Off to a job, tomorrow, so no more writing will be done till I get back. It's a long drive there and I'm getting too old for this kind of work because it exhausts me. I can use the money, of course, which is why I still do it, but eventually I just won't be able to.
Anyway, I'm currently working on the Bloody Sunday section and that has to be exactly right so I'm not rushing it. After that is Brendan taking Joanna to the circle fort and then deciding to leave Derry, forever...both pretty intense...
I guess I can still do NaNoWriMo if I push it, but I've got the second part of this job the second week of November, in NYC, for three days...so I may pass. I'm pretty much written out and this book is taking a toll. I just want to read something light and fluffy.
What was nice about reading Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris was seeing how Paul Galico skimmed over so much and yet still built somewhat interesting characters...and enjoying how much better the new film version is.
I also read Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire about his time at Henry Sotheran's, in London, as an apprentice and then antiquarian bookseller. Very light and easy and pleasant, and he's got a lot of wit behind his style.
So right now I'm building a headache so am signing off and won't be signing on again till Thursday night, at the earliest. Maybe the trees are still turning so I can get some nice photos of Fall colors to share.
What I worked on, today, in APoS. This is after the broken-up march at Magilligan Strand in January 1972, a week before Bloody Sunday:
------
Danny and I guided Colm back to a bus and hopped on. As it filled with wet and angry people, I used an American bandana he had to work up a sling of a sort so it didn't just hang at his side. Done in blue and white, it was, and looked fine against his tan Anorak.
"You should get this to a doctor," I said. "X-rays and a splint..."
Colm shook his head. "That could be used in evidence against me, if they want to make a case for rioting."
Danny chuckled. "Like they need evidence for that."
Colm had to nod in agreement. "I know someone I can get to check it. No worries."
The bus headed back for Derry, and Danny stayed on it with us so I asked him, "Where you lodging?"
"I'm not. I told you..."
Colm shook his head. "After this, you'll be lucky to get away without being snatched. Better you come with me."
"Let's to my place," I said. "You can stay there. Clean up. Leave off in the morning, once all is clear."
"But your ma?" Danny asked.
I huffed. "She likes you, and Eamonn's not around so you can sleep in the hutch. The both of you."
Danny gave me a crooked grin. "And miss another day's classes? Oh, Brendan, how could I ever?"
Even Colm chuckled at that, and from there we only talked about the lovely sport of the broken up demonstration.
The bus let us off at Guildhall and we headed for the checkpoint at William.
"Do you have some smokes, Colm?" I asked.
"Just two packs," he said, wary.
"Marlboros?" He nodded. "That should be enough."
And normally would have been, but the checkpoint was manned by a pack of very angry soldiers, none of whom I'd seen before. Save one...maybe. They slammed us against a wall, telling us to put our hands up on it and to spread our legs so they could maul us with full abandon. But Colm couldn’t raise his hurt arm.
A Sergeant grabbed it to look closer at his injury, making him cry out from the pain.
"What's this?" he snarled at Colm. "Bloody rioter?"
He started to rip Com's Anorak off, causing even more pain to him.
I was still in control, for we were outside, not in a room, so gave a small laugh and shot in with, “Me mate? Rioting? Couldn't throw straight to save himself. He was just playin’ the cod, is all."
“Shut the fook up, ye fookin’ taig.”
I shrugged. “Call me what you want, but I was workin' on a car, at McClosky’s, and me mate went actin’ stupid and got under it to play and kicked it off its block. This is from the rear wing hittin' him as it fell. Me boss tied his arm and it took the three of us to set the car right.”
"On a Sa'ruday?"
"Who said it happened today?"
“Ye fookin’ liar! Ye fix cars? A nobody like yerself?”
I snorted, this time. “I can fix any car there is!”
He smiled at me, cold and hard. “Yeah? I got a Defender leaks oil. Nobody can tell me why. All the seals are good and no cracks in the block. What the fookin' shite is wrong wit’ it?”
“What’s the year?”
“...Sixty-one.”
“Model”
“S-4.”
“Is the head tight?”
“’Course it fookin’ is.”
“Sure of that? If you put a normal jointing on, it needs to twice be turned, to be sure. I used double joints and compounds when I fixed Dr. Wiler’s; went hard on the fastening. Colm helped me with the last turn of the spanner, didn't ya?”
Then I noticed that one ugly mug who looked familiar was running his hands up and down Colm, slow and grabby. But me China stayed cold as ice and said, without hesitation. “It was bloody hard. Bloody thing won’t come off without major surgery, for certain.”
“Hasn’t had a leak since,” I said, making myself smile.
Christ, that bastard groping Colm looked more and more familiar.
Another soldier came up. “What 'bout a Volvo 122? Shifter comes out the gear box.”
“That’s the bloody car’s design," I said, keeping my voice light. "Put it back in and screw it closed, is all you need do.”
“Not what me mechanic said. Needs doin’ just right, fasten down just right. Glove repositioned.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and how much’d he hit you for?”
“...Ten quid.”
“Each time?”
“I...I didn’t say it was more’n once.”
I saw that same bastard was now shifting to Danny, and I was growing wary. I had to make myself chuckle. “Next time it comes out, put it in yourself and see what happens.”
“So you do know cars.” It was a Sergeant speaking, from behind me.
I shrugged. "I fix things."
That soldier began his mauling, up one of Danny's legs, grinning and growling like a hyena, then shoving his hand up around Danny's arse and Danny was growing tighter and tighter and his fingers were digging into the bricks and this was going to go so bad...it was going to go so bad...and...and I caught it. He was the same bastard who'd fingered my arse, a few weeks back.
Danny started to shake, his fingers digging tighter against the wall.
Oh, shite, oh, shite, oh, shite.
But then I noticed some older women in the queue, glaring at the fat bastard and without a thought suddenly barked, "What the fuck is this? You stickin' your thumb up my arse isn't enough, you wanna do it to me mate, too? Lookin' for dreams to wank off to, when you're alone?"
