Author: gregh121

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

Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad?

Well, it’s Sunday morning and there’s a Saints game today; I will probably ignore it, as my blood pressure and heart can’t really take it, and spend the day continuing to keep my head down and try to plough through all this work I have to get done today.

I got very little done yesterday. I had, despite the good night’s sleep and the good rest I got Friday night, it turned out my batteries were still too low for me to get anything requiring a great deal of thinking and thought done. It’s a shame, and I may not have been wise to spend the day resting and watching television and reading, but it was what my brain and my soul needed. I also refuse to beat myself up for taking me time anymore; I am too old and no longer have the energy and/or wherewithal to work constantly without taking time to refresh and recharge and revisit.

The news of course doesn’t help; the constant sense of outrage and anger at events transpiring in the world every day drains me of a lot of energy. Social media, which used to be a fun way of recharging and seeing what people are up to, has turned into a cesspool of lies, ignorance and weaponized hatred. I refuse to engage with trolls or trollish behavior; my rule of social media has always been if I won’t say it to your face I won’t say it on-line. This, of course, can be intensely problematic because I will say it right to your face. But my energies are best spent elsewhere; hearts and minds cannot be changed or altered through nasty social media battling, and I have neither the patience or energy to waste on lost souls with no capacity for reason or logic or compassion for other human beings.

So, today I am going to get cleaned up, do some chores, and I am going to focus on getting some writing/revising/editing done. I had hoped to be finished with the Scotty revision today, but the end goal of being able to turn it in by November 1 is still a distinct possibility, even by not doing any work on it yesterday. One of my primary concerns, as I may have mentioned, was the fear that I am rushing the revisions on these final chapters in an attempt to get it finished on my self-imposed deadline, and yesterday I also realized that I still have an additional three to four days to get this done by the 1st. There’s no need, absolutely no none, to revise three chapters today when I can actually manage one per day and still finish on time. Stop adding stress and pressure to your life, Gregalicious–it will be done when it is time for it to be done.

I got a copy of Joan Didion’s essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and dived into it some yesterday while football games played in the background (I have to admit I enjoyed watching Georgia do to Florida what LSU did to them; and that untimed play touchdown for the win by Kentucky over Missouri was amazing–definitely going down in Kentucky lore, which is usually about near-misses and coming close. As it happened, I thought to myself, you know, these are situations where Kentucky used to always lose. Maybe there has been a sea-change in the Bluegrass State; we will see what happens when they host Georgia next weekend). Didion is a great stylist; the way she uses words and creates sentences and paragraphs with an eye for a very telling detail is extraordinary. (I have some issues with Didion and the lens through which she sees things, but despite that lens the way she writes is exceptional. If I ever sit down and write about Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls, I will probably address them at that time.) And as with any writer who is truly terrific, reading her words made me think about my own, and gave me some thoughts.

As I said at the time, reading Bolin’s Dead Girls made me start thinking about my own essays; I’ve written quite a few over the years, and of course, as my friend Laura points out to me, my blog is essentially me writing a daily personal essay. I don’t know if I ever say anything truly earth-shattering or profound; I don’t think of myself as a great thinker, or being particularly perceptive and incisive in my points of view on many subjects. My intellect–and my ability to write essays–are still things I don’t have a lot of confidence in; thank you, public education and land grant colleges for making me insecure about these things. One of the myriad of reasons I started writing this blog back in December of 2004 on Livejournal was because I wanted to write about things no one would pay me to write about; to share my observations of the world, society, politics, and culture through the lens of a gay man in a highly homophobic world; it was also why I wrote about gay characters and themes in my fiction. My writing, by virtue of my lavender lens, is always going to be somewhat political; despite my privilege as a white man I still didn’t hit the privilege trifecta of straight white male, and while the privilege of being white male is still much better than any other variation of that, gay also negates a great deal of that.

