Hello, Wednesday, how are you?
Last night was bar testing, so I am a little sluggish this morning, which, to be honest, isn’t that much different than every morning. I did sleep in later than I usually do, though.
Author: gregh121
I am a writer and editor who lives in New Orleans.
Dancing in the Dark
Well, I finished Alafair Burke’s The Wife last night, and wow. Just….wow.
That is three, count ’em, three, amazing novels by women I’ve read recently; all of whom–Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman, Alafair Burke–were already writing fantastic novels, and yet somehow manage to get better with each new one. As a writer myself, reading these fantastic novels is a bit daunting–it puts me in mind of why do I bother I will never be this good–but as a reader who loves books, they make me want to send off fireworks.
I also started reading Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds last night, and it’s also exceptional. I’d read his Edgar Award nominated debut, Shovel Ready, which was amazing, but somehow had missed his second novel; but got a free copy of The Blinds at Bouchercon (thank you, Harper Collins author signing party!) and have heard raves about it, so I decided to tackle it next. And yes, wow. I am also still processing The Wife, and Lippman’s Sunburn, and Gaylin’s If I Die Tonight. I will of course discuss all of these books closer to their release dates, in great detail, on here. But if you love great books, Constant Reader, you need to go pre-order these right the fuck now. You will not be sorry.
You’ll only be sorry if you don’t.
I don’t have to go into the office until late; which is lovely as I have about a gazillion things to do around the house this morning. I also have several errands to run: I have to stop at Garden District Books to pick up a book about the New Orleans Jewish community (more on that later); CVS to pick up a prescription; and of course, as always, I have to get the mail. I need to spend the morning outlining some short stories–one is due at the end of the month, and I am going to have to really get moving if I intend to get it finished–and I also seriously need to get some Scotty stuff finished. I also need, this week, to tear apart the WIP so I can figure out how to restructure it and add in the things that need to be added. I’d like to get that finished by the end of the year, and I think going about doing all of this in an organized fashion makes the most sense. It’s weird how disorganized I am about writing, when I try–almost to the point of being obsessive–I am about everything else in my life. I also need to start restricting my access to social media; that doesn’t help me with my attention span, which seems to be getting shorter and shorter as I get older. I’ve always had trouble focussing and maintaining that focus; I’ve got to be more laser-like in my focus if I’m going to get all of this stuff done by the end of the year.
I know I can do it, and I am actually feeling a lot more confident than I should be. But the busier I am, the more I have to do–the more likely I am to get things done.
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines.
Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you, Constant Reader. Enjoy.
Let’s Hear It for the Boy
Monday morning. We watched The Walking Dead last night, finished Mindhunter on Saturday (amazing and I already miss it) and got caught up on The Exorcist last night; we were two weeks behind. I have to say, this season is really shaping up as much better than the first (which I enjoyed) and part of it is because of the strong performance of John Cho. (It also didn’t hurt than the exorcist played by Ben Daniels got a male love interest in these episodes as well.) I am still reading The Wife by Alafair Burke, which is extraordinary; she plays her cards out slowly and deftly. I am hoping to get some more of it read today between clients as we are testing pretty much all day; I don’t have to go into the office until noonish, but won’t be done with work until around ten thirty. Tomorrow I have a late night of bar testing as well.
A lovely way to start the week, no?
Next week is Thanksgiving, and I am also debating as to whether to take off that Wednesday as well. I think we are cancelling services that day, so there’s really not much point to my going into the office. Might as well take the day off and run errands and clean and get some writing/editing done, don’t you think? I like that you always agree with me, Constant Reader.
I am also hoping to get through today’s to-do list before I head into the office. I got two more short story ideas yesterday; naturally, neither of them have anything to do with the ones that I am currently obligated to write. Sigh. One is incredibly, incredibly dark, and the other is really more of a short noir novel–which I may end up doing (because I have so much free time) but I really like the idea. It does, however, require research, which is not exactly my favorite thing to do in the world. No, that’s not true–I love doing research; it’s applying it that’s hard. Seriously, how do I have a career?
