Category: Alabama

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.

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You)

And here we are on yet another Pay-the-Bills Wednesday. Paul is leaving today, and won’t be back until a week from Saturday. I also don’t have Scooter for cuddles and company. Will I go mad living under conditions of absolute reality? Even larks and katydids are believed by some to dream.

Yesterday was a much better day than I’ve had in quite some time, all things considered. I slept incredibly well, so didn’t start off my day either sleepy or groggy or tired, which is always a plus. The work day was relatively low-key; we were slow in the morning but busy in the afternoon, and frankly, I prefer it that way; busy in the morning inevitably means tired in the afternoon, and if we’re so it’s agony. But over all, a good day at the office and an auspicious beginning to the month of August. (I also didn’t note that it was the anniversary of both of our moves to New Orleans; first in 1996, then again on August 1 2001 when we moved back home from That Horrible Year Away.)

I ran errands on my way home–mail, prescriptions, groceries–and then came home to a sink full of dirty dishes which needed attention, so I took care of that as well as another load of laundry, and then sat my ample buttocks into my desk chair and banged out the revision of Chapter 3 I’d been stuck on for a little less than a week (not so much stuck as tired and didn’t want to bother with it, in brutal honesty) and got it finished and under control before moving onto Chapter Four. I also worked on “Whim of the Wind” for a little while, and also did some more research into the history of the city I am fictionalizing for the WIP, which I continue to fail to discuss. Perhaps this weekend? Perhaps. I kind of want to see if I can get past Chapter 4 before I talk about the book publicly, but that’s nothing more than my own superstitions, which is pretty stupid. As a general rule I don’t believe in things like jinxes and curses and so forth, but I do believe you can actually speak things into existence sometimes. The only takeaway I got from Psych 101 in college was the concept of visualization; that picturing something in your mind can make it happen–but not like winning the powerball or anything like that, but more along the lines of why you always spill something full when you’re carrying it no matter how careful you are…because your mind cannot picture a negative–you can’t see yourself not spilling it; so when you think about not spilling it, you will because you see yourself in your mind actually spilling it. (It’s like how you cannot prove a negative–you can rarely prove you aren’t something; but it is incredibly easy to prove you are. I use this example: someone drinks a lot. They don’t think they have a problem, they don’t wake up in the morning feeling like death warmed over twice and wanting another drink. But once someone says, “You have a drinking problem”, you can’t prove that you don’t. You can say you aren’t, but that’s denial. You can stop drinking for a time period—but if you start drinking again, well, there, you see, you were in recovery and then relapsed! You cannot win, so why bother trying?) It is much harder to prove something isn’t true than it is proving something is. Guilt is the same way–how do you convince the cops, who are convinced you are, that you aren’t?

I will say this about the WIP–it’s more hardboiled and noir than what I usually write, I am having a lot of fun with it, and it’s been a long time since I wrote anything set in Florida, if I ever have? Dark Tide started as a Florida panhandle novel, but I moved it to the Alabama coast; “Cold Beer No Flies” was a panhandle story, too. But this is me fictionalizing Tampa–come to think of it, my main character in The Orion Mask lived in a fictional Tampa I am using again for this one–and I’ve not set foot in Tampa, other than flying in and out for Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, since I moved away in December 1995 to once again reboot and restart my life.

I was tired after all my errands yesterday–the thermostat in my car let me know it was 101 when I left the office yesterday; it is insane for it to be that hot, even in New Orleans. It’s exhausting dealing with this insane summer heat this year. But I did get some writing done yesterday, which was a good thing, and of course Paul finished packing. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well, I have Superman and Lois to catch up on, and My Adventures with Superman, and so many old classic films to watch, so I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping myself entertained so I don’t feel lonely or bored. And of course I could be writing, which is always difficult in August…I also think about how about eighteen years ago I was finishing (finally) Mardi Gras Mambo at long last in that last, fateful August before Katrina. It really was a completely different world all those years ago; maybe I ‘ll go back and read those old Livejournal entries from August of 2005, so I can remember the world before once again. I also have a lot of reading to get caught up on, as well. I have some errands to run this evening on the way home from work, and then I am going to be inside for the night. We did watch another episode of Gotham Knights last night–very intense, as the season finale moves closer–but now I have to wait for Paul to come home to finish. Heavy heaving sigh.

