Author: gregh121

I am a writer and editor who lives in New Orleans.

I’ll Be Home With Bells On

To be honest, I’ve never really understood what the phrase today’s song title means. Did people actually used to go to things wearing bells? I suppose it’s more along the lines of oh I am going and you will SO know that I am there, but it’s puzzled me ever since I was a child. Not enough to look it up, of course, but it’s still a mystery to me. Okay, I looked it up–it means arriving in a noticeably festive way.

Although if someone literally showed up anywhere with actual bells on, they’d deserve what happened to them next, methinks.

Last night wasn’t the best night of sleep I’ve had this week, but I shall have to persevere and push through this day. I am sleepy/tired as I sip my coffee, looking out my windows at the darkness, but hopefully it will revive me enough to get me going and through the morning. Damn, I am sleepy still. Hope the groggy wears off, but that’s what the coffee is for–although doesn’t it seem unnatural to wake up before you’re ready and then to use a stimulant to help you wake up? That’s why I hate getting up to alarms, to be honest, and always have. Oh, Greg, you’re just lazy, is the response I always get when I make this comment, but doesn’t it make more sense to listen to your body’s needs? My shoulder feels better this morning–speaking of listening to your body’s needs–so I might, depending on how this day goes and how the tired/grogginess develops/fades throughout the day–make an attempt at going to the gym tonight.

Or should I let it rest another day and try tomorrow? Decisions, decisions.

But as I sit here this morning swilling coffee groggily and hoping to wake up, I am all too aware of the ticking clock on my manuscript and a short story revision that is due around the same time as well as the fact that my next book will be released around the same time as those are due; one month from today is the due date for everything, and the book will come out three days prior to that…and I will be in New York that same weekend. I worked on the book last night–the work is slow but I also don’t have a lot of time dedicated to it every day, so that’s to be expected–but it’s taking shape nicely, which makes me feel a lot better about everything. If I buckle down on the weekends, I should be able to get it all finished on time–but yes, that does require buckling down on the weekends, doesn’t it? Heavy heaving sigh.

In checking my emails this morning I’ve got an invitation to write a story for a tribute anthology for charity–it’s something I would really like to do, but it’s going to depend on the timing, really; or whether I have something on hand already that can easily be adapted to fit the theme; which basically is “gothic,” which is definitely in my wheelhouse; it’s also going to depend on whether I have the time to look for something that can be adapted to fit into the theme. I am sure I have some Gothic stories on hand that can be adapted; I love Gothic, and it’s really the only kind of horror that I do write, really–and so this means I really do need to buckle down on the weekends.

And while it’s nice to fantasize abut “all the writing I could do” if I didn’t have a day job, the truth is…I probably wouldn’t write more than I do now. I’d find incredibly creative ways to avoid writing. I know this because there were periods of time where I not only did not have a day job, but years where I only worked part time…and I’ve actually been more productive while having a full time job. Does this make any sense? It only does in Gregalicious land.

I did spend some time before Paul got home last night reading A Caribbean Mystery, and while you may remember me reading, a while back, a piece about “problematic” Christie books and titles that needed to be changed–and wondering why this book was included–I’ve come to realize I must have misunderstood the article I was reading; they meant the book when they referred to this title–which was some seriously unclear writing, frankly. But the book is incredibly racist; there have been several times where something I’ve read has made me wince–the locals on St. Honoré are clearly seen by the colonialist British ruling class as sub-human, barely better than animals, and definitely uncivilized. I’m close to the end–I know who the killer is; I remember, and I also remember the clue Miss Marple missed in correctly identifying the killer earlier on in the book–and so will probably be able to finish it tonight. And then I think I am going to move on to either Vivien Chen’s Death by Dumpling or Julia Henry’s Pruned to Death.

And on that note, tis time to head in ye olde spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

So, over the weekend I finished watching Chapelwaite.

What a terrific series this is!

When I started watching, I must admit I wasn’t compelled to continue watching past episode one. The story it’s based on (“Jerusalem’s Lot,” the only original story written for Stephen King’s collection Night Shift) was never one of my favorites, and I remembered it primarily as an epistolary story that never really got anywhere, if that makes sense–it really was just the letters of a man who was losing his mind, trying to get to the bottom of the weirdness going on in his inherited home, Chapelwaite, and there was something about “the worm” and so on. King described it as “Lovecraftian” in his seminal work on horror, Danse Macabre; and I had never gotten into Lovecraft, so I always figured I was missing something in the story because of that, and never revisited it. The first episode moved kind of slowly, as first episodes are often wont to do, and it did inspire me to reread the story–which I liked a lot more on a reread. But the episode started too slowly for Paul, and so we abandoned the show. A friend recommended it highly–“stick with it, it really picks up” so during my condom packing duties last week I started again with episode 2.

