Author: gregh121

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

Cover Me

The first day of the new year: 2018. It is currently twenty-eight degrees outside; which is hideous for New Orleans. Much as I would rather spend the day curled up beneath blankets with a good book today, I am venturing out for an early lunch with a friend before heading back home for the LSU bowl game. I am currently wrapped in a wool blanket sipping my first cup of coffee. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of my bed this morning; it was comfortable and warm in there under all those blankets. Tomorrow I have to work a long day which will entail getting up quite early; I am not looking forward to that as the temperature is supposed to be around the same as it is this morning.

Not a pleasant start to the new year, but i am grateful that at least our thermostat is in the positive numbers.

Yesterday after lunch at Commander’s, I stopped at Garden District Books and bought myself a blank journal; while watching the Saints lose (seriously, they couldn’t have played worse if they were trying to lose) I wrote three pages of notes on the WIP in it; and they are good notes. Sometimes, it’s necessary to go back to your roots to kick the cobwebs out of your mind and get things together. I’m glad I remembered that I used to do this with my journals, and I can carry it with me everywhere, just like I used to; and I can just scribble notes, even just brainstorming and free association the way I used to rather than rabidly checking my phone.

So, here are my goals for 2018. I prefer to set goals rather than make resolutions; goals sounds, for one thing, more positive, and not reaching a goal isn’t like failing; breaking a resolution sounds almost criminal, whereas not making a goal doesn’t mean the goal isn’t still attainable; just taking longer than originally anticipated. So, here goes.

Get to the gym at least twice a week. I was doing quite well with doing crunches at home several days a week, until I got sick a few weeks ago and it flattened me out. It will be easier to get to the gym now on the weekends since football season is past; ideally I should make it three times per week; but two is better than once; and once is better than never. Getting into a regular routine will help me get back into better physical condition; being in better physical condition will help me sleep better and help regulate my vitals–blood pressure, etc.

Write a short story every month. I always try to write more short stories; I set this goal every year, and I am even going to allow myself a little more wiggle room here with this one; I am going to expand it to mean just working on a short story every month. I have any number of short stories in a draft form, either unfinished or in need of rewriting/revising/polishing, and the sooner I can get those files off my desk the more room I will have on my desk.

Get an agent. This was a goal last year that I didn’t achieve; but last year I did start submitting queries. Now that I’ve ripped off that bandage, I am going to get going on this and get somewhere with it. However, part of this is having something to submit; and the WIP needs more work. So, I am setting May 1 as the goal date of having the WIP in shape and submittable. That gives me four months, and I should be able to get it done in that amount of time.

Finish the new Scotty and a young adult novel. I’ve had to stop the current Scotty because it was kind of a mess; I am debating whether any of the chapters I’ve written are even usable. I’ll need to reread them all, of course, but I am thinking that not only does the title need to be changed but the book itself needs to be overhauled. This is do-able. I also have about 40k of another y/a novel that’s been haunting my files for several years. It needed about another 20k, and I wasn’t totally satisfied with the plot. I think I know how to fix the plot and get it up to about 60k; with a goal of getting that finished by the end of the summer.

Pay down my debt. Buying a new car and having to have full insurance coverage on it put a major dent in my finances this year; so much so that it’s almost frightening how close to the edge I’ve skated at times. Obviously, the best way to not have financial concerns would be to pay down the debt that I owe, rather than just, as I said, skating along the way I have been, which means tightening my belt and maybe doing without. I am already denying myself new books until I clean out my TBR pile substantially (I will make exceptions, of course, to this rule), and frugality is the key to this year.

Do a better job of staying on top of the household chores, and maybe add a cleaning project each week. The condition of the Lost Apartment is really appalling, and trying to stay on top of things has been much harder than it should have been, but if I add one extra chore to the weekly ones rather than trying to do a massive, over-all all-at-once clean, I can get the house back under control in a matter of months and having it under control after a matter of months is better than never at all, right?

Those are all attainable, and putting them out there in public does make it slightly more likely that I will get them done.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines. I need to finish the laundry and grab a shower before lunch.

Here’s a Happy New Year hunk to kick off the year for you, Constant Reader, and as always, thanks for being here.

 

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Lucky Star

New Year’s Eve, a time to look back on the past year and reflect on goals either achieved or missed; to look at what was accomplished and what wasn’t, to think about and make plans for the future year.

So, what kind of year was 2017? I didn’t achieve many, if any, of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I intended to write more short stories (which I sort of did) and publish more short stories (which I didn’t really do); I intended to start my search for an agent (which I did); but I didn’t seem to get much else done. I didn’t start working out more, but I did lose weight–so that one’s kind of a toss-up; I weigh 15 pounds less than I did a year ago. I did buy a new car, which was also a goal, and I’ve not regretted it once, despite the impact on my finances. I also didn’t write nearly as much this year as I had hoped/wanted to; there were no new novels published under my name this year; which is the first time I think that’s happened since 2005. That doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did in 2005, to be honest; my self-worth and identity as an author apparently no longer requires me to write and publish at the insane pace that I used to keep.

I read a lot of good books in 2017, discovered a lot of great new-to-me writers, watched some amazing television shows and movies, but creatively I spent most of the year in stasis; just kind of getting through the day every day and then watching as those days turned into weeks and then months. I started a number of short stories that I either didn’t finish, or finished but didn’t know how to fix. The WIP, the manuscript I am shopping to agents, needs some more work. I had started sending it out in the fall, but I am going to hold back on it for a few more months as I revise and polish it some more. I always felt it was missing something, even though I thought it was a good manuscript, and I’ve recently figured out what that something is; and I’ve also realized part of the problem I had with the manuscript and fixing it has to do with my own stubbornness. It’s starting point needs to be before where I start the book; I flash back to the beginning of the story and that kind of is not only a cliche but also steps on the action. Also, where I start the book itself is kind of hackneyed and cliched. There’s another subplot or two that needs to be woven into the story, and I  need to develop my main character more; and there are things about him that I know that are kind of crucial to the story that don’t actually appear in the story, and some of the relationships between the characters need to be developed and deepened, more layered. It’s a very basic story right now, and it needs to be more complex; and it needs to go deeper into its theme.

So, that’s something, at any rate.

I also had a good year in that I was nominated for a Macavity Award (Best Short Story, “Survivor’s Guilt”) and an Anthony Award (Best Anthology, Blood on the Bayou). Both were completely unexpected surprises, and enormously gratifying.  As Constant Reader knows, I struggle with short stories and have very little to no self-confidence when it comes to them. So, to get nominated for a Macavity Award for a short story I wrote? That was probably one of the most meaningful things to happen to me in my career thus far. And I was nominated against some amazing writers–I read all the stories–and wasn’t in the least surprised when Art Taylor won; any of the other nominated stories were award-worthy. It was such an honor.

I was so certain I wasn’t going to win the Anthony Award that Paul and I booked our plane tickets home from Toronto for Sunday morning; I was boarding my flight to New Orleans when I started getting texts and tweets and Facebook messages that I’d won. It, too, was an incredibly lovely surprise, and I was extremely happy for the contributors, and thankful to them for their amazing stories.

I also realized this year that something I used to do when I was writing–something that was highly effective, and I don’t know why I stopped doing it–was write about whatever I was working on in long-hand in notebooks. I started doing that again this year, in these last few months–and it proved incredibly helpful with a couple of things I was working on at the time. So, I am going to make that a goal for the new year; to return to buying a blank book to carry around with me at all times, to use for notes and questions I have for myself, for developing characters and things. I think I stopped using the blank books because I started keeping physical files, and it was easier to use a spiral notebook for notes that could be removed and put in the files. There’s no reason I can’t stop doing that, either; but the point is that I need to start doing things like that in long-hand again. It was an excellent way of brainstorming and free-associating that I’ve sadly gotten away from over the years.

Despite getting off to a rough start, LSU also had a great season, one with lots of highlights and excitement, and wound up 9-3 on the year, with a chance for a ten-win season with a bowl win. The future also looks fairly bright for the Tigers going forward; the Saints are also having a great season. Back in September this football season was looking really bleak; who could have foreseen that both of our teams would have such a remarkable turnaround?

I had a lot of fun this past year. Last January I did two library events in Alabama, which were way fun, and was invited back again this year; I also spoke at an event at the University of Mississippi as well as at the Alabama Book Festival (both events were in teh same week, so I was driving around the deep South quite a bit then), and of course, Bouchercon in Toronto was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to this year’s event in St. Petersburg, and I am also looking forward to a trip to England this spring.

