Author: gregh121

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

Seven Wonders

Paul left early this morning–4:45 am to be exact–and somehow I then managed to sleep in until ten. I have another late night of bar testing this evening, and had planned to get up early and head out to the mall to do my Christmas shopping for Paul as well as stop by the Apple store. Alas, I overslept, and while I could go ahead and get ready quickly and head on out to do it all, I’m also thinking I can just do it tomorrow. Yes, the weekend before Christmas is going to be hideous out there in retail land, but I also don’t want to be rushed. I took tomorrow off because I have some appointments in the late afternoon, but if I can get up by nine tomorrow morning, I can do it all: Target, Apple, Macys, and even Costco. I have tickets for an early (10:00 am) showing of Rogue One Saturday morning at the Prytania Theater, and I intend to get quite a bit of writing–and cleaning–done this weekend.

In other exciting news, my editor got back to me and was enormously pleased with the tweaks I made based on her suggestions for my story; I cannot make an official announcement yet but I am very excited. The name of my story is “Lightning Bugs in a Jar,” and I can’t wait to talk about it. Woo-hoo!

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as getting praise for your work, is there? Particularly when you’re an author. I always thought that the more work I published, the further along in my career I got, the easier it would get and the less self-doubt there would be. Alas, that isn’t true; if anything, it gets worse. Heavy heaving sigh.

Ah, well.

So, as soon as I finish this I am going to get cleaning and organizing around here so I won’t have to take time from my weekend to do it.

I really want to get this book done. I’m itching to get going on some other projects (as always).

All right, sorry for the brevity, but I need to get back to the spice mines.

But here’s a hunk for you in the meantime.

Big Love

I worked late last night, and so had to cancel Wacky Russian this morning; it simply wouldn’t have worked–there was no way I was getting up in time to see him this morning at eight. I actually didn’t get up until almost nine, and I am still a little sleepy-groggy, but hey, I’m awake and drinking coffee, so that’s a start. I also have a late night on Thursday, but I have appointments Friday afternoon so I took that day off. Paul is leaving tomorrow morning for his mother’s, so I am hoping to get his Christmas gifts handled then as well–even if it means a trip to the mall in Metairie. (shudder)

In other exciting news, I bought a ticket for a morning matinee showing of Rogue OneSaturday. (Paul and his mom are going to see it while he is visiting her.) This is inordinately exciting for me. I generally don’t go see movies, and I certainly never go see them alone. Kind of cool.

I finished revising my short story yesterday based on the editor’s notes, and I am hopeful that I was able to get the tweaking done properly. I am never confident that I am doing what the editor wants, and my guess is always that I have not. I’ll read it over again this weekend along with her notes to double check, but I always doubt myself, which drives me crazy.

CraziER. Crazier.

Sigh.

The book continues to hum along. I managed to write a chapter yesterday in less than an hour, and when I started writing it I didn’t think I’d be able to get a thousand words done because it was hard to get started, but then I thought, anything is better than nothing and next thing I knew I had a chapter done.

Remember how this works, Gregalicious. It always happens this way.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Today’s hunk:

Never Forget

It looks like it’s another lovely morning out there. I didn’t have to get up early today, as I have to do bar-testing tonight and thus my shift was adjusted to accomodate not getting off work until eleven thirty this evening; I slept long and deep and hard, not waking until after ten. I guess I needed the sleep? I’m not going to complain, it felt good. My windows are covered in condensation–we had to turn the air on last night, so condensation on the windows means it’s probably in the seventies out there, or at least humid. Crazy December weather.

I just took out the trash. It’s in the seventies and a bit humid out there.

The revisions on a short story are due today, so as soon as I finish this and shower, I am going to dive back into them. I did it last night, but don’t trust myself enough to send it in again. I am going to reread the whole story this morning, and then reread the editor’s notes to see if I accomplished what she asked, or if I simply shoehorned/grafted some stuff onto it that doesn’t fit in the rhythm of the story and would prove kind of jarring to the reader. I also have to work on the book today and I’d like to solve the problem of the other story as well; I think I figured out how to really make it work last night while watching Ray Donovan (the two are not connected; my mind will sometimes wander while I’m watching something, no matter how riveting it is, and I am really enjoying this show); this is why short stories are so hard for me. I’ve already done at least six drafts of this particular story, but I think I finally, FINALLY, put it all together in my head last night.

