drove home, then wound up so weary, I had to take a nap. When I woke up, I was so deeply depressed I couldn't focus on anything. I managed to get some reading done and a bit of research...but didn't touch the outline or write a word. I just wallowed in my misery till it was time to get to bed...and then I couldn't sleep.

And by couldn't sleep, I don't call it insomnia because I know people who have that and it's hellacious. For me, it was taking over an hour to drift off when I'm normally deep into slumber-ville within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow. And it's not like my mind was racing; it was more of a blank that just would not take the final step to shut down.

Then today I had to go to work. The one positive was, I was alone in the office. My co-worker had a fender-bender so called in, and both the owners are in NYC laying the groundwork for next year's book fair. I had a bit to do so got it done, despite my sense of apathy, then as I came home I decided I wanted a chili dog. So got 2 and fries and brought them home and scarfed them down and felt a thousand times better. I want another one, tomorrow.

Man, I can still taste the chili and onions and Tabasco I put on it...but it killed my mood. Let me see that I haven't been eating like I should...and by that I mean I've been trying to cut back and eat better meals, and my body was freaking out and didn't like it and finally said, Enough! The enchilada meal was a good start to satisfying it, but it was the chili dogs that settled it down.

I guess I'm never going to diet, because when I do my body rebels. I work out...and I get a cold. I cut back my caloric intake, and I start feeling weak and unhappy. I'm pre-diabetic; maybe I finally toppled over into it. But eating crap just because it's good for you is the antithesis of how I've lived my life. And my DNA is saying, STFU and stop trying to be good; you're not.

And I don't mind that idea, at all.

Have to keep reminding me...

This is going to be a long haul...and the more I dig into what I've got and what I think I had, the more sure I am I'll be working on this book for the next 15 years. I've got to go through every single Word doc I have because while most of it's repetitive, some of it's not and is bits I need or want or have an idea will help...and some of the bits I remember writing, I can't find so have to dig even more into my trove of thumb-drives to seek out.

Well...I never have been very organized. Hell, the fact that I can find anything is often a miracle. The positive thing is, I've learned the jail on Crumlin Road, in Belfast, is now a sort of museum. It's got me wanting to go back to Belfast to look into it, because in the last section of the book, Brendan is taken there for interrogation by the British.

I keep halfway wanting to shift this book into third person, in its telling, but Brendan doesn't like that. "It's my blood, my story, no one else's, and what people glean for the lives of the other people I know is up to them...but it's filtered through me." I have to honor that. If I don't, it'll be crap.

I joke about this being my Russian novel, but I'm beginning to see it probably will be...in size and form. Dunno about depth, yet. There's a lot that can't be...or isn't being said, in the open, but is still trying to be known. And the new ending...the ending Brendan's brought to me, recently...is still spooking me. I haven't touched it, yet, except to make notes.

Of course, this is a two-way street, with him. He wants to screw with my brain? I'm gonna mess with his. See how he likes it.

So tell me, do I sound psychotic, yet?

Brendan's world...

Working on the outline, so not up for posting...just sharing something I'd already written. This is Fall, 1968. Danny's a long-time friend of Brendan's, very troubled and running with a new crowd...

-------

As we left the city’s edge, the fog all but vanished. There was no moon out but it was still a bright enough night to see across the parcels of land and beyond the clumps of trees, and because the silence was cut only by the sound of our shoes on the road, it seemed as if we’d been taken to a new and amazing world of peace and tolerance. I don't know where it came from, but for the first time I got the urge to just keep walking till I could walk no more.

Finally, we cut down this road that curled around and up a hill, and after a bit I could make out a round shape at the top of it, to our right. There wasn’t a tree near it and the wind was brisk and bit at my cheeks. I had my Anorak on tight, then, but Danny was in just a jacket and seemed untouched by the chill.

“Is that it?” I asked, my voice sudden and sharp against the quiet.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “I think it was a fort, once. It’s got walkways going up, inside.”

“How long you been coming here?”

“A year.”

“Bloody hell, Danny, you keep your own counsel, don’t you?”

“I like being alone.”

“Then why’d you show it to your mates?”

“I didn’t,” he said with a sigh. “It’s not like it’s a secret. They found me there, one night. We hit it off.”

Then I heard an odd swishing sound and turned just as a Schwinn bicycle raced up the gravel road and whipped past us, its pilot laughing. Another boy was on the handlebars. A moment behind them was a Huffy Penguin, with a second lad seated on the rear of the banana seat. They stopped a bit ahead of us and jumped off their bikes, waving at Danny.

“Hey, Danny-boy, who’s the lad!” shouted the one who’d piloted the Penguin.

“It’s Brendan,” he called back. “I told you of him!”

They came down the hill a bit to meet us, one tall, two my height, one smaller than Maeve, all dark and slim and looking a lot like brothers. It was the same group who’d been chased by the peelers. Their clothes were flashy and neat, something I hadn’t noticed when they ran past, and their faces were all grins as the tall one grabbed my hand, saying, “So you’re the famous fix-anything lad.”

“Can you work on the gears on me bike? They rattle something awful,” said one my size, who was the darkest. The other one my size was fairer and freckled.

I shrugged and said, “Won’t know till I see it.”

“I’m Tommy,” said the tall one, “and this is Aiden.” He pointed to the one with the Schwinn then to his mate in size, who’d piloted the Huffy. “That’s Sean. And last is Brian.”

“Boru to yous,” said the smallest lad, whose pants were actually a few inches too short for him and whose boots made his feet look comical in size.

“And Saint Brendan to you,” said I, in return. "I've an uncle named Sean."

"Who doesn't?" Sean shot back.

They laughed and we cut through what I think was heather up the last of the hill to the fort. Whatever it was, it was thick and grabbed at my trousers.

“I think I know your brother, Eamonn,” Said Tommy. “He’s at Queen's, inn’t he?”

“First term,” I said, nodding, suddenly remembering what I’d seen in the window. “He -- he’s home, for the weekend. I -- I don’t recall you being around.”

“I met him on the march to Dungiven. He’s a passionate one. When things threatened to get hard between us and the RUC, he helped convince us to back down.”

“You should’ve torn those bloody peelers apart,” snapped Brian.

“Plenty of time for that.”

“Um -- Eamonn thinks O’Neill will work with us,” I said.

“Give the country over?” laughed Sean.

“That bastard, Paisley, wouldn’t let him,” said Aiden.

“Not after Antrim,” said Tommy.

“Were you there?” I asked.

“Torched one of the RUC’s tenders,” he said, proudly. “News crews snapped photos of it for the papers.”

“He’s got a bloody scrapbook,” said Brian.

“For history, me lad!”

We reached the base of the fort and circled around to a tiny opening covered with a grate. Tommy undid a couple of bolts and pulled it partway off, then held it aside as we scampered through this cave-like passageway to the middle of the circle.

Danny wasn’t kidding; it did used to be a fort, with stone steps leading up to three levels of walkways. The uppermost one was only a few feet under the top so it looked as if you could lean on its walls and look out over the whole of Ireland. It was only later I learned we were in Grianán Aileach.

Before I could say a word, Tommy’d slipped a stone away from the base of a wall to let Brian dive into it, and moments later, out popped a bottle of whiskey and a fat bag of tobacco. “Still here,” he said, happily.

Brian vanished back inside the hole and brought out another bottle and laughed, “Irish!”

“Have a care, lads,” said Danny. “If too much is gone, it’ll be noticed and then it’ll all vanish.”

“Danny,” I said, “this isn’t your stash?”

He shook his head.

Tommy finished taking a swig of the whiskey and offered us the bottle, saying, “Finders keepers, you know.”

Danny downed some then handed it to me. I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t as much a man as them, so I took a swallow...and near choked on the sudden sharpness of it.

Brian smirked at me. “Can’t hold his liquor.”

“I’m holding it fine,” I snapped back. “I just -- I don’t drink out of a bottle.”

