Got it...

I received a copy of Philip Cunningham's Derry Down the Days and it is exactly what I needed for Place of Safety. He lived on Nailor's Row for 15 years as a child and it's a treasure trove of discussion about that little strip of homes facing the Derry Walls. I already knew the toilet was outside; I didn't know the running water was, as well. And his home was a two-up-two-down situation, with the front room used as an additional bedroom and the kitchen-back room referred to as the living room. 18 people lived in that place, and this was a family where the father had a decent enough job. They wound up moving to Creegan Estates in 1952 or so.

I'm still digging to find out when the buildings were vacated for demolition. I know some were still around as late at 1971, but no indication as to whether or not they were inhabited. Of course, that doesn't really matter in a fictional book. I'm making up a small section of the area to keep from having to deal with the people who actually lived there. Philip was in the Friels Terrace section.

Since posing the question of just how dark do I want to go, some interesting thoughts have made themselves known. After witnessing a horrific bombing, Brendan goes into what I was calling a catatonic state...but that felt rather 1940s to me. which reminded me of some old movie where the heroine had what was referred to as hysterical blindness. Which led me to find out that term hasn't been used in decades; it's now called Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder, and there is still controversy over whether or not it's a real psychological or physiological condition.

Don't care. It suits my goals and gives Brendan's family more excuse to shuttle him off to Houston, so he can be treated. And he just overstays his visa...by years...and it sets up a fun dichotomy that is also a parallel to his life in Derry.

Which is where some serious darkness has begun to grow...

Busy week and all

I've spent most of the last week working out my finances and catching up on paperwork...and letting Place of Safety do its own adjustments in the back of my brain. A lot needs to be reconfigured on the book, and me sitting at a laptop trying to figure out to say at this particular time is a total waste. So I'm letting Brendan and company do their thing as I do mine.

I hopped down to NYC to see a friend, Brad Rushing, cinematographer extraordinaire, and got slammed by NYC's typical summer heat and humidity. 90+ and sweltering. Used up a lot of cash on cabs to get around, made worse by the usual traffic tie-ups due to parades and construction and asshole drivers, but...it all worked out well. I even enjoyed a vegan dinner...with is NOT at ALL my bent.

Brad did an interview with Honeysuckle Magazine that was fun to watch and listen to, and I met a couple of cool people -- Ronit and Sam, who publish a very professional-looking mag that spits in your eye. I perused a couple of issues, and my favorite article was a remembrance of Dirk Shafer, who was Playgirl's Man of the Year until he was confronted about being gay...as he chronicled in his mockumentary, in 1995. I knew Dirk slightly and always found him to be pleasant and forward thinking, and was sad he died in 2015 even though I hadn't seen him since I left LA in 2008. Reading that article cemented my already positive attitude about the magazine's aims -- darkness with humanity.

Needless to say, I can get pretty damned dark in my thoughts and attitudes, not to mention complaints and rants. The fact that my first book has a straight man raping men and telling his story from his own self-justified viewpoint as he destroys lives...yet who still winds up a sympathetic killer at the end...is pretty indicative of how far I'm willing to go into the night. And I have to admit, sometimes I wonder if I can go farther.

I wonder if that's what the hesitation is about PS...that I either want to go too dark...or won't go far enough?

Quick note on "The Alice '65"

I had a nice but odd letter from The Austin Film Festival telling me the script made it as a Second Rounder but did not advance, yet on the same letter was a handwritten note saying the readers thought the concept was fun and unique and it had a strong narrative. Makes me wonder why it didn't advance farther, then. I don't get feedback on this, so I have no idea what that might really mean.

I guess I'll just be happy with what the script got and assume romantic-drama-comedies just weren't the choice of the day.

Got home and now am sorting through it all...

I've got so much I need to sort out, non-the-least regarding my financial condition and how much this trip set me back. My main concern was making sure I hadn't overdrawn on my bank account. Seems used bookshops in Derry don't take credit cards, so I went through my allowance on the first day. And I did wind up buying another copy of a book I already had...dammit. I should've taken a list. And don't get me started on the number of copies I paid for off the microfiche.

But this trip has solidified a number of issues in my head about Place of Safety. To start with, I'm still approaching the first section, from 1966-1972, from too American a viewpoint. The societal and family structures are much more expansive and encompassing than I was allowing for, so I have aspects in what I've written that would work fine in the US but are completely wrong for Derry...for Ireland as a whole.

However, some parts do work well, now. Like when Brendan's at the October 5th Civil Rights March in Derry, starting on Duke Street and planning to cross the Craigavon Bridge to go to The Guildhall, and it's attacked by out-of-control policemen with batons and water cannons before they even really begin -- I got all of that right. Along with the location of the Foyle Street Bus Centre at the time.

I also got how hundreds of Unionist reactionaries were holed up in The Guildhall to try and keep the Civil Rights Marchers from reaching there, on the January 1969 walk from Belfast, but according to news reports at the time, there was some serious fighting and push-back going on by most of the Catholic crowd outside, so that the constables were overwhelmed and the Unionists had to pretty much defend themselves. This is barely referred to in most of the books I have, if at all.

