Author: gregh121

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

That’s Enough for Me

A grim, rainy Monday outside the Lost Apartment, and I can hear the wind roaring around the upper level of the house. It is pouring here right now; the leaves are glistening with wet in the gloom–and am I ever glad I got the windows in the car fixed!

Yesterday was a lovely day; I got some work done, went to Costco, and managed to finish reading Paul Tremblay’s wonderful A Head Full of Ghosts.

“This must be so difficult for you, Meredith.”

Best-selling author Rachel Neville wears a perfect fall ensemble: dark blue hat to match her sensible knee-length skirt and a beige wool jacket with buttons as large as kitten heads. She carefully attempts to keep to the uneven walkway. The slate stones have pitched up, their edges peeking out of the ground, and they wiggle under her feet like loose baby teeth. As a child I used to tie strings of red dental floss around a wiggly tooth and leave the floss dangling there for days and days until the tooth feel out on its own. Marjorie would call me a tease and chase me around the house trying to pull the wax string, and I would scream and cry because it was fun and because I was afraid if I let her pull one tooth she wouldn’t be able to help herself and she’d pull them all out.

How much has passed since we lived here? I’m only twenty-three but if anyone asks I tell them that I’m a quarter-century-minus-two years old. I like watching people struggle with the math in their heads.

Earlier this year, the book won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, and as I have mentioned previously, I’d started it before and got distracted and for some reason hadn’t finished it. I picked it up again last week and started at the beginning again, and this time read it all the way through. It’s an interesting book–well-written, certainly, and I also thought it was interesting the way Tremblay chose to deal with its subject matter: is Marjorie Barrett a mentally ill teenager, or is she possessed by a demon? Complicating matters is that her father is descending into religious mania, while her mother is quite rational and skeptical; and while all of this is going on the family, in need of money, has agreed to have it all filmed as a reality show, The Possession.

The point of view character is the younger daughter, Merry (Meredith), who is remembering it all as it happened in two ways; she is remembering it for the afore-mentioned novelist, who is writing a non-fiction book about what happened to the Barretts, and Merry herself is writing a blog about the television show AND the case under a pseudonym for Fangoria.

It’s an interesting book, and it reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle in the voice; an emotionally arrested young woman telling the story in a child-like way about what happened when she was a child, and does she have an adult voice?

I’d read somewhere recently about how horror novels and films are often attacked by religious groups when the books themselves actually are quite affirmative of religion; I’ve always thought that to be true–Anne Rice’s vampire novels are actually very much about affirming Catholicism; and doesn’t almost every vampire novel, really, confirm that the symbolism necessary to defeat or keep vampires at bay those of Roman Catholicism? (Particularly interesting in that in Dracula, a Transylvanian would have been Greek Orthodox not Roman Catholic.) I don’t know enough about the genre to write knowledgeably about this, but it is definitely interesting.

And now back to the spice mines.

Angel

Writers write.

I’ve posted something along those lines before, both on my blog here and on Social media. I do believe that to be the truth; writers are people who write. Writers don’t write all the time of course; we take breaks, we step away from it for a while–sometimes days, weeks, months, years; some writers walk away and never write. But writers do write.

Sometime in the past year or so–I don’t remember when–I saw somewhere, I don’t remember where–someone took umbrage to the notion that writers write and wrote a lengthy diatribe about how some writers don’t write; as I read all the reasons people don’t write I just kind of shook my head. I take time off from writing periodically; sometimes it’s necessary to take some down time to think, to read, to relax so you don’t burn out or get stale.

And no matter what anyone thinks, says, or feels, I will always think it’s true: writers write.

Michael Thomas Ford (aka That Bitch Ford; or TBF for short) writes. He writes a lot. And he’s very good; he can pretty much write anything. He’s written children’s books and young adult; mysteries and romances and vampires and zombies and essays. I first became acquainted with his work when he was writing a syndicated column in the LGBT press (there used to be such a thing, kids) called “My Queer Life.” I met him when he signed a collection of those essays at the Marigny Bookstore, Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me, and they were all quite funny (included in that collection is my favorite essay about writing ever, “The Nonwriting Life,” which is absolutely spot-on), and over the years we’ve stayed in touch, remained friends; he was one of my contributing editors when I was at Lambda Book Report, he’s contributed to my anthologies over the years, we’ve shared editors, friends and enemies and lots of snark.

