Category: Alabama

Green Light

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how we don’t really have a Louisiana crime writer who explores and illuminates the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and environmentalism of the state the way John D. Macdonald infused many of his Florida novels with so frequently. Condominium, published in the 1980’s, is a stinging indictment of crooked developers and corrupt politicians putting up massive condominium buildings along the coastline of Florida, despite the damage they do to the environment, all in the name of a quick buck. I have been thinking about this because I spent a lot of time in the panhandle in the 1970s, back before Panama City Beach developed into what it is now. I’ve not been back there since 1980, at the latest; but just looking at Google Earth images it’s horrifying how different and over-developed that whole area has become. (I was looking at the images because I was thinking about setting a book along the Redneck Riviera/Baja Alabama/Emerald Coast/Miracle Strip, whichever name you use for the region.) Louisiana, nicknamed “Sportsmen’s Paradise” because of the abundant fish and game and the stunning natural beauty of the state, has pretty much spent the last hundred or so years (at least) destroying and despoiling the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, killing off wildlife species while introducing new invasive ones–and don’t even get me started on Cancer Alley, that stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with petrochemical plants parked next to poor, mostly Black communities that have, surprisingly enough, large instances of cancers in the residents. Now the level of the river is so low that it can’t keep the Gulf water pushed down, and the salty water is making its way up the river and intruding into our drinking water supply here in southeastern Louisiana. I’m sure the loss of so much of the wetlands to ensure oil company profits hasn’t affected this in any way, shape or form. There’s a really good environmental thriller to be written about Louisiana (if not more), and I think maybe part of the problem in writing about the destruction of Louisiana in the name of unfettered greed is that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to tackle it, nor do I have the time to spend on the research necessary.

It’s really disappointing to me that James Michener never wrote one of his two thousand page plus books about Louisiana. Louisiana history, no offense, is a lot more interesting than Texas’.

And Sportsmen’s Paradise is a great title for a book about Louisiana’s environmental disasters.

I suppose I should just go ahead and do it, regardless of how difficult and long and tedious the process may be. I also think part of the reason I’ve resisted this aspect of writing about Louisiana is because no matter how dark my books may get, I always want justice to be done in some way and to end the book with some sort of hope; there literally is no hope for the future of Louisiana because our politicians are all too greedy and corrupt and only focused on the now rather than the future, no matter how much they beat the “but the children!” drum publicly to fool those incapable of deeper thought. There have been so many environmental disasters in Louisiana over the nearly three decades I’ve lived here I can’t remember them all; and yes, I definitely count boil water advisories in that, too. There was the sinkhole at Bayou Corne (anyone remember that?) and of course Deepwater Horizon, whose true impact and the damage it wrought on the Gulf and the coastline will not be fully known for generations.

The one consistent thing throughout Louisiana’s history has been the entrenched systemic political corruption. I have written about that.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about Jackson Square Jazz, as I get into this revision, and remembering why I wrote it and what I was trying to say within the book; there was a thread in it that ties directly into the new one, and there are also some thematic commonalities with S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am really enjoying reading. Shawn is such an extraordinary writer, with a gift not only for language but character, dialogue, setting and story; the complete deal, as it were, and definitely is going to be considered one of the definitive crime writers of this new generation of exceptional talent that has risen over the last few years. I am going to spend some more time with Shawn’s book this morning, too; I am really enjoying it and wanting to see where it goes and how it all ends. I also have the new Lou Berney on deck, and Lou’s books are always high-quality, clever, and engaging.

College football was interesting yesterday. My Tigers prevailed in a three-point nail-biter against Arkansas in Tiger Stadium 34-31, running the clock out and kicking the winning field goal on the last play of the game. Paul and I were stunned, as was the crowd in the stadium..,and then I laughed. “LSU fans aren’t used to smart clock management in tight games,” I observed, and Paul started laughing with me because the crowd in the stadium didn’t know how to react to the end of the game either. It almost seemed ant-climactic rather than exciting…how many games have we lost this century because of poor clock management skills displayed by the coaching staff? So it was lovely, for once, to see the Tigers play smart at the end of a game for a change. Alabama finally looked like Alabama for the first time this season–but only in the second half as they iced Mississippi. LSU now has to play Mississippi in Oxford next weekend; it’ll be interesting to see how LSU stacks up against our old Magnolia Bowl foe. Colorado finally lost, which brought out all the racist college football fans on social media. The Texas A&M-Auburn game was just sloppy, ugly and unimpressive, while Mississippi State fell to South Carolina. But the big game of the day lived up to its billing–Ohio State v. Notre Dame in South Bend, with the Buckeyes scoring the winning touchdown on the literal last play of the game, 17-14. I literally only saw the closing minutes of the game, switching over once the LSU game concluded. The Saints play at noon today at Green Bay, so the grocery run I need to make will happen around that time–no fool me; everyone knows the best time to make groceries is during a Saints game here.

Yesterday was pretty relaxing, over all; a lovely day for the weekend and a restful and nice one, despite the stress of the LSU game. I’ll probably have the Saints game on in the background because it’s too anxiety-making to watch the games. (I have yet to learn how to control the anxiety during a game; it was certainly there last night and while I tried very hard not to get negative during the game, I could feel the adrenaline spiking and my heart rate going up, but I managed to keep my mind from spiraling and going super-dark as well not getting overly emotional It is, after all, just a football game and LSU football success isn’t necessary for my mental well-being.)

My goals for today are to read Shawn’s book for a few hours, get cleaned up and make a grocery run; while finishing the first chapters of the new Valerie and Jem books (tentatively titled, thus far, The House of the Seven Grables and You Gone, Girl) and also wanting to do some short story work as well, which is always fun. This Friday I am getting fitted for my new teeth (hurray!) and I have also reached the point where I can eat and enjoy noodles, so yesterday I made box mac’n’cheese (not Kraft, but one that came from the refrigerated section and simply needed microwaving and stirring; it wasn’t bad, either). Tonight I am going to make ravioli for dinner; we’ll see how that goes, although I am sure I won’t be able to eat any garlic bread. (I am able to eat Cheese Puffs, though.) I really want a burger, more than anything else. We are also making a trip to the SPCA to adopt a cat this coming Friday, which is perhaps the most exciting thing of all! I’ve really missed having a cat; they are such darling animals, and of course we want to get another ginger boy.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back–if not later, than tomorrow.

Adios Amigo

I’ve been toying with an idea for an essay for a while. It began as a blog post, but as I worked on it I realized it might be too long for a blog entry, were I to cover the entire scope of the issue even in abstract form. I moved it from here into a Word document yesterday, which may or may not mean something bigger in store for it than simply a blog entry. I don’t know. It will probably wind up here at some point as one of those long rambling things I do from time to time when I feel passionately about something. Consider that your warning. I’ve been thinking about masculinity a lot lately–it’s been an albatross hung around my neck since I was a child (“Boys don’t play with dolls! Boys don’t read Nancy Drew!”) and after reading so many bad takes about how “men are in crisis”–which basically boil down to an inability to adapt to cultural and societal change that is so intense that they resist such adaptation violently–I started thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man; if it means anything, really. It’s probably too important an issue for me to take on in a personal essay, but personal essays are supposed to be revealing, and no one expects me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything ever written about American masculinity, and to discuss it; thinking I can’t write something for whatever reason is self-sabotage of the worst kind, and something I am guilty of, over and over, throughout my life and career.

