Revisions, rewrites and rearrangements....

Well, I mailed off my submission to the NYSFA today. Checked and rechecked the thing to the point of OCD. In the process of completing the manuscript that I submitted, the following forward I wrote for "A Wasterly Gale." was removed for the time being.

It is written after the style of Samuel Rutherford Crockett. In homage if you will, to a literary forefather. It didn't quite fit at the beginning of this book, but I think it may work for its as yet unnamed sequel.

AFORE:

I, Mark W. O'Brien of the Village of Voorheesville in New York, begin the writing of this book with thanks to God, the giver of all good, for the bountiful harvest which He has given us here in the Town of New Scotland, in the year of His Grace, September, 2007.

Now it may appear that there are many things in this long story which I should like to tell concerning my forebearers, that are far from doing them credit, but let it not be mislippened (overlooked) that they were in the time of their youth and wild oat sowing, when the blood runs warm, and the heart takes hold o' the bridle.

My storie begins, as do most tales worth telling, with the ring of truth, and soon egresses to a bit of imagining, with a fleshing out of the rest. It is a tale handed down through five generations, from parent to child, and may have been lost were it not for the existence of letters and documents from some of the parties involved.

My storie begins in Ireland, and afore that, though not in this chapter of the saga, Scotland. That it begins in Scotland, is a fact to me which of is no small matter, for it tells me of the full circle to which I am a party bound. Scotland to Ireland to New Scotland: by the grace of the God and my forebears.

My own knowledge of it comes to be by my Da, supplemented by the reading and transcribing of the aforementioned letters that were kept for me as my inheritance by my Ma.

I should like just now, to offer this picture: It has little to do with my storie, and everything to do with it. For it is a picture of my great grand father James Alexander (Pappy) Gilmour, with my Da, James Gilmour O'Brien (standing next to the babybuggy) and my uncle Robert O'Brien. (...being held down by my Da and their Granpappy.)

These my progenitors, are not yet participants in the tale which I am about to tell, but they carry the names closely, of those who are. That is also a part of how this story came down to me, for we carry the lives of those who came before us in our names as well as in our hearts.

My Ancestors were Coopers by trade, and my own Da named me Mark O'Brien for a reason. The literal translation of my name from the old tongue is Hammer Strong. I was ever at home with a hammer in hand, but for sake of my tale I have beaten-it to a quill. "Name your children well" my Da was want to say, "for they will live up to it, or down to it, which ever the case may be, and its better to give them something good to strive for."

obeedude 03/oct/07

HAPPY 77th BIRTHDAY MA!