Author: gregh121

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

Winter Wonderland

And now it’s Tuesday! Hope your Monday was lovely.

Yesterday I was tired; I didn’t sleep well on Sunday night but managed to still get quite a bit finished over the course of the day. There were tornadoes (YIKES!) on the North Shore, but I ran some errands on the way home in the rain and then wrote another chapter of the book–another shitty-ass chapter, but a chapter nonetheless–and also caught up on logging entries for the Bouchercon anthology ( as well as sending acknowledgement emails), and made progress on the email inbox, which was delightful. It’s always nice to feel like you’re getting somewhere rather than just spinning your wheels, isn’t it?

I also spent some time thinking about my short story, “Solace in a Dying Hour,” which is what I’ve renamed “The Rites of False Spring” (which is a great title and I will recycle, it’s just not right for this particular story); I really like the new title, it’s from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Tamerlane”; I was paging through a collection of his poetry and that line jumped out at me, and I thought, you know what, that title fits the story you need to write better than the one it currently has and so decided to swap them out.

I woke up before the alarm this morning, and I do feel rested–the upcoming shower will undoubtedly shake off the cobwebs, at least one would hope so–but once I had finished writing and cleaning the kitchen last evening, I was a little too tired to actually do any reading, so I just sat in my chair waiting for Paul to come home while watching Youtube videos about ancient Egypt; the 18th dynasty to be exact, and primarily about the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten, who is just absolutely fascinating to me, and someone I would love to write about sometime–alas, it would require ever so much more research than I have time to do while working, of course, but someday I will make the young adult book ideas I have based in Egyptian history to fruition. (I love when I think about the books I will someday write–the ones that require more research than I have the time to do while juggling everything I must juggle now; as though retirement will eventually provide me suddenly with a lot of free time…which I have already become aware is nonsensical dreaming, since even taking time off from work inevitably involves time being lost to unforeseeable yet easily predictable distractions. Hell, just trying to carve time out of the day to go to the gym is a process of if I go what will I not be able to get done?)

We continue to wind our way through the original Gossip Girl, which is quite fun. I cannot imagine why we never indulged in it the first time around–probably the same reason we never indulged in either The Vampire Diaries or The Originals, assuming we weren’t the right audience for them–but I have no desire to read the books at all, and we’ve also noted continuity errors that are just sloppy writing; “oh, we need to completely forget about this in order to make this episode happen”, which often is annoying–like how i never forgave the Dynasty writers for the massive cheat out of the Moldavian Massacre season finale. I am also highly amused by the Dan Humphrey talented writer who wants to be a writer story–why is it that movie and television writers never understand how writing actually works? I love how he can, in one night, write a brilliant short story–without revision or rewrite at all; no one ever gets anything right in the first fucking draft–as well as the fact that as a seventeen-year-old he got a story published in the New Yorker, yet is worried about getting into Yale and his future as a writer. Um, if a seventeen-year-old got a story into the New Yorker, agents would be lining up for him and he probably wouldn’t have to worry too much about getting into Yale; every university with a strong writing program would be lining up with scholarship offers–faculty wouldn’t have stories in the New Yorker. None of the writing classes I ever took in college ever emphasized the importance of revisions, editing, and rewrites; that’s the one thing I wish I would have learned myself while I was in college.

I am also at the stage in writing a book where I am absolutely certain it’s horrible and I’ve lost my ability to write and this is the book that will decimate my career once and for all, so I guess what I am saying is things are back to normal in the Lost Apartment.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Happy Tuesday, Constant Reader.

Someday at Christmas

Yesterday was so beautiful here that I grilled burgers outside, taking a pillow for my back to rest against as I took my Agatha Christie reread out with me and basked in the glory of the gorgeousness of the day. And it was gloriously beautiful outside yesterday; hard to believe it was December…but then, early December is often quite delightful here. I did not, alas, get everything done yesterday that I wanted to get done, but that’s also kind of par for the course. Sundays are always hard-to-get-anything-done days here in the Lost Apartment. It usually is a day for Paul and I to hang out together–he usually doesn’t work on Sundays (he went to the office, for example, Saturday and didn’t get home until around eight that evening)so I generally try to get everything finished in the time before he gets up (he also sleeps late on Sundays). I didn’t manage that yesterday, so of course there’s still things for me to get done left over from yesterday, but that’s okay. I had a lovely time hanging out with him yesterday and watching Gossip Girl–the original show is really quite addicting–with the occasional break, during which I read more of my Agatha Christie reread.

Christie’s later books are often seen as lesser than her earlier ones, primarily, I think, because the earlier ones were so groundbreaking. Trying to figure out who the killer is was always part of the fun of reading Christie (spoiler: it was often hard to figure out because it was all-too-frequently two people, working together), and one of the interesting things about revisiting this particular Christie–any Christie,really–is that over the years I’ve read a lot of criticism of Christie, primarily that her characters weren’t developed well and she was so focused on the puzzle aspect of her books that the writing wasn’t strong. I guess those critics read a different Christie than the ones I’ve read? There were several times yesterday–and I am not very far into the book–where I was struck by her insights and cleverness about human nature, behavior, and how clever and wise some of her sentences were. One, in particular, stood out: And now he was dead, buried, and nobody cared very much…a rather chilling, if honest, insight. There’s also the fact that the primary reason Miss Marple is so successful at ferreting out information and solving crime is because no one takes her seriously for the simple reason she is old; she often uses that condescending attitude of the young towards our elders (well not our, I certainly am old now) against them, even at times playing the part expected of her, prattling on and on to distract her targets from her real objective, and then they are a bit startled by just how sharp her mind is, to the point they blurt out information they didn’t intend to ever share with anyone. We never get into Marple’s mind; she sometimes will tell us what Jane is thinking, but we don’t see it from her perspective; when Christie writes in the third person, it’s from a remove. There are also other point-of-view characters, but just to give the reader a bit more insight into what else is going on around the murder and how that impacts others. It’s also–I’d quite forgotten–how often old women are referred to as “pussies”, or Marple as a “nice old pussy”; I am sure the word meant something different then than it does now; or maybe it’s another example of the difference between UK English and American English–like how fanny means something entirely different in England than it does here.

