Category: Alabama

I Only Have Eyes For You

Sunday morning and I slept pretty well. Sparky of course annoyed me out of bed to feed him around six, and then I did go back to bed for two more hours. Our big day of errands wore us both out yesterday, and I also just realized the primary thing I went to Costco for? I didn’t get. AUGH. Oh, well, it’s just sweet-and-low packets; I can get some anywhere and then go for the three year supply the next time we head out there. Still irritating, though. After we got home and put everything away, we settled in to finish Vigil, which I greatly enjoyed, and then we moved on to a rather clever slasher flick called Bodies Bodies Bodies, and then we tried Baby Reindeer, which was very strange and really just kind of sad. I don’t think we’re going to continue with it, but it was something different, to be sure.

Yesterday wasn’t a total wash, just as today won’t be. It may be Paul’s birthday–I’m going to get us a pizza for dinner, and maybe rent something to watch, lie Dune Part II–but I can get some things done this morning before he gets up. I’m also not going to wake him up until he wants to get up, and I also promised to make him waffles, which I’ve not done in so long it’s almost shameful, frankly. Paul is 61 today, and I will be sixty-three in a mere four months. I did make some writing notes yesterday, and of course I was also thinking a lot most of the day about the things I’m working on. I also recognize my incredible skill at rationalization here as well…no one can rationalize or justify the way I can when it comes to excuses for not writing. I also downloaded some biographies of King James I–the influence of Mary and George, no doubt–but I am not entirely sure why I’ve avoided biographies of King James before. I have a lifelong interest in both his mother (Mary Queen of Scots) and his predecessor (Elizabeth I), as well as his Stuart descendants; yet have always avoided King James. I’m not sure why that is; but other queer kings and royals have often been of interest to me, but James didn’t come to a bad end the way most of the others did and so can be considered a successful queer King. (Frederick the Great is another.) It also seems like this Elizabethan/Jacobean era was rife with sodomy all the way through to the eighteenth centiury, both in England and France. The last son of Catherine de Medici, and the last Valois king of France, was gay (Henri III); so was the brother of Louis XIV and one of his illegitimate sons, the Duc de Valentinois; and of course James I’s great-granddaughter Queen Anne was a big ole lesbian. The queers disappear from European royal history for a while, certainly in England and France in the eighteenth century. I’ve always wanted to write about Louis XIV’s brother, and it may be interesting to write about Henri III from the point of view of one of his mignons. The French court in the 1580’s was a hotbed of intrigue, conspiracy, and murder; a very turbulent period I’ve always wanted to write about.

I’ve also come to realize that I need to be more ambitious with my writing rather than saying oh that’s too complicated or too hard or too difficult for me to write. I’ve been putting off my historical interest writing for quite some time, always thinking that someday I’ll feel competent in my skills to try it. It’s actually a cop-out; I should have written some of these years ago, or at least got started. My Sherlock story (still so incredibly proud of it) was my first real historical story (one written in a period of time I was not alive and cannot remember), and all of my fears about it were so clearly misplaced. You don’t have to know a period so intimately that you might as well have lived then in order to write about it. How much research is too much research? The difference between a short story and a novel, of course, are significant–clearly, you don’t need to know as much with a short story as you would with a novel–but again, how much is not enough and how much is too much? The problem (for me, at any rate) is research is like planting seeds–more ideas grow the more research I do, it’s an ADHD thing, I’m pretty sure. But I am definitely going to start the research for my seventeenth century novel, methinks; I love history, so why not? I can scratch two interests at the same time.

Saturday morning I will leave for Alabama for Decoration Day, or what I always thought it was called, The First Sunday in May. That’s what it’s always been called, it’s definitely what my grandmothers and mother called it, and that’s how it’s lodged in my memory banks. I’m going to help my dad put out the flowers and clean the graves, and then on Monday morning I’ll follow him north to Kentucky. It’ll be a nice week away, and I am going to try to get some work done and a lot of reading done while I am there. (Dad called it Decoration Day in an email the other day, and I thought, well, that makes a better name for it but for me, it will always be called The First Sunday in May.) I did notice last year that the only people out doing it were my age or older, so it’s probably one of those county customs that is dying out in these modern days of the Internet, cell phones, and streaming. A pity, to be sure, but sometimes traditions do die out. “The old ways”, as they say in creepy tones in Gothic novels that I love so much. I also imagine my creativity is going to explode while in Alabama as it always does.

And on that note, I am going to eat breakfast, get cleaned up, and head into the spice mines for the day. I may be back later, one never can be certain–but if not, have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Screenshot

Tell Him No

I did get tired yesterday afternoon, but I think it was more from malnutrition somehow than anything else. My breakfast and my lunch did not fill me up1, and after I had lunch I did feel like my batteries were starting to run down a bit. It was, all in all, a good day for the most part. I did make it through the workday. I ran errands after work (got some things for Sparky from Chewy, and the last batch of new shirts arrived); started organizing the draft blog posts to determine which can be combined (same topic started on different days, months, years) and which can be finished and which can be deleted; I finished the revision of “Passenger to Franklin” (and I think it’s much much better now); and started getting my (delayed and extended) taxes together. Ideally, I can get that done this week and to my accountant by Friday so that will be one thing more that’s been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles out of the way. Huzzah! I also took a look at “When I Die,” and while this one is going to take a lot of fucking work, it’ll be so much better when I finish it!