I had originally, and always thought, that if I ever wrote about the Virginia experience, it would be an entire book, which I always jokingly called, to myself, Gay Porn Writer, because that was the way I amused myself throughout the entire banning experience–laughing about me being described in so many newspapers and angry emails and complaints as “gay porn writer Greg Herren.” Over the years since all that nonsense, and over the last few years in particular, I realized that isn’t enough material to write an entire book around, and realized I needed, if I was ever going to write about that experience, another hook. I thought about extrapolating that happening to me in 2004 with the changes in publishing and society since then; but it was always kind of amorphous. I thought maybe using that experience as a jumping off spot to talking about race, gender, and sex might be a great idea. Realizing that the Virginia experience was the basis for a personal essay, a long one, to be added to a collection of other essays I’ve written as well as others I could write, that I could write about my life and my experience and call the collection Gay Porn Writer: The Fictions of My Life was probably the best way to do this, and more workable than simply trying to piece together a non-fiction narrative about how gay work is seen as porn by so many homophobic people because the very word gay makes them think about sucking cock or butt fucking.

And I’ve written so much! I had no idea how much non-fiction I’ve actually done in my career; how many author interviews, how many book reviews and fitness columns and whatever else may have you I’ve written and published over the years.

One of the things I did do yesterday around the laziness was start writing down essay titles I remember having written in my journal, in order to start searching through files and computer drives for them, to put them all into one easily accessible folder for me in the future…which also startled me; I remembered so many, and there are probably many more that I don’t remember. But that’s one of the chores I’ve assigned myself today; start pulling those together. I know my essay from Love, Bourbon Street, about Katrina and the evacuation, is rather lengthy and would have to be the anchor to the book.

And now, back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

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Rhythm is a Dancer

Christ, it’s the Friday before Halloween. The Quarter is going to be full of gays from all over the country all weekend, most of them costumed for at least part of the time.

And 90% of them will have costumes that include either sexy or slutty in the official name: “Sexy Sailor,” “Slutty Nurse,” etc etc.

Boy, do I feel old–because even as recently as ten years ago I would be chomping at the bit to get down there, have a good time, ogle some pretty boys, and have a good time. Instead, I’ll be hunkered down here in the Lost Apartment all weekend, proofing and editing and revising and copy-editing. I also have some reading to do, and there’s this week’s Riverdale–I seriously don’t know why I still watch, other than the really attractive and charismatic cast, because the plots do not make any sense–so yeah, I probably won’t be setting foot outside the house until Monday.

Ah, my first New Orleans Halloween.

It was 1994, and I hadn’t met Paul yet. I had just started my new exercise and diet regimen in late August, and I had never been to anything like the New Orleans Halloween weekend before. I have always had a contentious relationship with my body, and this Halloween was going to be the first time I ever dared to wear a slutty Halloween costume; granted, I was simply going as an ancient Egyptian, which meant, of course, being shirtless. This was a big step for me–I was going to go out in public without a shirt on; and it was a big gay Halloween costume ball. I even bought a headdress to go with the little skirt I had made for the event, and did my eyes with mascara and drew a thick line around my eyes and out to the side with eyeliner. My eyes looked huge. 

I also stupidly wore gold glitter. I never made the glitter mistake again.

I had such a lovely time that weekend. It was, I think, one of the first and best times I ever had as an out gay man–how sad that it took to age thirty-three for that to happen; but it did take me a very long time to deprogram myself from everything I learned growing up. (I’m still finding, from time to time, that I’ve not made as much progress as I would have liked, or hoped, to have made by now) But it was one of the first times that I felt like I was actually a part of the gay community; and I’ve tried, over the years, to write about the sense of belonging one gets when one in is in a sea of gay men dancing to great music and everyone just wants to have a good time; a blessed respite from the dangers and horrors of the every day world. I also distinctly remember being out on the dance floor in the midst of all these happy men dancing (the song was “Go West” by the Pet Shop Boys) and thinking, we are finding joy behind locked doors, forgetting everything that goes on outside and creating an oasis, kind of like in “The Masque of the Red Death.”

I wrote a story in my journal the next morning–while recovering over coffee–that was basically that; a gay adaptation of the Poe story. I’ve never revisited that story, but I just might, now that I am thinking about pulling together a collection of personal essays called Gay Porn Writer: The Fictions of My Life. So, yes, that’s yet another book I am currently working on. I have Bourbon Street Blues to proof, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories to go over, Royal Street Reveillon to finish, and my second short story collection, Once a Tiger and Other Stories, also in progress.

And I am also planning yet another collection, Monsters of New Orleans.

And there’s also the WIP.

This. Is. Fucking. INSANE.

Nothing like some creative ADHD, is there?

