Author: gregh121

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

Goody Two-Shoes

Friday! I made it through another week! Huzzah!

Have you ever wondered how my mind works? Let me give you an example from yesterday:

Before I started the car to run my errands on my way to the office, I saw a headline on my phone as I was stashing it in the center console. The headline had something to do with Melania Trump; I don’t remember what it was. And this is how my thought process went:

Melania is an interesting name, I’ve never heard that name before, but then Michelle Obama was the first First Lady named Michelle, and Laura Bush was the first Laura…they’ve all had unique names, really, Hillary and Barbara and Nancy and Betty and Pat and Ladybird and Jacqueline and Mamie…Mamie is an odd name, I wonder if it was a nickname…those awful bigots in Auntie Mame called her Mamie..gosh I love that movie and haven’t seen it in a long time…I wonder why no one has ever written a book or made a movie called Auntie Maim? It seems like such a natural.

And after I chuckled over the horror novel/movie Auntie Maim:

Rosalind Russell was so great in that movie, she was friends with Joan Crawford, they were in The Women together, it was that unflattering picture in the paper with Roz that convinced Joan to  never go out in public again…I should write an essay contrasting Baby Jane with Sweet Charlotte..Olivia de Havilland was terrific in that but what a movie it would have been with Crawford in that role, I always wanted to write something like Sweet Charlotte…I remember I had that idea twenty or so years ago, what was it called… oh yes, that, how could you write something like that today, oh maybe instead of having the Charlotte character be a woman she could be a gay man, which would have been equally scandalous to be having an affair with a married man but then how would you do the Miriam character they couldn’t both be gay men because that would be a stretch well maybe instead it could be that the lover was murdered and that outed the character and the character ran away and instead of being her cousin the other character is his sister and now Papa’s dying and the thrown away gay son is coming home to make peace with the dying homophobic father and the old crime was never solved…

And then as I pulled into the parking lot at work I wrote the opening in my head, and typed into the Notes app on my phone on my way into the office.

That’s how my mind works.

If you think that’s scary, imagine having to deal with that imagination all the time.

Heavy sigh.

I have maybe three chapters of line edits to input before this bitch of an edit is finished. Only. Three. More.

And I’ve been keeping notes on what and where to tweak.

And for the record, the last time I looked, I’d trimmed 101, 265 words down to around 78,000, give or take a few.

That was a serious line edit.

So, it will probably end up being around 80-85,000 when it gets queried to agents.

Fingers crossed.

And here’s your Friday hunk to slip you into the weekend:IMG_2769

 

Too Shy

Thursday!

I worked late last night, but also pulled within four or five chapters of being finished with inputting the line edit. Hip hip hurray! HUZZAH indeed! So, so close, and I know exactly how to finish polishing it; I know what needs to be added.

That’s such a lovely feeling, you have no idea.

The rest of this month is going to be a bit challenging; I have to do a lot of bar testing, going to the office on Saturdays, the NO/AIDS Walk is an upcoming Sunday, and just thinking about any and all of it makes me tired. But I will persist. I will persevere. Because I am Gregalicious!

I’m enjoying Louise Penny’s Still Life, which is a really charming read, to be honest, and I can’t think the last time I read a book about which I could use the word charming as a descriptor. Granted, I tend to read darker stuff, but I am enjoying this. I will keep you posted, Constant Reader, as I make my way through the rest of the book. I think I have copies of other Louise Penny novels scattered about the house in TBR piles; but I do think when I finish this I am going to tackle the reread of It. It’s so daunting though, I look at how enormous the trade paperback I recently bought on impulse is, and want to weep. How did I ever read a novel that large in such a short period of time? Will it still hold up after all this time? The suspense! Older Stephen King novels I’ve loved have stood the test of time; and I do think that perhaps I also might give The Shining a reread in October, when I am going to primarily focus on horror, as I always do in the month of Halloween.

I am going to pick up a prescription (I meant to do this yesterday and forgot) and some other errands–since I worked late last night I don’t have to be in until one. I am also going to do some other chores around the house before I leave for the office etc. I am hoping to get some more of the edits input this morning as well.

