Almost halfway...

Decent trip. Both flights were on time. the only issue was having to walk from the end of Terminal C at Baltimore to the middle of Terminal B, which is about half a mile. Then in Providence, you have to walk another half mile to get to the rental cars. And tomorrow will be the reverse. I'm getting my steps in.

I got a fair amount of editing done on NWFO during the flights and now at my hotel. I had dinner at a Panda Express in a mall that was good but skimpy. Rain is expected early in the morning but should be done by the time we start loading the shipment. We'll see how it goes. 

I've cut the book back to 142,500 words. At this rate, it will be the same length as APoS-Derry, which is good. So far I haven't found anything that's really squirrelly in it. Just condensing comments Brendan says and minimizing his repetitions. I don't want readers to get sick of him referring back to Joanna, over and over and over. Or the violence between his parents. And while he usually treats people decently and with kindness, he can also be something of a dick.

That was an aspect of The Lord of the Rings trilogy that drove me nuts -- the constant referral to Aragorn as being noble and caring and pained and all that noble shite. Over and over and over. Brendan's got an asshole side, and that's good. I don't want him to be perfect. I wouldn't be able to write him, if he was perfect.

God knows, I've never been perfect.

Irritations abound

Tomorrow I'm off to oversee a pickup in Newport, RI. A quick trip, in one day and out the next. Very simple...except we don't have all the paperwork needed for the job, yet, so I might get there and be able to do nothing. Been trying to get it for a couple weeks.

Same for another job in Dallas, that's not until Monday, next week. And I'm the one expected to get everything settled. Which I guess makes sense because I've been dealing with both for a while even though I'm not really working for the company full time, anymore.

I'm caught in this in-between phase. I want to focus on my writing and getting my books sold, finding out how to get them visible and noticed and all that crap without spending much money. But I need the extra cash since helping out my youngest brother's near bankrupted me. Maybe I should start a Go-fund me.

At least the Dallas one might be settled, which is good, but the one tomorrow? I may wind up spending an extra day in Newport.

Much of today was spent dealing with the upcoming jobs so only 70 pages gone through with NWFO. I'm taking my Mac with me instead of the PC, so if I do wind up cooling my heels in a hotel, I can keep working on it.

Going through it, this time, I'm back to thinking I may get rid of the subplot with the doctor's nurse messing with Brendan. It really serves no purpose in the story except to be prurient and indulgent. Just get rid of her, completely...or cut her back to just toying with him. Nothing more. I dunno.

I don't even know why I put that in, to start with, except to show how people manipulate and misuse others, when they can.

Divin' in...

Fuck it. I'm doing another read-through. I'm over 100 pages in and have found I spelled Charlie and McGabbhinn two different ways, as well as a couple more typos. So my instinct was right. I'm also trimming back a bit more, so I'm under 143,000 words, now.

This really does count as draft number ten. My red pen edit was draft eight. When I input it into Word, I made a lot of changes from that and some serious restructuring, so that's draft nine. And I have reworked the sequence of a couple moments in this draft, so it fits.

I was debating cutting one bit about Brendan being molested by a nurse in a doctor's office, while he was catatonic, because it didn't really seem to go anywhere. But I got lots of kickback over that, from Brendan, so added in another point with her. And I'm thinking of a third...meaning this draft is going to be different enough.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will acknowledge I do so much rewriting on everything, it's almost a parody of the above quote. A couple of them have told me they can't tell the difference between one draft and the next, but I always can. And any changes I make are very important to me and the story and characters.

I know I could work on this beast till I'm dead, but I do need to get on to volume three, so we'll see how things go with this pass.

Done with draft 8 or 9 or whatever.,..

I'm done with inputting the red pen changes to NWFO and feel a bit numb. It's down to 143,200 words from nearly 146,000. Cleaner. Sharper. Almost there. But I've got this niggling feeling I should do one last read-through to make sure before I send it off for proofing and editing. Crap. I don't know if I can face it, again.

I doubt I'll make my July 31st plan for publishing. And volume three, Home Not Home, won't be out by the end of the year. It's going to need at least as much work as this one did, and I'm only on draft 3 of it. There's much to add. Much to work out, still. So I'm not going to sweat it.

Something that happened mainly in this latest draft was changing locations and events. Like putting a conversation between Brendan and Jeremy at a shooting range instead of a pool, where it almost seems like Jeremy is upset with Brendan because Everett is obsessed with him. Jeremy was his second choice because he resembles Brendan.

And adding in an actual interview Brendan has with the FBI and a British agent gives a bit more heft to his belief he cannot return to Derry except through subterfuge. The British are still looking for him to interrogate about that bombing 8 years earlier. It's as if someone keeps stirring the pot to keep them thinking about him, even though most Catholics believe he's dead.

I also worked out a better way for him to find his motorcycle key years after he was kidnapped and brutalized in a playground. He's gone searching for the location and recalls the basic directions he was taken. He finally comes to a spot that seems right but he's leery because of the playground.

There's a knothole in one of the oak trees close by that's child-height and holds a number of things--cars molded from plastic, crayons, marbles, and the key. A child found it and is keeping it as part of their treasure. That way, he knows this is the place and it sends him careening into an attitude of Fuck everybody.

Just call me His Anal-ness...

I'm not sure I'll want to send NWFO out for proofing and editing when I get done, tomorrow or Sunday. And I will be done. I've got 5 chapters left to rework, though one is rather extensive.

But I'm falling into my doubting phase and thinking maybe I need to do another pass to make sure all the changes work. It's my writer's paranoia firing up my anal-retentive need for a perfection that is impossible to achieve.

I'm also at a point where I honestly don't know if the story means anything. If all I'm doing is verbal vomit. Brendan's telling me to shut the fuck up because it's his story and not some bullshit performative nonsense about a man fighting gods and monsters, but that might be his ego talking. Little prick.

