I'm ready to begin working on volume two -- New World For Old. I'm more comfortable with what happens in this volume because I lived in Houston for eight years and have a basic idea of the city and its layout. Not to mention the small town mentality of it. I want this done fast so I can dig into the final volume, Home Not Home.
Something that's kicked me harder into gear is that Gacy documentary. I remember how caught up in it I was, when it was happening...and that brought to mind the Houston serial murders of Dean Corll, five years prior. I lived in San Antonio, at the time, and Elmer Wayne Henley, his associate, was tried for the murders, there. Seems like the 70s was the decade of the serial killers, both straight and gay.
So there's a moment in the story where Brendan is invited by Henley to go to a party, late one night as he's walking home. It's only because he has a circulating fan in hand and wants to fix it so he can sell it that Brendan decides not to go. He doesn't want to cart it off to a party. A couple weeks later, he learns Henley shot Corll and it comes out that 27 boys had been raped, tortured and killed by the two...and Henley had planned that for him.
It has an effect on Brendan, skirting that close to a torturous death. He'd been brought to Houston after being injured in a bombing, in Derry, and jolted into a catatonic state. He's only just begun working his way out of it by reverting to his old habits. Find junk, fix it up and make a little money off it. This somewhat near-death experience does a lot to jolt him back to reality.
And also get him to decide not to keep so much to himself. The bombing showed him how suddenly life can be torn apart, and having Henley try to procure him for Corll to kill shows him he needs to build a circle of friends, like he had in Derry. People he can trust, because he really is in unknown territory, in Houston.
So I'm sticking to my schedule -- publish APoS-Derry in January 2024. Aim for HNH in June or July.
No comments:
Post a Comment