And here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, Constant Reader, actor Doug McClure:

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The Girl Is Mine

Home from the doctor and a good report; blood pressure is good, got a flu shot which didn’t hurt at all, heart rate normal, temperature normal, and I’ve lost thirteen pounds since my last visit six months ago, which is pretty awesome. I do seem to have stagnated at the thirteen pounds though; and I do know that cardio and/or more working out is probably the only way to get the scale needle to move further down. Heavy sigh. But I am feeling more ambitious about that lately–not ambitious enough to actually do it, but to where I am seriously thinking about it, and looking for a way to schedule it into one Gregalicious’ busy schedule.

I did decide to put aside the book I was reading, and took Louise Penny’s Still Life with me to the doctor, to read while waiting. I wasn’t able to get very far into it, but it’s quite charming thus far. In an interesting aside, when I got into the elevator at my doctor’s building, the other person in the elevator, a woman, gasped and said, “Oh, you’re reading Louise Penny!” She held up a copy of Ms. Penny’s latest, Glass Houses, and I replied, “Yes, I’m just getting started with the first.”

She gave me a big smile and said, “Oh,  you’re in for such a treat! It’s a wonderful series!”

It’s always so lovely to run into another reader in public. It’s almost like we belong to a secret club, isn’t it? And to run into someone reading the same author you are is like being in the Illuminati…er, I’ve heard. Allegedly.

And on that note, I am going to do some chores while I put in some more edits.

Here’s another shot of Roberto Bolle:

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Dirty Laundry

Wednesday! I have my biannual doctor visit this morning, so won’t be going into the office until later; I am doing bar testing this evening as well. I hope to get more edits put in–seriously, passing the halfway point made such a mental difference; each page I finish it like another step down the other side of the mountain. I am really looking forward to finishing; I know exactly what I have to do with this in the final draft, and am really really excited about finally finishing and getting it out there.

Huzzah! Yay, me!

So, Paul had dinner with a friend last night, and while I was waiting for him to come home (I’m not enjoying the book I’m reading and may put it aside), I decided to watch a documentary on HBO: Bolshoi Babylon.

Wow.

Over the last few years I’ve become obsessively interested in ballet; but most ballet stories are generally about women–understandably so; the men are primarily there, for the most part, to show off the women and their skills–but male ballet dancers are fascinating to me. For one thing, their bodies are amazing, and for another, what they can make their bodies do is even more amazing. It’s rare for a male ballet dancer to outshine his female counterparts; but when they do, they become big stars. (Nureyev, Baryshnikov, etc.) The world of ballet also seems very dark to me, very noir; the way the dancers torture their bodies to make beauty and art, the fragility of the egos, the constant need for approval–and of course, as dark as it is, it can get even darker.

Bolshoi Babylon is about the acid attack on ballet director Sergei Fimin several years ago; I remember when it happened. Fimin was a star of the ballet, became the artistic director, and then was viciously attacked, acid thrown in his face, and a long, painful recovery from the attack followed–he eventually got the sight back in one eye, but remained blind in the other. A male dancer in the company was behind the attack; Fimin had passed over his girlfriend for a lead, and he wanted revenge for his love. (I was very much reminded of the Tonya-Nancy figure skating drama; ballet and figure skating also have a lot in common.) But the documentary simply uses the attack as a launching point for an examination of the world of the Bolshoi; its internal and external politics, and also focuses on some of the dancers and what their lives are like.

It was riveting.

I’ve long wanted to write a noir about figure skating, and another about ballet. Watching Bolshoi Babylon only emphasized that desire; alas, I have this manuscript to complete, a Scotty to write, and I am also toying with that horror novel. But I think I shall continue my researches into both figure skating and ballet; Paul got home and watched the end of the documentary, and he agreed that it would be interesting to go to the New Orleans Ballet.

I also have been crushing on Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle for years now; thank you, Sarah Hilary, for bringing him to my attention!

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I also got involved in an interesting discussion on a friend’s Facebook thread about author Louise Penny, whom I’ve not read, and who was just here in New Orleans to accept the Pinckney Prize, as this year’s recipient. I had to miss the event, as it was last week. But I do have a copy of her first novel, and I will try to read it before Bouchercon.

So much to read before Bouchercon! I can’t believe I have homework.

Truly

Tuesday! I made it through Monday. I also managed to get a big hunk of edits input into the manuscript, which means I am on the downward slope to getting that finished. I am most likely going to put aside working on Scotty until the edits are finished, now that I’m in a groove, and am very pleased, I must say. I would love to have this done by the weekend, so I can let it sit for another week while I work on Scotty; but I don’t know; that’s going to depend on two things: motivation and energy.