I dunno what it is with me, right now. I'm in a weird mood and that's probably why I'm so edgy about the story. I'm too close to it to be objective...hell, even subjective. So I'm still going to send it out and probably wait to get reaction before crashing and burning.

But I don't think I'll make my deadline of my next birthday for publishing. I want to be sure and not just in a surrendering mode. I've been at this for too damn long to just let the story make-do.

Oh, the photo is of downtown around 1976 or 1977, before the super-boom of building started.

Stupid Blinders on...

Damn, I just remembered the LA Times Festival of Books was last weekend. I got so caught up in working on NWFO, APoS-Derry got ignored -- and it was on display there. Shit. Here are some images of it...but now I feel rotten that I didn't make use of this to get interest drummed up.

I really suck at publicity and promotion. I've never been good at it. That's one of the reasons I was never able to get my screenplays off the ground -- no ability to sell them. Hell, 90% of Hollywood is selling. Yourself. Your product. Your ability. And even then, you have to be supremely good at it.

Despite the fact that your product or abilities are only 5% of the equation, really. A friend of mine is an award-winning DP (we're talking MTV Music Award for Cinematography) who is an artist on film in his use of light, color and shadow. And he has to fight to get work. I'm nowhere near the same level of ability as him, so I'd have to push 2-3 times harder...and it's just not in me.

So I fucking blew it with APoS-Derry. And I feel like shit about it. But there isn't much I can do, now. I'm so deep into debt, and I've spent so damn much on pushing the book. I have to keep in mind, I'll be doing that, again, with NWFO. But I'm not seeing the return I need to justify it.

But I have to. Somehow, I'll have to find a way to keep it going...including with volume 3, Home Not Home. 

At least I'm closing in on finishing draft 9.

60%

Just 40% left to input. I'm still rewriting from the red pen notes and characters are sharpening themselves. Like Evangelyne, who becomes angry with Brendan when it looks like he's trying to be her knight in shining armor against a racist sales clerk. She gets huffy if she thinks someone feels she can't handle herself and needs protecting.

They have a quiet argument in the middle of The Galleria before she realizes Brendan is completely confused about the problem. I'd had it wind back around to him not being able to return to Derry, but then just cut anything that alluded to his past and kept it focused on Vangie misreading his meaning when he barked at the clerk. They'd been insulting to him, as well.

Vangie knows her own value and has no doubts about herself. He does not know his, except when it comes to repairing things. Which is brought home to him when he sees how Everett is, regarding his artistic ability. The man has zero self-confidence, despite doing two elegant portraits -- 1 of Brendan and 1 of Aunt Mari's family. Even the B-girls like what he did.

This gets Brendan to thinking he wants to change the way he sees life and deepen his existence. Not be alone. Not be afraid to do something new, like learn a new language. For no more reason than just to do it.

I may be reading more into my writing than I think, but I like this idea of what I think it is.

April 28th

That's the day I need to have this draft of NWFO done so I can send it out for proofing and editing. April 30th, I'm off to Rhode Island to oversee a pickup, then May 5th I'm running to Dallas, San Francisco and Sacramento for other packing jobs. So I won't have the time I need to work on it till after...and that'd make things too tight to make my deadline.

I'm going to make it. I'm about 40% done...up to the chapter where Brendan nearly kills a man, then freaks out at realizing how easily he could have done it. No hesitation on his part.

That sort of ties into his thoughts when he and Scott are discussing the mass murders committed by Dean Corll and Elmer Wayne Henley. Scott insists there has to be a reason or explanation that will help people understand why Henley and David Brooks would take male friends of theirs to Corll to be raped and killed.

Brendan points out they were just guys being paid -- money, car, drugs -- and there's something in many people where self-interest takes over and concerns for others vanish. He saw that happen in Derry, with Billy helping his uncle prepare for the attack on the People's Democracy marchers at Burntollet Bridge, and Colm casually helping kneecap Paidrig, who'd been his buddy since before he met Brendan, all over cigarettes.

Scott insists there has to be some existential cause but to Brendan it's just immediate circumstances and luck of the draw. If during Bloody Sunday he'd moved an inch to the left, he'd have been killed by a soldier instead of just hit by shrapnel. And the Paratroopers had stormed into the anti-internment march with live ammunition in their weapons, ready to commit slaughter.

So now he's nearly killed a man he didn't even know in order to protect someone he did know, and it emphasizes his belief that circumstances are what count all too often in all too many situations, not deliberate thought.

Because if he had thought through him defending that friend, he'd only have used a baseball bat to crack the attacker's knees, thus stopping him, instead of aiming for his head.

My ways is slow...

I'm slowly digging through and have managed four more chapters, one of which wound up with a bit more restructuring and rewriting than I expected. It's setting up how Brendan and Jeremy will wind up being good friends after he returns from the Yom Kippur war.

Turns out Jeremy was talked into going to a kibbutz for a year, by his rabbi. Of course, his family happily goes along with it, so he feels like he has no choice but to do as they want.

This popped up while I was redoing a lazy summer afternoon between Brendan, Scott and Jeremy, in the pool. In Houston, summers are brutally hot and humid. Which Brendan doesn't like. But having the pool to help him deal with it becomes a mainstay of his existence. 

Initially, I'd written the scene as an earlier one Brendan was remembering, but I chucked that and made it current. There's tension between him and Scott, who was moved out of the pool house so Brendan could live there. Aunt Mari wants Brendan to remain close to the family, and this is how she manages it after the B-girls caused a situation that makes him want to leave.

So Scott is snarky with Brendan as he floats around the pool, but Brendan ignores him. Jeremy notices and winds up confiding his reluctance about the trip to Brendan while Scott is out of earshot.

