Author: gregh121

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

Song of the South

Chapter One

              “Was this an accident, or did you do it on purpose?”

              I opened my eyes to see my mother standing at the foot of my hospital bed, her heart-shaped face unreadable as always. The strap of her Louis Vuitton limited edition purse was hooked into the crook of her left arm. Her right hand was fidgeting, meaning she was craving one of the rare cigarettes she allowed herself from time to time. Her dove gray skirt suit, complete with matching jacket over a coral silk blouse, looked more rumpled than usual. Her shoulder length bob, recently touched up as there were no discernible gray roots in her rigid part, was also a bit disheveled. She wasn’t tall, just a few inches over five feet, and always wore low heels, because she preferred being underestimated. Regular yoga and Pilates classes kept her figure slim. She never wore a lot of make-up, just highlights here and there to make her cheekbones seem more prominent or to make her eyes pop. Looking at her, one who didn’t know better would never guess she was one of the top criminal attorneys in the country or that her criminal law classes at the University of Chicago were in high demand.

              I could tell she was unnerved because she’d allowed her Alabama accent to creep slightly back into her speech. She’d worked long and hard to rid herself of that accent when she was in law school, because she said no one took her seriously when she spoke or else thought she was stupid once they’d heard it. The only times she used it now was when she wanted someone to feel superior to her, or she’d been drinking, or she was upset.

              It worked like a charm getting her out of speeding tickets.

              I hadn’t been asleep, nor had I been awake either, hovering in that weird in-between state where it seemed like I’d been living for the last three or four days.

              “It wasn’t on purpose.” I managed to croak the words out. My throat was still raw and sore from having my stomach pumped. My lips were dry and chapped, and my eyes still burned from the aftermath of the insane drug-and-alcohol binge I’d gone on in the aftermath of the break-up with fucking Tradd Chisholm. “It was an accident.” I shifted in the hospital bed, trying to sit up more, the IV swinging wildly. The memory of that last and final fight with Tradd flashed through my head.

              Why are you so fucking needy? He’d screamed at me. I can’t fucking breathe!

              Fucking Tradd, anyway. Why did I let him get under my skin the way I had?

              Why had I let him isolate me from my friends?

              Why, why, why.

              He wasn’t worth this, that’s for sure.

              She moved to the chair beside my bed, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor. She sat down smoothly—she always moved fluidly, which led one of her ex-husbands to spit at her on his way out the door, “Maybe if you take that baseball bat you’ve got shoved up your ass you can be a wife to the next poor bastard who marries you.”

              She peered at me with her big, emotionless gray eyes. “Given your history, you understand why I had to insist they put you on a seventy-two-hour hold, once they called me?”

              I closed my eyes.

              My history.

              I’d slit my wrists at fifteen, tired of the non-stop bullying at St. Sebastian’s, the elite prep school that she said would set me up for the rest of my life. The therapist she sent me to afterwards claimed it was more of a cry for attention than anything else, and I’d had to agree with that assessment. After all, I hadn’t gone up the arm following the vein with the Exacto knife, after all, but had cut across instead—which meant the wounds would clot long before death. I’d taken a couple of her Xanax, thinking it would make the razor slicing my skin hurt less.

              That was why I passed out in the bath water, not from loss of blood.

              My therapist had also made me understand why she couldn’t forget or let it go.

              “Put yourself in her shoes, Jake,” Dr. Mendelssohn said, making sure she was earning her two hundred and fifty dollars per hour. “Imagine coming home from a long day in court, exhausted, and finding your only child unconscious in a bathtub full of bloody water, a razor blade on the bath mat. That’s an image she’s not likely to ever forget. No parent would.”

              “Yes, Mom, I understand.” I replied mechanically, keeping my eyes closed. My throat ached still, and I had a headache. The doctor said it would take a day or so before I started feeling physically better. It had already been twenty-four hours. Forty-eight more to go before I could go home to my cute little apartment on Napoleon Street.

              Not that I wanted to go back there.

               The memories of the fight and Tradd storming out were still too fresh, the place would seem empty without him there. Had we ever been happy together? I wasn’t sure. We must have been at some point. There must be good memories, too— I just couldn’t remember them at the moment.

              “I’m not responsible for your feelings!” he’d screamed at me. “You’re too possessive! You won’t let me breathe! I can’t take it anymore!” And finally, the finishing touch: “You’re just not worth all this drama.”

              The door slammed behind him.

              I’d stood there, shaking, grabbed my phone before remembering there wasn’t anyone for me to call. Tradd hadn’t liked my friends and I’d chosen him over them. Our friends were his friends.

              Without him, I was alone.

              So, I’d gone into my little kitchenette, my hands shaking as I reached for the bottle of Grey Goose in the cabinet over the stove. I poured myself a glass, added some ice and started drinking. I don’t remember heading to the Quarter, whether I took a Lyft or the streetcar or called a cab or how I got there. All that mattered was that I did get there.

              I do remember deciding after a couple of glasses that the easiest way to feel better was a lot of drugs and a lot of sex with strangers. Most of those days between Thursday night and Sunday morning were a blur.

              At some point I must have run into a dealer I knew and started snorting.

              So. Many. Blanks.

              The last thing I remembered was being on the dance floor at Oz, my shirt off and my heart racing and the sweat pouring out of my body, the little packet of crystal meth I’d just scored from someone—the last of I don’t know how many—clutched in my hand as I moved to the endless thump of the music, some total stranger dancing close behind me, grinding on me, dry-humping me on the dance floor. I remember dipping my apartment key into the baggie and inhaling up both nostrils.

              According to the doctor who’d spoken to me when I came to in the emergency room, I’d collapsed on the dance floor around five in the morning on Sunday. The ambulance arrived at Oz around five thirty and brought me to University Medical Center. They’d pumped my stomach, given me something to counteract the meth, stuck an IV in my arm, and called my mother.

              And once she told them about the suicide attempt when I was fifteen, they agreed I should be watched for seventy-two hours.

              And now, here she was.

              “I won’t ask why you didn’t call me.” She said, sounding tired. She probably was—she was consulting on a case in Los Angeles and so she must have taken a red-eye flight in. “I know I’ve not been the best mother, Jake, and maybe it’s my fault you’re so messed up. Maybe I  shouldn’t have been a mother. God knows I can’t make a marriage last. Which reminds me, I’ve kicked Brock out and asked for a divorce—” Brock was only ten years older than me and a tennis instructor. I hadn’t thought it would last, but he was gorgeous and had a great body and was nice enough, if not particularly smart.  I didn’t blame her for marrying someone for great sex after three failed marriages. “—but I’ve done my best, the best I knew how to do.” Her right hand was twitching again. I was tempted to tell her to just go have the damned cigarette. “And I know I’ve not been around much because of my career but…” She shook her head. “Your father says you don’t talk to him either.”