I have so much writing work to get done this weekend. And once again, I am having an attack of the lazies this morning. I even did laundry and some cleaning last night to free myself up for today’s work…and yet here I sit, lingering over coffee and social media and not really feeling particularly interested in getting to work.

And on that note, I should probably return to the spice mines.

Have a lovely Saturday, everyone.

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Missing You Now

Friday! Friday! Friday!

I have a very busy weekend looming in front of me. I need to proof the new edition of Bourbon Street Blues, copy edit Royal Street Reveillon (assuming I finish revising it today), and also need to do some editing work on Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I’m frankly trying to decide whether to pull a longer story (“Don’t Look Down”, which I may do as a Kindle single) and add some others in its place. I am leaning that way, quite frankly; I’d like to get these other stories out there, and “Don’t Look Down” could easily wind up being five to ten thousand words longer than it is; I feel that I kind of rushed it, and there are other things that I need to put into it to make the story more cohesive and work better.

Royal Street Reveillon is being revised apace; I only have three chapters left to revise, and an afterward to write. There is no conceivable way this won’t be finished by the end of the weekend, even given my enormous talent for procrastination. So, I can end October by turning this book in, taking a few days to myself to recuperate, and then dive directly into Bury Me In Satin. My goal is to have that particular first draft finished by the end of November–my first ever Nanowrimo (I am not signing up for anything, just planning on using that as my go-to for motivation) and then I intend to spend December tearing apart the WIP. The restructuring is going to require me to probably write another 40 to 50 thousand words; the 98 thousand or so I already have will have to be pared down to about 40. That means a shit ton of writing I will have to store away and hopefully use again for something else. I can always find a way of using that material.

Recycle, recycle, recycle.

But at the same time, despite the wearying thought of all this work in front of me, I am also very excited. I am excited to be finishing yet another Scotty, for the first time in over two years; I am excited to be finishing another novel; I am excited to start writing another; and I am excited to have solved the mystery of the WIP, which has been languishing in my head now for nearly three years.

The most important thing, though, is to not rush; I suspect I was rushing with the last few chapters, so this weekend I am going to go over the ones I finished last night as well as work on the remaining ones.

And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines.

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Back to the Hotel

I have been taking five minute lessons in Italian every day–or trying to do them every day–and while I can’t say for certain that I am actually learning Italian, it kind of is cool. I probably should have gone with French instead, but once I get through these Italian lessons maybe I’ll try French. I’m not looking to get fluent in Italian; I’d just like to–if we ever return to that fabled land–be able to be understood in restaurants and bars and shops and gelato shops. But French…French would probably come more in handy, particularly in doing research on old New Orleans.

But I chose Italian, I am doing my lessons, and we’ll see how it goes. I do love me some Italy, and there’s always that historical mystery set in Florence I’ve been wanting to write ever since I first saw the city…

So many books to write, so little time.

It’s been raining since last night; I woke up sometime in the middle of the night when it started, and as such slept deeply and well; what is it about rain that is so soothing? All day yesterday it rained, and of course, with a tin roof next door right outside my office window, all I wanted to do was curl up under a blanket and go back to sleep. I wonder what it is I’ve always found comforting about the sound of rain? I love rain; I only mind getting wet when I have to go to work or am on my way somewhere that it matters that I look presentable. Other than that, I am all about the rain. There’s nothing I love more than being warm and comfortable inside while it is pouring rain outside. I even like driving in the rain–the only drawback being, of course, moronic other drivers. I mean, it’s understandable that New Orleanians don’t know how to drive in rain, since it rains so rarely here (sarcasm).

I am getting close to being finished with the Scotty draft. There’s absolutely no reason for me not to be finished this weekend–unless I get a bad case of the lazies. This is, of course, always possible–but I really do need to get it done because I have literally no idea of what I’ll be doing with the day job next week. It’s a long story, but our office location is closing and we are moving into a new office space…I’ll probably go into more detail later, when I am in less denial about the actual move.

And yes, for the record, I’ve been in denial about the move since it was announced.

 We continue to watch American Horror Story: Apocalypse, but I’m not really sure why. The story-telling is terrible, it isn’t linear, and both the writing and acting aren’t particularly good–in my opinion. Of course, Joan Collins steals every scene she is in–give this woman her own television show immediately!–which makes it worth watching when I know she’s going to be in an episode. But I always check social media after I watch and apparently Paul’s and my opinion about this train wreck of a season are the minority.