Very glad I did; and I really need to remember the truism that one should always give a show at least two episodes before abandoning it–unless that first episode is really and truly terrible (I’m looking at you, I Know What You Did Last Summer). Chapelwaite’s first episode was not terrible; but it was a very slow burn to set up the story. One thing I did greatly appreciate with how this show was done and cast was how the main character, Charles Boone (played perfectly by Adrien Brody), was more fleshed out and developed than he was in the short story. In the story, no mention was made of any spouse or children for him; his only family was the cousins who lived at Chapelwaite. The show gave him a Pacific Islander wife–who was already dead when the show opened, and three children, Honor, Loa, and Tane. In the show Boone was a whaler who lived at sea with his wife and children; the much-loved wife died of tuberculosis, and the younger daughter has rickets, so one of her legs is in a brace. The children are quickly seen as outsiders because of their mixed race heritage in the small town of Preacher’s Corners, the nearest town to the house; it isn’t just the mixed race children that are the source of the animus of the townspeople toward the Boone family. The Boones are blamed for a mysterious “illness” that infects and gradually kills the villagers; no one really knows what causes the illness or how to combat it effectively.

Charles is soon having weird visions, and hearing rats–or something–scratching within the walls of the house. An exterminator finds nothing in the walls, no signs of rats or mice or anything, which makes Charles think he might be going insane. He also engages Rebecca–who is not your run-of-the-mill nineteenth century young woman in small village in Maine. Rebecca has ambitions and desires of her own–to escape Preacher’s Corners, to become a writer, and she has been educated; so she comes to Chapelwaite to tutor the children and get them up to speed. Of course, the other children at the school are horrific to the Boone children, just as most of the adults are horrible to Charles. (Rebecca is played perfectly by Emily Hampshire, better known as Stevie on Schitt’s Creek, and the range she has is clear in this role; which is as far from Stevie as she could possibly get.)

But once the show starts rolling–as Charles and Rebecca and the children begin to find out what is really going on at Chapelwaite, and in the nearby abandoned town of Jerusalem’s Lot–it just keeps picking up speed. It is also truly Gothic in tone and feel; beautifully filmed and shot and the cast is perfect in their roles.

Highly recommended; one of the best King adaptations I’ve seen.

Merry Christmas Darling

Yesterday the box o’books for #shedeservedit arrived; which was an extraordinarily pleasant surprise on an otherwise wretched day (I won’t bother you with the details of why it was wretched, simply take my word for it). The arrival of the finished books is always a delightful experience, even if it means having to find a place to keep them (the Lost Apartment is running out of space very quickly), so for now they are stacked up on the kitchen counter; I’ll worry about finding a space for them at some point this week when I am more awake and not, well, not feeling as defeated as I am this morning. It’s nothing really, just more of a sense of how much there is to do and it seems as though every day more pressure is building up on me to get things done and more things seem to get added to the to-do list exponentially faster than I am able to get things crossed off.

I did, however, have a lovely, if brief, time with the manuscript yesterday. It’s finally coming together, and my character’s voice is coming through at long last–a little too late if you ask me, but better late than never–which means I am hopeful that the the rest of the book is going to flow much easier and faster. My shoulder still is sore this morning, so a return to the gym tonight is doubtful; I am not going to allow myself to get stressed about that because well–I need to let the muscle heal before trying to get a new rhythm going again, and why keep straining it before I let it heal? My workouts won’t be very productive until such time as the muscle can handle them anyway, and it is what it is, right? I also have to ignore that snide voice in my head telling me that I am again making excuses not to go to the gym, because I do want to go. I’ve finally broken through that mental block I’ve had for so long where I don’t want to go at all; ironic that a strained muscle is slowing down the momentum.

It’s also hard to believe that Christmas is practically upon us; next week I have a short work week as a direct result of the holidays, and again the following week. I am not terribly sorry to see 2021 come to an end, in all honesty; it was another dreadful year, with absolutely no guarantee that 2022 will be any better, quite frankly. Years are arbitrary things anyway; my usual questioning of why everyone gets so excited about New Year’s Eve and so forth when it’s simply a relatively arbitrarily fixed date (why not start the new year on February 1? March 15th? etc etc etc), although there probably is a reason that I’ve simply never bothered to research or look up. There is, as always, a sense of time slipping through my fingers; that one day I’ll wake up and my book is due and I am nowhere near ready to turn it in (that is my version of the nightmare of showing up to school unprepared for a test one has forgotten about), but I think I can buckle down and push through it–especially now that I have found my character’s voice. I think the problem was before that I was trying to not write her to be snarky–one of the complaints about Paige was she was too bitchy, when I feebly tried to spin her off into her own series–but the reality is she just needed a bit of softening. Paige kind of was a bitch, by design; Valerie, my new character, can be snarky but she’s also needs to be kind as well, and that was the balance I needed to find.