We’re having lunch later at Commander’s Palace; our annual New Year’s Eve meal with Jean and Gillian, which is always a lovely way to ring out the old year. I’ve started reading John Hart’s Redemption Road–I greatly enjoyed his The Last Child and Iron House, so am greatly looking forward to this one. Next weekend I am appearing at Comic Con at the Convention Center every day; that should also be a lot of fun.

And so, I should get some things done before it’s time to go to lunch. The spice mines are always calling me, so here’s one last hunk for 2017, Constant Reader, and have a lovely and safe and happy new year.

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You Might Think

Friday night I finished reading Lisa Unger’s exceptional The Red Hunter. I don’t remember who originally told me to read Lisa Unger’s work, but whoever it was, I really need to say thank you again! She is an exceptionally terrific writer, and as I make my way through her canon, it is startling how fresh, new and completely original every single volume is.

Take The Red Hunter, for example, her April 2017 release. Unger’s books are always about the damage humans do to each other, and how that damage and/or abuse creates ripples that eventually become waves that affect the present, and the necessity of coming to terms with that past in order to solve the problems of the present. The Red Hunter is, at it’s core, the story of a house in rural New Jersey; an old derelict place that is falling to pieces. Claudia, a publishing executive whose personal life is in shambles, decides to renovate the house as a project and blog about it, moving into it with her daughter, Raven. But the house has some terrible secrets.

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There’s nothing about me that you would ever notice. I am neither especially thin, nor overweight. My face will not be one you remember. With dark eyes and pale skin, hair the color of straw, cheeks round and just rosy enough that you won’t wonder if I’m ill, I will blend into the sea of other plain faces you saw before and after as you went about your day. nothing about my clothes will capture your notice. No brands that incite jealousy, or anything revealing, no stains, maybe just wrinkled or worn enough that you’ll dismiss me as someone without much money, though not poor enough to be in need. If I’m wearing a uniform, I don’t even exist. I am the checkout girl at the grocery store, or the maid that cleans your hotel room, the girl woh answered the phone, or the young lady at the information desk. No, you would say later, you can’t recall her name or what she looked like, not really. The truth is you don’t see me; your eyes glance over me, never coming to rest. But I see you.

This is Zoey Drake, one of Unger’s point of view characters. Zoey is a young college student at NYU, who studies martial arts and works in a coffee shop; she house and cat sits for a place to stay. Zoey sees herself as the Red Hunter, a vigilante/Batman of sorts, who stops crimes from happening when she comes across them and always dresses nondescriptly; she is trying to right a cosmic wrong. When she was a young girl, her parents were brutally murdered in front of her, and she too was injured and left for dead; she survived that horrible night, but has always been looking, ever since, for answers to the question of who murdered her parents and why.

Claudia herself is surviving a brutal attack; she was assaulted and raped brutally years earlier, which wound up damaging her and her own marriage in ways she couldn’t even comprehend at the time. There has always been a question as to whether her daughter, Raven, is her husband’s or her rapist’s. This is part of the reason why Claudia has brought Raven the old house in the New Jersey countryside; she is trying to rebuild the house and their lives at the same time. Raven has her own curiosity about the question of her paternity.

Their lives are destined to cross because of the house; you see, the house is where Zoey lived with her parents and where they died in front of her. The killers were looking for something in the house that has never been found…and Zoey’s actions have set everything into motion again so that the tangled skeins of their livers are going to cross again as the mystery of how and why what happened when she was a little girl rears its ugly head again, and now all of them are in terrible, deadly danger.

Wow. This book is a thrill-ride from start to finish; fully developed characters that you care about, a fascinating unfolding of a crime with twists and turns that keep the reader balanced firmly on the edge of their seat.

Seriously, if you aren’t reading Lisa Unger, what the hell is wrong with you?

If This Is It

Sue Grafton died this week.

