Slow shift...

I'm trying to get back to reading my books for APoS but I keep dozing off. It's not lack of sleep doing that to me; it's probably just age and sitting on a comfy couch by a picture window on a warm day. I remember when I used to be able to read just about anything while seated in an overstuffed chair at my grandmother's and get so lost in the story I wouldn't hear anyone when they spoke to me. Sucks getting old.

I already see I need to do a better job of setting up Bernadette and Eamonn (her husband). Brendan's brother, Eamonn, already has some solid aspects of Derry in his character, but I'm unclear about their parents. I have ideas about where they came from and how they wound up living in sub-standard housing, but it's still kind of sketchy. Granted, most of the housing in the Bogside of Derry was dilapidated by the mid-60s, but that's beside the point.

This photo shows the tail end of Nailors Row about 1950, and the buildings in the lower-left, facing the wall, had been torn down by 1955. The ones up by Walker's Pillar, shown in previous photos, lasted another 20 years before being demolished. That's the area where Brendan's family lived, and those people all knew each other going back generations.

That's how it was throughout Derry, really. Reading recollections and stories of the place, even drunks sitting in the street could recite a child's ancestry from his great-grandfather or mother. And I don't really have that. There's also the issue of cleanliness. Lots of kids then had head lice (they called them nits) and were less prone to bathing since they didn't have indoor plumbing. That's another thing I never had to deal with, personally. If anything, we were kept extremely clean...and I only hint at Brendan's casual attitude about bathing, so far.

I guess it's time to hone the story down to its basics. Something writing Blood Angel showed me was, I can be overly descriptive, at times. And while it reads nice, it also hides the story. And it's especially unnecessary when being told in first person, like most of my work is. Lean and clean, Kyle.

Never let it be said I didn't aim high with my writing...