And now, I think I’ve at last found it.

Eureka!

We are still working our way through the original Gossip Girl, and still enjoying it. It’s delightfully bonkers, really, in that crazy, over the top Melrose Place campy way Paul and I like. It’s eminently sweeter than Melrose Place, though, and never completely goes completely insane the way Melrose did; they don’t have, for example, a regular psycho character like Kimberly, but they have some who will show up for a short arc before disappearing again–Agnes the skank model and Georgina the seriously unbalanced heiress, for example; the episode last night saw Agnes’ return, for example, and here’s hoping that was simply a single episode arc, because she’s so awful and dislikable I really don’t want to see her on the screen again–but it’s also interesting to see that the original villains in the cast, Blair and Chuck, are really the only characters who’ve exhibited any growth or real development as characters–and they are much more interesting than the “good” characters (Dan and Serena) that the audience is supposed to be rooting for. I mean, none of them ever make good choices, but at least the villains have developed into much more interesting and more richly developed characters than the one-note terrible people they were originally written to be.

And no, I didn’t get a chance to finish A Caribbean Mystery last night. When I got home I put away the dishes in the dishwasher and did another load (they’ll be waiting for me when I get home tonight, and I’ll probably have to do another load of laundry as well)–the endless toil and strife of the American housewife, trying to have it all–but tonight I am definitely going to spend some time reading after I finish doing my writing.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a fabulously lovely day, Constant Reader.

Oh Christmas Tree

Monday morning. The high today is only going to be 69, and it’s actually in the fifties as I look out into the dark of the early morning. I slept well again last night–the bed and blankets felt very warm and comfortable this morning as I hit the snooze button repeatedly–and as always, really didn’t want to get out from the warm cocoon this morning. I have, as always, ever so much to do today (this entire week, really) and my shoulder seems to be okay this morning–there’s a bit of pain there, but not really as much nor is it as obvious as it was before. I still think it needs more rest and recovery time before I try to lift weights with it again–and I am going to have to use less weight when I do go back (I think the primary issue is I over-exerted it when I went back to the gym) but that’s fine. I’m not trying to get “swole” or whatever the term the gym-boys like to use today (it’s annoying; I’ve always hated “swole” because it should be swolen, if anything at all), for me it’s more about burning calories and exercising and the stretching and so forth. I am going to try to keep the Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule I was on before, with perhaps a trip down for some cardio on Sundays; but we’ll see how it all plays out.

Today I need to make some headway on everything–Christmas cards, etc–and since it’s my theoretical off night from the gym, I am going to run some errands on the way home from work this evening. I will need to work on the book tonight, of course, and I need to clean up from dinner last night. But the laundry is caught up (for now), and there are a few other things I’ll need to touch up around here…and of course, I want to finish (finally) A Caribbean Mystery. Christmas is a week from Saturday–how weird that it’s so soon–so next week will be a short work week, as will the week after with New Year’s being involved. I need to buckle down and get working on things as quickly as I can; I also have a short story or two that need one last round of polishes done on them. Yesterday I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked, frankly, but I think resting yesterday was a lot more important than working, to be honest. I feel like I can make it through the day today without much difficulty, which is nice–I am not tired, as I mentioned earlier, and feel very rested, which is also incredibly lovely. Maybe that means I will have a productive day, maybe it won’t–but at least I can go into the office without feeling tired and worried about how I am going to make it till the end.

Yay!

But I feel good, which is always a plus, and I am working my way down the to-do list I made yesterday and that’s terrific. I also went down some wormholes yesterday while researching a few things, and while I actually didn’t write anything new, I did figure out what the problems with current manuscript are, and how to fix them–brutally cutting out a character, reducing the status of one from main supporting cast to merely someone who is mentioned but never seen; how to get the timing and dating flow of the story to work better; how to get the “New Orleans” feel there; how to better do the main character’s back story; how to build up the rest of the story so the intensity grows with every chapter as the original mystery (the one that will run through the course of the first few books at the very least) deepens and then the actual mystery to be resolved in the book course corrects, and how to make that seem less abrupt and more….organic, for lack of a better word.