Which, again, is fine.

Two more days till the weekend, Constant Reader! We can do it!

And now back to the spice mines.

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Blowing Kisses in the Wind

Rereading ‘salem’s Lot again, after many years, has proven to be quite a treat: there was clearly a reason why I loved this book so much and why I’ve reread it about a gazillion times. It has always been my favorite vampire novel, and certainly one of my favorite horror novels. It scared the shit out of me when I first read it back when I was a teenager, and it has always entertained me, every single I’ve read it, even though I know what’s going on in the town, what’s going to happen, who lives, who dies. I remember there’s been talk over the years–I think even Stephen King may have aided and abetted this at times–that there might be a sequel; I’ve long since given up on that hope–despite always wanting to know whatever became of Ben Mears and Mark Petrie…and did they ever return to that awful town in Maine?

In the 1980’s, I decided that I wanted to be a writer like Stephen King. I started writing horror short stories, and even came up with an idea for a full-length horror novel called The Enchantress; I still have those four chapters I wrote in my files before I finally put it away for good. The book itself, while influenced most strongly by King, was also influenced by Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon, which I had also recently read–I’d loved Ghost Story and If You Could See Me Now–and wanted to write about, the way King did so often, a small town where something supernatural–and terrifying–happens. I blatantly copied the narrative structure of Floating Dragon (oh look! Four different point of view characters! One an old man, one a child, one a man in his early thirties, and the other a woman with psychic abilities that have basically cursed her life!) but I was also trying to weave some other elements into the story that might not have ultimately worked; it was set in the panhandle of Florida, for one thing, and it had to do with the curse of a witch on four different families (a la Floating Dragon, only he didn’t have a witch), and I don’t think that would have ultimately worked. The idea was also built around a concept I had, an idea, about evil, killer mermaids. I eventually used some of the story and the concepts for Dark Tide, whose original working title was Mermaid Inn.

It’s funny that rereading ‘salem’s Lot brings back such weird memories, isn’t it? I may get around to writing The Enchantress someday–it just can’t be set in Florida, because it needs cliffs–so maybe I’ll move it to a fictional town on the California coast.

Like King–another thing I stole from him–almost all of my books are connected to each other in some way. For years, the connection between the Chanse and Scotty series were my cops–Venus Casanova and Blaine Tujague–appeared in both series; why have different homicide cops in the same city? I had originally intended to connect everything; Woodbridge in California, from Sleeping Angel and Sorceress are connected to the small town in Kansas from Sara; I don’t recall off the top of my head how Lake Thirteen plays into my world-building; but I think the Chicago suburb where the main character in that book is from was the same suburb that the kid from Sara was from, and so on. I always wanted to go back and write some more about Woodbridge; I kind of saw my teen/young adult fiction as being similar in type and style as the Fear Street series by R. L. Stine; which were all in the same town and often minor characters in one book was the main character in another. (Woodbridge was loosely based on Sonora, where some of my college friends were from; I visited them several times up there in the mountains and it was stunningly beautiful up there. One of the few great things about spending the 1980’s in Fresno was accessibility to Yosemite, Sierra National Forest, and Kings Canyon.)

I may get back to this at some point; Bury Me in Satin is connected in that it returns to the part of Alabama where the main character in Dark Tide is from, and more connections might develop as I write the book. I’ve pretty much decided to try to get the first draft of Bury Me in Satin written for Nanowrimo, which is something I’ve never done before; but why not? I am not going to officially participate, but why not use it as a goal to get the first draft of the story done?

I am on chapter nineteen of the revision of Royal Street Reveillon; one big strong last push is all it will take for me to get that finished by the end of the month, and I am enormously pleased at the prospect. It’s shaping up nicely; I think there are still a few holes in the story I am going to have to figure out how to plug later, but that’s perfectly fine.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Everything Changes

Tuesday, and this week progresses. Time is running out on my deadline for Royal Street Reveillon, so I really need to buckle down and get to work. No more excuses. I finished the revision of Chapter 16 yesterday and started Chapter 17; there are eight chapters to go, and nine days left in the month. This is utterly and completely do-able, of course; it’s a matter of making myself do it, quite frankly, and not allowing laziness or some other shiny object get in the way.