And I was loud with it.
The bastard spun to me, snarling, "What the fook're you sayin'?"
I noticed other ladies were casting glances our way so grew louder. "What the fuck, yourself, arsehole. It's not enough you grab my bollocks and stick your nose up me arse, you're gonna do it to all of us? Fuckin' poofter! Gettin' your jollies off goin' up boys' jacksies?!"
The bastard howled and punched me in the kidney and fuck did it hurt. I cried out. He grabbed the collar of my coat suddenly I'm back in Strand Road and I just know I'm going into that fucking room, again, and hours of that shite and that added to my gasps of pain and I was close to whimpering...
But that queue of women heard me.
They heard me.
Saw what the bastard was doing. Saw him hit me. And they began spitting furious curses on the man. Words I'd never heard come out of a woman before, not even Mrs. Keogh when she was in a lather. Spitting at all of them. Beginning to close in on them.
"What're you doing to them boys, you cunts?"
"You bastards gonna try anything with them?"
"Big fucks with toy guns beating up on little lads?"
"Motherfuckin' bastards!"
"Keep your fookin' paws to yerselves, ya sick fucks."
Colm burst out with, "That fookin' bastard groped me! An' he was grabbing me mate's arse. Me mate's an altar boy! Never a stitch of trouble to him and this ape's gonna drag him off for his sick fun!"
Oh, did the ol' cows howl even more. Poofters and Homos and Nancy Boys, and I'd swear I heard a few cocksuckers in there. It was glorious. Others began to come over, from Waterloo, both men and women, to see what the noise was about.
The paras started to get nervous and now held their weapons at the ready, in case this hoard of middle-aged ladies took it upon themselves to attack. If I hadn't been so winded by the bastard's punch, I'd have laughed at the cowardice in them.
But then I looked at Danny...and while he was still in position, staring at the wall as if frozen, his fingers still digging into the brick, he was also still shaking and breathing hard and sharp.
Like I had been...in that room...for hours...and I started begging in my mind, Please, Danny, please don't let go, not yet, not now. Please.
I was so sure I was rocking along with APoS's fourth draft, it decided to kick me in the shins. Nothing harsher, fortunately, but enough to pay attention. By focusing on Brendan's emotional connections with the bits of this draft, I got lost in the lead-up to when his sister, Mairead, and her husband leave Derry for Toronto. It causes a huge rift in the family, and brings the worst of Brendan's mother out.
She's become something of a Republican fanatic in bits and steps, but when Mairead pushes for the move after Brendan and Turleigh are arrested and physically abused during the arrests under internment, Ma works Eamonn up into a fury over their departure. Sees it as cowardice. But Mai fires back that he and the IRA had run off and left them to be abused by the British and it gets harsh.
What's more, Brendan is scarred by his interrogation but doesn't really recognize the signs until after he, Danny and Colm are almost arrested after the demonstration at Magilligan Strand, a week before Bloody Sunday. He's sharp enough to help them avoid it, but afterwards comes close to collapse in front of his two best mates, both of whom are startled at how calm and cool he was when facing down British troops at a checkpoint.
I don't have this completely right, yet. This chapter. It's still just sort of there because what I had already written was skating past all of this. But it's at this point, just weeks before his 16th birthday, that he figures out he cannot trust his mother about anything, and that his brother, whom he'd idolized, is easily manipulated...and now aspects of his father's brutality are showing up in Eamonn. It's along in here he knows he wants to leave Derry as soon as he can; all he's waiting for is Joanna to decide where she's going for university.
And he has a horrible feeling she might decide on Queen's college, in Belfast, and he doesn't know what he will do if she does...because that's just as bad if not worse for Catholics.
I'm not going to do Robert's Wife for NaNoWriMo. I'm going to work on the very first part of Darian's Point, which I have not written but only outlined. This is my Irish horror story about harpies that live in the Cliffs of Moher and come out during storms to feed on fish in the sea. Except every 100 years, a young man is sacrificed to them as part of a pact they made with the Clan Ui Briuin 30 Centuries ago.
I wrote a screenplay for part of the story many, many years ago and won awards for it. Almost got it sold. That part was set in 1910, when the harpies break the pact and try to kill the last man in the Ui Briuin line. I almost got it sold and produced. Had a director who liked it. Producers at a company that had development deals with Irish production houses and funding pushed for it. But it got turned down by the head of the company because he already had an Irish script and didn't want another one. That's how arbitrary film can be.
I wrote a followup, set in modern times, where the last young man in the Ui Briuin bloodline suffers a catastrophic loss and decides to kill himself by jumping off the Moher Cliffs. But things don't exactly go that way, and he decided to face his demons. Literally. So those two parts just need to be novelized.
In each one, the story of how the harpies were formed is told, but each time it's a bit different...and not really correct. My thought was to bring them out in reverse order. The modern one, first, then the 1910 one, then the original showing what actually happened is very little like the stories passed down through time. I may, still.
I'm only able to do this because I will be done with this draft of APoS by the end of October. My jobs in NY state and NYC are set, still, but they're looking to be fairly easy. It's just the driving in the first one that will be a chore. Still...I'm feeling good about it.
Okay, I'm up to the trip Brendan and Joanna take to Dublin, which leaves about 150 pages to rewrite. When I'm done, I'm going to print it out, again, and this time go through all my notes and information to cross reference before doing the last draft.
I'm thinking of making a book out of an outline I once did for a script -- Robert's Wife. Thing is, I don't know what it's about, yet; I just have it written out. Here's the beginning of what I have...
-------------------
ROBERT Van WARREN (50, better looking than he thinks) wakes
on a beautiful morning and rises to take a shower. After a
moment, his wife, ANNE (a lovely woman twenty years his
junior) joins him and they make love. They are gentle but
intense with each other, the steam curling around them and
adding to their excitement.