Then during Hanukkah, Jeremy makes a short visit home with a couple of IDF buddies. Brendan sees he is unsettled, jittery, and having trouble being around his family, so he trusts Jeremy enough to let him have his one joint, to share with the guys. To settle them. Which it does.

And step by step, he and Jeremy wind up being more like brothers than any of his actual brothers. this was not specifically planned, but I'm liking it.

Old habits and all that shit...

As I go through NWFO and input the red pen edits, I'm also still adjusting the language and tightening up the structure. I've compared my writing to peeling an onion, before, but it really is like that. Each draft is one more layer gone until I get it down to the point where I am about to wind up with nothing.

I'm removing as many softening words or tentative conjugations as I can. Less of the it seemed kind of writing and more of the it was. Also turning I was running into I ran. Make everything more immediate for Brendan's telling. Tighter. Cleaner.

I'm currently reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winner...a chapter at a time as I do my business on the toilet. It's taken me some time to get into the book, and I like Joe Kavalier more than Sammy Clay, so far, but it's started me thinking about something.

The writing style does not seem to fit the story, to me. Chabon's prose is very busy and rich and erudite, with a couple words I had to look up. Which surprised me, because I like to think of myself as somewhat educated with a good vocabulary. But that's what clued me in.

Joe is a Jewish boy who's escaped from Prague after the Anschluss. Sammy is his cousin, in Brooklyn, who's always trying to find an angle. It's weird, but the writing of their stories is...I dunno how to put it...too rich for their backgrounds, so far. It's told in 3rd person omniscient, so it's not like the boys are using words and phrases they wouldn't yet know, but it doesn't match them.

I'm thinking of another Pulitzer Prize winner -- Lonesome Dove -- in comparison. Larry McMurtry's style is simple and direct, like his characters, Gus and Call. And Alice Walker's style in The Color Purple fits Celie perfectly. But that of another Pulitzer winner -- Trust -- was so dry and removed from the characters I could not connect with them; it was like I was reading an outline for the book and characters instead of following their stories. And A Confederacy of Dunces was working so hard at being unusual it became impossible.

I like to think the style I have in APoS-Derry and NWFO reflects well on Brendan, which is probably easier to get away with because it's being told in 1st person. Won't know till I'm done.

Started in on the final draft...

I know I've said this, before, but this is the final draft of A Place of Safety-New World For Old. I might make corrections for typos or missing words and the like, but no more restructuring. It's time to let go. I could work on this book until I was dead, and considering how old I am that wouldn't be all that much longer. But I think 20+ years is sufficient time to write a novel regarding something you know nothing about.

I'm doing this draft on the PC, as mentioned before, and it's helping. I've found more errors, and Word for PC is more of a Grammar Nazi, so I'm having to justify my own use of punctuation and sentence structure. Not what I expected. At least it's making me think of what I'm doing.

Responses to my initial book cover design are...interesting. It's another case of taking me outside my box and making me justify my decisions while causing me to think up other options. I've been scribbling out some other layouts, but those seem busy. I like the simplicity of the first cover and want to keep that as much as possible.

It's like with my reworking of the cover for How to Rape a Straight Guy into Curt -- I never would have thought having a tightly muscled man wearing a pair of trousers and looking back over his shoulder would so neatly encapsulate the story...but it does.

I may be trying to be too literal as to what the cover must be. I thought of slightly copying this promotional poster for Beautiful Thing, but with a young man in full figure looking at the skyline of Houston, ca. 1975. The vast majority of Houston's skyscrapers were put up after 1980. The image of downtown that they used in this image is from about 1981, at the earliest.

Which doesn't do much for my using that as part of the cover.

Run-around day...

I worked up a potential cover for the cover of NWFO. I like it but it's not getting great response. I've thought up a couple more, using the passport, Houston's skyline in 1975 and an image of Brendan standing and either looking out or looking back at the city. I'll think about it some more.

Ran out to the Apple store and showed the tech how my caps lock came out and I can't get it to go back. Seems a couple of pieces broke in the connector, so there was no way I could have repaired it. He took it in the back for about ten minutes and bam...it was done. Works as good as new.

Also got my test copy of Curt, today, and it looks really good. Crisp printing, good colors on the cover. I didn't really expect any issues, but you never know. I once got a proof copy that was trimmed at an angle and had to resubmit my documents to get it corrected. Wasn't my fault, fortunately.

I'm backing away from social media. The fuckhead MAGAts are out in force praising their orange god and trying to fuck up the legal proceedings against him. One even set himself on fire, that's how insane it's becoming. I've always had issues handling extremists like this, people with no connection to reality demanding the world conform to their insane viewpoint.

Xitter is a cesspool of their shit. In just an hour on there, I blocked 15 nutcases blaming everything the world that's ever gone wrong on Democrats and liberals and queers and abortion and lack of god in schools and on and on. The one bright spot is, Congress might finally get off its collective ass and send Ukraine some help instead of use it to score political points.

Fuck the world, I want to get off.

Focused and finished...

Okay, the red pen edit is done on NWFO. I'll start inputting everything Saturday. Give myself a breather from it. There are enough structural changes for it to definitely be draft #9, and I may do another read-through once it's input to make sure it's all in order before sending it out for proofing and commentary.

I'm getting to be a bit leery about a moment I have in the story. Brendan is kidnapped and taken to an isolated area where he is brutally beaten, over dating a Cajun girl. Years later, when he learns his mother has cancer, he's too restless to settle down for the night so retraces that night's journey. And winds up finding the place he was attacked.

The part I'm unsure about is, he'd lost the key to his Montesa bike when the beating took place...and he finds it, when he comes back. That worries me as being just too easy. Too simple and obvious. I've set it up like the fates are leading him back there specifically for that purpose...but it's still a bit much. I may cut him finding that...or rework it. I dunno.