And trust me, Constant Reader, there are plenty of shiny objects in the life of one Gregalicious.

It’s gray and raining this morning in New Orleans; naturally, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work at home again, or to simply go back to having an out-of-the-house part time job, like I used to have. It’s funny how I never seemed to have enough time during the day to get all the things done I needed to get done; but I suspect the truth was I always put things off because, since I didn’t particularly or especially need to budget my time, it seemed like I had all the time in the world to get the things done that I needed to get done….until I started running out of time; I do remember horrifying mornings when I glanced at the wall calendar and realized, oh no, the book is due next month and I’m not even half-way finished.

Obviously, for me, the ideal would be to get back to that place; where the at-most time spent away from the apartment during the day would be a maximum of twenty hours per week, not including errands or the gym. I like to dream that when and if I ever get into that position financially again, that’s when I’ll start working on ambitious writing projects that might take months or years to research; that I’ll continue writing the things I love to write and creating stories and characters that I enjoy, and the big and exciting books I want to write will get written.

Hope springs eternal.

But I also have to get past my tendency towards procrastination, which is exacerbated by my own laziness.

Ah, well.

I suppose I should get back to the spice mines.

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Wildside

Well, Monday has yet again rolled around, and I am staring down yet another work week.

The weather changed again yesterday–it was in the low sixties when I woke up–so there is hope now that perhaps fall has actually, finally, arrived in the Crescent City. I don’t mind the heat, but I do get weary of it by October–particularly when it’s late October and usually it starts cooling down in mid-September. I’m choosing not to look further ahead in the weather forecast; if it’s going to get unseasonably warm for us again, I’d rather not know ahead of time.

I got another short story rejection the other day; the masochism of being a writer is kind of like when you have an aching tooth and you can’t stop irritating it with your tongue. It was a lovely rejection–something I’ve noted lately from markets I’ve submitted to has been the return of the lovely, well-worded, take the sting out of it rejection emails. I no longer get angry or depressed or wounded when a story is rejected; as a long time anthology editor myself I know what the process is like and rejection doesn’t necessarily, if ever, mean you really suck at this do us all a favor and stop, okay? It is what it is. I continue to try to write the stories I want to write, say the things I want to say, figure out what it is I want to figure out, with each and every story I write. Sometimes the longer a story sits without being finished, or without being revised, is better. I had another couple of thoughts yesterday, for example, for “Never Kiss a Stranger” that I think are going to be key to making the story richer and deeper, more powerful to read, and hopefully connect with potential readers better. I’m glad I’m not rushing this story, but letting the characters and the time live with me a while is helping me to know them better and is turning the story into something much better than I’d originally envisioned for this tale.

And that’s a lovely, lovely feeling.

I opted not to watch the Saints game. The LSU game on Saturday evening was enough stress for me to voluntarily take on over the course of a single weekend; I chose to have s relaxing day of getting things done and cleaning up little chores I tend to put off; making the house more neat and tidy always helps clear the cobwebs from my brain and allows me to free-associate; I make lots of notes and also identify problems in stuff currently in progress that I hadn’t thought of or noted before.

(Okay, I did tune in for the last two minutes of the game. I mean, wow. Seriously, Saints? WOW. I swear, both the Saints and LSU will be the death of me this season.  A missed extra point sealed the win? Oh, my heart…

I am savoring my reread of ‘salem’s Lot, taking it slowly so I can get to know the characters and the setting all over again; enjoying how King builds his slow burn of a novel and sets everything up for the heart-pounding non-stop tension of the second half of the book.

I was also thinking that October is here, and usually I pay tribute to the books and movies and short stories in the horror genre that I’ve enjoyed and have had some kind of influence on me, as both a reader and a writer. And here it is, with only ten days left in the month and I have yet to even acknowledge October and horror; despite having watched (and greatly enjoyed) The Haunting of Hill House this month.

This coming weekend is the bye week for LSU before the Alabama game, so I will be at loose ends on Saturday. I do want to watch the Georgia-Florida game–crucial to determine who will win the SEC East–but other than that, with no LSU game to watch I will most likely have to entertain myself in other ways on Saturday; which means perhaps going to the library at long last and finally getting a New Orleans Public Library card–something I’ve been intending to do for a very long time. The Latter Library on St. Charles is very close to my post office; I can simply make a quick detour there after picking up the mail on Saturday and get my card. The Latter Library is, if you are not acquainted with it, one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen. It’s housed in an old St. Charles mansion, which supposedly is not only haunted but was at one time home to a silent screen star–but it also has an enormous plot of land., taking up an almost entire block of St. Charles.