Endless amounts of snark.

But after several years away from writing, he’s back, and once again, he’s done a fantastic job with his new work, Lily.

Lily is a fairy tale of sorts, in the same way Tim Burton movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride are; like Neil Gaiman’s Emmeline. Lily is a little girl who, on her birthday, develops the ability to know when whomever she touches will die; and the book follows her after her mother sells her to a traveling tent revivial–as she struggles to fulfill a quest given to her by the witch Baba-yaga as well as find her way back to her safe old world.

The illustrations are quite beautiful, and they match the tone and beauty of the story as well. I am often amazed at how TBF can so easily master different voices and tone and styles. It’s a wonderful wonderful story; one adults can enjoy as well as children.

It’s an excellent addition to your library.

Sisters of the Moon

I went to my first Christmas party of the year last night and stayed far too late; I didn’t roll out of bed until after ten this morning but at the very least I do feel very well rested, at any rate, if groggy. I stuck to Sauvignon Blanc last night, which I really like–I use to loathe white wine, but have developed an appreciation for both Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. I rather like wine, but rarely drink it at home.

Perhaps a glass every evening will help me sleep?

Yesterday was, on the whole, a good day. I spent most of the day washing the bed linen and organizing my kitchen (not as much as I should have done, of course; I never do that as much as I should. I really need to clean out the drawers and cabinets; a project for my vacation that never happened), and I worked on editing one of my short stories. I came across an anthology call for submissions that is absolutely perfect for this story, and I needed to go over it again. It’s been rejected a minimum of three times–for two conference anthologies and from Ellery Queen; but I kind of figured it didn’t strike the right tone for the conference anthologies and Ellery Queen was a long shot. But when I opened the document yesterday, I immediately saw what was wrong with it and why it had been rejected so regularly, and I also knew how to fix it, so I started working on it. I hope to get that finished today and sent off and out of the way; there are couple of other calls I’d like to submit to as well; and the stories need to be worked on a bit, and I also need to get going on the new novel as well. I also got editorial notes I need to mull over today, and I need to make the Costco run that I should have made yesterday but put off.

But it’s also raining; thunderstorms off and on all afternoon. Costco in the rain? Hmmmmm.

I do rather like how gray it is outside, though.

And lord, what a mess this kitchen/office area is this morning.

I do feel more motivated today than I did yesterday–whatever that may mean for the day; I would like to finish reading my book today, and I’d like to get some good work done.

Why is it so hard for me to remember that I enjoy writing? I actually do, you know, and I suppose as with anything I just get very frustrated and annoyed when it’s not going well or with myself when I get lazy.

Okay, need to focus and get things done.

Here’s a French farmer.

Not That Funny

I am awake but groggy. I slept late, am guzzling coffee, and am thinking that I may put off going to Costco until tomorrow. Today might be a stay at home, laze around, get some stuff done when and if I feel like it day. I have a bit of the ‘just turned in the book’ malaise, that bizarre funk where I just feel a bit dazed for a couple of days. Which is fine, of course, although I need to really get to work on the next. I see reading A Head Full of Ghosts in my future. I also have a Christmas party to attend this evening.

Yesterday I managed to find that Twilight Zone episode I was talking about, “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” based on the Harlan Ellison short story that is definitely one of my favorites of all time. It’s on Youtube, and if you have about thirty-two minutes to spare, it’s definitely worth watching.

Click here.

Sure, watching it now you can tell it was filmed in the 1980’s–the little bit of special effects used were especially cheesy–but the greatness of the story still comes through; it’s speculative fiction, sure, but the real strength and greatness of the story is in its human elements. And Danny Kaye is fantastic.

I found it because I was googling the story to find out which collection it’s in–it’s not in The Essential Ellison, sadly–and I wanted to read it again, only to discover you can actually read it on-line as a pdf here.

