Still advancing...

I got another chapter written for HNH, where Brendan is taken to visit his brother Eamonn, in the Maze Prison. It's not long, just 7 pages, right now, and I'm guessing on a couple of aspects of how they'd meet with him in the place...but it feels right. So far.

I'm nervous that this part of the story is becoming an advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes, but it's what Brendan smokes and he's finding they help break the ice with the soldiers at checkpoints and guards at the Maze. They're available in Derry, but cost close to twice as much as things like Gallagher Blues, which Brendan used to smoke, so only the better-off people can afford them.

He's finding out there's a lot of contradiction in the information he's been pulling together about his family. He's always assumed they were all born and raised in Derry, but if his parents lived in Belfast till mid-1951, then both Eamonn junior and Mairead would have been born there. And he's got two names for his father -- Eamonn Kinsella and Edward Gorman. He needs to sort that out. Not sure about this...but it does add to his confusion.

I've cut a great deal, as well. The long, painful reunification with Joanna is gone, as is the moment she turns on him. And the lead-up to him being arrested by the RUC is shifted to a more believable place--the Peoples Wall down Fahan from Guildhall. It's a one-way now but I think it was both directions back in 1981. I'd better verify that.

Oh, I still have much to do for this...but it's getting there.