Again, it comes down to cutting things that were rather well-written. I shall have to save them for another piece, maybe a book, I don’t know.

And in fairness, this short story was originally a book idea that I decided to turn into a creepy short story.

The book so far has been a slog, but I am starting to find my character’s voice, which is half the battle. Once I have the voice–I already have the plot–it becomes that much easier. I am hoping to get a lot of it done this weekend. I need to get these two short stories out of the way this week, and I have two other stories I need to work on by the end of the month, and I also have an essay I need to write.

Sheesh.

Merry Christmas to ME.

Ah, well, such is life. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I weren’t busy, you know?

Here’s a hunk for today:

Tusk

Paul is leaving to visit his mother on Thursday for a few days, which leaves me with a stark and lonely weekend of cleaning, writing, and reading. It’s needed, and there are also some long weekends coming up thanks to the holidays, so am feeling relatively confident I can get things finished the way I need to.

Fingers crossed, at any rate.

The weather, after that abysmal cold spell over the weekend, has now climbed back into the seventies for today; the high is supposed to be 74. It is one of those lovely days–warm, slightly cool breeze, bright blue sky with nary a cloud to be seen anywhere. Of course, I am convinced this is because I finally realized that it was smart to prepare myself for the cold in my home office and broke out the space heater.

*shakes first at universe*

Of course, rather than working on the two stories that need to be revised or the book in progress, all I can think about is the stupid short story i started writing this weekend. Do other writers have this creative attention deficit disorder? Why is it so flipping hard for me to focus on one writing project at a time, and why, oh why, can’t I simply focus on the one that has to be done? Heavy heaving sigh.

We continue to watch Ray Donovan, and continue to enjoy it, although there have been moments of ‘oh really?’ here and there. I am also still reading I Am Providence, not as quickly as I would like–the writing and everything–but I am moving along rather nicely. I also have been rereading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly (watching Medici: Masters of Florence triggered me into wanting to read the section “The Renaissance Popes Trigger the Protestant Reformation” again). This book is one of Tuchman’s best; in it, she talks about how governments fail to act in their own self-interest with disastrous results because of an inability to see the big picture. She opens with book with the myth of the Trojan War and the Trojan Horse; an illustrative myth demonstrating folly. The war was folly, taking the horse into the city was folly; and then she moves on to three historical periods where folly and the short-term overruled the big picture with disastrous results: the afore-mentioned study of six consecutive popes (Pius II thru Clement VII); “The British Lose America”; and finally, “America Betrays Herself in Vietnam.”

I would love to write popular histories, but the problem of course is I don’t have the time to do the research. My time is already pretty limited, and let’s face it, if I learned anything from college it’s that I would rather read for pleasure than read something I have to. In fact, nothing takes the pleasure from reading for me faster than being forced to read something, which is why I want to reread some of the things I was forced to read for classes–like The Great Gatsby, which I absolutely loathed, and Hemingway, and various other things.

Ah, well, enough delaying, and it’s back to the spice mines with me.

Here’s today’s hunk.

Walk a Thin Line

Yesterday morning it was cold for here; it was only forty degrees out when I got out of bed and lumbered downstairs. It was even colder inside that it was outside–the joy of old New Orleans homes, built to be cooler inside than out–and sat here shivering at my desk trying to get some work done. It wasn’t easy and I was so cold, so cold that I decided when out running errands to buy gloves in order to cut off their fingers so I could type with them on so it wouldn’t be an issue. It wasn’t, of course, until later that I remembered I had a space heater in the closet upstairs, which I brought downstairs and set up. It’s not as cold this morning as it was yesterday, but I do have it on and I am relatively comfortable in here. This is a good sign. I didn’t get as much writing done yesterday as I’d intended; I have to write at least two chapters and revise two short stories this weekend–so of course, I started writing an entirely different short story yesterday, and one I don’t have a market for.