It's just, that little Montesa Impala is like another character in the story. It takes Brendan all over the city. Gives him a quiet sort of cool, overall, and sticks by him. It even leads him to a place where he can find a car that needs lots of work and brings him back to an even keel after all hell breaks loose in his head. So it sort of makes sense. I guess.

Overall, the book is coming together. And it's quietly setting up things that will happen in book 3, Home Not Home. Ah, something to look forward to.

Time wasted...

A potential job came through in Philadelphia, overseeing the collection and palletizing a group of storage file boxes for a client. I spent two hours on it...and submitted my part of the estimate. And I can pretty much tell it's not going to happen. Just me, alone, is going to cost nearly $2000, thanks to explosive air fares and hotel rates. Even driving down would be pricy...and take a full day. It's over 400 miles.

I also had to set up a trip to San Francisco and Newport, RI. Which took a couple more hours. Then I made a cottage pie for dinner, with a green bean casserole, and did some grocery shopping...and crashed into a low-blood-sugar phase. When that happens, it takes a while to claw back out and I'm wrecked. I wind up having to take a nap. And I usually come out of it very depressed.

So no work done on NWFO, today. I'm in a bad place, emotionally, and would not do right by the story. I'll work on it, tomorrow.

But damn, that cottage pie turned out good. It's what I ate to get me out of my physical situation. I might have done better with a candy bar or regular DP, but it's what was available...short of eating a spoonful of sugar.

75%

Closing in on the newest draft. Number 9. Brendan is about to vanish from his aunt's house to let himself mend from a catastrophic situation. It seems every time he thinks his world is back on track, something happens to derail him...and this time it was brutal.

I was getting worried that the chapters leading up to this were bland and simplistic, but now see them as the calm before the storm. I guess I'll find out if that's the way of it or not. As a writer, I can never really evaluate my work. Sometimes I read it and I'm so fucking proud of me, I'm like a lion in the middle of his pride. Other times, I wonder if I'm just a superficial slug smearing himself across a semi-wet pavement and thinking it means something.

When I do the inputting of my corrections, this time, I'm going to do it on the PC. Word winds up looking completely different on that as opposed to what appears on my Mac. Same for Excel and emails and everything. Same programs, just not the same. Make it make sense.

When I get done with this draft, I'm taking my Mac in to the Apple Store to have the caps lock key reset. I hope. I'd hate to have to send it back to Mac for repair and not have access to it for a period of time. I've got Ps on here and my images to use for the cover of NWFO. It's under warrantee, so shouldn't cost me anything; it's the time I'm worried about. What's funny is, I rarely used the caps lock. Maybe I need to, more.

Still, I really do like this laptop a lot more than the previous one. It's got its quirks, but they all do.

Workus interruptus...

Looks like the beginning of May is going to be busy. Two jobs popped up for overseeing pickups and packing boxes into containers for transport, one on each coast. Took some hours working up estimates for each and melding them into one I already had going. They look pretty solid, so I better get my ass in gear and finish up editing on NWFO.

What's awkward is, working on these caused me some tension. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, with them, but I wound up with a nasty back ache and stiffness in my shoulders and neck. Old age? Not seated right? Fighting to keep the costs down? I dunno. I tried Icy Hot and wrapping myself to keep the warmth in, but nothing worked till I popped a double-dose of Advil.

The good thing is, Curt -- AKA: How to Rape a Straight Guy -- is now available for sale in paperback through Amazon and B&N. I've ordered a copy to see how it prints out when going through the retailers. Hoping it's as pretty as it looked in the proof.

I dealt a bit more with the mess over Hunter, at Amazon, and one of my FB friends sent me Jeff Bezos' email address, so sent him a query. I doubt anything will come from it, and reality is the book is still available through B&N and BAM so I can point people towards them. But Amazon's the biggest in the world and not being one with them is like being a ghost.

That probably added to the tension in my neck. As did checking out air fares from here to Hong Kong for the new Firsts-China book fair, the beginning of December. Last time I went, through Toronto, it was $1700, r/t. Now it's more than $2500. Damn.

And my Texas nephew is getting married in October, so I have to go down for that. Yeah...a bit of tension.

I did get through a couple more chapters of NWFO. I'm now under the gun to get this edited, input and sent off for proofing within the next two weeks...but I'm having questions in my head about things and not sure I've answered them sufficiently, yet.

Oh, perfect. The caps lock key on my Mac just came undone.

Amazonicus-inrterruptus...

I'm halfway through this red pen edit of New World For Old. Jeremy's back from Israel, having fought in the Yom Kippur War, and Brendan is the only one who notices he's changed. Mainly because Brendan's seen the same thing in friends of his back in Derry.

Jeremy also senses that Brendan has seen death, like he has, and would understand his emotional distress. They become good tight friends over the Fourth of July holiday, thanks to both having nervous reactions to all the fireworks and gunfire.

I'd be further along but an issue with Amazon came up. My book, Hunter, is no longer being sold by them. It's been shunted onto third party suppliers who are charging 10-25% more than I do. It's still available at the correct price through B&N and BAM, but at Amazon it looks like it's out of print.

I tried to find out what's going on and spent 3 solid hours getting shunted about from one unhelpful twerp to another. Online messaging. Phone call. Texting. Posting queries on my author page. Then finally I got a link that took me to a page where I could do nothing because the book does not have an ASIN; it's got an ISBN.

Well, when you hit a brick wall...all you can do is step back and stop hitting it. And from now on direct people to BAM or B&N. And if they insist on buying through Amazon, let them pay the extra money. I'll still get my part because the suppliers will need to order it through Ingram.

I checked my other books and all of them are fine. Maybe I'll look into becoming a seller of my own books through Amazon, at the correct price, and see if I can make a better cut, that way. It's stupid, but that's Amazon. It's not like they haven't been stupid with me, before.

