Victor O'Reilly

July 9th 2001

Sometimes things don't work out quite as planned...

Unfortunatly

Letters and e-mail from you, my readers, have proved a real encouragement and comfort over the last few years and are very deeply appreciated. They stop me growling at the goldfish, or would if I had a goldfish.

They say us authors can be a moody lot.

Accordingly, I have tried to respond in kind by replying to each of your missives individually and to keep up the connection by way of my newsletter Letters From Hangman Hall supplemented by further personal e-mails when called for. Doubtless, some e-mails have been lost over time and are forever consigned to some electronic Valhalla, but mostly I have reason to believe that my replies have got through. E-mail beats pigeons during Hunting Season hands down though you can't eat the things.

Unfortunately, technology does not always cooperate. Military people call it 'the friction of war.' I call it 'the friction of modern Ireland.' This country's economy grew at 11% last year, and came close for much of the last decade, but unfortunately our infrastructure has not kept pace. The Celtic Tiger is creaking. Its communication arteries are clogged. Last week, just after I had sent out the second edition of HH, my ISP (Internet Service Provider in case you are not technical) went down for over 2 hours and to make it worse some of their data was scrambled and took some time to sort out. A long time! Bottom line - most people got the newsletter, but when they clicked on the URL to get this web site, they got zilch unless they tried again the following day. Zounds! If D-Day had been like that, we'd all be speaking German.

Sorry about that. The ISP says that our state owned telephone system is to blame and they could well be right. Down with state owned telephone companies! What's wrong with rampant capitalism?

Personally, I think it's leprechauns and, as it happens, my ISP is in the West of Ireland where leprechauns are known to be thicker on the ground and to have a real talent for messing with technology. If you don't believe me, come over here and look. Just find a rainbow, and there is no shortage of rain here, head for the base where, as I am sure you know, there is always a pot of gold and a bunch of dot.com share certificates (this is becoming a very up to date island) and just look around. If you really, really believe, you will see leprechauns and, quite possibly, flying pigs.

I know these things, and I try and share my knowledge.

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July 2nd and 3rd 2001

I'm in shock

Blue Skies

It's a blue sky day here in Ireland, as I write this, and warm as well, indeed HOT by our deprived standards. We normally exist in chill dampness.

I know it is hard for you good people in other climes to imagine a climate where the predominant sky shade is gray, but the reality is that blue skies here are as rare as snakes in this Emerald Isle.

In case you have a nest of Copperheads in your back yard, and take the presence of such delightful neighbors for granted, you should know that St. Patrick banned all snakes from Ireland over a millennium and a half ago.

Or maybe he just re-directed them with some friendly advice. "Are you snakes crazy! Don't you know the Irish climate sucks? Head for Florida and live a little."

Years ago I went to Cyprus for some sun and a look at the Civil War between the Greeks and the Turks that was brewing up there, I like safe-ish wars, and while doing some cross country walking one day, paused to rest on a convenient rock. Unfortunately I neglected to look before I took the weight off my feet so sat smack on a rather large black snake. I don't know which of us was more startled or moved faster, fortunately in opposite directions, but it put me off cross-country rambling for a time. There were unfriendly types with guns wandering around as well but they did not scare me half as much as the snake.

They should have. A few weeks after I left the island, the Turks invaded to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority and all hell broke loose. It gave me an odd feeling to see the hotel I had just been staying in riddled with cannon fire. A helluva way to encourage the tourist trade.

The Turkish invasion was spearheaded by paratroopers and was a complete success militarily for the Turks, although the Greeks weren't too crazy about it. Interestingly, it was one of the few times since World War II when Airborne troops were used as trained. Paratrooper training produces some of the finest soldiers in the world but a parachute assault as a method of delivery can leave something to be desired in operational terms. Paratroopers have been known to end up in the oddest places. But who am I to comment about their social lives!Helicopters are the preferred method of vertical insertion though it is hard to match the sheer drama of a parachute drop.

Memories are rather on my mind at present because I am going through my annual clearout prior to starting a new writing project and, as always, being forced to make some hard choices on what to keep and what to junk. This year, apart from preparing for yet another intensive writing phase, the idea, in theory, is to be able to write anywhere which is tough to do when accompanied by close to 5,000 books and endless files. But I am giving it my best shot. The heavy firepower will stay but will be drawn on only as needed. Operationally in the field, I am endeavoring to rely on laptop computers, electronically scanned-in research and so on. It is my layman's version of what I have long been advocating for the US Army.

Be FAST, LIGHT & LETHAL.