Heavy heaving sigh. Isn’t that always the way?

Ah, well. It’s an idea I had actually a really long time ago, and something I saw on Facebook reminded me of it, and so I actually started writing it. I’d forgotten the idea, quite frankly, hadn’t made any notes or anything, and it is a good idea, so I thought it better not to forget about it a second time so I took some action and wrote the opening. I also don’t know how to end it, either, so I am not going to try to write any more of it; rather, I’ll just print what I had and write out some notes and create a folder for it so it’s there when I want to get back to it. Which is what I usually do. Which is why I have a million folders everywhere.

We are still watching Ray Donovan, but I also discovered a new series on Netflix last night, Medici: Masters of Florence, which I of course wanted to start watching. Paul’s not into it as much as I am, of course, but he’s also going to visit his mother this coming weekend so I will have plenty of time to watch it while he’s gone. It’s focused on Cosimo de Medici (I love me some Medicis), and the building of Il Duomo. It’s lavishly and expensively shot–they’ve spared little to no expense–and the lead actor is the guy who played Robb Stark on Game of Thrones, Richard Madden, who is quite lovely to look at.

Those eyes!

The story flashes back and forth between the time when Cosimo is a young man with aspirations of being an artist, and forced into the world of banking and power by his father, Giovanni (played by Dustin Hoffman)–who dies of poison at the opening of the first episode. The present day is 1429, so the ‘past’ is 1409. Giovanni is the one who started the bank and founded the dynasty; Cosimo took it much higher–Cosimo’s grandson laid the groundwork for two Medici popes and, in time, two Medici queens of France. (The Medici eventually reached noble status, and eventually royal. Not bad for a family of bankers.) The Medici are fascinating, of course, and watching the episodes we did see made me, of course, long for Italy. (Next year’s Bouchercon anthology is themed Passport to Murder; I have some ideas for stories set in Italy, which is kind of exciting for me. And of course, there’s an Italian novel I want to write–not in Italian, set in Italy, of course.)

I am also still reading and enjoying Nick Mamatas’ I Am Providence, which is really hitting its stride nicely. I am not sure what I intend to read when I finish it; there are some lovely horror novels in my TBR pile, but then again, every book on my TBR pile looks lovely.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Beautiful Child

Everyone is making and publishing lists of their favorite books of 2016; I intend to do the same, of course, with the stipulation that I shall simply name my favorite reads of the year, regardless of publication date. I can do that because, you know, this is my blog.

So, in no particular order, my favorite reads of the year:

Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

A haunting story of an ambitious state’s attorney whose current case forces her to confront her own past–as well as the way she remembers that past–with some sly social commentary about changing societal attitudes towards racism, classism, and sexism. It is also extremely well-constructed, alternating between the present day and the past with different tenses and distinct voices; the voice of a child and that same voice as an adult.

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

We watch them on television every four years when the Olympics roll around, marveling at their skill and being moved by their prepackaged and manufactured personal stories without wondering what really goes into the day-to-day world of raising a prodigy athlete, the sacrifices that must be made–and just how far is a parent willing to go to not only protect their child but make their dreams come true? Megan Abbott, one of our strongest writers, asks those questions in this chilling tale, and the answers aren’t what you might think.

The third novel by Edgar and Macavity Award winning author Alex Marwood might be her best yet; a compelling study of narcissism and the damage it can do to one family, structured around the disappearance of one of a pair of twins during a holiday weekend where the adults basically abandoned all responsibility and how the past is still affecting the present, when everyone from that weekend gathers for the funeral of the lost child’s father.

What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin

This astonishing tale of two murders, twenty-five years apart, is also a study of fame, and notoriety. Twenty five years ago a teenaged girl went to prison for murdering a notorious Hollywood director. Now, after getting out and married, her father-in-law is murdered in a very similar fashion. Did she commit both murders, or neither of them? The secrets and motivations from the past, long buried, now come rushing to the surface as all the players from twenty-five years ago have to face inconvenient truths long-buried.