But perhaps I’ll use all this solitude productively. One never knows, and on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Tishbite

And suddenly it’s Sunday, and I go back to the office tomorrow. Paul leaves on Wednesday for ten days, so Wednesday night is going to feel really weird and off when I get home from work. No cat, no Paul, and that has the potential to be incredibly sad and lonely, if I allow it to go that way. I don’t think I’ll be able to manage just goofing off when I get home from work while he’s gone; not to mention the time we usually spend together every night. I will most likely finish watching My Adventures with Superman while he’s gone, and I’ll probably watch Heels on Starz, with Stephen Amell; obviously, it’s a drama series built around a local wrestling promotion–and since my current WIP does the same (it’s not about the promotion, but the promotion plays a part in the book), it couldn’t hurt to watch, right? I just have to be careful not to steal, er “borrow”, anything from the show. (I doubt I will; the promotion is really back story more than anything else.)

But yeah, next weekend is going to be weird as shit around here. I’ll have to get used to sleeping alone–always an issue for me; changes to sleeping situations never are particularly easy for me to adapt to, ever–and without Scooter to cuddle up next to me in the bed, it’ll be particularly lonely. Ah, well.

I started reading Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt yesterday, and I have to say wow. From the very first page she pulls you into the story, and the authorial voice! Magnificent. I still haven’t read Real Bad Things, her previous novel, yet; I don’t want to not have another book by her to read (my usual author-fan neurosis kicking into gear) but I am also thinking I may read it on the plane to Bouchercon, depending on how far along I am with my TBR pile by then–I have, after all, books by Eli Cranor, S. A. Cosby, Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman, and Michael Koryta to get through yet as well–but with Paul gone, I will either be reading or writing every night when I get home from the office, so maybe I can get a lot of this reading caught up on. I also want to read this original text version of The Mark on the Door (The Hardy Boys) so I can write about it, too. I was also thinking it might not be a bad idea to take some of these really old blog posts I never finished and copy them into Word documents…because they really are longer form personal essays that require more work than just what I think off the top of my head–I actually have to look things up and do research to be effective, and I can save them in a folder called blog essays so I know where they are when and if I decide to ever look at them or try to finish them because it bothers me that I have all these unfinished drafts saved on the blog–many of which I tend to forget about until I’m reminded when I see the draft, which isn’t exactly conducive to finishing it. There’s one particularly old one where I wanted to read and talk about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, probably one of the most famous books ever published in this country and one that actually effected societal change…but it’s undoubtedly, from the modern lens, incredibly problematic, which is why I wanted to read it. I also have an electronic copy of The Clansman, which is the book Birth of a Nation was based upon, which clearly is a problematical text; perhaps someday I can do a lengthy personal essay about both of those books, along with Gone with the Wind, in the context of the Lost Cause mythology I was raised to believe (never really did because I could never get past the evil that was chattel slavery, no matter how much any of the latter two authors tried to convince their readers that it was benevolent and better for the enslaved than freedom…even typing that, I can’t wrap my mind around the fact people believe that bullshit, or even more insanely, some still clearly do).

I also spent some time doing research into Filipino immigration to Louisiana (because I am looking into writing about them) in the eighteenth century as escapees from enslavement on Spanish galleons in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana truly is the melting pot I was taught growing up as a part of American exceptionalism; Louisiana had immigrants from all over the world and from every imaginable “race” (which is not biology but a social construct, and no one will ever convince me otherwise), from the Isleños from the Canary Islands to the Filipinos who settled at St. Malo just off the coast-line on the opposite shore of Lake Borgne from New Orleans–I am also interested in the idea that there was also a settlement of escaped formerly enslaved people in the East called “maroons”–not to mention the enslaved people brought here unwillingly from west Africa as well as the Caribbean islands. Europeans were well represented here by French, English, and Spanish; Jews also came over in the eighteenth century, as well as Germans (There’s a town called Des Allemandes–the Germans–on the west bank of the Mississippi, and an entire stretch of the river called the German Coast), and of course there are Cajuns, Armenians, Greeks and Americans, too. There is a quite large Vietnamese immigrant community in New Orleans East, too. I’ve always felt New Orleans had a darkness to her; the slave trade flourished here (New Orleans was what they meant by being “sold south” or “sold down the river”–and it was so bad those words and phrases were considered threats)…which also reminds me I should revisit Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series, which I always recommend to people interested in reading about New Orleans and its history. All of the former slave states have a darkness to them, which is what I am exploring in my Alabama and Louisiana researches on now; how to incorporate that theme, of the suffering embedded in the blood-soaked soil and how so many souls cannot possibly be at rest.

That’s kind of what my revision of this nearly forty year old short story is becoming, and that’s kind of why I am stuck in the part I am at now; when the two boys are told the Civil War legend about the ghost of the cemetery. The original story was one that has since turned out to be apocryphal, a story my grandmother told me as truth when I was a child. I have found an equally bloody and horrifying legend based in the actual grisly history of the region from whence I sprang, and I am trying to get the tone right. I think the man telling the story to the boys would not have been a Union sympathizer but a Lost Cause believer, which makes telling the story and getting the tone right much more difficult. I think I’ve figured out the way to do it right–I don’t really care if Lost Cause sympathizers are ever offended by my writings about the South, to be perfectly clear if it wasn’t already–but I am of course worried that I’ll blow it so had to rest my brain and think about it some more yesterday. I also scribbled some backstory on my main character for the book I just started writing in my journal, which was very cool. After getting the mail and the groceries yesterday I was just drained–the heat really can suck the life right out of you–and so I just sheltered in the apartment and did some cleaning and organizing and thinking, really.

We watched two movies, Renfield and They Cloned Tyrone, both of which were quite enjoyable but completely different. I wasn’t so sure about Renfield, which I assumed was simply a modern take on the Dracula story from Renfield’s point of view, which I thought was a clever idea–but I didn’t realize it was intended to be a comedy. The female lead is Awkwafina–which I did not know and didn’t see her once in any preview of the movie I ever saw, which was some peculiar marketing. I wouldn’t have even thought twice about watching the film had I known she was in it–and she was amazing, as always. I am really becoming a fan. They Cloned Tyrone was a tech horror movie, filmed like a 70’s blaxploitation film, and it was interesting and clever and really smart (although part of it reminded me very much of an Edgar award winning novel from a few years ago that I loved) and we really enjoyed it before watching some more Nora from Queens before turning it in for the evening.

Today I am going to get cleaned up a bit, get ready for the week and do some writing. I want to get this short story revision completed as well as taking another shot at revising the third chapter of the WIP. I do need to do some more straightening and organizing–as always–and there’s a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need putting away. I am feeling better rested, which is lovely, and I am hoping to carry that energy, along with some positivity, into this new week. I do have some errands that will need to be run this week, alas, but I think most nights I’m probably just going to come straight home from work and either read or write or clean and organize. There will of course be nights when I am horribly lazy and won’t do a thing, but I am getting bored with being lazy and am feeling like I need to be producing in one way or another–making myself useful in my spare time. That of course is a neurosis in and of itself; the refusal to accept and allow myself to have down time where I am not doing something or anything or even thinking; sometimes I just need to mindlessly go down Youtube wormholes for the evening, and sometimes I even learn something when I do.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday however you choose to spend it, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

Evangeline

One of the great joys of my life has always been history. One of the many reasons I love New Orleans so much is because the city has never completely paved over and replaced its history; on a foggy night in the French Quarter, the sound of mules pulling tour carriage clopping on the streets can make you feel like you’ve somehow stepped through a window into the past, and I love that. I’ve never known much beyond some basics of New Orleans and Louisiana history; and I’ve been going down rabbit holes since right around the start of the pandemic, learning more and more about the history here. It’s humbling to realize how little I actually did know. I knew when the French arrived; I know how English Turn got its name and when Louisiana was turned over to Spain (1763, to be exact) and when it became American (1803). I also know Napoleon sold Louisiana to the Americans before he succeeded in forcing the Spanish to return it to France….so he could sell it to the Americans. I know New Orleans fell to the Union in 1862 during the Civil War; I know a little bit about Storyville and Huey Long; and I know that the landing boats used for the Normandy invasion in World War II in 1944 were built here. I know a smattering of things post-war about New Orleans–but the gaps in my knowledge are staggering, and I know even less about the rest of the state’s history.