In the process of looking through files and old photograph albums, I have been reminded of all kinds of half forgotten experiences and adventures. The whole exercise has made me wonder 'Do writers treat memories the same way as other people?'

I mention this because some people I meet seem remarkably indifferent towards the past. That is possibly healthy in terms of dealing with today's problems today, and preparing for tomorrow, but speaking as a writer, I find such an attitude disturbing. To me, at any rate, experiences are the very building blocks of creativity and so need to be maintained in pristine condition. That does not mean I am indifferent towards the future, though it seems to turn up anyway regardless of my opinions, merely that I regard the past with great respect. Also, purely as a set of stories, it is extraordinarily interesting.

By the way, I am finishing this on July 3. The weather has turned chill and the sky is now gray. But there are still no snakes.

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July 1st 2001

July 1st 2001

I am writing this on a typical Irish summer Sunday. The sky is gray, the atmosphere vaguely warm and decidedly humid.

It is like Winter with heat. But, it is Sunday.

You know, I adore the weekends. It is not that I don't work on Saturday and Sunday, in fact I often do; it is more the feeling that one does not have to. So when I do, I feel vaguely virtuous. I figure it will get me brownie points somewhere.

Us humans are an odd bunch.

Strictly speaking an author can write when he or she wants, and some people write at very strange times, but I have found that the routine that works for me is to adhere to a fairly conventional working day except that because I don't have to commute more than a few yards, I gain additional productive time both ends of the day. Typically, I work from about 7.00 am to 6.00 pm which sounds marvellous and more impressive than it is because I take a break for a morning bath after I have checked my e-mail (and yes, I do have a yellow duck) and then I take lunch off at 1.00 pm for about half an hour when I listen to the news. That still adds up to close to a 10 hour workday, and it is, but creative writing rarely takes all that time. E-mail is a voracious consumer of time, as a single father I have many domestic chores to do, I keep a private daily journal and there remains the normal paperwork that one has to do to survive. So book-writing time, on average, tends to add up to no more than 6 or 7 hours a day, and of course that includes research.

Many writers think that research is essential. It is, in the sense that you have to have some experience of life to write with any conviction, but good old-fashioned normal living may be all the research you will ever need.

It just depends how you live. Some people just naturally opt for the door marked 'SAFE' and others have a drive that makes them chose the door marked 'ARE YOU CURIOUS?'

The 'CURIOUS' door can lead to High Adventure but tends to deceive about the price.

The underlying rule is simple: If you want to know, it will cost you.

Writing is hugely about finding out.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

But know this. If you have the writing bug and follow your dream, you will enter the Gardens of Paradise (just as if you were an Assassin or some such other dedicated person) and in the Gardens of Paradise, there is scant need to be concerned about a few weeds.

Well, so they say.

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June 25th 2001

"Weapons Change, Part 1:"

One thing I have learned is that professional soldiers are very reluctant to change their personal weapons (unless the new weapon is dramatically superior) because weapons handling has to be instinctive to the point where you don't think about bringing your killing tool into action. You just DO it.

Or you get killed, or injured or scared out of your boots. Life is full of fun choices.

It takes time, effort and training, but it seems to me that the use of a weapon, a tool, has to be instinctive. Handling a tool with skill is not an objective in itself. It is a means to an end, no more. The use of a tool should be transparent.

Let me tell you, the use of my particular weapon, the computer, that strange hybrid of obsolescent hardware and psychotic code, has a long way to got before it is merely an aid to my writing. The things are wonderful when they work, but they are also complex, bug ridden, unstable and have an ability to soak up time, energy, focus and money which can only be described as awesome, and on a par with Chinese Communism under Chairman Mao. And they don't give a damn that all I want to do is write. In fact, they don't give a damn what any of us want to do.

They masquerade as sentient at times, but the truth is they don't think at all.

These reflections are prompted by the fact that I have recently switched from using a conventional desk computer as my main writing machine, with a laptop as my backup, to using a laptop as my main machine. Such a dramatic revolution suggested a new laptop, because my existing one was as slow as a funeral where the star attraction had taken a wrong turn and was lost in traffic, but sourcing the new machine was a nightmare.

There are few places you can go to evaluate all the latest machines and, as far as I know, none at all in Ireland where I live. Mail order might seem like the obvious answer but you can't try out a keyboard from a catalog or ad, and I like to get intimate with a machine before I commit.

After all, when you spend as much time as I do working with a computer, it helps that you are compatible in a few key areas. A courtship is a requirement.

I was sorely tempted by a Dell 8000 which, on paper, had everything, but it seemed required weight training to lug around, but Dell Ireland would not let me touch the thing, unless I paid for it up front, so I ended up staying faithful to IBM and bought yet another ThinkPad, my fifth. This is the Model T21, and it is a thing of beauty and, at around 5lbs, light enough to leave my shoulders more or less parallel.