Bookstop in Houston, the late 1980’s. I hadn’t read mysteries in years, abandoning the genre in the late 1970’s because I was tired of the straight white male point of view, and I wasn’t really aware there was any other, to be honest. I’d always loved the genre; as a kid I read every mystery I could get my hands on, from Mary C. Jane’s books for kids to the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew to Trixie Belden to The Three Investigators. I read all of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen. I was a huge fan of the Gothic suspense writers, Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart. I read Charlotte Armstrong. But once that store of writers and their works had been exhausted, I tried reading the male voice…and didn’t care for it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the problem was, but they weren’t anything I could enjoy. So I moved away from the genre, reading family sagas and romance novels and science fiction and horror and fantasy; literary fiction and historicals; I’ve always read, and I always will. But I remember stopping at the Book Stop in Houston on pay day–I always went to a bookstore on pay day–and they had a little glossy magazine about new books and writers they always put in the bag. The cover story was an interview with a writer I’d never heard of, and about her new book, D is for Deadbeat.  “Wow,” I thought as I read it, “a woman private eye? This sounds interesting.” So on my next pay day I bought the first four books in the series: A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse, and D is for Deadbeat.  I enjoyed the first two, and they got me thinking about my own plans about being a writer. (I’d given up the idea of being a crime writer–which was my first inclination–when I lost interest in the genre in the late 1970’s.) And then I read C, which to this day remains my favorite of the entire series. I was hooked, sold, and a Grafton fan for life.

And I realized that despite some of the criticism she received (misogynistic at its heart; male critics dismissing Kinsey as “a man in a skirt,’ which was such utter bullshit I couldn’t believe a paid critic could be that ignorant and obtuse–now, of course, I can readily believe it), she had really reinvented the form; by creating a tough, loner female private eye she had forever changed the form and recreated it. And made me realize, hey, if someone can write a series about a female private eye, why can’t I write a series about a gay one? 

She made me realize that anything was possible in the form; if you only had the courage to shatter the mold and recast it.

Reading Grafton led me to the other great women writers–Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller–and the ones who came in their wake: Lia Matera, S. J. Rozan, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, and so many others. And I grew to love the genre again,  and realized that it was what I was meant to do myself.

I had the great good fortune to meet her here in New Orleans at a party given in her honor; I don’t recall why she was in town, I know she came to the Williams Festival one year and I got all of my books signed. But she made time for a conversation for everyone at the party, was gracious and friendly and kind. I don’t remember what we talked about–I was too in awe and tongue-tied to be anything other than a blithering idiot, so I mostly stuck to  innocuous party conversation, but I remember she was very kind, had a wonderful warm smile. and an infectious, joyous laugh.

I started buying the books in hardcover around I; I am woefully behind on the series, and now there won’t be another to come; the series ended before she reached Z, only falling one short; if I am not mistaken, I have W, X, and Y left.

Thanks for all the years of great reading, and inspiration.

RIP, Sue.

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Miss Me Blind

The last Friday of 2017. I am working a very abbreviated day at the office today; and have a three day weekend. I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning–nothing new there this week; I’ve felt that way every morning this week–and am really looking forward to being a lazy slug and staying in bed as long as I can the next three days. Huzzah for being a lazy slug! I am also starting to come out of this whatever it was that I had; its lovely to feel this close to normal–I was beginning to forget what close to normal felt like, to be honest.

I finished reading The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo last night, and I have to say, it was refreshing to read something about Anne Boleyn that tried to take a look at her in an objective way; who she was has been so defined over the years by so much misogynistic garbage, as well as the highly biased accounts of two men who hated her–the Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, and the Venetian ambassador–that it was lovely to read  a book about her that tried to take a look at who the real Anne was, and debunk the myths that have, over the years, come to be taken as facts.

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The sixteenth century is one of my favorite periods of history, and always has been, as far back as I can remember; the Tudors in England and the Valois in France; the unification of the Hapsburg empire; the rise of Spain as a nation and its own colonial empire and systematic looting of the Americas; the corruption of the papacy and the Reformation; the Renaissance; and the rise of England as a world power. The sixteenth century is also remarkable in that it is the first century of European history where women rose to prominent positions of power, more so than any other: the list of powerful, influential women ranges everywhere from intellectual influences (Marguerite de Navarre) to regnant queens (Mary I and Elizabeth I in England, and even the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey; Mary Queen of Scots; Jeanne d’Albret, Isabella of Castile) to powers behind the throne (Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici) to regents (Margaret of Austria, Maria of Hungary, Marie de Guise), among many other women who influenced the course of history. I’ve always wanted to do a Barbara Tuchman style study of the century and its powerful women, called The Monstrous Regiment of Women. 

The century was also terribly unique in that precedents were set by things that had never happened before: England executed three of her queens, and another in Mary Queen of Scots; France saw a non-royal crowned queen in Catherine de Medici; and of course, there were the marital shenanigans of Henry VIII. And while I am fascinated by many  of the century’s women and their place on the stage of history, perhaps the most fascinating, for me at least, has always been Anne Boleyn.

I’ve never understood the bad rap that Anne Boleyn has gotten over the years from historians; the very first biography of a Tudor woman that I read, Mary M. Luke’s Catherine the Queen, was obviously very anti-Anne Boleyn; she has been painted with the brush of misogyny throughout history as everything from the husband-stealing vixen to the great whore; and yet, the answer has to be more complex than that. Anne Boleyn was responsible for England’s break from the Catholic Church, and while her predecessor Catherine of Aragon is often depicted as the long-suffering victim, there was also no question, in any histories of the period or biographies, that Catherine of Aragon was, the entire period of her marriage to Henry VIII and after being discarded, very much a Spanish agent working against England’s interests in favor of those of her family; the ruling house of Spain. Her goal was to eventually see her daughter, Mary I, sit on the English throne and marry her cousin Charles, thus bringing England into the Imperial fold. She violently resisted any other possible marriage for her daughter; and it cannot be questioned that making England a basic vassal state of the Hapsburgs was hardly in England’s best interests going forward (as was seen when Mary did eventually become queen and married Charles’ son, Philip). Catherine, no matter how romantically people want to view her as the wronged wife and victim, allowed her own pride, and her own ambition, to cause England to be separated from the Catholic Church despite her own seeming piety; for her, her own pride was more important than the souls of the English people. So even the stories of her deep religious faith as a sign of her great character really don’t hold water. And at any time, she could have relieved, not only her own suffering, but that of the daughter she loved so much. I’ve always found these depictions of Catherine of Aragon to be more emotional rather than logical.

No matter what, Anne Boleyn inspired great passion in both her adherents and her enemies. After her death Henry VIII destroyed all of her papers, so very few letters of hers exist and so there are no primary sources of information on her that aren’t tainted by the opinions of the person writing; the Spanish ambassador, so clearly an agent of Queen Catherine, can hardly be trusted to be unbiased. Likewise, the Venetian ambassador was no fan of Anne Boleyn. Yet I’ve never seen any letters from the French ambassador; or from the Scottish ambassador, or any that might actually have been anti-Spanish. All that exists is basically propaganda. And there are few women in history who’ve been more slandered than Anne Boleyn; and not only was she slandered for being the mother of the English Reformation, she was slandered for not being a typical woman of the time. She was intelligent, she was educated, and she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind during a time when women were primarily expected to be quiet and listen to the men.

It was not, of course, uncommon for women who didn’t fit the desired societal mold of their time to be trashed and slandered; it still happens today. Another woman of the century whom I find fascinating–Catherine de Medici–also has had a horrible reputation throughout the years…Jean Plaidy’s trilogy of historical novels about her bears some of the names she was called for titles: The Italian Woman, Queen Jezebel, Madame Serpent. Elizabeth I was also slandered; one can only imagine how the historical views of her would be different had the Spanish/Catholic view of her prevailed.

I am really piquing my own interest in this project again here.

Anyway, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating read, and one that Tudorphiles definitely should look into. I highly recommend it.

Love Somebody

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning again. It was just so warm and comfortable in the bed, so cold and unwelcoming outside of it. But a few nights of good sleep and I am on the road to recovery–barring a relapse, which at this point would be so cruel to have happen I can’t even contemplate it. My mind is actually clear-ish today and not foggy, which is also a really good sign. This means I might actually be able to start getting caught up, and start getting my shit together sooner rather than later.

I don’t even know what to think about this development. I’ve been so sick for so long I can’t remember what it feels like to not be sick and have energy and a clear mind.

Hallelujah.

Tomorrow I do have to get up earlier than I usually do; it’s my usual half-day Friday which means getting to the office earlier. But I am going to stop at the grocery on the way home, make another grocery run on Saturday, and pretty much have no plans to leave the house other than lunch at Commander’s on Sunday and possibly going to see I, Tonya on Sunday evening. Monday will be a lovely day off of staying home and watching football games and resting and reading and relaxing, and then Tuesday I can hit the ground running and really start busting through everything that needs to get done. I’m kind of excited; the problem with being sick and low-energy for so long is that it also leads to depression and unhappiness, and the last thing I need to do right now is get sucked down into a quagmire of misery and depression about my writing career; those dark demons in the corners of my mind are always there and ready to come rushing out at the drop of a hat.

I started ripping the WIP to pieces again yesterday; I have decided that it needs to really be overhauled and rewritten; I was never truly satisfied with it in the first place, to be honest, and some more time away from it has also convinced me that, well, while the book has the potential to be something fantastic, it’s really not there yet. So, while I get some other things I am working in tied up in bows and finished, I am going to start dissecting and rewriting; there’s a whole other subplot that needs to be added to the story, and there needs to be a lot more development of my incredibly passive hero; and the stakes need to be raised higher. And I need to get this done, because I need to get to work on the next WIP to try  to get an agent with, if this one  isn’t going to do the trick. I’ve been messing around with this one now for almost three years, off and on, and this is going to be the last try with it.

I’ve also started restructuring the Scotty book. Oy. Have I ever been off my game this past year!

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

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State of Shock

Good morning, Constant Reader, and everyone who only occasionally stops by, should you happen to stop by this chilly late December morning. It’s very gray outside, and the Lost Apartment is cold, and I have a slight sinus headache, but nothing I can power my way through. I still am not feeling at 100% yet, but am getting there; maybe by this weekend? One can hope.

I feel slightly cotton-headed this morning, and am trying to decide what to read next. I’m definitely doing a month or two of short story reading for the first two months of the new year, which I am kind of excited about. Yesterday I was tired all day, and never made my to-do list; I’ll have to get that done today. Today is also payday, so I’ll have to pay the bills today as well. I didn’t really want to get out of bed this morning, honestly; the bed was warm and comfortable and it was cold in the apartment–and I would gladly go back to bed if i could. Heavy sigh.

I know I have some short stories to work on, and I need to do some other things as well. I hate this cotton-headed feeling! It makes it really hard to focus. One short story, which is do this weekend, is almost finished; it only needs two quick tweaks and another read-through before I turn it in; the other story isn’t necessarily a big priority; I just wanted to get it done and out of the way months before it is actually due because I don’t want to have to want until the last minute to work on it and have to rush, if that makes sense. It sort of does, doesn’t it? (See what I mean about cotton-headed?)

It’s always something, isn’t it?

I am still enjoying Joan Didion’s Miami, and think I’m going to read, for fiction, Lisa Unger’s The Red Hunter next. I always enjoy Lisa’s work, and while I am still carefully doling it out so I won’t run out of Unger books to read, I think it’s safe to go ahead and read another one. I also suppose I should do a year recap here, as well as a goals-setting entry for 2018. Sigh.

Okay, back to the spice mines.

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Legs

Post-Christmas, and it’s gray outside. I have to work today; it’s a late night so I don’t have to go in until later. It’s gray and chilly outside, and the Lost Apartment is a disaster area. I don’t feel quite so ill today; in fact, I feel better today than I have in over a week. Dare I hope that whatever it is I was contaminated with is finally over? I think so. I am not coughing, I don’t feel feverish, and I don’t feel dizzy nor weak; how lovely to get over my illness in time to go back to work! I do have a three day weekend upcoming, but we are having lunch at Commander’s on New Year’s Eve, seeing I Tonya that evening, and of course, the LSU bowl game is that Monday. And the next weekend is Comic-Con, at which I will be exceptionally busy. Heavy heaving sigh.

I also now have to figure out what I need to get done. I’ve been in the fog of illness for so long I don’t remember what’s due and to who anymore.

I slept most of yesterday. I woke up early, put the turkey in the slow cooker, tried to do the dishes and some straightening up, and then Paul and I binge-watched The Night Manager, which was remarkably good. I kept dozing off during it, though, missing almost all of episode 3,  as well as significant chunks of 2 and 4, but I did see all of 5 and 6. I’d never really seen Tom Hiddleston in anything before–not counting Thor–and I see why he is such a big deal. Handsome and talented and extremely charismatic, and those eyes! We then watched an old BBC miniseries with Daniel Craig, Archangel, and I also slept through most of it. Then I went to bed and slept like a stone. I think the sleep was a desperately needed part of the healing process, to be honest; the illness kicked off with an inability to sleep for three consecutive nights, which continued through the illness. So, finally being able to sleep well, and get some rest, was something I greatly appreciated and clearly needed. My mind does seem clear this morning, even if the disaster area that is the apartment is defeating to look at. But I must persist, because cleaning the apartment is long overdue, and it’s tragic how quickly it can get out of control.

I am delving more deeply into Joan Didion’s Miami every night before I go to sleep, and the book is simply fantastic. I’m amazed at how she wrote; the way she effortlessly creates a mood with her word choices, which are clever and insightful and spare at the same time. I’ve also decided to make the month of January “Short Story Month” again, perhaps extending it into February as well, since I have so many marvelous anthologies and single-author collections to choose from. And really, how difficult is it to read a short story every day? Not very.

And so, on that note, it is back to the spice mines with me.

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Almost Paradise

Christmas. I am still not 100%, but so far this is the best i’ve felt on waking in a while. The temptation is to, of course, overdo it some today, but I also don’t know what my energy levels are like; are they still depleted as they have been, making even the simplest of tasks exhausting? I was so drained all day yesterday that I couldn’t focus enough to even read, let alone do anything involving heavy lifting. The apartment is a disaster area, ready for a FEMA inspection. I’ve fallen so far behind on everything that I despair that I will ever be able to get caught up. But I know I will; I know I shall have to simply buckle down and focus, and with focus, all things shall come to pass.

I also did fairly well in the Christmas present department this year. Paul got me an incredibly comfortable long-sleeved LSU T-shirt (which I am wearing); a Team Italia soccer shirt; two books–one a memoir by a male ballet dancer and the other a history of the Bolshoi Ballet; tickets with great seats to see the Ballet des Monte Carlo at the Mahalia Jackson Theater in February; and a gorgeous new watch. We had watched the documentary Bolshoi Babylon some months ago, and I had mentioned my fascination with the ballet and thinking it would be a great setting for a noir novel–and that I would love to go see the ballet sometime. Being Paul, he remembered. This is why I am so shitty at gift-giving, to be honest; I am so self-absorbed so much of the time that I don’t notice things other people say that could be used as hints for gifts.

I have to say, the ballet noir is sounding better and better all the time.

Okay, I am starting to feel hollow-headed, so I am going to go lie down for a little while.

Merry Christmas, Constant Reader!

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Infatuation

I don’t remember ever being sick for Christmas before, but it must have happened, right? I mean, it’s hard to believe I’ve made it fifty-six years without ever being sick at this time of year. I am hoping if I spend the day today–and possibly tomorrow–resting and drinking lots of fluids and not exerting myself in any way–that I’ll be well and ready to hit the ground running on Tuesday when I have to return to work. Yay. Not really how I wanted to spend four days off, but the best laid plans and all of that nonsense.

At least, so far today the biggest thing is a complete lack of energy. I get tired very quickly; just clearing out the dishwasher and putting the clean dishes away made me so exhausted i had to sit down for a minute. But at least today I’m not praying for death as a merciful release, so that’s something.

I was so tired yesterday that I kept dozing off while trying to read! At one point I started reading and woke up two hours later, with the book still open in my hands. I started watching a documentary on Dunkirk, and woke up an hour later with the credits running. When Paul got home we finished watching the documentary series about the Papal history, and with Paul periodically talking to me, I managed to stay awake, but when the show ended I went to bed and slept through the night. This morning, I’m not praying for death and I’m not feverish, but my throat still hurts, my chest hurts when I cough, and there’s the no energy thing.

The smart thing here to do is not try to overdo anything, right? So I think I’m going to go sit in the easy chair, try to read, and then maybe do some of the dishes at some point. The Saints are also playing today, so there’s that.

I just hate wasting time, although I suppose it’s not really a waste if you’re trying to get over an illness? But you know what I mean. I have so much to do. Then again, being overwhelmed with an insane amount of work to do always seems to make me be more productive.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Anyway, merry Christmas Eve!

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