I slept well last night, and my coffee is rather delicious this morning. It was cold yesterday morning when I left for work–surprisingly so–but it warmed during the day so my car was very hot when I got into it after work. It’s going to get warmer consistently later in the week–I still can’t get over it being eighty-eight last Friday, it’s only April for Pete’s sake–which means it’ll probably be hot and sunny as I visit graveyards with Dad the weekend after next. I was thinking last night, as we watched Vigil (it’s terrific, highly recommended), that I’m almost in a good place again for the first time in almost ten years or so. My stress levels are way down, my moods generally are good and even, and I don’t have flashes of anger anymore (mostly while in my car). Other idiot drivers are still annoying, but don’t send me into a rage anymore. Now, it’s more like I get annoyed, say very calmly, “yes, you’re an asshole who can’t drive” or “yes, you are so much more important than all the rest of us”, but as I said, it’s calm–and I can absolutely live with that.

I got a short story rejection email yesterday, and I was completely ambivalent about it. The problem is you’re never sure if the story just doesn’t work for them or if the fact that the main character is gay was a problem for them. Sure, the rejection had the standard form please submit to us again, but…yeah, not so much. This is what straight white cisgender people don’t get, with all their whining about “merit”–the only people who they think actually earn their careers are straight white cisgender people, after all–because you can never be certain that it’s the story that they didn’t like enough or whether homophobic concerns come into play: our readers might get mad at is if we shove queer down their throats or we don’t want to become known as the queer crime publication and every other iteration of that you can imagine…any excuse not to publish a queer writer. Many years ago, I decided that I would never allow suspicions of homophobia affect my writing career, and I would always assume it was the story that was the problem. But…you have to wonder. When a magazine only buys your work when you send them things with straight main characters (twice) but rejects everything with a gay main character or even a gay theme, you have to start to wonder.

And given how few of the magazines that actually pay well for short stories (or pay at all) there are and how little queer work they actually publish…you begin to wonder. You don’t want to believe it’s homophobia or homophobic concerns, but here we are, you know. The stories I am working on now aren’t really crime stories, they’re more supernatural/horror stories, but I do think “The Last To See Him Alive” is not only a good story but it’s written really well. I need to revise it and edit it, of course, but it’s in really good shape already which is pleasing. “When I Die” needs a complete overhaul, but that’s fine. It’ll be a better story for it when it’s finished. And while these stories I am working on could complete the collection, this morning I am wondering if I should include horror in this book or not.

I really do not understand these new state laws (here in Louisiana we got one, too) allowing people to drive their cars into protestors, something which inbred morons Tom Cotton of Arkansas and eternal bitchboy Josh Hawley of Missouri are all about. Nothing says leadership like telling people to kill or injure other people. As always, these kind of Nazi-lite fascistic laws come to you courtesy of the Republican Party and MAGAt. I personally am looking forward to driving my car into a crowd of Trump protestors and hitting the gas pedal, frankly. When I saw this on social media yesterday, I responded with Never thought I’d see the day when the Kent State massacre would have fanboys, which prompted some responses which, of course, made the most sense: they had them at the time. I was too young to remember the right-wing response to the Kent State shootings, I just remember being appalled that the National Guard murdered four students on a campus, and I have always viewed it as a disgrace and a tragedy…but of course the right did not see it that way–just as they backed William Calley as a hero after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Even I–who have always known how vile and unpatriotic the right in this country is and always has been–didn’t think they were that callous and awful.

They are, they always have been, and they always will be.

The thing that always amuses me about this is the “patriots” of the right always forget that the only reason we exist as a country was because of mass protests….which led to a revolution. So, by that way of thinking, the most patriotic thing you can ever do is protest, really. Remember the Tea Party, the seeds that grew into MAGA? Remember the stolen election of 2000? Remember how Reagan dismantled and changed (and ruined) Social Security? The only reason there’s an issue with it now is because of Reagan, St Ronnie of the Right. The Republicans are the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and people like Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz are their heirs.

Remember back when I was thinking about starting to read and study poetry? I got a great recommendation from a dear friend at S&S of where to start–Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early–and I’ve been paging through it randomly, reading poems here and there, glimpsing fragments, and I think I’m slowly starting to come to an understanding of poetry I never had before. I am not going to review poetry on here as I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself self-teaching and coming to what regular readers of poetry already understand from studying it. It’s a wonderful education, and one I kind of wish I had started earlier. Ah, well.

I also decided to postpone reading the Paul Tremblay and take it with me to Kentucky to read. Instead, I’ve decided to reread a book I don’t remember much of–Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford. He published a sequel this past year that I would love to read, but not remembering the first one was a problem, so I decided to go ahead and reread it. I don’t talk about Ford much, but he really is one of the most underrated queer writers of our time. He can basically write anything (a blessing and a curse, as I know all too well), and he does it extremely well. Rereading the first chapter last night pulled me back into the story effortlessly, and the voice is so compelling and hauntingly real…and likable. I’m looking forward to reading more of it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

  1. I also ate dinner late on Sunday night, which I usually don’t do and am sure that had something to do with it, but given I don’t really get hungry all that often it was kind of cool. ↩︎

I Cried a Tear

Well, it’s back to the office Monday and I am feeling pretty good about the weekend. Did I get everything done I needed to get done? Of course not, I never do. But the house is in good enough shape that if I maintain it every night then next weekend I can move on to some further cleaning/organization/declutter project because I don’t have to start over catching up on the the basics yet again. I also made dinner last night for the first time in forever, actually cooking, and it was kind of nice and the meal was actually quite good. I also was creative this weekend, and maybe very little actual writing was done but a lot of planning and thinking about the projects and so forth that need to be worked on and I also had a lot of really good ideas. I started thinking about the projects in terms of what I was trying to do, what the point of the story was, and how best to get the message across to the readers while also telling a compelling story. This is the kind of thing I miss doing, and am usually so rushed with impending deadlines and so forth that I don’t have enough prep time before I start writing, if that makes any sense? It did to me, and I think that’s another reason I have Imposter Syndrome on a regular basis; I kind of leap blindly into the project and hope that it works out all right.