And yes, the story as written is so much more powerful than the actual teleplay–which I believe was also written by Ellison.

The story opens with two men in a small cemetery; one is quite old and visiting the grave of his beloved wife, lost to him for twenty years. He is set upon by a couple of young hoodlums determined to rob him; they are fought off and driven away by another man in the cemetery who sees it happening and comes to the old man’s rescue. The two men develop a bond, although the rescuer is a little stand-offish and the older man has to earn his trust. The old man’s name is Gaspar, and he is quite charming and a bit opinionated. The younger man, Billy, who is haunted still by something that happened to him in Vietnam.

THIS WAS AN OLD MAN. Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic. But even so, a very old man, this old man perched on an antique shooting stick, its handles open to form a seat, its spike thrust at an angle into the soft ground and trimmed grass of the cemetery. Gray, thin rain misted down at almost the same, angle as that at which the spike pierced the ground. The winter-barren trees lay flat and black against an aluminum sky, unmoving in the chill wind. An old man sitting at the foot of a grave mound whose headstone had tilted slightly when the earth had settled; sitting in the rain and speaking to someone below.

“They tore it down, Minna.

“I tell you, they must have bought off a councilman.

“Came in with bulldozers at six o’clock in the morning, and you know that’s not legal. There’s a Municipal Code. Supposed to hold off till at least seven on weekdays, eight on the weekend; but there they were at six, even before six, barely light for godsakes. Thought they’d sneak in and do it before the neighborhood got wind of it and call the landmarks committee. Sneaks: they come on holidays, can you imagine!

“But I was out there waiting for them, and I told them, ‘You can’t do it, that’s Code number 91.03002, subsection E,’ and they lied and said they had special permission, so I said to the big muckymuck in charge, ‘Let’s see your waiver permit,’and he said the Code didn’t apply in this case because it was supposed to be only for grading, and since they were demolishing and not grading, they could start whenever they felt like it. So I told him I’d call the police, then, because it came under the heading of Disturbing the Peace, and he said . . . well, I know you hate that kind of language, old girl, so I won’t tell you what he said, but you can imagine.

“So I called the police, and gave them my name, and of course they didn’t get there till almost quarter after seven (which is what makes me think they bought off a councilman), and by then those ‘dozers had leveled most of it. Doesn’t take long, you know that.

“And I don’t suppose it’s as great a loss as, maybe, say, the Great Library of Alexandria, but it was the last of the authentic Deco design drive-ins, and the carhops still served you on roller skates, and it was a landmark, and just about the only place left in the city where you could still get a decent grilled cheese sandwich pressed very flat on the grill by one of those weights they used to use, made with real cheese and not that rancid plastic they cut into squares and call it ‘cheese food.’

“Gone, old dear, gone and mourned. And I understand they plan to put up another one of those mini-malls on the site, just ten blocks away from one that’s already there, and you know what’s going to happen: this new one will drain off the traffic from the older one, and then that one will fall the way they all do when the next one gets built, you’d think they’d see some history in it; but no, they never learn, And you should have seen the crowd by seven-thirty. All ages, even some of those kids painted like aborigines, with torn leather clothing. Even they came to protest. Terrible language, but at least they were concerned. And nothing could stop it. They just whammed it, and down it went.

“I do so miss you today, Minna. No more good grilled cheese.” Said the very old man to the ground. And now he was crying softly, and now the wind rose, and the mist rain stippled his overcoat.

Nearby, yet at a distance, Billy Kinetta stared down at another grave. He could see the old man over there off to his left, but he took no further notice. The wind whipped the vent of his trenchcoat. His collar was up but rain trickled down his neck. This was a younger man, not yet thirty-five. Unlike the old man, Billy Kinetta neither cried nor spoke to memories of someone who had once listened. He might have been a geomancer, so silently did he stand, eyes toward the ground.

One of these men was black; the other was white.