              My parents divorced when I was so young, I couldn’t remember them being married. He’d remarried, lived out in the Chicago suburbs with his second wife and their three kids. Very 50’s family sitcom existence. Cecily, my stepmother, tried to always make me feel welcome and a part of their family, which only made it all the more obvious I was out of place in the suburbs.

              “So, I guess we failed you as parents. Maybe you shut me out because you think I’m not there for you, have never been there for you. But I am your mother and I wish you’d call me when you’re in trouble.” Her voice shook on the last words, the accent softening the r’s and drawing out the vowels in a slight drawl, but she took a moment to compose herself and I watched her turn back into the high-powered, highly sought after criminal defense attorney that rarely lost a case and eager young students wanted to learn from. “I took the liberty of stopping by your apartment on the way here.” She hesitated. “You tore up all the pictures of Tradd and burned in them in the sink. And since he’s not here, I guess it’s safe to assume that’s what this was all about.”

              “I don’t—I don’t want to talk about Tradd.” I closed my eyes. I just felt numb but was afraid if I talked about him, thought about it, the pain would come back.

              “All right.” She leaned forward in the chair. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to—I’m not going to make you.” She got up out of the chair and walked over to the window, looking out through the blinds at the traffic on Tulane Avenue. “I’ve already talked to the dean, and they’ve agreed to withdraw you from this semester, even though it’s so late, given the circumstances. I think you need to get out of New Orleans for a while.”

              “Mom—”

              “Don’t argue with me, Jake.” She began tapping her foot. “I’ve also spoken to your landlord and have paid the rent through September, so you can keep the place and come back here to go to school again this fall. But you need to get away from New Orleans for awhile. I don’t think this is the healthiest environment for you to be in while—while you’re this fragile.”

              After the suicide attempt, she’d threatened to put me into a psychiatric facility. We compromised on Dr. Mendelssohn. “I’m not going to a treatment center.”

              “Dr. Benoit said you were inhaling the drugs, so while it’s still possible that you’re addicted, at least you aren’t injecting.”

              Thank heaven for small miracles, right?

              “I’m not addicted to anything, Mom.”

              “I’ll take your word for it.” She hesitated. “But admitting you have a problem is the first step—”

              I cut her off. “What I did was stupid, but it was also out of character.” I sat up further in the bed, wincing as my head throbbed. “I smoke a little weed here and there, and yeah, I get drunk sometimes, and every once in a great while maybe I’ll do something else—” Honesty, but not total honesty, was called for, if it would keep me out of rehab.

              Always tell the truth, just not the whole truth.

              “—but I don’t need to do anything. Even the thought of drinking again makes me nauseous.”

              “That’ll pass.” She was still looking out the window. She turned back to look at me, her arms crossed. “You can’t come home to Chicago because I’m consulting on a case in Los Angeles and will be gone most of the summer. I don’t imagine you want to stay with your father—”

              “No!”

              “—and there really are few other options.” She cracked a smile. “I never thought I would say this, but I know the perfect solution, and it actually solves two problems. You remember when I called you about your grandmother’s stroke?”

              I gaped at her.

              She couldn’t be serious.

              Her mother, who refused to answer to anything but Miss Sarah or Mrs. Donelson, had suffered a massive stroke back during Carnival. She hadn’t been expected to live, but somehow had grimly held onto life in a hospital in Birmingham. Mom had stopped taking me with her on the annual duty trips down to Alabama to visit her mother when I was about eight, so I barely remembered Miss Sarah. Mom always refused to talk about her mother—or any of her childhood out in the rural countryside, really—and her younger brother, Dewey, who lived in Birmingham with his wife and kids, never did, either. He and his family sometimes visited us in Chicago, and he seemed like a good guy, his wife nice. Their kids were a little spoiled—he was an investment banker—but no more so than my half-siblings out in their Mayberry-like suburb.

              “You’re going to send me to Alabama?” I stared at her. “For the summer?”

              “She’s getting out of the hospital,” she replied calmly. “She wants to die at home, and Dewey and I are arranging for nurses to come in—one during the day and one at night, twelve-hour shifts. But those nurses are going to need to take breaks sometimes, and we can’t trust that Donovan kid to spell them.”

              “What Donovan kid?”

              “I’ve told you about Kelly Donovan.” She furrowed her brow.

              I racked my brain. “No, you haven’t.”

              “Of course I did, you just weren’t paying attention.” The like always was implied. She let out an exasperated breath. “His mother was a distant cousin, I’m not sure how we’re related, to be honest, nor do I care, but his mother died last summer and Miss Sarah took him in. He’s some big deal athlete, has a scholarship to play football at Troy this fall. But he isn’t close family, and while I certainly couldn’t stop her from taking him in, I don’t trust him alone in the house with her and the nurses.” She waved a hand. “It’s bad enough he’s had the run of the place since she went into the hospital, but Dewey—” Her face twisted, and she sighed. “He’s been there the whole time, and Dewey thinks we can’t very well kick him out—I really didn’t like him staying there alone in the house while she was in the hospital—because he has nowhere to go, and Dewey certainly can’t move there to stay while we wait for her to…” she stopped herself, and had the decency to blush a little.

              “Wait for her to die?”

              “Well, yes.” She blew out another breath. “I don’t know why it’s always so hard to talk honestly about family things. Yes, while we wait for her to die. The doctors don’t know how much longer she’ll last. She could last for months, weeks, years—or she could die tomorrow. I know I’d feel better if you were there in the house. Not just because of this—” she gestured around the room, and I could feel my own face turning red, “—but to know a family member is there in the house with her. She can’t really get out of bed—you don’t have to worry about any of that personal hygiene things, that’s what we’re paying the nurses for—and she’s able to talk very little. And you won’t have to spend much time with her, except to give the nurses a break to have dinner or a cigarette or to stretch their legs or something.” She sat back down in the chair. “And don’t say you’ll be bored. There’s a satellite dish, so there’s wifi and a big screen television Dewey bought her, and—” Her eyes gleamed. “—and since she’s dying, we might as well get a jump on things that’ll need to be done once she’s gone. You start clearing out the place. No one has ever thrown a damned thing away. The attic…the attic looks like something from one of those awful shows about hoarders. Lord, that place is a mess, filled with old furniture and boxes of things. Maybe some of that garbage is worth something, can be sold or donated somewhere it can do some good.”

              “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

              “At least you haven’t lost what you think is your sense of humor.” She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed. “But if you’d rather spend the summer at a facility—”

              “No, no, of course not.” My heart was sinking. A summer in rural Alabama, awful as it sounded, was still better than a summer being watched in a rehab center and group therapy and all the rest—made all the worse by knowing you don’t belong there in the first place. Sure, I’d done something incredibly stupid but the only person I’d harmed was myself.