I know that the Cajuns are actually Acadians, from French Nova Scotia, kicked out after the French and Indian War and forced to resettle elsewhere–many of them, after a long and mostly horrific journey, arrived in the swampy wetlands of Louisiana and made their home here. I know that Longfellow’s epic poem “Evangeline”, about two lovers tragically separated during what is called le grande derangement–the Great Expulsion–who promise to find each other once they reach Louisiana. It’s a tragic poem, and of course the Evangeline Oak in St. Martinsville is supposedly the”place” that the fictional lovers finally found each other after so many years, but their pairing was simply not meant to be–the story is a tragedy, after all–but that was how the “Cajuns” came to be Louisianans, and even after they arrived it wasn’t easy for them here. The Creoles of New Orleans looked down their aristocratic noses at the lower class farmers, and so they settled in the part of Louisiana still known as Acadiana to this day.

I have a copy of Evangeline somewhere. I really should read it.

One of these years, I am going to explore my state more. I’ve lived in Louisiana now for almost twenty-seven years, and I’ve never done much in terms of exploration, sight-seeing, and research. The Atchafalaya Basin fascinates me, as does Acadiana. The more I read about the history of both New Orleans and Louisiana, the more I realize how little I know (I always laughed off being called a “New Orleans expert,” because there’s literally a library filled with information about the past of both the city and the state to completely humble me and make me realize I know actually very little about either, and definitely do not qualify to be called expert on anything Louisiana.

I’ve slowly started writing about the rest of Louisiana, but I often fictionalize the places I write about; they are loosely based on the reality but I get to play around with that sort of thing and that’s better for me than trying to write about the real places and making it all up. My first time outside of New Orleans writing about Louisiana was really Bourbon Street Blues, when Scotty is kidnapped by the bad guys and winds up deep in a swamp. “Rougarou” was when I came up with a fictional town and parish outside of New Orleans, which I’ve used since then again. Need had portions that were set in the rural parishes outside of the New Orleans metropolitan area. The Orion Mask and Murder in the Arts District also were heavily reliant on being set (at least partially) in a fictional parish between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. “Solace in a Dying Hour” is another one of these stories. Oh, and Baton Rouge Bingo also had a lot of action outside of New Orleans as well.

I probably should have majored in History for college, but what would I have done with that kind of degree other than teach? Ah, the paths not taken, since I never had any desire to be a teacher, probably my subconscious saying um, you cannot be a teacher because of who you really are which was probably smart. Besides, I wouldn’t have ever been able to pick a period to specialize in; I would have had to be like Barbara Tuchman, interested in everything and picking certain periods that intrigued me for study. How could I ever choose between the Wars of Religion and seventeenth century France, or the Hapsburgs in Spain and Austria? Although I suppose I could have specialize entirely in the sixteenth century, primarily because it was such a tumultuous transitional century. I wish I was a trained researcher, but I suppose I could still learn how to do research properly despite my great age; the problem is time. Fall Saturdays are given over to college football (and I am not giving up one of the great joys of my life) and of course Sunday I watch the Saints. But if I am going to write historical fiction set in New Orleans or Louisiana, why wouldn’t I avail myself of all of the magnificent research facilities here in the city? UNO, Tulane, Loyola and I’m sure Xavier all have archives in their libraries documenting the past here; there’s the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Williams Research Center and really, so so very much. I also need to explore the bayou parishes and the river parishes, and make my way further north to explore Acadiana…and if I ever want to write a book based on the Jeff Davis Eight, I would need to go visit that parish and look around, get a grasp for how it feels and looks there.

So much to do, so little time…and one of the great problems about Louisiana and New Orleans history is trying to decipher what is fact and what is fiction; as so many “historians” and “writers” (looking at you, Robert Tallant and Harnett Kane) often wrote legends and lore as historical fact. I’m not sure how much of Gumbo Ya-Ya is actually true or not, but for writing fiction…perhaps it doesn’t matter as much how right it is? I have this idea for a story, predicated on something I recently discovered again–I have a tendency to forget things–but there was a community just outside of New Orleans called St. Malo, which was settled by Filipinos who’d escaped bondage on Spanish sailing ships. Filipinos in Louisiana in the eighteenth century? But it’s true; and the community was mostly houses and buildings built over the water; the 1915 hurricane destroyed it completely and it was never resettled, with those who survived moving into the city proper. I have an idea for a story called “Prayers to St. Malo” that would be built around that, but the story is still taking shape. There is always more to learn about regional history here…and since I am doing such a deep dive into Alabama history, why not continue diving in regional here?