Tommy winked at me and said, “You’ll learn.”

I noticed Aiden and Sean were busy rolling fags, so I took the moment to ask Danny, “What is this?”

He shrugged. “I was up here lying on the top circle, just looking at the stars, and some men snuck in. I kept hid and watched them pull that stone away. After they left, I looked into it. They’d hollowed out part of the wall and used it to hide things in. I guess it’s stuff they’re smuggling into Derry. Not paying taxes on it. Making a fortune.”

“But all this way, so far from everything. It doesn’t make sense.” I looked around the rocks, the whiskey building a nice warmth in my belly. “This place is kept up, Danny. Eventually someone’s gonna find that loose rock and brick it over.”

Danny shrugged in answer.

Brian fired up a fag and inhaled, but the didn’t exhale. Tommy did the same thing, after him, then he offered it to me. It didn’t smell like any cigarette I’d ever had, but I still took a puff and Tommy laughed at me.

“His first drink and his first smoke,” he chuckled.

“I’ve smoked before,” I said, irritated.

Danny took the fag, saying, “Like this, Bren.” Then he inhaled and held his breath ... and held it and held it until I thought he’d pass out before he exhaled and choked out, “Here,” as he handed it back to me.

I took the smoke in and held it as long as I could, handing the fag off to Tommy, who carted it over to Sean. When I finally let it explode from my lungs, I was starting to feel dizzy.

“It’s best to lie back, Bren,” said Danny. “Look at the stars. You’ll never see the like of them, again.”

I lay on the grass and gazed upwards, and he was right; suddenly, it was as if the heavens were fresh and new...bright, gleaming little diamonds captured in the black, black sky and so glorious brilliant. A billion of them, it must be. Then they moved...and I had to hold onto the earth as it spun.

“Christ, Danny,” I whispered, “what is this?”

“Something to make the world a better place,” he whispered back, and I’d say he was only half talking to me.

The bottle came my way, again, so I sat up and sipped more carefully, this time. It was a smoother sort of whiskey, more flavorful. I offered it up to Danny but he waved me off, opting instead for another drag on the fag. I giggled at the rhyme, and then couldn’t stop giggling.

Tommy sat beside me and took the bottle then offered me a fresh ciggie as he looked at the label.

“Bourbon,” he said as I inhaled. His tone became too-properly-British as he continued with, “A good Protestant drink, I’d say.”

“Naw, it’s Scotch that is,” snapped Brian.

“Don’t like Scotch,” said Aiden.

“Da says you have to build a taste for it,” added Sean. “But why? If you don’t like it to start off with, why make yourself drink it?”

“’Cause you’re an eejit,” laughed Tommy.

“Bloody right about that,” snapped an angry voice.

I jolted around to see -- it was Colm standing by the passageway, and he looked so angry I had to laugh, “Howya, Colm, come to join the party?”

Do I dream in parallels?

I'm having some very odd dreams, lately...like I'm on a film set but in front of the camera in a smaller role. Acting. Something I know I'm not good at and have never wanted to pursue. I did some in college to try and break me out of my shyness...and it helped...except when I got the reviews back and found I wasn't the only one questioning my abilities in that realm. But in truth, I didn't have the focus needed for it. I was in a comedy and most of my effort went to keeping myself from laughing at my own lines.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm waking up from moments in my slumbering brain that can only be explained by them being a movie. Sitting and talking with Russell Tovey? Walking into a room of men dressing for their characters? Though that one might have been for a play...but I really don't remember. I do recall getting a costume from a closet just as I was awoken by my alarm.

I've often wondered if the occasional deja vu I feel stems from dreams that sort of prefigure my life. Especially the vivid ones. There was one from years and years ago that still haunts me. I'm driving across a bridge high above a lake or river and it buckles and cars are tossed into the water, mine included. I get out and swim for shore as fast as I can because a shark is after me...which is funny because I can't swim. But I make it. Now here it is decades later and nothing even remotely similar has happened. However, that dream was so intense, I still think of it when I'm driving across a bridge over water.

I don't know what these things are supposed to mean; I've never really done the dream therapy/explanation thing. I just know the ones that are truly scary I don't remember; all I do is jolt awake and I'm freaked out. Those are few and far between so I don't worry about them, but all these recent ones have me confused. Am I telling myself I should not have given up on film?

That'd be silly. It took me long enough to get it through my thick skull no one wanted my scripts and I had no idea how to change their minds. And no way was I chasing an acting career; that's filled with a thousand times more rejection than I ever experienced. Now maybe I'm subconsciously saying I should have?

Man...I do confuse me, sometimes.

A redo of "David Martin"

I got my hardcover copy of David Martin and it looks good. It's overpriced at $16.95, but I couldn't get the price any lower, with Ingram. What I can do, however, is offer it for sale through me at a 40% discount (and 55% through Ingram for dealers). I'm setting it up on ebay, which uses PayPal for payments, and am contacting libraries to see if they're interested in a copy. I'm also pulling the paperback from circulation.

I've set up ebay with The Alice '65 and The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, as well, both at 20% off but signed copies. I want to see if this will help sales of the books. OT hasn't done very well, and I don't want A65 to vanish into the thousands of books published every week, so I'm doing everything I can. Having three positive reviews for A65 is better than I got with OT, at the start.

I'm also pushing for more reviews through BookLife, Book Daily and GoodReads. Since A65 is a very mainstream book, I'm hoping that will work in its favor. OT having a gay protagonist as its detective seems to have caused the mystery-reading crowd to stay away. So...it's more of a niche book than I anticipated. Fine for me, but I was hoping Jake's story would be better read.

Of course, it could also be I'm just a crap writer.

Remembering to remember...

Something I keep forgetting is, Place of Safety is a massive undertaking. I'm in the middle of restructuring the outline so I will know what I do and don't need, for now...and I know I'll discard it as I find new ideas and details to add. Plus, I've got dozens of books on The Troubles to dig through for those details, not to mention Derry of the Past's facebook page and NICRA's and CAIN's websites and on and on...so yesterday as I was looking at it, I pictured myself facing this massive wave on the North Shore of Oahu, about to crash down on me...and me unable to swim. Gave me a monster headache.

I have to keep reminding myself, I'm not getting this done by the end of the year. Maybe I'll have a rough draft...very rough...but I need to keep aware enough to know it's only a start and doesn't need to be perfect. That's a bad habit I was in -- trying to make everything fit right in the first go-through then hone it...which doesn't work. At all. And is nothing but a waste of time and effort.

The great thing about doing The Alice '65 was seeing just how many times I'd gone through it and redone it and gotten feedback and redone it, again and again and again, with more feedback, and even as I was putting it to bed, ready for submission, I was still making small changes to improve it. And get rid of as many typos as possible. Something I've found is just plain impossible. It drove me to near insanity...but it also showed me aiming for it to be right from the beginning is a waste of time.

It's going to change as I write, and it will be what it is. I know people have told me that, before, and I've read it in books on writing, but the idea doesn't sink into anyone till it's ready to. And I mean emotionally, not just intellectually. I can understand something in my head, but if it doesn't make instinctive sense to me, I have all kinds of trouble with it, and I won't know why till I'm able to fit both sides together, in some way.

I'm going to have a lot of that turmoil working on this book, I know, because I'm heading into uncharted territory, for me. But at the same time, I'm focusing on the instinctive part of the story more than the intellectual...I think...because that's where Brendan's truth lies. That's why the outline is only the most basic map showing me the path of a very long journey.

So to keep from spinning into a Tasmanian Devil of a writer, that's all I'm going to focus on.

Changes made...

I have a lot of work to do on Place of Safety, and I'm already honing in on it. First was one character's name -- Father Pat needed changing. Sounds like something out of a 1930s Boys Town movie starring Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Cagney...with a dash of Bing Crosby. He's now Father Jack, cozier than his real name, Father John, a hipster priest sent to Derry to take over for Father Demian, neither of whom Brendan really trusts of believes.