So there's a lot of work ahead, but it's not like I'm starting from the beginning...I just need to expand on some things.

Expand on things...my favorite phrase when it comes to writing.

The things you find on facebook

So...I spent most of yesterday in the Derry Public Library, again, digging through old copies of The Derry Journal, trying to find out a few things -- like what the weather was on certain days and the price ranges of goods and what was actually being said in the paper about various events, including opinion pieces -- and reminded myself of the major limitations to microfiche.

To start with, they're usually bad scans of papers that are hard to read. But...after a bit of trial and error, I figured out how to make prints from them in ways that I could at least read what was being written. And the pricing of things like cars and blouses and shoes and meat were mainly pre-decimalization, so I have to go back to my notes to remember what 40' 6d is (I think that's 40 schillings and sixpence...but don't hold me to it.) However, I do know what movies were showing -- "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Dirty Dozen" on Brendan's 12th birthday -- and that an Irish girl named Dana, who lived in Derry, won the Eurovision Competition in 1970.

But no luck on the weather conditions or any information about where the bus depot -- bus centre was in the later 60s. Until I was at the station. I asked the people working there and got a big shrug. One said, "It's always been here, hasn't it?" Which was contradicted by his co-worker with, "No, this area but this centre wasn't built till recent." Which sort of fit into my memory from the first time I came here, in 2002; I took a bus up from Galway and recall the station seemed new, at the time.

However, I noticed Ulsterbus had a sign suggesting you go to their facbeook page to leave a comment -- and when I did that and followed a link to Foyle Street Bus Station and looked through the photos, there were some that were from the late 60s showing the place was right where it's always been, but entrance was straight onto Foyle Road and not the boulevard behind it -- the dual carriageway, as they call it.

My new photo isn't a very good one (I'd pretty much rejected it), but it does show that the buildings right behind the bus, this side of Guildhall in the old photo, are gone and the area made into a park. Dunno if that was from bombings or just redevelopment, but it's an interesting change.

Now I know one section I wrote -- when Brendan and his buddy, Colm, go to get some money off Colm's father and he sees Joanna, again, is all right. He's gotten dirty helping Colm's father fix his taxi, and for the first time starts thinking maybe it's a good idea to keep clean and neat, in case he sees her, again. Wants to make a good impression.

Which he does, later...which leads to major life changes...

Helpful...

I'm exhausted, but this has been a fruitful visit to Derry, so far. I've been to the Tower Museum, Free Derry Museum, Gasworks Exhibit Hall, Derry Library, The Guildhall...and Burntollet Bridge. And aspects I'd described in the story are close but too many are not quite right. This is why it's good to actually see the places you're setting your story in.

For example, I walked (and got rained on) the full 7 miles left to get to  Derry on the A6 (after the attack at Burntollet) and they are almost like what I said...but on the side of the road where traffic is headed to Derry, there's a sharp drop. Not a cliff but like a steep hillside covered in foliage. Something you can't see from maps or Google views or even a neat little video on YouTube that shows the full drive. This photo is proof. I took it head on and the road slopes down at about a 30 degree angle.

And wandering around the Bogside en route to the Gasworks, I found the logistics I was using for Brendan to get home, get a gun, and go searching for some men who beat him is too wide-spaced. For it to work means it has to be tightened or changed, completely.

Got lots of pictures of stuff just for me. Ran the battery out on my camera and damn near did the same thing on my phone. But here's one of the city from halfway up Fountain Street. That damned thing is a definite 45 degree slide down. You can tell by how the homes are practically stacked on each other, to the left. Needless to say, it's a one-way street going down.

The great thing about the library was finding books in the reference section that I want, getting their ISBNs and finding them online to buy. And the second-hand bookstores are also a treasure trove.

I'm hoping the airline won't weigh my bag on return...

Dangerous...

I did a read of Killing Moon as I did laundry, looking for typos and other things. Found a few but not many. Made a couple of changes. Emphasized the terror of a couple murders. And now think my script is into dangerous territory. So...I'm submitting it to a couple of horror script competitions. Just to be a shit.

I violated a couple of rules -- like making some of the characters who die nice people, and killing the hero 2/3 of the way in. There's also the attack on misusing religion to suit your own ends, and all the emotional and political connotations of someone being lynched. It's not your everyday horror film, and it doesn't count as grind or torture porn. It's a middle finger kind of script.

Anyway, it's done. And I'm hitting a time for change in my writing and such. I'm not renewing my postings of The Alice 65, Marked For Death, and Carli's Kills on Inktip. It's proven to be worthless, for me. The one time a production company downloaded a script to review, I wrote to them and asked about it and they didn't have the courtesy to even write me back. E-mail me. Anything.

