Assessing...

I don't know what it was that sent me crashing into a bleak, black rabbit hole, yesterday, but what kept it going was memories from shit that happened to me when I was twelve. That's the year I learned I had no control over my life. None. It happened in El Paso, which is why I absolutely loathe that city and when I would drive from LA to San Antonio, I would not stop till I was past it. No matter what.

I'm not sharing any of that, but I will say on the two occasions afterwards, where I did try to assert some control, I got shot down, totally. First was in Grand Forks, ND where I decided I was going to be part of the little theater group, on base, and make as many friends as I could. I was tired of being a loner, and El Paso had shown me having friends would be useful in many situations.

Well, we lived on base, 30 miles from town. I'd be in a new school around no one I knew. I could become as open and outgoing as I wanted. Instead, my mother was hospitalized, again, and we wound up being shipped back to San Antonio. I wound up attending a school where I knew everyone and they knew me, and there was no chance of me reimagining myself.

The second time was in Hawaii, where we were going to stay for 3 years. I pushed myself to make friends, again, and decided I was going to take a boat back to the mainland, not fly. I got my Social Security card, even though I was still 15, and went looking for a part-time job so I could start saving for my trip. Instead, I got corralled into babysitting my brothers and sister so my mother could work, because that damn state was so damned expensive we needed the extra income. And we still wound up moving back to San Antonio after a year. No option.

These experiences colored my view of how life works. And it set me on a path of just meandering through life. Trying this to see if it works and if it doesn't then trying that. Unable to focus too hard on anything for very long and losing interest the moment I sense I'm going to be kicked to the curb, again.

The one thing that amazes me through all of this is how long I've kept pushing at A Place of Safety, even though the whole of existence seems to be screaming at me that I will never make it work. I keep trying to figure it out...and do feel like I'm stepping closer and closer.

But as I was reading Eamon McCann's book I became so overwhelmed with a sense of futility, the only thing I could do to avoid throwing everything in the trash was to just shut down. So Saturday evening was spent watching second-rate murder mysteries on BritBox and Acorn. And Sunday I took hours to prep my expenses and invoice for time spent on this job...and just grew more depressed at what I was trying to do.

Then today I went into the office to drop off paperwork from the two jobs, gave everyone a little gift I'd bought in LaPorte, IA, the home of Buffalo Bill, and bought some groceries and came home and had a book I'd ordered from Kenny's Bookshop in Dublin waiting for me. I didn't expect it till next week. That managed to snap my mood and I've already read through some of it; it has an article by Martin Melaugh, who'd once told me I'd never get the sound of Derry's people right, but he'd also said I should try...and it seemed like a sign that I should keep working.

So I am...and I will...even if it takes another 20 years.

No posting...

I'm in a bad place, right now, and need to recenter. Not sure what or what's going on...just not feeling good and unable to do anything about anything...

I hate it when I get like this.

Road trips begat road trips...

I'm going to add a chapter to Book 2 of APoS, where Brendan, Everett and maybe a couple other people do a road trip from Houston to Austin to see a San Antonio-based punk band called The Next. They play as a punk club called Raul's, just off the UT campus, on Guadeloupe. Pronounced Gwa-de-loop. Don't ask me why; when I lived there it took me forever to get used to how they said names. Like Manchaca was pronounced Man-shack. Drove me nuts.

It's during Brendan's drugged-out phase -- about 1979 -- and they go in Everett's 1974 Chrysler Imperial, which can easily seat a dozen people, it's so damn big. Bren uses this to break out from his high-end ennui...even buys a cassette of their music and plays it when back in Derry to jolt a cross-cultural party into life. Just before he sees a ghost and begins to question his sanity.

But my main focus is still the first book, Derry, and it's slowly working its way around to me. I'm debating adding a moment were Brendan finds letters written from his father to his mother that are almost poetic. He's learned his aunt in Houston has been sending money in her letters and packages to the family, something his mother never once mentioned, so he wants to know more. And what it leads to is him having to start re-evaluating his father's anger...but this seems like such a literary device, I'm not so sure about it. So Victorian. So Edith Wharton.

I can't just have him overhear the man spinning one of his tales or singing one of Ireland's songs inside a pub while Brendan's outside; I don't want him to know any of this until after the guy's dead. It's gonna be tricky...

Maybe even Brendan''s stumped at figuring out how. Maybe that's why he's been so quiet on this trip...

Long drive...

I've driven between LA and San Antonio and Houston so many times, and that stretch between Junction and El Paso is deadly boring...but damn...between Chicago and Iowa city is mind-numbing. Open fields that may have been plowed or aren't being cultivated going on and on. Few truck stops and even fewer rest areas. And having Google maps keep trying to send me down toll roads because it might save me a few minutes wrecks your mental health.

I got the main job done -- 18 boxes off to the client, for delivery tomorrow -- but this one is more of a favor of an add-on, because it's going to be 4 boxes, max. But the donor can't pack this stuff, themself, so...I wind up drinking too much Dr. Pepper and chewing too many pieces of gum to stay alert while trying to get some thinking done about APoS...but Brendan wasn't having it.