              And getting away—even to Alabama—didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Maybe by the time I came back in August I’d be over for Tradd for good.

              The numbness was fading. Thinking about him caused a pang.

              “And of course, I’ll pay you for the work,” she went on. “You’ll have your credit cards, of course, and I’ll up the weekly deposit into your bank account from five hundred to a thousand. Does that sound fair?”

              I nodded.

              “And you can also keep an eye on those archaeologists.”

              “Archaeologists?” I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

              “You really don’t listen to me when I talk, do you?” She shook her head. “Some archaeologist from the University of Alabama—Dr. Brady, I think—has been after us for years to allow him to excavate the ruins. Miss Sarah of course would have none of it, but after she had the stroke Dewey gave him permission. You probably won’t ever encounter them—they’re using the old road to the ruins, they’ve cleared it all out—but Miss Sarah doesn’t know they’re there and you aren’t going to tell her. Kelly has been warned about telling her—I am not as squeamish as Dewey about throwing him out. If she gets upset or angry—” She cleared her throat. “There’s no need to tell her anything that’s going to finish her off. And she’s just mean enough to live on and cause trouble for both me and Dewey.”

              “But if she’s bedridden—”

              “I know my mother.” Her voice became cold and steely. “She may be bedridden, but there’s all kinds of things—damage—she can still cause trouble as long as she’s still breathing. I think Dewey should have told them to clear out once she decided to come home to die, frankly, but he’s the son and he has the power of attorney and so what I think doesn’t matter.” Her voice was bitter. “I’m just the daughter.”

              “What are they looking for at the ruins? The lost boys?”

              Mom may not talk much about her childhood, but she had told me stories about the family history over the years. The Blackwoods had been among the original settlers of Corinth County when Alabama was still a territory and not a state. The legend of the lost boys was one of the stories she’d told me, while also letting me know that it was most likely an apocryphal story, a romantic fairy tale that was actually fairly common throughout the old Confederate states. Before the Civil War, the Blackwood plantation had apparently been one of the largest plantations in that area of the state, and the Blackwoods had also been one of the largest slave-owning families in Alabama. When the war broke out, the patriarch and his two oldest sons had set off to fight in the war in Virginia, leaving his wife and the two younger sons behind. The father had died at Gettysburg, the oldest son at another one of those late-war battles in Virginia that led to the surrender at Appomattox. When the second son returned to the plantation, he found only the ruins of a burned house. The slaves, his mother, and two younger brothers were all gone. “The story was that a Yankee soldier—maybe a deserter—had robbed the place, killed the family, and burned the house down.” She had shrugged. “But that story—you hear it everywhere. It’s not even original. Hell, even Margaret Mitchell used it in Gone with the Wind.”

              No trace of the missing Mrs. Blackwood or her two younger sons had ever been found. The surviving son married one of the county girls and lost most of the property; but the family fortune was slowly built back up by one of his sons, who built a huge Victorian house closer to the county road than the old plantation house. But the later descendants weren’t so good with managing the money and so the big house had slowly started falling into ruin and Miss Sarah’s father had been a simple farmer. The woods had grown back up, and the ruins were about a twenty-minute walk from the newer house, hidden from sight by the towering pines.

              One of my few memories of visiting Alabama as a child included a trip back to the ruins of the old house. I can still remember the columns on the porch and the chimneys at either end covered with moss—but not enough to hide where the fire had burned them black.

              Mom had been very careful to always remind me not to take pride in the fact my ancestors owned slaves. “Slavery was disgusting, Jake, and the root of every racial problem we still have in this country was built on that foundation of slavery. We shouldn’t forget the history, but we also shouldn’t take pride in the fact our ancestors owned people they treated like cattle and were traitors. The heritage is hate, never forget that.”

              I never had.

              “I should hope not, since he has an excellent reputation as a scholar.” she said with a look of distaste. “Apparently, he told Dewey the ruins of Blackwood Hall are one of the few antebellum plantation sites in the state that haven’t been excavated, so this Dr. Brady—don’t worry, I did a thorough background check on him once Dewey told me about all of this—is more interested in finding how they lived and documenting the history than in any of the romantic family legends.” A faint smile crossed her lips, and she arched one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “Believe it or not, the Blackwoods of Corinth County haven’t exactly been the subject of a lot of historical research. But Corinth County is just a backwater and I seriously doubt he’ll find anything of major significance there.” She reached out and covered my hand with hers. “Is there anything you need that I haven’t already taken care of?”

              I closed my eyes. “No, Mom, as always—you’ve thought of everything.”

Jingle Bells

Look everyone! We made it to Wednesday and Christmas is next week!

#madness.

I’m groggy this morning (as well as being Greggy) and am hoping the cappuccino will kick up the energy soon. It’s my last day at the office this week, and while I slept fairly well, I didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off–and am looking forward to sleeping a little later tomorrow. I have to get through this day at the office so I can head for the gym this evening, and then collapse into my easy chair where I will write for a while until it’s time to either watch something on television or read.

Revising Chapter Eighteen is much harder than I had anticipated; most of what I had written is unusable, and so I am basically starting from scratch with it. I made some progress yesterday, but still have a ways to go, and am worried that the rest of the book will also need so much work–but that’s me being paranoid as the deadline date approaches steadily. But I am very pleased with the cover–which I shared yesterday–and the final polish will go a long way toward getting the manuscript to match the mood of the cover, which actually does precisely capture the mood I am going for–spooky, Gothic, rural–and I’ve been worried (my primary worry) has been that I am not capturing the mood I was going for.

Then again, I always am worried about what I am writing.

So, the high today is 58; it’s currently 53 and there’s also rain in the forecast for today. Hurray. The entire sky is gray right now–the sun is coming up, but the sky is covered in frothy clouds–so there’s this whole weird spooky element to the morning already. It doesn’t exactly make me want to jump in the shower and go outside this morning, you know? But it is what it is, and at some point you just have to get it together and go, you know? But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. As you probably already know unless you’re new here, I am not a fan of cold weather–and by that I mean anytime the mercury drops below sixty degrees. I like sweater weather; I do not like jacket weather. But at least the cold weather days are few here–much fewer than in most parts of the country–but that doesn’t mean I have to like them. Rather, I just endure.