Reality is, the vast majority of producers and such on InkTip are minimal people looking to find a script to take to another real production house and try to set up. You IMDb these people and they have maybe 1 or 2 credits for shorts or TV. So it's not worth the money to keep going.

Now I'm off to Derry to do my research, and I've got my list of things I need to check out. If I get half of them addressed, I'll be doing good, since I'll only have 2 real days there. Can't afford any more.

Story of my life.

Well...I've done it...

I put every bit of spit and vinegar I could into Killing Moon. Got a lot of shit out of my system ... and it's brutal. Obnoxious. Cruel. Maybe even offensive. No ... probably ... and I love it.

It’s set in North Carolina’s backwoods country ... you know – that lovely land where  Deliverance  took place. A bible-thumping preacher named Avery makes a deal with the devil to raise a demon in exchange for him killing 5 innocent people and getting a crowd to kill 1 more for all the right reasons. He claims it’s to prove the reality of evil but he’s really doing it to save his son from drugs.

His first kills are 2 girls his son was getting high with. Then 4 college kids – Mike, Joe, Lissa and Troy – arrive to spend Spring Break at Troy’s father’s cabin by a nearby lake. Lissa and Troy are a couple, as are Mike and Joe ... if Mike can get over thinking he caused his brother’s death in a car wreck. He keeps having visions of the guy’s bloody corpse.

But it turns out Mike is the only one capable of stopping Avery before he achieves his goal. Avery senses this, blames him for the murders, and rouses the town to hang him…in front of live cable news feeds. Kind of hard to stop a demon when you’re dead.

So, yes ... I’ve got every cliche in the book of horror movie-making -- kids on Spring Break at an isolated cabin, screwing each other and having oblivious fun as a serial killer lurks nearby ... along with a religious villain, gay heroes who actually do have sex, a lynching at the hands of a “Christian” mob, a church burning, and while Mike is now white, Joe is Jewish and from Texas, and learned how to fire a gun when he was called a “queer Christ killer.” All in 92 pages.

It’s like Friday the 13th done by John Waters, albeit without the scatological references. Never gonna get made, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s done and it’s mean, and I love it.

Woo-hoo …

Light at the end of the endless tunnel...

I felt good enough to try and break my writer's block by working on something other than Place of Safety...and it seems to be helping. I have a horror script -- Killing Moon -- that is about as in-your-face as can be. It's got a preacher as the villain and the hero, who's half-black, gets lynched by the white townsfolk after a sermon by the preacher works them up...as the media stands by. Oh, and the hero's girlfriend is Jewish and from Texas, so learned how to shoot a gun at the age of six, after she was called a Christ-killer. No chance in hell of it ever getting made, but it gives me pleasure to just let it rip.

Another possibility was working on my gay serial killer book set in London...but I couldn't get going on that. It needs a lot of work, too, and would take a major shift away from PS. I'm not willing to go that far to break my block.

I'm still achy and my neck is bugging me from sneezing so much...as are my sides...but it's not as much as it used to be. And I took a nap when I got home so that seemed to help, too. And I sound like an old man talking about his ailments. Jesus, when did I turn into a cliche?

I wanna go back to the Armadillo...

Still feel like dirt

I'm fighting this beast but it's too soon to say if I'm winning or if it's taking a breather before it makes a serious counterattack. Right now, my nose is so dry, it hurts, but that's lessened the irritation of my throat. And I'm seriously pissed off, still, instead of morose or numb...so maybe that's good. And it's probably good I live alone, right now.

I remember the first time I visited Ireland...back in March 2002. My first night there, I went into a fish & chips shop on the pedestrian walkway to have a decent serving of the stuff. It had picnic-like benches and people would share the table without knowing each other. Well...as I was eating, this Irishman sat across from me, and he had the worst-sounding cold. Sniffling and snorting breathing like a Mack truck. I wrapped the remains of my food up and left as quick as I could...but it did no good. I started feeling it the next day, the little prick.

My B&B had a bar downstairs, and when I told the bartender what had happened, she made me the best hot toddy ever. Said it would kill the cold. It knocked it back, that's for sure...and if I'd had another, I'd have been fine but instead I got busy looking the city over and taking a ferry out to one of the Aran Islands and driving around the countryside and going to the Cliffs of Moher...and the morning I caught my bus for Derry, I started feeling it, again.

I was sick the rest of my stay. And when I ran out of Tylenol, it was on a Sunday...and just try and find a place to buy drugs in Ireland on a Sunday. The only positive aspect of it was, the beginnings of the cold made me fussy and irritable, and probably contributed to me missing my bus back to Derry from Grianan Aileach, the circle fort just across the border...so I had to walk. And that's when Brendan began talking to me about Place of Safety.

And freaked the hell out of me. Fourteen years since then...that's how long I've been circling and working on this book. 14 friggin' years, and I'm still unsure of it. No, I'm unsure of me and my ability to tell the story honestly. Truthfully. Honorably.

And at the moment, feeling like I do...I really don't know if I'll succeed...