I cannot imagine writing a book now and referring to an old woman–any woman–as a pussy now. But you know how I know Christie is a good writer? Rereading this book was inspiring–I was getting ideas for new projects of my own and about the current project, which means reading Christie triggered my own imagination, and writers who trigger my own imagination are, at least in my eyes, the best writers.

Today I am up and the sun is rising as I drink my morning coffee. I don’t think I slept all that well last night; it was a bit warmer than usual, not warm enough for the air conditioner to be necessary but I did need a fan. I don’t know if the whirring of the fan was why my sleep wasn’t deep–it wasn’t restless, just light–but I also don’t feel terribly tired this morning; we’ll see how that lasts through the day. I have errands to run after work today, so no gym this evening–saving that for tomorrow–so when I get home tonight I’ll do the dishes and try to get the kitchen/office finished (something else I’d intended to get done yesterday and didn’t) and work on the book some more. I also have a lot of emails to answer between clients this morning; I did make the to-do list (perhaps not as detailed as it should be) and have already started striking things from it. But progress is progress, after all, and one should never really beat oneself up over not making enough progress. Celebrate the wins, however small, rather than treat them as defeats.

LSU is going to a bowl game this year–next, really, not sure why it’s so late on the schedule–playing Kansas State, which is a sort of split loyalty thing…not as much as one might think. LSU is my team, and while I won’t be happy should they lose the game, at the same time that loss won’t be terribly disappointing or upsetting. It’s weird, I guess the new head coach won’t be coaching the game–there’s an interim head coach–but it’s also on a weird day of the week; a Tuesday after New Year’s, which is, as I said, very strange. But that’s okay, I suppose. Not sure how many of the bowl games I am actually going to watch this year–the National Championship game is, after all, on a Monday night, and since LSU isn’t going to be in it, I am not staying up late that night since I have to get up the next morning; it was an entirely different thing LSU was playing it it that lovely season two years ago–but I might have the games on in the background while I am doing something else.

Who knows? But Happy Monday and I am heading into the spice mines. Catch you tomorrow!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Well, I suppose it’s time to start spreading Christmas hunk cheer around here, so enjoy today’s hunky elf–who actually makes me think about my story “The Snow Globe.” I’m not really sure when the anthology it is in will be coming out, but I am looking forward to it. I so enjoy getting short stories into print, and do wish I had more time to write them. Then again, perhaps if i stopped wasting so much of my time maybe I could get more stories written. I know I’ve committed to three more that I’ve got to finish (two only need a final edit/revision; one had to be written almost entirely from scratch) for the new year, and once I get this current book finished–well, after the new year and so forth I am going to be rather too busy to write a book for a while; at least, to focus on writing a book, at any rate. I have the Bouchercon anthology to work on, the release of #shedeservedit is right around the same time as the new book is due, and….yikes.

FOCUS, Greg, you need to FOCUS. And make lists.

And breathe.

Yesterday was a really good day, though. I got up early, got caught up on some blog entries about books I’ve read recently, made serious progress on the cleaning and organizing, and I worked on the book. I got another chapter finished; it’s not very good at the moment, but I know what I need to do to make it better, and I also made it to the gym yesterday afternoon, which was also lovely. I need to work on the book some more today–I also have to make a grocery run at some point–and finish the cleaning and organizing I got started on yesterday. The kitchen office looks a lot better than it has in a very long time, and while there are still some odds and ends to touch up, and file, and forth, I feel much better about everything.

Part of the organizing yesterday also included gathering and sorting all my notes for this book and putting them into one, easily accessible place–as well as sorting out the file folders, etc. that had been gathered at some point that have the same title or a similar title or may have some old notes and so forth; I was actually very surprised to see how many times I’d started writing a traditional mystery over the last decade or so–and in my head I conflated them all as the same story, which SURPRISE! They were most definitely not–but I filed those other fits and starts in an easily accessible place, where I can get to them if this first book turns into a series, or if it doesn’t–well, I can then try again with another idea I’ve already made lots of notes on in the past. (I am talking about physical files here, of course; my electronic files continue to be an utter and complete disaster.) But after a terrific day of getting things done and kicking ass and taking names (okay, Chapter Five isn’t very good but it’s a first draft, okay?) I went to the gym and saw some of the Georgia-Alabama game on the television there. After coming home and doing the dishes and some more filing (and making a protein shake), I curled up in my easy chair with Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery and turned on the television. I read while glancing up periodically to keep an eye on the game–Jesus, Georgia, even LSU was able to play decent defense when they played Alabama–and kept an eye on my iPad and watched part of the Michigan-Iowa game until Paul got home from the office (late) and we switched over to Gossip Girl (the original is so much better than the sequel that we probably won’t even bother going back to the new series, even though there’s only two episodes left). I also got a pretty good night’s sleep last night as well, which was quite marvelous–I seem to be sleeping better these days, which is lovely.