But getting all my software to run on it is proving to be an ordeal that Hercules would shrink from.

That tale awaits in "Weapons Change, Part 2."

June 27th 2001

"Weapons Change, Part 2:"

I don't know how you organize your life, some people are impressively well organized and store their socks by color gradation, but I have learned to try and confine changes in my computer setup to natural breaks between writing bursts. Well, that's the ideal, though since in practice I am always writing something, if only my Journal, I really mean book-writing bursts. When I am writing a book I find I really have to concentrate and computers are a massive subset of the word "distraction."

The things are a menace.

Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong will," applies, with particular elegance, to computers, and so does the most realistic comment on Murphy's Law that I have read so far: "Murphy was an optimist, particularly when messing with computers."

In short, it is my experience that making any change to my computer set-up is equivalent to proceeding into harm's way. This move to a new IBM ThinkPad T21 with an 800mz CPU, 385MBs of RAM and a 20GB hard drive, although running crash resistant Windows 2000 (Microsoft have a sense of humor and most anything is crash resistant compared to Windows 98), has still proved to be replete with problems.

The computer and its installed software has, as best one can judge, proved to be fundamentally OK. Installing the ancillaries and software that actually do the work (though I have the notion that I do the real sweating) has been, as ever, a time-burning nightmare. This won't work with that and so on. All these dinky programs seem to add up to a climate of conflict, sibling rivalry carried to excess, and I write as the eldest of 12 children (roughly five fathers were involved) so am not without experience.

A quill pen becomes more attractive by the day. And you could kill, stuff and eat the source if you were partial to roast goose.

What a way to resolve one's frustrations!

Think about that, Mr. Gates.

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June 15th 2001

Things Are Beginning To Move

As many of you who have read previous entries on this site will know, my career has been on hold for about 2.5 years as I faced a domestic situation leavened with legal complications, and adjusted to being a single father. Then, as if to nail down the reality this was a time of major change in my life and there was no going back, my mother, a rather remarkable woman by any standards died about a year ago.

Whatever your relationship, it is a sobering feeling when finally you lose both your parents. Though we were not close, either personally or geographically (she lived in Spain), I was more affected by my mother's death that I would have thought possible. We had a difficult relationship at best - she was a complex and demanding woman, and there are times when I am not exactly a day at the beach - but she epitomized the phrase "Lived life to the full" and demonstrated the point by having 3 husbands, 12 children and dying a Countess. Her last husband was a Polish count. She was also, in turn, in the Royal Air Force in World War II, and then an opera critic, writer, painter and socialite. She was charismatic, creative and inspirational and throughout her life did what she wanted when she wanted and to hell with convention and political correctness. She was outrageous, vastly entertaining when she wanted to be and, without question, unique. She loved color and she was certainly colorful.

She will not be forgotten.

But life is for living, and we all have crises and watersheds in our lives so let me move on.

People talk about difficult times often causing 'writer's block' but I have to say the events of the last 2.5 years have had the opposite effect. True, I did stop writing completely for several months because I was coping with practical details such as selling the family home and so on, but then I started a daily journal, a life-long ambition that I could never quite achieve in the past. When that worked, and actually increased my writing speed (on the principle of the more you write, the more you can write, I guess), I set to work to write my first non-fiction book, an affectionate and humorous account about my time researching the US Army called Getting To Know The Warfighters.

Writing Warfighters was a lot of fun, especially as I love writing humor, but thousands of readers were writing in screaming for another Hugo Fitzduane adventure, so I then set to work to write Evil Is A Good Word, a classic action adventure thriller which also features Fitzduane's parents in a flashback sequence set in Nazi occupied France during World War II. Winston Churchill, Heinrich Himmler and David Sterling (Founder of Britain's elite SAS) and Barnes Wallace (who invented those weird bouncing bombs used by the Dambusters) appear in cameo roles.

I have also completed Satan's Smile, a major thriller about terrorist infiltration into the very heart of the US defense establishment.

Now it is up to the publishers, and all that is going on as I write.

But I am back and in action and expect to have yet another writing project completed by the year end.

Speaking of living life to the full, let me close with a photo of a good friend of mine, and thoroughly nice human being, Brigadier General Frank Brusino USA (Retired). Frank has spent a great deal of his life in Special Forces and clearly all that snake eating has worked wonders. At the age of 70, last year he went to China and went parachuting with the Chinese Army.

Awesome is a good word.

By the way, I have been invited to jump with the US Army.

Hmm!

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