I also had a thematic breakthrough on the current Scotty, which is absolutely lovely. Now that I know what theme I’m exploring it should make writing the book that much easier–I kind of knew, it just hadn’t really gelled in my mind–and so hopefully i can get a strong draft finished by the end of the year. I also, over this weekend, had an insight on the WIP–which was very important. Again, my bad writing habits and my reluctance to throw things out and write new material have everything to do with bad decisions I’ve made about writing manuscripts before; I so desperately wanted to believe this one was finished–or close to finished–that I wasn’t looking at what was clearly right in front of my face.
Honestly.
And on that note, this spice ain’t gonna mine itself.
Here’s a Monday morning hunk for you, Constant Reader.
All Night Long (All Night)
Well, it’s Sunday. I made it through another week and it’s grim and gray out there again this morning, with a grocery run staring me down and some serious cleaning, organizing, writing and editing to do ahead of me for the rest of the day. Heavy heaving sigh. But that’s okay; I have a lot on my plate. Some exciting things dropped into my lap recently–pretty much all in the second half of last week–which means I have a lot of things to work on but very little time in which to do them. This also, of course, means all the damned procrastinating I’ve been doing pretty much this entire year needs to come to an end, and I’m already regretting the whatever it was that was allowing me to be lazy all year.
Bad Gregalicious! Bad Gregalicious!
I had wanted to get some more reading done this weekend–Alafair Burke’s The Wife is truly extraordinary and it’s killing me having to read it in bits and pieces–but it doesn’t seem likely. I’ll probably get to finish it this week, as I am doing a lot of testing events this week and can read between clients. We also finished watching Mindhunter last night, which was absolutely amazing, and started watching American Vandal, which is a clever idea…we’ll give it another episode because we’re a bit on the fence about it. Watching Mindhunter also put us behind on our other shows that are currently airing, so we’ll need to get caught up on those tonight.
I do feel extremely motivated today; I slept really well last night so am feeling all I can conquer the world today, which is an absolutely lovely feeling. It’s certainly been awhile since I’ve felt that way, and I really do love the feeling. I have to work late nights tomorrow and Tuesday; the rest of the week is normal, and of course next week is Thanksgiving! Where oh where did this year go?
And I have SUCH a plethora of riches in my TBR pile; the new Donna Andrews, the new Ivy Pochoda, the new Adam Sternburgh…not to mention everything else that’s in my pile and has been for YEARS.
And speaking of which, I need to get back to the spice mines or nothing’s going to get done.
Here’s a Sunday hunk for you, Constant Reader:
Missing You
So, this came in the mail yesterday.
Yup, it’s the Anthony Award I received for Best Anthology for editing Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016. I was at the airport boarding my flight home when my name was called; my phone immediately began blowing up and I was more than a little stunned, surprised, thrilled and I don’t know what all.
So cool. It’s gorgeous, and a lot heavier than it looks.
So, since I wasn’t there to accept in person, I am going to give an acceptance speech. (I didn’t have one prepared; I was so certain I wasn’t going to win we booked our flights home for Sunday.)
The first time I signed a contract to edit an anthology I didn’t know the first thing about doing an anthology. So I asked an editor whom I had long admired for some advice. All he said was “only work with good writers.” With Blood on the Bayou, that was certainly the case. I didn’t know what we were going to get when I put the call for submissions out; we wound up with so much good material we could have done two anthologies. So, let me thank everyone who submitted for doing such exceptional work, for giving me such an embarrassment of riches to work with. I want to thank the people whose stories did wind up being used–you were all amazing, a joy to work with, and I wouldn’t have this if it weren’t for you. I need to thank Eric Campbell and everyone at Down and Out Books; again, you had no problem whatsoever with my moods and my oddities and my quirks and I greatly appreciate that. I owe Heather Graham and Connie Perry, the New Orleans co-chairs, a big thank you as well for letting me do this anthology, and I also need to thank Art Taylor, who put the whole thing in motion for me–none of this would have happened without Art. I also want to thank everyone I’ve ever known in my entire life.