Today, as I said, I have to make a bit of a grocery run, and need to write and finish these odds and ends of filing around here, as well as write some more on the book–I should do another chapter today–and I’d also like to get some more reading done on the Christie; the murder/mysterious death has already occurred, and now I am wondering if Agatha Christie did, indeed, write cozies; there’s certainly no sense of community here in this book–how can there be, since Miss Marple is visiting a resort hotel on the fictitious island of St. Honoré (an island name I may abscond with at some point), but now that I think about it, the sense of warm community that is a hallmark of most cozy mysteries doesn’t really exist much in any of Christie’s books–but then again, my memory is faulty and I don’t remember much of the plots and stories and characters the way I used (and I do miss that recall skill I used to possess in abundance). But I read almost all of Christie’s books a million years ago, when I was in high school, and I simply cannot revisit all eighty or so of them (I never read the ones she wrote as Mary Westmacott, either), so I will leave commentary on the Christie canon (other than the ones I actually reread) to those who are expert.

But over all, I am feeling pretty good about life in general. As always, I am buried under and busier than any one person probably should be; but it’s how I function best–and I am not sure why that it, probably has a lot to do with the short attention span and having to always balance multiple things at once, and also why taking the time to actually sit down and get organized, making lists and so forth, is the best way to go for me. Paul is getting me an old-fashioned day planner for Christmas, because even though it’s become a thing of the past, I discovered that having a physical journal to write down random thoughts in or brainstorm plots and so forth in was much more effective for me than the electronic system modern technology had forced onto me–so it’s not really much of a stretch to think that having to physically write things down as opposed to making entries into a digital calendar will be even more effective and increase productivity and stop me from forgetting things. (I will continue to use the electronic calendar for bills; that is one thing that has worked remarkably well for me.)

And so now, I shall return to the mines for more spice. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

Just One Look

I am now almost completely caught on the Donna Andrew canon, with only The Twelve Jays of Christmas, this year’s Christmas Meg mystery, to go. I have already decided to save it for Christmas Eve and Christmas day reading; what better way to celebrate the holiday with yet another visit to Caerphilly at Christmastime? I have also realized that I have done something I try to never, ever do; once I have finished that particular Meg story, I won’t have another to read until next year’s release. Insane as it may sound, I never want to run out of books to read by favorite authors; it’s oddly comforting to know there’s still another one left for me to read. I still have about three to go with Sue Grafton, and there’s one Elizabeth Peters novel still left unread for me to sink my teeth into with a heavy sigh someday. I know it makes little to no sense to think this way, and it’s kind of irrational, but I’ve never claimed that my brain and its peculiarities and weird ways of working makes sense to anyone who is NOT me

And in complete honesty, I’m not entirely certain I understand how my brains works. It certainly mystifies me most of the time.

“Mom?”

I kept my eyes firmly closed and focused on breathing in and out in the slow, deliberate way that was supposed to make you feel better when you were stressed. One…two…

“Mom,” Jamie repeated. “I know when you’re doing your yoga breathing we’re not supposed to interrupt you unless there’s actual bleeding involved.”

“Or open flames,” his twin brother, Josh, added.

“But I kind of think this might qualify,” Jamie went on.

My eyes flew open.

All I could see for a second were the muddy shins and baggy knees of the woolen hose they were wearing as part of their medieval costumes. I craned my neck to see upward, past the well-worn lether doublets to their faces. Josh was leaning on his longbow as if it were a staff. Jamie had his lung over his left shoulder. Neither appeared to be injured. But they both looked…anxious. And that wasn’t a look I saw very often on the faces of my not-quite-teenage sons.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

They exchanged a glance. Were they deciding what to tell me? Or just sorting out who had to do the telling?

“We think we found a body,” Josh said.

“A dead body,” Jamie clarified.

As always, Meg has her hands full as the book opens. Not only have the twins discovered what may be a dead body in the woods near the house, the reason they are dressed in medieval costume is because Michael, her husband and a professor of drama at the local college, is mounting a production of Macbeth, and the twins have (small) roles. Because of insane and arcane academic inter-departmental politics, the Drama department has had to enlist the assistance of the History department in a skirmish against the villainous English department, which has resulted with a group of re-enactors camping out in the field on her parents’ neighboring property; the leader of the group is a royal pain in the ass. There’s also a house full of relatives, as per usual, and due to the on-going housing situation in Caerphilly, many of the cast of the show are having to stay, if not in Meg’s and Michael’s house, then camping out around it. There have also been some incidents of vandalism, inside and outside the house–and oh, yes, there’s a documentary filmmaker staying in his trailer, also on the property and also proving to be a bit of a handful.

Never ever a dull moment in Meg’s life, certainly!

If that’s enough, the area is in the middle of a drought, and someone has been lighting campfires in the woods. Rose Noire, Meg’s cousin and an herbalist/naturalist/holistic healer type, is convinced that whoever is lighting the campfires is up to no good–and the discovery of a page torn from a book with an evil spell written out in nearby only seems to back up Rose Noire’s intuition (Rose Noire is becoming a favorite of mine; I love all the characters in this series–the ongoing feud between Meg’s grandparents is a personal favorite on-going subplot of mine–but Rose Noire was a bit irritating at first, but as I’ve spent more time with her she has definitely grown in my estimation; and her devotion to protecting animals–as happens throughout this book–played no small part in that rise) that the miscreants are definitely up to no good.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot–which is, as always, interwoven with various subplots and minor mysteries, which only serve to complicate and confuse the reader (not so much Meg) while trying to solve the central mystery–but the book is, as always, a charming experience that engaged me throughout, making me laugh aloud several times, and while I was glad to get to the bottom of the mystery, and the ending was enormously satisfying…at the same time I was a little morose to be done with my latest visit to Meg’s world.

And I only have one more to read. Heavy sigh.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

What I am hearing is that Donna Andrews is a master of writing about Christmas.