The Watcher in the Wall by Owen Laukkanen

My first Owen Laukkanen novel definitely won’t be my last. A teenager commits suicide, and the FBI becomes aware of ‘suicide groups’ on-line, where suicidal people go for solace while opening themselves up to the potential predatory conduct of a sick voyeur who enjoys watching teenagers commit suicide on live cam. By showing us how the predator was created, and the point of view of the current victim he is nursing along, Laukkanen takes this from just another thriller to a complex and complicated exploration of human nature, how damage begets more damage, and how far the law is behind our modern technology.

Crazy Love You by Lisa Unger

Also my first Lisa Unger, and it won’t be my last. Gorgeously written, Unger keeps the reader guessing what is really going on with her protagonist right up to the end–and even then, the reader still isn’t sure. Phenomenal.

Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

Published a couple of years ago, Elizabeth Little here tells the tale of a Paris Hilton like celebutante, convicted of murdering her mother when she’s seventeen and released on a technicality ten years later. Her main character is untrustworthy and untrusting as she embarks on an attempt to find out who really killed her mother ten years earlier–if she didn’t do it–and the trail leads her to a bizarre small town in the Dakotas where the secret of her true past is hidden.

The Ex by Alafair Burke

One of the best legal thrillers I’ve read, Burke’s main character is a tough, driven defense attorney whose personal life isn’t the best, takes the case of an ex she treated badly years before, which she has always felt guilty about. But does her belief in her client’s innocence justified, or is it based in her own guilt? As the evidence mounts against him, she begins to question her own motivations and values as she struggles to defend her client. Extraordinary.

Stranded by Bracken MacLeod

This story of an ice-locked freighter and its crew is almost unbearable in its tension and suspense. Told from the point of view of the ship’s scapegoat, who despite everything manages to rise to heroic behavior in the face of unspeakable terror and horrific conditions to save the ship, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

How Like an Angel by Margaret Millar

There was a reason Margaret Millar was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and this novel is an example of why. A car breakdown outside of a strange religious cult’s farm leads our unlikely hero into a long-dead murder mystery going back quite a few years, and it has a strange connection to the cult.

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor

A must read for every Star Wars geek out there; it’s not only a history of the films and the merchandising but a history of the fandom. Most enjoyable.

So, there it is: my favorite reads of the past year off the top of my head. I didn’t read everything, of course, and I am sure I forgot books from this past year that I deeply enjoyed. But those are the ones I remember from the top of my head, without reviewing my blog for the last year.

I may add some before the end of the year.

And now back to the spice mines.

Honey Hi

The book is coming along nicely, if slowly, but I feel that this weekend (no college football) will be a MOST excellent time for me to get caught up on it. I am also making terrific progress on the revision of the short story, and I have another to revise on top of it, so my work–around errands and cleaning–this weekend is cut out for me indeed.

But as I always say, I’d rather be busy–and holiday weekends are coming, as well. I’ve done the majority of my Christmas shopping already; Paul is, as always, a challenge as he simply buys what he wants when he wants it, and he never really wants much in the first place.

We’ve started watching Ray Donovan on Showtime, and we’re enjoying it so far. I’ve always been fascinated by Hollywood ‘fixers’–albeit the ones in the days of the big studios–so it’s kind of interesting to see a fictional series about one in the present day.

I am almost finished reading Gore Vidal’s Empire; it’s slow going, as so much of Vidal’s work is (although I’d really love to reread Julian the Apostate again; and The City and the Pillar as well). It’s part of his fictional ‘American history’ series, which I’ve not read. Vidal was, as one of my co-workers said, the kind of American intellectual we will probably never see again in this country; I tried to think, and have been trying to think, of whom the current day American intellectuals are, without much success. I don’t know if that’s my failing, or that of our society; I don’t know who the current day equivalent of Vidal or William F. Buckley Jr. would be. Vidal was incredibly intelligent, but there was also a sneering, condescending superiority to him that I never particularly cared for (Buckley was much the same); a sense that “if you don’t agree with me you are clearly mentally inferior.” No one likes to be told they’re stupid or not as smart as someone else; that puts me off even when it’s someone I agree with. Vidal had a deeply cynical view of American history and of the country itself; I’ve not read his essays on American history and politics so I am not sure if that cynical contempt was of the country or how it mythologized its past and the hand-over-heart patriotism it promotes; the concept of American exceptionalism, which does bear much deeper scrutiny than it gets as a general rule. I do know that he was fascinated by Aaron Burr (his fictional biography, Burr, was the first book in his series about American history) and felt he was an unappreciated American hero unjustly vilified by his enemies, whose view of him has come down to us through the centuries.