When done, Robert and Anne
discuss their plans for their vacation. "Where do you want
to go?" asks Anne.
"I've never been to Paris."
"Isn't that expensive?"
"Money means nothing when I'm with you."
They almost make love, again, but Robert has a lunch date
with Smith Corley, an important client and must finish
preparing for it.
"Isn't he beneath you?" Anne asks, joking.
Robert chuckles and says, "My father's very words...even after
Smith placed twenty million with us."
Anne suggests he could
still arrive late to the office, but Robert is adamant.
"When your name is on the building, people expect a thousand
times more."
She reminds him they are attending a gala art opening with
friends, that night. Robert promises not to be late but only
if they can leave early.
"The Van Warren Company" is an elegant but low-key building
in Beverly Hills and the few employees are dressed to
business-like perfection. Robert enters and his assistant,
JACKIE (pretty in a "Vogue Big Girls" kind of way), meets him
to discuss which clients are happy, which are unhappy, whose
portfolio is in decline and needs attention, and an upset
client named PENELOPE MARSH is on her way over.
"I couldn't talk her out of it," says Jackie.
"I know what it's about," Robert replies. "I'll see her soon
as she gets here."
"And your father called from New York; he's been trying to
reach you. Since eight a-m. Eastern time."
Robert nods, tosses off responses on how to handle the few
problems without hesitation, takes Penelope's portfolio and
enters his immaculate office.
The instant Robert's door is closed, he goes to his desk,
takes one of the five pencils perfectly lined up on it...and
deliberately snaps it in half.
He snaps another and another and another. Finally, he sits
at his desk to caress a glamorous photo of Anne with a
hairstyle that almost seems old-fashioned, then calls his
father, STEPHEN AMBROSE Van WARREN, III.
Stephen never has time for pleasantries; he's "received word"
that the Fed is about to raise interest rates, and he wants
Robert to buffer some clients by shifting into bonds and
certain securities. Robert already has; he anticipated the
Fed's actions by a week. Without another word, dad hangs up
so Robert buzzes Jackie, tells her he needs more pencils and
she tells him Miss Marsh has arrived. She brings in both
pencils and a very jittery young woman and makes sure
everything in order before she exits (her actions showing she
has a crush on her boss).
Penelope starts in, immediately, on needing an advance on her
allowance (Robert manages a trust fund set up for her by her
mother). Robert points out she receives her funds on a
quarterly basis only, and draws out of her that she owes
money for drugs; she had been clean but breaking up with her
boyfriend sent her off the wagon. Robert agrees to float a
loan if she returns to rehab. Penny (as Robert calls her)
isn't sure that's the best idea, but Robert responds, "When
have I steered you wrong?" and finally wins her over.
Lunch with SMITH, a hot young movie star, goes well. They
are at a restaurant surrounded by shrubs and traffic so Smith
can be noticed without seeming to want to be noticed. Robert
is telling the younger man that a particular investment his
agent recommended "is just like Enron, more of a Ponzi scheme
than a real company," when he hears Anne's voice call,
"Eddie." He looks around to find her meeting EDWARD PERRIN
(same age as her, good-looking), and she is radiant. They
kiss and she says, "It seems like forever," as they walk away
arm in arm.
Robert cannot move, stunned, until Smith says,
"Shit, no wonder you froze -- a babe like that." Robert just
nods in response. Then Smith adds, "She kind of looks like
that picture on your desk, the one of your wife."
Robert
spills his wine then as the waiter cleans up the mess forces
himself to keep talking to Smith, convincing him to stay away
from the bad investment and ending with his pet phrase, "When
have I steered you wrong?"
That night, Robert pulls into his driveway to find a new
Mercedes parked by the front door. He stops behind it,
envisions Anne leading Perrin inside and cannot make himself
get out of his car until his housekeeper appears at the door
and calls to him, "Mr. Van Warren, you have guests."
Robert
heads into the house to find JUDGE and MRS. AMBERSON (a too-too
distinguished older couple) in the sitting room with
Anne. A huge portrait of Robert's father hangs over the
fireplace.
The judge and his wife are old friends of the family...and of
Robert, of course. Robert greets them then goes upstairs to
change.
Anne follows him and comments on how late he is. He responds
it couldn't be helped and asks her about her day. She says
nothing about meeting with Perrin. Robert tries to lead her
into confessing, telling her, "I saw a young man on the
street who looked familiar -- tall, dark-haired, good-looking,
a scar on his left forearm. Do you remember ever
meeting anyone like that?" Anne says no...but not in a
definitive way.
At the opening, Robert keeps to himself, drinking too much
wine, speaking only to people who come up to speak to him and
watching Anne talk to an attractive man in the distance. She
seems to flirt with him. Robert becomes more and more upset
in his usual quiet manner...until he snaps the stem of the
wine glass. It cuts his left hand. He hides it by wrapping
the cut in a napkin and slipping it into his pocket. Then he
goes to Anne and insists they leave. No one says good-bye to
them.
At home, Robert and Anne argue. At first, she denies knowing
Perrin but finally angrily admits they are lovers and casts
questions on Robert's ability to please her. Her words turn
vicious, dig deep into Robert. He hurries up the stairs to
get away from her, but she paces him, belittling him until he
lashes out at her. She tumbles down the stairs and lies
there, motionless. Horrified, Robert races to her...and
finds she is dead. He freezes.
Made up a bit for yesterday, and am now up to Chapter 20, including the Battle of Bogside, where the local population fought back against the Royal Ulster Constabulary and refused to let them rampage into the Bogside area of the city. 14-16 August 1969. Brendan helps by making petrol bombs, and the fighting goes on for three days until Westminster sends in troops to separate the two sides. For the moment, it looks like victory to the Catholics...for the moment.