It’s incredibly easy to become cynical about Christmas; American capitalism’s infection of the holiday has made such cynicism almost de rigueur. The commercialization of what is supposed to be a religious holiday has been a concern for decades–A Charlie Brown Christmas was, after all, produced in 1965–and it is has even been politicized for the last thirty or so years (war on Christmas, anyone?). And while the argument over whether one should say “Merry Christmas” rather than the more inclusive “Happy holidays” has always struck me as particularly stupid (in a multi-cultural society where one cannot easily identify which particular holiday a stranger might celebrate, why would anyone want to risk giving offense? I really don’t understand this modern sensibility that good manners no longer matter), it becomes easier and easier to become tired of the entire thing and want to wash one’s hands of it all.

But Donna Andrews’ Christmas mysteries hit precisely the right chord, and can revive that holiday spirit in even that most cynical of hearts and souls, my own; so much so that I may even revisit the books every December as a necessary reminder of what this season is really supposed to be about.

“Cow manure?”

I was talking into my cell phone, but my friend Caroline Willner, who’d just popped into the kitchen with an armload of brightly wrapped presents, must have thought I was talking to her.

“Is this part of the whole not-swearing-in-front-of-the-boys thing?” she asked. “And what did I do to deserve–oops!” Her voice sank into a whisper. “Sorry! I didn’t realize you were on the phone.”

Although I could see her curiosity was aroused.

“We have access to a variety of manures–cow, horse, sheep, goat, and llama,” I said into the phone. “Much of it’s even organic. Is there a particular reason you want cow manure?”

“Well, any of those would be acceptable,” my caller said. “Especially the organic ones. I just don’t want chicken manure.”

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s so apt to be infected with salmonella. Give me your address and let me know when I can drop by–would sometime later today work? If you can show me the area you want fertilized, I can figure out how much manure is required and how many volunteers we’ll need to spread it.”

It is, as one can assume by the cover and title of this particular Meg Langslow mystery, Christmas time in Caerphilly again, and as always, Meg has her incredibly capable hands full with everything that is going on that she needs to make sure gets taken care of (her competence, list-making, and multi-tasking are all things that I aspire to, and inevitably always fall short on). Caerphilly’s Interfaith Council has, this particular year, come up with an amazing idea to help people out called “Helping Hands for the Holidays”–in which those in need of help can ask for assistance, and Meg and her group will find volunteers to get things taken care of for those in need. It’s an absolutely lovely idea, and who better than mayoral assistant Meg to take charge of such a program as part of her official duties? A Caerfully Christmas, which has become a major source of tourist revenue for the small town, is also in full swing; her house is filled with relatives; and she is hoping, for once, to have a relatively peaceful Christmas.

But that is not to be. One of the projects involved helping Harvey Dunlop (aka Harvey the Hoarder) declutter and de-hoard his home. Harvey’s neighbors loathe him because of his hoarding tendencies (the town has already helped him declutter his yard to mollify his neighbors), and naturally he is suspicious of the de-hoard assistance he is being offered at first, but with so many people willing to chip in and help out–with Meg there to assure him that the purpose isn’t to get rid of everything, but to help him sort and decide what to keep, as well as moving it all out so the house can get some much-needed repairs, Harvey begins to slowly come around. It would be easy to make Harvey the butt of many jokes here, and a lesser writer would probably do so. However, Andrews completely humanizes Harvey, and as we the reader get to know him better, understand his loneliness and sadness and how the hoarding has so completely overwhelmed him…we can’t help but root for him. The lovely people of Caerphilly even throw an impromptu holiday party for Harvey in the warehouse his things are being stored in (honestly, my bitter old cynical self would love to live in this marvelous lovely town full of kind, caring people who look out for everyone), and Harvey actually begins to come out of his shell, has a lovely evening, and everything is look up for him…

..until later that night when he is brutally attacked, and later dies in the hospital.

This was, for me, a complete and total shock. I had suspected that Harvey–with his hateful neighbors and even more hateful relatives–was going to be the murder victim at the heart of this story, but kept hoping he would be the suspect whom Meg would have to clear instead, and as the book progressed and I came to like him as a character more and more, finding so much joy in the way everyone in Caerphilly was working with him to make his life better and the way he was responding to the kindnesses he was being shown, it was a horrible shock to me…which, of course, is yet another testament to Andrews’ gifts as a novelist. I mean, I was seriously upset that he was murdered.

So upset, in fact, that I grimly looked forward to the murderer being caught and thinking of the most horrible ways for them to be punished, and as I kept reading to find out who this monstrous villain was, I was actually angry and outraged and was certain that whatever their fate might be, it wouldn’t be horrible and gruesome enough to satisfy the bloodlust I was feeling.

But this is Caerphilly, and Donna Andrews, and a Christmas book. There are some major twists along the way to the final denouement, and as always, there was a most satisfying conclusion to the mystery and the book, which enabled me to close it with a happy sigh, again reminded of what the season is truly about, and wishing the world was more like the fictional one that exists in this magical series.

(She’s a) Very Lovely Woman

Saturday morning and it looks kind of gray outside the windows this morning as I look out at the world blearily and drink my first cup of coffee. I slept very well last night–which is always welcome–but woke up feeling a bit groggy this morning. I am sure the caffeine will work–it generally does–but as I glance around at the chaos of my office/kitchen my inclination is to pour the coffee out and go back to bed and sleep the rest of the day away, hoping magical elves or something else will show up whilst I sleep to finish organizing and arranging this mess into something resembling workable order. On the other hand, I don’t think that’s going to happen, so I am going to need to wake up, buckle up, and put my nose to the proverbial grindstone. I’ve got to contain this mess–and do it properly, no more sweeping things under proverbial rugs to get mess out of sight–and I’ve got to work on the book today and I need to run some errands. I also have to go to the gym today, so I will most likely follow football championship games today by periodically looking on-line to check scores only. Paul is going into his office this afternoon to do some work as well, and I need to update my to-do list and…yes, it’s a very busy day for a Gregalicious.

I finished reading Murder Most Fowl by Donna Andrews last night–charming, as always, delightful and witty and funny–and decided, since I was talking about how much I preferred Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot the other day, that I should revisit one of the Marple stories. I have a hardcover copy of A Caribbean Mystery–I don’t recall where it came from–but it has some sentimental value for me in that it was the first Marple novel of Christie’s I had read all those many moons ago when I was a child, holing up in my room on Saturdays with a book and a bag of Bar-B-Q Fritos. (My first Poirot was actually Halloween Party, which I also have a hardcover copy of and again, do not recall where I got it or how long I have had it; I read most Christies in paperbacks purchased at the Bolingbrook Zayre’s off their wire paperback racks) In those first few pages of the book, it spelled out exactly what I loved about the Marple stories–about how living in a small village actually exposes one to almost every kind of human behavior there is in a smaller ecosystem, and the great irony that the smallness and rural aspects of the small community are all too frequently seen as provincial and inexperienced in the world (why Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place was so shocking when it was originally published some seventy years ago; that placid, idyllic on the surface looking village/small town/rural community has a lot more going on than one would think at first glance). This is an excellent set-up, really, for the story Christie is writing about this fictional resort on a fictional West Indies island; her nephew, the successful novelist Raymond West, has paid for this trip for her to get some sun and recover from an illness…and when she originally protested about the expense and “who will watch out for my home in St. Mary Mead”–this response (which I hadn’t remembered) hit me right between the eyes:

Raymond had dealt with everything. A friend who was writing a book wanted a quiet place in the country. “He’ll look after the house all right. He’s very house proud. He’s a queer. I mean–“

He had paused, slightly embarrassed–but surely even dear old Aunt Jane had must have heard of queers.

Now, what is one to make of that? It was a jolt, certainly. It put me in mind of something I came across on Twitter the other day, written by Wil Wheaton, in which he had answered at a con somewhere a question regarding the current debate of “can you separate the art from the artist?” This is something I’ve pondered about quite a bit–most recently, the feeling of guilt I experienced in rewatching Chinatown, knowing now what I–we all–know about Roman Polanski. I enjoyed Chinatown every time I’ve seen it, and I was now watching–rewatching–through a different lens than I had before; I was watching in terms of my own Cynical 70’s Film Festival, to see how a 70’s film that actually harkened back to old-style crime/hard-boiled/noir styles, but with a more modern (at the time) sensibility fit into that 70’s cynicism and darkness about humanity and human behavior. But the discomfort kept popping up, particularly because Polanski himself appears in the film…and I eventually decided not to rewatch another favorite, Rosemary’s Baby, because of it.

I am not going to consign Agatha Christie to the trash heap of history; she was an extraordinary writer, and one of the most influential in the field in which I myself write. Nor do I think a simple throwaway line or two in a book originally published in 1964 is enough to dismiss Christie and her canon as homophobic and never revisit her work. In fact, given the time period in which the book was written, I am surprised the two sentences weren’t, frankly, much worse. Reading the sentences didn’t offend or outrage me; it was just a surprise, primarily because I didn’t remember them at all in a book I’ve read multiple times over the years–and I think when this hardcover came into my possession (I won’t swear to it, but I think I got it during one of my many eBay buying frenzies after Hurricane Katrina, when I felt it necessary to get copies of books with some sentimental value to me) I did actually read it again because I didn’t remember the plot–and this either went right past me or I noticed and didn’t think much of it.

Revisiting this book and viewing it through a modern lens is going to be interesting. And like I said, the reference could easily have been worse–but seeing queer used in this way reminds me of how it used to be used. The younger generations are reclaiming the word, and I myself have been advocating for it as a generic term for the non-straight community for eons…but I also can see why there are people of my generation/the one before me/the one after me who object to its use and why.

But I would a thousand times rather see the word queer used in an Agatha Christie novel than faggot. And I also remember the sympathetic depiction of a lesbian couple in my favorite Marple, A Murder is Announced.

Interesting thoughts on a Saturday morning. The sun has come out now and it’s not quite so gray outside; the second cup of coffee is certainly hitting the spot right now and the grogginess is beginning to leave from not only my head but from my body. I still don’t want to straighten up this mess, but there’s no choice, really, and I want to get some good work on the book done today and tomorrow. I need to go to the gym either today or tomorrow as well; perhaps later this afternoon once I get some writing/cleaning/organizing completed. I cannot be completely lazy this weekend, much as I would like to be; I have to get things done, and the more things I get done now the fewer things I will have to do later this month (I am not, for example, going to want to write on Christmas). But once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator.

And now it occurs to me that perhaps I am procrastinating here, so I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and will talk to you soon.

One for One

FRIDAY!!!!

Yesterday was a good day. I slept extremely well, got up, answered some emails and printed some things out that I needed to sign and scan and send back, data entered, and then made condom packs. Once I was finished with my work-at-home duties for the day, I went to the gym. Yes, that’s right–one more time for those in the back: I went to the gym again. It was a lovely late afternoon–early December is so lovely here, Constant Reader, you have no idea–and so the walk was nice. People out walking their dogs, dogs running around having a good time in Coliseum Square, a nice coolness…it’s so lovely here once the blast furnace of the summer is over.

I also wrote for a bit–not one of my better writing days, alas–and so took a break and read Donna Andrews’ Murder Most Fowl for a while until it was time for us to watch last night’s batch of episodes of Gossip Girl. The last three episodes of the reboot–although I suppose it’s really more of a sequel series than a reboot–have dropped, but last night’s was rather lame; the season is sputtering its way to the finish line, which is a shame, since it started so well with guns blazing–and we’ve come to the conclusion that we much prefer the OG. We saw the first two episodes of Season 2, and are all in once again; despite the fact that the season one finale was such a disappointment. New characters, new romances for the characters, and lots of new drama, which is wonderful. I still can’t believe we didn’t ever tune in when it was originally airing.

Today is another work-at-home day, mostly data entry but with some condom-packing perhaps later. Yesterday’s condom-packing movie was another entry in the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, and I decided to check out Shaft, the original from 1971 starring Richard Roundtree–who was sexy as fuck. I’ve never seen the original Shaft movies; there were three of them in total (Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft in Africa) released in the 1970’s, and while it’s terribly dated now, it still holds up as entertainment. And one cannot really dismiss its importance as a film, given the time in which it was produced. Here we have, in 1971, six years after the Voting Rights Act and other important civil rights legislation, a complex Black private eye as the hero of a crime film; it is a mere four years after the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night, with Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia police detective solving a strange murder in rural Mississippi and having to deal with the horrific racism of the region. The film was a huge hit at the time, and it’s famous “Theme from Shaft” by Isaac Hayes won the Oscar and was a huge hit record; I believe the entire soundtrack also sold extremely well. The character of John Shaft was created by a white writer named Ernest Tidyman–no #ownvoices there–who also co-wrote the screenplay (he also wrote the screenplay for that same year’s The French Connection–he was definitely having a good year); and published a number of novels featuring the character. Just as Virgil Tibbs and In the Heat of the Night were created by a white writer named John Ball–the novel the film was based on in that particular case was problematic–so was John Shaft; but in looking up Tidyman, I also saw that he received an Image Award from the NAACP. The plot of the movie is pretty straightforward; the Mafia is trying to muscle in on a Black mobster in Harlem, so they kidnap his daughter, so he hires Shaft to find and rescue her. The NYPD is concerned about a possible mob war between to the two rival syndicates, and also is pressuring Shaft to give up what he knows and get involved. It was very much a film of its time; I always love seeing movies film on location in New York during that time, when the city was much grimier than it is now, and its success may have been integral in the development of what came to be known as the “Blaxploitation” film in the 1970’s–when studios realized there was a big audience for films about the Black experience in America, with strong Black lead characters, giving rise to the careers of Black stars like Pam Grier, for one–and some of Chester Himes’ novels were given the Hollywood treatment. Are there any books, I wonder, about this period? Why did they stop making these movies? (They must have stopped making money, which is usually the reason Hollywood stops making any kind of film) I must make a note to do some research.

I also worked on cleaning and organizing last night, so there’s some finishing up to do here in the kitchen/office. I also had to answer some questions regarding the proofs of my story “The Snow Globe” (which will be in the upcoming anthology Murder is Magic, co-edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley), which was nice; I was very glad that story finally found a home somewhere. It was originally, of all things, a Halloween story that morphed into a Christmas story–I’ll write more about it when the book comes out–but the opening line came to me one Halloween night as I stood on the balcony of the Parade watching all the costumes down below on Bourbon Street, when someone dressed as Satan came out of Oz. The costume was totally slutty-gay; a guy with a phenomenal body wearing red boots, a red bikini covered in sequins, horns, and red body paint. Wow, I thought, Satan has a great six-pack, and laughed, because I realized it was a terrific opening line for something–short story or a book or something–and pulled out my phone and texted it to myself so I wouldn’t forget. It sat in a folder called Satan costume for many years…until I realized I could turn it into “Santa” and turn it into a Christmas horror story. And the rest, as they say, is history.

All right, it’s time for me to get back to data entry. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and will check in with you again tomorrow.

Some of Shelly’s Blues

Thursday, and Gregalicious is working at home today. Huzzah? Huzzah! I do like working at home; it always has been best for me to work in isolation; my attention span is such that being around co-workers inevitably means distraction and lower productivity than I would prefer. This is especially true when I am doing data entry; it’s much easier to make mistakes and get distracted when others are around and talking, even if they aren’t talking to me. The printer/copier/scanner (business sized) is right behind where I sit at my cubicle, so every time someone prints something or needs to copy something I see them approaching out of the corner of my eye and they are right behind me as they go about their business. It’s a bit awkward to not acknowledge them or for them not to say anything to me, so when we used to operate at full capacity with everyone in the office I generally had a short conversation with everyone who was printing or scanning or copying…which, as I mentioned, is distracting when you are doing data entry and trying not to lose your place and be accurate. I’ve also gotten really used to there not being anyone else in the office since I myself went back to working a few days in the office every week in July 2020. Even now, we are still not at full capacity and not everyone has returned to the office yet–certainly not all at the same time, the way it used to be–and it’s going to be incredibly weird when we get to the point where we are all back in the office again.

Incredibly weird.

So for now I will continue to enjoy my working at home days, doing data entry and then when my eyes get bleary or start crossing, moving back to my easy chair so I can watch a movie or a television show Paul doesn’t watch while I make condom packs (seriously, if I got paid by the pack I’d probably make a lot more money than I actually do).

I felt great all day yesterday; a holdover from going to the gym Tuesday night, no doubt, and I was in a really good mood as well. I got a lot done yesterday–I realized, yesterday when writing my blog (and discussed it here) that I hadn’t really gotten a feel yet for my main character’s voice, and that was part of the reason why I’ve been struggling with the manuscript. So last night I started writing a biography of her, trying to get inside her head, to understand her point of view and how she feels about the world and how she sees it; I was making her a little more namby-pamby, I think, than I wanted her to be. I want her to be strong and capable, but also a bit unsure of herself; I want her to be feeling a bit of dissatisfaction with her life, not so much because she’s made bad choices but because in a lot of cases in her life she didn’t really get to choose her own path. She fell in love and married very young, had twin sons, and then she was raising her sons while working on renovating the old house she and her husband had bought, so the house was her job outside of wife and mother; her husband died suddenly and she went on raising the twins by herself. Now they are off at college and she has reached a point in her life where she isn’t quite forty yet, but doesn’t know what she wants to do with the rest of her life; she kind of thinks she made the easiest choices along the way. It probably also doesn’t help that her two best friends are successful professional women. I want this to be a good mystery series, of course, but I also want to show her journey from a place of what do I do with the rest of my life to having a clear purpose with goals and ambitions and dreams.

And writing her biography helped me with developing the character, so here’s hoping writing the book will become a bit easier now? One can always dream…

And you know what? After I finished the biography, and sat down to revise Chapter 4–I started to feel like I knew her, and what she would say, and how she would react. I feel like she really came to life, both on the page and in my head, in this chapter, and I powered all the way through it, which felt really great. Maybe it was a holdover of the endorphins from going to the gym Tuesday night; I don’t know. But I feel much better about the book and everything else this morning–tonight I will get going on Chapter 5–and I think I can make a very strong push now to get it finished on time.

I also finished reading Donna Andrews’ The Gift of the Magpie last night, which was terrific and fun and the perfect thing to read during Christmas season; she really is masterful at writing about Christmas, and her community of Caerphilly, Virginia, is always delightful to revisit. I enjoyed the visit so much that I started reading the next in the series, Murder Most Fowl, within minutes of finishing the earlier volume–I have others to read, of course, but this wonderful binge-read of Andrews in an attempt to get caught up on the series (only two left, inclusive of Murder Most Fowl), and the next one is another Christmas one…so, yeah. I’ll probably keep going with Andrews until I am all caught up.

We also finished the first season of the original Gossip Girl last night, staying up later than we’d intended to once we realized how close we were to the end of that first season–and the season finale was interesting; they pretty much had gotten everyone to a happy place, so naturally they had to dynamite everything to set up the next season, but I was more than a little disappointed with how they did it. I am not as intrigued to continue watching as I might have been–but it has been a really fun ride, and even the “villain” characters have wound up being a lot of fun to watch–with the exception of psycho Georgina, and Paul and I kept saying (spoiler) “oh for fuck’s sake, Serena, sic Blair on her. What’s the point of having an evil bitch best friend if you don’t take advantage of her skills?”–which she finally did, and it was ever so satisfying.

I just felt like they could have done a better job with the season one cliffhanger situation.

I guess the Saints are playing again tonight–they also played last Thursday–which means this weekend is another major-Louisiana-football-team-free weekend, which should amp up my own productivity. Today I am going to be working here at home, obviously, and then I am going to the gym, and then I want to get some more work on the book done. I made a new to-do list yesterday, and have to say I am very pleased with how well I’ve been doing lately, getting things done; one can never underestimate the motivating power of a to-do list.

And on that note, it’s time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you later.

I Fall to Pieces

Wednesday morning, and the last day I have to get up at six this week. Huzzah! I also paid the bills yesterday–that onerous task I despise–but at least it’s done. And today is the first of December; hurricane season is now theoretically over, and it’s officially (to me at any rate) Christmas season–even though retailers have been pushing it on us since before Halloween. I even made it to the gym last night for a light workout–the old “one set full body workout” starter program, since it’s been over a month since I last went and my body is older and sadly, more brittle than it used to be–and it felt great. It’s weird to go after dark and walk home in the dark, yet it’s also now cool enough in the evenings that I wasn’t drenched in sweat and completely dehydrated by the time I got back home. It felt amazing; I stretched and exercised my muscles and as always, I forgot how great the endorphin rush after working out feels. I slept deeply and well last night–am a little groggy this morning, but that’s fine–because I feel rested. (reminder: you love the endorphin rush and you sleep better when you’ve worked out, so fucking stick to a work out schedule already, dumbass.)

I also worked on the book last night; it’s not coming as easily as I would want, as always, but I also realized, before I dropped off to sleep last night that it’s partly because I’ve not really found my character’s voice yet. That’s something I can write my way into, and then go back and fix in earlier chapters, so I need to keep moving forward while figuring out who she is. I think between clients and during my lunch break today I am going to work on getting to her core as a character; defining what kind of person she is, what she likes and dislikes, and so forth; she’s just kind of bland right now, and she definitely needs a stronger sense of humor. I kind of have an idea of who I want her to be, but I still haven’t found the voice, and that’s why I am struggling. I need to stop worrying and the voice will come to me organically, and I need to just let that happen.

I also don’t really care that much about the football games this weekend, so I think I’ll have lots of free time to not only read and clean and organize but to actually get some writing done this weekend. The house, as always, is a disaster area; I definitely need to work on that this weekend (I got started last weekend, and what little I did was a massive improvement already, so here’s to this coming weekend and making the Lost Apartment a little less lost). I also have to start getting ready to promote the upcoming January release of #shedeservedit, and I also have a short story that needs revising that is due on or around the same time as this current manuscript I am working on. I did tear through my to-do list; there are still some things on it that need doing, but I can go ahead and make a new one today and keep going. Huzzah? Huzzah indeed.

And while I am hesitant to say I am starting to feel like the old me again–every time I say that it’s kind of a jinx and everything kind of goes to hell again–I am feeling a lot better about everything. I know I can make these deadlines I am on; I am excited about getting deeper into my book; and I love the concepts I will be exploring in the short stories I have committed to writing for upcoming deadlines. I am not certain what’s going to happen with my new book’s release; I am a little concerned about the subject and how I’ve handled it, but I did the best I could and think I made some very strong and valid points about the controversial subject matter of the book. So, we’ll see. It may just come and go with a whimper, not even noticed. Which won’t be the first or the last time this has happened with one of my books, you know?

And I am excited to be getting to the end of this year and starting a new one.

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

.

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

If you’ve been sensing a theme in my recent reading, Constant Reader, you are correct. I have been reading a lot of traditional mysteries lately–cozies, if you prefer–and there are any number of reasons why. One, I want to read more broadly across the genre; two, I actually enjoy them, a lot; and three, well, yes, I am writing one. I am only sorry that it took #3 in that sentence to really dig into one of my favorite sub-genres of crime fiction again, since I am having the best time since I started digging them out of the TBR pile and reading them. They are called cozies for a reason; they are generally warm stories about incredibly kind and likable people who wind up getting involved in murders–usually through no doing of their own–and through their own shrewd observations of behavior and brains, inevitably wind up finding the killer’s identity before the police do.

I know I am an anomaly when it comes to this, but I always preferred Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to Poirot. I loved that the elderly, always under-estimated by everyone spinster from the little village, simply by watching and observing human nature in the microcosm of her village–and her theory about human nature, “people who are similar often behave similarly”, is kind of spot-on. I loved how the suspects in a case would remind her of someone she knew from the village in the past, and her observations were inevitably correct. A traditional mystery is one where there’s no violence or bloodshed on the page (mild, if there is–like a punch in the nose or something like that when trying to evade the killer, etc.), no sex, not much cursing, and so forth. I tend to think of them as stories that take place in the world we’d rather live in, rather than the actual real world we do live in.

Stephen King, in his seminal treatise on horror, Dance Macabre, described horror novels as examples of the conflict between the philosophical concepts of the Dionysian and Apollonian; in which the Apollonian signifies the status quo–peace, order, reason and balance–while the intrusion of the murder/crime into that Apollonian ideal sends the community reeling into the Dionysian: disorder, tragedy, emotional illogic. The solving of the crime brings the community back into balance and returns it to the Apollonian ideal, so the amateur sleuth in these books are agents of reason. And since one of the major precepts of the traditional/cozy mystery is that sense of community–see Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series–it is the duty of the amateur sleuth to return the community to the sense of peace, order and serenity that ruled before the Dionysian influence disrupted all of that.

But Mary Feliz’ first Maggie McDonald mystery kind of turns that theory on its ear.

“Awesome! I bet it has bats!” My fourteen-year-old son, David, exploded from the car and mounted the steps of the old house three at a time. He peered through the grubby porch windows.

“Is it haunted?” Brian, my twelve-year-old, leaned into my side as we stood in the front yard. I eyed the dust motes cavorting in a light beam that had escaped the shrubs and overgrown trees surrounding the 100-year-old California Craftsman house. I put a reassuring hand on Brian’s mop of curly hair. “I doubt it, honey.” I hoped it was true.

I swallowed hard and watched my husband, Max, ease his long legs out of the Prius. Like my minivan, Max’ car was overloaded. We’d packed both cars with everything too fragile to transport in the moving van. In among the breakables, our two kids, one golden retriever and two cats, we’d tucked picnic food, cleaning supplies, and sleeping bags.

Today was Thursday. The plan was simple. The movers would arrive tomorrow. Since Monday was Labor Dat, we’d have four days to get settled. The kids would start school on Tuesday, and Max would begin his first full day at the new job the same day. I was giving myself a month to focus solely on house and gamily. After that, I was determined to restart my career as a professional organizer.

Anyone who has ever moved to a new city and started over can relate to the opening chapter of this book. I myself have moved countless times to new communities–from Chicago to the suburbs to Kansas to California to Houston to Tampa to Houston to Tampa to Minneapolis to New Orleans to Washington and back to New Orleans finally. There’s something exciting about starting over in a new place–but there’s also that little thought in the back of your head, what if you were better off where you were before? It can be both scary and intimidating to move–especially when you have children, as Maggie does. Her family was happily living in Stockton when her husband’s aunt died, leaving them the property where he grew up and remembered fondly. They visited the property while the estate was in probate, and Maggie, too, fell in love with the big old beautiful house, and agreed to give up her own business–she’s an organizer, the person you hire when you can’t organize yourself and you need help–and move to Orchard View in Silicon Valley to this big beautiful house where her husband grew up…and right away, her worst fears are coming true. The house somehow has become incredibly run down, with broken windows and dirty inside; there’s a horrible smell coming from the basement, and the power doesn’t work. It doesn’t even look like the same house…and then they find the dead body of the caretaker in the basement.

So the house is soon crawling with cops, and Maggie wants to go back home to Stockton with the kids and wash her hands of the whole mess.

Who could blame her?

But the cops are actually friendly–even if the first neighbor she meets is kind of a dick–and helpful, introducing to people around the town who can help get the house back together and under control, so she and her family can get settled in. The principal of her kids’ school is a problem–as is the recurring acts of vandalism at the house. And then Max’s job sends him off to Bangalore, leaving Maggie to deal with everything on her own. The vandalism amps up, and before she knows it she is stumbling over yet another dead body. Who is killing people who have a connection to Maggie’s family? Is the vandalism connected to the murders, or is it something else entirely? Is one of her new friends and acquaintances actually the culprit?

It’s a fun read, and I appreciated the different spin on the community aspect of a traditional mystery. Having Maggie and her family (her boys are terrific, too) resettling into a new place means that, like the reader, she has no history with either Orchard View or the people who live there; we meet them and get to know them as she does. As Maggie grows more comfortable in her new home, so do we the readers–and that was a pretty big risk to take for the author, and I respect Feliz for taking that risk. It was actually kind of cool to see her establishing those relationships and creating a history with the characters, as opposed to having to dip into a lot of backstory, which is also hard to do with aplomb and without losing reader interest.

I am looking forward to reading more of this series!