I slept very well last night and didn’t want to get up this morning (or at least out of bed, which was warm and comfortable), but as I swill this first cup of coffee I am starting to come to life and that’s a good thing. I am not patient-facing today–it’s my in-office administrative day, and I am pretty caught up on my work. The downstairs looks nice and neat and orderly this morning; there’s dirty dishes in the sink, of course, but that’s easily rectified. On the way home tonight I have to stop and get the mail and pick up a prescription. I am leaving for Alabama/Kentucky the week after next, and so that’ll be nice. I’ll take some books to read, and I imagine we’ll do some sight-seeing in Kentucky while I am up there this year. It’s nice visiting Dad, and seeing my sister. Mom’s death brought the survivors closer together, which is nice. They still live too far away for regular visits, but it’s nice to be closer to them both.

Overall, it was a nice weekend. I got some rest and recovery time, and feel much better this morning than I did any morning this weekend–which might be related to staying in bed longer–and we started watching a terrific new show last night called Vigil, which is from the same team that did Line of Duty, which was exceptional. Vigil, which isn’t something I thought I’d be too keen on–a murder mystery on a nuclear submarine that also includes international intrigue on top of the crime–but always trust people who’ve produced another show you liked, really; Vigil is superb (submarines absolutely terrify me–my claustrophobia would drive me insane within an hour of getting on board, and if it didn’t before, it would definitely happen once we submerged; this is why that novel The Chill by Nick Cutter was so unsettling–underwater in a submarine in the dark. No fucking thanks) and absorbing. I cannot wait to watch more of it tonight after writing and doing some more clean-up around here. My writing goals for this week are to make more progress on the book, finish revising “Passenger to Franklin” and “When I Die,” and get a good night’s rest. I also have some emails to reply to, as well as some others I need to generate. I did make progress on finishing some of these draft posts I’ve had in the files forever–some going back as many as four years (I wrote down my initial impressions of January 6, which I do need to finish since we are heading for another precipice)–and it’s nice to get some of this stuff cleaned out. I still have more drafts back there than needed; I think there are numerous ones that can be actually combined, since I started a related topic more than once, methinks–usually because something makes me angry or frustrated enough to forget oh yes, started something on this very subject several times already, maybe should combine them all into one.

I also want to finish the blog posts about my books already published. I am not sure where I left off–I know the last one I did was for Dark Tide, but I think I’ve already done The Orion Mask, which leaves Timothy because I know I did a lot of promotional posts for both Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit. I’ve also already done the most recent Scotty books, too–I think I’ve covered that entire series already. I know the last Chanse book is still there in the drafts, too–I thought I’d need to reread it since it’s been so long since I wrote it, which isn’t a bad idea. I don’t really remember Chanse’s voice, and am not sure I can still hear it if I want to. I know I’ve written a Chanse short story since the series ended, and I have a Chanse novella in progress that went off track and needs to be steered back onto the tracks. I do have another idea for a Chanse book, but I am thinking he might just be a supporting character and I can center the book from another point of view, which could be interesting. See what I mean? My creativity has really come roaring back.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and get cleaned up to head into the spice mines. I hope you have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again a little later.

Doesn’t look like he likes the photographer’s direction to “arch your back a little and stick your butt out”, does he?

Poison Ivy

Work-at-home Friday! I got up early this morning for some reason, but it was an hour later than usual so I will count it as “sleeping in.” I have a lot of stuff to get done for work duties today, which I want to wrap up so I can get all the errands taken care of. I have prescriptions to pick up, groceries to make, a trip to Costco–I get exhausted just thinking about it. But yesterday was really a good day, wasn’t it? I’m not sure how it was for you, but I was productive and in a really good mood for most of the day. I was a bit tired at times during the day, but I made it through, picked up the mail (a package of new shirts arrived!), and then came home. Sparky was rambunctious and so had to cart him around on my shoulders while I did some things, and then he parked on the desk while I wrote for a while. I also talked to one of my co-workers who drives for Uber/Lyft, because I wanted to be sure I was getting how it all worked right in a short story I am working on and revising, “Passenger to Franklin.” I was also pleased that the story wasn’t the piece of trash I convinced myself it was when I was writing the first draft, and I was pretty happy to see that despite my usual self-deprecation mentality (which I am really working on, I promise) it wasn’t bad at all–and there are some really good images and sentences in it. After all my running around today, if I have time I am going to write some more tonight, and hopefully finish this second draft.