Seven or eight chapters left to go; just depends on how I do it. I want each one to be between 12 and 20 pages, but a couple seem intent on going for longer. The one I'm facing now deals with one of Brendan's closest friends, Danny, dealing with some brutal demons and Brendan not knowing what to do...and it's at 40 pages, right now.
Throughout the story, there have been hints that Danny was being abused by his parish priest. He's grown more and more moody, and when the priest was sent away, he grew lighter but still problematic. Brendan drew him into helping with repairs and electrical wiring, and there's talk of him being apprenticed for that work. But it finally catches up to him and all hell is going to explode here.
The consistency of Catholic priests molesting boys and girls in their parishes all over the world is far too well documented not to make reference to. Especially since there are studies linking that molestation to emotional and legal troubles for the kids later in life. This reality slipped itself into the story without my noticing, at first. And I still don't address it directly but allude to it....until this section, when it comes out in the open. Still unnamed but obvious.
I've got 4 full days left before I head out to a packing job along the Hudson Vally, between Albany and NYC. Maybe 5; depends on what Caladex needs from me to get ready for this job and the Toronto Book Fair, the following Sunday. But I'm so close to being done with this draft, I'm on pins and needles.
Something I have been doing throughout this draft is emphasizing Brendan's emotion reactions to things. How he feels. When he's angry and why. When he's happy and why. Giving him more and more a hint of a poet's heart. By the time I'm done with this book, he might actually be strong enough to tell me to fuck off.
Isn't that what every author wants his characters to do, finally?
I decided to do laundry at a full-scale laundromat and got a salad to-go from Pie-o-Mine, figuring I was being a good boy. Washing blankets and mattress cover, too. Getting ready for winter. If last week was any indication, it's going to be a fun one.
Well...the first laundromat I went to was packed, and the second one was open but not very good. Washing was okay but the driers sucked. And it was a lot more expensive than doing it in the building where I live or the first place I went to. Then on top of it, the fucking salad made me sick.
I'd planned to go grocery shopping but instead came home and tended to myself. Nap, too. Brain scattered. And somehow I wound up tracking in three little brown spiders. Caught them all and put them outside, where they won't starve. I'm just now feeling human, again.
The last time I got sick from a salad at that place, I blamed it on the uncured bacon the used for bacon bits. Uncooked, too. Not this time. Guess I'm steering clear of that joint. Not even balsamic vinegarette dressing protected me.
In short, nothing done on APoS, today. But I will have a fourth draft done, soon.
This draft of APoS is halfway done. Made it through the attack at Burntollet Bridge and the police reprisals up to Brendan's family getting a new home on ClÃodhna Place and his older sister, Mairead, getting married and having a baby.
I'm working up a query letter to agents in hopes of finding one that will help me set the book with a publishing house. Most of the ones I've looked up say 6-8 weeks before notification, which really puts it after the first of the year...so I've got time to still work it.
This is what I've got, so far. Any comments or suggestions?
----------
My novel, A Place of Safety, is the journey of Brendan Kinsella, a lad born and raised in Derry, Northern Ireland, who just wants to be left alone to live his life. But he is growing up during the time of The Troubles, and history keeps overwhelming his plans.
The story is told in three volumes, beginning in 1966, with the murder of his father, when Brendan is ten years of age. It sweeps through the 1968 Civil Rights demonstrations in Derry, the attack on peaceful marchers at Burntollet Bridge in early 1969, the lead-up to The Battle of Bogside in August of that year, the re-introduction of internment and Bloody Sunday, as well as witnessing a destructive bombing, to end in 1972. Woven through it is a budding relationship with a Protestant girl that has to be kept secret for fear of reprisals by both sides. This volume is in a fourth draft and currently undergoing revisions to clarify characters, events and moments.
Volume 2 is set between 1973 and 1980, in Houston, Texas, where Brendan is sent after a mental breakdown, while volume 3 is set during the hunger strikes of 1981. Those two are in second draft. As of now, all three volumes total more than 1400 pages and 320,000 words. And I should add, this is not based on my own life.
I have self-published 14 books in both print and ebook. Several are gay erotica, but I have also published a MF romantic-comedy, a MM murder mystery, a MM satire, and a MF erotic revenge thriller. However, I would like to situate A Place of Safety with a mainstream publisher to overcome the many obstacles that come with self-publishing...especially the need for sales and publicity (which I am very poor at), and getting copies of the book placed in brick & mortar stores.
I am open to sending you the first three chapters of volume one, or the first chapter of each volume, or whatever configuration you prefer. I could also send you a copy of The Alice '65, my MF romantic comedy, or The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, my gay murder mystery, to further show my abilities in writing.
Thank you for considering A Place of Safety. I believe it would be a great match with your agency's interests.
I look forward to hearing from you.
-------
Seems a bit long, but this is a pretty massive book. I'd call it my Russian novel but right now I'm pissed at Russia. Maybe German, like Musil or Grass? French like Proust? Spanish, like Cervantes?
Okay...A Place of Safety is now 123,335 words spread over 541 pages, and I'm about 1/3 of the way through the rewrite. At this rate, I'll probably hit 130,000 words. This puts me at the end of 1968, when Eamonn, Brendan's older brother, is going to join the People's Democracy march from Belfast to derry...which turns brutal at Burntollet Bridge.
I'm at the point where I think the majority of the story is pretty well set. I need to make sure bout consistency and that all the names are correct. I changed a couple...like from Declan to Turlach, and a neighbor from Mrs. Rafferty to Mrs. Haggerty.
I'm also adding in more description of the areas Brendan passes through. Today it was Duke Street, by the railroad station. I found an old photo of Duke and used that to work it up. Same for his first time to Grianan Aileach, the circle fort just outside Derry in the Republic. It's a fight to give an idea of the places around him without sitting down and describing them in detail. Just give enough that a 12 year-old boy would notice to reference.