THAT is great writing. The story, which I read again last night, moved me to tears again; just as the cheesy 1980’s production of the beautifully written teleplay did as I watched it again. All of Ellison’s stories are engaging, superbly written; he writes about enormous themes and yet his characters, his situations, are incredibly real and relatable. He writes about the human condition, and humanity; and often he writes of humanity’s loss of humanity, if that makes sense. Ellison was the person who introduced the all-encompassing term speculative fiction as the tent that contains science fiction, fantasy, and horror; he is a master of all of them.

I’m really looking forward to rereading the stories I’ve already read; and I am also looking forward to reading stories of his I’ve not read. I encourage you, if you’re not read Ellison but are a fan of great writing, to click on the previous link and read “Paladin of the Lost Hour”; I would be very surprised if you didn’t want to read more. His website is at Ellison Webderland; you can find information there about the project (and possibly donate) to digitize all of his writing so it won’t be lost.

And on that note, back to the spice mines.

Here’s another French farmer.

That’s All For Everyone

Good morning. I finished Wicked Frat Boy Ways yesterday and turned it in. I am now in that weird afterglow of it’s done! it’s done! and oh my God it’s probably the worst piece of crap ever turned in to an editor.

Such is life as a writer.

I have decided that January is going to be yet another attempt at Short Story Month for me, in which I try to read, and blog about, a short story every day. I have tried this before, and have failed, but yesterday’s mail brought copies of Harlan Ellison’s The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, Strange Wine, Stalking the Nighmare, and Approaching Oblivion, so there is THAT, and I have lots of anthologies and single author collections haunting my shelves and my iPad.

I am also looking forward to reacquainting myself with some of Ellison’s short stories, and discovering new ones.

I am going to spend this weekend getting ready to dive headlong into finishing the next book, due on January 1, getting caught up and varied sundries that have fallen through the cracks, perhaps outlining the new book I started writing this past week, writing an essay that’s due soon, and maybe crafting/editing some other short stories that have been lying around unfinished or in need of a second go-round. My plans for the weekend are obviously rather ambitious, and I won’t get everything done I need to, but I also don’t think it’s a bad idea to have lots of plans; even if I feel like a complete and utter loser when I don’t accomplish everything I set out to. I also want to finish reading A Head Full of Ghosts as well as start reading something new; and there’s lots of organizing and cleaning in the kitchen/office that definitely needs to be taken care of.

It truly never ends.

The weather here has also finally turned; it’s chilly and I have to wear sleeves and head covering–probably what most people would call fall or autumn; what we consider the start our brief winter. It’s kind of gray out there today; but it is Friday which is lovely.

All right, I need to get my day started.

Here’s a hunk from the French Farmers calendar.

Storms

Ah, Thursday. And it’s December already. MADNESS.

Tonight is my late night, and so I have the day relatively free before I literally am testing all night (it’s also World AIDS Day–know your status, people!) so am debating on just which errands need to be run today and which ones can wait until the weekend. There are a few things I need to pick up and I may as well swing past the post office since it’s sort of near my CVS where I need to get my prescriptions…sigh. I also have some serious writing to do today. Busy day for one Gregalicious. I also have gotten some lovely news this week that I can’t share as of yet, either.

But I am chair dancing.

And I’m almost finished with the book. I hope to have it done today. Huzzah!

And then a free weekend and then it’s on to the next one.

I am currently reading Paul Tremblay’s Stoker Award winning A Head Full of Ghosts, which I started reading another time and had to put it aside for some reason; I don’t remember why, but when I finished reading Elizabeth Little’s superb Dear Daughter, and was looking for the next book to read I ran across it in the TBR bookcase (yes, I have a TBR bookcase, don’t judge me) and thought, I never finished this and picked it up again. It is riveting; I started from the beginning and now I can’t wait to get back to it again.

I also started writing another book yesterday; one that isn’t contracted anywhere, one that I don’t even know if anyone would want to publish–but it’s one that’s been dancing around in my head lately, and it’s actually the combination of several ideas I’ve had over the past few years that have come together cohesively and meshed into one book idea. The opening hit me the other day when I was finished working on the current work-in-progress, and so I wrote three paragraphs. It’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before–so is the current work-in-progress–which makes it very exciting for me; of course I have a multitude of other projects to work on and finish, but maybe it’s something I can work on around the others. I also have another couple of ideas I am toying with as well….I am never so creative as when I am on a deadline; but it’s never with the project ON deadline.