Louisiana is unique and special and different–which is why I think I felt at home here that fateful thirty-third birthday when I came to New Orleans to celebrate it. New Orleans was the first place I ever felt like I belonged, and I’ve never regretted moving here. I just wish I’d started diving into the local history sooner.

Essence

And here we are, on a very hot Saturday July morning in New Orleans, feeling rested and relaxed, which is becoming the norm and I have to say I really quite like it. I think some of it has to do with the lessening of stress and anxiety with the lightening of my over-all schedule; it’s nice not being constantly busy and always feeling guilty (anxious, stressed) about the things undone when I had to call it quits for the day from sheer exhaustion…and then of course that stress/anxiety/guilt made it impossible for me to sleep. I even cut back drastically on my caffeine intake during this period–cutting back to only three cups of coffee (which is probably still too much, really) and only one 16 ounce bottle of Coke per day. It’s helped my sleep some–and I am not willing to up my caffeine intake to find out, either–but I’ve been sleeping so well the last few weeks since I recovered from the trip that I am almost not afraid talking about it will jinx it…but the streak continued again last night. I’m not sure what the difference is–probably the reduction in stress and anxiety.

Finding out that my mother suffered from anxiety was also incredibly helpful. Finally, at age sixty-one, nearly sixty-two (less than a month away), I realize that I, too, suffer from almost crippling anxiety, but never realized it because it’s just my reality, if that makes sense? Everything stems from anxiety: the self-deprecation, the not taking my work as seriously as I should as well as being dismissive of it rather than proud, the issues with public speaking–all of it stems from anxiety. But that’s because it’s always been for me, I just figured, as one would, that it was normal and everything else has the same issues because that’s all I know. The Xanax has helped somewhat with reducing my anxiety or lessening it enough for me to be functional, and now recognizing that it is an actual chemical brain condition that I’ve had most of my life has opened my eyes in many ways, and I am trying to rewire my brain to accept and understand that anxiety causes me to want to self-destruct at times. I wish I had known this about twenty years ago, even forty, but would it have made a difference?

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, really. I woke up later than usual (same this morning, staying in bed until just past seven thirty like a lazy slattern) and feel very rested. I spent most of the day going over forms doing Quality Assurance as well as did some on-line trainings. Once the work day was over, I repaired to my easy chair with my journal and scribbled notes in it for awhile until Paul got home from the gym. We watched this week’s episodes of Minx (smart adding Elizabeth Perkins to the cast for the second season), The Crowded Room, and Hijack, and moved on to some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite half-hour comedies of all time (the queefing episode is a non-stop laugh riot, seriously).

Today I want to spend some more time on a kitchen cleaning project, in which I am cleaning out the drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen. Things tend to accumulate around here, and there are things that get tossed in drawers that I’ll never need, have never needed, and just held on to for some reason unknown to my conscious brain. I also want to work on the kitchen rugs (which never stay in place, ever) and the floors a bit more. I need to purge more books, too, and work on the kitchen. There’s a mess now because I cleaned out some things already and now that stuff is scattered all over the kitchen and I need to either find a place for it all or toss it, I also am going to spend some more time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman over my coffee and perhaps a few more Alfred Hitchcock Presents short stories before I run today’s errands: groceries, mail, library sale to drop off books, and maybe a car wash. The tire pressure light has been on in my car since I drove home from Kentucky, but the heat has been so intense I’m not sure I’ve been able to get an accurate gauge reading of the tire pressure; I’ll probably swing by the gas station before doing any errands to try equalizing the pressure again. I also want to spend some time trying to write today–whether it’s a new book project, a revision of a short story, or even a brand new short story entirely (that Malice anthology deadline is approaching), but I want to get back into writing again, flex and stretch those creative muscles that have been so dormant for so long.