We’ll see how that turns out, won’t we?

Heavy sigh.

I am debating on whether I want to reread It. I bought it the day it was released, back in 1986 (as I have done with everything Stephen King has published since Different Seasons,  and I read it over the course of two days. (I binge-read King’s novels back then; each as they came out, on the day they were released; a habit I have sadly fallen out of.) I also used to reread King novels many times; I can’t count how many times I’ve reread, for example, The Stand, The Dead Zone, ‘salem’s Lot, etc. I still will reread one of those earlier novels on occasion; but I’ve never reread It, though, and I’m not sure why. I think I got out of the habit of rereading King sometime in the mid-1990’s; and what I wouldn’t give for the time to sit down and reread them all, beginning with Carrie and working my way through the most recent. But now that a new film version of It is out, and breaking records, and getting much critical acclaim; it may be time to reread the Big Novel. I loved It the first time, cherishing the characters more so than the story, which did terrify me; but I vaguely remember not liking the ending; which was a first for me with King.

I do love Stephen King, both as a person and as a writer; granted, what I know of him as a person is confined to news reports of things he does, and his Twitter account; plus, I did get to meet him at the Edgars several years ago, which was one of the biggest thrills of my life. It’s hard to describe what King’s work has meant to me; how it’s inspired me as a writer, and pushed me to not only find my own voice as a writer but made me want to figure out how to create characters that, no matter how bad they might be or how awful the things they do, the reader can find some sympathy for. His On Writing is the book I always recommend to beginning writers as a place to start learning to write, and ‘salem’s Lot (with Needful Things running right behind it) is one of the best novels about a small town, and small town life, I’ve ever read. “The Body” is one of my favorite novellas, if not the favorite; and of course the film version, Stand by Me, is one of my favorite films. His uncanny eye for human behavior, his insights into character that are so honest and real and true, are what make the books so damned brilliant for me.

We watched the first episode of American Horror Story: Cult last night as well; it was an excellent start to the season. But that doesn’t mean the show won’t go off the rails as it continues to unfold; it seems like it almost always does. And without the anchor of Jessica Lange giving a balls-out performance at the center, the post-Jessica seasons tend to lose my interest along the way. We never finished watching Hotel, but we did finish the mess that was Roanoke. As Halloween approaches–it’s certainly has felt more like fall around here since Labor Day, with temperatures in the low seventies and no humidity–my mind is turning more and more to reading horror; it’s almost time for my annual Halloween reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and I do have some other horror in my TBR pile I’d like to get through. I promised Katrina Holm I’d read Michael MacDowell’s The Elementals before Bouchercon so we could drink martinis and discuss it; I’ve got some unread Nick Cutter on my shelves, as well as some other things from ChiZine Press (which never disappoints), and there are some Stephen King novels in my collection I’ve yet to read. I also want to reread Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and Floating Dragon; as I said the other day, a horror novel I’ve been thinking about for about thirty years has been percolating in my frontal lobes the last week or so–I finally realized where I could set it, where it would make sense, as opposed to where I’d stubbornly been wanting to set it, where it wouldn’t work so I’ve never been able to write it–and I may start sketching some ideas for it.

And on that note, these edits aren’t going to input themselves.

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader, Eddie Cibrian, in his underwear:

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Always Something There To Remind Me

Monday morning.

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to this weekend–do I ever?–and now it’s Monday morning. Ah, well, ’tis life, isn’t it? We have friends coming in this week–we’re having brunch Saturday at Commander’s–and I’m not sure what other opportunities we’ll have to see them this week.

I did manage to finish reading Donna Andrews’ latest, Gone Gull, over the course of the weekend, which was fun.

gone gull

“Wow, you could kill someone with that thing! Doesn’t that worry you?”

I counted to ten before looking up from the anvil, where I’d been about to start hammering on an iron rod. I’d only finished heating the iron to the perfect temperature for shaping it. If I was working in my own barn, I’d have ignored Victor Winter’s remarks.

But I wasn’t in my own barn. I was at the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center being paid–quite handsomely–to teach Blacksmithing 101. And however annoying I found Victor, he was a student. If ignored, he’d start muttering again about complaining to management. I didn’t want him doing that. Management was my grandmother Cordelia, owner of the center, and I didn’t think she needed the aggravation today.