I'm also finding I need to solidify the timeline of the story before I do much more, right now. I had Brendan's brother, Eamonn, talking about the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in a section set in 1967. Not right, since King died in April 1968. I also had Brendan seeing Joanna for the first time on Shipquay Street and that didn't work. I like him seeing her the first time after working on Colm's father's taxi...which leads to all kinds of complications.

Something else I'm doing is updating my grammar. I got into this silly habit of putting a period after a dash, which is nonsensical. I'm also removing spaces around my ellipses; I like how that works a lot better. Plus, Derry of the Past is helping work out the logistics of Brendan's area prior to redevelopment. I have a map of the city from about 1946 or 47, and I know some of the houses on Nailors Row still existed in early 1972, but I think they were empty and there was nothing else around them except the city walls they faced. It's just, numerous roads were done away with during this period and others were redirected, completely, making it hard to work out what was where and when.

It's funny, but by tearing apart whole neighborhoods and resettling people left and right, the Protestants running Derry gave the Catholics pushing for equal rights even more ammunition...not just political but physical. When it came to slinging rocks, plenty were to be had; and the Rossville Flats gave the boys hurling petrol bombs (Molotov Cocktails) the high ground and put them pretty much out of the reach of the RUC and Army until they established an actual base on the top floor.

Talk about the law of unintended consequences...

One last bit of Place of Safety...

I'm currently working through a new direction Brendan wants to take the story...not sure how I feel about it except it makes me nervous, which probably means I should follow it...but I'm still skittish.

Anyway, this is maybe fall, 1967...I haven't set the exact time, yet.

-------

I got started working on cars when Colm’s Da was having trouble with the heater in his black taxi. It was a cold day but not bitter, anymore, and he was parked near the bus landing jumping back and forth from under the bonnet to beneath the fascia to see why it wasn’t warming the ten year old piece of junk when Colm and I raced up. Ma had found my hiding spot for my scratch and taken it all as well as giving me a hiding for not handing it over, so I was bust and Colm thought he could beg a few schillings off him so we could pop over to Woollies for some hot cocoa.

But we found him in a foul temper, cursing and slamming his fist against the front wings of the car ... uh, fenders. Colm was of a mind to just let him be but I got a curiosity up and peeked under the bonnet to see what he’s doing.

“Don’t touch a thing, Brendan,” he snarled at me. “This bloody beast’s already jabbed me twice with shocks.”

“Isn’t it grounded?” I asked, not really knowing much about cars.

“Somewhere a wire’s touching metal, now and again. I think it’s shorted out the heater’s motor.”

That made no sense to me. In a lamp or radio, it’s easy to find a shorted wire. Why not in a car? Being small, I dropped to the ground and was able to slip under it to get a look.

Colm jumped into a rage. “Bloody hell, Bren. We’re not here for this!”

“Give us a minute, Colm.”

“You’ll bloody dirty yourself, and I’ll not be seen with you.”

“Since when are you a Teddy Boy?”

He kicked my shoes, for that. Teddies were notorious for being poofters after lads like Colm. He was already well on to being adult in body if not in brain. Me, I thought it odd him always talking about having to shave when I had little more than soft down about my chin, yet, and us near the same age.

Anyway, I got a look at what I later learned was the back of the core, and it was a holy mess of trash and half the floor rusted away, so I cleaned it away to get a better view and found a wire hanging there but not attached. I noticed a similar wire on the other side had a cover on it so, using my screwdriver, I put it back where I thought it went and pulled out from under the chassis to say, “Mr. Lemass, have you something to put over this wire down here? It’s missing a cover.”

He dropped to his belly to look under the car at me. “What d’you mean? Brendan, if you’ve made a muck of anything, I’ll box your fuckin’ ears.”

“Right here, see? There was a wire loose and caught in some twigs and leaves. It’s missing the cover.”

He looked hard and could just see what I was pointing to. “It’s a glove, the cover’s called,” he said. “Get out from under.”

I did and he started the car up and turned on the heater as I tried to brush off the mud and dirt and oil that’d caught my trousers. Colm looked me over, rolled his eyes and headed on without a word. No patience in that lad.

A bus came up from who knows where and an estate car parked behind us, in the area meant only for taxis. Mr. Lemass said nothing, just focused on the heater ... and in a moment, he almost smiled.

“It’s working, so far,” he said.

“I’d not run it till you put a glove on that,” I answered. “Not if the other wire has one.”

“Right you are.” And he turned off the heater and the motor, then he got a look at me. “Aw, Brendan, your Ma’s about to be right sore at you.”

The grease on my hands had only streaked when I tried to wipe it off on my trousers. Nothing massive, just obvious.

I shrugged. “They’ll wash.” Then I crouched down to dip my hands in some water in the gutter and looked up and saw an older lad lifting some bags into the estate car as a woman of maybe Ma’s age trudged up to the passenger side, both big and looking very much like mother and son.

And caught between them was this girl...silky golden hair drifting down her back to be caught in a chilly breeze, a tam-o-shanter atop her head, form enough to her body to make even the fur-tufted coat and colored stockings seem perfectly female on her. She handed a last parcel to the older lad, and then turned to reveal a perfect face of clean skin and rose-hued cheeks and eyes bright enough to fill a room with light. She caught a good look of me washing my hands in the filthy water, and I jolted to my feet at realizing the sight I must be making to her.

She almost laughed, her eyes dancing with humor and no judgment. Her lips red as cherries without the touch of rouge, without the touch of anything on her face that might hide her elegant complexion. I laughed back, spread my arms and shrugged as if to say, “I’m a slob.”

“Joanna!” The bark came from her mother, whose hard cold blue eyes glared at me. “In the back!”

She got in the estate car and her brother hopped behind the wheel, casting me a frown that seemed to mix both wariness and condescension. As they drove off, I heard her mother say, "It's not right to make fun of little street urchins."

"I wasn't," was all I heard her say back, and my heart went with her.

Then Mr. Lemass gently popped the back of my head, smiling. “You’re aiming high with that one.”

Embarrassed, I said, “I dunno what you mean.”

He just shook his head, still smiling, and tossed me half a crown. “I mean learn to keep yourself clean and smelling good. Drop by Wellworth’s; they’ll have something for that.”

“Birds really go for that?” I asked, using a word for girls that I’d seen in a movie.

“Never hurts. Hop in, I’ll drop you by.”

I looked at my now filthy clothes and for the first time caught the idea that maybe Colm had the right idea in keeping himself tidy. You never know who you’ll run into in Derry, and if I did chance to see her, again, it probably was better if I really was presentable.

“I’d best walk. Don’t want to mess your seats up.”

“You’re a daft one, Kinsella.”

“Well, the next time you need something fixed on your car, this daftie’ll probably handle it well enough.”

He laughed. “No doubt. But it is something you might consider. Looks as if you have the touch for it.”

“You think so?”

He nodded. “Good future in it. Cars’ll always need fixing.”

“What won’t? Thanks.” And I flipped the coin then headed on to Waterloo Place.

-->

A bit more P/S...

This takes place just before the previous post, just after Brendan's turned 14; Danny and another friend, Colm, came to blows over a stupid comment Colm made...

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I managed to catch up to Danny on the Creegan pitch. It was misting and chilled close to cold, but he’d just shoved his hands in his pockets and juggered on through it. His hair shined from the moisture and his skin gleamed, almost softening the hard look on his face. A Saracen was parked in the middle of it all and the field was torn up from its running about, but Danny seemed not to care.

“What the devil’s got into you?” I asked him. “Colm meant nothing by that. He’s just happy there’s something for him to do and — ”

“Then let him do it,” he snapped at me. “And you keep on with working both sides of the fence.”

“Oi! Just because somebody’s Protestant doesn’t mean they’re an arsehole.”

“You say that ‘cause of that little tart you got.”

I shoved him, nearly sent him to the ground. “You’re not to say a word about her! She’s a decent girl!”