Heavy sigh.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for the day:

What Makes You Think You’re The One

This week, the Mystery Writers of America announced it’s special awards, to be presented in the spring at the Edgar Awards banquet along with the competitive prizes. All the recipients of these awards–the Ellery Queen for outstanding contribution to editing, the Raven for outstanding contributions to the field, and the Grand Master (s), for an outstanding body of work (like a Lifetime Achievement Award)–are always highly deserving; the first Grand Master, for example, was Agatha Christie, and over the years has included such names as Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Ellery Queen, Ross McDonald, Stephen King, and James Ellroy. This year, the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America chose two Grand Masters, Max Allen Collins and Ellen Hart.

Ellen Hart!

Ellen Hart is not only an amazing crime writer who deserves this honor, she is also the first out lesbian author of lesbian crime fiction to be recognized by the premier organization in our field with the highest honor in our field.

From the press release issued by the Mystery Writers of America:

Upon learning that she was named a Grand Master, Hart said. “A writer’s stock-in-trade is imagination. I’ve always felt mine was pretty good, but never in a million years did I ever think winning the MWA Grand Master award was a possibility. I’m stunned, grateful, and profoundly honored.”

Ellen Hart is the author of thirty-two crime novels. She is the six-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, the four-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction, and the three-time winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award for mystery. Ellen has taught crime writing for seventeen years through the Loft Literary Center, the largest independent writing community in the nation.

Previous Grand Masters include Walter Mosley, Lois Duncan, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Carolyn Hart, Ken Follett, Margaret Maron, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Bill Pronzini, Stephen King, Marcia Muller, Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie.

I’ve known Ellen’s work for over twenty years, and have known Ellen personally for almost seventeen or so. Ellen is from Minneapolis, and her outstanding Jane Lawless series is set there. I moved to Minneapolis to live with Paul in 1996; and this was around the time I decided to start taking writing seriously (this was in no smart part because Paul believed in me). We lived in Uptown Minneapolis (ironically we moved to uptown New Orleans from there), and right around the corner from our apartment was a mall at the corner of Lake and Hennepin called Calhoun Square, and inside that mall was a Borders. I used to go there every other week and buy books, and they had a huge gay and lesbian section. I had already decided that I wasn’t meant to be a horror or a literary writer, and wanted to focus on writing gay crime novels. It was at this Borders that I discovered both Ellen Hart and R. D Zimmerman (locals), and many other gay/lesbian crime writers and their books. I never met either Ellen or R.D. while I lived there, but it was at that Borders that I first met Felice Picano.

I think the first Jane Lawless I read was Faint Praise, and after that I was addicted.

Over the years I’ve gotten to know Ellen, and am proud to call her a friend. It was Ellen who got me to join Sisters in Crime, and her graciousness and her kindness over the years has been something I’ve, as a writer have tried to aspire to be more like. She so deserves this honor, and I can’t even begin to express how thrilled I am for her, and how happy this has made me; because in recognizing Ellen they not only recognized her for her brilliance as a writer, the longevity and consistent quality of it, but they’ve also, for the first time as a Grand Master and only a second time over all, recognized the sub-sub-subgenre of LGBTQI crime fiction. (The first time was when John Morgan Wilson won the Edgar for Best First Novel for his first Ben Justice novel back in the 1990’s.)

As a writer of gay crime fiction…well, I can’t even begin to say how impactful this recognition of Ellen is for me, personally. This is recognition from the Mystery Writers of America that LGBTQI crime fiction not only has a seat at the table, but belongs there.

It is something I never thought I would see happen in my lifetime; every step forward is amazing.

Now young, aspiring LGBTQI crime writers can actually dream of being MWA Grand Masters.

SO AWESOME.

And go ON with your bad, deserving self, Ellen!

Save Me a Place

I have to say, one of the most interesting developments of the advances in television viewing (i.e. streaming) has been the development of interesting new programming from non-traditional sources. The cable networks have long been giving the traditional television networks a run for their money for quite some time, but Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix are now throwing their hats in the ring. I was skeptical, to be honest–but I really enjoyed Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, and so when a friend recommended Hulu’s Freakish, I was also a bit skeptical about it–I mean, Hulu?