Derry has changed a lot since the beginning of the Troubles. Entire neighborhoods gone. Streets renamed or removed. Brendan's area is done away with, completely, to be replaced by a wide hillside of green grass. When I was there in 2002, you could still see open lots where buildings had been bombed or torn down, but you could also find sections where the old houses still stood.
I need to go back. Spend my time in the library looking through the newspapers of the time for the weather and movies being shown and prices and headlines and the like. I have a number of books from The Derry Journal that have photos of the time that appeared in the paper, but not one has a photo of the attack on the October 5th march in 1968. I'd like to see what the front page was like on the paper in the next issue.
The internet has its limitations.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
This is part of Chapter 7...and this turns brutal. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's beginning to explain Brendan's mother and father and bringing change to him. He's 12, right now, half listening to his mother and two neighbors chat about his older brother, Eamonn. He's been accepted to Queen's and is planning a career in law.
----------
I was outside at the window waiting for Danny and wee Eammon to come, so was using the sill to hold an old clock and some of my tools. I’d found it in a dustbin behind a shop. The levers were rusted near solid but I had finally worked them apart. Its wooden body was split but could be filled in and painted over. And since the face was in such perfect condition, being this painted porcelain with old-fashioned brass numbers, my plan was to clean it up, make it work right, and sell it to Mrs. Donaldson’s shop down in Waterloo. She had second-hand goods in the back area that only looked half ready for use. I thought doing this might also show her I could fix those things up, as well, to bring her a better price...and maybe a steadier line of work, and never mind she was Protestant.
So I was only half listening to their craic, simply because I didn’t want to get too caught up in this before the lads appeared. I had my little work box at my feet to set everything into at a moment's notice. But then Ma just had to say, “It’s a pity not all my sons’re like Eamonn, strong, smart and sure of themselves. Livin' their lives to make the lives of other’s better. When he shifted coal, every shilling he made was handed over without a word of complaint or me havin' to fight for it.”
I looked at her with disbelief, for I remembered full well how many times Eamonn had asked her to let him keep a little of his wages, and Ma’s reply had been that he was a selfish child who thought of no one but himself when she had to scratch the earth to keep kith and kin from having to eat grass like they did in the famine, and on and on. Oh, she could lay on eloquence as well as Father Jack, when she had a mind to. She was glaring straight at me when she offered up that lie, as was Mrs. Rafferty in what appeared to be complete agreement.
Without a thought, I popped out with, “Oh, aye, Ma, between you and Da's drink, there was no one could keep his own wages.”
She hissed, bolted up and yanked me by my hair and her fist struck me hard in the face as she snapped, “You dare talk of your own father like that? A murdered saint of a man?”
I tore away from her, wiping blood from a cut in my lip. Mrs. Rafferty was shaking her head in horrified agreement with Ma, saying, “The mouth that one has, Bernadette. You’ve a trial with him, there’s no question.”
Mrs. Haggerty rose to her feet, wiping her hands on her apron, wary but silent.
Rhuari appeared at the door, looking at me as if I was mad. He must have been in his usual corner, reading. He didn't have the ability to block out the world when he was lost in a book, not like I did. A couple of neighbors also popped their heads out to see what was the commotion.
Now I’d have left it there, but Ma was not yet content in my punishment. She grabbed up the clock’s face from the sill and smashed it against the corner, shattering it, causing Rhuari to race inside. Then she glared around at me, a vicious slash of a smile on her face, and snarled, “Now you’ll come back here and clean this filth up!”
That look...that snarling grin...it tore something apart, inside of me. I'd seen it when she was fighting her worst with Da, a couple of times, almost like it was a pleasure to her, so I snapped. “I could have made two crowns off that clock, Ma! For one so concerned about money, you seem not to give a tinker’s damn about that!”
Jesus, God, did her face grow red and twist with anger. Which I expected...but not that joy would be dancing in her eyes, as well. Cold and vicious. Anticipation of the damage she would do to me.
It kicked my mind with a memory from when I was but nine years old. The night of September Equinox. Da was coming home from Belfast. He'd been gone much of the summer, and it was not long after the bus had arrived that I heard him coming up the hill, singing a fight song. To my surprise, he did not seem perished from the drink. Still, I'd warned my older brother, who picked up Rhuari and headed for our room, saying it was time for his bed.
Mairead and Maeve were already in theirs, reading, so for them we had little worry; Da rarely aimed his fists at them, and then only when he was in the worst of ways and seemed not to know any of us. As for Ma in the back? I'd shot a quick, "Da's comin'," to her then scurried up to our room, hoping to have covers enough to cushion against his blows.
Only he did not burst through the door, raging. Instead, we heard him clomp inside, drop his sack, exchange soft words with Ma, all of which was followed by a confusing silence. Then he jumped upstairs to crash into their room.
Moments later, my sisters were screaming. Young Eamonn and I burst to the door to see what was wrong only to find a shaken Mairead carrying a weeping Maeve downstairs. Then my brother jolted and tried to cover my eyes, but not before I saw Da come out and stand at the railing to bellow, "Bernadette! I'm callin' to youse!"
Now in truth, this was not the first time I'd heard him say it and have my sisters banished from their room...but this was the first occasion where I saw him naked.
Top to bottom.
With his tadger pointed out straight from between his legs.
To say it jolted me would not be a lie.
I'd just moved away from young Eamonn's hands when Ma came all but leaping up the stairs, in her shift, her hair wet and streaming down her back. She called over her shoulder, "Mairead, wrap yourselves in the shawl on the settee. I'll let you know when to come up."
We'd kept the door closed tight enough so she didn't notice us watching as she danced past and threw herself into Da's arms. He grabbed her rear in a way most vulgar and they kissed and stumbled back into the room and their door slammed closed, and for half an hour the creaking of their bed could have been heard clear to Armagh.
