Back on track...

Okay...I reworked a section of the Celebration chapter to deal with Brendan beginning to see that a need for control is swirling around him in too many ways, and it may tie into the Dean Corll mass killing spree. The term serial killer wasn't coined until years later, depending on who you choose to believe.

The FBI called it serial homicide in the middle 70s, and apparently the LAPD changed that to serial killer in the middle 80s. But this section of New World For Old takes place in 1973, when Brendan is slowly regaining his footing in reality, so gotta go with the lingo. He still has flashbacks and even sudden sharp memories of what happened to him while he was catatonic, and they can be exacerbated by current events.

Something else he's becoming aware of is the uncertainty of his status in the US. He was brought over late in October 1972, and being a citizen of the UK he's given an automatic 3 month visa. If he was provided a medical visa, that can be extended for an additional 3 months, if I understand this right. But it's now August, more than ten months later. Which makes him totally illegal.

That means him going to a gay bar when he's just seventeen years old and drinking is really insane. If the place got raided and he was caught, it would cause huge issues for not only him but his Aunt and Uncle. What makes this even more fun is, if he is caught and gets deported back to Northern Ireland, it's possible he'll be either arrested by the British or killed by the IRA. Mairead and Aunt Mari have done too much to help him to let that happen.

Anyway, now I'm up to page 177 out of 510 and 114,300 words. This part's going to wind up bigger and more involved than Derry is, because I haven't even written the road trip to Austin to hear a punk band called The Next play at Raul's...and maybe a trip to San Antonio to visit the Alamo.