LSU Gymnastics was in the first session of the national championship meet, and they scored over 198 and qualified first overall into the finals Saturday afternoon. I would be excited regardless, but it’s even more exciting this year, because if they hit they could finally win it all this year. I was waiting for Paul to get home and had stopped writing to settle into my easy chair, and remembered, oh, I wonder if we can catch a replay of LSU on ESPN? So I turned on the television and navigated into the ESPN app, and thought, oh, I don’t care about the second session, but I can watch for a while until Paul gets home. So I did just that and turned it on just in time to see Oklahoma’s first vaulter sit down on the landing. Oklahoma was undefeated and ranked number 1; Ragan Smith, one of their stars, has spent a good potion of the year making TikToks claiming LSU’s routines were over-scored, which is not only unsportsmanlike but a total bitch move (I am not a fan of that kind of shit, especially since you’re daring karma,Alabama and hubris is not something the gods like). They sat down two more vaults, and two others weren’t great, pushing them so far down they couldn’t climb back, which was shocking. They had two more falls off the beam, so had to count a fall there. This is NOT what you expect watching Oklahoma, and Paul got home right after that first vault, and the evening session was like a trainwreck you couldn’t stop looking at. It rained Alabama gymnasts around the balance beam–I think four of them came off–and even other teams were having falls they didn’t have to count. When the bloodbath was over, Utah and Florida moved onto the finals to join LSU and California. I am very excited to watch Saturday afternoon!

Last night was also a lovely evening because Paul and I were both relaxed, rested, and in a pretty good mood, so we were laughing and joking and having a great time. It’s been way too long since we’ve had an evening like that, and I was actually reluctant to go to bed and end the evening (I still hate ending a good time, and I don’t think that will change until I am in the crematorium), but it held over until this morning, too, which was unexpected and a delight at the same time. I feel good this morning, despite only sleeping in for an extra hour, and confident and like myself again for the first time in a really long time (I know, I say that all the time, but having fun with Paul has been missing from my Bingo card for far too long), but I don’t really think I’ve been myself for almost ten years or so. Mom had her first stroke and we almost lost her the first time in 2016 around Christmas, and that’s been weighing on my mind subconsciously I think ever since until last year when we finally did lose her. The pandemic, volunteering, getting COVID myself, Mom dying, my surgeries–it’s been quite a ride and while I am not certain I am completely coming out from under it all, I am feeling somewhat better and I hope it lasts.

I also came across another interesting bit of Kansas corruption and crime yesterday, in which a corrupt district attorney (now a federal prosecutor), in tandem with a police chief and a judge, were closing cases by not sharing evidence, forcing people to testify against innocent people by threatening to send them to jail, and on and on it goes. You can read about this vile racist piece of shit here.

Seriously, so much crime in Kansas.

I also typed up some notes for the new Kansas book (it feels weird to be saying that since it was what I called #shedeservedit for years), and I also started bringing together some things for the next Scotty book. See? I am being productive again. Maybe that’s why I am feeling so good? Probably. I always am in a better place when I’m writing, and without any other things weighing me down, I am really loving life lately, you know?

And on that note, I am going to start doing some day-job stuff by heading down into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later (have you noticed I’m posting a lot lately? Trying to clear out those unfinished drafts).

At the risk of sounding crude, this wrestler has an amazing ass, does he not?

Drop Me Off In New Orleans

Ah, some more blatant self-promotion! I’ve done some on-line panels so far this year, which has been terrific. Here are the questions from one I did, turned into an interview so I can promote myself! I believe these questions were for a queer crime panel, and the credit for the questions goes to the one and only J. M. (Jean) Redmann; you can order her books here.

Why did you choose your characters and their professions? What drew you to them?

Hmmm. This is tough, because I have so many books and so many different main characters…I think I’ll stick to my two primary series to answer the question. I wanted to write about a gay private detective in New Orleans, and I wanted him to be a big man, a former college football player who may have been able to be a journeyman NFL player had he not been injured in his final college game. I wanted him to be uncomfortable in his gay skin, and the point of his journey throughout the series was to grow and learn until he was finally comfortable in that skin, and able to be loved and give it.

Scotty, on the other hand, was created as a stand-alone character and I wanted him to basically be the antithesis of Chanse; in which he had few if not hang-ups, was completely comfortable being a sexually active gay man with a snarky sense of humor covering an incredibly big and kind heart. He didn’t really need to grow much–he usually is the catalyst for other characters’ growth–but as he’s aged, I’ve really enjoyed his journey.

What attracted you to writing mysteries?

I always liked them. As long as I can remember, my two biggest reading passions were history and mystery, with horror/Gothics close behind. I would check anything out of the library with mystery, haunted, ghost, phantom, secret, or clue in the title. Then I discovered the series books–The Three Investigators, Trixie Belden, et al–and after that there was no turning back.

What does being queer/gay/lesbian bring to your story?

I think queer people have the outsider point of view down to an art form because that’s how we see the world–from the margins. The easiest way to critique society, the culture, and how people interact with each other is from a remove–and queer people see all of those things from a remove through no fault of their own. I didn’t have role models when I was growing up, at least to teach me how to be a decent adult gay human being, so I had to learn it all on my own for the most part. I’ve also been confused and mystified by American culture, philosophy, and society, because it wasn’t designed for people like me. When I came out, I was just at sea in the queer world as I always had been in the straight one, and I’ve never forgotten those experiences, either, and they also inform my work.

How do we deal with how the wider world deals with queer characters? Especially in these times?