I got the table of contents for another anthology that I am appearing in, School of Hard Knox, edited by the amazing Jeffrey Marks and coming from Crippen & Landau. The author of the Father Knox crime series, back from the Golden Age, had come up with a list of ten rules that should never be broken by a crime/mystery writer; we each chose a rule and wrote a story breaking it. Mine was “no supernatural events or beings”; which was kind of perfect for me. I dug out an old Alabama/Corinth County story that had been moldering in the archives for decades called “The Ditch,” which I revised and rewrote and made much stronger. I was pleased when the story was accepted, and I was even more pleased to be told that the copy editor thought my story was “powerful.” (I’ll write more about the story, and the anthology, when its release date is imminent.) I also got paid for my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” and cannot wait to get my contributor copies of This Fresh Hell. I don’t know why I get so much satisfaction out of selling and publishing short stories; but subconsciously I think of each sale/publication as another knife into the corpse of that wretched college writing professor who told me I’d never publish. Given how revenge and “I’ll show you” will always drive me to prove someone wrong about me, I’m starting to think that professor may have been a blessing? I’ve certainly proven him wrong with over forty novels, fifty short stories, and over twenty anthologies edited, not to mention countless articles, interviews, book reviews, and essays I’ve published over the years.

Anyway, here is the TOC for School of Hard Knox:

Introduction – Jeffrey Marks
Not Another Secret Passage Story – Donna Andrews
A Matter of Trust – Frankie Y Bailey
THe Dinner Partty – Nikki Dolson
The Intruder – Martin Edwards
The Ditch – Greg Herren
Dichondra – Naomi Hirahara
Baby Trap – Toni LP Kelner
The Stolen Tent – Richie Narvaez
The Rose City Vampire: An Accidental Alchemist Short Story – Gigi Pandian
Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church – SJ Rozan
The Forlorn Penguin – Daniel Stashower
The Island Boy Detective Agency – Marcia Talley
Ordeals – Art Taylor
Knox Vomica – Peter Lovesey

Look at those names. I am so honored and thrilled to be in an anthology enabling me to share the interior with these amazing, glittering names. More on this anthology as things develop–release date, cover reveal, etc. I’m very excited to be in this book, which will be a strong contender for Best Anthology short lists next year, as well as the stories making Best Short Story shortlists. I’m particularly proud of my story, to be honest. I think my metier in writing is writing about Alabama, to be completely honest. I know I am known as a “New Orleans writer,” and to be sure, my greatest success has come from writing about New Orleans, but I feel more drawn to writing about Alabama now that I am in my sixties. I am sure some of it has to do with losing Mom–somehow, it’s like writing about Alabama keeps me connected to her in some weird, complicated and twisted logic only my brain is capable of making, but it’s true.

I’ve also decided that I am going to submit to the Nashville Bouchercon anthology, even though I am not going. The theme, being Nashville, has to do with music, and its being edited by the incomparable Brendan DuBois, who is a fantastic short story writer and has found enormous success as a co-writer with James Patterson (I also like Brendan; we served on the MWA board together and he’s really a great guy). I would love to be edited and work with Brendan, and I think the story I’m going to write for it is “The Blues Before Dawn,” a period New Orleans story from before the first world war, which I’d been thinking about turning into a Sherlock Holmes in New Orleans story. That might make it stand out from the rest, one never knows. It also could get selected out by the anonymous readers who could be homophobic–it happens, and one can never be sure if your story isn’t good enough or if its homophobia–another joy of being a gay writer of gay stories.

And on that note, I am making another cup of coffee and going to read Megan Abbott for awhile. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I am sure to be back again later.

Pur

Wednesday Pay-the-Bill day, and I have the day off because I have a doctor’s appointment smack dab in the middle of the day, so…no choice but to take the day off. I don’t mind, despite the disruption of routine it causes. I have errands I can get done, and I can also take Megan Abbott with me to the appointment to read while I (inevitably) wait.

Coming home from work wasn’t as rough yesterday as it was Monday. I did pause once I shut the front door to wait and see if Scooter would come downstairs before remembering, which made a bit sad. It really doesn’t feel like home without a cat in it. And of course, our next cat may not be anything like Scooter. Scooter was a completely different cat from Skittle, after all–Skittle wasn’t nearly as affectionate, but he was but only when he wanted to be and for as long as he felt like it, while Scooter was constant. I’m torn between a kitten and one that’s already full grown; primarily because everyone wants kittens and it’s harder to adopt out full grown cats. Kittens are awfully cute; Skittle was a kitten when we got him. But our stairs are pretty steep for a kitten to navigate, and it also means we’d have to be a lot more careful with the front door. Scooter had no interest in going outside whatsoever; the front door could be wide open and he was having none of it. He was so disinterested in the outside he wouldn’t even stare out the windows–unless he heard Paul talking outside on his phone. That always intrigued him, and was the only time I ever worried about him going outside–if Paul was out there, Scooter would want to join him. But as a general rule, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about outside. (I’m with you, Scooter, I’d never go outside again if I could get away with it!)