I'm now back to thinking about NWFO and probably should label this draft 9, since I've done a fair bit of restructuring. We'll see what happens when I input the corrections I'm making.

Slashing...

I cut an entire scene where Brendan and Jeremy go to one of Uncle Owen's bars, even though Brendan's underage. It felt wrong. First I tried to shift the place into being a restaurant and bar, like Ye Olde King's Head in Santa Monica. That place has dining on one side and the bar through a door to the other side.

But that was requiring some serious word dancing and seemed too much like busy-work and repetitious, since he does the same thing with Scott, later...albeit into a gay bar. So that's a good 3 pages gone.

BUT...I added in a bit at the gay bar where Brendan almost runs into Carla, a nurse at the doctor's office he was taken to, a few times. She's someone he automatically takes a dislike to, but doesn't remember anything about the visits except for slashing visuals that lead him to believe she molested him while he was mentally incapacitated. It's never going to be specifically discussed, but it adds to his sense of confusion and wariness.

Now I'm at a point where I need to know when Sam Houston Book Shop transferred operations into the Galleria. I know they were there in 1980, but the store had been around for nearly 35 years prior to that. But this is Christmas 1973 and I'm not sure they were there. I don't want to make a mistake and have him reference them years before their arrival.

But all I can find online is lots of discussion about the high-end stores and when they arrived, along with a few of the smaller shops and restaurants. The expansions. Lots of photos of the exterior through the years. But no word about Sam Houston.

I worked there from 1985-1992 before moving to LA. I remember a lot of the place, but that's starting ten years after the point where Brendan is in town. He doesn't like going to the Galleria because the prices are too high for him, but he does like ice skating around the rink on the ground floor of the main part of the mall.

It's the one thing he now has that does not connect him to his past in Derry.

Red pen

Started my red pen edit of New World For Old and in the first hundred pages found one repetition and one inconsistency. A couple of typos and some moments where I could trim back a bit too much wordiness as well as a couple of spots where a bit of clarification helped.

If I can get it done and input by next Friday, I can send it off and ask for feedback to be returned no later than the end of June. That gives me a month to update it, format it into 6x9 size and send it to Ingram to prep. With it being so close, I'm starting to get antsy and wanting it done.

Once it's gone, I'll start in on the dust jacket. See what I can do about that. I'm still thinking making it a passport as the main art, open and folding around to the back of the book. We shall see.

I approved Curt in paperback and found it's already listed on Amazon, for pre-order. Not on B&N or Books a Million, yet. I've ordered a copy for myself, wanting to see how it prints up.

APoS-Derry is going to be on exhibit at the LA Times Festival of Books, which will be held at the University of Southern California in LA on April 20-21, 2024. If you're planning to come to the festival, here's what you need to know:

Booth Name: The Reading Glass Books
Booth Number: 959
Zone: Black
Contact Persons:
Lyn Goot, Kathy Pinero: (203) 871-8975
Time: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Post eclipse depression?

Yesterday was not good. I went into the office to help with setting up shipments for dealers returning from the NY Book Fair...and I kept making mistake after mistake after mistake. Usually stupid things, like inputting 144kgs instead of 114kgs or not verifying all of the boxes were ticked on a master airway bill. I think I made more work for everyone instead of lightening any burdens.

That started me spiraling down into the blues, and it got so bad that when I tried to do some grocery shopping I couldn't face it so just blew it off. Figured I'd treat myself to a BLT at 5 Guys and come home to mope. That only made things worse.

That BLT was not good. The bacon and cheese were cold, the lettuce messy and the tomato so thick it kept sliding out of the bun. What's more, it cost me nearly $20 for that, a small order of fries and a regular soda. Which got me to thinking about how the last few times I've gone out to eat, where it's cost me about the same amount but only been adequate to actually bad. 

And it's not just fast-food places. The last two times I ate at Chili's I was really underwhelmed. And the lamb curry I got at Taj Grill was okay but the samosas were way overdone. And those fucking meals cost me $30 each. The only thing I've enjoyed, lately, was a make-your-own personal pizza at Pie-o'-Mine, and that's only because I made sure I got extra sauce on it.

So I crashed into one of my woe-is-me phases and did nothing, last night, except watch some Poirot on Britbox. And even bitched about how those programs were done. By the time I was ready for bed, I hated the world.

I was a bit better, today. Only a couple mistakes and the unwillingness of a program we use to set up shipments to work with me, in full. That, I cannot blame on me. But I've done all they wanted, so at least no more fuck-ups there.

I got a burrito at a Mighty Taco, en route home, which was bland and borderline tasteless until I spiced it up with some tabasco. Then I moped a bit, took a nap that made me more tired as well as achy, got angry about it, and made myself my own BLT. I had some bacon, cucumbers (in place of lettuce), cherry tomatoes, cheese, mayo and mustard. Did it on toast...

And it was fantastic! Just what I needed. I have enough left for another, if I want it. Maybe lunch, tomorrow. After I go out to do the grocery shopping I should have done, yesterday. So the hell with eating out.

Oh, the proof just came in for Curt. And it looks good. I'm ordering a copy. If that's good, too, it should soon be available through Amazon...but we shall see.

Change of direction

I've decided to change the title of one of my books -- How to Rape a Straight Guy -- to Curt so I can offer it in print, again, instead of just ebook. I've come to the conclusion I'm being obtuse about the title. It's always been problematic but it worked well for the story, and I thought people were just being puritanical. Which they were.

After all, the book has been banned several times over since I published it in 2007. Now the only way anyone can read it is in an ebook. But there are a lot of readers who just won't deal with that. I, myself, prefer not to. I like the feel of a real book.