One of the great ironies of editing this anthology–I think it was the twentieth I’ve done–was that when I finished editing the last one I said, “this is the last time I’m doing this. This is my last anthology.” And yet…here I am.
But this is just so lovely. I never dreamed I’d ever actually win an Anthony Award. I mean, I hoped, of course–who doesn’t hope they’ll win an award in their field? I hope for all kinds of things, but I don’t expect to get most of them.
And it didn’t seem quite real until now–that’s it here and I can look at it.
Wow.
And it’s Friday, just like that. I have so much to do this weekend. Sigh.
Karma Chameleon
I had some seriously strange dreams last night. The first was a nightmare involving reptile and snakes–that’s all I remember of it–but Paul had to wake me up because I was crying out in terror in my sleep. (Thanks for the rescue.) In the second, more benign but also scary dream that I remember, I was teaching a creative writing class, focusing on short stories. I suppose the subliminal message my mind is telling me is how terrified I am of writing short stories, and I have any number of them on deck that need to be written, and time is rapidly running out before they are due. Heavy heaving sigh. Maybe in the first dream the snakes and reptiles symbolized the deadlines.
Stupid short stories anyway.
We’ve finished watching season 2 of Freakish, and alas, it’s not as good as Season 1. We’ll probably watch the third season, if there is was, to see if it recovers its lost promise; but yeah, jumped the shark and went off the rails in the second season. Plus, it has The Walking Dead problem; to up the ante they have to keep killing off characters and introducing new ones. The problem (spoiler!)is they keep killing off ones we like and keeping the unlikable, stupid ones…and adding more unlikable, stupid ones. In the first season, part of its charm was that Breakfast Club thing of kids who have nothing in common and are from completely different social circles, for the most part, having to work together and come together and bond to survive. That was lost in the second season; which is a shame as it was one of the show’s strengths; the developing relationships and bonds between the characters.
We’ve also started watching Mindhunter on Netflix, which is fucking amazing. The first episode was a trifle slow, but still interesting; episode 2 really gets the ball moving and when it was finished, I was really disappointed we didn’t have time to stay up and watch another episode. It really is terrific–and the guy who plays the Co-ed Killer should win an Emmy for Best Guest Star. He was absolutely riveting. They also have done a remarkably good job of capturing the late 1970’s; as I said to Paul last night, ‘wow, I had no idea or memory that the late 1970’s were so aesthetically ugly; colors and designs and so forth. Blech.’ Can’t wait to get home tonight and watch another.
I read another chapter of Alafair Burke’s marvelous The Wife last night, and that story is also really starting to pick up. One of the great things about Burke’s writing is her attention to little details that make the story and characters seem absolutely real and authentic.
I also–speaking of short stories and so forth–got some revising of early Scotty chapters in the new book done, and realized that a scene in Chapter Three is eerily reminiscent of one in a short story I am writing. Ah, well, I guess there’s no harm in slightly plagiarizing yourself, is there?
The weather was weird yesterday; it appears to be more of the same out there outside my windows this morning. Heavy heaving sigh. At least today I know to take a Claritin before i leave the house.
And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, Constant Reader, actor/model Gordon Scott:
Ghostbusters
Wednesday and a gray morning here in the Lost Apartment. For a brief moment I thought it was Thursday; I don’t know where the hell that came from, but it’s indeed Wednesday, and as I sip my second cup of coffee and look at cats sleeping on the scaffolding outside my window, I am girding my loins for an incredibly busy day at the office.
I’m enjoying thoroughly Alafair Burke’s The Wife, which I am reading about five to ten pages at a time at night before I turn off the light and go to sleep; I look forward to being able to dive into it a lot more thoroughly. I also managed another 1500 words or so on Scotty yesterday, and finished that darned essay. I don’t have to turn the essay in until this weekend, so I am going to let it sit for a few days before I reread it and tweak it. It’s about censorship, banning and sensitivity readers; my big fear is the points I make are going to be offensive.,.but maybe the fact that I’m worried about unintentionally giving offense is a good sign? I dunno.