We watched the new episode of A Teacher last night, and you may very well ask why we are continuing to watch a show we so clearly don’t like. Primarily, it’s because the episodes are short, and when we have a few minutes in the evening to watch something, well, a show that’s less than thirty minutes per episode fits the bill. I’m not even sure what the entire point of this show is, to be honest. The older woman/teacher last night was let out of jail on probation (I’m not sure why she even went to jail in the first place, as they made it clear from the beginning he was over eighteen–and while it’s morally questionable and she certainly should have been fired, I don’t really see how their affair was actually a crime), and she clearly learned nothing–she’s bitter and resentful that her life has been ruined, and has been ruined for the foreseeable future–so again, I am not sure what the point is here? The show runs trigger warnings both before and after every episode, about grooming and seeking help if you feel you’re being groomed–but that isn’t what they are depicting in the show, which is very confusing to us as we watch…you keep making these statements that grooming is bad and teens get groomed by predators…but then what you’re showing is supposedly a little more nuanced than that, so I don’t get it. It’s like the producers and writers are like, “we want to show the complications of such a relationship, and how there’s so much gray involved when the adult is in her early twenties and the student is eighteen, but we don’t want to be criticized so we are going to try to defuse it by stating before and after every episode that what we are showing is actually bad and if you need help, here’s where to find it.”

It’s just…odd–or at least it seems odd to me. Your mileage might vary.

Basically, I neither understand the teacher nor the student or their motivations or why they are behaving the way they are, so it’s hard for me to understand them or have empathy for either of them. Again, others might feel differently, but the show just isn’t working for me. So why do we keep watching? Because the episodes are short, and everything else we are watching is about an hour per….and sometimes it’s fun to watch something you don’t really like; we watched many many seasons of Pretty Little Liars before we finally gave up on the show. (Interestingly enough, Pretty Little Liars also featured a romance between a high school student and a teacher, with the genders reversed; they became one of the primary “super-couples” of the show and there were no trigger warnings given.) And in fairness, we often were rooting for A.

And on that note, it’s time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and may your holidays be filled with cheer.

Our Song

So, as you have undoubtedly noticed–were you paying attention; I always assume you were–I didn’t have a book come out in 2020. Since my first book came out way back in 2002, I have only had a couple of years where something with my name–or that of a pseudonym–wasn’t released. 2005 was one, and there were a couple of those years in this past decade. I have two books coming out in 2022, though, and while neither are a Scotty nor a Chanse, I am pretty pleased with both of them. I am wrapping up the edits and revisions on the first, and then will be diving headfirst into the second to get it finished on time.

Here’s the jacket copy–and gorgeous cover–of Bury Me in Shadows, the first to be due and the first to come out.

After landing in the hospital after a bad break-up and an ensuing drug-and-alcohol binge, college student Jake Chapman is given two options: rehab, or spend the summer at his dying grandmother’s decaying home in rural Alabama. The choice is obvious. 

His grandmother’s land has been in Jake’s family since the early nineteenth century; the ruins of the old plantation house are a short walk through the woods behind her home. An archaeological team is excavating the ruins, looking for evidence to prove an old family legend—and there’s a meth lab just over the ridge. 

Once Jake is there, he begins having strange experiences—flashes of memory, inexplicable emotions—that he can’t explain, and he keeps seeing something strange out in the woods. As he explores his family history, he uncovers some dark secrets someone—or something—is willing to kill to keep hidden.

Jingle Bell Rock

Constant Reader may have noticed that I have started using Christmas songs and hot guys in Christmas costume, effective this past weekend. This is my annual countdown to Christmas–twelve days leading up to it rather than the twelve after; most people wouldn’t get that I was doing Christmas to Twelfth Night (which is the night Carnival technically begins–but we aren’t really having Carnival this year in New Orleans, yet another crippling blow to the city’s economy), and I prefer to confuse people as little as possible–particularly since it is generally so easy to do, frankly.

It’s dark and cold this morning as I sit sipping my cappuccino; it’s a mere forty-eight degrees outside, with the high for the day projected to be a toasty fifty-nine degrees. It was cold last night as I walked to the gym–yes, I went after work, which was nice and felt great, and then it was back home to write for a bit before bed. I was very tired–getting up early AND the gym–but I did get some work done on the complete overhaul of Chapter Eighteen, which is going to slow me down considerably, but it’s actually okay. I still have time, and if I can get more than one chapter done in a day I’ll still have time to get it all done and let it sit momentarily before sending it in after one last polish. I did get the final cover design yesterday, which is absolutely gorgeous; definitely one of my favorite covers.

We also watched a couple of episodes of The Hardy Boys before retiring for the evening, and I have to say, I am very impressed with the show. I get why the purists object to it, but the show is better written, acted, and plotted than the dreadful 70’s iteration, which the purists seem to love. But oh no! Diversity! The boys aren’t a year apart! Aunt Gertrude is too young and goes by Trudy! THE HORROR! I think it’s well done, and the series is very close to the spirit of the books–if not as cardboard and two dimensional and simplistic–which has me curious to give Nancy Drew another whirl. (In fairness, I also liked the first episode of that reboot, but I watched it by myself one night when Paul was working late and never got back to it.)

I think maybe this next year will be the year I try to write my middle grade series.

But I slept really well last night, and don’t feel tired at all this morning, which is absolutely lovely. I have taken the week off between Christmas and New Year’s, which means I’ll be out of the office for nearly ten days (New Year’s Eve is a workday, but it’s also a work-at-home day, which means…out of the office for nearly ten days), and I am looking forward to that. It’s also an opportunity to have a lot of down time in case I need it for finishing the book–which hopefully I won’t need–and it will also give me a chance to get started on the final rewrite of the next one, due on March 1, and after that, I will focus on Chlorine until I can get a good first draft out of the way. I ordered The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson yesterday, and it should be here by the weekend, and it’s the final piece of research I need for the Hollywood casting back ground stuff. I will also need to do some other background reading–studios, economics of the period, what else was going on, what was LA and Hollywood like in that period, etc. And perhaps at long last I will also read James Ellroy’s LA Confidential–it seems fitting.

Oh! And I. need some time to finish my short story for the MWA anthology, which will hopefully make it stand out from the submissions pile and get selected. One more thing to scratch off my “bucket list”–get into an MWA anthology. I wish I had some things ready to end out for submission, but alas, I don’t. Maybe “This Thing of Darkness”, after a bit of a tweak, and “Death and the Handmaidens”–again, after another tweak or two–but I hate that I’ve not sent any stories out for submission lately. I also want to finish some of these that I’ve got started.

So. Much. Writing. To. Do.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and hope you’re having as lovely a holiday season as a pandemic will permit.

Silver Bells

Still aglow from the big LSU win Saturday night.

Sadly, the Tigers clearly used up all of Louisiana’s football juju, because the Saints played terribly against the Eagles and lost yesterday afternoon. It did occur to me that one of the reasons I dislike the NFL–at least in comparison to college–is because players I rooted against can wind up on the Saints, and LSU players are drafted to other teams and play against the Saints. It’s hard for me to root against LSU players. And while Jalen Hurts wasn’t a Tiger–he played against us several times and I rooted for him to lose each time–I was a fan of his; I could recognize ability and talent on the field, and I also thought how he handled the whole Tua situation at Alabama was pretty damned classy. So, while I wanted the Eagles to lose, I also wanted to see him play well, and he did, and then I felt like a traitor and I do not have these kinds of conflicts watching college football damn it.