I also recognize that’s very snobbish of me.

My friend told me it was kind of a cross between The Breakfast Club and The Walking Dead…which sounded intriguing, so Paul and I decided to give it a try.

Wow.

The description couldn’t have been more apt; it literally is The Walking Dead as directed and written by John Hughes, but rather than playing into the stereotypes Hughes lionized in his films, this show subverts them and turns them inside out.

It’s a Saturday, and some kids are arriving at Kent High School for all-day detention. just like The Breakfast Club; this was not a thing at my high school and I don’t know if it’s ever been a thing–but it’s always seemed weird to me. There are also a variety of others kids there at the school–playing basketball, putting up posters for the school election, etc. The basketball coach is in charge of the detention, and is checking in students. Grover, our main hero, shows up and checks in–but he doesn’t actually have detention (just like the Ally Sheedy character in The Breakfast Club), he’s just there because he’s interested in Violet, one of the girls who DOES have detention. As we are getting to know some of the characters–the basketball star, the cheerleader, the Type A girl who wants to be student body president, the violent thug bully, the nerdy smart guy–there is a series of explosions from the chemical plant nearby where most of the people in town work. As the explosions continue everyone rushes inside the school as the atmosphere outside changes–there’s a weird fog, debris falling–and no cell phone service.

And… people exposed to the outside environment have become infected with something that turns them into what the viewers know, from years of these types of films and TV shows, ‘walkers’ or ‘the living dead’ but the kids on the show call ‘freaks’; because in their universe there have been no George Romero movies or anything.

This, of course, is the beginning of their zombie apocalypse, and it’s all shown from the point of view of the teenagers; the coach, the only adult, is killed by a ‘freak’ early on.

The entire first season has them trapped in the school, as one by one the group dwindles as kids are either infected or killed by the freaks; and they slowly, as the season progresses, realize they have to kill or be killed, rather than just trying to save themselves or lock the freaks up somewhere. And those stereotypes I mentioned? As I said, as the show progresses those stereotypes are turned on their heads as the kids slowly begin to bond, a la The Breakfast Club, and as we the viewers get to know them better, as they begin to adapt to their new world and try to figure out ways to survive.

Each episode is only twenty-two minutes long, which goes to show you don’t need over an hour to create suspense or character, and lots of action. Each episode flies past. And yes, we kind of rolled our eyes at it at first, but by episode three we were completely sucked in.

And the last two episodes were a definite sucker punch.

I also liked the sly references to Hughes films, particularly this shot:

I guess it’s time for the 80’s nostalgia wave….but I’m certainly enjoying it!

Looking forward to Season 2.

Think About Me

My vacation is over, and while I do regret that–a stay-at-home vacation gives you a taste of how my life could be; just doing errands and chores around the house and of course, writing without interruption, without an eye on the clock knowing I only have so much time to get so much done; the leisure to take my time on projects and not feel rushed, to not feel like I’m not doing the best I can because the clock is ticking and there are other things I have to do…

It’s kind of nice, although it makes me kind of sad to have to go back to the clock-watching and time-scheduling,

I did finish reading Elizabeth Little’s superb Dear Daughter last night.

As soon as they processed my release, Noah and I hit the ground running. A change of clothes. A wig. An inconspicuous sedan. We doubled back once, twice, then drove south when we were headed east. In San Francisco we had a girl who looked like me board a plane to Hawaii.

Oh, I thought I was so clever.

But you probably already know that I’m not.

I mean, come on, you didn’t really think I was just going to disappear, did you? That I would skulk off and live in the shadows? That maybe I would find a distant land, a plastic surgeon, a ceramic half mask and a Punjab lasso? Get real.

But I never meant for it to come to this. There’s attention and then there’s attention, and sure, the latter gets you fame and money and free designer shoes, but I’m not Lindsay Lohan. I understand the concept of declining marginal returns. It was the not knowing–that’s what I couldn’t stand. That’s why I’m here.