I’ve actually never read Burr, or any biographies of him; what I know of Burr has primarily come from reading biographies of his political enemies (Hamilton and Jefferson) or histories of the period that are slanted towards his enemies; it only stands to reason if Hamilton and Jefferson are to be heroes, than their enemies must therefore be villains. Yet Hamilton and Jefferson were political enemies; throw John Adams into the mix and you have quite a confusing mishmash of who is the bad guy/who is the good guy. The truth, of course, is they were human and a mix of both the good and the bad, despite the mythology.

Heavy thoughts for a Friday morning; and not where I really wanted my blog entry this morning to go.

Then again, I’m listening to the Hamilton cast show album, and Burr is mentioned periodically in Empire, so perhaps there was an inevitability to this, after all.

(And now, of course, I want to reread both The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers, damn you, Hamilton cast show recording!)

All right, perhaps it’s time to return to the Spice Mines.

Here’s today’s hunk:

I Know I’m Not Wrong

Another gray morning in New Orleans. I don’t have to be at work until later; a short day in store for me, so I am going to run a couple of errands this afternoon and diligently work away at my computer while also trying to straighten out/clean the kitchen/office. Seems like every day, doesn’t it? Ah, well.

The best of lists are coming out now, and as expected, I am seeing some books that I absolutely loved this past year (Laura Lippman’s Wilde Lake, Alison Gaylin’s What Remains of Me, Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me, Alex Marwood’s The Darkest Secret, Alafair Burke’s The Ex) showing up on many of them; as well as many other books in the TBR pile I’ve not gotten to yet. The awards season for crime fiction this next year is going to be something, methinks. I’ll do one at some point this months of my favorite books that I read this year; I don’t limit myself to books published in the current year, of course. I love to read, really. I’m always amazed when people tell me they get bored, because it’s mystifying to me; how can you be bored when there are so many wonderful books to read, so many that even as voracious a reader as me will never even get close to scratching the surface of every book I want to read?

Reading is so satisfying. I’m very glad I have a passion for it. I only wish I had more time for it.

My vacation week was actually rather lovely; I would get up in the morning and drink my coffee and answer emails, write a blog entry; edit what I wrote the day before, go run some errands, come back home and write for four or five hours until the well went dry; and then curl up with a book in my easy chair while I waited for Paul to come home. This, I thought, is the life. Now that I am going back to the office every day, my timing is more tight and thus I have to juggle my time a bit better. There isn’t the time, for example, to laze around because any wasted time is time taken from my writing or editing; usually what this means is I have to cut out my reading time. I try to create a balance between work and relaxation; if I don’t I get stressed and tired, have trouble sleeping, and that affects the next day.

Which is why I get behind.

Sigh.

My office is such a mess I feel claustrophobic.

All right, I need to get back to the spice mines.

Here’s another French farmer:

Never Make Me Cry

I had a major breakthrough on one of my short stories yesterday, and got some decent work done on the book. Not as much as I would have liked–and yes, I am behind on it–but progress is progress and I will always take it. Here’s hoping I can get back on schedule this weekend. A couple of really “on my game” days is all it will take, really.

Hopefully, some of that magic will occur today.