Well, at least not so much anymore. The LSU-Auburn game was a tough one for me until Katrina. After that, I was all in for LSU.

It’s back in the fifties today, and we are in a “high wind alert”–gusts up to 35 miles per hour until around seven, which is fortunately around when I have to get in the shower before heading to the office. It doesn’t feel all that cold this morning in the Lost Apartment, which is interesting; usually when it’s that cold outside it’s even more cold inside, but while I did have to put a ski cap on this morning because my head was cold, other than that it’s not so bad this morning. I slept pretty well (obviously, didn’t want to get out of bed at any point once the alarm started going off) and so feel pretty good this morning. I wound up not going to the gym yesterday, which means having to go this evening (which is fine; I’ll be reluctant and tired, undoubtedly, when I do go) but that’s all right, I can deal.

Yesterday I fully intended to work on Chapter 18, but realized that it probably needs to be mostly tossed and completely rewritten from the start, which is something I was really afraid of having to do–and tossing and starting over means I have to redo the ending of Chapter 17–which I actually realized on Saturday night, while I was thinking about it during the LSU game; the ending of that chapter doesn’t make sense, rendering the eighteenth chapter was completely off the rails, which is going to delay my completion of the revision more than just a little bit. I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out how to redo the chapter, and I think I have it down now–we shall see when I get home from the gym this evening, won’t we?

John Le Carre died yesterday–or rather, his death was made public, at any rate–which came as a surprise to me because I had figured he had already died. It was strange that he died around the time I finally got to read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but deepest sympathies for his family, friends, and professional colleagues. Truly a great writer, the book won an Edgar for Best Novel and Le Carre himself was named a Grand Master in 1984; deservedly so. He was nominated three other times–The Little Drummer Girl was nominated for Best Novel; he was nominated for Best Short Story for “Dare I Weep? Dare I Mourn?” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968; and for Best TV Feature or Miniseries for A Murder of Quality. I am really looking forward to exploring more of his work in the years to come; I am still reeling a bit from the brilliance of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–and have been assured by others whose opinions I respect that the other novels are just as brilliant and well written. I’m only sorry it took me this long to get to his canon.

And so another week dawns; another week of seeing clients and getting writing done and going to the gym and hoping against hope that I will stay rested and motivated and fresh all week to get everything done.

Have a happy Monday, Constant Reader.

Christmas Must Be Something More

Christmas came a little early last night for LSU fans and Louisiana.

23 point underdogs. Only 54 scholarship athletes–one more than required to field a team–and then lost four more players in the first half to injury. Starting true freshmen all over the place on both sides of the ball, including a quarterback starting his first time ever. Playing the team ranked sixth in the country , arguing they deserve a spot in the play-offs, and scheduled to play Alabama next week in the SEC title game. An LSU team that had just lost to Alabama 55-17 last week, and has had offensive records broken against it all year long. Probably the worst LSU team in twenty years, a possible losing season for the first time since 1999, and all of this coming one year after having one of the best teams and seasons in college football. No one, including me and Paul, gave LSU a chance last night.

And in true LSU fashion, they somehow managed to pull off one of the biggest upsets in LSU football history, one of the biggest ones of the season nationwide, and destroyed any hopes Florida had of backing their way into the play-offs. You’re very welcome, Ohio State. It was one of the craziest, wackiest, most insane games I’ve ever seen–and as an LSU fan, I’ve seen some pretty fucking wacky, insane games over the years.

GEAUX TIGERS!

The game started looking like it would be the same as every other game all season, and while I held out desperate, long-time fan hope that LSU would somehow rise to the occasion–I couldn’t believe my delighted eyes as I watched the game unfold. LSU’s defense–beleaguered all season, beaten up and bloodied–somehow managed a goal line stand to open the game. Exciting, but probably not going to happen again, I thought. Sure enough, LSU had to punt and Florida marched right back down the field to go up 7-0. Then–LSU’s true freshman quarterback Max Johnson took the Tigers right down the field to tie it up, 7-7….and on Florida’s next possession, an LSU true freshmen defensive back managed a Pick 6 to put the Tigers up 14-7. Another completely insane interception on the next Florida possession–and thanks to another defensive stand, Florida was later held to a field goal, 14-10. The Gators scored next to make it 17-14–and then more insanity. LSU scored to take the lead back 21-14, forced a fumble in the closing seconds of the first half and kicked another field goal, LSU 24-14. LSU got the ball first in the second half; another field goal: 27-14. And then Florida took control…three possessions, three scores: 31-27. LSU scored another touchdown, and Florida kicked another field goal: 34-34, with time running out. LSU’s drive stalled on third down–and I thought, ah, well, we gave it a good shot, they’ll get a field goal for sure…but wait. In a moment of complete insanity that will go down in college football history, the LSU tight end’s shoe came off, and a Florida player (I won’t name him, since his name will go down in infamy and this moment will be replayed, over and over and over again, for years to come) threw that shoe twenty five yards down the field….for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. 15 yards and an automatic first down. Some questionable play calling put the game on the foot of kicker Cade York: 57 yards, longest of his career and an LSU record. He nailed it, 37-34. Florida tried desperately to get their own in the closing seconds–but missed a 51 yarder and LSU escaped the Swamp with a major upset.

In the fog.

And stunned an entire nation of college football fans.

And when it was all over, all I could do was shake my head. This is why I love LSU football so much; even in mediocre seasons, they will always manage to pull off a signature win and a major upset (10-7 over number 4 Mississippi in 2014; 26-21 over top ten Auburn in 2017 after losing to Troy, the 28-21 upset of Number One Florida in 1997, and there are so many others), and not only knocked Florida out of any shot at the play-offs, but also probably cost Kyle Trask his shot at a Heisman trophy–and going into the game, I thought it was for sure between either him or Mac Jones at Alabama.

As someone said on Twitter last night, “Florida just lost to a the worst LSU team in twenty years’ BACK-UPS.”

LSU still has to play Mississippi this coming weekend; Florida is off to the SEC title game to face the Alabama juggernaut–which could go one of two ways: Alabama will either blow them out, or Florida–playing with nothing to lose–could rise up and smite the Tide. The East has only won the SEC once since 2008 (!), so who knows? I didn’t have much interest in watching the game, frankly, but I might now.

So, yes, it was a lovely Saturday in the Lost Apartment. I finished reading The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–loved it–and also wrote; I didn’t do a lot of cleaning or anything else, but I got some work done on the book which was lovely, finished reading a book, and got to watch LSU beat Florida. The Saints play today–I think at three?–which will give me some time this morning to get some emails answered, some work on the book done, and even a trip to the gym out of the way.

And I slept deeply and well, which was also quite marvelous.

And on that note, tis time to go back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Style

I often talk about how my education in the classics is sorely lacking; this applies across all spectrums and all genres. I was in my thirties when I began to appreciate John D. MacDonald, for example; I didn’t start reading Ross MacDonald until I was in my forties. There are any number of classic works of fiction I’ve not read, and I am sorely under-read in my own genre. I am trying to rectify that as I age; it’s, like almost everything else I do, a project.

I am not nearly as well read in spy thrillers as perhaps I should be; I certainly went through a Robert Ludlum phase (although I am not entirely sure that’s where Ludlum belongs–only rarely are his main characters, at least in the volumes I’ve read–actual spies), and over the last decade I’ve started reading Eric Ambler. I also gave, back in the day, both Helen MacInnes and Alistair MacLean a whirl; and of course, I’ve read some Ian Fleming–but not all. (I really want to reread Live and Let Die to see if it’s as racist as I remember; I also want to rewatch the film again–and not just because a lot of it was filmed in Louisiana; I want to see if the book’s racism carried over into the film, which I strongly suspect it did)

So, John Le Carre. I’ve never read his books nor seen anything adapted from one of them (other than the wonderful The Night Manager starring Tom Hiddleston; highly recommended, and now I need to read the book), but of course I’ve heard of him. His most famous book is probably The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and I acquired a copy of it from somewhere at some point. I recently decided to give it a read–my attempt to improve my education in crime classics at work–and I finished it this morning.

The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, “Why don’t you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up.”

Leamas said nothing, just stared through the window of the checkpoint, along the empty street.

“You can’t wait forever, sir. Maybe he’ll come some other time. We can have the polizei contact the Agency: you can be back here in twenty minutes.”

“No,” said Leamas, “it’s nearly dark now.”

“But you can’t wait forever; he’s nine hours over schedule.”

This is how the book opens, and it does draw the reader directly into the story; the action is already underway, and LeCarre masterfully choses this method–entering the story in progress, with dialogue–to draw the unwary reader into the story. The use of polizei and the year it was written gives the clue that this is very likely occurring in Germany, and most likely the divided city of Berlin. Alec Leamas, a British agent, is the main character of the story, and one of his spies on the other side–East Berlin/East Germany–has had his cover blown and is trying to make his escape to the west. As Leamas watches, the mission fails spectacularly and his final agent on the other side is shot to death by guards as he tries to make through from east to west. Leamas is tired of spying, tired of betrayal, tired of dealing with the worst aspects of international espionage and how it exposes the smallness of most people on either side of the capitalism/communism divide; he is alsi very tired of deaths that eventually mean nothing in the long run. Agents are merely pawns of their states, expendable and disposable. Brought back to England, he is informed that his counterpart in east German intelligence, who has been killing off his agents left and right, must be brought down, and his final job for British intelligence will involve deep cover and a plan that will inevitably lead to the Communists bringing their master intelligence agent, Mundt, down on their own as a traitor.

The Berlin Wall came down during my lifetime; 1989 to be exact, and its construction began the week before I was born. The division of Germany into two halves–one a democracy, the other a Communist autocracy–occurred after the utter defeat and collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945. The Berlin Wall was itself a symbol of the ideological divide between east and west; the cold war itself a world-wide struggle for hearts and minds that didn’t always go so well for the west–primarily because of the West’s determination to uphold Fascist dictatorships that violated the freedoms of its citizens repeatedly as bulwarks against Communism. It’s been thirty-one years since the Wall came down and Communism collapsed in most of the world, and there are at least two generations of Americans who have grown up without the the constant threat of the mushroom cloud’s shadow–yet the right’s constant portrayal of the left as communist/socialist/enemies of American freedoms and liberty persists to this day, and there are any number of American voters still alive (and voting) who will knee-jerk reflexively react to anything being labeled socialism or communism. The Republican party began their decades-long policy of red-baiting during the Truman administration, initially behind the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Nixon was an acolyte of McCarthy’s (which should have been enough to disqualify him from public office thereafter); and it was under Nixon that the right began its gradually lurch toward authoritarianism which we see bearing fruit today.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is dramatically different from any other “international espionage/intrigue” spy novel I’ve read to date–and while LeCarre despised Ian Fleming’s work and often stated that he wrote his novel in reaction to the popularity of the Bond novels, the same moral ambiguity permeates both. Both Bond and Leamas are merely doing their jobs in both, and neither is particularly vested in ideology or politics or even nationalism. They are simply professionals, doing their jobs. LeCarre’s novel isn’t very action-packed, but it is written stylishly, and the suspense comes from whether or not Leamas will prevail in his task of bringing down an important figure in East German intelligence. Once the book got going-after an admittedly slow start–I simply couldn’t put it down, and now I am definitely interested in reading more of LeCarre’s fiction. It’s extremely well done, deeply cynical, and there are twists and turns that not only come as complete surprises–but really, shouldn’t have.

I highly recommend it.

Me!

Hey there, Saturday! It’s gray and raining here in New Orleans, which explains why I slept so deeply and well last night–there’s really nothing like the sound of rain to put me to sleep. (I wish it would rain every night, quite frankly.)

I didn’t write at all yesterday. After I finished work I went to the gym and did my workout, then came home and was quite tired, both physically and mentally. I repaired to the easy chair with a bottle of Sunkist (I’m trying to reduce my caffeine by not drinking as much Coke, but I also like sugary fizzy drinks, so non-caffeinated Sunkist works just fine as a substitute; I am also considering 7-Up) and switched on the television, going into a loop of Ted Lasso reviews, clips, etc. Everyone is already starting to prepare their Best of the Year lists, and I wish that I could do the same, but trying to remember 2020 isn’t particularly easy. I know I didn’t read as much as I usually do, and most of what I did read I’ve forgotten already–even forgotten that I read them, to be completely honest. I also really can’t remember much of what I watched on television or what films I watched or what short stories or documentaries or movies. But Ted Lasso continues to stand out for any number of reasons–it also helps that I regularly recommend it to people who then wind up loving it as much as Paul and I did. I know a book I read early in the year–Elizabeth Little’s Pretty as a Picture–is making a lot of Best of lists; I read that before the pandemic shut down when the world changed, and literally, it seems like it was a million years ago when I read it.

Then again, I also don’t limit myself to things that came out during the calendar year when I make a best-of list; my list is the best things I read or watched during the calendar year, regardless of when they were actually released. My list, my rules. So, at some point I guess I will go through my blog entries and find the things I enjoyed enough to talk about on here, and will thus pull together a list of what I enjoyed most in 2020. (I know that television is going to be a three way tie between The Mandalorian, Schitt’s Creek, and Ted Lasso–and I am also going to have to come up with a foreign-language television so I can mention Dark and Elite and Toy Boy.)

