Friday and working at home. I don’t have to return to the office until Wednesday. I don’t know if I am going to attend any of the parades tonight, but I will most definitely attend Iris tomorrow, and Orpheus on Monday. Sunday is a madhouse out on the corner, with four parades running and the last two (Thoth and Bacchus), so Paul and I will sometimes go out for the earlier ones–but it’s so crowded by the time Thoth comes down the avenue we can’t stand it so we come inside. It’s weird. I intellectually know that it’s probably not a good idea to go out there–no one masked, everyone drinking and in close proximity to each other–and if I get sick I have no one to blame but myself. I still go back and forth on it–there’s a pandemic! But it’s Carnival!–so I may end up not attending rather then severely curtailing my parade attendance (I certainly don’t ever want to get Bad Carnival Karma); we’ll see how it goes.
I did spend some time last night filing, cleaning and organizing so I don’t have to do any of that this weekend. I have a short story to finish by Tuesday, a thousand emails to answer, another thousand tp generate (you think I’m kidding; I quite literally am not) and I’d like to get the floors done. I also have to run some errands at some point today–mail and make groceries (not much, just to get through the rest of the weekend)–and I also don’t have to go back into the office until Ash Wednesday (thank you, Fat Tuesday paid holiday), so I am hoping to get caught up on all kinds of things that will help ease off the pressure I feel like I am constantly under. One of today’s chores is to make that updated to-do list I’ve been meaning to get written all week, and to try to gather all my scribbled notes and idea scattered over various notebooks and legal pads compiled into one place. Once I get this short story finished, I am going to start working on Chlorine again–the goal is to have a workable first draft by the end of March, fingers crossed–but it’s going to be a shorter book, fast-paced with machine-gun like word rhythms. I am also becoming more and more fond of my main character–a not particularly talented but incredibly hot and sexy closeted film actor, cynical about using his face and body to get ahead because he is really only out for himself…understandable, given the climate of the times and his backstory–and creating him is probably the most fun I’ve had creating a character since, well, Scotty.
But he ain’t nothing like my Scotty. At all.
I also need to start pulling together the various threads of Mississippi River Mischief together; figuring out the various subplots to gel around the main story of the book, and I also have to map out Redemption Parish a bit more than the amorphous bounds I’ve already given it. I think it first appeared in Murder in the Arts District–no, not entirely correct; it was where my story “Rougarou” was set, and I think that was my first time writing about Redemption Parish and the town of Bayou Shadows–and I know The Orion Mask was also set there. I should probably go through everything and make notes for the sake of continuity–ha ha ha, just checking to see if you’re asleep–but yes, I think I originally envisioned Redemption Parish as being further upriver than where I want it to be for this book; I’ll definitely have to recheck Arts District and The Orion Mask to get a better idea of what I wrote and where I placed it so I can figure out how to finagle moving it and how to justify it…but….this is a different series than Arts District, and Orion was a stand alone, so…I definitely can get away with moving the parish if I need to. (As much as I want my books to all be connected together in some amorphous way–a la Stephen King’s Maine–I can also look at Scotty and Chanse and every other New Orleans thing I’ve written as different universes, like a multi-verse; so I can use characters from across all the books as well as places, but it’s a different world.
I also tend to worry about things no one else notices in my work, so there’s that.
But it wouldn’t hurt me to start a reread of the Scotty series. I am having trouble focusing on reading these days–it comes and goes–and so why not reread the Scotty books? Why not spend some time putting together the ultimate Scotty Bible, so I have an easy reference to check things? This actually sounds like a good idea, and it’s been so damned long since I wrote the first books I probably wouldn’t even remember who the killer was…so it would almost be like reading something new? And it could help put me back into the Scotty mindset. (Also, for the record, Mississippi River Mischief is set in the spring after the Christmas of Royal Street Reveillon, which will make it spring 2019. The next Scotty will be Twelfth Night Knavery, set just after Christmas 2019–January 2020–followed by French Quarter Flambeaux (Mardi Gras 2020) and finally Quarter Quarantine Quadrille, April 2020. So, the plan is for there to be at least four more books in the series, if I live that long. But I also reserve the right to change my mind and discard any of these books along the way–but this is what I am currently thinking.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.
Queer and Loathing in America 