So when I’d reached ten I put my hammer down, set the rod safely on the anvil, and pushed up my safety goggles. Then I smiled, and did what I could to turn his question into a teaching moment.

“Yes, Victor,” I began. “You could kill someone with this metal rod–even if it wasn’t heated to its present temperature of approximately a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.”

I love the Meg Langslow series, and eagerly await each new volume (there’s another one coming out in October, The Finch That Stole Christmas, huzzah! The Christmas ones–there are two already–are amongst my favorites).  Meg is, as you can guess from the above opening, a highly skilled and trained blacksmith; if I had any complaint to make about the series, it’s that Meg’s blacksmithing has taken a backseat to all of the many other things she somehow manages to do. This book is also not set in the small college town of Caerphilly, Virginia (I pronounce it carefully, because it makes me laugh), but rather in the Blue Ridge mountains, where Meg’s long lost grandmother (introduced in The Good, the Bad, and the Emus, another favorite) lives. (Although I do miss Caerphilly, but I am hopeful the October release will be set there.) Meg has an enormous family, a wry sense of humor, and is uber-organized, which is why she also ends up running so many, many things–almost all of which result in someone being murdered and Meg having to use her highly honed organization and deduction skills to catch a killer.

The premise of every  cozy series, of course, is that the main character manages to catch the killer before the police do; this is a very difficult thing to pull off, and Andrews does it every single time. The books are witty, and clever, and I don’t think I’ve ever even tried to figure out who the killer is, or solve the crime (which is something I tend to do whenever I read a crime novel) because I am enjoying the ride so much.

Gone Gull is a fine addition to a series that I hope Andrews never grows tired of writing, because I’ll keep buying and reading as long as she does.

Tell Her About It

At halftime, LSU was ahead 28-3, and the score could have been even more lopsided.

A punt return for a touchdown was called back for a penalty, and the Tigers also missed two field goals. Chattanooga’s original possession–they got the ball first–was sustained by some sloppy defensive play and some penalties, but after having first-and-goal from the Tiger eight yard line, Chattanooga was forced to kick a field goal–and never led again. Four plays later LSU was ahead 7-3, and never really looked back. Outside of that sloppy play and the penalties, LSU looked very impressive last night, winning 45-10 (Chattanooga’s touchdown came in the fourth quarter when the game was pretty much over, and scored in three plays against the second-team defense.) LSU looked great; getting interceptions, recovering fumbles, completing exciting long passes, and Danny Etling looked calm and cool–sometimes running when he had no one open, sometimes throwing the ball away, never getting intercepted and never getting sacked. (He did get called one time for intentional grounding.) It was, over all, an impressive performance, and LSU could have easily scored over fifty points at the very least.

And it’s always fun to be in Tiger Stadium.

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Today, I have to go make groceries, do some more cleaning, and do some more inputting of edits and I also hope to finish Chapter Five; and maybe tonight we can watch the first episodes of The Deuce and American Horror Story: Cult. I slept really well last night, and I also am planning on making it to the gym for the first time in weeks, and the first time in years without an appointment with my trainer. We’ll see how it goes.

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

Stand Back

I have to work today, so am spending this morning catching up on chores around the house. After I get off work, we are heading up to Baton Rouge for tonight’s LSU game, which I am quite naturally excited about. It’s also my first time taking the new car to an LSU game in Baton Rouge! Woo-hoo!

GEAUX TIGERS!

I also started reading Donna Andrews’ latest, Gone Gull, last night, and am enjoying it pretty thoroughly already. I’ve already laughed out loud a couple of times in the first few chapters, an excellent sign, and am looking forward to reading more of it. Since I am working today and going to the game tonight, I have to do other errands–get groceries, etc–tomorrow, but I am also hoping to be able to carve out some time tomorrow to do some writing/inputting edits. I am so far behind on the inputting of the edits–it’s such a tedious process–but maybe if I just devote myself to it tomorrow, I can power through it, and then spend next weekend making the necessary tweaks the manuscript needs to have made before I start querying agents.

Ah, the joyous sting of rejection to come. Woo-hoo. But I’m much better about that sort of thing now than I used to be. Now, as long as the rejection is handled professionally, I no longer mind. And by professionally, I mean that you are notified. There’s nothing more infuriating than writing something for a market–say, an anthology–and finding out you didn’t get into the anthology when the book is released. This has happened to me more than once, and I am really tired of it. I am also really tired of the people involved turning around and saying oh, I just don’t time to contact everyone. Um, it’s part of the fucking job. I notified every single person who submitted a story to Blood on the Bayou–in fact, for every anthology I’ve ever been involved with–to let them know I wasn’t able to use their story, and to encourage them to submit it elsewhere.

There’s no fucking excuse, otherwise.

Agents who say on their website that ‘if you don’t hear from us in two months’ or some other time period? That’s different, because they are letting you know right up front they will only contact you if interested, and are giving you a timeline. Personally, I still think you should thank someone for submitting, but I’m also old school, and maybe agencies nowadays simply don’t have the staff or the time to do that anymore. I’m not an agent, have never been one, and have never worked for an agency, so I give them the benefit of the doubt.

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

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you, actor Caspar Van Dien.

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Allentown

I was so tired last night when I got home from work–and I worked a short day! After work yesterday, a friend and I went to lunch to a place on the corner of Tulane and Carrollton called Namese, and I had an enormous  bowl of beef pho, which was absolutely delicious. I was in the mood for noodles, and having never actually had pho before, was quite thrilled to try it, and it was amazing. I’ve been wanting to try pho since seeing a show on our local PBS channel, WYES, about the big Vietnamese community in New Orleans, and one of the things they talked about on the documentary was pho. I’d been wanting to try it ever since, and got my chance.

DAMN THAT WAS GOOD.

I’d known we have a big Vietnamese community in New Orleans for quite some time–most of them live in New Orleans East, and were devastated by the flooding after the levees failed back in 2005. Poppy Z. Brite wrote about that community in his brilliant (and deeply disturbing) Exquisite Corpse, doing it so well I never had the nerve to try to write about it myself. (Our first, and only,  Congressman from Orleans Parish was a Vietnamese; Joseph Cao, who defeated “Dollar Bill” Jefferson in the post-Katrina scandal created by the fifty thousand dollars in cash he had stored in his home freezer. Cao was born in Ho Chi Minh City (then called Saigon), and only served one term in Congress–but I liked Congressman Cao; he put New Orleans ahead of party, and I was sorry to see him go.

I have an idea for a noir involving the Vietnamese communities of the Gulf Coast that I hope to write some day. I’ve also been toying with an old idea for a horror novel that’s been dancing in my head for the last thirty years or so–I can tell that I am writing another book; my creativity always spikes when I am writing a book.

Honestly. One would think I could get that under control.

Anyway, I also finished reading Margaret Millar’s Do Evil in Return last night. It wasn’t the below edition I read, but rather one of the volumes of The Collected Millar; this volume also contains Fire Will Freeze, Experiment in Springtime, The Cannibal Heart, and Rose’s Last Summer. But I rather like that Gothic-style cover.

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The afternoon was still hot but the wind carried a threat of fog to come in the night. It slid in through the open window and with curious, insinuating fingers it pried into the corners of the reception room and lifted the skirt of Miss Schiller’s white uniform and explored the dark hair of the girl sitting by the door. The girl held a magazine in her lap but she wasn’t reading it; she was pleating the corners of the pages one by one.

“I don’t know if Dr. Keating will be able to see you,” Miss Schiller said. “It’s quite late.”

The girl coughed nervously. “I couldn’t get here any sooner. I–couldn’t find the office.”

“Oh. You’re a stranger in town?”

“Yes.”

“Were you referred to Dr. Keating by anyone?”

“Referred?”

“Did anyone send you?”

Margaret Millar is a treasure, and her work, despite now being dated because of societal and social changes, are worthy of not only being read by modern audiences but also deserving of study. She, along with Dorothy B. Hughes and Charlotte Armstrong, formed a triumvirate of strong women writing suspense novels featuring women protagonists that were the equal of anything written by male contemporaries; there were numerous other women doing the same, but these three had longer careers and are now being rediscovered, in part thanks to the diligent work of Sarah Weinman and Jeffrey Marks. Library of America has released a two-volume collection of works by great women writers of the time; Soho Crime is releasing thick volumes collecting all of Millar’s work, which I am happily acquiring. I read Armstrong when I was young, and loved her; I am in the process of working my way through the canons of both Millar and Hughes, as well as two other great women writers of the same period, the incomparable Patricia Highsmith and my personal hero, Daphne du Maurier.

Do Evil in Return, originally published in 1950, is ultimately a novel about how society and its hypocritical misogynistic treatment of women can destroy them. The main character of the novel, Dr. Charlotte Keating, is a strong, independent woman with a successful practice in a small California coastal town. She is both single and hard-working; owns her own car and her own home–no small feat for a woman in 1950–and the book opens with a young woman coming to her for help. The woman, Violet O’Gorman, is only twenty and married, but finds herself with a particular problem; estranged from her husband, she had a one-night stand with a married man which has left her pregnant, and she is desperate for an abortion, which of course was illegal in 1950. Dr. Keating–Charley to her friends–refuses to break the law and perform this service, but her heart goes out to her patient and wants to help her, but while distracted by a phone call doesn’t notice the girl slipping out of her office. With a local address her only clue as to how to find Violet, she goes looking for her…and soon finds herself wrapped up in a terrible string of events beyond control, a noose tightening around her own neck. For, like her patient, Charley herself is involved in a love affair with a married man–a platonic one, to be sure, for she refuses to become intimate with him as he is married–and the similarities she sees between herself and young Violet is part of what drives her. The following morning, Violet’s body washes ashore, an apparent suicide, according to the police but Charley herself isn’t so sure.

And of course, she is right.

Millar’s particular genius lies in how casually she lays out her cards; she never tells her reader straight out what’s going on, but allows it to unfurl naturally, leaving it to her reader to figure it out. When we meet Charley’s platonic lover, there is no mention of his being married–Millar simply talks about the stifling existence he has at home with Gwen. As the story continues the reader slowly realizes that Gwen is actually his wife, and she is also one of Charley’s patients. Charley has tried to foist Gwen off on other doctors, but hypochondriac Gwen refuses to see anyone else–and is incredibly needy, ringing Charley for help at all hours of the day or night. Charley’s own feelings for Gwen’s husband also aren’t that simple; and in 1950 divorces weren’t as easy to obtain as they are today.

Perhaps the strongest part of the book is how Millar clearly depicts how claustrophobic a woman’s world was in 1950, and the delicate balance a single, independent professional woman had to maintain. Exposure of the relationship would ruin Charley, both personally and professionally; just as Violet’s unexpected pregnancy has ruined her. Society’s expectations of women, and their sexuality, are the true villains, the true evil in this novel; and the realization that this world Millar so brilliantly depicts was only sixty-seven years ago is truly chilling.

I think this book would be excellent reading for a Women’s Studies course; to let young women know how truly awful and misogynistic society was not so long ago, as a reminder to everyone today how far women have come in a short period of time, and how hard they fought to get to where they are today.

 

Stray Cat Strut

Friday!!!!

I have almost made it through this short week–I am working tomorrow before we head up to Baton Rouge for the LSU-UT Chattanooga game–and am pretty happy about it. It seemed off this week; I’m not sure what that’s about. We’ve had a chilly week here–for September, it’s been in the 70’s without humidity, which is November weather, really. I’ve slept fairly well, despite waking up a couple of times per night, and each morning have not wanted to get up. I may get up tomorrow morning so I can get the groceries and run errands prior to going to the office–get that out of the way so I can sleep late Sunday, since we’ll probably not get back from Baton Rouge until around midnight.

This week my short story “Keeper of the Flame” came out in Mystery Weekly magazine, and I am inordinately proud of this. Short stories are so hard for me to write, so each sale of one makes me feel like I’ve truly accomplished something.  I struggle so much with short stories…I have so many right now that aren’t finished, but I am trying to get the edits input and the first draft of the new Scotty written and … and…and…

I also got pretty deep into Margaret Millar’s sublime Do Evil in Return, and can’t wait to finish reading it so I can post about it. It’s so extraordinary!

Anyway, if you want to read “Keeper of the Flame”, you do have to pay for it, alas. This is the link to the preview of the story, to give you an idea of whether you want to read it or not:

http://mysteryweekly.com/issues/keeper.asp

You can buy the magazine in either print or e-form here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1549639919/

And you can also buy or subscribe here:

http://www.mysteryweekly.com/subscribe.asp

Do support markets that pay–even in a small amount–for short crime fiction!

Here’s a hunk to get your weekend rolling, former Tarzan actor Gordon Scott:

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