It can be depressing, which is emotionally and psychologically dangerous. It’s bad enough experiencing homophobia, but then to immerse yourself in it in order to write about it? Even more horrific. Watching Pray Away this weekend made me furious with the ex-gay movement all over again; listening to queer people hating themselves and their desires in order to be at peace with God in some twisted way? But if God is infallible…this is the doctrine Christianity gets hung up on. They think we’re mistakes, but if their God is infallible, He had to have made us perfect and its willful sin or the devil whispering in our ears. This is their incredibly harmful and dangerous rhetoric. If God tests humans, perhaps he made queer people to test the faithful–and they are failing.

But they can never admit to that.

How do you deal with diversity? No author can be everything their characters need to be, how do you handle reflecting the wider world?

I write mostly about New Orleans, and beyond that, mostly the south with occasional forays into other areas of the country–upstate New York, Kansas, California–and you cannot write about a city like New Orleans realistically without having Black characters, period. New Orleans is a majority Black city. You also can’t write about the South without touching on the issues of race and a problematic history. I’ve always included diverse characters in my books. I don’t like to describe skin color, frankly, and most white writers do it in the form of food, which I find unsettling–do you want to eat them? Cinnamon skin, cocoa, cafe au lait, eggplant, dark chocolate, etc.–I’ve seen all of those used to describe skin color and it always makes me recoil because it’s so damned lazy. I don’t think I would ever write from the perspective of a Black character–there are plenty of Black authors who can do that more authentically, and given how most diversity pledges by major publishers also inevitably end up in quotas, I don’t want to take a spot from a Black creator. I do love reading work by racialized authors, but I would never try to write from that perspective.

How do you use setting? What does it bring to the story?

Setting is one of my strengths, I think, so I always use it to enhance my story. I am also very lucky in that I live in New Orleans, where anything can happen on any given day and you can never go too far over the top about anything–if anything, you have to tone things down to be believable. I think setting is important because it tells you so much about the characters–why do they live there, how has it shaped them, did they live somewhere else, how do they deal with the challenges, what annoys them, what do they love–and is an important foundation for your story.

How do your books start—not the book beginning, but the start of the process of writing the book. Where do the ideas come from and how does that coalesce into a book?

It usually is something I find interesting and I think I should write about that. Sometimes the ideas take years to coalesce and come together, sometimes they are immediate. The Scotty books inevitably begin with three disparate things I want to address in one book, and then I have to figure out how to combine them all into a story. The next Scotty’s prompts are evacuation, statute of limitations, and obsession. It’s coming together in my head enough that I think I’ll be able to write it this fall.

Once you’re writing, what’s your process? Outline? Write from start to finish?

I used to outline, but now I kind of have it in my head and then will only go back and outline when I am stuck, so I can see where I went wrong in the manuscript. I always write from beginning to end. I don’t know how people can write backwards! I’ve thought about trying it sometime, though.

What are the hard parts of writing for you? The parts you enjoy?

Definitely the middle. The middle is soul-destroying, and always triggers Imposter Syndrome. I also hate copy edits, but recognize them as a necessary evil.

I love the actual writing and revising and all of that. There’s nothing like putting down a good word count for the day, regardless of how bad those words might be. I think revising is magic: you take garbage and turn it into something terrific.

Which writers influenced you?

All of them, in one way or another. I especially love Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier, and John D. MacDonald. Currently? Alison Gaylin, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Michael Koryta, Alex Segura, Michael Thomas Ford, S. A. Cosby, Kellye Garrett, and Alafair Burke–there really are so many. I always take something away from everything I read, whether good or bad.

What are you working on now?

Right now I am writing a sequel to Death Drop, in the Killer Queen series. I also have a ton of short stories and novellas in progress, and I already have ideas for the next three or four (or more) books.

Any advice for newer writers?

Keep writing and keep believing in yourself, and keep reading.

Last words of wisdom?

If you want to be a writer, read Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English and Stephen King’s On Writing.

Gotta Travel On

The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.

I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.

I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.

I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”

As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.

And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Lonely Teardrops

Well, good morning, Constant Reader, and I do hope everything is going well for you on this lovely Saturday. I slept deeply and well (and a little late), and feel pretty good this sunny morning. My primary priority for this weekend is to get my taxes finished and to my accountant (we’ve already filed an extension because I couldn’t get my shit together last weekend), do some writing and cleaning and run some errands, and relax as much as I can. Last night after getting everything done that needed doing, I ordered us a pizza for U Pizza (formerly Slice) on St. Charles Avenue, and we watched some more documentaries about child abuse reform schools for “troubled” teens, The Program. It’s very chilling to see how these kids were treated both in these schools and in those camps (Hell Camp), and I imagine we are also going to have to, at some point, watch the documentary about conversion therapy camps, too. Watching these has given me an idea for another Kansas book (I already had the idea, but this was excellent research for it), which made me think about some other things about my writing: what inspires it, and what issues do I take on in my work? I think part of the issues I am having with really getting back into the writing (where I’m writing three thousand words or more every day) is because I am not addressing issues I am passionate about, things I write about and learn more about and should be more concerned about.

And now that uneducated white supremacists are now in power in Louisiana, I’m going to have a lot of issues here to take up. So far, Governor Landry is unchecked in his attempts to turn Louisiana into an authoritarian state, and I doubt very seriously any Louisiana politician is going to oppose his horrific agenda for Louisiana–he’s actually worse than Jindal ever dared to be, and he was a monster who left the state in shambles. It’s kind of scary knowing our governor is someone who wouldn’t agree to be Klanmaster because the position wasn’t racist and homophobic enough for him. As much as I love New Orleans, retiring out of state is beginning to look like the best option.

Sigh. But there won’t be anywhere safe for us if we don’t win the November elections.

I did manage to finish two pending blog entries yesterday on top of the daily entry, and so that made me feel a bit better. I’ll probably spend some time this weekend cleaning out the drafts–getting rid of the duplicate ones, or trying to combine them all into one and getting rid of the others. I’d love to finish my Saltburn essay, too, but that may not be in the cards this weekend, either. I’m going to go run errands later this morning, and I also have some more cleaning and filing and organizing to do around here as well. Like always. But I really do feel like I made some great progress on all of this lately, but the floors need to be done, and the rugs need to be reorganized. I also want to spend some time with Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, which I should be able to finish reading this morning…which will lead to me having to pick out something else to read next. I do have some good choices–piles and piles of great potential reads–and I did go through them a bit last night while making some choices. I should also read some more short stories while I am at it; the Short Story Project has definitely dropped off, and I’d also like to revise one of my in-progress stories this weekend, too, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also been doing some casual research for The Summer of Lost Boys, which I am hoping to start and finish by the end of the year. All I am doing is listening to the Top 100 hits of the year for (so far) 1973 and 1974, and that in and of itself is bringing back memories. I do think this is going to be a really good book and I’m getting kind of amped to write it. I know immersing myself into the history of current events as well as popular culture in those years will trigger my memories, not all of them good, of course, but definitely its helping me to remember what it was like to be a tween in those years, going through puberty and truly realizing how different I was from everyone else I knew as well as getting ghosted, bullied and mocked for being different, which I didn’t really understand other than knowing the truth–that the horrible things they were saying was right, and that made it even more shameful and awful. The only thing that kept me going sometimes was dreaming of being a writer and reading books, escaping from an existence I neither asked for nor wanted.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later without a doubt, and so hang in there until I wind up posting again. May your Saturday be marvelous, and thanks for stopping by yet again this morning!

Under the Boardwalk

I hadn’t been sure that I would keep writing young adult novels after I revised, rewrote and published the first three (Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, and Sara) I didn’t know if it was a direction I wanted to keep going in. I knew I wanted to do stand-alones–always have wanted to do stand-alones–and I also like writing about teenagers and young adults.

You may remember (doubtful) me talking about a horror novel a while ago that I started writing in the 1980’s called The Enchantress that I only got about three or four chapters into before abandoning (because I didn’t know where to go next with it; and the first chapter I specifically remember rereading at some point in the decades since and shuddering in horror at how badly it was written), but one of the places in the book really stuck in my head–an old family-owned hotel called Mermaid Inn, which sat on the shores of Tuscadega Bay (which was my stand-in for Choctawhatchee Bay–my grandparents retired to a house on that bay and I’d always wanted to write about that area; still do–it’s where “Cold Beer No Flies” was set). After shelving The Enchantress (which I do think about from time to time, and wonder if I should revisit the idea) I kept thinking, you should write a book and call it Mermaid Inn because that is a great title!

I made a folder for it, wrote a few sketchy notes, and then… it sat in my files for a very long time.

If you will remember, I had originally planned to write an entire series of interconnected young adult novels, a la the Fear Street series by R. L. Stine, and one of the varied locations they would be spread out over would be Tuscadega, Florida, in the panhandle on a fictional bay. That was part of the note I scribbled for the folder–set this in the panhandle of Florida, and somehow connect it to the fictional Alabama county you’re going to write about someday.

I decided to write Mermaid Inn sometime after Hurricane Katrina, when I discovered yet again my own ignorance of geography. I was beginning to realize that the panhandle wasn’t the right setting for this book and decided to set it on the Alabama Gulf Coast, which made me realize I had absolutely no clue about that part of Alabama’s geography. I’d just never really given it much thought, to be honest; I knew Mobile was on the bay, and I knew that when you drive on I-10 through Mobile you have to take a tunnel below the Mobile River. I just had always assumed there was nothing south of Mobile in Alabama–I mean, it’s ON the water–and figured that those lower prongs of Alabama that reach down along the sides of the bay were uninhabitable wetlands. I discovered this to not be the case when visiting friends for the first time who lived in Alabama south of Mobile. They told me to take an exit off I-10 and drive south, which I didn’t think was possible.

Turns out it was–and I realized…this will work for my book! So I filed it away and forgot about it again.

I don’t remember precisely why I decided to write Mermaid Inn, but I did, and set in a small town on the prongs, south of Mobile; my friend Carolyn Haines helped me with some background and I know she told me some stories about closeted society men in Mobile and their hijinks and I thought, I could use this for the book and I think that may have been the impetus? And then I created my character, Ricky Hackworth, from Corinth, Alabama–po’ white trash who needs a swimming scholarship to attend the University of Alabama. (Sidebar: alert readers will recognize that Beau’s last name in Bury Me in Shadows–and at one point in the story he mentions he’s only the second Hackworth to go to college; “besides my cousin who got a swimming scholarship.”)

Bold Strokes didn’t like the title, and for perhaps maybe the fourth or fifth time in my career my original/working title didn’t make it on the cover. They recommended Dark Tide, which I really liked because it gave the sense of the book’s mood and tone and voice…and darkness.

The engine of my pickup truck made a weird coughing noise just as I came around a curve in the highway on the Alabama Gulf Coast and I saw Mermaid Inn for the first time.

My heart sank.

That’s not good, I thought, gritting my teeth. I looked down at the control panel. None of the dummy lights had come on. I still had about a half tank of gas. I switched off the air conditioning and the stereo. I turned into the long sloping parking lot of the Inn, pulling into the first parking spot. I listened to the engine. Nothing odd. It was now running smooth like it had the entire drive down. I shut the car off and kept listening. There was nothing but the tick of the engine as it started cooling.

Maybe I just imagined it.

Hope springs eternal.

The last thing I needed was to spend money on getting the stupid old truck fixed. Maybe it just needed a tune-up. I couldn’t remember the last time it had one.

Dad gave me the truck when I turned sixteen. It had been his work truck since before i was born–it was two years older than I was. He’d finally broken down and bought himself a new one. This old one was dependable and had almost two hundred thousand miles on it. Dad had taken good care of it. He’d babied it, gotten an oil change every three thousand miles without fail, and I could count on one hand the number of times it had been in the shop to be repaired.

It still had the original transmission.

It might not have been the nicest or prettiest car in my high school parking lot, but it got me where I needed to go and got good gas mileage. Since I was saving every cent I could for college, that was a lot more important than horsepower and cosmetics and a loud stereo that rattled your back teeth. The swimming scholarship I’d accepted from the University of Alabama wasn’t going to remotely cover anything close to the lowest estimate of what my expenses might be, but it was the best offer I’d gotten.

And I was grateful to have it. If they hadn’t offered, I wouldn’t be going at all.

Swimming was my ticket out of Corinth, Alabama.

That opening scene!

Dark Tide was probably my most hard-boiled young adult title published to that point. It was a dark story, and Ricky was poor–an economic condition I’d touched on with Sara, and something I generally try to avoid when writing. I’ve been poor, and I know how it feels; I don’t like remembering those days of checkbook mistakes and bounced checks and not having enough money from one paycheck to another. Ricky has taken a summer job as the lifeguard at Mermaid Inn in Latona, Alabama (Latona is another name for Daphne, which is actually a town on the prongs below Mobile), to save money to pay for college expenses his swimming scholarship to the University of Alabama wasn’t going to cover, and the water being there meant he could continue training. Once he arrives and is shown to his room on the uppermost floor of the building and meets the owner’s daughter, he learns that his predecessor from the summer before had simply disappeared–and young teenaged boys disappear with an alarming regularity over the past few years. He starts asking questions, mostly out of curiosity, and also starts having horrible dreams, about vicious mermaids beneath the water, and there are a lot of stories about killer mermaids from the days of the indigenous people and the Spanish. I wrote some terrific scenes in this book that I was really proud of–one particular dream sequence was especially chilling–and I was also trying something with the rhythm of the words, which I hadn’t done in a very long time, and I think it worked.

Writing Dark Tide was important to me because this was the book that reminded me again that I was writing stand-alones to help keep the series books fresher, more creative, and less paint by the numbers, too.

Lonely Street

It’s been interesting watching the right backpedal as hard as they are currently doing in order to convince voters that they aren’t that kind of Pro-Lifer, when we know damned well exactly what they will do about abortion if given the chance. The way the right managed to convince everyone in the decades after Roe was decided that pro-choice was actually an unpopular position, and that the American people wanted either an outright ban or severe limitations. It has always infuriated me because I knew it wasn’t true; most Americans would never say it out loud–the true success of the right-wing noise machine right there; be loud and scream a lot and you’ll convince people (particularly the media, which is not only disgusting, but was also decades of journalistic malpractice visited upon the public, who trusted them) that you are a majority position. (NARRATOR VOICE: If you have to outscream and outshout people about a position, your position is probably not popular). South Dakota had a ballot initiative three times to ban abortion outright in order to let the voters decide. These initiatives weren’t covered much by the media, and you can be forgiven for not knowing this happened…but in 2004 when Turdblossom and W made gay marriage a scare tactic to drive conservative voters, that ballot initiative was trounced in South Dakota soundly. It was once again trounced in 2006, but the big story that year was Republicans losing Congress and our first female speaker. I kept pointing this out to people, and have long said that Democratic candidates and politicians should work to put abortion on every ballot so the people could decide, instead of these lunatics that keep getting put in state legislatures and governor’s mansions.

And pro-life is a very toxic and unpopular political position, as politicians and judges in Virginia, Kansas, Alabama, and other red states have since discovered. NONE of their policies are popular and liked by the general population; and I love that the Democrats are finally fighting as hard and as dirty as the Lying Evangelicals. They need to be exposed as traitors, charlatans, and cosplay Christians. This latest ruling in Arizona? The justices need to be taken out and horsewhipped if they like 1860 laws so fucking much.

And don’t think they won’t come for birth control and divorce. You can never believe they are ever finished with their grasp for power and control–as long as they are the ones in control. If they aren’t. they’ll scream about how their “freedoms” are being oppressed.

They. Will. Never. Stop.

Yesterday was a wild day here in New Orleans. I knew we were going to have terrible weather, and it was pretty bad. We were under a tornado watch until one or two, and of course we were having flooding rain all day, and the streets were flooded all over the city (on the other hand, it gave me the opening line for the next Scotty: It was August and the streets were flooding.). We didn’t have a lot of clients come in for testing (obviously); when I got to work, I got out of my car just as the rain started, and I was pretty much soaked through by the time I got into the building (my socks were damp all day, which was super-annoying). But I got caught up on my work stuff, our site visit was cancelled but I am glad I got everything caught up–and I am hoping now to be able to stay on top of everything instead of being lazy and letting things slide. I was very tired when I got home–the city had pretty much shut down, to the point that I could actually take the highway home at 4:30, and got home in five minutes–and managed to finish a load of laundry and do some dishes. We watched the Hell Camp documentary about how the kids sent there were tortured and abused, some being seriously injured and some even died, and parents are still sending their kids to these places! We then watched a German documentary series about a gay serial killer in Berlin (a German serial killer? Who’d have thunk it?), which was interesting and creepy and more than a little scary (I’ve always held that gay men are the perfect victims for serial killers, because they are used to going home with strangers or bringing one home), but it was fun to watch while wrapped in a blanket and listening to the rain. Not quite the enormous pleasure it is to read in that situation (I am really looking forward to getting back to The Cypress House this weekend.)

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will probably be back here possibly later.

Alvin’s Harmonica

Here we are on another Wednesday Pay the Bills Day, and are we feeling bright and chipper this morning? No, not really, but we’re getting closer to the weekend and that’s always a good thing.

We’re also in a “severe weather alert” and there’s currently a tornado warning until one pm. That should make driving to work exciting, should it not? Sigh. The weather is supposed to be bad all day–high winds and heavy rains, on top of the tornado warning–which also means an odd day at work. Will people try to come in to keep their appointments in inclement weather like this? You never know, and so the entire day is going to be weird like that. We’re also having a site visit from our chief funders for my program today, so I also need to be on my toes. We’re ready for the visit; I got everything caught up that I needed to for this, and so it’s just a matter of making sure everything today runs as smoothly as possible. Heavy sigh. And after some more checking, I see that City Hall is closed today for the weather, they’re allowing parking on the neutral ground because of potential flooding, and yeah, not looking forward to getting there or driving home later today. But at least if there is a tornado, our office building is probably the safest place for me to be during a tornado anyway.

I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday, and so didn’t get very much done. We watched the new Netflix movie Scoop, about the notorious BBC interview with Prince Andrew after the whole Epstein thing went public that basically ended him as an active royal–his titles and responsibilities taken away and forced to live quietly for the rest of his life out of the spotlight and public eye. It was interesting, and had some terrific performances. After that I got up to do chores before bed, so I got the dishes put away and did several loads of laundry before going to bed. Tonight I will do another load of dishes and then the kitchen will be in relatively good shape.

It’s already started raining, and I can tell it’s going to be one of those “oh the city is definitely going to flood” storms, and it’s not going to let up much all day. Huzzah. The pumps all seem to be working, though, which is always a plus. It’s the kind of day where my preference would be to sit in my chair wrapped up in a blanket while Sparky sleeps in my lap and I read more of The Cypress House–it’s a wonderful day for being snug and warm with a book while you listen to the rain come down and the occasional thunder.

Ah, well, maybe it’ll rain this weekend and I can do that.

A lot has happened in the world and culture over the last week or so, and I’ve unfortunately not really remembered to make commentary on some of it. Congratulations to the South Carolina Gamecocks and Coach Dawn Staley on a fantastic season and a national title! I was also incredibly impressed with Coach Staley’s response to the gotcha question about transwomen in sport before the game–which she also called out and didn’t care about any controversy or backlash to her opinion–and that’s the kind of ally-ship we need and deserve. She is a class act in every way, and what she has built at South Carolina is the kind of dynasty the Tennessee women used to enjoy under Pat Summitt, and that is saying a lot.

And almost every day I almost fly into a rage at the right-wing’s attempts to legislate women’s healthcare and bodily autonomy, with the latest outrage courtesy of the Arizona Supreme Court, overruling a recent fifteen-week ban legislated and putting a draconian law from the OLD WEST DAYS OF 1860 TO GO INTO EFFECT. Those fucks are a disgrace to American jurisprudence, and I love that the Attorney General flat out said “we’re not enforcing it, fuck those pieces of shit.” And don’t think for a minute that the evangelicals won’t come for birth control (they’ve already abolished IVF in Alabama) and same sex marriage. You know, I hate to break it to these blasphemous idolators (Trumpism is idolatry, sorry not sorry, have fun in Hell: thou shalt have no other gods before Me). If you want an idea of the country and culture they want, look no further than Puritan Massachusetts. Remember The Scarlet Letter? That’s the kind of shit they want to bring back. You can never ever give a religious extremist an inch….because when you do, they want everything. (And Catholics, don’t think you aren’t on their list after they outlaw and get rid of everyone else. Right after the Jews, they’ll come for you because they always have to have an enemy. The Right’s entire purpose is scapegoating and blaming minorities for everything. So when things continue to suck after they’ve gotten rid of the “problem minorities,” they’ll have to find another group to blame. Remember how the Soviet Union collapsed and the Right didn’t have another enemy in place? Saddam Hussein stepped into that vacuum happily.)

Okay, I am going to brave the elements and go to work. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I will chat with you again maybe later, Constant Reader.