And yes, self-sabotage is 100% a by-product of my anxiety.

I also have Justin Baldoni’s book about masculinity, Man Enough, which is also an exploration of masculinity. Baldoni played the incredibly hot and sexy father of Jane the Virgin’s baby, and so as a gorgeous male actor/sex symbol, he has some gravitas to speak on the subject. I’m looking forward to cycling around to his book, once I finish my reread of a Charlemagne biography I really enjoy. I also spent some more time with Shawn’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am liking and savoring as I go–and can’t wait to spend some more time with it today. When I finish, Lou Berney’s Dark Ride has preempted everyone and been moved to the top of the TBR pile. It’s so lovely having so many great options of what to read next. I also think once October rolls around I am going to read only horror that month, in honor of the season–so I need to finish Shawn and Lou’s books before the month turns.

It also occurs to me that many of my books–unbeknownst to me–have explored the topic of masculinity in great detail already.

I slept really well last night, and only got up once. Ironically once I did wake up, I thought wow you really slept late and then saw it was quarter past seven on my alarm. I guess how it feels matters more than how long it actually was, and what truly matters is that I woke up feeling rested and relaxed and ready for my coffee this morning. I am debating right now whether I want to take the books to the library sale and the beads to the donor bins as well s make a slight grocery run–but am leaning towards not making the trip outside the house. I don’t really need anything from the store until Monday at the earliest, and the boxes of books and beads are out of the way and not bothering anyone, let alone my need for order and open space in the living room. I also want to work on some writing today before the games, so maybe leaving the house today isn’t in the cards–or am I just being lazy? It’s definitely possible that laziness and procrastination and my tendency to self-sabotage is what is really going on here. It’s possible. I do tend to put things off I consider unpleasant (and by unpleasant, I mean have to put some effort into it)…

LSU plays Arkansas tonight in Death Valley, and tonight we’ll find out two things: basically, how good either time is. It’s hard to say this early in the season how much quality your wins and losses have; the Florida State-Clemson game today will impact how good the LSU loss to the Seminoles was, and of course we aren’t sure how good Mississippi State is, so we don’t know if that was a quality win yet or not. Arkansas lost to BYU last weekend, so there’s also no telling how good they may or may not be, either. The whole conference seems to be down this year, but a tight win for Georgia can be shaken off as meaningless this early, and Alabama may bounce back; a Nick Saban coached Alabama team has never lost more than three games in a season since 2010 and only twice overall; sure, they looked unimpressive against USF and lost badly to Texas in Tuscaloosa, but does that mean Alabama isn’t going to rebound and is destined for a bad season? No, I don’t think so. Love them or hate them, Alabama consistently wins, and an early season loss means nothing to their program. Sure, LSU could run the table, win the West and potentially even the conference title game and make it to the play-offs; but they have to run the table on a schedule filled with landmines, including both Alabama and a rebuilding Auburn as well as the always hated Florida Gators. There are some great games today, which is why I want to spend some time reading Shawn’s book this morning before the games start, and I plan on rereading and revising Jackson Square Jazz during the games today.

And of course, there’s always filing and organizing to be done. I have seriously messed up my filing system so thoroughly and completely that it’s going to require a major overhaul to begin with, but I also have to think about putting together a new and workable system that will be easier to maintain than this haphazard way I’ve been doing things–and of course the computer files are an utter disaster as well. Heavy sigh.

I’ve been doing a lot more research (or rather, falling into research black holes on the web) about New Orleans during the decade of the 1910’s. I am definitely going to write a Sherlock pastiche for the Bouchercon anthology–which of course means I will most likely be rejected. Perhaps a Sherlockian-type character, and if they turn it down I can simply turn him into Sherlock and toss the story into my short story collection? I need to finish the revisions of “Whim of the Wind” and finish a draft of “Parlor Tricks,” which will probably go into that collection as well. What particularly interests me now is “Manila Village,” a settlement of Filipinos on Barataria Bay, settled by native Filipinos who were forced to serve in the Spanish navy and escaped to Louisiana. There’s still a strong Filipino-American community here (which I actually didn’t know before falling into this wormhole of research), and I do feel that Holmes, living in New Orleans in that decade, would probably embrace them and their culture. (I also need to research the Isleños; descendants of the Canary Islanders who settled here.) New Orleans was also dramatically different geographically back then; the New Basin Canal was still there, for one thing, and I am not entirely sure when the Carondelet Canal (also called the Old Basin Canal) was filled in, but it came right up next to Congo Square; the streets in the Quarter were either dirt or cobblestone, and the lower part of the neighborhood had been almost entirely taken over by Italian immigrants.

I’ve also got strong starts of first chapters for another Jem book (sequel to Death Drop) and another Valerie (sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder); so there’s plenty of writing to be done this weekend as well. I’m not feeling overwhelmed by any or all of this writing that must be worked on and done; this morning I literally feel like all I need to do is roll up my sleeves and dive into the word documents head first, which is a great way to feel.

And on that note, it’s spice mine time this morning. Have a great Saturday and I’ll probably check in with you again later.

Don’t Throw It All Away

Well, we made it to Hump Day again, which is a lovely thing.

I think I may also be losing my mind? I could have sworn one night in the last two weeks I sat down with my journal and hand-wrote the next five or six hundred words of my story “Parlor Tricks.” Last night after running errands and getting home, I promptly sat down, opened the Word document for the story, pulled out my journal and started flipping through the pages.

Constant Reader, those two or three pages I could have sworn I wrote in my journal? Were not there. I turned page after page, growing more and more confused. How could I have not written it down? I specifically remembered words and phrases I’d used in the scene, describing how my main character’s psychic ability to read someone else’s thoughts sometimes created a psychic bridge between the two, which has just happened. The bad part of it is she read his thoughts and knows he’s planning on killing his wife later that night. I even got into the weeds with the psychic stuff, but no–I must have thought of it all, planned to write it down, and then…just never did. I’ve also somehow lost my belt and my Crescent Care hoodie, too.

Or Paul is gaslighting me. I’d prefer to believe that, of course (who wouldn’t?), but much as I want to believe that, I’d only be gaslighting myself. Heavy heaving sigh.