It’s always lovely to have a breakthrough on a story. This particular one was written several years ago for an anthology submission, was turned down for that–then slightly revised and resubmitted twice more, only to be rejected twice more. It’s seem right for yet another submission call, so I dragged it out again because I know there’s a publishable story in there somewhere. Yes, I can be stubborn, and I am determined to get this story not only right, but published somewhere. (I hate that there are so few markets for short stories, but that’s a whole other story.) But I did go through it another time and make some good corrections; then last night in the car on the way home I was struck by the proverbian lightning and realized exactly what was wrong with the story, and now I know how to not only fix it, but make it so much better.

It’s SO annoying when it takes me so long to work out what’s wrong with a short story.

THIS is why I find short stories so hard, I might add. Sometimes a short story just springs from me, the first draft just being rough but the actual story is there and just needs tweaking, some polish, and some refinement; other times it takes me years and I can never quite put my finger on what’s wrong with it–and then, hopefully, out of the blue the answer comes right to me, like yesterday.

Needless to say, I prefer the former over the latter. There are some stories still languishing in my files, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike. Some of those waiting for me to figure out what’s wrong with them include “Fireflies”, “The Ditch,” and “The Weight of a Feather” (although I think I’ve figured out how to fix that one).

There’s another subset; stories that began as ideas that I started writing, got pretty far into, and couldn’t figure out how to end: “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain”, “Never Kiss a Stranger”, and “All Hallows Eve.” What often happens is the stories turn out to be different then the original idea (the last being one of those) and yet I still try to graft the original idea onto it rather than saving that for another story and just writing the story as it comes to me.

Idiocy, really.

And now back to the spice mines.

Today’s hunk is Zac Efron, on a skateboard.

Brown Eyes

It has rained all night, and in the dawn’s early light outside my windows everything looks wet and soggy. It was still raining this morning when my alarm went off, but as I sip my cappuccino and prepare my lunch before sitting back down to my computer, the rain has ceased, or at least there’s now a temporary respite. These are the days when I would rather curl up under a blanket and read a book, but alas–that is not to be.

I started reading Nick Mamatas’ I Am Providence last night and am enjoying it so far, although I’m only a few chapters in. I’ve not read him before, and this is a crime novel set at the Summer Tentacular, a conference/festival in Rhode Island celebrating Lovecraft. (I’ve also not read Lovecraft, which is another reason, one would suppose, why I am terrible at writing horror; Lovecraft apparently is de rigeur for writing horror or fantasy. I tried reading him when I was a teenager and didn’t get very far; I would try again but my TBR has basically already taken over my living room.) I love books about writers, and I love books about writing conferences–two of my absolute favorite books are Isaac Azimov’s Murder at the ABA (long overdue for a reread), which is set at what was once called the ABA (American Booksellers Association) and now called BEA (Book Expo America), and Elizabeth Peters’ hilarious Die for Love, set at a romance fan festival in New York (also long overdue for a reread).

I recently realized I’ve been writing stories about writers a lot lately–a couple of unpublished short stories, and of course, Jerry Channing appeared in both The Orion Mask and Garden District Gothic; I’m even thinking about an entire book with Jerry as the main character–and it’s always been something I’ve resisted–writing about writers, even though it’s something I know intimately and always enjoy reading. I even said this to one of my co-workers at the office lately, a quote that’s always in the back of my head: there is nothing more narcissistic and masturbatory than writing fiction about writers. That thought has always been in the back of my mind, and whenever I start creating a character who is a writer or have an idea for a story about one, I always pull back, remembering that. Saying it to my co-worker recently got me thinking about it–where did I read it? Who told me that? Stephen King has, for example, always written about writers–both ‘salem’s Lot (Ben Mears, moderately successful novelist) and The Shining (failed novelist Jack Torrance) have writers as main characters; and I can think of any number of other authors who’ve also done it, quite successfully. Elizabeth Peters’ series character Jacqueline Kirby starts out as a librarian, and eventually becomes an international bestselling romance novelist, for another example.

And then, last night as I revised a short story about a writer, and then curled up with the Mamatas novel, I heard the words clearly in my head again, and knew exactly where they came from.

That wretched writing professor who told me in 1979 I would never get anything published.

I might have known.

So, tonight as I continue to revise that story and work on the new book, I am giving you once again, Asshole Writing Professor, the finger.

And now back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for today: