Covid, here...

After a rough night of coughing and aching, I took another Covid test, Monday morning...and it was positive. Took another an hour later, even more positive. Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday night, the damned disease caught me. I'm not flat on my back, like some people. Seems I have a mild case, but it's still taking its toll. Couldn't focus at all, yesterday. Barely managed to postpone my job in NYC and contacted my Doctor's office to speak with him. Guess who wasn't in, yesterday.

TBH, this really just feels like a case of bronchitis, which I've had before. I don't have it bad enough to require the anti-viral regime people like my sister have gone through. Just rest, isolation (no problem there), plenty of fluids and use Zyrtec to handle the sinuses and cough drops for the throat.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten cough drops have a negative effect on me, especially the sugarless ones. Besides, gargling with salt water does a better job. Lots of tea. Lots of DPZ, which actually handles the tickle in my throat well. And Tylenol. I'm doing well-enough...but I'd much rather not have had this.

I know where I got it, from a woman at the office. She had Covid recently and came beck before I though she would. I walked into the office to drop off paperwork and there she was, and I wasn't masked. That was on Monday...or was it Tuesday, last week? Don't remember. Head is fuzzy. But within a day I was feeling out of sorts. I'm 5x-vaxxed so that is probably why I'm not in the hospital. Ugh, the one time I don't wear a mask.

Anyway, all travel is off for two weeks. If I can kick myself hard enough, tomorrow, I'll start in on the step outline of the book, chapter by chapter. Get that done. Send out more agent queries. Use the now-free time as productively as possible for APoS. I've spent too much time futzing around with it to kick back, now.

Marathon man...

Did a marathon of the last four chapters of APoS-New World For Old, even though I feel like shit. That may have helped in working on Brendan's punk rock phase; he doesn't give a damn, anymore, and my attitude was...Why not just let him roll with it? It needs another draft, without question but it's close to being set in its size. 530 pages, 119,000 words.

I found I had shrugged off an important death in the latter part of the story, so set that up better...and could still do more with it, on the next draft. My one and only fear about that moment is it's too obvious this is going to happen. That may not be a bad thing, but still...I'm not a fan of predictability.

I've been fighting a sinus infection all day. Initially, I worried it might be Covid but another test today was negative. And it's mainly my sinuses aching and me shivering like I have an infection. So I used Vicks Vapo Rub on my neck and chest, and up inside my nostrils, and set a pot on the stove with eucalyptus water in it to permeate through the apartment. I feel better, if not tip-top.

I slept until noon so missed a call from my brother, Kelly. He needs a notarized letter stating I've been supporting him for some years and for how much, each month. I can do that at the bank. Hopefully, my check for this month's work will come in the mail.

I'm also getting a folding dolly (from Amazon, I know, I know, but I couldn't find another one that would work) so I want to see if I can take that as carryon luggage. Means a trip to the airport and checking with Delta. This job in NYC is only a day's worth of packing, but it's getting the materials I use into the office without making three trips. That's why I want the portable dolly.

It also means I don't need to take much in the way of clothing, so I'm just using my backpack for the minimal stuff. Travel as light as possible...

Brendan has a cold side...

New World For Old is showing Brendan can be a real bastard, at times, especially when he's been hurt. It doesn't matter who's in his line of fire...if they cross him in any way he goes full Howitzer. Which he just did with Evangeline. He was thinking of asking her to marry him, before he was beaten, but learns she never felt that way about him. He's fun for now, but not forever. So he subtly lets her know he's pretty sure one of her brothers was in on his beating. He feels betrayed by her so does it, right back. And he's not sorry, even after she slaps him and storms off.

Then he quietly arranges to sneak away from the pool house and his aunt's family to live on his own in the shadows. He's beginning to see that's the only way to avoid those who would try to make him live his life by their precepts. He finds a room in a house like this, in a run-down section of the city and begins to build himself a new family. A new life.

This takes me to Page 422 out of 525 and almost 118,000 words. That's not counting a chapter I still need to add about Brendan's punk phase and a trip to Austin to hear The Next, a San Antonio punk band playing at Raul's, up on the strip. So it's probably going to be a good 122-123K. Which I don't mind. When I first started writing this section I worried it would be even so much as 80K.

I've fallen off the search for an agent so will do that tomorrow. A couple emails and queries to keep it up. Just one rejection, so far, is pretty good. I also need to catch up with the step outline for this one. Lots behind on that.

I may have a sinus infection. Light but irritating. Just feeling a bit achy and cranky. I took a home Covid test and it came up negative, but I'll take another before I head down to NYC, on Wednesday. Train back on Friday should give me plenty of time to write. I like Amtrak. Like the trip up the Hudson. If it wasn't 9 hours each way, I'd do it all the time.

Too busy, which is good...

Whirlwind day. A job in NYC came through for next week (talk about last minute) and two others look solid...one in Berkeley that'll be a part of history, another in NYC, again. All on top of the one outside Boston. Then there's one in Chicago that's beginning to look really iffy, because the company pushing it has gone on radio silence. I don't even know what part of the city it's in so I can't work up an estimate.

Once everything was done and dinner over, I worked on APoS...and it's taking a deeper turn than I expected but do want. What I'm now building on is Brendan's emotional reactions to what's happening to him, be it good or bad...and all of it has led to being very bad. In the chapter I just completed, he's brutally beaten for dating Vangie and suggesting he'd like to marry her. In Texas. In the middle 70s. In a part of the country that has one of the biggest chapters of the KKK. Not smart.

He's also begun to see the parallels between Derry's situation and Houston's attitudes. Is seeing betrayal in what happened to him, because it looks very much like he was set up to be attacked. Which sends him spinning into a deeper sense of loss and confusion than he's ever had. His reaction after seeing Joanna caught in the fire was psychic horror and brought about an emotional and mental collapse. But he's stronger, now, and is trying to make sense of it all.

As Everett, his gay friend tells him, he may be just 19 but he's "an old man in a young man's body." He's seen death and destruction lead to more death and destruction and already knows it's just a vicious cycle dragging everyone down to their doom. And try as he might, he cannot seem to break free of it. Now he carries scars that will come back to haunt him, both physically and emotionally.

Something I can finally see, looking back over my scripts, is how I focused more on the emotional content of them and worried less about the action aspects. William Goldman once famously said, "Screenplays are structure," and I understand why. They're the blueprints for the film. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the screen, kind of thing. But I never could get past the deliberate simplicity of that. I think that's why actors tended to love my scripts...I gave them content to play, not just Save the Cat numbers to fill in.

Something like the Paint by Numbers sets toy stores sell, and which I could never get to look right.

Short timer...

I visited a friend who's now in hospice care. Cancer. Not discovered until he went in for an MRI to find out why his shoulder was hurting him so much. He wasn't even released from the hospital but was taken straight to a room and sedated and is now drifting towards the end. I doubt he'll be around more than a week.

His name was Vincent Botticelli, and he cut my hair. The only person I'd found in this town who could do it like I wanted it. I stuck with him for more than 10 years. Every two months we'd talk about old movies and actors and actresses and while I might have known more history, thanks to my background, he had a greater depth in his viewing. He loved all of the Italian cinema and we'd both seen so many classic Hollywood films, we would never have the same conversation.

It was great fun comparing Joan Crawford to Bette Davis in their respective roles. Same for film noir; lots of gossip and tidbits about the actors and the quiet cruelty of those films. No one was safe. Gene Tierney. Jane Greer. Robert Mitchum. Kirk Douglas. Burt Lancaster. Comparing looks and sexiness and beauty was a joy.

But to him, the whole of film boiled down to Ava Gardner. In this dress. In East Side, West Side, a 1949 movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason. He said the only time he'd ever considered going straight was when she first appeared in the movie. She played a character born to be murdered...and he loved her every moment.

He also liked to point out hairstyles and how inconsistent they could be from one moment to the next. Like Kim Novak's hair in Vertigo. Apparently, the process they used to make her a platinum blond, in 1957, was very delicate. If not properly cared for, it would quickly shift into a harsher shade...and it drove him nuts to see how often that happened. Like in the flower shop...scenes shot on different days then cut together had her hair inconsistent in its coloring. Now that I see it, I cannot unsee it.

I took him a printed copy of Ava, in a frame that could be set up on his night stand...but I doubt he'll really know of it. He was pretty done in by morphine. I did get to meet his partner (I don't know if they actually married, nor was I going to ask). He was a gentle man working in an art museum and so endearing.