We will have to see. It’s a very charged topic.
My kitchen is a mess this morning; and I have yet to decide what to take with me for lunch. Heavy sigh. I should clean up this mess so I don’t have to deal with it tonight; I should have dealt with it all last night. I hate when I do that.
I’m feeling good about my work again; which is something. Getting writing done is always the key to this; there’s an anthology I want to submit a story to whose deadline is the end of this month and I’ve only written a small part of the story. I’d hate to not submit, but the story also has to be really good. I could focus on it over the Thanksgiving break, of course, but I’d like to have a rough draft figured out and written before then. I hate when I do this to myself; and I have another that I’ve agreed to write by the end of December that I haven’t really started yet.
And on that note, this kitchen isn’t going to clean itself. For your Hump Day Hunk, here’s professional wrestler Ashton Vuitton:
Owner of a Lonely Heart
Tuesday, Tuesday. I managed to slog through another thousand words of the new Scotty yesterday, and some things I want to do with the book are starting to take shape. I also managed another five hundred words on an essay I am writing and need to finish, but it’s a tricky one–one that could easily give offense. I am going to go back to the beginning of it again this morning and see if I can start revising at the start, and maybe then I’ll be able to finish it. I feel a bit rusty–I used to be able to knock off a couple of thousand words in an hour or two, no problem, every morning, and now it’s more of a slog. I am going to blame it on a lack of practice, and that I need to simply get my writing muscles back into shape.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I have to say that I finished reading my advance copy of Laura Lippman’s Sunburn this weekend, and was completely blown away by it. I’ll post a review when it’s around time for the book to be released, where I will go into more detail about how incredible this book is, but reading it and the new Alison Gaylin (If I Die Tonight) was truly inspirational. Ironically, I myself have had an idea for a noir thriller lying around in my files for decades now, also called Sunburn–which, obviously, I won’t be able to use now, if I write it I’ll clearly need a new title–but they have nothing in common other than the title and the sensibility. I love noir so much, and I really want to write more of it. I also started reading my advance copy of Alafair Burke’s The Wife Sunday night, and got more into it last night, and it, too, is quite extraordinary.
Reading such amazing work by friends is inspirational, but also a bit humbling. But I also kind of love reading books that make me think, boy, I have to work harder and do better.
And on that note, I should get back to the spice mines and get to work.
Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you:
Hello
When I was cleaning out/working in my storage unit a few weeks ago, I uncovered the only surviving copies of two anthologies I edited pre-Katrina: Shadows of the Night (horror) and Upon a Midnight Clear (gay Christmas tales). I picked them up Saturday night during the Alabama-LSU game and paged through them, and laughed as I realized I’d published a story of my own in each anthology, but being afraid of being accused of ‘self-publishing’, I used a pseudonym. The pseudonym was one I was going to use for writing horror, and the name I chose makes me laugh really hard: Quentin Harrington. Quentin came from the old show Dark Shadows, and “Harrington” was a variation of my last name that, sometimes but not very often, people used to actually think was my name (along with Harris, Herron, Heron, Huron, Aaron, etc.).
The stories, which I’d completely forgotten about, were “The Troll in the Basement” and “The Snow Queen.”
The books have been out of print for about ten years now, and Shadows was actually a Lambda Literary Award finalist (the first time I was nominated twice in the same year; I was also nominated in the Men’s Mystery category that year for Jackson Square Jazz, and was also the first time for me to lose twice in the same year). Shadows was inspired by two thoughts: one, how much I enjoyed Michael Rowe’s two Queer Fear anthologies, and by knowing how many writer friends I had who enjoyed horror but didn’t write it. I thought it would be interesting to get a group of writers who didn’t write horror, and see what they could come up with. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about my own story; which isn’t bad, but isn’t great, either. It had one of those 1950’s EC Comics endings–something I still tend to do, even with crime stories, and is something I need to get away from.
Upon a Midnight Clear was an anthology I’d been wanting to do for a very long time before it came to fruition. I’d always wanted to do an anthology reclaiming Christmas for LGBTQ people; there is so much out there–TV shows, movies, specials, books, etc.–for Christmas but none of it exploring it from the queer outsider’s point of view. I’d gotten a story submitted for another anthology that was Christmas-themed, and didn’t really fit that particular anthology; but it also triggered the why not do a queer Christmas anthology? It could be a perennial seller at Christmas time. And that’s how the anthology was born. I got some terrific stories (of particular note: Jim Grimsley’s “Comfort and Joy,” David McConnell’s “Christmas 1989,” and “Our Family’s Things” by Jay Quinn–but they were all lovely stories in one way or another) and the book sold a fair amount of copies. My own story was a twist on Han Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen,” not an exact rewrite or retelling, but something I took and twisted and made my own. I liked the story a lot, but had completely forgotten I’d written it.
Alas, I only have one author copy of each anthology; someone on Twitter was looking for queer Christmas stories and ‘Nathan Burgoine recommended Midnight Clear, and if I had even one spare copy I would have sent it to the person looking. But I don’t, and so I can’t part with my copy.
I also was invited to write a story for an anthology yesterday, which was thrilling (it’s always nice to be asked) and the story itself is going to be a challenge to write, which is also thrilling. I do love me a challenge.
I spent most of yesterday cleaning and finishing reading Laura Lippman’s astonishing Sunburn, and started reading Alafair Burke’s The Wife last night. I have a lot of thoughts about the Lippman, just as I do about the Alison Gaylin I finished Saturday night, but will review them and talk more in depth about both books closer to their release dates. I am enjoying Alafair’s book, too, by the way.
And now, back to the spice mines.
Jump
Sunday morning and the end of Daylight Savings Time. I woke up at the usual time, reset the clock to the correct time, and stayed in bed for another hour…but still got up early. It’s fine, I don’t mind, and I am actually awake rather than groggy. I need to get groceries–a minor run for some staples and a few things I need for dinner tonight–and I also need to get to the gym today. (I did not, in fact, go yesterday as planned.) I also managed to destroy my ancient iPod Nano. I took it out of my car (where it’s my music source) and put it in my jeans pocket Friday so I could take it with me to the gym, forgot about it, and yes, put it through both washer and dryer. Sigh. Now the screen is dead–the memory in it still works, if I connect it to my computer–but the controls don’t work, and they don’t make Nanos anymore, which totally sucks. I had that damned thing for almost seven years…so I guess I’ll have to use my iPod Touch, which is nine years old, for the gym instead until I can swing getting a new one, I suppose. So annoying. Then again, if it costs less than a new iPod Touch, it might be worth seeing if it can be fixed.
I suppose I could just use my phone, I suppose, but I hate how the music cuts off if you get an email or a text or something. It’s jarring.
First world problems, I know.
I am reading an advance copy of Laura Lippman’s Sunburn, and it’s really quite exceptional. It’s very different than anything she’s done before, and I have to say, it’s quite the ballsy move. It’s very easy to just write the same style and the same type of book over and over again, but Lippman has really stretched herself and grown in her stand alone novels; this, coming after the sublime Wilde Lake, is yet another gamble that is paying off big time. And as I said yesterday, reading amazing work by amazing writers is inspirational; I actually sat down at the computer yesterday and made myself write two thousand words; and they were good words. They took me longer to write than usual–my attention span is so shortened because of social media and everything else these days; I need to remember that the best thing for me to do when I get stuck is to get up and do something away from the computer; even if it is something as simple as rearranging a cabinet shelf; putting things in order and organizing, for some reason, always works as a writing trigger for me. But it’s more than I’ve written in a long time, and I am kind of excited about it, to be honest. I still have an essay to write, and there’s a short story I need to write, but I want to get some more of this Scotty done before I sidetrack myself again.
And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines. Here’s a Sunday hunk for you, Constant Reader:
Queer and Loathing in America 