He gave me a look so deep with hurt and sadness, I felt the bastard for being angry with him.

“It’s not just Protestants who’re arseholes, Bren. I know that. Christ, do I know it.”

“Danny — what’re you going on about?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“Has it something to do with Father Pat?”

“What’s he to do with anything?”

“Father Demian then?” I only asked that as a last chance at getting him to tell me his trouble, but you’d have thought I’d shot him. He gave me the flash of a look, the same kind as I’d seen once in a stray cat that’d been cornered by dogs, wild and terrified and ready to spin into madness if it’d save itself — or at least it would take a couple of the damned growlers with him. And it stabbed into me, deep. And then it was gone and covered with his usual sullen glare.

“And he has less to do with me, now, him being sent to America.”

“I heard he’s in England.” I hate to repeat gossip, but sometimes it’s necessary to get to the base of things.

And sure enough, that wild look flashed over him, again, and this time it caused him to catch his breath. “Says who?”

“Mrs. Dougherty — Father Pat’s housekeeper. She says he’s made a number of trunk calls to Nottingham, just to see how things’re going, as it were.”

He sat on a fence post that’d been pushed half over by a Saracen and lit a fag. And the thousand yards stare filled his eyes. For the first time since I’d known him, I was afraid for him...and a bit of him.

“You and Father Demian were close,” I said, real careful.

“You never liked him, did you?” I shrugged. He looked at me. “I can’t tell if you like Father Pat or not.”

“He’s all right,” I said. Danny kept looking at me, so I shrugged, again. “I just — well, it hits me sometimes that his actions don’t match his words.”

“They don’t, do they?” He offered me the fag. I took a drag off it and handed it back. He smiled. “You ever gonna buy your own ciggies?”

“All I ever want’s a puff, now and again. And it’s you offered.”

“Aye.” He kept smoking and sent a harsh glare the way of the Saracen.

“Careful, lad,” I said. “They’re the only thing standing between Free Derry and the RUC.”

“They won’t, for long.” And I knew he was right. Something about the attitudes of the British Army was hinting that they weren’t happy to be pushing back against their fellow “Englishmen,” as if the Paisley-ites give a damn about them. But there’d been incidents of lads being roughed up while searched and good long chats between British commanders and the upper-level constables. Some lads said it looked too much like they were giving ear to the Unionists whilst ignoring those they’d come to protect, and only a fool wouldn’t see the point as valid. “It’s like they’re waiting for an excuse to show the world a bunch of Paddies can’t shove anybody around.”

“I hope the excuse doesn’t come.”

“You would. You’re willing to trust people, still. Believe them.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that — ”

“Bren — you know as well as me that Father Pat’s a two-faced bastard, but you’ll coach your opinion to allow him some benefit of the doubt.”

“Are you angry with him for taking over for Father Demian?”

“No, that bastard can rot for all I care. I’m pissed at him for lying about it, and making me the liar for it.”

“Christ, Danny, what happened?”

He give a long terrible sigh and said, “If I told you, you’d not believe me. There’s nights I think, maybe I don’t believe me. Maybe it was all just a bad dream. A child’s fantasy.” He sighed and kept a long silence, then said, “Nottingham, you say?”

“About what?”

“Father Demian.”

“It’s information come to me third hand. I don’t know it for a fact.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. All they’d want to do is move him to another parish and — ” His voice trailed off and he sat in silence. And I had no idea what to say, so I just stood there by him, waiting. He let me have another drag on the ciggie then looked at me, almost sad. “You never were his acolyte.”

“Father Demian’s?” I asked. He nodded. “Never wanted to be.”

“Keep that wariness about you, Bren. Believe me that no one cares for the other, not truly, not when it means something more than words.”

“Danny, what happened between you and Father Demian?”

“Father Devil’s more like it.”

And finally I understood, and could think of nothing to say. Danny saw it in my eyes — shock and disbelief, I’m sure, as well as concern for me China. He wrapped his arms tighter around him and looked away from me. “I didn’t tell ya. You know that — I didn’t tell ya.”

“But didn’t the church — ?”

“They called me a liar. The devil stood there, hand on a bible, and spit in the face of God to swear his innocence. Father Pat backin’ him up.” He glanced at me, and the pain in his face cut me to the core. He almost snarled in a voice filled with tears, “You’re not to tell anyone of this.” All I could do was shake my head in agreement. He nodded and his thousand yards stare shot across the field. “I know I didn’t have to say it. You see things, but you don’t say much. You keep your own counsel. That’s good.”

“Danny...”

He waved a hand to silence me. We stood there in the chill, saying nothing for several minutes. I didn’t look straight at him, not once. I felt he’d have shattered if I had. But it was a horrible silence between us, just then, and it tore into me. The thoughts that must have been going through his head. The ideas in his mind caught in anger and hate, and not just at the priest...no, priests, for if Father Pat had taken sides against Danny, and him knowing how close Danny was to having no control, then he was just as guilty of anything that man had done, just as if he’d done it, himself. And the thought of that made me near ill.

-->

Some of Place of Safety...

This is late Spring, 1970, Brendan is 14:

----

Two months after we'd moved to Clíodhna Place, Eamonn came home from Belfast, his clothes bearing the scent of burned wood and rubber. And he announced he was not returning to Queens.

"Everyone's mad, there," he said, his voice holding a quiver in it I'd never heard before. "It's naught but abuse and anger from all in control, and the Army listens only to them. I can't get to me classes without being rousted five times, each way, and all but spat upon for being Catholic."

Mairead was home from Tilly's and asked, "Could you go on to Trinity?"

"Be run off from my home?" he snapped at her. "I think not."

"True," Ma said. "You've never been the sort to back down or give in to those who hate us." Then she shot me a glance, and it seems I was the only one to see it. I paid no attention. By now, I was used to her disdain.

Rhuari asked him, "Then what're you gonna do?"

"I...I have some possibilities," he said, then ended the discussion by wondering about dinner.

Mairead hopped down to McClosky's for some fish as I peeled some potatoes to boil, and Eamonn marveled over how easy it was to fix meals with the new kitchen. Ma fussed about him and made him sit at the table with a cup of tea as she worked, as if he were man of the house, and finally he noticed I'd yet to say a word to him beyond hello.

"You're quiet, Bren," he murmured to me, smiling.

I gave him a shrug and focused on the spuds. And for some reason, my bloody cough started up. Not major just...just occasional, but enough to irritate me. I finished and set them to cooking, then went back to the parlor to work on an ancient Royal typewriter Mr. Connelly had brought to me. The sticking keys he was having problems with were just him not doing a good job of removing the oil-dabbled dust between the levers, over the years. As a courtesy, I had also checked the teeth on the tab key and now was cleaning the ink tape fibers from the letters. For this, I'd make a pound...and all would go to Ma, since she knew of it from the start.

I had myself set up on a cloth laid over the two bottom steps of the staircase, giving me a level spot to both work and sit. Eamonn brought his tea and another cup in and sat on the floor next to me, his eyes soft and careful. He put the second cup on the step. We could hear Ma jostling about in the kitchen.

"You didn't get any tea," he whispered.

It shrugged then took the second cup, and it was done as I like it. I smiled at him.

He smiled back, and struck me so much as someone much older, I had to focus on the tea to keep from gasping. "Don't you like my decision?" he asked.

"There's more 'n what you're tellin' us," I whispered back.

He nodded and was about to say something, but Mairead returned and nearly knocked him aside when she bolted in.

"Jesus, Eamonn, what're you sitting in the door, for?" she snapped.

"Sharing a cuppa with Bren."

"You could put yourself up three steps to do that and be out of the way, if you gave it a moment's thought!" Then she headed on to the kitchen.

He chuckled, rose, and followed her into the kitchen, saying, "Does Terry know he's getting a girl who's nothing if not always in a rush?"

We didn't speak again till I was in bed and he joined me, freshly washed. "What a joy to have hot water in the tap, eh? And a toilet inside." he murmured as he joined me in the bed. "You mind sharing your bed with me?"

I shook my head and looked out the window, at the back of Mr. Carroway's. "The view was better on Nailors," I said.

"What's the trouble, Bren?"

I looked at him. He was back to seeming like good old Eamonn, again.

"I read the papers," I said, soft and easy so as not to wake Rhuari and Kirean. "Mr. Hennessy -- he's the clerk at the news agent's -- he lets me for having fixed his bicycle. The bloody thing's older than me and..." My voice trailed off. I coughed.

"And?" whispered from Eamonn.

I took a deep breath. "There were fires in the Ardoyne and Short Strand, in Belfast. Catholics burned out. People on both sides shot. Nothing near to Queens. But I can smell it all in your coat. And I hear PIRA's been -- "

He held up his hand to stop me. Did not look at me. His voice was tight as he said, "I have never known you to be one who spreads gossip."

"I only say this, 'cause I'm scared for you." He noticed my words quivered and turned his gaze upon me. I kept on with, "I feel like I did when you were goin' on that long walk and...and I don't want you hurt, again. Seeing you in hospital, like that...like you were that time...I'm scared for you."

He leaned up on one arm. Put his hand on my shoulder. "I've always wondered what you really think about the rest of us. You're so quiet. So focused on what you do. Sometimes it felt as if you were looking down on the rest of the family."

"Eamonn!" It jolted me that he said such a thing.

"I know better, now. I'm sorry for having ever thought it. I can't tell you anything more than...than I did not return to Queens in January. The IRA's cowardice in the face of what's been happening...it had to be remedied. And so...it is."

Oh, Jesus... "Can I help you in some way?"

He looked at me, deep in thought. His face took back the expression of someone far older, then he said, "Do you...have you already built some fresh hiding spaces in this place? For to keep your money?"

I nodded. "It wasn't easy, believe me. Ma kept a sharp eye on me, expecting it."

"Is one big enough for this?"

He shifted off the bed and dug into his bag to pull out a felt wrapper...and inside it was a pistol.

I gulped in air and slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from saying anything. He knelt by the bed and set it on the covers, his eyes locked on me.

I looked at him and whispered, "How'd you get it past the checkpoints?"

A crooked smile crossed his face. "I didn't come home the usual route. And it's not mine; I'm keeping it for a friend."

"It's too big for any of my spaces. Have you a match?"

He pulled a box from his bag. I struck one and looked the pistol over, carefully.

"It can come apart, easy enough," I murmured. "I could spread it about."

"Could you?"

In answer, I slipped off the bed to get my screwdrivers, but Eamonn stopped me and moved the pistol to the window for a bit better light then he proceeded to dismantle it.

First he ejected the bullet clip then pulled the slide to rear to make sure it was empty, cocked it, pushed a tiny button on the right side of it, shifted the sliding part back to release a lever -- a slide-stop. When he removed that, the pistol nearly exploded apart. He grimaced. "Forgot you have to hold it tight for the spring."

Now I knew why he hadn't returned to Queens. I began to cough, again.

He took a section off the main grip then removed the barrel and bushings. In moments, the pistol was in pieces. The grip was still on the large side, so I removed the wood panels on each side, then I snuck them downstairs and used bits of wax paper from a fish and ships takeaway dinner, adding a bit of oil from the larder to wrap the pieces in while leaving the felt bag to hold the barrel and recoil bits. I put the felt bag and recoil bits in a small space behind the frame of the pantry door.

Then I slipped under the sink and pulled away a fake slat by the water pipe to hide the slide and stop. I kept the pistol grip, magazine and sear until the morning, when Ma was downstairs fixing breakfast. I snuck into her room, found a small groove I'd made, and pulled at it. Part of the sill dropped down to reveal a hole in the wall. I hid the last of the pistol in there.

Later in the morning, Eamonn took me aside and asked for me to show him where everything was hidden, and I wouldn't.

"Better if you don't know," I said, my true intention being never to let him near that thing, again.

Working my way back into P/S...

I'm reading Philip Cunningham's Reflections of Derry, again, which takes place between 1960 to around the late 80s. It's an easy step back into the period with a man who seemed not to be touched very harshly by the Troubles...a gentle book with soft reminiscences and lots of photos.

I've also reconnected with Derry of the Past on Facebook and am asking questions about things I see in the images posted. There are also videos of the time posted on the site, like one of Derry in 68/69 that shows a glimpse of Nailors Row still being in place.

I'm not sure why that particular street has become part of Brendan's story, but it's been there from the start. Here's an image from about the same time showing the last of the houses, in the background, with Walker's Monument standing above them.

I like the feel of this photo. It fits in with a bit I've already written, in the story, when Brendan's walking alone after having witnessed his older brother, Eamonn, sneaking off to meet up with a married woman.

It's afternoon and foggy, and he hears some boys running up then past him as they're chased by constables...and one is Danny, a friend. He calls Danny over to hide, then they walk to Grianan Aileach to meet up with the other boys. They've found a smuggler's spot so are smoking their cigarettes and pot and drinking their whisky, and getting royally whacked out...until the smugglers show up.

Brendan's just fourteen twelve...and already drifting apart from everyone...until later in the year, when things suddenly heat up.

The Philosophical Research Society...

I stole this from Wikipedia...

The Philosophical Research Society, Inc. (P.R.S.) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1934, by Manly Palmer Hall, to promote the study of the world's wisdom literature. Hall believed the accumulated wisdom of mankind is the birthright of every individual, and built the facility to serve the general public to this end.

Its current president is Obadiah S. Harris, Ph.D.[1] Under Dr. Harris, in 2000[2] PRS created a subsidiary which is doing business as the University of Philosophical Research. The University offers two nationally accredited Master’s programs (M.A. in Consciousness Studies and M.A. in Transformational Psychology) and a newly approved (as of 2014) Bachelor of Arts program in Liberal Studies. All degree programs are online.[3]

It maintains a research library of over 50,000 volumes, and also sells and publishes metaphysical and spiritual books, mostly those authored by Hall.

Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California. The building at 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard in the Los Feliz neighborhood was designed by architect Robert Stacy-Judd and designated as a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument.[4]

-----

...and this from their own page...

As elementary and apparent as it may seem, this one word, this “love of wisdom,” raises two profound questions: what is love, and what is wisdom? With such inquiry, we are instantly confronted with the challenge of two great mysteries.

The Greeks may have often spoken in diverse ways about the meaning of philosophy: greedy for wisdom, lusting after wisdom, pursuing wisdom as the way of personal glory… Yet much more did they insist in the loving of wisdom. In so doing, the term “love” meant giving one’s affectionate attention and unselfconscious care in the pursuit of wisdom.

Wisdom is insight into the nature of things, a fundamental acquaintance with Reality. All of the great insights of humankind left for us to study, which history has managed to preserve, are the priceless inheritance of every person. It is the clear goal of Philosophical Research Society and the University of Philosophical Research to provide global “lovers of wisdom” access to that treasure which is their birthright.

Thus this one word reveals our purpose and shapes our method. From this understanding we carefully draw our principles. They guide the administration of our organization:

• Inclusiveness — We look to include wisdom from its every source and to make it accessible to all who value it.
• Non-Advocacy — We are not partisan nor do we endorse any one particular tradition or person.
• Freedom — We consider the quiet urgings of each heart to be the proper personal guide in the process of self-discovery. Each person is urged freely to compare and reference their natural knowing with the finest expressions of humanity’s deepest insights. We expect this process to create resonance which best leads each person on his or her unique path of learning and discovery.
• Quality Resources — To the greatest extent possible, we strive to have all of our resources distinguished by carefully referenced scholarship supported by direct experience and field work. We seek to continually refine and update our offerings as discoveries come to light and errors are uncovered.
• Community — Stimulating and good spirited interaction reflect the fact that we are a community of discovery, not just isolated individuals. Ours is the path of ecumenism and a journey of shared meanings. We are part of a movement toward World Culture in which all wisdom traditions and the highest expressions of our spiritual heritage are honored. We yearn for a planetary citizenship in which social justice and compassion aim toward a transformation of humankind.
• Education – PRS is dedicated to being a place for learning and for “drawing out” (as in the original sense of “educate”) the wisdom that lies within all traditions and all human beings.