So...I'm digging through Shutterstock looking for more images to use for NWFO when I get led to a photographer's page that includes some amazing photos of men and women...and up pops one that all but screams Curt to me. He's the main character of HTRASG, and tells the story in first person...and it fits him so well, I dowloaded it and worked up this potential cover.

Of course, first I had to determine what size I'd do the book in. Then locate the file from the last update...the one that Ingram rejected. Then reformat it and get the cover template...and it turned out I had 2 ISBNs left from the ones I'd bought for APoS...and this is what I came up with. All today.

It just fell together, as if it's meant to. So I've uploaded it to Ingram and am waiting to see if they accept or reject it. If they say yes, I've got my first novel back out in paperback circulation. If they say no, I'll check a few other options to see how it goes.

But at least I'm still trying to honor my work, even my in your face queer erotica.

Ring bindered...

Busy day. Had an ophthalmology appointment to check on my right eye. Got dilated and told I can't watch the eclipse because it might cause permanent damage, so to be mean I called in clouds. If I can't see the sun, nobody can.

This photo is the height of it, at 3:20pm. By 3:24 it was daylight, again. Here's a brief video I took, as well. Clouds were gone by 6pm.

I've put APoS-NWFO into ring binders and tomorrow I will dig into them. 31 chapters, half in 1 and half in the other. I had to empty one binder of an earlier draft of the story...that was only 315 pages long, double-spaced Courier 12point font. It's changed a bit.

What's nice is reading notes I'd made of things to add to the story to make it better and forgotten about. Most were cheesy, but some were good and I will consider adding. But it's about time to start packing this volume's papers into a bankers box ready for storage, all the information I've got. I think the story is pretty tight...so those notes had better be really impressive to be fitted in.

I finished reading The Detective Up Late and it was okay. McKinty's style is taut and lean almost to the point of emaciated, but the story moved fairly fast and had an upbeat ending. I didn't buy a couple aspects of the subplots, but they were unimportant. What was fun is, since the story was set in 1990 I knew the references made, here and there, and his comments on groups like The Official IRA were fun.

I ate some sugar-free cookies, last night, and there was something in them that my body did not like. I wasn't just hitting the bathroom; I had cramps and gas and felt somewhat nauseous...which is a big deal for me because it's been decades since I last threw up. Wasn't able to get to sleep till after 4am, and even then I woke up every 2 hours to deal with some irritation.

It finally settled down about noon, today, when I had hot tea and buttered toast for lunch. But I'm never eating anything sugar-free again. Fruit juice as a sweetener is okay, as is honey. No syrup or high-fructose crap. I may even get some frozen fruit and make my own compotes or something.

I managed to fiddle around with APoS-NWFO's formatting, today, and it looks like the book with be about 340 pages in 6x9" format. I can live with that. I also printed out a hard copy, but in larger font and more spacing, so it was over 400 pages. 

I had to go out and get a new ink cartridge for my HP printer, so walked down to Target. It was a nice day for it, and it's a mile each way, which is good exercise for me. But damn, did that tire me out. I just nuked some Stouffer's lasagne for dinner and that's been fine.

As for HP...I'm ticked off. I had a backup black ink cartridge when I started printing. I finished up the one in the printer, replaced it with the new one...and only got 120 or so pages from it before it ran out. I'm doing this in draft mode so it uses half the ink. I'm of a mind to send it back to HP and complain. The one I got at Target is the XL model...and I'm leery of it having all that much ink in it. The last time I used an XL cartridge, it was a different size from the regular one. Not this time...even though it says on the cartridge that it's the extended one.

Anyway, I finished my printing and can do the red pen edit. But I'm exhausted, right now, and my back is killing me from weariness.

Settling down

Took the day off from worrying about APoS-NWFO and did very little on social media. Instead, I'm reading Adrian McKinty's final Sean Duffy murder mystery, The Detective Up Late. I've read all the others--as well as Gerard Brenna's and Stuart Neville's works--mainly to get a feel for the syntax of Northern Ireland...only to find they're all set in Belfast, not Derry. That's like using the way people in San Antonio talk as opposed to Dallas. Not severe differences, but enough to matter.

The one real positive is Duffy is originally from Derry; he's just a Catholic cop in a hateful Protestant-riven Constabulary. AKA: peelers...RUC...the usual stupid people who think they're either smart or too butch to care.

I'm going to adjust the font and sizing, tomorrow, and print out a hardcopy to start going over in red pen. Make sure the changes I input in draft 7 work well enough...as well as check for typos, missing words and inconsistencies. Then send it off to be properly proofed and edited.

I'm liking the changes I made in this draft. It's funny, but putting Brendan back in the attic room for the last quarter of the book actually worked out better than him returning to the pool house. Maybe I'm paying attention to him enough to make this work, now.

Home Not Home is next. Of course, it needs a LOT of work, even though it's in 3rd draft. I have a section I need to add where Brendan learns his father was recorded by a college student while telling one of his stories in a pub and he goes to listen to it...and it's beautifully told. It was caught at just the right moment, before Da was too drunk to keep his thoughts in order.

He gets a copy and shares it with Eamonn, who's locked away in the H-Blocks. And despite him pretending to be someone else, the two brothers reconnect so that later, when it's suggested Eamonn add his name to the list of hunger strikers, Brendan has more cause to turn brutal to keep it from happening.

It's all leading to an ending that I'm not crazy about, but is necessary. Dammit.

Draft 7 is done

I pushed through, today, and hit the end of New World For Old just a few minutes ago. 145,566 words. It ends when Brendan find out out his mother's cancer is terminal and he needs to go home...and wishes he could avoid doing so.

APoS-Home Not Home will pick up from there as he makes plans for his trip and works out a way to keep from being found out. He knows the British still basically want to speak with him about the bombing, so he can't return as Brendan. Nor is he happy about being Brennan McGabbhinn. He has to do something else...and does.