And now, back to the spice mines. I have a lot to get done this week, as the end of October looms large on the horizon.

Have a great day, Constant Reader!

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Do I Have to Say the Words?

GEAUX TIGERS!

It wasn’t a pretty win by any means, but a win is a win–and LSU is now the only team to have beaten four teams that were ranked at the time of the game. With Ohio State’s stunning blow-out loss to Purdue, the Tigers should be ranked in the top four (probably number four) when the rankings come out..and also setting up a huge game against Number One ranked Alabama… look completely unbeatable. Regardless, this has been a wonderful dream season so far–particularly when you take into consideration everyone had LSU dead and buried before the season started. The defense looked amazing against Mississippi State last night; the offense moved the ball decently at times, but for the most part looked sluggish and off. But on a night when the offense wasn’t clicking, we still managed to beat a top 25 team 19-3.

Yes, this season has been joyous, for the most part.

I did all my chores and ran all my errands yesterday. I was too nervous about the game to get much else of anything done, other than random tasks that don’t require much thinking; filing, organizing, cleaning, dishes, putting groceries away, and so forth. I did some thinking about writing while my  hands were busy, which sort of counts, and I did look over the Scotty book. I do like getting organized and preparing my thoughts. I am going to try to get my revisions done this morning before the Saints game; knowing I will become completely useless afterwards. But at least I don’t spend as much time as I used to parked in front of the television, flipping back and forth between games I don’t care very much about.

That’s something, at any rate, isn’t it?

The Saints game isn’t until two this afternoon, so I have plenty of time to answer emails and do some editing/revising/cleaning in the meantime. This is actually kind of nice; I slept later than I’d intended this morning but again I feel amazingly rested, which is kind of nice; and I remain hopeful that I’ll be able to get everything done that I need to get done today. It would be lovely to get three chapters finished; but I’ll have to see how that goes as I start writing. I’d also like to get my floors done today, and maybe some more reading of Empire of Sin; I also need to mark up my old journal with sticky notes for ideas on works in progress so I don’t forget about those notes. I used to have such an amazing memory; it’s almost tragic how much my brain has slowed and how overloaded it has become in my late fifties. Tragedy, truly.

Yesterday, in the afternoon lull before the LSU game, rather than reading something new I took down my hardcover copy of Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot, which is one of my favorite novels of all time, and dipped into it again from the beginning. If The Stand is my favorite King novel–of several to choose from; if pressed I name it as my favorite but it’s on a pretty equal par with several others, including Christine, Carrie, The Dead Zone, It, Misery, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman, and Firestarter, to name just a few–‘salem’s Lot also holds a special place in my heart for any number of reasons. For one, it’s a book I bought solely because of the name of the author–the first time I did this with King, and from this one on I anxiously awaited the new King novel every year–because I’d never read anything remotely like Carrie before, and I was curious to see what he would do in this new book. I was living in Kansas when it was released in paperback; I actually saw in the grocery store line at Safeway with my mother and I asked if I could have it. She said yes in this instance–I always was asking for a book whenever we were anywhere shopping; whenever we went to malls she would send me into a bookstore while she shopped; the most exciting thing my mother could ever say to me was You can have a book–and I started reading it in the car on the way home. I remember it was a Saturday; I  remember retiring to my room with a bag of taco-flavored Doritos (also a treat; my mom would either get me a bag of those or barbecue Fritos whenever she went to the grocery store and I would spend the afternoon methodically eating the entire bag while reading in my bed), and starting to read. Living in Kansas I had no idea what books were about–there were no book reviews in the Emporia Gazette, the only paper we had access to–and so I could only go by the blurb on the back of the book or on the first page inside the front cover. I had no idea what was going on in this little town in Maine until King revealed it halfway through the book. Also, when you bear in mind that Jerusalem’s Lot’s population at the beginning of the book was just over a thousand and I was living in a small town with a population just under a thousand; it was raining that day and as I read, the rain turned into a thunderstorm that seemed to last for hours; and right at the time King revealed that the secret supernatural thing going on was vampires the wind blew a tree branch against the screen of the window directly next to my bed–well, you can see why I may have uttered a half-scream and dropped the book. I remember my heart was racing and I was breathing hard; I had to go wash my face and take some deep breaths before I could pick up the book, find my lost page, and finish reading it. I stayed up until three in the morning finishing the book. ‘salem’s Lot has always had a place in my heart as the first book I ever read that truly terrified me; I’d read horror fiction before but I’d never had such a major physical reaction of sheer terror and shock as I had in that book. (I had also barreled through Carrie in one day, but it didn’t terrify me so much as suck me into a fast-moving train of a story about a horrible tragedy; I’d never read anything like it before–and this would prove to be the case with so many of King’s novels for me.) Reading ‘salem’s Lot made me a King fan for life; a Constant Reader, if you will. Eventually, other distractions and changes in my life also changed my King fandom; I don’t always necessarily buy his new novel the day it is released and put everything else on hold as I read it in a day or two, shutting everything else in the world out. (I just, for example, bought The Outsider yesterday; I still don’t have a copy of Sleeping Beauties, and I’ve never finished reading The Dark Tower series, haven’t read Bronco Billy or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon or Black House or Doctor Sleep or 11/22/63 or End of Watch yet; I know, I am a terrible King fan.)

But one of the things I loved the best about King–one of the reasons I always felt, back in the days when he was dismissed as simply another hack genre writer–was the way he depicted small towns and the people who populate them; Jerusalem’s Lot was the first of his great small towns, to be followed by Castle Rock and later, Derry. King’s small town, and the people who populate them, are so realistic, so real, so these are my next door neighbors, that I’ve always loved his work and characters and their reality, their realness. This is why his horror works so well–the reader is invested emotionally with his characters–which is also one of the reasons why my least-favorite King novel, The Tommyknockers, is my least favorite. (I also want to revisit that novel at some point; just as I want to reread Pet Sematary again. Both are amongst the few earlier King novels that I’ve only read once and never went back to; I used to reread King all the time.) This is also, I think, why Netflix’ adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House was so powerful, and why I enjoyed it so much: so much was done with character and their relationships with each other that I became vested; I cared what happened to the Crains.

And isn’t that, ultimately, what makes any work resonate with the reader? The ability to identify with, and care about, the characters?

I am really looking forward to continuing my return visit to Jerusalem’s Lot.

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Everything About You

Saturday morning. A good night’s sleep had me up earlier than I would have thought this morning, but I feel rested and good; I was exhausted last night for some reason; Friday, perhaps? I don’t know. But I feel good this morning, I only have one errand to run–which is the grocery store, and I’ll try to get that out of the way momentarily–and some cleaning and organizing needs to be done. I also need to do some writing and editing today; yesterday I was too tired to work on the Scotty revision when I got home, so I need to get caught up on that today.

GEAUX TIGERS!

LSU plays their fifth ranked opponent today, Mississippi State. The Bulldogs roll into Tiger Stadium tonight ranked 22nd in the country. They have some nice wins under their belt, and some losses to quality teams–last week they surprised Auburn–and so this is by no means going to be an easy game for LSU. There could be a let down after last week’s huge, physical win over Georgia; Mississippi State is going to come in hungry; and LSU has to be careful not to be over-confident, must stay focused, and try not to look ahead to the big Alabama game in two weeks–which won’t be as important should LSU lose to Mississippi State. I will undoubtedly be extremely tense during the game, but am going to try my best not to get overwrought and overly involved in the game. It’s supposed to be fun to watch for Christ’s sake.

I also have some reading to do, and some editing that needs to get done, and an author interview I need to get started. My intent is to clean out my email inbox before leaving for the grocery store, as well as get some morning cleaning done here in the kitchen/office. My day job is moving at the end of this month, and I will no longer, in the new building, have my own office; I shall be in a cubicle like everyone else–and so have had to empty the bookcases in my office as well as take down all the pictures from my walls. I do not have the wall-space here in the Lost Apartment to adorn my walls with these pictures–mostly of our trip to Italy–and I’ve been trying to squeeze the books in wherever I can, which for obvious reasons has not been easy to do.