And that is some serious progress, methinks. I am itching to get into the manuscript and make these changes and get them underway. I think this will help me get the damned book finished, too–I am finding my character’s voice, and that was crucial.

And on that note, tis time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check in again tomorrow.

Do They Know It’s Christmas

I have to write today.

The temperature dropped overnight, and so it’s a bit on the chilly side this morning in the Lost Apartment; it felt rather muggy and humid last night when I retired to bed, so this morning I put on a T-shirt and am now realizing I should head back up and get a sweatshirt. Hang on, I’ll be right back.

Thanks for waiting–that’s much better. The sun in also shining, and I do think I am going to take the day off from the gym again. The shoulder is still sore, and I am worried that–even though it didn’t really bother me on any exercise other than the triceps pushdowns Thursday–doing anything weight-bearing could keep aggravating it, even if I don’t feel it while I am doing the actual exercise, so yeah, probably best to wait and let the strain or whatever the hell it is go away. I may go and do some step exercising–all cardio machines suck balls for me, and while using the step and doing my own little step aerobics routine probably isn’t good for my leg joints, it’s not hurting my shoulder and let’s face it…I need to do some cardio in addition to the weights if I ever want any of this extra weight to go away; lifting weights at this point is clearly not going to be enough to trim off the middle fat this time around…especially if I keep straining or injuring muscles.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But that’s part of getting older, isn’t it? I suppose I should consider myself lucky that my body has managed to hold it together for so long, that it took until I was fifty to injure myself enough to stay out of the gym for a long long time, and that it’s still capable of going to the gym at all. Better my shoulder than my back, after all, and it’s not structural at all; it’s muscle, not joint or cartilage or bone.

Yesterday was kind of a nice, if low energy, day. I finished watching Chapelwaite–more on that later–and did some cleaning around the Lost Apartment as well as did some deep thinking about the book; mindless chores like vacuuming and doing the dishes are really good for that sort of thing– so that was helpful; I know now what changes I need to make to this draft to make it better and I am going to spend today going through those first chapters, which should be enough of a trigger for me to get the next chapters done this week–and I am also going to spend some more time on the chores today as well. So, so close to having everything cleaned up and organized…and I want to finish rereading A Caribbean Mystery today, so I can move on to something else. I have so much to do, and the clock is ticking on the deadlines for so many things….AIEEEEE. But I slept very well last night, and I feel very well rested this morning, and so am hopeful that I will be motivated to get the things done that I need to get done.

And the first thing I need to do is look at the to-do list I made last week at the office and see if any of it got done (doubtful). But I did find some interesting research details yesterday (I looked up Valerie’s house and floor plans; I love that you can find all that stuff on-line; my copy of Lloyd Vogt’s New Orleans Houses is also an incredibly valuable resource), and that’s one of the reasons I want to reconstruct these first seven chapters; I also feel that the heart of the story isn’t well expressed there in my desperation to get as much done as I possibly could as quickly as I could, and the book never really flows–I always get stuck–when the opening isn’t as good as I think it should be. So, that’s my task for today, once I get through my coffee and finish some other chores around here.

The excitement truly never stops.

But there’s a load of laundry tumbling in the dryer; the living room is a disaster area; and of course, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded so I can empty the damned sink. There are piles of papers and folders everywhere here in the kitchen office, and trash everywhere. I hate how I let things slide this way, but yesterday, as I said, was an incredibly low energy day for me; it’s a wonder I got as much done as I did.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

I woke up this morning to the news that Anne Rice died last night.

She was an enormous influence on me and my life, for any number of reasons. It was her book The Witching Hour that made me realize that I needed to come to New Orleans, that awakened my connection to the city that was maybe always there in my head yet was dormant; I cannot precisely place what it was about that book that opened the connection necessary in my head to know that New Orleans was where I belonged. There was just something about that book, the way she wrote about the city and its magic, that drew me here. The weekend of my thirty-third birthday I came to New Orleans, and it was the first time I ever felt connected to a place, that I had finally found the place where I belonged, where–if and when I were to move there–all of my dreams would come true. Her love of the city where she was born and grew up comes through so powerfully in The Witching Hour, and the book remains one of my favorites to this day. The friend I stayed with that weekend–knowing how much I loved the book–took me on a drive around the city and through the Garden District, and pulled up the house at the corner of First and Chestnut. “This,” he said with a big smile, “is where she lives. Do you recognize the house?”

I got out of the car, dumbfounded. The home of the Mayfair witches was real. It was on the corner of First and Chestnut, just as she wrote in the book. There was the massive live oak in the front yard. There was Dierdre’s porch, just off to the side of the front gallery of the house. There was the pool in the side yard. There was the window from which Antha fell to her death.