Today I plan to write all day–or most of it–around doing household chores and so forth. There’s literally no need to turn on the television and watch football–although as a diehard LSU fan I’ll have to tune in to the horror that will be the Florida game tonight–and so I might as well take as much advantage of a free-from-football day to write and get caught up on the book. Two chapters a day this weekend will take me to Chapter 21, with only five left in this draft, which will–again, as I have reiterated over and over–give me some down time to let it rest before going over it one last time before turning it in. I am also very excited about the prospect of getting back to work on the Kansas book one last time before turning it in and calling it a day on it as well.

I also want to spend some time reading The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. John LeCarre is widely considered one of the greats when it came to spy novels–or whatever the genre is called–and while it has been quite some time since I read Ian Fleming, Helen MacInnes, Robert Ludlum, and Alistair MacLean, I am very interested in reading LeCarre. The first few chapters of this book haven’t exactly grabbed me, but I do appreciate the writing. One of the things I love the most about the mystery genre is there are so many fascinating and interesting subgenres–the broad spectrum of what is routinely considered mystery fiction is quite vast; everything from traditional mysteries to romantic suspense to police procedurals to international intrigue. (I also want to finish it so I can move on to the new Alison Gaylin, and I also have the new Lisa Unger–and I think I have the new Ivy Pochoda as well) Spending the rainy morning reading really sounds like a lovely way to spend the morning, does it not?

Yesterday I watched The Ruling Class while I was making condom packs for the Cynical 70’s Film Festival. The film hangs entirely on yet another award-worthy performance by Peter O’Toole as the fourteenth Earl of Gurney, who is completely insane–and yet because of the terms of his father’s will (his father was into auto-asphyxiation, which finally went terribly wrong and he hung himself while wearing a military jacket and a tutu) the entire estate is his–and any attempt to break the will means everything will go to a charity. So his vile family cooks up a scheme to get him married and produce an heir, after which they will promptly have him committed. It’s a satire, and occasionally the cast will suddenly break into song-and-dance; which was disconcerting the first time it happened, but after that I went with it. Coral Browne–most famous for playing Vera Charles to perfection in Auntie Mame–is also a standout here as his grasping aunt-in-law; she really should have had a bigger career. When we first meet the new earl he thinks he’s God and insists on being called “J.C.”–and as the family continues to try to either cure him or have him committed, O’Toole could easily have started chewing the scenery and gone over the top; yet he is remarkably restrained and completely believable in the part. He was nominated for an Oscar (losing to Marlon Brando in The Godfather), and deservedly so; his great misfortune as an Oscar contender was to always be nominated against performances that became legendary. The film is quite a send up of the British class system and how it rotted and how it really didn’t make sense from the very beginning–noblesse oblige, indeed, and yes, cynical. It would be interesting to see how a remake/reboot could work, with one of our fine British actors of the present day in the role–but I also can’t see how anyone could ever outdo O’Toole.

And now, I am going to repair to my easy chair with John LeCarre, get under my blankets and hope that Scooter joins me for some kitty cuddling–if he hasn’t gone back upstairs to bed with Paul. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!

Mad Woman

And now we ease into Friday and what will hopefully be an enormously productive weekend for one Gregalicious.

Yesterday was a lovely day, if not as productive as one would have hoped. When five pm rolled around, my mind was fried from the condom packing (I watched The Stunt Man while making them; more on that later) and so instead, I cleaned up around here and did some brainstorming. I did a shit ton of laundry last night, and did some other cleaning as well….but I really hate that I didn’t get to the book yesterday evening. Definitely tonight it’s on my agenda, and hopefully if I stay motivated I can get quite a bit finished this weekend. I am still hoping to get this draft version finished before next weekend, so I can stick to the plan of writing some short stories next week before getting back to the final polish on this manuscript so I can get it turned in. The next deadline–the two months for #shedeservedit–is going to be much rougher on me than this revision was, so getting this one finished sooner rather than later is definitely something I need to be focused on.

We watched The Flight Attendant’s new episodes last night–I’m not sure why the release two at a time, quite frankly–but it definitely feels like the show is being padded to fill it out to the necessary (or needed) length. My mind started to wander during the first of the two episodes, but the second one picked up and became more interesting. Kaley Cuoco is a very charming and likable actress, so playing such an unlikable character is, I am sure, quite a stretch for her as an actress; yet the character is so unlikable–and as the show progresses, becomes more and more unlikable–that it becomes very hard to continue rooting for her as she makes bad decision after bad decision–and of course, she is clearly an alcoholic, and the alcoholic fog helps keep her from dealing with her own deeply problematic past. There were some big reveals in the second episode–although one was pretty predictable from the get-go, and the second one didn’t make nearly as much sense as the writers perhaps wanted it to; I won’t get into it here because SPOILERS, but while the show is very well done there are some things that feel rather self-indulgent and unearned. But Kuoco is, as I said, eminently likable and interesting to watch, so we’ll probably see it all the way through.

I signed a contract yesterday to allow Wildside Press to republish my story “Annunciation Shotgun” on the Black Cat Ebook Site as a “Barb Goffman Presents”, which is very exciting. “Annunciation Shotgun” was one of my first mainstream publications for a story with queer characters–although the queerness wasn’t important to the story, which was part of it’s subversive fun, and made it incredibly fun to write–and I do love the story. It was originally published in New Orleans Noir over a decade ago, and of course, was included in my collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories; in fact, I had originally intended to call the collection Annunciation Shotgun and Other Stories. Ironically, part of the credit for the idea for the story belongs to none other than Poppy Z. Brite; I was reading his novel Liquor and at one point, the book made reference to Ricky and G-man living in a shotgun house on Constantinople Street, and I thought to myself, “Constantinople Shotgun is a great title” and I thought about gay friendships and having that one friend who always seems to be an agent of chaos–the one you’re always have to bail out but he’s so charming and lovable you always, always, get out of bed and throw on some clothes and run bail him out of whatever he’s gotten himself into. It was also born out of my fascination with how we live in such intimate closeness to neighbors here in New Orleans–shotgun houses means you share a wall running the length of the house with someone who might be a complete stranger–and that invasive intimacy with people you barely know is something I’ve turned to, again and again, in my short stories. I started writing it originally when the idea struck; when I was asked to write for New Orleans Noir I was assigned the lower Garden District as my neighborhood, which is where I’ve always lived in New Orleans since moving here–which meant the title no longer worked; Constantinople Street is in Uptown. But Annunciation Street runs through the LGD (it also runs all the way uptown to Riverbend), and it’s an unusual, multi-syllabic name, so I chose it for the title. (I still love the title “Constantinople Shotgun”–but I don’t know that I can get away with writing another “shotgun” titled story; but “Constantinople Camelback” is also not a bad title….hmmmmm.)