The closest I came is him reminding me, once more, that the theme running through this story is about hopes and wishes and dreams and how they keep getting smashed. By events...by others...by themselves. Which is what happened with his parents. Which means a restructuring of his opening chapter...and maybe writing some of Eamonn Sr's stories. Maybe rework some from James Stephens' book...or make up some of his own. Have him share them with the family instead of just down at the pub in hopes of getting someone to buy him another drink.

Question is, how does that translate into his becoming a brute? And how do I work it so Brendan comes to learn about it, thus softening his memories about his father even as his mother is sharpening his awareness of her disdain for him?

It seems Rhuari, Brendan's younger brother, is the one shifting into a sort of creative mode by learning Irish in Book Two and starting to teach it in Book Three. And maybe Eamonn Jr becomes something of a wordsmith in his letters from Long Kesh, laying out a manifesto and talking about a political path to take.

I don't know...still ideas...

Chicago

Flight was on time and got everything I needed with minimal trouble. Even avoided the craziness of these drivers, who like to jut out from alleyways to half block cars on the street so they can scoot across. Almost got hit by one and received a very dirty look when I honked. Boxes are built for tomorrow's use, and I had Panda Express for dinner. My favorite even though it's really too rich for me. Makes my blood sugar skyrocket.

But it helps center me. Settle me. For some reason, despite everything going so easily I was extremely tense, and it's telling in my neck. I'm downing Tylenol like it's Tic-tacs and slathering Icy Hot on it, but that's barely keeping the pain to a minimum. Don't know why I'm feeling this way, I just am.

Read some of Eamonn McCann's book and got some notes out of it. He clued me int on what it was I was trying to understand about Derry people -- they are brutally sarcastic and love to undercut egos. They also do not take shit off anybody. The UVF (the Protestant version of the IRA) once threatened to kill any Catholic who was working for the government's health system, in the main office. So the full office, both Protestant and Catholic, went on strike to let the bastards know it would not be tolerated. It worked. The UVF put out a mealy-mouthed memo saying they'd been misunderstood.

I was mistaken in thinking Brendan needed an excuse to want to be to himself and not have many friends. I was thinking of making him slightly autistic or with a mild form of ADHD, but that's taking his choice away. He just doesn't want to play the game the others do. He has a few really good friends, both Catholic and Protestant, but one of the Proddy lads betrays him, viciously. Twice. So he just gets very careful about who's going to be his mate. He's wary, not sick or disabled in any way, and loyal...but only to a point.

I also think I'm being too harsh about Eamonn, Sr. Brendan's da. He's a man in his mid-thirties who had dreams and hopes and did what he could with them...until he was killed. He was a storyteller, a weaver of words into magical worlds but without the opportunity or resources needed to make something of it. And Bernadette can see that. But all Brendan can see, at first, is how brutal the man could be when he was drunk. I'm finding Eamonn will reveal himself slowly, and Brendan's mother will do the same...

I think...I honestly don't know, just now.

Stupid me...

I signed up for an online course in using Google Ads and YouTube to increase sales of my books...specifically Carli's Kills. It was a couple hours long...and the last third was a complete waste. I can't even use YouTube unless I have at least one professional video to post, and they suggest three. Meaning sink God knows how much money into working up a video for the book to go onto a format I rarely visit and don't really know will help me.

On top of this, I'll need to sink hundreds of dollars into working with Google Ads to see which one will be best for my work. And I need a stand-along platform for the book to link back to, for sales. Then there are the network backups and the response display and the target ad group and key words to use but also key words not to use but you won't know which is which until you spend more money...and now I'm depressed.

I wanted to understand better how to sell CK so I might be able to pay for a trip to Ireland...and no way in hell is that gonna happen. I'll need to spend God knows how many weeks or months just catching up to speed on how things work and sink myself even deeper into debt in hopes my one little mainstream erotic-suspense-romance-revenge-justice-thriller takes off...with no guarantee it will.

I'm currently set up for it to be in Ingram's catalogue blast, which cost me, too but actually has helped me make sales for things like my coloring book and such.

I've been fortunate in sales of my books. I've made my money back, plus some, on all but David Martin (my fable) and The Alice '65 (my MF Rom-com). The two books that are the most mainstream. Guess I'm a niche writer until I take a hardcore course in online sales and work out a formula for success in it.

I can't, right now. I've been avoiding APoS for too damned long and want it completed before I'm feeble of body and brain, which at the rate I'm going may be this time next week.

More and more...

Jesus, the paperwork is never-ending. I'm 2/3 of the way through this box and found a few things that were useful, including printouts of an email conversation I had with Martin Melaugh, PhD who's heavily involved with CAIN in Northern Ireland. They're a goldmine of information regarding the Troubles and politics of the times. I was hoping to find if he wrote a book about the time, but all I could locate was an anthology of thought pieces on the social attitudes in NI that included one by him. Still ordered a copy. Anything that will help me center APoS properly in that region is desperately wanted.