I did what any number of fans and tourists did, of course; posed for a picture by the front gate. That picture–all of the pictures from that weekend–were lost over the years and many moves, from apartment to apartment in Tampa, from Tampa to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, when I finally, at long last, was able to move home to the city I loved…where, as I suspected when I read The Witching Hour, all of my dreams came true.

Eight years after we moved here, I lived through a horrible nightmare. One night on Memorial Day weekend, Paul and I had gone to the Quarter for a book launch party and then went out for a few drinks. We ran into another friend at one bar but I wanted to go dancing. Paul stayed behind with the friend, said he’d catch a cab home, and off I went. I came home and he wasn’t there. I went to bed…and woke up later that morning to a phone call that no one ever wants to get. Paul had been attacked by a group of homophobic thugs and beaten, badly. Had it not happened directly across the street from the Verti Marte, the two college students who had stopped there to get something to eat on their way home from work wouldn’t have seen it happen, and run out screaming at them. The monsters escaped, but had those girls not taken action, he most likely would have beaten far worse, perhaps (probably)killed.

I don’t remember much, really, of that day or the next few weeks. I do remember how kind people were, and how much support I received.

But what I really remember is how the crime was mishandled by the homophobic cops who were called to the scene–the girls told me all about when they called (and to this day, I regret never getting their names)–and as a result, the possibility that the attackers would be caught and punished evaporated. It didn’t make the Times-Picayune for several days–the timing is very unclear to me to this day; those days are jumbled and unclear in my mind–but I will never forget that Mrs. Rice made a public statement about what happened, and she also went on all the news channels in New Orleans to talk about what happened, and offered a reward.

And one night, after I got home from the hospital, I decided to tackle the monumental task of thanking people, who had reached out, who’d offered help, who were holding fundraisers, etc. etc. etc. I knew Mrs. Rice’s address, but figured she would probably never see a thank you card given the amount of mail she probably received; I had always heard stories that she actually had a phone number listed in the phone book (yes, I am “look it up in the phone book” years old) and sure enough, there was a number listed. I also figured, as I dialed, that it was probably just a message line, but I had also heard that she listened to all the messages, so I thought when the recorder picked up, I would talk really fast to get everything out that I wanted to say before the beep cut me off.

But a human being answered the phone, a woman.

“Hi, I was wondering if I could leave a message for Mrs. Rice?” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

“Yes, of course.”

The words started tumbling out of me. I said who I was and who Paul was, and that I wanted to say thank you to her for offering a reward, for her public statement, and how much it meant to me, to both of us, that probably the most famous person in New Orleans would do that for total strangers. My voice broke a couple of times, my eyes filled with tears a couple of times, and I had to stop to take a breath every once in a while. When I finally finished, the woman on the other end of the line said, very kindly, “Well, of course. It was the least I could do.”

I was stunned. I was talking to Anne Rice herself. I had read all the books. She was one of the reasons I had finally found home; the place where I felt I belonged–and was now, of course, questioning that; I had read all the books and enjoyed them all; she lived and wrote about one of the most beautiful houses I had ever seen and was kind of a personal touchstone for me in the city; and now, she was reminding me why New Orleans was home.

We talked for a while, actually; I know she asked about me, she asked about how he was doing, she wanted to be certain I was okay–this total stranger who had looked up her phone number and reached out just to say thank you. I don’t know how long we were on the phone, but I do know, when I finally apologized for bothering her and taking up so much of her time, she replied, “You didn’t waste my time. I’m so glad you called because I was so worried about you. And if you need anything–anything at all, please don’t hesitate to call. Hospitals and medical expenses can add up very quickly. You just let me know what hospital and I’ll take care of everything. Please take care of yourself. And please, call at any time.”

I never called again. But I’ve never forgotten that Mrs. Rice, one of the bestselling authors of the last fifty years, one of the biggest celebrities to live in New Orleans, took a personal interest in two total strangers, and did whatever she could to try to bring attention to what happened as well as try to catch the perpetrators, and how incredibly kind and gracious and caring she was to someone she’d never met, and would never meet.

I had always wanted to attend one of her signings, to thank her in person not only for everything she did in that aftermath of what happened to Paul, but for how incredibly kind and generous she was to a shaky, barely holding it together total stranger who called her out of the blue one weeknight. But it never worked out for me to do so, and now she’s gone.

RIP, Mrs. Rice, and thank you again. You were truly a great lady.

Santa Baby

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and I am a bit tired. I went to the retirement party last night (note: it was not in the Bywater, but actually in Holy Cross, on the other side of the Industrial Canal; a neighborhood I’ve not been to in years. But then again, I’ve really not spent much time in the Bywater in forever either), and it was absolutely lovely. I enjoyed spending time away from the office with my co-workers in a relaxed environment, it’s been a hot minute (and not just because of the pandemic, either) and it was nice spending time getting to know them outside of a professional environment. I laughed a lot more than I thought I would, and stayed much later than I had planned–it was almost one in the morning when I finally rolled into the Lost Apartment, but was very delighted. I had a glass or two of champagne spread out over five hours (and they were very small), so was okay to drive, but have a bit of a headache this morning.

It feels more sinus-y then anything else as well, so I think once I take a Claritin that problem will clear itself right up.

Today I have a lot to get done; I need to get back on track with the book, I need to go to the gym (but continue to baby the left shoulder, which is still a bit sore this morning; note to self: Icy Hot), I want to finish reading A Caribbean Mystery, and I also want to finish watching Chapelwaite. I only have two episodes left, and despite that really slow burn first episode, it really picks up steam and starts going full blast, the pace picking up with every episode without losing the integrity of the story or the characters. It also has inspired me to write a sort-of sequel to Bury Me in Shadows–well, that’s not quite true; I’d always intended to return to Corinth County with another book, and but watching this show gave me the inspirational story spark I needed to come up with the story. I scribbled down a lot of notes yesterday, and while I need to focus on the current book, I am itching to get to this one sooner rather than later (a constant problem with this my writing career, which never seems to change despite my advances in age) but I definitely need to get to Chlorine next.

So, next year is going to be about Chlorine, another Scotty, and this second Corinth County book, which will start tying the threads of the county spread out over many different stories, both short, novella length, and novel, together. (Which was one of the primary reasons I was dreading writing such a book; tying these threads together was going to be difficult, but now i sort of know how to do it all; there’s one novella in particular that isn’t going to be easy to tie into the others, but I think I know how to do it now)…) And the novellas. And the short story collection. And the essays. And….yikes. Just typing all this out made me very tired.

I also had a rather scary moment this morning when I saw a headline about a fatal, catastrophic tornado (or rather, series of them) devastating Kentucky; I really wish the news would be less generic in headlines or click titles for articles about such things. The vast majority of states are actually rather large in size and scale, and while obviously I feel terrible for the residents of the state affected by this disaster, at the same time I was extremely relieved to go look at a map and see it was in western Kentucky, a significant distance from my family in eastern Kentucky. I understand the need for clicks and so forth is the on-line Internet business model, but still. Nevertheless, these tornadoes devastated a vast swath of that area, including Arkansas and Tennessee and I believe Missouri, and as someone who has lived through and dealt with natural disasters myself, I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for those who have lost loved ones as well as homes and property (the gulf parishes south of New Orleans are still struggling to recover from Ida, by the way). Please donate to the relief efforts if you can.

And on that note, I have an excess of emails to clean out, a kitchen office to organize and get ready, and a book to get back to writing, amongst many other things to do and they ain’t getting done the longer I sit here writing this. Have a happy healthy Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you tomorrow with a progress report.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Friday morning and I have a dear friend’s retirement party to attend in the Bywater this evening. I have to run some errands–including stopping by the office–at some point during the day, and it looks like I shall have to postpone working on the book until tomorrow as there isn’t any way to make time for it today. But these things happen; sometimes life doesn’t allow an author an opportunity to write. It’s not the best possible outcome of a day, of course, but there it is.

I also further aggravated a muscle strain in my left shoulder (usually it’s my right one that becomes an issue, from an old wrestling injury) at the gym last night. I noticed the ache the last time I went to the gym–and thought I could push through it at the gym again last night. I noticed it when I was doing the chest exercise–I had to significantly lower the weight in order to do the exercise–but ironically, the only other time it was an issue was doing tricep pushdowns, when the shoulder merely works as a stabilizer for the working of the triceps. I had to abandon that entirely, and it did make me wonder as I walked home how I strained the muscle in the first place? It’s also worrying, now that I am back into the swing of actually working out again, that I now have a ready-made excuse to talk myself out of going every other day. On the other hand, it’s just a strain of some sort–not even a pull–so it can undoubtedly be worked around. The gym was also very crowded last night, which was irritating; I really need to get used to going into businesses that are more full than I’ve gotten used to over the past year or two. And especially since it’s now Christmas time; everything and everywhere is going to be more crowded.

Sigh.

While I was making condom packs yesterday I started watching Chapelwaite on Epix. I originally started watching it with Paul, but he thought it was too slow and didn’t care to continue watching it. I knew almost from the get-go that it was most likely a slow-burn; it was very Gothic in feel, which inevitably means a slow-burn (a friend asked me if I was watching, and when I said we’d stopped, told me to go back and finish–and she was right). The show is exceptional–it did take me a while to get used to Emily Hampshire playing someone not Stevie on Schitt’s Creek–and if you’re into Gothic horror and suspense, it’s right up your alley. It also handles issues of class, race, prejudice and provincialism extremely well; and the steady sense of dread and building suspense is quite remarkably done. I am really looking forward to finishing watching, to be honest. The afternoon flew past as I watched. It’s based on the story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” by Stephen King, from his Night Shift collection, and yes, it does sort of fit into the mythology of his terrific novel ‘salem’s Lot. I’m not sure if that was his intent when he wrote the story–Chapelwaite, the house in the story, is in some ways similar to the Marsden House in ‘salem’s Lot–which is yet another reason I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

It also gave ma a good idea for another Alabama book, a sort of sequel to Bury Me in Shadows. So huzzah indeed!

But as Friday looms, there’s a lot I have to get done this weekend–I really need to get caught up on the book; I want to finish reading A Caribbean Mystery, and as always, there are endless chores to be done, and don’t even get me started on my email inbox–but I have faith that I shall persevere, and will come out on the other side of the weekend with much ado and accomplishment. (Yes, I do crack myself up from time to time, thanks for asking.) I slept really well last night–we got through the second season of OG Gossip Girl and are now into season three; it really is fun to watch, especially seeing bigger name stars of the present in early roles–Armie Hammer (although one can argue he no longer has a career of which to speak) was in the second season, for example, and yes, shame that he turned out to be what he turned out to be, as he was very good looking and reasonably talented–and our addiction to this show is allowing other shows we watch, or ones we want to watch, pile up so we’ll have plenty to watch in coming weeks and months, which is lovely.

I also think I am finished with Paul’s Christmas presents, but am not entirely sure. I’ll assess once they are in my hot little hands and wrapped (and hidden). And I do need to do my Christmas cards at some point–tick tock, said the clock.

And on that note, tis time to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will speak with you again tomorrow.

Silent Night

And just like that, it’s Thursday again. The sand in the 2021 hourglass is running ever more quickly with each passing day, Christmas is nigh, and I think I have everything figured out that I want to get Paul for Christmas. He is very hard to buy for, and he is so much more thoughtful than I am–he always gets me the best gifts–so I am hoping that he will be pleased with what I get him this year.

Yesterday I wasn’t nearly as tired as I usually am on a Wednesday; even stranger, I was more energetic and rested than I’d felt earlier in the week. Bizarre, I know; I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, either, but chose to run with it rather than wonder about it. It was a pretty good day, really; I kind of got a little stuck on the manuscript, so did what I always do when I get stuck–went back and read/edited the previous chapters–and hopefully that kick-started my creativity again. We’ll see; I am going to give it another try after I finish working today. I do feel a lot better about getting it done on time–not to the point where I am not experiencing a lot of stress, however (stress is my go-to, really)–but a lot better about who my character is and what the story should be and so on and so forth.

I slept well again last night, which was lovely–I really didn’t to get out of bed this morning; my body was so relaxed it had become one with the mattress and covers–and it looks a little gray outside this morning; my coffee tastes marvelous and I feel so relaxed…it’s a nice feeling, really. I am going to miss my work at home Thursdays next month when I go back to four days in the office per week; yes, it’s going to suck and yes, it’s going to suck a lot to have to get up at six a.m. four times per week instead of three, but on the other hand I am probably going to sleep extremely well when Thursday nights roll around again.

I think I have all of my Christmas presents for Paul sorted; nothing terribly exciting, as ever–he is so much better at gift-shopping than I am it’s almost sad (I mean, it’s good for me as the recipient of his thoughtfulness, but at the same time terrible for me because I am such a shitty gift-giver). That’s another thing about Christmas that its commercialization has done–the stress and pressure of buying gifts for people that they will not only appreciate but are thoughtful can often be, for obsessives like myself, extraordinarily stressful, and the failure to get someone something that makes them happy is horrifically disappointing. But that is not the proverbial “reason for the season”, and this year I am focusing on the messages of Donna Andrews’ marvelous Christmas mysteries: happiness and joy and the simple pleasure of giving.

And isn’t that the most important thing?

It should be, at any rate.