I’m still reading Empire of Sin, and am hoping to get further along in that this weekend as well; it may be in my lap during the game tonight. My reading has slowed down dramatically; and I still haven’t done a blog entry about Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls. Maybe later today.

I finished watching season three of The Man in the High Castle last night, and by far and away, this third season is the best of the show so far. It is interesting to me how well they’ve done with the character of John Smith, an American who fought against the Axis during the lost war and has switched sides, climbing the ladder in the American nazi hierarchy and also being groomed for leadership by Himmler himself. Underplayed beautifully by Rufus Sewell, the personal journey of this monster has sort of humanized him–which is, in and of itself, terrifying; this man is a monster and the antithesis of a patriotic American; everything a true American patriot would despise–and yet, those personal problems and tragedies and little heartbreaks in his family life make him almost win the audience’s sympathies…then he does something monstrous and you remember, there are no good Nazis. This show, and its message, are particularly real and powerful and important, given these times in which we live.

In the early 1990’s, I has an idea for a dystopian series of novels, built around the collapse of the American republic and the rise of a totalitarian state in its place; which I was going to call There Comes a Tide. I have all my notes and ideas in a folder somewhere, which means I might take a look at them sometime soon and see if it’s something I want to write in the next year or so. I have a y/a on deck to write after I finish the Scotty revision, and I am also going to be working on the WIP in the meantime as well; I kind of wanted to try writing a cozy after the first of the year and I also have a noir I want to write, in addition to a paranormal suspense thriller I’ve been toying with the last few months. There’s simply never enough time to write everything I want to write, and all the procrastination doesn’t help.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I’ve also decided to pull a long story from my collection and replace it with two shorter stories; the longer story will probably go up as a Kindle single at some point, and I also am in the midst of another long story that will probably turn into a Kindle single as well: “Never Kiss a Stranger.” I’ve recognized that story needs to be longer but it’s not enough of a story to be a novel…and there’s always Kindle single.

And now, back to the spice mines. I need to wash the bed linens, put some dishes away, get these floors cleaned, organize and file….and stop procrastinating.

Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!

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Friday I’m in Love

Well, Constant Reader, we did it. We’ve made it through yet another week of work, and the weekend looms, with big games on deck for both the Saints and LSU.

The weather change has come at long last; with cooler temperatures, and now when I wake up early in the morning, it’s still dark outside. I dislike immensely rising when it’s still dark–or at least murky–outside; it feels like I am getting up in the middle of the night, and rightly or wrongly, my body rebels against that. One has to hate that.

Last night I finished revising Chapter 15, which puts me at three-fifths of the way finished with the revision. Once you’re over that midway hump, it always seems to go much faster. I do think I’ll be able to get this finished by the end of the month and turned in, which is lovely, after which I can focus on Bury Me in Satin as well as deconstructing the WIP. I am itching to get back to that as well as get started on the new y/a, so that makes the revising of Royal Street Reveillon even more tedious for me. I’m also gathering all kinds of research materials I’m going to need to get through relatively soon, so I can get started on those projects as soon as I finish with Scotty.

I am really liking the idea of putting together a collection called Monsters of New Orleans. I’ve done very little horror; and a lot of what I do write probably wouldn’t be considered true horror, but like mystery there are many shades of horror. I do have some stories already that would fit into this collection, but the point is also to fictionalize true stories as well–and there are many murderers and ghosts and horrible people in the city’s history to write about…and putting a modern, fictional spin on them would be all kinds of awesome.

So much to write, so much to read, so little time.

I’m still working my way through Empire of Sin, which is really terrific.  I am now at the part of the book where jazz is being born in New Orleans; and in all honesty, it’s really interesting to me. This surprises me. I like jazz, but I don’t love jazz; and I’ve never written about the New Orleans music scene primarily because I don’t know much about it and it’s a kind of music–jazz–that’s never resonated with me. I also fully accept that this probably makes me seem like a barbarian or a philistine to some; this is also perfectly fine with me. But if I am going to write about a gay prostitute in the days of Storyville, this is stuff I need to know…and I should probably start listening to the music, so I can get a grasp of how it sounds and how it makes people feel.

I am also almost finished with The Man in the High Castle; I’ll probably finish watching Season 3 tonight. It brings up a lot of interesting questions.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Have a lovely Friday.

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