Young Eamonn sighed, shut the door and turned back to the covers, where Rhuari was already asleep. I did not move. Moments later, I could hear he was also away from this world. Obviously, he was not surprised by the actions of our parents.
But I was.
It made no sense to me. All of the times I'd been caught in the middle of their battles and hurt, thinking they'd hated each other and it was only the church refusing divorce that kept them as man and wife...to witness the joy in their faces as they embraced was confusing, at best. The confusion lasted right up past when he crushed my hand for a five-pound note.
Then Da was dead and Kieran on his way. And I'd had no need to think about it, anymore.
Until now.
The smile on Ma's face after breaking that clock's face brought it crashing into me. The image of Ma's joy as she flung herself against a man I'd seen brutalize her time and again. And the days of peace, after. I had also seen that same coloring of joy when they were in the midst of one of their fights.
Her fists balling tight like his?
The vicious grin on her face, like his?
I finally understood.
They had fucking loved each other.
For that anger.
For those fights.
For the pain it caused.
All the screaming and blood, between them...I could finally see they had actually lived for it. Da with his howling growls. Ma with her sharp nails and tongue. Drink being the excuse to explode both of them into fury. Him caught in it; her joining in it. Fighting and spitting like wild beasts. And me thinking I had to try and stop them. My brother thinking he had to stop them. When they cared nothing about ending their battles, themselves. They had reveled in them.
She had loved his abuse. Loved abusing him. They had hurt each other because they wanted to. They had hurt me and Eamonn the younger because they wanted to. They had gotten some bizarre form of pleasure from it all.
And now?
Now?
Now, I understood her hate of me.
She needed someone to abuse. She no longer had my Da and Eamonn was too much his own man and Mairead too calm in the face of her spits and snarls, so I was her choice. Because I was quiet and sneaky and would take it with silence.
This is the last of Chapter One of A Place of Safety, to finish what I'd already posted on October 5th and 6th. Today was one of those busy days where you think you're doing a lot but look back and wonder what exactly you accomplished. Anyway...this image is of the promenade atop the walls that overlooked Nailors Row, Brendan's neighborhood. That line of smokestacks are to the ramshackle buildings people lived in.
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Aunt Mari also spoke to the press, consistently emphasizing that the widow had five children with another soon due, was living in a maisonette that was close to collapse, and had no prospects for better. She actually shamed the Protestant bastards -- who ran the Catholic town like their bloody fiefdom -- into promising new lodgings once the last of the Rossville Flats was completed.
If there were room still available on the queue, of course. Can’t make promises one might have to keep.
But as with most catastrophic events, soon all was over and done with, and life began its return to normal as the confusion surrounding us all drifted away...except for one small detail.
My father lived and died in Derry, in the North of Ireland -- Londonderry for those who cannot be bothered to learn the city’s true name. First known as Doire Calgach, then Anglicized to Derry when Elizabeth the first started up her plantation of Ireland with Scottish thieves, and finally was deliberately linked to the empire's capital at the beginning of the 17th Century, as if it were a new settlement. But that's how it is with the English. When they take something, it's theirs, alone, and did not exist prior. And never mind that kings of Ireland had been living here for millennia, or that St. Colmcille had built his monastery a thousand years before; if one did not agree with what the English wanted for the town, they were either killed or run off at the point of a sword...if not hanged.
Protestants took hold of Derry as an abusive man might take hold of his woman, refusing to let her go even if it meant her destruction. This was proven during partition, when she was even cut off from the lands that most belonged to her so as to keep her in the fold. Then for fifty years she had been little more than thought of as their prize. If the majority in town hadn't been Catholic, I'm sure she would have fared much better.
Yet Catholic we were. Raised on the blood of Jesus, Mary, and the ten thousand Martyrs and saints we prayed to. And when it was learned that yet another Catholic man had been killed by two drunk Protestants -- who swore to heaven and earth they’d only meant to have some fun with the Taig which , naturally, was accepted as the most reasonable explanation by the powers that be despite his injuries -- the martyrdom of Eamonn Kinsella to Mother Ireland was carved in stone and his trek to sainthood begun as the truth of his violent existence vanished like a ghost into the salacious gossip of his final condition.
Added to other Catholics being killed and several Catholic schools being attacked, that year, the move to civil rights that had begun but recently became even stronger. Which I doubt was the intention of the Loyalists who did it all. Those glorious mental defectives -- called themselves the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, they did -- had noticed the growing restlessness of the oppressed so had stupidly decided to prove their ownership of the land. That their ancestors had lived here not even four-hundred years, while ours stretched back for millennia, was immaterial. Everyone would see the righteousness of their cause for Queen and country and would happily join them!
Instead, they wound up banned and imprisoned at Long Kesh.
But to be honest, their terrorism was not completely in vain. For in honor of it, the Catholic population was held to blame for the discrimination against it, which meant no one would be relocated from their uninhabitable homes in the Bogside...that lovely, crumbling, stinking area crammed up against the city's western wall...until it was time to redevelop their street. Meaning we kept to that hovel for three years more. Ma, the new wain and the girls in the front bed, me and the lads in the back. And we counted ourselves lucky to have even that much room for us, alone.
So that was my new beginning at the ripe old age of ten. Unaware of the quiet brutality that was slowly building to an explosion of hatred and cruelty made only the worse by it happening in a supposedly civilized part of the fast-dwindling British Empire.
But what child can see the growth of history around him when even few adults can? Events occur, and you either rejoice when all ends well or weep when it doesn’t. Thus, my father's death held resonance for me in but the most selfish of ways -- the belief that I could now live my life in the manner I chose, that of a boy filled with hopes and dreams and prayers and promises, thinking himself to be in a place of safety.
In honor of National Novel Writing Month starting on November 1st and me having the audacity to think I should write a new novel in 30 days, from actual scratch instead of adjusting a screenplay into book form, I now have 3 packing jobs lined up. Two I drive to, one I fly to.
It's not as if this has never happened before; in fact, it's every damned year except the last two, thanks to Covid, and in the past it's been flying to Hong Kong to handle the China in Print Fair. Which is no more, thanks to China's near destruction of Hong Kong as a free port. Which was why I helped myself along by using script that I'd already written or had abandoned as the outlines of the books I would write.
I've been doing it since 2007, missing one year and not completing one year, but eight of the books I did with NaNoWriMo are published. Which is pretty good. So this year I aimed to begin with the outline of a story and see what came of it. It's titled Robert's Wife.
It's about a guy named Robert, of course, who kills his wife when he finds out she's cheating on him then goes after her lover, intending to kill him, as well. Instead, he finds his wife alive and well, freaks out, kills her, again, and runs off. The lover is actually her husband and Robert was imagining he was married to her. He has a nervous breakdown and is institutionalized. Meanwhile, the real husband is accused of hilling his wife, tried and found guilty. His sister believes in him but her investigations get nowhere...and he is about to be executed for it.
I may need to make this a period piece, because it's set in Beverly Hills and California does not have the death penalty. I suppose I could work it up in Houston, since Texas has already executed at least one provably innocent man and possibly two, but not sure about that. The outline is years old and I just happened upon it, recently.
I guess I'll wait and see what happens on November 1st.
I'm tired of whining about my writing or lack thereof. Weary of wondering if it's any good or, in some cases, too good for what I do write. Which is something I never thought I would think. But I am pleased as hell with the concept I came up with for The Beast in the Nothing Room...and the tag line for it -- How do you stop a serial killer who kills no one and doesn't even exist? However, even with that book, every now and then I wonder if making it a MM story killed its potential for sales.
Which is stupid and childish and insulting to the story. I've been told by people who have read it that it's the most terrifying story they've ever read, and moves lightning fast. I've even been told my take on DNA is spot on, by someone who's in the field. There is one complaint I have to agree with -- I didn't develop the relationship between my MC, Finn, and a German cop, Christian, in the depth it deserved. I just let it happen and assumed everyone would fall in line with how much sense it made. That was wrong of me.
I use this story and the responses to it to prop myself up when I'm feeling uncertain and scared. Even when writing A Place of Safety, which has a straight protagonist in Brendan...for the most part. BNR pretty much wrote itself, once I had Finn set, and I had to do very little rewriting. It would not have hurt to do another draft before publishing it, but too late to change things now. And I'm not planning to do it as a screenplay, like I did with Porno Manifesto, where I corrected mistakes in that story to make it stronger. I'm of the mind that one can only do that with an adaptation.
I'm back to reading more, now. I got a DVD of the new Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and also bought a copy of the book. I watched the Angela Lansbury TV version from 1991 (which was close to awful) and am appreciating the neat job done by the 2022 screenwriters Carol Cartwright and Anthony Fabian. It's a lovely fable in the movie, and a charming character study in the book...sort of.
But seeing these three different takes on the same story is helping me settle my uncertainty regarding the path APoS is on. It's all right. I just need to relax and let it be.
He had been dumped in that wet icy ditch on his back and lain there until his clothing was soaked through and solid with ice. One unseeing eye open and tinted by blood; the other swollen shut. Well-preserved. Refrigerated, even. This made it difficult to set an exact time of death, but when the powers that be claimed it was somewhere between midnight and four of the previous morning, they were ridiculed as beyond belief. For he was last seen being jostled out of McCleary’s in his far-too-usual condition just after last orders, two nights before. And he had not returned to his hovel off Nailors, since.
The rumors of his final condition were verified thanks to a reticent undertaker's wife whispering them in quick, horrified breath, making it even more obvious to one and all that he had not relinquished his grip on life easily. It was decided his torturers had their fun with him for at least a full twenty-four hours, which became truth incarnate when that reticent undertaker gently but insistently suggested a closed casket, to the widow.
"Considering the devastation visited upon him," he'd gently said, "well...there's only so much one can do, you know, and really, Mrs. Kinsella, it would be best to remember him as he was."
Mrs. Haggerty, her immediate neighbor, was at her side when the new widow began to wail, "My poor Eamonn." Over and over as word leapt from house to home with the speed of telepathy.
I overheard this, being in the room with my older brother, Eamonn, the dead man's namesake. Standing quietly as my elder sister, Mairead, silently wept. I was but ten years of age and could make no sense of his words. I only knew that perished was not a proper way to describe the annihilation of a human being.
Of course, to the shock of no one, this information increased the dead man's stature greatly in the eyes of most. Within the hour, many a man was dropping by the wake, wives and wains in tow, to bring a touch of food and drink, and to offer kind remembrances of Eamonn Kinsella's bleak eyes and long face. A visage that brought to mind tortured poets and sad balladeers. They wistfully spoke of how he could sing so well as to make the angels weep. Elegant tunes of Ireland's ruined past and her dead future. Others gave gentle smiles as they told stories about the stories he could weave. Melodious tales spun by him of fairies living in Oak glens that once spread forever across the land. And of gods who roamed her once glorious green fields and forests. And exciting events wrapped around Grianán Aileach, the ancient ring fort but six miles and a hundred worlds away from town. All brought to life in such beauty and perfection you'd have thought he lived through each and every one. Though none of which they could recall well enough to repeat, or so they swore.
Still, it would have been nice to hear something of them, for he had never shared them with us. But when I said as much, not once did any of them believe me.
"Oh, you poor wee lad, you just don't remember," was the usual response, followed by wink and nod to whoever was seated next to them. And since neither Eamonn the younger nor Mairead said a word to the contrary, and my other siblings were staying with our aunt, my obvious stupidity was also carved into stone.
After all, he had a true Irish heart in his use of words, and in another time under much better circumstances, he could have given the likes of James Joyce and Sean O’Casey a challenge as the nation’s bard. So without question, he would have shared his gifts with one and all. Usually followed by a dozen God rest hims, a toast to his memory, and promises left and right that his widow and wains would be looked after.
It would try the patience of a saint, the nonsense they spewed, but on and on it went.
The only part of this catastrophe that afforded me some pleasure was when a few less-pious souls had the audacity to suggest that a man so well-spoken yet so ill-educated must have actually lived through some of his ancient tales, and was merely relating memories of lives past.
Word of that blasphemy spread faster than fire. That is a communist notion! A belief of Protestants! No good Catholic would ever entertain such an idea, nor would a good Irishman. And so forth and so on. And by the following Sunday, the churches were ringing loud with magnificent huffing and puffing from more than one priest at this vile nonsense. Our own Father Demian was most especially loud at the horror of the very idea.
Which actually made me wonder if he had lived previously, for how else could so much anger and grace could have been poured into one man in fewer than thirty-six years? Of course, I knew not to say this aloud; that would have been seen as a stain the memory of our latest martyr.
But it wasn't as if he were the only man filled with anger, in Derry. That was the one honest emotion those like him were allowed to hold. And if his missus was seen at market with a fresh bruise over one eye or across one cheek? Or was out in the cold night air walking her wains around till her lord and master had sworn himself into weary, drunken sleep? Well, her nails had left scratches deep on more than just his back, and her quickness with an iron skillet aimed for his head had not gone unnoticed. Oh, she could be her own form of holy terror, Mrs. Kinsella.
Thus his trek to sainthood began as the truth of his violent existence vanished like a ghost into the salacious gossip of his final condition.
His funeral was well-attended and partially paid for through the intersession of Father Demian, who’d so often visited the man’s home in times of distress. The rest wad handled by the widow's one sister, Maria McNamarra -- who had rushed over from Houston. Texas. She had left Derry before I was born but maintained steady contact. It was she who'd sent me that five-pound note. She took the family over, saw that everything was as well-arranged as possible in our sad little hovel, and kept the younger ones at her room in the City Hotel to give them peace from the nonstop clamor of adults in the house.
September was not a good month for me, at all. I had to stop writing, completely, work a little to help with Firsts London book fair, deal with Ingram cancelling distribution of HTRASG and Tumblr terminating my blog without warning, losing me every contact I had on there. There's also family shit and me starting to feel my age...so I was ready to have a nice selfish bit of mopiness.
On top of it, I could not get the first few chapters of APoS to read in a way that was interesting instead of bland and unimportant. Sometimes I have to fight to keep in mind that I do know how to write. I have awards for my writing and my books have received some very good feedback...even on GoodReads.
But every now and then I can drop into this rabbit hole of WTF am I doing trying to tell Brendan's story? I can barely type, these days, without fucking up every third word with skipped or inserted letters, or losing the direction I was heading. I don't know if these are marks of old age or if I've always been like this. I haven't noticed it in any of the earlier books I wrote.
However, the respite and watching a few movies helped me settle down and regain my path. In the last couple days, I've rewritten the first chapter of the story three times to get it right, cut two pages of bullshit, and instead of being coy about who he is, Brendan now states it in the second sentence. I think this slightly snarky, stand-offish voice is how it wants to be told.
The changes do not seem huge...and yet, they are. Here's the first few paragraphs to give you an idea of how much cleaner and quicker it reads:
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You know, those who were familiar with Eamonn Kinsella, and were being less dishonest than usual with themselves, had to admit that were he born but ten miles to the west or north, his murder would have been seen as the fitting end to a hard and brutal man. I do not say this because he was a cruelty as my father, nor am I so shallow as to make the claim simply because he near crushed my hand while insisting I turn over a five-pound note I'd received for my birthday, so he could drink himself into his latest stupor. No, for one and all around him knew that it took little more than a wrong word, here; a wrong look, there; or even a wrong touch on his shoulder to enrage him. Then suddenly you'd be on the floor with a split lip or blackened eye, after which, it would be your fault he had to react, no matter how improbable the cause. Couple that with his height being well above six feet, weight at more than 15 stone, and back still carrying the strength gained from his position as a navvy on Belfast's docks, despite it being many-a-year since, few were they who would take the dispute further.
That was why, as word of his death spread, the first thought on many a mind was he had finally focused his anger on one who could show him the truth of existence -- that there was always somebody bigger, stronger, meaner and better with his fists than yourself, and that one day you were sure to meet.
His body was found off the Limavady Road, down a farm trail that very nearly offered a view of the Foyle. It was in a ditch of flowing water, the morning air cold and blustery, the fields around him bleak and cruel despite whispers of snow and the brightness of day. His coat had been pulled down his arms and his hands bound behind him, and rumors flew that every bone in every finger was broken, several ribs were shattered, an elbow dislocated and his face had been pummeled into the mere hint of a human visage. Blood soaked his shirt to his trousers, the knees of which were torn and scraped as if he’d been forced to crawl on them -- or been dragged -- and it was said his every tooth was broken out, as well.
Of course, little of this was verifiable because the Coroner’s single comment on his death was the purest embodiment of callous simplicity. “Mr. Kinsella perished from the result of a bullet being fired into the crown of his head.”
Perished.
Not killed.
Not murdered.
Not slaughtered like a cow in the abattoir.
No. Perished. A charming word you'd hear more often on the lips of a man saying, I'm perished from the thirst. Or hunger. Or cold. Or work. Or the mere seeking of a job. Women made use of it, as well, but not once until that Coroner's comment had I ever connected the damned word with death.
Which sent me to the library and their dictionary, and to my surprise it actually was defined as such, with synonyms being expire, wither, shrivel, vanish, molder and rot, any of which might have been just as cruel and inappropriate.
Writer and self-involved artist out to change the world until it changes me...as has already happened in far too many ways. This blog is to showcase my writing, art and photography...especially since I'm working on a novel set in Northern Ireland and using Tolstoy as my guide.