I'm going to hitting them up for Place of Safety, I think. I've decided to try and read that book, Less Than Human, by David Livingstone Smith, and am pretty much able to work with the soft type and spots of lighter ink, for the most part. It's already raising issues about the story I have to consider, contemplate and craft in or out of the book...so I want to dig some more, and this place looks like a good place to start.

You never know what's going to happen till it's done.

I must be getting old...

Actually, it's probably just being sick, but this was one rough trip. Not the meeting, itself -- that went very nicely and I got everything I needed to pull together a quote -- but the long drive down in rain 75% of the way, and the even longer driver back in rain and sleet and snow 100% of the way, it wore me out. I had to stop at a number of the travel plazas on the 90 toll road to get out and walk around, to keep awake. I even caught a nap at one, which helped. It wasn't till I was in the middle of a snowstorm driving along at 60, between Rochester and Buffalo, that I fell into the beauty it was bringing.

Seriously, there was a mist with the snow that wrapped itself around the road ahead to reveal it and the surrounding countryside only as you drew near -- thickets of tall trees and bushes dusted in white, creeks tumbling over snow-capped rocks at top speed, and rolling fields in yellows and browns partially layered over by snow held in soft focus by the grey atmosphere. It helped me keep awake far better than anything else had, just watching it whisper past. I'd have stopped to take photos but the trucks and other cars were barreling along as if it were the middle of a bright Spring day and not on icy roads. I could see one plowing into the back of my car...

Part of the issue with my general mood was not sleeping well, last night. I kept coughing, so wound up buying a Pepsi (I do not like Pepsi but it was that or Mountain Dew) because carbonated drinks actually help my throat. But that meant I had to get up to pee, every couple of hours, like an old man. Shit. Tedious.

As for cough drops, those work for 10 minutes and build up a nasty taste, after too many of them. Tea just loosens everything and makes the tickling in your throat worse, as does a hot bath or shower. So...I dealt with it and hoped nobody was in the room next to mine. Now I'm home and the worst of the coughing seems to be over. We'll se how it goes, tonight.

On a good note, I got the PDF proof of David Martin and it looks 1000% better than the previous one, so I've okay'd it. I still ordered a hard copy, to see for sure, but I think it will be okay.

And The Alice '65 got another great review on Amazon...albeit from a Beta reader. But I take 'em any way I can get 'em.

On a negative note, the data recovery guys I sent my dead thumb drive to said it would cost $600 to rebuild the connectors and recover the data. I can't afford that, not to get info I may have on another drive or just get back images I'll never do anything with. So I told them to chuck it. From this point forward anything I save is going to be backed up even more. I guess I should also go through all the thumb drives I have and sort through exactly what files I need and how I can remove too many dupes.

I've been too prone to duplicating my duplicates after duplicating them,...

A65 got its first 5-Star reader's review...

I noticed as I was checking my author's page on Amazon so read it...and here's what someone named L. Kortus said --

What? No one has reviewed this book before me?
Well, that IS a shame.
This book’s synopsis caught my eye and I’m so glad it did. A totally enjoyable read, I did not want to put it down and stayed up to the wee hours reading it.
Terrific character development, humor, quirky twists, and not your run-of-the mill, formula plot.
This is a well written, entertaining, romp of a book. I was delighted.

I needed this. I've been getting zero traction on the book and was close to convincing myself I'd screwed it up...so to have a review like this come out of nowhere, unsolicited...very, very nice.

What's interesting is, today I received a book I ordered for research into the mindsets of hateful people...and it's close to unreadable. Not the prose...that's fine, so far...but the print is so soft it's almost blurry. What makes this odd is -- it's put out by a major publisher. St. Martin's.

I thought maybe I just needed to upgrade my glasses, or maybe it's because I'm still fighting off this friggin' cold, but I checked some other books and I could read them, fine. I could read the paperback edition of David Martin without any trouble.

Plus it's not consistent. The words give us at the top of page 164 are softer than the words One significant at the top of page 210. It's just a bad printing. And it might be due to the book being printed on cream-colored fibrous paper instead of white. I don't know. I want the book but I have to wonder if sending it back for a new copy will make any difference. I just know I was straining to read it and had to put it down.

Maybe there's an e-book, available...

Man...am I picky...

By watching these BBC and ITV murder mysteries, I'm finding that I really do not like stupid murders. Meaning, when it's finally explained, it makes no sense. Or the explanation is, "I didn't mean to do it." Revealed by a person who's never once acted like they could be at fault.

One that really got to me was In The Dark. A detective inspector is pregnant by one of two fellow cops, and no repercussions for her. No disciplinary hearing. Nothing. Okay...maybe it's different in England; I can get past that. But then one of those cops is killed...and it's done in a way that, even from the beginning, I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me?"

The set-up -- he's at a bus shelter on a lonely road and a car smashes into it. First of all, the car's not going that fast. Second of all, the shelter would have taken the brunt of the impact. He'd have been hurt, but killed? Stretching things. Then it turns out it was deliberate? How could the killer know he'd die from this? It's far more likely that he'd survive. Didn't even begin to buy it.

Now I just finished the first two seasons of Shetland, and while I liked its characters and atmosphere and scenery, again, there was a murder set-up in the last episode that wouldn't necessarily kill the victim -- a car crash. Off a cliff, sure, so it's possible he'd have died, even though it's only about 40 feet down to the bottom, but it's a new car with seat belts and airbags and people have walked away from worse wrecks. If he'd been killed and put in the car and the killer hope it would look like a wreck, that I could believe, but not just him being run off the road.

That sort of nonsense bothers me. Agatha Christie could get convoluted in her murder setups, but they made sense in the end. Same for Earl Stanley Gardner. Now it's all about twists and turns and sleight of hand explanations...and maybe I'm too picky but I like the end to be believable.

I think I did that with The Vanishing of Owen Taylor. Lots of twists and turns, but Jake's not a detective or a cop; he's just a guy trying to get to the bottom of his uncle's disappearance...so he makes mistakes and wrong assumptions and does some stupid things before he finally figures it out. At least, I hope I succeeded in making it believable.

Who knows...maybe I'm not as clever as I think.

David Martin starting the road...

...To becoming a hardcover book. Nice size. A bit pricy but with a fine cover. Everything nice and neat, inside. 88 pages long, 75 of them story and illustrations. I finished it up on my laptop, getting around the issues I had by shifting it to a DOC file from DOCX. I'm waiting to hear back with a PDF proof, then I'll get a hardcover...and then I'll start sending notices out to libraries to see if they want it. See if this gives the book a new lease on life...

I'm headed for a quick scout of a possible job in Connecticut, on Sunday, to meet with the people on Monday morning. Of course, this is the perfect time for me to get a cold...or virus, if I've got what a coworker got from her daughter. I'm fighting the beast with tea and soup and Tylenol and hoping to bring it down to nothing by Sunday...but so far the best I've been able to do is keep it at bay.

Tomorrow's Friday the 13th...and I's just superstitious enough to dread it. I can see me getting worse with this cold, and I've got a shipment that I'm trying to get out for a client that is just begging for something to go wrong. But can't do anything about it except call in sick, and that's not an option, right now.

I'm waiting for new copies of A65 to come in. It's all set to be sold through Kindle, Nook and a host of other ebook formats, and I have a promotion starting with Book Daily to get it better known. One can only hope, since I haven't the resources of Random House behind me to get it into book stores and advertised in media everywhere. Gotta rely on word of mouth.

So far reaction is good...

Musing...