But I do love the story, and am glad that this opportunity has presented itself…and I’m making a title note to use “Constantinople Camelback” because of course I am.

I’m also waiting impatiently to get the final cover design for Bury Me in Shadows because I’ve seen it and I love it, and it’s one of my favorites of my own books thus far. The book itself is taking shape nicely; I am refusing to listen to my doubts and imposter syndrome and choosing instead to believe in myself and my abilities and skill as a writer.

So, other than refreshing my mailbox, my plans for the weekend include revising at least four chapters of the book, perhaps some thinking about the short story I want to submit to the newest MWA anthology (I swear to GOD I will get a story accepted into one of those anthologies if it kills me), and I definitely want to finish reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

So, yesterday I watched The Stunt Man. I saw it many many years ago–I think maybe on one of the pay cable networks in the early 1980’s? HBO, perhaps?–and it was so strange and so interesting that it really took my fancy. I fucking loved Peter O’Toole, since I watched him and Richard Burton chew up the scenery in Becket, and this was only the second film of his I’d seen. He got an Oscar nomination for this–losing to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, of all things; O’Toole’s failure to win a competitive Oscar is one of the biggest crimes of the Academy–and while this movie isn’t my favorite of his, I’ve always wanted to rewatch it. Essentially, the plot of the movie is this: Steve Railsback (breathtaking in his youthful beauty) is an escaped convict, or is on the run from the cops (and we never really find out why), and he is also a Vietnam vet. While he is running he accidentally stumbles into a movie set and is responsible (this responsibility never really makes sense to me, and over the course of the movie becomes even more and more weird) for the death of a stunt man. The crazed director, Eli, played by Peter O’Toole, doesn’t want to stop filming as he is on a tight schedule and also doesn’t want to deal with the scandal involved with a stunt man’s s death, so he makes a deal with the Railsback character–fill in for the dead stuntman so they can cover it up until the movie is finished, get paid, or turn himself in. Railsback becomes a stuntman–some of the best scenes in the film are him working with a veteran to learn how to do the stunts without harming himself (note: the performance of the guy teaching him to do stunts–an actual stuntman named Chuck Bail–should have gotten an Oscar nomination at least) and of course, O’Toole is stunningly brilliant, as he is in everything. Barbara Hershey is also terrific as the actress Railsback falls for…I also had no idea it was based on a book, which I am now going to have to read. It’s also very cynical–definitely fits in the the Cynical 70’s Film Festival.

Sigh, Peter O’Toole. So talented, so gorgeous. My Favorite Year is also one of my all-time favorite movies, and his failure to win an Oscar as fading star and alcoholic Alan Swann is yet another Academy crime. It’s one of the great performances of all time, and I’ve also always thought someone should turn that movie into a television series–a behind the scenes look at how a television show like that in the 1950’s was made–with a new guest star in every episode and so on. (Just send me my check, Netflix, and you’re welcome.)

Not sure what today’s film is going to be, but it may be another O’Toole 70’s classic, The Ruling Class.

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

This Love

Today’s working from home adventure will be interrupted by a trip to the office for a working lunch! I love when we get paid to do work and get fed at the same time. One of the drug companies is doing a brief training for us, and they are treating us to lunch from Mona’s on Frenchmen. I miss Mona’s; when I worked all those years at the office on Frenchmen Street I used to treat myself to Mona’s periodically–their gyro plate was my go-to, always, and I’ve been missing my gyros, so you can imagine my delight when I learned about this training.

Huzzah, indeed!

Free lunch is always a plus.

I also have errands to do at some point, and I probably should go to the gym this evening. I plan to be super-productive today–I am going to watch The Stunt Man while I am making condom packs this afternoon as well–and of course, there are any number of household chores that need to be completed. Ugh, so much cleaning and picking up to do around here, as well as writing to do. I made a pretty decent start on Chapter 17 last night, so hopefully tonight I can get through it and Chapter 18; and with a strong push this weekend I can almost get all the way through the rest of the book, which would be amazing and would put me way ahead of schedule. So, that’s the goal for this weekend, at any rate. I also want to finish The Spy Who Came in From the COld, because I got a very advance copy of the next Alison Gaylin novel, The Collective, which I cannot wait to dive into.

If I can get the book finished this weekend, I can then spend next week working on short stories before diving back into the book’s final pass, and I might even be able to get it turned in early. I am also looking forward to getting the final cover design–which I fucking love–at any minute. I approved the final proof of it yesterday, and so it should be arriving in my inbox at any time. I am also feeling a lot more confident about the book itself, which is always a good thing; this final revision, I think, is helping to really pull it all together.

We tried watching His Dark Materials last night. I’ve never read the books, but that doesn’t mean I can’t watch and enjoy the show (I’ve still only read the first book in A Song of Fire and Ice, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying Game of Thrones both before and after I read the book), but there was too much going on that I didn’t understand and thus made it much harder to follow. Paul fell asleep–which should give you an indication of his level of enthrallment–and so I think we’re going to take a pass on it. We also started watching the new Hulu adaptation of The Hardy Boys (if you will recall, I was highly amused that the kids’ series fan pages were in a major uproar about the show and the changes made to it from the books, and I will agree, those changes are substantial enough to make you wonder why they bothered calling it The Hardy Boys–but would a show called something else get any traction?), which I liked just fine, even if it was a lot darker than anything ever seen in the books. I mean, their mother is murdered in the very first episode–the Hardy Boys, at least in the original series, never dealt with anything so dark and scary as a murder–and instead of the Hardys having always lived in Bayport, they live in “the city” and move to “Bridgeport” during the premiere. They’ve also turned Biff Hooper into a girl (I don’t have a problem with this) and overall, it’s not bad and we’ll probably continue watching. (I will, at any rate; Paul may not) I also want to give the CW series adaptation of Nancy Drew another shot; I actually liked the premiere, but never went back to it from there.

And seriously, there is such a book in these rabid fans and their reaction to changes to their sacred texts.

I also would like, at some point in 2021, to start pulling together my own kids’ series. It has been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid, and lately I’ve been feeling that gravitational pull to writing a kids’ series again. Oh, I know I have two books scheduled for deadlines already and that I need to dive into Chlorine once I get these both out of the way–and there’s probably another Scotty book out there I should write (at least the one)–but as I have mentioned more and more lately, I am becoming much more conscious of running out of time; when I was in my forties, it seemed like there was all the time in the world to write everything I wanted to write. Now that I am approaching sixty like a bullet, and more ideas come to me all the fucking time, I am becoming highly aware of the finite amount of time I have and that I am not going to be able to write everything I want to write. It’s a shame–I really have too many good ideas that will probably go to waste–but you know, that’s kind of how life works.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Happy Thursday, everyone.