I see that the year’s Best of lists are coming out, which means I should probably do something along those lines here–my favorite reads, movies and TV shows of the year–but the problem is a problematic memory with the last two years actually kind of blending together into one, and alas, I don’t always talk about everything I read or watch on here, so I have to rely on memory in so many cases. I read a lot of good books, watched a lot of good movies and television shows, and will, when making a list, inevitably forget some that were worthy of mention. As I look back this morning and try to remember what all I read this past year, I am a bit amused because I often berate myself for not reading more (there literally is nothing I will not berate myself for at some point; I really need to dig into that and figure out why and where that comes from and maybe if I do, I might actually be able to fucking stop twisting myself into pretzels all the time and torturing myself), because I actually read an awful lot in this past year. And I read some amazing books! I’d hate to not mention any one I really enjoyed…but on the other hand, it’s not like my blog is this highly read information source for book information.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines.

The Christmas Song

Wednesday and yet another Pay-the-Bills Day. Huzzah? HUZZAH.

Yesterday I was tired. I slept better on Monday night than I had on Sunday night, yet somehow by the afternoon I was far more tired than I had been the afternoon before. I really didn’t want to go to the gym after I got home from work, but I did, and I also wrote a (shitty) chapter of the book before Paul got home. I felt really great after the gym, and I slept amazingly well last night. (The first time I woke up in the night–I did so twice–was to find a purring Scooter curled up next to me, which he never does; he always sleeps on the other side of Paul rather than in between us…and never underestimate the power of a purring cat to help you sleep.) It’s taking me a hot minute to wake up completely this morning–it’s also raining, which also makes me feel drowsy and is not helpful to the waking up process–but I feel very well rested, which bodes well for the rest of the day. I do have some bills to pay today, and lots and lots of emails to answer.

Ah, the sisyphean task of answering all the emails.

It’s funny, but the other day I was cleaning out/organizing electronic files and came across an essay I started writing several years ago as the introduction to an essay collection I was thinking about putting together (which I promptly forgot about; and didn’t remember when the idea occurred again earlier this year–so this year’s idea of an essay collection wasn’t even original!) and I opened it and started reading…hilariously, as mentioned parenthetically above, it was a reflection on getting older. Apparently, there’s no such thing with me as an original idea during this pandemic, because I had these ideas already and before. I keep saying that aging has never really bothered me but sixty kind of shook me up to my core, but there it was, an essay at age fifty-seven, triggered by me noticing (for the first time) that the skin under my chin/jawline was loose. (Yes, yes, it’s probably been loose for years, but I really don’t spend much time looking in mirrors; usually when I am shaving and I have to take my glasses off and so can’t really see anything but blur.) But it was interesting to revisit how I felt about confronting my age (in my head I am forever stuck at 35–even though my eldest niece is now in her forties, which makes it harder to keep that delusion going. Although I think I have finally pushed that deception out of my subconscious and have embraced being sixty…at least can say it without shuddering.)

So tonight when I get off work I am going to head directly home, methinks; home to clean the kitchen/office, perhaps the living room; do some laundry; write another chapter of the book; and hopefully spend some more time with A Caribbean Mystery. I was reading an article about Christie’s enduring popularity last night, and this book was mentioned (along with two others) as one whose title had to be changed because of racist implications in the title; which I didn’t remember (And Then There Were None had the most notorious original title; which was corrected to something considered less offensive but then became offensive, and hopefully its latest title in the UK–Ten Little Soldiers–will stick for the rest of its history), and so I looked it up. It did always have the same title, although its entirely possible that the offensive content was inside the book–I’d already marked some questionable content regarding the locals on St. Honoré–and will have to do some more research into the book and its history to see if it was, indeed, the content and if the edition I am reading is one where the content had been cleaned up.

It was foggy last night when I walked to the gym, and since I now generally go after dark, I’ve been taking pictures of Christmas decorations. The foggy night gave some of the pictures a more eerie feel, which was pretty cool, and so I think tomorrow night after the gym I might detour through the Garden District on my walk home–fabulous decorations on the houses there, of course–and I would like to head down to the Quarter at some point to see how it’s decked out for the holidays; it’s really such a lovely time of the year to do this sort of thing. It’s also helping me feel reconnected to the city in a way I’ve not really felt since our office moved, since I no longer work one block outside the Quarter anymore. I do miss that, and now that I am writing another book about New Orleans I really need to feel more of a connection to the city than I have in a while. I’ve really felt disconnected from everything, really, since this pandemic began, but am starting to feel much better about everything the more time passes and the more things slowly start coming back to some sort of what passed as normal in the before time.

I guess we’ll see how everything goes, won’t we?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!