Jesus, there's a lot that happens in this volume. I'm torn between doing draft 8 and just sending it out to get feedback, first, to see if it's working. Now would be the time, since I want to publish it in about four months, and I'm only just beginning to pull together the cover artwork.

I honestly think I'm at the point where I'm looking more for typos and aspects of the story that don't work for a reader, so it's best to just send it out and deal with the response. Brendan's a bit unsure about it all, but that doesn't matter, right now. I'll be doing another rewrite once it comes back so why the fuck not do it right?

I'll decide tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or after the eclipse.

Chef Kyle

I made an apple pie. I used premade crust, but the filling I did on my own. Peeled 'em. Cut 'em up. Mixed 'em with a dash of lime juice, melted butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. And it tastes really good. Still kind of juice-heavy, but I liked it.

I did this because as I worked--and watched the pie cook since I didn't want it to burn--I figured out a bit more about APoS-NWFO and wove that in. Added a bit of an explanation as to why Everett is friends with Brendan, Also introduced him to Evangelyne and Jeremy. Brendan's in the process of regaining control of his life, so of course events have to kick the blocks out from under him.

Doing all of this added another 500+ words to the story, but its flow works a lot better for me. I'm down to the last 80 pages, so I should be done this weekend. All set before the eclipse.

Buffalo is going to be in the center of it as it passes over New York. I have an ophthalmologist's appointment that morning, but should be home well before it starts. Everyone's freaking out and thinking the nutcases will be roaming the streets like zombies.

This isn't my first eclipse. I was in San Antonio when one happened in October 1978. It wasn't a total one, as I recall, and was late in the day...but it got everything dark for a while then light again before night fell. I was working at a downtown newsstand waiting to hear if I'd be admitted to NYU's graduate school of film. Didn't see a single zombie.

NYU accepted me, but in one of the dumbest things I ever did in my life, I turned them down when they wanted me to go the full three years and start over in 8mm when I'd been working in 16mm. I was remarkably stupid, somewhat arrogant, and rather an asshole, back then.

My books are too long

Apparently, A Place of Safety is turning out to be way too long a novel, according to the publishing world. Normally, a novel is 60,000-100,000 words. For the whole damn thing. I'm close to 290,000 for these two volumes, with another 70,000+ coming for volume 3. Maybe that's why I couldn't get anyone interested in them--publisher or agent.

BookLife did call Derry a long book. But in hardcover it looks right and I don't think I could have cut any more than I did without hurting the story. Same for New World For Old. It's pretty much registering at 145,000 words, no matter how much I do. And that is fine with me.

However, it does limit me in ways I wasn't expecting. Some book groups won't let me set Derry up with them due to length. And it is kind of expensive to buy in hardcover. $32.95 in the US. New World For Old with be just as expensive, if not more.

It's just, I do not want to rush Brendan's life due to some arbitrary limitations on book size. He has three segments in which to tell his story--all three of which have been written, with one published, and one still on track to come out around my birthday. The last should be done by the end of the year. And that will be it, for him. No more space to expand upon his life, as if it's not expansive, right now.

I'm 2/3 done with draft 7 of NWFO and am back to feeling comfortable with how it reads. Brendan's more contemplative in this part. More introspective. And he's actually kind while also being as angry and wary as a feral cat...and unwilling to be trampled upon. He's fighting to regain control of his life and finding it's not so very easy.

And that makes him angrier.

Jeremy returns...

I think I worked out the problem with Brendan following the waitress' death. I'll go through it, again, tomorrow, but it does feel more organic to the story, now. More connected instead of perfunctory. I actually got through to the Fourth of July 1974, after Jeremy's returned from Israel...where he fought in the Yom Kippur war.

He's changed, and Brendan can see it in him. They're now two young men who've seen people die, up close. He shows up at the pool house to spend the Fourth with Bren, because the fireworks now remind him of death and not celebration.

-----

By the time midnight was approaching and the gunfire and explosions were beginning to mellow down, Jeremy had settled next to me on the floor, both of us leaning against those totally useless bean bag chairs. Angus was asleep. We were on what I thought was the last joint, so he took another toke and offered me the remainder. I brushed it away. I was now at the point where no sudden pops or snaps could attack me.

He nodded and held it and a long sigh whispered from him. “Thanks for lettin' me stay here. Be here. Through all the noise and crap. Forgot how loud it can get. How much it sounds like-like...” His voice trailed off, then he murmured, “My folks're havin' a barbecue. Again. That's all they ever have in this state. Set off fireworks and I-I-I just couldn't...”

“I know,” was all I could think to say.

“It's all so different, here. All so changed.”

“I've not been here long enough to tell,” I murmured.

“It's not that. It's me. I was born here. So was my mom. Her folks came through Galveston back around 1910 or something. They were kids. Dad's from New York. They met when he did his residency. He decided to stay. And it was fine; nobody really seemed to care 'bout our religion. Now we get blamed for everything. Embargo. Hijackin's. Even Munich. Somethin' goes wrong, first blame the Jew.”

“Someone I knew once said, Too much blamin' and not enough accepting goin' on in the world.”

He let a near smile come to his face. “Don't have to know me to blame me.”

“But I can't see anyone blaming you for a thing. You're too mellow a lad.”

The smile finally forced itself to his face. “Never was.”

I just nudged him in a friendly joshing manner.

He chuckled. “It's true. I was a terror, in school.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Kids were kind of afraid of me.”

“How so?”

“Long story.”

“Got no place to be.”

He chuckled and settled deeper into the bean bag chair and this long gaze came to his eyes.

Danny's gaze.

I looked away.

“When I was in sixth grade,” he finally murmured, “this family moved in from Port Arthur and one of their kids was in my class. He found out I’m Jewish and started callin' me Christ-killer. Hell, I didn’t even know what he was talkin' 'bout till I mentioned it to mom. Man, she tossed a fit. Went roarin' down to the school, but the principal told her it was nothin'. Just kids being kids. Then he said to me--I mean, my mother dragged me down with her to tell him what I’d been called, and I was embarrassed like you wouldn’t believe.”

I chuckled. “Parents were made to cause their children hell.”

“No shit. Anyway, mom had him explain what it means.” He a gave a nice long yawn. “Two-thousand years ago the Jews had a guy named Jesus executed by the Romans. That’s why Christians call Jews Christ-killers.

“Now I already knew a little bit about this Jesus guy. The way Christians see him. That he’d been hung on a cross till he was dead, and there's some weird crap about him not really dyin'.” He nudged me to look at him. “We don't go along with that, but we're not as hard-assed as we used to be. Not at my temple.” He shifted back to his thousand mile gaze. “Anyhoooo, his explanation didn’t make sense to me.”

“Why not?” I asked, because truth be told, now that he mentioned it I remembered the priests and nuns saying the same about the Jews.

“'Cause, I knew my history. Romans ran the world, back then. Jews couldn't do a damn thing without their okay. So I piped up like a little smart ass, But the Jews didn’t kill Jesus; it was the Romans. You said so, yourself.” He chuckled. “Maaaaannn, you’d have thought I spit in his face.”

His chuckle became a laugh, and he took another drag of the joint's stub then sipped some wine before exhaling.

“Well, that principal bolted from his chair and yelled at mom, Get this little Jew bastard out of my office! Said it so loud, half his staff looked around. That's when mom rose and said, very sweet and cold, Unlike you, this little Jew is the product of a marriage.”

That made me laugh along with him. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Then she took me straight to a karate class and enrolled me in it, and said, Learn it; you’ll need it.” 

“Is that what you used on that drunk, last year?”

“Aikido,” he smirked. “Karate got boring. Anyway, I was barred from the school. Nearly two weeks 'fore Uncle David made the district back down and let me back in. Mom kept me current with my classes, so that was no problem.” He was quiet, for a long moment. “Problem was with that little shit who called me a Christ-killer to begin with. He made friends. Gained converts. Lots of kids. Kids I thought were friends. They were callin' me that. Whisperin' it. And the kids who didn’t say it, who told me in private they thought it was awful what those brats were doin'? They let it happen.” He gave a long deep yawn. “And the teachers did nothin' to stop it. 

“Finally, that little shit and I got into it, after school. Right under the noses of three teachers. I think they thought it was time the little Jew boy got put in his place.” Another long pause, then a smile. “I broke the little shit’s arm. Compound fracture. That stopped the fight, all right. Blamed it all on me. I was suspended for a month. Little shit's dad threatened to file charges. My mother tossed another fit, but this time my father told her to shut up and see what happened. Then he took me to a shootin' range and showed me how to fire a pistol. We went once a day for a whole month. Thirty-eight revolver. Forty-five automatic, which hurt my hand with its kick. Shifted to a Ruger ten-twenty-two.”

He looked at me, pretty much stoned. I wasn't far behind him.

“That's a rifle. Word got around. Mess with the Jew, he'll mess with you. You know what? When I went back to school, no one ever called me that name, again. Ever.”

I chuckled. “Sounds like you work better with the head to head approach in life.”

“Only after I’d had two months of karate lessons, five times a week. I mean, I wasn’t even beyond a white belt at that point, but I knew how to get that little shit’s arm over my knee and go snap. It was very impressive.”

“Jesus, Jere...”

He sat forward, still cross-legged, still staring at nothing. “Mom put down I'd won awards for my shootin' and had a black belt in Aikido. For the info. For the kibbutz. So when the Egyptian army started their build-up, I was grabbed and handed a GALIL and sent to Sinai. To stop any advance. I thought they were jokin'. Nobody thought the Egyptians were any good.”

I watched him just sit there, unmoving. Barely breathing.

“They were wrong,” whispered from him.

Shifting...

Well, what started out as a simple shift of this paragraph there and this page down here became a complete expansion and intensification of Brendan's reaction to the waitress' death at the hands of her abusive husband. Brendan withdraws completely from everyone, thinking himself a curse. Blaming himself for her murder. I had a bit where Todd, the bartender where Brendan worked, drops by to talk...but I think I'm combining that with Everett's visit.

The setup is simple -- the husband shows up at the bar, attacks his wife and Brendan, remembering how Paidrig was kneecapped by their mutual friend, Colm, grabs a baseball bat and smacks it against the man's knees. Breaks one, crippling the guy. Which is bad because the husband is a cop and Brendan is not legal.

Brendan sets her up at Everett's till she can convince her mother to move out of the city with her. But the husband uses police resources to track her down, rams her car head-on, and pumps five bullets into her before killing himself. And the whole city wonders why a fine, upstanding young cop went berserk while tacitly blaming the waitress for it all.

I'm using an infamous occasion in Asbury Park, NJ, about 7 or 8 years ago, where a cop was in a divorce, accused of abuse and pissed off over child support, so chased down his soon-to-be ex and killed her in her car while their daughter sat in the passenger seat. What made it horrific was, some fellow officers saw what he was doing and didn't even try to stop him. Then comforted him before they arrested him. All on video.

This mess crashes Brendan back to memories of his father's abuse of his mother, himself and his older brother, Eamonn, and sends him careening into despair. He sees himself as a curse, now that two women he knew are dead thanks to him. How I get Everett in to talk him back to humanity is something I'll deal with tomorrow.

Ophthalmologist blew me off about my stye. Just use hot packs on your eye and come in for your normal visit, next week. I so love being cared about...