I wonder if it's possible in today's world to show a man who's known to be vile and evil and depraved as someone who's truly sympathetic? I'm talking about a monster on the level of John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy, who raped and murdered innocent people, over and over and over. And I don't mean trying to understand why they did what they did -- I don't think that's possible or even, really, necessary -- but to know what they've done and to see that's not all to them.

I'm thinking of someone like Andrew Jackson, who as president set up the mass murder of Native Americans on a level that would make Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot green with envy. Or missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries who forced native populations around the world to submit to their version of God or die, horribly. Same for the Inquisition in Spain. Could a man participating in the forced conversion of Jews to Christianity under torture be seen as someone who goes home and pets his dog and loves his wife and kids, just like the guy who runs the local gas station?

I did something a bit like that with Curt in How To Rape A Straight Guy...but he was busy justifying himself because I think, deep down, he had an idea what he was doing was wrong and destructive. That's probably why the last chapter gets people so worked up; I can't tell you how many readers have let me know they were shocked at how they felt sorry for Curt...or sympathic for him, at the end.

I also did it a little with Alan, in Bobby Carapisi, but I think I also showed he was lying about a lot of his actions or, at least, exaggerating his part in them, to make himself feel like he had some kind of effect on the world...when in truth, he had none. All he had was a sort of bluster that fooled no one...and at the end Eric has no choice but to feel sorry for him. Pity him. Even after the little shit nearly ruined his life.

Thing is, I don't care to know why someone like Hitler did what he did. He's not really an anomaly, considering that at the same time Stalin was killing millions of his own people and Mao was rising up to commit just as great of atrocities, as did the Japanese in China and Korea and Turks in Armenia. And a thousand years before that was the hideousness of the Crusades and Vlad the Impaler.

So I wonder if I could write a book where the lead character is just like you or me...but has this quirk of abject cruelty in him that flares up, now and then, for no more reason than he or she might have eaten strawberry jam on their toast instead of orange marmalade? And have you still feel for them, at the end?

And now I'm wondering why the hell I'm wondering that.

Always good to ask...

I got an email back from Smashwords in response to me querying them about the epub problem...and it turns out the fix was quite simple. Epub doesn't like you to use capital letters when setting up bookmarks for hyperlinks. So I went through, redid all the bookmarks in lower case letters, relinked them...and it went through. Zing. I had no idea this was a requirement. Oh, well...The Alice '65 is now available in every ebook format there is, and that's what counts.

I tried a few more fixes for that dead flash drive -- plugging it into a couple of PCs at work, and it almost fired up, again, then found a data recovery service and sent it off to them for evaluation. In Florida. I'll find out in a week to 10 days if they can do anything...but if it's dead, it's dead and that is that. Dammit.

I may stop at Office Max en route home, tomorrow, and buy a memory card to back up all my thumb drives. I already do a lot of overlapping when it comes to saving things, but now I'm totally paranoid and want a couple of different ways to protect myself and my data.

On another good note, I got my LCCN back from the Library of Congress, so tomorrow I'll get David Martin set up with Ingram...and then I can shift focus to P/S. All I have left to do is the layout of the cover, which I've already got half done.

I was lucky and found a lot of images for P/S on an old thumb drive from 2010 as well as the one from 2012, and I still have the CDRs and zip disks I stored things on prior to the drives. They may be needed.

Sometimes it pays to be a packrat...

The devil's in my laptop...

I've decided the only reason I could possibly be having the issues I'm having with my laptop and technology, lately, is because the devil has inhabited my MacBook Pro and is having his fun with me. I set A65 up on Smashwords, but I got an error email saying it failed the epub check because of an undefined error. I tried a dozen different tests and checks to make sure the file I was sending was clean and good...and it's still sending me an error message.

Apparently, the only way I can get around that is called a nuclear option -- meaning remove ALL formatting and start from scratch with the basic text. The story has italics in spots all the way through it, and those will be gone. Same for spacing and indentations and hyperlinks between the table of contents and chapter titles. If I don't do this, it won't be made available to B&N or Apple iBooks.

What's crazy is, I downloaded a copy of the epub version of the story into my iBooks library, and I can read it fine. So I've sent them an email stating this to see if it can make any difference and included the message it keeps sending...and we'll see how it goes. If that's a no-go, I'm faced with hours of reconstructing the formatting on the book.

This interrupted me getting back into Place of Safety. I was digging through the files I had, transferring old files onto my laptop to use, and found I've got the beginnings of a step outline for books 2 and 3...from 2011. Damn, I've been too long away from this book. At least I know who the characters are, again -- like Everett, a gay man who works in the advertising department of a grocery chain in Houston and is in the closet, but who turns out to be a solid friend to Brendan. He's the one who's going to lead me into some very dark spaces.

Then there's Jeremy Landau, a Jewish kid who's making his name in the oil biz by focusing on China and the not-so-secret negotiations between Beijing and London over the fate of Hong Kong when the lease is up in 1997. His father's a doctor and he helps Brendan at an important point when he needs medical care but can't get it because he's illegal.

There's still a lot to do on this book...but I'm past the 50% point in what I've laid out. All I need to do is buckle down and get the rest of it filled in. The Houston part is still the iffiest, right now, but that will change. I know what it needs; just need to work out how to write it.

That's the hardest and most fun and irritating part...

Weird day....

It started off when I woke myself from a nice dream. I was in a waiting area for like a plane or train or maybe prepping for a crowd scene in a movie, sitting across from Russell Tovey, and it was so tight the only space for our legs was between each other's -- sort of a left, right, right, left situation -- when we were called and he looked to his right -- and I woke myself up by biting the side of my tongue. Dunno what it means in Freudian terms; just know it hurt like shit, and I had to be careful the rest of the day and keep rinsing my mouth because if I don't I'll get a sore. I'm prone to those.

Anyway, it set the day off wrong, so after more than an hour of emails and facebook and news and sorting through crap and dusting and rearranging shit to try and handle myself, I decided to issue David Martin in a hardback. Not sure why I settled on that, but I got to work and have it pretty much ready.

It'll be 6x9 inches with a glossy cover pasted over boards in a slim volume...1/2 inch thick. It didn't take a lot of reworking, but I made it appear a lot better than the paperback. Its sales have died so maybe this will help them. I also submitted it to the Library of Congress for a Preassigned Control Number, and this time I'm waiting till I hear back from them before I add anything to the copyright page.

But as a hardcover, it would work well for libraries, and since they won't take paperbacks as small as the one I issued, I can start hitting them to see if they'd buy a copy. Thing is, it's $16.99 for an 88 page book...but it will look very classy.

That did set me right, again, so I watched a BBC Mystery called Shetland, set on the Shetland Islands north of Scotland, and liked it. What's interesting is, the voices for Place of Safety began whispering in my ear, during it...this time with an aspect of one character's life that I really don't want to go near. But for me to do this right, I'll have to...and have to figure out a way of making it work without painting the character as sick and diseased.

Thing is, it's been so long since I dug into that phase of the story, I don't even remember the character's name...and it creeps me out when someone I think I know comes up and starts telling me secret things when I haven't figured out who he is, yet. I need to revisit my character list...or maybe even see if I have one. I can't say for sure. But what it boils down to is...yes, I do hear voices...so don't fuck with me.

Unless you're Russell Tovey.

I have no idea what I did...

I worked on A65's paperback cover, today, prepping it for when it's time to be released. I'm using the same layout but with some slightly different placement. Anyway, in the middle of this, I went looking for an image I knew I had...and discovered one of my thumb drives is dead. Completely. I plug it into the USB port and it does nothing. It's like the damned thing's not there.

Well...freakout time, because it has at least a hundred file folders on it, with images and details and information -- exactly what, I don't know, completely. I probably have half of the files double-backed up on other thumb drives, but there are a lot I don't have. And I cannot get it to work in order to find out...so I have no idea how much I've lost.

I spent hours digging through possibilities on the internet, including downloading a couple of programs that swore they could handle the issue, only to get nothing...though I did find people tend to have a poor opinion of PNY thumb drives. Too many are either poorly made or poorly designed, causing connectivity issues similar to mine. And I'm fairly certain it's a connection problem because when I tried the drive out on my old Mac Book, the little green light flashed on then went off.

Jiggling it did no good, nor did cleaning it or trying to compress the mouth of the thing. I plug it in and get absolutely nothing. Won't even work on my Mac Mini. And I know it's not the ports, because my other drives work fine on them. So I'm trying one last thing -- plugging it into my PC at the office. If that doesn't work, I'm screwed. I guess I could check around to see if someone knows how to get around this issue, but since it's not a programming or motherboard thing I don't know who to go to.

I guess I could ask around. What'll make this especially interesting is, there are images on there I just don't want people to see. Things meant solely for me...like a fairly graphic Yaoi illustrated story I found interesting about a man sexually assaulted by vines and trees who, when they're done with him, shrugs it off and walks away...and some other artwork by Mentaiko, whose human figures are caught between the cartoonish form of Yaoi and the best rendition of body forms and skin tones I've ever seen.

And just to be clear -- yes, I can be very weird and warped, at times...

You do what you have to do...

Well...initial response to A65 is interesting. I've had over 200 people download a free edition of the ebook. I got a nice blurb in the Funds for Writers newsletter, which actually got someone to contact me asking when the ebook would be available in Nook. I decided the hell with it and set the ebook up on Smashwords. That'll make it available for that format soon. Not sure what this means for Kindle, but right now I don't give a shit. Amazon's fucking me around on the hardcover -- they're back to first offering it through that 3rd party dealer -- so if they want to make an issue out of it, screw 'em.

I read through a bit more of the book, checking for mistakes...and stopped. I had to. I was close to convincing myself I'd done a crap job with it and should pull the book and never be allowed to write, again. Me being hyper-critical of every sentence not worded perfectly. It's ludicrous...but I think most writers are like that. Hell, even Steven King went back and reworked The Stand several times, not necessarily for the better. I read it when it first came out and it went on and on, even then, before he added God knows how many pages and changed the timing.

But then, he's Steven King and he can do that. Writers like me, it just makes us look indecisive and lacking in confidence...which we are. At least, I am. So I've frozen my inclination to rework the story, yet again, into stasis till I get word back from the LoC that everything's okay. If it IS okay...I'm publishing the paperback as is and doing no more rewrites, at all. If it isn't and I have to reissue the hardcover...well, I'll see what I can do to control myself.

Haven't had much luck in that aspect of my life, yet.

It's now official...

I ordered a hardcover copy of A65 from Amazon before all my issues with them came to a head, and I got it today...and I'm sending it straight to the Library of Congress to see if they will accept it into their CiP system. What's interesting is, once Amazon got around to including that particular sale in their numbering system, it bumped the 3rd party seller off the main page and now the first window up to offer a hardcover is straight from Amazon. Not sure why it works like that, but it's reality. I'm still pissed, however.

I've also set A65 up as a free ebook download through Sunday, and that's boosted it to #54 in Romantic comedy and #80 in Contemporary Fiction. This is a screen shot mainly to prove it to myself. If anyone wants to grab it, go here. I think you have to be a member of Kindle Unlimited or something, but it's there and ready to be read.

I've also got a Facebook friend in Denmark who's got health issues and reads a lot of M/M stuff, and who's bought a copy of the ebook. She posted all of her library on Facebook, and here's one of the images. I love how my book pops out at you. She's read everything else of mine; I guess she can handle a straight rom-com, of a sort.

Anyway, I've done as much as I can, right now. I'm gleaning back through my own ebook copy to check, once more, for typos and finding none, so far...just places I wish I'd rewritten, once more. But I can't go through this, again...not on the level I've been doing; I find myself becoming hyper critical and that is not good. No.

The book is done...and that's good...because what's done is done...

Different directions...

I got my hardcover copy of The Alice '65, today, and it looked fine. All that angst over getting the color out and finally giving in and submitting the pdf with the ICC Color Profiles still there...and it turned out great. So fine, I ain't worrying about it, anymore. It's gonna go like it goes...as the river flows...and all that crap.

I'm going to try something new, here, and offer the hardcover of A65 via ebay, direct from me. I've ordered some copies of it to have on hand and will have it available as of April 15th. If enough people bite, I'll keep it up. If not, I'll have copies to use for publicity and promotion.

I'm about ready to let go of the book. Just a few more items need to be handled -- like sending it to the LoC and getting their response, and shipping signed copies off to the people who helped me by editing and commenting on the story. When all of that happens, then I can relax and accept the book's done. I suppose I could get the paperback ready, completely, including the cover, even though I'm going to wait to issue it till I hear back from the Library of Congress on their notations.

Oh, and set it up on Smashwords. Right. Better make a list, because this will be a full weekend.

I also need to check out my Mastercard; I think I've maxed it doing this, but the friggin' website won't let me in to check. It wants me to reset my password because it doesn't recognize me and it's doing it in a way that doesn't seem right...so I'll call tomorrow and find out what's up. Not interested in dealing with someone from India who responds to your issues with a scripted phrase. Had enough of that with Amazon.

I also picked up my tax return forms...and that's not going to be fun. I'm tempted to let them send me a bill and then refuse to pay it, I'm still so angry over what the Republicans and Czar Snowflake have pulled with their tax rewrite. I've got to pay 20% of my piddly income while Amazon pays nothing.

It's enough to turn you into an anarchist...

Amazon sucks...

That fucking bully of a company has always been a pain in the ass -- I speak from experience, having been banned by them, once, and semi-banned a second time. Now they've gone one venal step farther into the hell of avariciousness. Apparently third party book sellers can now buy the right to show up first when you want to buy a new book from Amazon...before Amazon's own page listing that book. Seriously. Here's what the little shits told me when I asked to have the Amazon listing appear first when someone links to my hardback book --

...(T)his is an automated process and cannot be manually updated based on your request. Though seller Prepbooks is coming up first in the search, potential customers still have the option to purchase the book directly from Amazon. Amazon has allowed third-party sellers to compete for the Buy Box across categories for many years. We’ve now extended this policy to books. In some instances, the winning merchant will be a third-party seller instead of Amazon as in this case.

In other words, Fuck off. We'll do what we fucking want and if you don't like it, too bad. And then they make it damn near impossible to find the link to their actual listing so you can buy.

I'd tell them to do the fucking to themselves, but I do want The Alice '65 to get read, and it is set up with Kindle, so...it is what it is. The book's also available on Barnes & Noble and I'm going to make an ebook available in Smashwords, too. If they don't like it, too bad. Not everyone has a Kindle or a Reader, and this'll make it available to all sorts of venues.

I'm trying to see the up side of this -- that maybe it will make the book more noticed and easier to get...but I'm pretty sure I'm bullshitting myself. It's just a tacky, vile move by a money-grubbing asshole's company to increase their monetary gain all while paying their employees starvation wages. The fact that Czar Snowflake is attacking them (with lies and stupidity, as is usual from him) is raising conflicts within me...however since that asshole in the White House is a danger to the world and not just my book, he gets my disdain and Amazon my vague support.

But very vague...

Wedding photos from Austin...

My niece, Krista, married her long-time boyfriend, Micah, on March 10th in Leander, in the scrub of the Texas Hill Country on a day that hit 90.

The Wedding begins...

And it's done...

This is Micah and his two moms, with Krista...

The parents of the groom. My photos of the Bride's family had too much sun flair to be of any use.

My nephew, Daniel, youngest brother, Kelly, and sister, Jeri, mother of the bride.

Micah and Jeri dance, with Krista in the background.

It was a nice wedding under a hot sky and lots of damn good brisket out in the middle of nowhere along a rutted road surrounded by mesquite and brush. Very down-home.

I wish them both a long and happy life together.