I wasn’t tired yesterday either. I slept really well on Monday night–I’ve slept well ever since I finally adapted back to my life and reality after my vacation and the 4th holiday fucked with me–and we had a relatively easy day at the office. Between clients I did some more deep diving into Alabama history; I don’t know why it never occurred to me until this week that if I was going to write a short story built around an urban legend, why try Louisiana when I have all that history and lore and legends about my home state? I found a particularly gory and grotesque Civil War revenge story–based in fact–which might do the trick. One of the things that has been interesting me lately is the concept of the interior civil war inside the state of Alabama in the north hill country; Union sympathizers who didn’t believe in secession and refused to fight for the Confederacy, and some even served in the Union army. The Alabama Home Guard was particularly brutal; they were the ones who committed the atrocities that triggered the vengeance story, and that something I think I can work with. I know there’s a legend that one of my aunt-by-marriage’s ancestors served in the Union Army and when he snuck home for a visit, the Home Guard caught him and skinned him alive. Gruesome and horrible, but the back country in the South’s entire history is gruesome and horrible. There are a lot more stories to be told about the part of the country from whence I came…

I slept well again last night, too. I was able to sleep in a bit later because I took the day off for doctor appointments–I need to talk to my doctor about my arm and my toe again, heavy sigh–but since the appointment was in the middle of the day, I didn’t see any point in either going in before and returning after so took the entire day off. It’s a nice break to the week, really. We watched this week’s episode of Last Call, and then went back to The Crowded Room–mostly because we didn’t have anything else to watch last night. The first five or so episodes of the show moved really slow and you couldn’t really be sure what was going on. I figured out it was dissociative identity disorder that was plaguing the poor sad character being played (brilliantly) by Tom Holland; but the episodes we watched last night moved the story along, tied it all together, and were riveting. Paul and I agreed it was an odd storytelling choice; risking losing the interest of the viewers who might not continue because it was moving so slow and made so little sense. We wouldn’t have gone back had there been anything else for us to watch–but the performance by Tom Holland! My word, he’s quite the talent. I knew he could act–I’ve seen him give incredibly strong performances in two films, Cherry and the other one, The Devil All The Time, which was, in my opinion, terribly underrated as a film. I suspect Holland will win an Oscar at some point–if people can stop seeing him as Spider-Man.

I was thinking it might be fun–since our anniversary is tomorrow–to surprise Paul with a cat when he gets home from work tonight. But the more I think about it, the more I think that as fun as that would be, I think he’d want to be involved in the selection process. So, probably the best thing to do is talk to him about it tonight when he gets home from work, and maybe going out to the SPCA on the West Bank to see what kitties they have on hand for rescuing. I’ve looked at several websites for adoptable cats in the area, and of course want them all (Wendy Corsi Staub recently wrote a piece for CrimeSpree to promote her new book, Windfall, about winning the lottery; she asked a bunch of us what we would do should we win the huge lottery…and I should have said “buy a ranch so I could adopt all the cats in the world and give them a loving home,” because I would really love to do that), so probably its best to involve Paul in the process. Paul picked out Skittle, even though I found Scooter. I’m still missing Scooter–expecting him to come down the stairs at any moment, listening for him, and sitting in my easy chair after I get home from work just isn’t the same thing; I cannot justify sitting there doing nothing without the “cat sleeping in my lap” excuse.

I’ve got laundry going, and I need to finish the load of dishes in the sink so I can put them in the dishwasher and run it. I am going to try to get some things done around the house around the appointment, but we shall see how that goes. We’re in another heat advisory today–seriously–but this morning I am going to swill coffee, do some stuff around the kitchen, and maybe spend some time with Megan Abbott this morning. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.

Bluebeard

Monday morning and back into the office. I am kind of dreading it, to be honest; there was apparently some shake-ups and drama at the office on my work-at-home day while I was dealing with Scooter. Can’t wait to get into the office today and find out what’s up and what the future holds. Who knows? I may be coming home a lot earlier than expected and never going back.

I was very productive yesterday morning, all things considered. I slept in a bit, got up, and wrote the blog, worked on the dishes and laundry, cleaned up a bit, and found some computer files I was looking for. What’s truly strange–really really strange–is that my imagination is so powerful that I can remember writing entire short stories without actually having written them. A friend had mentioned the deadline for the 2024 Malice anthology, with an international theme to it, and I thought Oh, I have that ambiguous Central American–set Mayan ruins story I wrote a long time ago. I distinctly remember writing the entire story…only to look through all my electronic files to only find one with a few sentences, at best a paragraph, written. I pulled the file out of the file cabinet and sure, that’s all there was. I’d swear I’d written the entire thing…even looking through the old files from the 1980’s that had to be retyped, before remembering that I got the idea on a trip to the Yucatan….in about 1993. This means I remember writing something that I never did.

And people wonder why I think I’m not mentally stable?

I also pulled up a file for a potential next novel–the one I was thinking about before I left for the trip a few weeks ago, and even it isn’t what I remembered; primarily because all the changes I made were made in my head and not really made electronically. I originally wrote the first chapter with the story still set in the French Quarter; I moved it mentally to Camp Place in the Lower Garden District and made changes…in my head. Lord, where is my straitjacket? This isn’t the first time this has happened; where I’ve finished writing something in my. head but never got it typed up into the word document, to be bitterly crushed and disappointed later when pulling up the file. (This also happened with, among many others, “A Holler Full of Kudzu”.) I am certainly not sure that I’ll be able to get this story written, revised, and edited by the end of the month but….stranger things have happened.

I also read some more into Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman and am completely in her thrall. Jesus, reading her makes me want to just give up and never write another word. Well, that’s extreme, but authors who are on her level do make me want to push myself, to try harder, and to do better work. I read for a little while, a few more chapters, then got up from my chair (quite reluctantly) to do some more chores. I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as perhaps I would have liked to have, but it was also my first Scooter-free weekend and I kept getting sad. I imagine I’ll still do so on occasion for a while, but I am also going to resolutely start looking for a new cat to adopt this week. The house just doesn’t feel right without a cat. This morning when my alarm went off I actually went to fill his food and water bowls before remembering they weren’t there anymore. I was afraid that would happen today, to be honest; knowing reality wouldn’t kick in instantly when I rose the bed. Today is also the big meeting with the entire department. I don’t know what that is about, or what is going to happen, or what even to expect. Hell, I may be unemployed by noon, who knows? Not the kind of stress I needed for the weekend on top of everything else, but when it rains in my life the streets definitely flood. I at least slept well last night. We finished watching Fake Profile last night, which was a lot of fun, with a completely insane series finale. I don’t see how they could do a second season, but stranger things have happened with Spanish-language Netflix programming.

I also read a couple of short stories from one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents books, Stories That Scared Even Me, and realized something about my own short stories; the stories in these Hitchcock anthologies aren’t necessarily what we would traditionally refer to as “crime stories,” but I don’t think they count as outright horror, either. The stories are what you would expect from the television series–as well as others like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Night Gallery–stories that are more macabre than anything else, really; some with a very bitter and dark sense of irony more than anything else. The two stories in this anthology that I read over the course of the weekend, “Fishhead” by Irvin S. Cobb and “Camera Obscura” by Basil Copper, were these kinds of stories (the latter perhaps being a bit problematic–the ‘moneylender’ in the story is, while not coming out and saying so, the worst stereotypes of anti-Semitic tropes, while not coming out and saying the character is Jewish); more macabre in outlook than either horror or crime. I’ve also never heard of either author–but back in those days someone with a strong imagination, excellent typing skills, and dedication could make a decent living writing only short stories…ah, for those good old days of the business, right? I’ll probably do a google search on them–and the others whose names I don’t recognize–at some point because I am nosy.

Looks like the heat advisory streak, going back to early June if not late May, might get broken today. Not as humid as usual, but still the high will be 93. It felt cool out there this morning when I took the trash out.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Monday, everyone.