Road trips begat road trips...

I'm going to add a chapter to Book 2 of APoS, where Brendan, Everett and maybe a couple other people do a road trip from Houston to Austin to see a San Antonio-based punk band called The Next. They play as a punk club called Raul's, just off the UT campus, on Guadeloupe. Pronounced Gwa-de-loop. Don't ask me why; when I lived there it took me forever to get used to how they said names. Like Manchaca was pronounced Man-shack. Drove me nuts.

It's during Brendan's drugged-out phase -- about 1979 -- and they go in Everett's 1974 Chrysler Imperial, which can easily seat a dozen people, it's so damn big. Bren uses this to break out from his high-end ennui...even buys a cassette of their music and plays it when back in Derry to jolt a cross-cultural party into life. Just before he sees a ghost and begins to question his sanity.

But my main focus is still the first book, Derry, and it's slowly working its way around to me. I'm debating adding a moment were Brendan finds letters written from his father to his mother that are almost poetic. He's learned his aunt in Houston has been sending money in her letters and packages to the family, something his mother never once mentioned, so he wants to know more. And what it leads to is him having to start re-evaluating his father's anger...but this seems like such a literary device, I'm not so sure about it. So Victorian. So Edith Wharton.

I can't just have him overhear the man spinning one of his tales or singing one of Ireland's songs inside a pub while Brendan's outside; I don't want him to know any of this until after the guy's dead. It's gonna be tricky...

Maybe even Brendan''s stumped at figuring out how. Maybe that's why he's been so quiet on this trip...