Since I'll be headed off to Chicago for a couple of packing jobs, day after tomorrow, I'm taking a book with me to read -- War and Peace in Northern Ireland by Eamonn McCann. I've read his War in an Irish Town and some of his other articles, and he's a contemporary of Dr. Melaugh so his viewpoints will be interesting...and, I hope, illuminating.

I also found an old interview I'd torn out of a Playboy Magazine that was with Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams, leaders of Sinn Fein, as well as an unidentified Provo. I know it was from sometime in 1988-89, because it references Adams as being 40 and he was born in 1948. Plus there's the ads for cigarettes and the hair styles of the women.

I'm still thinking about the situation between Brendan's parents, Bernadette and Eamonn, and what that entails. It will help determine what direction some parts of the book will take. I'm leaning into Bernadette disliking Brendan because she cannot affect him in the same ways she affects his father, brother and sister. He's growing closer to being slightly into ADHD, but undiagnosed. Just his actions. But I need to know more about that issue before working it in instead of going for a slight form of autism.

But it's all to make his a bit apart from everyone else, and partly why he has only a few close friends.

The joys of paperwork...

OMG, I have so many notes and printouts and articles dealing with APoS, it's close to overwhelming. I went to storage and pulled out a box of stuff I knew was packed with all kinds of stuff -- from copies made of the Derry Journal from January 7, 1969 to interviews with the wives of men murdered by the RUC during the shoot-to-kill phase of the troubles...which actually started up after Brendan's story is done, here...to pages and pages of my scritchy-scratchy handwriting with ideas and possibilities.

A lot of them I've already incorporated into the story, but there were some I'd forgotten. I've started up folders for each section of the book -- Derry, Houston and Return -- and that's helping me keep track. I found I actually had a printed copy of a book I bought...War in an Irish Town by Eamonn McCann, who was a big movers in the Civil Rights Movement...as well as printouts of emails I exchanged with him. It's been so long since I looked at them, I'd forgotten.

I'm building up a need to go spend a week in Derry, again, to dig through the library's archives and haunt the used bookstores there as well as in Belfast. I checked into it and a 10 day stay in mid-September would be around $5,000. Which I ain't got. I mean, I have space enough on a credit card...but the interest rate on that card is now up to 16% and probably will rise more. It's tied to the Fed's rate, and I already have too much on it from my apartment furnishing and eye-surgery, not to mention my long-term semi-employment. Dammit.

Maybe Carli's Kills will take off and bring in enough for me to go. I'd only need to sell about 3000 copies. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Weird day messing with me...

First learned Ukraine's entry into the Eurovision competition, this year -- Kalush -- won for their song, Stefania. And there are rumors of a coup against Putin due to his declining health and mental capacities. Both of which gave me a hint of hope and joy.

But then my sister in Texas texted me, asking about the shooting at a Tops Market about 4-5 miles from me. I went online and saw that ten were dead and three injured, all but two African American.

The white racist fuck who went hunting for black people in that market was from a town just outside Binghamton, and I've been through it so many times while en route to NYC or parts of PA and NJ. He had n*gger printed on his gun and a 100+ page manifesto posted on his FB page, but officials are still investigating whether or not to see this as a hate crime.

Seriously! They don't want to rush to judgement.

The killer was taken without a scratch on him, just like Dylan Roof. Not tasered once, despite having an AR15 next to him. Handcuffed and driven off in the space of minutes. By cops who shoot to kill any black man who dares make even the hint of a wrong move in their direction.

Sickening.

I did manage to get a schematic worked up for Brendan's home on Nailors Row. And I did more digging seeking what I'd worked up for his possible grandparents. But not a lot else done, today.

This world is going fucking mad...

Difficult day searching files

For me to solidify the situation in Brendan's family, in Derry, I need to know not only who his parents are and where they came from, in detail, but who his neighbors are and where they lived in proximity. So I decided to make a map of the area and note who's where and when. I do have the characters worked out and listed, who's with whom and such, but I need a lot firmer idea of Eamonn Sr. and Bernadette.

I know somewhere in my files I started writing out more background on the lives of his parents...but I'm having a hell of a time finding it. I've got a thousand Word files, alone, to go through as well as just as many images. I suppose I should just make some kind of order from them, because a lot are duplicates spread over at least five thumb drives and my external hard drive. 

I did finally find this map I'd been looking for. It's of the Bogside of Derry from before 1960. I know this because it shows an extension of Nailors Row that led up to Fahan Street, at the top center under that orange stripe, and I have a photo of that spot from 1961 showing they'd been torn down, by then.

I don't remember where I got it from, but I didn't put the colored stripes on it and the notes written there are not my handwriting. What's great is, this shows not only the plots of the houses but also their back yards and if they have a hutch/shed. I think I have another, somewhere, that is without the stripes...but it's God only knows where.

I'm going to add an 8th plot to that little curve across from Walker's Pillar and make that the Kinsella home. Then I'll need to do one for their new flat on Cliodhna Place, where they move before the Battle of Bogside.

What I'm also having to deal with is how some files have reached the point where I cannot open them, the format they're in is so old. At least, not on my laptop. I've got my MacMini so may try that version of Word. but no matter how it goes, this book ain't coming out till next year, at the earliest.