I was very tired as I ran my errands after work last night–needing more soft food, although I can eat stuff now that isn’t quite as soft; macaroni and ramen and soups and things. But the primary need was for things I could make for lunch at work; microwavable things. I also didn’t eat dinner last night, so this morning I am a bit on the hungry side. Yogurt and oatmeal and protein, oh my! But the end is nigh; next Friday I got get the molds for my new teeth made, and I am hoping that will only take about a week or so for the final to be ready for me to wear and use. (I’m also hoping there will be temporary ones I can use in the meantime, but I rather doubt it. But the thought of being able to swing back Five Guys on the way home next week is almost overwhelming.) I also weighed myself yesterday with shoes and keys and belt and wallet on and came in at 205, which is fine and something I can live with. I’d love to get below 200 again, but I’d rather that happen through diet coupled with exercise once I can go back to the gym.

But I did manage to get Jackson Square Jazz printed, three-hole punched, and put inside a three ring binder, meaning the editing just got real. I had gone back and forth over it, you know; should I re-edit/revise the book, or just do the basic copy edit? I didn’t have time to do any work with the Chanse book or Bourbon Street Blues before the ebooks went up, and at the time I didn’t know how I felt about redoing the books for republication; it was more along the lines of the old writer’s adage you can keep fixing it forever but sometimes you just have to say “fuck it it’s done” and it didn’t seem right. I wanted the print editions to be available as they were originally published…which seems now like a silly hill to die on. Why wouldn’t/shouldn’t I revise them? Jackson Square Jazz I think is the longest of the Scotty books, and probably has one of the most convoluted plots of the entire series; there was a lot fucking going on in that book. As I was putting the new printed-out pages into the binder, I came across the scene where Scotty is drugged and loopy in the penthouse on top of Jax Brewery when Colin scales the building to rescue him…and I started reading. I got rather caught up in the story–that scene is rather amusing and was a lot of fun to write–before stopping myself and getting back to what I was doing. I did think that was a good sign.

This week I’ve been letting the anxiety control me rather than the other way around. My supervisor is on vacation this week, which amps up the anxiety for me as I have no one to go to for decisions and/or questions; I kind of have to decide for myself and I really don’t like that. I think that was why I had trouble sleeping on Monday night, frankly. And I noticed it Monday night when I got home from work as well as last night. Granted, I was also tired last night, but I got very little done once I got home. Sure, I printed out the manuscripts (frontside and backside), and made groceries and picked up the new Lou Berney novel Dark Ride, which was very quickly moved up to the top of the TBR pile, but once the book was in the binder and the groceries all put away…I just literally did nothing else. I should have worked on “Parlor Tricks” while I still remember the continuation I didn’t write down but is only in my head; I should have read more of Shawn’s book; I should have done the dishes or folded the clothes that are still sitting in the dryer this morning. More to do this evening, I suppose. I am also seeing my new primary care physician this Friday morning, which will be nice, and then of course LSU’s game is Saturday night in Death Valley, which gives me the day free to run errands and clean and write and get things done around here because I don’t much care about the other games, although I’ll probably have them on as I clean and do things. Then again, I just looked at the games this weekend, and Florida State-Clemson, Auburn-Texas A&M, and Alabama-Mississippi are also on Saturday…so I’ll be paying more attention than I was thinking that I would.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Uncloudy Day

Monday morning and back to the office with me once I’ve woken up, cleaned up, and showered. It was a good weekend for the most part, mostly anticlimactic feeling after the visit with the surgeon on Friday morning; I’d say the best word to describe the weekend would be relief. I slept well last night, and yesterday was a nice, relaxing one. I cleaned and read my own works in progress and made some revising notes; I also started writing the opening of the next Valerie book in my journal, which was kind of fun. There’s a bit of a mess that needs to be cleared up before the book really starts going, but that’s what rewrites are for. At some point this week I’ll need to transcribe what was written into a Word file– I also need to do that with “Parlor Tricks,” a short story I freeform wrote some stuff in my journal for–and I also want to get back to writing again. I’ve been lazy lately–burnout maybe from the back-to-back writing of the most recent two–but I need to start working again.

But it’s always nice to revisit works-in-progress you’ve not progressed on or thought much about in over a year other than the occasional idle thought: oh, I should probably finish that novella or short story or whatever and then make a note or something and promptly forget about it. I’d not realized how far I’d gotten with a Chanse (!) novella until I read it yesterday, and even as i was reading it I was thinking tweak this or this would be a good place to go into this and oh you can restate that paragraph to make it a lot more powerful , which was nice. I also reread the starts of several short stories in progress, several of which I’d forgotten about, like “A Little More Jazz for the Axeman” and “Please Die Soon”–a really fun exploration of gaslighting as well as unreliable narration, and even the main character isn’t sure if she’s being gaslit or if her mind is fucking with her, which is a super-fun concept to work with. I also looked through “Festival of the Redeemer” and “A Holler Full of Kudzu” and “Spellcaster”; all of which have a lot more potential than I remembered or would have thought.

We got caught up on The Morning Show last night–it really is a strong show, kind of like The West Wing about a television network, in some ways, and the cast is simply superb–and then started watching Suspect on Britbox, which I am not sure I am sold on, to be honest. It’s a great concept and has a great cast, but…I’m so tired of “something happens to child of bad/absent father and so angry father must appease feelings of guilt by tracking down killers/rapists/kidnappers/etc. to avenge child they neglected while alive.” I fucking hate this trope because they always portray the dad as some sympathetic hero. Sorry, if you beget children, you need to be a good parent to them and present while they are alive, and “avenging” said child doesn’t make up for it. (I really think S. A. Cosby ended this trope forever with Razorblade Tears; Shawn took a very tired trope, breathed new life into it, and wrote the definitive book on the subject; no one else need bother anymore unless you do better than Shawn…and good luck with that.) Was Liam Neeson not available to play Super-dad in this? Someone needs to do a lengthy critical essay book about the trope of the super-father in fiction, the societal problems they mask, and their unrealism bordering on fantasy to the point of being inadvertent straight male camp. (Which really is what James Bond, Mission: Impossible, and The Fast and the Furious franchises are, just like the Marvel/DC comic book movies are–there’s a dissertation for a PhD in Women’s Studies for someone. You’re welcome.)

I also, in reading the stacks of paper-clipped drafts in one of my stack of inboxes, found another draft of “Whim of the Wind” I’d forgotten about–see what I mean about my shitty memory?–where I’d undertaken a thorough rewrite, and I’m not certain I don’t prefer this opening to the most recent attempt to revise the story. So I am going to compare/contrast the two of them, and see what comes out of it. I also am not certain I like the new ending I came up with, because it doesn’t really work with the tone and voice of the story (it’s also very reminiscent of how I’ve ended a couple of other stories lately, and I don’t like being repetitive, which I find in short stories a lot more frequently than I’d like, to be honest), so I am going to give it yet another old college try to see if I can’t finally whip this damned story into publication strength (after forty years, it’s the least I can do for it). Writing freeform in longhand yesterday in my journal also seemed to unlock something in my mind–the creative stall or whatever you want to call it–but I feel like writing again, and I don’t dread it or even think meh not doing anything today isn’t going to hurt anything, which is incredibly stupid (but one of those lies my brain tells itself to get out of writing).

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, everyone, and I’ll check in with you again later.

A Song in the Night

Sunday morning after a satisfactorily relaxing Saturday, in which I watched a lot of college football while doing chores and picking things up and so forth. For those of you keeping track of the soft food diet, last night I tried mashed potatoes as a meal and it was rather filling, yet not satisfying. I was fantasizing yesterday about corn dogs and fish tacos and cheeseburgers and almost every kind of solid food imaginable at some point during the day, only to sigh and get another yogurt or protein shake in a box.

LSU played very well yesterday, winning 41-14 over Mississippi State in Starkville, which meant listening to those fucking cowbells all through the game, but I don’t know what that win means, if anything. Yes, it means LSU is now tied for first place in the West, but what does it mean for how good they are? LSU has been very dominant in its last two games, but Grambling State was very much outmatched and no one really knows how good or bad Mississippi State is, either. They always manage to play better than expected when they play LSU, and there have been some insanely close games as well as the occasional MSU upset win–and by quite a lot. I’m cautiously optimistic about the rest of the season for LSU, but my expectations aren’t high; I’ll be glad for whatever we get that is good this season. It’s nice to beat the Bulldogs in Starkville decisively. Was Florida State just a really good team and LSU played sloppy so had no chance? It’s also possible. Georgia didn’t look invincible yesterday against South Carolina, and neither did Alabama at South Florida. The Florida blowout of Tennessee annihilated any hopes they may have had of winning the East this year–I can’t see how they’ll beat Georgia, and Alabama, which is the only way it’s possible for them now. Another Tennessee loss will be fatal to their hopes for a big season–and they also have to play at Alabama….who also is looking a little shaky this year. I think the SEC is wide open this year, and Georgia is still the favorite, but maybe not as resoundingly as I had thought. Interesting.

So, as I said, the rest of the day was anti-climactic. I continued on my soft food diet, while fantasizing about solid food, and my mouth waters at the thought of what I’ll be able to eat once my mouth has healed. This may also be the last time I’m ever on a liquid/soft food diet, and certainly not for the length of time this is taking for me. That helps me get through the day, believe me–and those are the straws I am grasping at this point. It’s not really been that bad, but I think a diet that is so heavy in protein and fat can’t be that good for me so I am going to force myself to eat more of the baby food, which is dreadful. There’s a weird chemical aftertaste to it that I can’t quite figure out, but it’s nasty. At least the servings are small. I did eat mashed potatoes for dinner last night, which was just weird. Today I think I am going to make chicken noodle soup for lunch; I think I can handle the noodles somewhat, and that will be a good benchmark to see what I can and can’t have in terms of more solid food. I mean, maybe mac-and-cheese could happen at some point, you never know. I do have some things to do that I’ve been (as usual) putting off until the last minute, so there’s no other option than to do them today. It’s fine; there’s no Saints game to distract me or sideline me (they play tomorrow night) and I am conflicted about them; they are my team, but this week I found out our new quarterback is a COVID-denier and anti-vaxxer–at least as far as the COVID vaccine is concerned. I had started following him on Twitter (I refuse to call it X, fuck off, Musk), and then I saw him retweeting something questioning the WHO and the vaccines, etc. and thought, yes, because you got your degree in epidemiology and infectious diseases at Fresno State? I unfollowed and blocked him. This is tough for me, really. I never really felt the same about Drew Brees after he partnered with the homophobic American Family Association to promote “bring your Bible to school day”–which sounds sweet and innocuous….unless you aren’t a Christian. The fact that he and his team failed to do any vetting on AFA before agreeing to work with them was incredibly troubling; his reaction (“I’m not a bully! I support everyone! How dare you criticize me!”) made it worse. There was no humility there, just anger at being doubted or questioned, which belied the “humble act” he’d been playing since signing with the Saints. To me, that failing lessened him in my eyes because I’d admired and liked him as a good person for so long. No doubt, he did a lot for New Orleans and he still has charities and programs here his foundation runs–but the Brees family moved back to Texas shortly after he retired as well.

So much for his lifelong commitment to New Orleans. That also stung a bit. So, yes, while the bloom was off that rose even before he retired, I suppose I could have eventually gotten around to getting past it and excusing the AFA connection–if not for them leaving New Orleans. This city literally gave them everything they have…and once the city had finished giving them everything, they left when there was nothing left to squeeze out of the orange.

I’m petty that way. I love New Orleans, and don’t even think about disrespecting the city unless you live here. Only residents of the city have the right to complain–the rest of you don’t have to come here, and please, feel free to keep your sorry asses at home if you aren’t going to love and appreciate New Orleans for all that she is.

I was also realizing, as I watched the games yesterday (won’t lie, I always pull for upsets except for LSU early in the season; my allegiances and loyalties shift as it progresses as LSU works through its schedule and who LSU needs to win and lose changes every weekend), that I should be taking advantage of this contract-free state in which I find myself to work on other things and maybe get them ready for either submission or publication? I’d like to get my short story collection finished by the end of the year–I think some of my stories that are published might not be available for it, like “The Ditch” and “The Snow Globe,” and if I finish revising “Whim of the Wind” and the anthology I am working on it for takes it, that will also take it out of consideration for the collection. I know “Death and the Handmaidens” will never be picked up for publication outside of one of my own collections, and that’s fine with me. It’s a bit flawed and needs cleaning up, of course, but it’s a good story with a strong foundation that just needs tweaking. I finally have let go of my ridiculous notion that “Whim of the Wind” was perfect as written and only had one small flaw that needed fixing; I am still proud of it as the first story I wrote that a college professor and a writing class thought was good and publishable of mine, so it will always be that landmark story in my writing career, but revising and rewriting and changing it isn’t some incredibly unpardonable sin for me, you know. I also want to revise and finish “The Blues Before Dawn,” “Parlor Tricks,” and “Temple of the Soothsayer.” That should be my goal for this week–as well as starting the revision/re-edit of Jackson Square Jazz–and emptying my email inbox.

And there are other things, too. So much, as always, that one Gregalicious always seems to have on his plate. I also started writing up interview posts, based on panel questions from Bouchercon in San Diego, which is always fun.

And on that note, I am getting another cup of coffee before heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may check in with you again later, if not tomorrow.

Two Dollars in the Jukebox

This marvelous interview with the amazing Margot Douaihy dropped while I was in the midst of Bouchercon or preparing for it, so I always intended to share it around on social media (what a thrill to be name-checked by such an amazing new star in the world of crime fiction). Her debut crime novel Scorched Grace was so phenomenal that I still think about it from time to time; her New Orleans was so exquisitely and artistically rendered that it gave me pause–and also made me wonder if I’ve been coasting and not working as hard as I should. (I always think that when I read a work that blows me away–I should try harder.)

Yesterday was spent in my chair watching college football and making notes in my journal on projects that are upcoming or are currently in progress. Despite all the sleep (I slept for eleven hours Friday night, and again last night) I still feel a bit out of it and drained and tired; but I am going to take a shower in a little bit and I am sure that will perk me right up. I did read some more of Shawn Cosby’s newest book but those opening few chapters hit me right in the soul and it’s going to take me a minute to process it. I also posted like three or four entries yesterday, too–I finished turning John Copenhaver’s questions for the Outwrite DC panel into a Greg interview (I plan on doing the same with the questions from the Bouchercon panels because I can, mwa-ha-ha!), also finished my entry announcing Death Drop, and another one about how The Children’s Bible was one of my first sources for images of hot muscular men (thanks again, Golden Press, for those sexy illustrations! I didn’t even mention Samson), so I am making progress on getting these drafted blogs finished and posted.

I feel a little pain in my mouth this morning, so I rinsed with salt water and took my pain pills. Pain is draining and exhausting, even if you take something for it, so that’s why I think I was so behind the eight ball with everything yesterday–it’s certainly why I am sleeping so much and so deeply, for which I am eternally grateful. There’s no more bleeding, which is great, and I am trying out hot coffee this morning (caffeine deficiency may have played a huge part in the tired thing yesterday). All I ate yesterday was protein shakes and ice cream (Haagen-Dasz strawberry; today is vanilla bean) which was weird and not very filling; I am going to have to go buy yogurt and more ice cream tomorrow, methinks, and explore some other soft food options, like oatmeal. I am going to have oatmeal for breakfast this morning–I actually like oatmeal and am not sure why I stopped having it in the mornings–and then see if I can figure out some other things. I bought some soups, so maybe I can soften crackers in the soup too. I remember moving back onto solid foods was an issue the first time around, so I have to keep that in mind as I slowly start reintroducing solids back. I know I will miss this unashamed and unabashed deep dive back into ice cream. My face also never swelled up, which is another indication of how good my dental surgeon was. Well done and bravo, sir!

The highlight of the day yesterday for me was watching Coco Gauff win the US Open. How absolutely delightful, and how delightful to have a young American star again to root for. I love tennis, but there really hasn’t been anyone on the women’s side with a larger than life personality like Serena Williams, or just flat out charismatic and likable (like Kim Clijsters) to watch and root for in a very long time. I think the guard is also gradually changing on the men’s side, with the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic triume slowly retiring as they get older, and it’s fun to see rising young stars like Carlos Alcazar play, too.

As for football, well…the Alabama-Texas game was exciting to watch, if strange; I’ve not seen Alabama play that sloppy or poorly very often in the seventeen years or so since Nick Saban came to Tuscaloosa. I also can’t remember the last time Alabama lost so early in the year–which means a second loss ends any play-off hopes they may have unless they go on to win the SEC. To see Alabama lose in Tuscaloosa by ten points to a non-SEC team early in the season? Unthinkable. The conference is not off to a great start this year; Miami roasted Jimbo and A&M yesterday; LSU’s horrific loss last weekend to Florida State; Mississippi got super-lucky to beat Tulane yesterday; and the rest of the conference isn’t exactly off to a great start either–even Georgia hasn’t looked invincible in their two wins, despite the margin of victory. The SEC is due for an off-year anyway; we’ve literally won four national championships in a row (2019 LSU, 2020 Alabama, 2021-22 Georgia) with three different teams, which is something no other conference can say this century, and also doesn’t include Florida, who won two in the aughts (as did LSU: LSU was the first team to win two titles since championship games were implemented). The only teams not from the south to win national titles this century are Oklahoma and Ohio State, and Oklahoma might as well be a Southern state as it’s not really in the Midwest either. In fact, the only two Big Twelve team to win national titles this century–Oklahoma and Texas–are joining the SEC next year. I’m still not sure how I feel about the realignments and conferences being killed off, but…the sport has changed dramatically since I was a child and ABC held the exclusive right to air games. LSU blew out Grambling State last night 72-10, and looked much better than they had the week before in that embarrassing loss to Florida State; but there’s also a big difference between FSU and GSU. I guess we’ll get a better idea of what LSU is like once we play at Mississippi State next week, and we’ll see how well Alabama bounces back from this disappointment for them. Auburn did manage to hold off California last night (I went to bed), but I also think Florida lost their opener to Utah? Yes, they did, or maybe it was Oregon? Regardless, they lost. Pity. (I despise Florida, and will only root for them when they play someone I hate even more, like Tennessee.)

So, today I am going to take it easy one more time without feeling guilty for not doing anything productive. I am going to do some chores–emptying the dishwasher, maybe some filing to clean up the mess that is currently my desk situation, and the refrigerator needs cleaning up too–and repair to the chair to read Shawn’s book for a bit. I also am going to make another cup of coffee and perhaps some oatmeal, washed down by a protein shake. I don’t know if my heart and blood pressure can take watching a Saints game, but Paul will want to watch and there’s also the men’s final for the US Open today. And maybe I will finish some other blog posts. One never knows, really.

Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader–and if I’m not back later, be sure I’ll be back in the morning.

Near You

Several weekends ago, I did an on-line panel for Outwrite DC. The moderator was John Copenhaver (whom you should already be reading), and my co-panelists were the always delightful and intelligent Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Renee James, and Robyn Gigl. The video is actually up on Youtube, if you would like to watch it. John’s questions were insightful and intelligent (as always), and the conversation was marvelous, inspiring, and fun; there’s nothing I love more than communing with other queer crime writers (or any writers, to be certain), and I always try very hard to not monopolize panels because I do have a tendency to talk too much–especially if and when I get going on a topic I am passionate about. So, I thought it might be fun to take John’s questions and turn them into a long form interview, for thoroughly selfish and totally self-promotional reasons.

The panel blurb claims that “queer characters are riveting and necessary material for crime fiction and how those stories can shape (and perhaps reshape) the landscape of contemporary crime fiction.” Do you agree with this statement—and why do the stories of queer characters have the potential to shape crime fiction?

I completely agree with this statement. Queer crime fiction has a very proud history that was never really recognized or appreciated by the mainstream crime writers, readers, organizations, and conferences. That is changing for the better.

New blood is always necessary for any genre–horror, romance, crime, literary fiction–because genres tend to stagnate after a certain period of time. The cultural shifts of the late 1960’s and 1970’s echoed in crime fiction, for example; you couldn’t write crime in those periods without addressing all the cultural and social shifts; Ross Macdonald’s later novels are a good example of this. The 1970’s saw a lot of anti-hero books being written. The private eye sub-genre had grown quite stale by this time, which was when the women really moved in and gave it a shot of adrenaline–Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton blazed that trail, and revitalized a sub-genre that had kind of lost its way. Queer writers and crime writers of color are currently doing the same to the entire genre. Voices and perspectives we aren’t used to seeing are now getting into print and changing how we see, not only our genre, but each other. Crime fiction has always given voice to societal outsiders and outliers; queer people and people of color are the ultimate outsiders and outliers in this country. Who better to tell stories of societal alienation?

Why did you choose your sub-genre? How do you think the sub-genre has influenced the types of characters you write?

Well, I write in several different ones. Chanse MacLeod was a straight private-eye series; Scotty Bradley was more of an amateur sleuth/humorous series, but he does have a private eye license in Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Murder was a cozy, with an amateur sleuth heroine who gets caught up in a family mystery. I’ve also done young adult and “new adult,” whatever that is (it’s been described as ages 16-25), and Gothics with a touch of the supernatural. I tend to write things that I like to read, and I have a varied reading taste. I started writing the Chanse series because I wanted to do a harder-edged private eye series with a queer twist and set it in New Orleans. I didn’t know about J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series when I started writing Chanse; would I have done something different had I known she’d already covered the hardboiled lesbian private eye in New Orleans? We’ll never know, I suppose. Scotty was meant to be a lark; a funny caper novel and a one-off. And here we are nine books later…

As for Streetcar, I had been wanting to try a traditional mystery with a straight woman main character for a long time. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in with both feet. I like trying new things and pushing myself. Having to follow the “rules” of a traditional cozy was a challenge–especially because I have such a foul mouth in real life. I love noir so am working on two different gay ones at the moment.

Why do you think amateur detectives are appealing? Do you think there’s a reason queer characters often find themselves in the role of amateur detective?

I think it’s because we all think we’re smarter than the police? We enjoy seeing a character we can identify with figuring things out faster than the cops, especially without access to all the evidence, interviews, and forensics the cops do. Murder She Wrote has been off the air for about thirty years and yet the books based on the show continue coming out every year. If we start out in mysteries reading the juvenile series–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Judy Bolton and all the rest were amateurs, so we always cut our teeth in the genre with them to begin with. Scotty is basically an amateur, even though he has a private eye license he rarely uses; he and the boys never get hired (although they kind of do in the new one, coming this November.)

Let’s talk about place. Greg, your books take place in the South. Why is place important to the crime novel—why is it especially important to the queer crime novel?

Place shapes who we are–not just as queer people, but as people in general. There are similarities between growing up in a small town in the Midwest and growing up in one in the South, but the differences are very marked. I’ve lived all over the country–pretty much everywhere but New England or the Northwest–and always felt, as a Southerner (despite no accent and not growing up there) like an outsider. Couple that with being gay in a time when it was still considered a mental illness, and you have someone always on the outside looking in. But I have that Southern pull to write about the South–although many would say that writing about New Orleans and writing about the South are not the same; like me, New Orleans both is and isn’t of the South, and I feel that very strongly. I’ve written books set in California and Kansas, even one in upstate New York, but I very much consider myself a Southern writer.

Place is even more important in a queer crime novel because place shapes the queer people so much. As a writer, I think one of my strengths is setting and place, and I think that comes from being very much a fan of Gothics growing up. Gothics are known for place and mood, and I think those are two things I do well.

All of you write wonderfully flawed characters. Sometimes, as LGBTQ+ writers, we feel the burden of representation and the urge to write only positive LGBTQ+ characters as an attempt to undo history’s (the dominant culture’s) demonization of us. Unfortunately, that can be limiting—even flattening. Clearly, you’ve all struck a beautiful balance with your characters. Talk a bit about how you approached this issue.

The flaws, to me, are what make the characters seem real. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys always annoyed me because they were so perfect; no one is that perfect, and anyone that close to perfect in real life would be irritating and insufferable. I am am quite aware that I am flawed (one of my biggest flaws is believing I am self-aware because I most definitely am not), but I am not trying to be perfect; I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. By showing queer people with all their facets and flaws and failures and blind spots, we’re showing the reader that we are human; despite what those who hate us say or claim, we are human beings just like everyone else, just trying to get through life and do the best that we can. The villain in my first book was a gay man–and the entire book was a commentary on how we, as queer people, tend to overlook flaws and red flags from members of our own community. Just because someone is queer doesn’t mean they are a good person–and queers with a criminal bent do exist, and often take advantage of that sense of camaraderie we feel with each other, especially when we don’t know the person well. I tend to trust a queer person more readily than I will a straight person, and that’s wrong–which is why I think we feel so much more hurt when queer people betray us.

Speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ+ folks … Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame said, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” What do you think about the current tactics to ban queer books from schools, libraries, and even bookstores in places like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas? Why are they targeting queer books?

This is, I hope, the last gasp of the homophobes who’ve never updated their hate speech in over fifty years. What the hate group “Moms for Liberty” are doing and saying is no different than what Anita Bryant said and did in the 1970’s, what Maggie Gallagher and her evil co-horts at the National Organization for Marriage repeated, then came the One Million Moms…all too often it’s the cisgender straight white women who are the real foes of progressive politics who fight to uphold a bigoted status quo. They always claim they’re concerned moms worried about their children–but are perfectly fine with them being shot up at school; working in a meat factory on the night shift at thirteen (have fun in hell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when you get there and French-kiss your Lord and Master Lucifer); or shouldn’t have the right to vote…they know better than a child’s actual parents, you see, about what the child needs or wants. Maybe they should spend more time with their own children than worrying about everyone else’s? Phyllis Schlafly, queen skank of the conservative right, ignored her own family while she embarked on her crusade to strip women of their rights and autonomy–all the while shrieking like a hyena into any microphone nearby that she was fighting progress to save the American family while selling some Leave it to Beaver-like nonsense as reality. I always felt sorry for her gay son. Imagine that as your mother.

As for why, it’s about control and power. I actually respected Anita Bryant more, because she truly believed all the vile, horrible, unChristian things she said and espoused. Most of the others, including the unspeakably vile and disgusting Moms for Liberty, are working a grift for money, attention and power. Hilariously, they’ve sold their souls in the worst possible way in the guise of family, religion and God; if they’ve ever actually read their Bibles, they need to work on their reading comprehension skills as they are both apostates and blasphemers who will spend eternity doing the breast stroke in the lake of eternal fire. Hope they enjoy it.

Sorry your husbands and children don’t love you, but who can really blame them?

What are you working on next? What’s coming up?

I have a short story in an anthology called School of Hard Knox from Crippen and Landru (and somehow got a co-editor credit for the book with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor); Death Drop, the first in a new series from Golden Notebook press, drops in October; and the ninth Scotty comes out in November, Mississippi River Mischief. I am writing a gay noir, and may be writing second books for the new series I started with Crooked Lane last year as well as a sequel to Death Drop, and have a couple of short stories I want to finish to submit to anthologies I’d love to be in.

She’s Just An Old Love Turned Memory

It literally just dawned on me that I will have two books out this fall, releasing in consecutive months. The cover for the one I’ve not talked about much is being revamped, so I had to delay sharing the post where I talk about the book (want to share with the actual cover rather than a simulation, of course), but yeah: I have a book out in October and then Mississippi River Mischief drops in November (pushed back from September because, well, life happened), how cool is that? Last night as I was driving home in the hellish heat (the few days of highs in the 90’s, that tragic temperature serving as a respite for the rest of the summer) I realized, you know, if you don’t feel like doing anything when you get home, you don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to work on a book, I don’t have to do anything unless I actually want to–which is hardly motivational. It also was warmer in the apartment when I got home, so I turned on the fans again and the portable coolers and that was that.

I spent most of the evening watching football highlights–August is when I prep for college football every year–and wondering about how LSU is going to fare this season. There’s a lot of hype for them–something we’ve not seen since 2019, frankly, and even then they over-performed by a long shot, and that has me a bit concerned. I have no doubt LSU will be better this year than they were last year, but all this hype-talk makes me a bit nervous. Their schedule is incredibly tough (although Auburn and Florida come to Baton Rouge this fall, and LSU’s last three national titles came in seasons where that happened), but this is also the last season of SEC football as we’ve come to know it since the last expansion, when Missouri and Texas A&M joined. Next year Texas and Oklahoma join, the conference realignments settle in, and college football will never be the same again. I don’t know how i feel about this stuff, to be completely honest. The college football I grew up watching hasn’t existed in a very long time–I remember when ABC exclusively held the TV rights for all NCAA football, so there would be one big game that aired every Saturday and then a local game of some importance–and that was it. When you look at the plethora of games to pick and choose from to watch on Saturdays in the fall now, and can remember pre-1980’s college football, it’s kind of wild.

I booked an appointment with the specialist yesterday. I didn’t get into this very much the other day, because I was frustrated and angry, but basically when I injured my left arm last January? I tore the biceps muscle. I saw my primary care doctor three days later for my biannual check-up, and he didn’t think it was anything. Flash forward to July’s biannual check-up, and now “oh yes, that’s torn, you need to see an orthopedic surgeon.” Well, it turns out that they do require surgery to repair–but it needs to be done, at most, within six weeks of the injury–you know, like when I saw my primary care physician three days after it happened? As such, the specialist he referred me to–whom I liked very much–didn’t feel comfortable performing the surgery because so much time had passed, and he referred me to a specialist at the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine. I made the appointment yesterday, and here’s hoping we can get the surgery scheduled for sometime this fall. (The chances of full recovery, by the way, also are significantly reduced the more time that passes, so thanks again, primary care physician, whom I will never be seeing again.) So, yes, I have a big fall planned. I am getting my eyes examined on my way to the airport this coming Wednesday; I am getting fitted for hearing aids this Sunday, and I am getting my teeth fixed when I return from Bouchercon. Woo-hoo! Seriously, the excitement around here never stops. I also realized that I only have to go into the office twice this coming week before I leave for San Diego…so I probably should spend some time this weekend preparing.

I know what books I am taking with me to read on the flights there and back. I also figured out that I’ll probably get home in time to catch the final quarter of LSU’s season opener, so I will of course be checking the score regularly as I fly back to New Orleans. I am sharing the Dallas-San Diego legs with Carsen Taite, which will be a lot of fun. (I am getting Whataburger at Dallas Love and at some point whilst in California, I better get to go to In ‘n’ Out Burger.) I have a lot to do this weekend to prep. I am moderating a panel–asked to fill in at the last moment) so I need to reach out to my panelists and apologize for being so tardy to reach out, and start pulling the panel itself together. I need to write this weekend, or at least I should, but there’s a lot of other stuff I have to get done this weekend, too. I really should take the car in for an oil change tomorrow before I leave town, for one thing, and it won’t kill me, either. I can also make groceries while on the West Bank. I think I may just take the weekend as it comes and not put any pressure on myself. I need to make an updated to-do list, for sure, but I am really pleased that I conquered my anxiety to get all those appointments made.

I also had anxiety about moderating this panel, but the nice thing now is I can shrug off the panic as “oh, that’s just your anxiety trying to make you miserable” and you know what? That actually works! Oh, how I wish I had known this wasn’t normal years ago and had seen it for what it really is, because now I can come up with true coping mechanisms and work-arounds to keep it at bay. It was so freeing saying that to myself last night; the moment I said it, the power of the anxiety was defeated and I am no longer worried about how the panel will go. Like how I get anxious and put off making medical/dental appointments. It’s just anxiety, and making the calls isn’t horrible. None of this stuff is truly terrible, but my mind makes it that way.

We also started watching Swamp Kings last night, about the Urban Meyer years at Florida (he was 3-3 against LSU), which was interesting. We’ll keep watching; the first episode takes them through the 2005 season and up to the Auburn loss in 2006. (Spoiler: that would be their only loss and they’d beat Ohio State for the national championship.) I told you, I’m trying to get warmed up for football season!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may check in with you again later.

Alabama Pines

I sometimes wonder how dramatically different my life would be had my parents not migrated to Chicago when I was a child to provide us with a better life than we could expect in Alabama. I’ve always been somewhat grateful to them for this, because I can’t imagine or fathom what growing up in the rural South would have been like for teenaged gay Greg; Kansas was bad enough. But my heart will always have a place in it for the state I was born and where my parents grew up (and will both eventually be buried), and whenever I mine Alabama for fiction, it always comes up roses.

I was enormously pleased and flattered to be asked to participate in the Crippen and Landru anthology School of Hard Knox, and the last thing I was expecting was to get a co-editing credit. Art, Donna, and publisher Jeffrey Marks (a fine writer in his own right; check out his novels and short stories) did the majority of the heavy lifting; my contributions were more along the lines of sending an email cheering the others on or giving a thumbs up/thumbs down to a design question.

If you’d like, you can preorder a copy right here.

The premise of the anthology was that Father Ronald Knox, a scholarly clergymen, had come up with the ten commandments for writing crime fiction during the Golden Age, and each of us could chose a commandment and write a story breaking it. Obviously, it was pretty clear to me that Rule 2 was perfect for me:

All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

And I knew precisely which story in the archive I could revise and rework to break this commandment and fit perfectly into the book, “The Ditch.”

I also cannot believe who I am sharing the table of contents with. Check out this talent!

Now THAT’S a table of contents! Not sure what I am doing there with these amazing writers, but I am most pleased to be there.

And this is how my story, “The Ditch,” opens:

I‘d just finished reading my book–The Hardy Boys, The Secret of the Lost Tunnel— and was reaching to turn off my bedside lamp when my phone chirped on my nightstand to let me know I’d gotten a new text message. I frowned. It was just past ten on a weeknight. Sure, it was summer, but Mom and Dad were strict about phone usage after eight o’clock. My orange-and–-blue Auburn Tigers clock, hanging just over my desk, read a few minutes past ten [on a weeknight]. I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. My wallpaper was a photo of me standing on a white sand beach on the Florida gulf coast.

I need your help. Come over! Please! Emergency!!!

It was from my best friend, Zane Tidwell.

I closed my eyes and exhaled.  Classic Zane, always sending desperate–sounding text messages expecting me to drop everything and rush right over. Everything was an emergency to Zane, from not getting his homework done to failing a test to not having any clean underwear to having a nightmare of some kind—all of these things qualified as emergencies in Zane’s brain. He worked himself up into quite a state over the stupidest things.

“The boy who cried wolf” was all Mom would say.

The problem being, sometimes it was an emergency, like that time he broke his arm when he was home alone, or when his mother fell and hit her head, or when his dog ate rat poison.

He always counted on me keeping my head on straight and not panicking and solving the problem for him. We’d been best friends ever since we were little boys in Bible study, and things had always been this way.

I was the calm one and Zane–well, Zane was a drama queen.

He knew I wasn’t even supposed to use my phone after eight, let alone leave the house after ten.

I typed out you know I can’t it’s too late to leave the house and if I get caught they’ll take my phone and ground me forever with my thumbs.

Please you have to come I don’t know what to do I am really in big trouble now PLEASE!!!!

I stared at the screen. In big trouble? What did that mean? But if the needle on the Zane drama-meter was going up, he wasn’t above calling me on the landline.

And that would send Mom and Dad over the edge.

I sighed. I was going to have to go over there.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Zane Tidwell,” I whispered, typing out Be there soon and hitting send.

“The Ditch” is an Alabama story, of course, and has a teenaged protagonist (I’m not sure why I always write about Alabama from a young person’s perspective; probably because most of my memories are from childhood, I suppose) whose name we never really know. The ditch is actually a real place; my main character’s house is based on where my aunt and uncle lived–which is where we would visit–and about twenty or so yards behind the house was this ditch–or rather, what they called ‘the ditch.’ (I’d share a photo from Google Earth, but all it looks like from the air is a line of trees.) We used to spend a lot of time playing down there, and of course to me as a child it seemed enormous, but it’s probably a lot smaller in reality than I remember (everything seemed enormous to me when I was a child). I never knew what created the ditch, or why it was there, but it’s very similar to what I describe in the story, if smaller. There was all kinds of garbage down there–broken bottles, rusting cans, and so forth, so we were never supposed to go down there barefoot. I also remember that when we were in the ditch we weren’t visible to anyone not standing on the edge–which was a bonus for us as kids. The rope swing was also there (and now I think how fucking insane was it that adults let kids play like that? You could break your neck falling off that thing!) and I’ve also included the ditch in another, unfinished longer piece. There was something creepy yet idyllic about the place, and of course whenever I think about it as an adult it’s always what a perfect place to hide a body! What a perfect place for a ghost! and so on.

I wrote “The Ditch” originally for another anthology’s open call, but I knew when I finished it and turned it in it wasn’t going to get selected. (I was right.) I also knew it needed to be revised and the ending changed as well as some other things (minor but important) but had never gotten around to getting the revision done. So when this opportunity presented itself, I was going to use a different story but had some trouble with its ending and then was despairing when it hit me: you know how to fix “The Ditch” you just haven’t done it yet, so stop spinning your wheels with this one and do that instead, so I dug back into it and really had a great time with the revision. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you will be, too!

(Ironically, this week the ending to the other story popped into my head, so I will be working on that this week, too.)

I Can’t Believe She Gives It All To Me

And just like that Wednesday has rolled around again, and today is the day I meet with the orthopedic surgeon to determine just what needs to be done to repair my torn left biceps muscle. I am a little nervous, to be honest, and more than a little trepidatious about it. I’ve not had any kind of surgery since having my tonsils out as a child and a potentially cancerous lesion removed in 2007, so I’ve kind of been lucky on that score (I don’t consider tooth extraction–even the wisdom teeth–as surgery; just how my mind works so don’t @ me, okay?). Dr. Google has told me that I’ll need physical therapy, a soft cast, and a sling (not the fun kind) for a while, maybe as much as six months to a year, which is definitely not pleasant or anything I want to happen to me at any time, but if needs be, it needs be, I guess.

At least after today I won’t have to wonder any more.

But my rebooting the week seemed to have done the trick. Yesterday was a good day; I slept really well and was in a very good mood when I came to work. A friend texted me to remind me that it was also my first birthday since Mom died, and so subconsciously I was probably grieving, which was why the energy felt so off Monday (the news of Tiger’s passing didn’t help much in that regard) and it really should have hit me when I got Dad’s note in the mail. It’s funny, I keep trying to tell Dad that it’ll gradually get easier but it really never does, does it? Hell, just typing since Mom died makes my eyes fill. I need to remember to keep being kinder to myself, and not so hard always on myself. After work I ran errands again–much as I hate driving all the way uptown every day, at least when I do there’s a place to park when I get home, and Paul’s expecting something, and I needed to make a little groceries on the way, too–and followed my Monday strategy of showering after emptying the dishwasher and putting my groceries away. I did finish the new draft of “Whim of the Wind” last night–and I have a place to try getting it published now–so I am going to let that sit for a couple of days before digging back into it. I’m glad that I let go of the sentimental attachment to the story since I wrote it back in college; it makes so much more sense to revise it into something different but keeping the same feel and vibe. I don’t think I stuck the landing on the second draft, but I have something to work with now, and that’s terribly important.

I tried working on another story after I finished that revision but alas the fountain had run dry by then. I did pull up both stories I want to get to work on, and maybe after my appointment this afternoon–and errands after that–I’ll be able to sit here and finish both stories tonight. I slept great last night–even better than i had the night before–and actually didn’t wake up until four (then five, then the alarm) which was probably the longest stretch of “straight through” sleep I’ve had in I don’t know how long. It was again miserably hot yesterday, but these last few days haven’t felt quite as hellish as the ones before. Paul was late getting home last night (board meeting) and after I finished writing for the evening, was kind of lost. I did do a load of laundry and another load of dishes, even going so far as to clean and straighten up the kitchen (I also showered when I got home; the twice daily showers seem to be doing the trick–getting things done and sleeping well) before repairing to my easy chair to watch some Youtube. Yesterday evening I revisited some scenes from old soaps, mostly General Hospital and All My Children–I still haven’t accepted that it’s no longer on the air–and I was also thinking about all the actors from soaps we lost to HIV/AIDS back in the day; and how many really gorgeous young men had appeared on the soaps when I used to watch and then just disappeared…which, of course, makes me wonder. (I love that the actor who played Derek Mallory, the police chief on Edge of Night back in the late 70s and early 80s, started in gay porn movies.) Someone really should write about that; and how actors had to remain closeted to have careers until the modern day era where there are only four soaps left, but they often have gay characters and storylines now. (was it Christian McLaughlin who wrote Glamourpuss, about a closeted gay soap star who gets outed, so the show makes his character gay and turns him into the villain?), I remember when Donna Pescow played the lesbian nurse on All My Children back in the day–she wasn’t around long, of course, the occasional queer character rarely lasted for long–but i would love to read a book about the history of queer actors and queer storylines on the daytime soaps–I remember the gay teen storyline on One Life to Live back in the day (Ryan Philippe’s first big break as an actor was playing that gay kid) and remember thinking wow what a difference this storyline would have made to teenaged me back in the day.

Representation matters, people. It really does. And if you’ve never not seen yourself reflected back to you in popular culture, you literally have no idea what it feels like or how moving it is when you finally do.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.