I don't believe in the religious versions of heaven and hell, but I do think there is more to the basic essence of the universe than we can ever understand. I sense it when a character in a story takes over and sets the path we're to follow. Takes me places I would never have gone. Never have gone. Lives I've never been close to living. Both real and unreal. And the love and the depth and the arguments I have with my characters are more important to me than any other part of my existence.

I know Brendan is from that essence, for I can think of no other explanation as to why I'm letting him lead me through the story of a lad I would never have known and whose life I would have no true understanding of. Call it the fates or a muse or insanity, it's just...this is proof to me that when we leave this world, there is another to be joined with, in some way, form or fashion. We meld with the universe, again.

I can only hope that Ava will be kind enough to help him in his transition.

Back to it.

Worked on the chapter where Brendan goes to Mardi Gras with Vangie's family, gets some serious sensory overload, and does go to mass with them for Lenten services. But then, when he gets home, he winds up in a vicious argument with his uncle over going without telling his aunt and uncle. The implication being they would not have allowed it. Seems white boys ain't supposed to be running around with black people. And never mind that Vangie's family is Creole; it's the same thing. Houston still has a small-town plantation feeling, even today.

So Brendan now sees himself as a sort of prisoner, because he has to keep a low profile and not get into any situations that might call attention to himself. He's overstayed his visa and could be deported back to Derry. He now senses there was more to him being snuck into the US than just kindness or a wish to keep him alive. But he has no way of finding out, short of asking his sister, Mairead, about it. And she won't tell him. Not sure where this part is going, just yet, but it's adding some interesting emotional depth to the story...and conflict within Brendan. Because this also means a rift with his belovéd aunt. She's backing her husband up, complete.

I'm also working up costing for a couple of jobs that may or may not come to fruition. I'm asking for more information from the clients about them, and I'm dealing with the costing of a job that will require another long drive. I like driving, but my agéd old joints and back and butt and legs ain't so happy with it. I'm also finally having trouble with my lower back. Serves me right for being so proud about how good that part of me has been.

There's even one job I may miss out, in LA, on because I pack the books too well, for transport. This one non-US auction house may send their people over to handle it, instead. Which would be a hoot. How're they sourcing packing materials and working out the logistics of flying it to another country? Which they have to do it they want it in a timely fashion. Ocean transport saves no money under a certain weight level and takes months.

Good thing I'm at the stage where I just shake my head at how fucking stupid people can be...including myself, far too often.

No drive; no thinking...

Back home after this latest job. I was expecting to pack 450+ books but the auction house's people took  the high end stuff with them when they made the deal and I dealt with the stuff that's under six-figures in value. Still  a lot to do, but I had help and since the shipment was being hand delivered to the auction house, I could pack a bit faster. Wound up with 19 cartons, including a framed item.

But it wore me out so even though I slept pretty good, last night, I still had to stop about mid-way home to nap so I didn't fall asleep at the wheel. As for the weather, it was cold and wet...then snowy...then sleeting...then pouring down rain and windy. The Voyager I drove had a monitor that lets you know what kind of gas mileage you're getting, and in this car it started at 15.8 mpg. I got it up to 24.1 by the time I reached the site, and 27.3 by the time I turned it in. All because of freeway driving and cruise control. I once had it all the way up to 28.2, but a strong headwind obliterated that.

I tried to talk with Brendan as I drove, but he told me we're at the point where I have to be working on what's already been written to see what needs to be done. So next is Brendan's trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and how it opens a massive rift between him and his uncle. Especially since he went with a Cajun family and is finding he likes the only daughter, Evangeline. Vangie. More trouble on the horizon.

It's funny. I both want the story to flow but worry that it's flowing too easily as things happen. If it's too predictable. When I start reading a book, if it telegraphs what its ending will be and how the journey will go, I lose interest and check the ending to see if I'm right. I almost always am.

So I don't want APoS to fall into that category for anyone, even though I want it to happen naturally, as time rolls along. But I don't want to input changes just for the sake of hiding what's about to come. So I just keep plugging along and hope for the best.

Won't know for sure till it's done and people either love it or hate it.

In Kingston, NY

I made it down in decent time, mainly because I packed a lunch to eat along the way and only stopped to pee. And walk around a little. I'm in a Chrysler Voyager and it's like riding in your easy chair, once the cruise is on. The thing's a barge in size, but very comfortable.

I worked out a small issue on APoS, specifically in Book One but also Book Two. I acknowledged that it's important the reason Brendan eats the first meal he's aware of at his aunt's -- a chicken drumstick well-fried -- using a knife and fork is because that's what he does when he's invited into Joanna's house. He's escorted her and her friends home after the celebration fleadh and let her parents think he's a Protestant from the Fountain area of the Bogside so invite him to dinner. Joanna's brother, Charles, is suspicious, but Brendan puts up a good front and deliberately eats a chicken leg in the same way he saw one of his repair clients do.

He fixed an elderly lady's television and she shared the remains of a chicken dinner with him. He was fascinated by how she picked the meat off the bones by using only a knife and fork, so he jokingly uses that to make himself seem even more refined than he really is. Everyone's surprised, but it works...and when he heads home it's with the request he call, again. But then Charles remembers where he's seen Brendan before -- at the bus depot cleaning his hands in snow in the gutter -- so chases him down with some friends and starts to beat him. Brendan manages to get away almost unscathed.

The dinner at Joanna's is all input, now. And I added a note on the first title page to figure out the best place to add Brendan seeing how to eat chicken.

As for Kingston, this is one of those towns were getting anywhere means circling around and around just to cross from one side of the main drag to the other, and it will never be known for its cuisine. I finally had dinner at a 5 Guys and bought lunch for tomorrow at Target. It worked, fortunately, since we'll be 40 minutes away from anyplace with food.

Another job on Monday

Driving to the Poughkeepsie area, tomorrow, in a minivan loaded with packing materials. It's for a job we thought we had 2 days to complete and three people to do it, but found out...yesterday...that we only have one, and today found out I'll only have one assistant. Even better? We have to transport all the cartons we've packed away on Monday because the house has been sold and there will no further access to it. Which might mean a 12-hour day. So nice to have no warning in advance.

To add to the turmoil, one of the people in the office contracted Covid. Probably got it when flying back from San Francisco after the book fair. She's vaxxed and wears a mask, like me, and still got hit. She's doing better, but nowhere near 100%. This comes after my sister in Texas came down with it. She's had to take a couple weeks off work and do the meds routine, and apparently it's rough. However, she's better now. I've been fortunate so don't want to poke the fates. Masked, vaxxed, and still negative...so happy.

Today was more paperwork and preparation for this job, so no writing done. I'll be getting onto it when I return. I also updated and double-checked my financial condition and I maintaining. I had to pull some out of savings to cover my bills until I get reimbursed for SF, LA and Houston, but I can always put it back. What's hurting is my credit card interest is up to nearly 20% on one card, to which I owe a shitload of money, and 15% on another. I may look into shutting them down and paying them off in smaller amounts once I stop working.

I've watched the first 3 episodes of Vera, on BritBox. It's a British murder mystery series set in Newcastle and thereabouts, with Brenda Blethyn as Detective Chief Constable Vera Stanhope. Sort of a female Columbo but with a team of officers around to help her. Sharper and more demanding, I like her, and the crew around her are okay, but this season the directing and writing are tired, incomplete and repeating previous story plot points. And while there's always been a hint of self-righteous cruelty in the final revelation of the killer, in many of the previous episodes, it's become more glaring and I don't like it. It's almost sanctimonious in how it's handled.

I guess cozy British mysteries like Miss Marple, Midsomer Murders and Agatha Raisin are more my style.

Psycho-Kyle, qu'est que ç'est?

I crashed into...no...no...I drifted into one of my black moods, where nothing was any good and I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and felt like I'd wasted my life following the one thing I should never have bothered with -- writing screenplays. Because I have no idea how to really do them. And here I was still fucking writing a script to achieve nothing. As if I had no control over my direction in life. As if I were a junky and writing for film was my drug.

It started quietly, like a slow-rising flood, but grew deeper and deeper until I was quite...shit...lost and whatever self-confidence I had went hiding. All I could see was the mistakes I'd made in everything, and I nearly drowned in the belief I was screwing up Brendan's story. A story I've been working at and avoiding and hiding from, myself, for...well, to be honest, thirty-five years, since the first germ of the idea of the story came to me while I was living on Branard Street in Houston.

I didn't really do anything with it for years, just sort of poked at it. I was caught up in working on other projects...like Cutting Edge, a little action-thriller set in Houston, and adapting John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World into The Cowboy King of Texas. It was originally titled King of the Cowboys but after I won Best Screenplay at the Houston International Film Festival, in 1990, and got press for it, Roy Rogers' estate sent me a letter saying that phrase had been trademarked for him so I couldn't use it. My first real taste of being fucked over by the industry I'd stupidly decided to be a part of.

But I'm finally coming out of this mood. Back in recovery from screenwriting. I had a nice conversation with Brendan who told me, "If you don't write my story, it don't get wrote." Plain and simple. So MTK goes to the side. Dair's Window gets pushed back. And I focus on A Place of Safety-New World For Old and Return...and then the whole book, to work in whatever ideas and needs that come up.

I guess feeling obligated to my characters is what keeps saving me.

More jobs...fewer jobs...

Today was spent working on costing for a couple new jobs and learning two that I'd prepped were now put off for a couple months. It's hard to keep track of them all, but that's how it goes. Ebb and flow.

So this evening I started work on restructuring Mine To Kill into a serious horror script. I want it to be a scary as possible, so I'm slicing out anything that distracts from the moment.

Here's the opening...

--------

FADE IN: EXT. BELFAST, N. IRELAND HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT 

An ambulance roars up, siren jangling. The doors fly open and EMS TECHNICIANS burst out with the bloody body of a WOUNDED CONSTABLE on a gurney. PSNI patrol cars (Police Service of Northern Ireland) follow. 

DR. MATTHEW THOMAS MacGREGGOR (good-looking medical intern) exits the hospital with a RESIDENT and CRASH CREW. They surround the gurney as several PSNI CONSTABLES rush up.

TECHNICIAN (Irish accent)

Four gunfire wounds. Three chest, one neck. B-P's one-seven-nine over six-two. Pulse, four-four. One saline. Two plasma. Crashed, en route.

CONSTABLE ONE (Irish accent)

Name's Campbell!

CONSTABLE TWO (Irish accent)

Charlie Campbell!

CONSTABLE ONE

A good man!

Matt waves them off as they approach the entrance.

MATT (Scottish accent)

Station one, stat!

IRISH NURSE

We've somebody in there.

MATT

Get them out!

RESIDENT (Irish accent)

Call surgery for a consult.

Matt's hand rests on the constable's chest.

MATT

Bullet fragment's nicked his aorta. I got pressure on.

RESIDENT

No snap judgements, MacGreggor.

MATT

No, I can feel it, sir! You crack his chest, you'll see it.

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT 

Doors crash open before the speeding gurney. PATIENTS and NURSES scatter. CONSTABLES follow the gurney in.

TECHNICIAN

G-C-S -- two-three-one.

MATT

He's coding.

He tears open the man's shirt and --

FLAMES EXPLODE EVERYWHERE! LIGHTS FLARE TO A HELLISH GREEN.

The wounded constable bolts awake and grabs at Matthew, terrified.

WOUNDED CONSTABLE (Irish accent)

Don't let me die; I ain't ready!

Matthew's eyes jam closed and

EXT. SOUTH BELFAST STREET - NIGHT

Cold and desolate as the wounded constable rapes a WOMAN behind a dumpster. She fights him. Tears nails into his cheek.

WOUNDED CONSTABLE

Fuckin' Taig cunt!

He slaps her and tears at her breasts. Starts in on her. She gets his pistol. SHOOTS HIM IN THE NECK. Shoves him back and SHOOTS HIM THREE MORE TIMES.

His PARTNER bolts from a patrol car and shoots her!

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

Matthew wipes his face. Smears blood over his eyes. The flames are gone. The wounded constable unconscious, again. 

MATT

Bloody bastard... 

Constable Two hears him, growls. The Resident glances between them as they roll into

A TRAUMA ROOM

They shift the constable to a table. The uniform gets shredded. Equipment is attached. Blood flies everywhere. Monitors show his heart beating then stopping then beating then...

FLAMES EXPLODE around the crash crew. No one notices.

They crack the wounded constable's chest open. His heart beats and bleeds. The Resident massages his chest. Matthew jumps in.

MATT

Stop! Bullet fragment! By...by left atrium!

RESIDENT

He's in arrest!

MATT

You're slicing his heart open!

Matthew shoves him aside and dives his hands into the man's open chest and

FLAMES EXPLODE FROM THE MAN'S TORSO. SMOKE FILLS THE ROOM.

EXT. BELFAST ALLEY - NIGHT

Bleak. Dirty shadows and cuts of light. A terrified YOUNG MAN races around a corner to a dead end. Trapped, he turns and raises his open hands in surrender. The wounded constable appears, unhurt -- and SHOOTS HIM! Kills him. Tosses a second pistol beside the body.

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

Matthew growls but forces himself to keep working on the man's heart as

FLAMES ENVELOP THEM BOTH!

The man's hands grasp at Matthew, his voice a howl of pain.

WOUNDED CONSTABLE

No! Please! Gimme another chance! I'll make amends. I swear!

Matthew whimpers, also in pain.

MATT

I'm trying! I'm trying!

WOUNDED CONSTABLE

You're lettin' me go! You fuckin' bastard, you're lettin' me die!

MATT

No, I'm not...I'm trying!

The crash crew casts him quick glances but keeps working.

RESIDENT

Doctor MacGreggor!? Doctor!?

THE ROOM GOES DARK. SILENCE FILLS THE SHADOWS.

Matthew rises to stand upright before the now-empty table, his hands dripping blood. The constable faces him from the other side, no longer injured, his uniform in perfect condition.

The woman who was being raped appears from the shadows, to his left, followed by the young man he murdered.

The man sees them, terrified. Backs away.

WOUNDED CONSTABLE

No, no. Please! I'll make amends! I swear it!

The young man strikes a match. It fires beautifully. He hands it to her.

WOUNDED CONSTABLE

No, no, I'm not ready. Please -- no -- no -- NO!

She flicks the match onto his uniform.

HE SCREAMS AND EXPLODES INTO FLAMES...and vanishes...

The smoke and fire are gone. The shadows disappear. The trauma room is back to normal.

Matthew stands there, his hands covered in blood, the body of the constable on the table. The room is silent.

RESIDENT

Time of death, twenty-three-fourteen.

MATT 

...No...no...twenty-three-sixteen...

The resident glares at him. Everyone else in the crash crew looks at him as if he is a ghost.

A bit of space...

This round of jobs, with more for next week, took me over and proved to be exhausting, not just physically but mentally. But they also took my mind off APoS and let me see there are places where I can make connections between what happens in Derry as Brendan is growing up and in Houston, now that he's a war-wounded lad trying to restart his life. Once I'm done with this draft...if ever...I'll have aspects to go back to Derry and add.

For example, in New World For Old Brenda eats pan fried chicken leg with a knife and fork, like you would a breast. When did he learn to do that? Who showed him? Why would he even think to do it that way? The obvious answer is, that's how Joanna would do it. But the only time I have them getting together, there's nothing more than cake and tea involved. I can work that in and it would add to her magic, in his eyes, just not sure where or how, yet.

I once got a job making backgrounds for a party to be held at the King Ranch, in South Texas, because when I was interviewing with the man pulling it together, he offered me dinner. Fried chicken. This was long ago, before I understood that chicken and I do not get along. It was all drumsticks and wings and thighs mashed potatoes and gravy and biscuits and stuff. So Southern. Pick 'em up by hand and gnaw on 'em with your teeth. Only I didn't. I used a knife and fork, which startled him.

You see, when I lived in England as a child, a Scottish couple across the street from us would sometimes have me over for tea. It started when my mother had her first nervous breakdown, and I'm sure my stepfather was relieved he had only my little brother and baby sister to deal with, and not this finicky little redhead. Even after she came home, it continued about once a week...but usually just over tea and cucumber sandwiches with butter or cream cheese.

Anyway, on one occasion they roasted a chicken. They took the breast and gave me a drumstick. I was fascinated by how they ate with the fork in their left hand and knife in their right...so I copied them, working the meat off the bone with the knife and fork then keeping the fork my left hand to put it in my mouth. They were amazed.

So was I, really, and it marked me as an oddball when we came back to the States, but I still eat that way. No one else in the family does; just me.

Damn, I'm seeing so much of Brendan in me, and me in him in many ways. As it should be, I suppose.

First feedback on APoS-Derry

They haven't finished reading it, yet, and noted there is a lot of jumping around in the first chapter so got a bit lost, but otherwise reaction is good. They like the characters, especially Brendan, and the sense of place I manage to bring to it. Makes me feel better...and more secure...

I spent a little of today roughing out an idea of Brendan's home and neighborhood, up by Nailors Row. Just scribbles, right now, but I might post something inked-in once I have a chance. It's on a hillside, I already knew, but these sketches gave me a better idea of the slope to the house and its yard. 

I finished job #2, today. Wound up with 20 cartons, which will then go into a crate for shipping to London. Tomorrow is getting it on its way and having dinner with my architect nephew, whose latest building is in GA Document 162.

It's the Orange County Museum of Art and he was one of the project designers. He's with Morphosis, one of the premier architectural firms in the US, and does amazing work. He's very self-deprecating about his abilities, but has always had self-confidence issues. He's doing better (helped that he and his now-ex-wife are no longer together; she constantly put down his ambitions and abilities while offering zero support) but still needs a boost. I hope this gives it to him.

I'm checking with Hennessey & Ingalls Books, tomorrow, to see if they have a copy in. It only came out in January and is published in Japan, so may not. But I can still order one.

I'm so happy to see him doing well.

LA is a great big freeway...

 I spent half of yesterday on the freeways going places to see friends...and I don't know what's going on, but suddenly half of the other drivers are going below the speed limit instead of 20 mph over it. Three times -- twice on the 101 and once on the 5 -- I got caught behind some minivan or pickup truck that was going 55 in a 65 zone. And It was hard to pass them because of the others on my left whipping past fast enough to make my rented Corolla shiver. Mondo bizarro...

I worked up a rough sketch of the front of Aunt Mari's home, in Houston, to help me better visualize it for Brendan. I may do one of the back and his pool house, too. And then there's his two homes in Derry -- off Nailor's Row and then Clíodhna Place off Abbey Street. I did a map...but more visuals to help me is better.

In the never give up category...I have a horror script called Mine to Kill that I couldn't get to really work...until yesterday. The protagonist is an intern who's an empathic-intuitive, times a hundred. He knows what's wrong with people before they know, themselves. The antagonist is a veterinarian whose husband is emotionally abusive and cheating on her. He's in a car wreck and the intern tries to save him because he can see the man is being dragged to hell...but it's no good. The vet blames the intern for letting him die and decides to bring her husband back to life using the intern's blood and organs.

I wrote it first as a script years and years ago, but it takes forever to get going. All the back story and explanation and grounding it in people's actions...and while I pulled off some truly scary moments, it didn't hold together. Until I had the idea to change the whole structure. I have a short ghost story I wrote about a young doctor learning he is damned good at his job because he saves the life of a young man who's been dead for twenty years...and it's not being used in any ways, so...

If I adapt that into the first act of MTK, to establish the intern's abilities, then jump to the man dying in a car wreck and reveal his abusiveness as his wife fights to save him, it might work a lot better. Something to think about...

Synopses are helpful

I've been working my ass off the last few days but yesterday the shipment got off and is en route to its new home -- and it took me all day, today, to recuperate. I'm finding even just packing the books and humping the boxes half as much as I used to is wearing me out twice as fast.

This little picture shows how they looked on the base of a D-Container, before I finished putting the container walls around them. I packed every one of those brown boxes; 58 of them; 70 boxes, total, into 3 containers.

Tomorrow I'm off to LA to do 20-25 cartons, but in larger boxes and with more care, since they are traveling outside the US. After that, another 4-5 cartons then it's off to home, and a week to rebuilt my strength.

But...this evening I did manage to do some work on APoS and the summary of chapters for New World For Old. Saw some spots where I could clarify aspects of the book, itself, and work in more details...not just in this part of the story but also in Derry. The more I work with Brendan and his memories of his time there, the more I see how to add cross-references to the story.

Something else that's helping me is reading a book called Milkman, by Anna Burns. Just not in the usual way. I do not like the book. Apparently it's about a young woman in Belfast who's suddenly being stalked by a member of a paramilitary for no reason and hates how the gossips have decided she's his girlfriend and probably sleeping with him.

I was reading it to get a clearer vision of the society of the time...but OMG, is it tedious. I got to page 25 and not one character has a name, yet, not even the main one. They're referred to as maybe-boyfriend and third sister and Milkman and the like. So I'm finding it damned hard to empathize with her.  Yet it won the Man Booker Prize in 2018.

I'm probably being unkind and demanding. After all, 25 pages isn't much to go on and I normally give a book till page 100 before I quit, so I'll probably keep going. But it's like an assignment, now, not a pleasure.

But at least I can stop worrying if my book will be tedious or surface; this thing is as deep as skim milk spilled on a kitchen counter.