It’s hard, really, to believe that Dear Daughter is a debut novel; Little writes with the punch and skill of a much more experienced writer. The main character’s voice is exceptional, strong, and even though she can read as vastly unsympathetic, she is always compelling.

A technicality has overturned Jane Jenkins’ murder conviction; when she was seventeen she was tried as an adult for murdering her socialite mother, with whom she had a rather combative relationship. Jane herself was what is called a ‘celebutante’, like Paris Hilton and others before her, famous really for being famous. (Imagine the circus a Paris Hilton murder trial would have been…) Now that she’s free, Jane wants to prove her innocence (she really doesn’t remember if she actually killer her mother or not) so, with the help of a trusted attorney, she takes on a false identity and disappears; even lying to the lawyer about where she is going. The night of her mother’s murder she heard her mother arguing with a man, and the only words she caught were ‘Tessa’ and ‘Adeline’; she has found a remote town in South Dakota named Adeline, and that’s where she is heading.

The twists and turns and surprises come fast in this novel, and once it kicks into high gear there’s no stopping. Jane herself is a strong, full-fledged character; smart yet vulnerable, lonely, yet the loneliness makes her stronger. She tries to sort out the complicated relationship she had with her mother while trying to find out the truth, not only about her mother’s murder but her mother’s past, as well as her own…very compelling reading.

And the writing itself is quite extraordinary, as well.

I highly recommend this! And can’t wait for her next novel.

And now back to the spice mines.

Ledge

I worked yesterday morning and in the early afternoon yesterday; the work didn’t go as well as one would have preferred but those are the breaks. Hopefully today it will be better. One can always hope.

I spent the rest of the day watching college football–it was a most interesting day–and reading, of all things, comic books on my iPad (the recent DC mini-series The Coming of the Supermen, which, not being up on my current DC Universe, was a bit confusing in places but over-all, kind of interesting), started rereading Garden District Gothic because I am getting ready to start writing Scotty VIII, and also rereading some short stories from one of my favorite collections of all time, Harlan Ellison’s Alone Against Tomorrow.

It occurred to me yesterday, as I was marveling at the mastery of Ellison at short story writing (he really is one of the best short story writers of all time; his “Paladin of the Lost Hour” might be my favorite short story) that with all my talk about short stories lately I never talk about Ellison, which is a shame. (Also, rereading these stories and being reminded of how extraordinary a writer he is sent me into an ebay wormhole of ordering copies of his collections; I do have The Essential Ellison omnibus, but it doesn’t have everything; he is so prolific I don’t think all of his work could be collected into a single volume.)

But in fairness to me, these entries are usually unplanned and written while I am enjoying my morning coffee and waking up, so I am not as clear-headed as one might think when I write them.

I first discovered Ellison through, as so many other things in the speculative fiction world, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. I knew from reading that book that he had written probably the best episode of Star Trek ever, “The City at the Edge of Tomorrow”–also known as ‘the one with Joan Collins’, but in those pre-Internet days finding books wasn’t as easy as it is now. It wasn’t until several years later, when I was at a friend’s apartment that I discovered she had a copy of his collection Strange Wine, which she not only loaned to me but gifted it to me, saying, “Reading Ellison will change your life.”

And it did. Several of those stories haunt me to this day. I was poor then, very poor, and so rarely bought books new; I haunted second-hand bookshops (do those even exist anymore?), and started hunting for Ellison whenever I went into them. That was how I found Alone Against Tomorrow, among others, and became a big fan.

Looking over these stories again last night, I was reminded why I was a fan.

And rereading Garden District Gothic after spending some time with Ellison was quite humbling.

I ordered a copy of Strange Wine last night–because I definitely need more books–and think I am going to dig out my copy of The Essential Ellison because I want to read more short stories (I say that all the time, don’t I?) and maybe I’ll make my entries for January all about short stories again this year. But I have so many short story collections lying around the house that I’ve never read; single author collections and anthologies and magazines and so forth, that a focused effort is really necessary.

And I really want to reread “Paladin of the Lost Hour.”

And now I should get back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for the day: