Category: books i’ve read

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

Saturday morning and I am swilling coffee in the Tennessee Williams Suite at the Monteleone Hotel. I slept much better than I would have thought last night–the bed is ridiculously comfortable here–but that also may have had to do with the dirty vodka martini I had last night with dinner. I have to, once I finish writing this, get a bit cleaned up, swill more coffee, and start trying to work on my moderating duties for my panel this afternoon–a mystery panel at the Muriel’s location, with Alafair Burke, Samantha Downing, and Kirstien Hemmerichts. I’ve read their most recent books (Samantha’s is her debut, My Lovely Wife) and while I’ve not yet met Samantha, I did meet Kirstien at the opening reception at the Historic New Orleans Collection last night. I’m hoping to ask some interesting questions and have a terrific discussion about women in crime fiction–both as characters and as writers. I have been a long time advocate, as Constant Reader should know, of women writers, particularly in the crime genre. So, we shall see how this goes. Tomorrow I have another panel (for Saints and Sinners) and a reading to do (I am going to read “This Town” from Murder-a-Go-Go’s, which I know is probably not the self-promotional thing to do; I should read from Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, since it’s my new release–again begging the question how do I have a career?)

I also had a lovely dinner at G. W. Fins last night with the amazing Alafair Burke and the equally amazing Sarah Weinman (you really need to read her The Real Lolita); what can I say other than #ilovemylife? The dinner was superb, the service exceptional, and the conversation? The kind of thing I used to dream about when I was a teenager, late at night, before I fell asleep and dreamed my big dreams.

And hopefully, tomorrow after everything is over I’ll be able to head home and start putting the house back together after TERMITE ARMAGEDDON. I’m going to have to do a lot of laundry and a lot of loads for the dishwasher, so the sooner I can get a jump on doing that the better, obviously, since I have to return to work on Tuesday morning. It’s not like I wanted to spend my day Monday cleaning the house thoroughly and doing all that laundry and those loads of dishes, but it has to be done and I don’t really have a choice; supposedly the gas dissipates on its own but doesn’t it get in the fabrics and so forth, and better safe than sorry? Plus, it gives me an excuse to clean out the cabinets and the drawers…so yes, part of my evening tomorrow will be figuring out a more efficient way to use the cabinets and the drawers….because it’s always an ongoing thing, you know? (My spice rack actually might be something I throw away; I don’t use the stuff in it very much and it takes up counter space and collects dust.)

I do have some writing to do–website stuff–that is due on Monday, so I’ll probably get to work on that after my panel this afternoon.

Okay, and on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me!

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December 1963 (Oh What a Night)

Friday morning, and TERMITE ARMAGEDDON is nigh. I am up before dawn because they are coming to tent the house and commit genocide around eight, so I have to wrestle Scooter into his carrier before then so I can get him to the spa when they open at eight. Then I am going to drive back and leave the car at the house, and Lyft down to the hotel for the Weekend o’Festivals. I also have to go to my doctor at 1:30 in the afternoon; I think I’ll leave early and take the streetcar, so i can sightsee and read on my way. And then…it’s just about the festivals for the weekend until we are cleared to come back to the house. I’ll probably do that on Sunday after my panel, if I can, so I can start laundering things and washing dishes and moving the perishables back over from the carriage house, so I can go get Scooter first thing Monday morning and then go make groceries.

Heavy heaving sigh. I keep finding things that might get contaminated. Well, when I take Scooter to the kitty spa I guess I’ll be loading more things into the hatch of the car than I’d thought I would have to.

Now that the morning of Termite Armageddon is here, I am much calmer than I thought I’d be. My suitcases are packed, the majority of the cabinets have been emptied, and all I have to do is wrestle Scooter into his carrier. I think I can manage it on my own, although it’s usually a two-person job. I think I’m also just going to grab the streetcar and come back here to get the car; that way I can go pick up the mail as well…or should I just take the streetcar all the way so I can keep reading? Decisions, decisions. One of the things I hate the most about anything is having to rush. Rushing causes me stress–almost to the breaking point–so I always try, when I have mornings like this, to get things done and try to give myself enough time so I don’t have to get stressed and rush and freak out–which, of course, is how I always wind up forgetting things along the way.

But tonight I get to have dinner with Alafair Burke and Sarah Weinman!

ENVY ME.

Yesterday I’m not going to lie; I was stressed as all hell, so feeling so calm this morning is quite lovely. I don’t know if I am actually calm or if it’s because I’m actually not quite awake yet, but in either case, there it is, you know? It is what it is, and whatever I didn’t get out of the Lost Apartment are things that will have to be thrown away at some point when we come back home, which I’m more than fine with. Moving the perishables to the carriage house made me realize something–not only do I hoard books, I hoard food. I think it comes from being poor, being hungry, and not having anything to eat in the house (my mom’s house is practically bulging with food; now i wonder if the poverty from her early married days, when my sister and I were kids, has something to do with that as well) and I  am realizing that there’s really no reason for there to be so much food in the house. So, in some ways, the Termite Armageddon is a good thing, because it’s forcing me to clean out my refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen cabinets.

In a way, I am having spring cleaning forced on me, because definitely Monday I am going to have to spend the majority of the day cleaning the house.

Again, not a bad thing.

But it is what it is.

So, I am hoping this weekend will give me the boost I need, the kick in the part, as it were, to get me writing and thinking about my writing, again. I am having a lovely time–albeit going rather slowly–revising the WIP, and I am already thinking ahead to the next thing. I’d like to see April spent writing up a storm, and revising short stories, making another push to get some stories into print. I also need to get caught up on all sorts of other things–I still haven’t gotten the damned brake tag–and I have taxes and things to sort. I am hoping that the weekend in the suite at the hotel will do the trick; give me some time to relax, read, and get caught up on things that I have been seriously lagging on. I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a malaise thus far this year; since finishing Royal Street Reveillon, if I am going to be completely honest, and going back to the Great Data Disaster of 2018. But the Weekend o’Festivals has always given me the kick in the pants I need to get there.

And now, I need to go load the car and sneak the kitty carrier down out of the storage without Scooter seeing it, else I’ll never get him out from under the bed.

Oh, spice mines….how I wish I could resist your siren song.

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Kiss and Say Goodbye

Wednesday morning, and I could have slept until tomorrow. Paul moves into the hotel today for the Weekend o’Festivals, and I get to come home to an empty house and Needy Kitty ™. Tomorrow I get to finish packing things up and moving them out before the Termite Tent arrives sometime on Friday, which is when I get to somehow finagle Scooter into his carrier and get him to the spa for the weekend, move into the hotel, and somehow find the time (and a way) to get to my doctor’s appointment uptown later that same day.

Heavy sigh.

But that’s okay. I can manage it. I also have to start preparing for my panel, so I am going to try to finish reading Samantha Downing’s My Lovely Wife before Saturday. I am enjoying it–it’s quite good, and getting quite a bit of buzz this week–and I also have to decide what I am going to read on Sunday. I should probably read something from Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories–promote promote promote–but I am leaning toward reading “This Town” from Murder-a-Go-Go’s. I feel terribly unprepared for this coming weekend, to be completely honest, primarily because I haven’t had a chance to actually focus on it. I still need to pack, too.

Heavier sigh.

But…that’s okay. I have a half-day on Thursday, as I said before, and all I really have to do before and after work that day is actually get ready for the weekend. I’ve already made my packing list for my suitcase, and sometime today I’ll make a list of the things I have to get done tomorrow. I also need to figure out what I am going to need to get done on Monday–besides go get groceries, restock the house, wash the bed linens and the clothes and all the dishes (hurray!)–while also trying to readjust back to normality while feeling exceptionally tired, as I never sleep well in hotels. I also have a bit of freelance writing that’s due on Monday, and I have to fit getting that done in there somewhere. I’ve also got  to send my tax stuff to my accountant, which I should probably mail today since I am going to the post office.

But I don’t have a lot to do this weekend–I have my panel at TWFest on Saturday, then my reading and a panel at Saints and Sinners on Sunday–and other than that, and dinner with some friends on Friday evening, I can pretty much hang out in the suite for the weekend and relax, maybe get some reading and writing done most of the time. I am not the best at getting things done while staying in a hotel room, but stranger things have happened and so one never knows. Usually we have someone staying with us in the suite, but it’s just us this year.

So, without Paul being home tonight or tomorrow, I should be able to get things done that I need to get done–around dealing with Needy Kitty ™. Some cleaning and organizing, packing…and then I am ready for the weekend.

I did work some on the WIP yesterday–not much; it took me a while to get back into the story–but something is better than nothing.

I’ll just be glad when this weekend has passed and everything has returned to that semblance of normal that passes for normal around here.

And then I can focus on getting the WIP and some short stories finished in April, so I can move on to rewrite the other in May, and maybe–just maybe–start something new in June or July, depending on where things fall. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even stay on schedule.

Stranger things have happened.

And now back to mining spice.

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Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Last night when I got home from work I was so tired I literally repaired to the easy chair almost immediately, while a purring cat in my lap. I kept dozing off while I waited for Paul to get home, and finally, once he did make it through the front door, I gave up any pretense of being awake still and went directly to bed. I didn’t want to get up this morning (no different than any morning, really, other than it’s dark and rudely early), and would be more than happy to go straight back to bed for another few hours.

I did manage to revise the first chapter of the WIP yesterday; first chapters are always the hardest to do, quite frankly, and so I always end up spending the most time on them. The trick is to introduce your main character without a lot of explanation and back story–the temptation to write an entire chapter of back story is always, always present, and must be resisted; there’s no easier way to lose a reader than explaining back story….but there has to be enough for the chapter to make logical sense to the reader as well. It’s a balancing act; one that I’m not quite sure I’ve managed, but at least today I get to move on to Chapter Two.

Tonight I have to not only pack for the weekend but also continue to move perishable things over to the carriage house. I think the last thing I’m going to do is move things to the back of the car–the cat food, etc.–and since I’m not taking the car to the Quarter for the weekend (the cost of parking down there is absolutely insane) that should work. It’s also going to be a struggle getting Scooter into his travel kennel to take him to the Kitty Spa Friday morning; it’s usually a two-person job, and since he’s a Daddy’s kitty, not having Daddy to help me is going to make it a battle royale, I fear. I also have a doctor’s appointment Friday afternoon that I couldn’t reschedule before July (!), so it looks like the most likely progression here will be drop off the cat, drive back over here, and call a Lyft to take me to the Quarter, then grab another Lyft to the doctor, and take the streetcar back from there.

Madness; a weekend’s worth of utter and complete madness.

But I am feeling better about things; the lovely comments from people about my story in Murder-a-Go-Go’s plus getting some good revision done yesterday has me feeling better about my career and my ability to write again; it’s been a hot minute since I felt good about anything having to do with my writing, so it’s kind of lovely to have some confidence again. Or rather, restore the low confidence I’ve had most of my career. Writing is insane in that way; maybe the big names like Harlan Coben and Jeff Abbott and Lisa Scottoline and Karin Slaughter don’t ever suffer from Imposter Syndrome, but it’s really an integral part of my personality. I’ve had it about everything–not just writing. I constantly question, and have my entire life, whether I am good at my job (whatever it may have been at the time) or whether I am a hard worker or how clean my house is or whether I actually can write or if I am just somehow managing to cost by somehow, being read by non-discerning readers who can’t tell that I’m not a good writer.

And around and around and around it goes.

I started reading Samantha Downing’s wonderful My Lovely Wife yesterday on my lunch break, and it’s really really good. I am looking forward to moderating our “whodunit” panel this Saturday; hope to see you there.

And now back to the spice mines–because if I know anything, it’s that spice won’t mine itself.

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Love Machine

Ah, Monday of the week that ends with the tenting and the Weekend o’Festivals. Just thinking about getting through this week and this weekend makes me tired. Very tired.

We started moving perishables and other things that could be poisoned by the termite gas over to the carriage house yesterday; even as we did so, I kept remembering and finding more things that need to go over there. I’ve never experienced termite genocide before, that oh-so-uniquely New Orleans experience that so many others have before multiple times. It’s got me thinking about the possibility of murder by termite tent, of course–although I am pretty certain I’ve read a book where that happened, I think it was by Elaine Viets.

Murder-a-Go-Go’s officially releases today as well, so those who preordered it should be getting it delivered to your electronic reading devices and those who ordered hard-copies should be getting them soon. Huzzah! I love book birthdays; my own for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories is soon to come; April 10th, officially. Order, order, order! And don’t forget, the first ever Chanse MacLeod short story is in this book!

I reread my story for Murder-a-Go-Go’s again yesterday, primarily because another idea came to me yesterday, which I shared on social media: Someone really needs to write a spring break noir called WHERE THE BOYS DIE and I would read the hell out of that. I do think that’s a terrific idea; is there any better setting for a noir than a small beach town taken over by tens of thousands of partying college students? (I also had another idea for a book, based on an actual brutal murder that took place over spring break several decades ago; hat tip to Scott Heim for reminding me of that murder) I had always wanted to do one over the course of Southern Decadence weekend as well; I still might do that one. Anyway, I’m digressing. So, on my post about Where the Boys Die some suggested I write it, others that it sounded like an anthology, and then Jessica Laine said, you already wrote this story for MURDER-A-GO-GO’S, and I loved your story. 

The thing about being a writer is that all-too-often you don’t remember things about your work once it’s finished. “This Town,” my story for Murder-a-Go-Go’s, is one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever written, to be honest; I think it’s also one of my best. But, when I read Kristopher Zgorski’s lovely review and he singled out my story as one of many for individual praise, and then seeing Jessica’s lovely comment, I decided I should probably reread the story since my recollection of what I actually wrote was so vague…and there it was. Constant Reader, it’s good. I then pulled up my story “Neighborhood Alert,” which is going to be published in Mystery Tribune, and it, too, is good. This was revelatory for me; as I may have mentioned, another story of mine was recently rejected by Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and that had, of course, put me into a bit of a tailspin as far as my writing of short stories was concerned…astonishing at how easy it is to have one’s confidence in one’s own work shattered, isn’t it?

And that also got me to thinking about the second Chanse short story, “Once a Tiger,” that has tragically been stalled for so long. Short stories are actually more intimate than novels; in that you have much less space to develop a story and less room for characters so it has to be scaled back some. “Once a Tiger” is struggling because, quite simply, there are too many characters in it; how does one investigate a death at a fraternity house on a college campus when there would have to be well over a hundred brothers and pledges? That was where I struggled with the story; even the police would have trouble sorting all of this out, so imagine the trouble Chanse would have with it, working alone as he does. I still want to write a murder mystery set at Chanse’s LSU fraternity, where Chanse has to come back and solve the crime, but I just don’t–at the moment–see how that can be done as a short story. Maybe now that I’ve said that it will come to me–just like the other day, how to weave the two plots for the next Scotty book came to me from out of nowhere.

I love when that happens.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Jojo

Sunday morning and another lovely night’s sleep. It should surprise no one that I wound up getting very little done yesterday. Blame it on the World Figure Skating championships/SEC women’s gymnastics tournament one-two punch, if you will. After watching the LSU ladies win their third title in a row (GEAUX TIGERS!) Paul and I settled in to watch an episode of Shrill and a few episodes of The Order, which is just good campy, Teen Wolf-ish fun. And it doesn’t take itself seriously, which I love; it is funny, and it also takes time to laugh at itself.

But I did box up all of the open perishables in my kitchen cabinet, and now have just a few more boxes to load up–the bathroom stuff, etc.–and then we are as ready for the termite tenting as we can be. I still have to clean out the freezer–our friend Jean has graciously agreed to allow us to keep it in hers–and coordinate how all of this is going to go down–Scooter to the kitty spa; my suitcases and so forth to the hotel; the freezer stuff to Jean’s; how to coordinate getting everything back into the house on Monday–but it’s just too much and I don’t really want to think about it. This week is going to be completely insane, and I am not here for it.

I think that’s part of the reason I got so little done yesterday–in addition to the laziness default and the stuff on television–is that I am more than a little overwhelmed with everything I have to do–without taking the tenting into consideration. I literally am half-way through a first draft of a novel, have at least twenty to thirty short stories in some stage of writing, another manuscript that needs to be revised, am editing another novel as a paid gig, and that’s not even taking into consideration the volunteer work I am doing with Bouchercon and other organizations–and the Weekend o’Festivals is looming on the horizon. I still have to finish reading The Woman Who Fed the Dogs and My Lovely Wife, I have to get prepared for my panel and come up with some interesting questions for my panelists, and….seriously, all I want to do is sit in my easy chair and watch highlights of old LSU games on Youtube.

But I need to buckle up and get to work. There are things that need to be done, and they need to be done today. I need to get my email inbox cleaned out, as well as answer insane amounts of messages on Facebook and other places that I’ve simply allowed to pile up, and I still have a lot of filing and organizing to do. I’m not beating myself up over not getting all the things done yesterday that I had originally intended to get done yesterday; that’s just self-defeating, after all, and I am not a believer in wasting time on regrets. So, when I finish this, I am going to go fold the laundry, load up another box of stuff from the kitchen and perhaps from the bathroom, and organize/file the stuff that’s piled up on the kitchen counter. I am going to make a to-do list for the week, some playlists for the car on my phone because I am sick to death of the ones I already have and have listened to for quite some time now, and possibly finish revising the first chapter of the WIP. I am not going to push myself too hard about getting the WIP worked on this week; my original plan had been to finish it this month, but that’s not going to happen now so I am going to push it off until April. I also need to get my taxes sorted and to my accountant, and I also need to back up my desktop computer.

And the books always need to be reorganized.

And then, of course, there’s the Scotty Bible, and I also need to make a list of things to do for the next Scotty, aka Hollywood South Hustle.

And on that note, those emails aren’t going to answer themselves now, are they?

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Off the Wall

It’s Saturday morning and the Lost Apartment is close to being clean; I have to work on the kitchen a bit more today and do the living room floors. I also have to start packing up/throwing away perishables for the looming tenting for next weekend. Heavy heaving sigh. But…it’s also going to make me clean out my cabinets, and since everything has to washed after the tenting is over, also make me reorganize them.

Crazy!

I have a couple of errands to run today; I need to get the mail and I also need to get my brake tag taken care of today–it was due in January and now it’s almost April. Not very adult or responsible, I’m afraid; I really need to stop procrastinating about things and just get them done. I am going to clean out my email inbox, respond to Facebook messenger, and I also have to mail some things today. I want to work on the WIP, and I want to clean, and I want to finish reading The Woman Who Fed The Dogs so I can move on to Samantha Downing’s My Lovely Wife, thus completing my Festival homework, and then I need to prepare some questions. Moderating isn’t something I particularly enjoy, in all honesty, but I generally do a fairly decent job at it–at least, no one has ever told me that I suck at it. I know Paul thinks I’m good at it, or he wouldn’t keep trying to make me do it–although I also suspect it’s simply easier for him if I agree to moderate a panel.

So, yes, my plate is rather full today, but that’s okay. Hopefully, tomorrow I can do some writing in the morning and spend the afternoon reading the Downing (which, of course, is completely predicated on finishing Fed the Dogs today). The world figure skating championships are also going on currently, and I’d like to see the men’s competition, which is airing this afternoon. Americans are sitting in first, second and fourth after the short program–which is unlikely to hold through the free skate, but stranger things have happened.

And while next weekend is going to be fun and lovely–the Weekend o’Festivals always is–it’s also going to be exhausting, especially when you add in the fun of having to put the house back together that Monday. And it’s almost April already! When did that happen? How did that happen? Where did the first third of this year go, and what do I have to show for it? Very, very little…although I suppose I did finish writing a book, so that’s something.

And this past week’s episode of Schitt’s Creek was another one of those “get me in my feelings” episodes. Seriously, y’all, if you aren’t watching this show, you really need to be. There was one scene last night that should win Daniel Levy an Emmy, just for that scene alone–and of course Catherine O’Hara is a comedic gift that never stops giving.

All right. This spice isn’t going to mine itself, now is it? Happy Saturday everyone!

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You Decorated My Life

Friday, and the weekend looms. Alas, but this weekend is deceptive; it is the last weekend before the Weekend o’Festivals which means I won’t see Paul very much and I probably won’t be able to get a whole lot of relaxing done as I will be stressing about numerous things. I need to finish reading two books by next weekend, I need to get some work done on the WIP, and I need to clean this filthy apartment. I am behind on everything (like always) and really need to step up my game. I’ve been feeling slightly overwhelmed this week, but feeling overwhelmed only leads to paralysis and inaction and chaos, so…when I get home from work this afternoon I need to get to work. I need to stay off social media, close my Internet browsers, and just get on it. I need to get chapters revised; I need to clean thoroughly; I need to do all sorts of things, and this is the last chance I have to get any of this done before the Weekend O’Festivals.

And the house is being tented that weekend for termites; effective Friday, the termite tent is going up. So we also have to prepare the house for that.

I’ve got to get my reading done as well, so I also need to focus and try not to goof off as much. Scooter, of course, won’t mind me sitting in the easy chair all weekend reading, either–which should minimize the kitty whining I have to put up with over the weekend. (there’s always kitty whining)

Heavy heaving sigh.

What I need is to have a Type-A weekend. I haven’t had one of those in a while; not sure what that’s about, but as I said, I’ve felt disconnected from everything since the Great Data Disaster of 2018. The return of my allergies hasn’t helped much in that regard, either–it’s spring in New Orleans again! I guess the first step in getting my shit together is to make a pretty solid to-do list, and stick to checking things off on it. That’s always been the most effective way for me to deal with these things, and something I’ve been rather slipshod about for quite some time.

With the river so high and all the midwest flooding, I’ve also been thinking about, of course, Katrina and the flood that followed. It doesn’t help that the lead off and title story in my soon to be released collection, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, is an aftermath story, with the character on his roof in the heat waiting rescue. It’s a morbid, creepy story; one that I was reluctant to tell, if I’m going to be honest about it. I evacuated; Paul and I packed up as much as could fit in the car, put Skittle in his carrier and fled north. We left the Lost Apartment shortly after eleven a.m. that morning; we didn’t get to Slidell until nearly seven, and the outer bands of the storm were already coming in as we crossed the Twin Spans across the lake. It does now seem like that was an incredibly long time ago, and yet the memories, while faded with time, are still relatively vivid–even though the distance makes it seem as though it happened to someone else. There’s an unreality about the entire thing, looking back over the years. It’s hard to believe something like that could happen, yet it did, and it does, every year, to somewhere. Puerto Rico is still recovering, and suffering, from Maria.

The other day on Facebook there was a post from the New Orleans Tourism Board about signs they’ve created that businesses here can hang in their windows, to show queer tourists that they are welcome in the business and in the city. Quite naturally, some homophobic trash (from Oklahoma) had to show up on the thread and say shit like well, looks like I need to cancel my reservations for New Orleans this May–guess it’s time for another hurricane! 

You really can’t fix trash. Particularly from some asshole who smugly thinks Oklahoma is immune from natural disasters. This reminded me, of course, of the congressional trash serving at the time who didn’t think New Orleans (the fifth largest port in the United States) didn’t need to either rebuild or recover from this disaster; they were willing to just let the city sink in the swamp and disappear. Steve King, the Klansman without a mask, was one of them; yesterday he said something similar again about how everyone affected by Katrina sat around waiting for help while “in Iowa we help each other.”

Really? Fuck you, you racist faux Christian piece of shit, and I do hope you have a lovely time in hell when you get there.

And despite the fact that Iowans clearly continue to reelect this excrement to Congress because he is a racist bottom-feeding monster, they still deserve our sympathy and our support and our help in this time of disaster for them.

Sorry you don’t have a soul, Mr. Congressman.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Tusk

As Constant Reader is aware, I’ve always had issues with my weight and, by extension, my body. I am trying–the goal is, anyway–to get down to 200 pounds. I am currently hovering at a plateau of 212, with fluctuations running from 210-215. Tuesday I tried on a pair of pants I’ve not been able to wear for several years and they fit comfortably; yesterday was the true acid test of my black Levi’s–which I haven’t gotten on in almost four years.

Not only did they fit, they fit fairly comfortably…and as the day progressed so began the ever-green struggle to keep pulling them up constantly as they slid down. I don’t know what that means–other than the reality that jeans do stretch when you wear them–but I’d like to think my body shape has changed. That fifteen or so pounds I lost has made a difference.

Huzzah! Now, of course, I should use that as motivation to improve my bad eating habits and start going to the gym with some degree of frequency…and also need to keep reminding myself that no matter how sore I may get, or how tired, or how little I want to lift the weights–I always feel better afterwards.

I worked a little on the WIP yesterday–not as much as I would have like or preferred, but so it goes, you know? I am still reconstructing that first chapter, which, now that I’ve started pulling it apart and trying to put it back together to try to make it more compulsively readable, isn’t quite as good as I may have thought it was when I originally conceptualized, and wrote, it. A lot of that probably has to do with originally conceiving the book as first person/past tense; and now I am shifting it to first person-present tense, so the reflective tone of the opening paragraphs no longer works.

The opening sentence, which I’d loved, has to go: My mother ruined my life the summer before my senior year of high school.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good opening sentence, but it doesn’t really work anymore. Choosing to write in the present tense–which most y/a fiction I’ve read recently seems to be in–changes that dynamic; plus I always seem, at least in the early draft stages, to have a tendency to create a reflective, looking-back framing device for the story, like my character is remembering how it all happened from the vantage point of the adult he now is–and that’s just reflexive and lazy writing on my part. (It’s not a bad device, I’m not saying that by any means; but I use it too frequently, or try to, at any rate. I blame reading Herman Raucher’s Summer of ’42, which used this device beautifully; as did Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides. Perhaps someday I will use it when it is appropriate and will work. I need to reread the Raucher; I bet it doesn’t hold up–primarily since it’s theme is about a teenaged boy who has sex with a woman in her twenties and he basically stalks her; hmmm, there could be a really interesting essay in there…)

I hope to get that first chapter revised, restructured, and rewritten this evening, since it’s one of my two short days this week; and tomorrow I can move on to the next chapters. I  started reading The Woman Who Fed The Dogs, part of my TWFest homework, and I also need to get that finished so I can read the last bit of my homework, Samantha Downing’s My Lovely Wife. 

Always, always, always so much to do!

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me!

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Silly Love Songs

Weekends are never really long enough, are they?

Here it is Monday morning and my first full normal week, and maybe–I think it’s possible I may have finally adjusted back. Of course, next weekend (not this coming one) is the Weekend o’ Festivals; which will of course throw me off-course yet again now that I am getting back to normal.

Hurray!

Heavy heaving sigh.

I’m not tired this morning; I went to bed early last night as I was sleepy (before ten!) and slept deeply and well and restfully; I woke up slightly before my alarm but I was so relaxed and comfortable I kept hitting snooze–there are many mornings when I don’t want to leave the warm nesting cocoon of blankets in my oh-so-comfortable bed, and today was one of those mornings.

But I did get up, I did drink a lot of coffee, and I’ll be departing for work relatively soon. In the dark. Where no one can you hear you if you call for help.

Sorry, had a Shirley Jackson moment.

But the big news of the weekend is I was able to finish reading what is surely going to be one of the top crime novels of the year, Alafair Burke’s The Better Sister.

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I betrayed my sister while standing on the main stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a beaded Versace gown (borrowed) and five-inch stiletto heels (never worn again).

At the time, I never could have scored an invitation–or been able to afford a ticket–to the Met Gala in my own right. I was the guest of my boss, Catherine Lancaster, the editor in chief of City Woman magazine. She wasn’t even my boss. She was my boss’s boss’s boss. And somehow she had personally invited me

Well, not personally. She had her assistant swing by my cubicle to deliver the message, which turned out to be a good thing, because my immediate RSVP was laughter. Not even a normal-person laugh. More like a snort. Even back then, the so-called Party of the Year was paparazzi porn, a celebrity-soaked, fashion-focused spectacle. The idea of me–the bookish new member of the writing staff–hobnobbing with rock stars, Oscar winners, and supermodels was ridiculous. So I snort-laughed.

So, Alafair Burke.

Alafair has been in my TBR pile forever; I’ve been wanting to read her Ellie Hatcher series and earlier works for quite some time. I don’t recall precisely why I decided to start working my way through her canon with The Ex, but I was SO GLAD I DID. The Ex was so amazing, made a lot of Best of the Year lists, and also was an Edgar finalist for Best Novel.

Last year came The Wife, which was also brilliant.

So, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get to her new one (dropping officially April 16), The Better Sister, and once I started reading it last week I really didn’t want to stop reading it. It’s part of my homework for the Weekend o’ Festivals; I am moderating a panel that weekend on which one of the speakers will be she.

It’s fantastic, y’all. Seriously.

The set-up for the novel is basically this: two sisters, several years apart in age. The older sister, Nicky, is a bit of a fuck-up; the younger sister, Chloe, is a Type-A who makes other Type-A’s look like slackers. She was worked her way up from being a staff writer at City Woman magazine to editor of another female-centric, but not as big, magazine. Chloe recently has done a series of articles called #themtoo about women who have been victimized but aren’t as high-profile as some of the cases we were seeing with #metoo. This has earned Chloe the scorn of Internet trolls. Her husband (Adam) is a lawyer at a major firm, but he used to be a prosecutor. He was kind of pressured by Chloe to move into the higher-paying world of private law; she also makes more money than he does. They have a teenaged son, Ethan.

The catch? Ethan is Nicky’s son; Nicky was Adam’s first wife.

As I said earlier, Nicky was a fuck-up and Chloe is the Type-A. Of course Chloe steps in when they divorce and Adam gets sole custody of Ethan. And while this might seem lifted from the script pages of Guiding Light (Reva married every male Lewis at some point), Burke not only makes this far-fetched notion work, but it totally makes sense.

But we’re seriously starting with a fucked-up family dynamic…so when Chloe comes home from a party to their home in the Hamptons to find Adam’s dead body, stabbed to death and the house trashed…secrets and lies start coming out, and I swear to God, this plot was like riding a rollercoaster–ups and downs and swings and switches and twists until by the time I reached the end I was completely riveted and not even remotely certain which way was up and which was down…and I had to know the answers.

This book is amazing, absolutely amazing. Every character rings true, the dialogue is stunning, and the plot is so intricately plotted that one almost needs a whiteboard to keep track of everything.

Alafair Burke is a national treasure, and this book is a GIFT to us all. Buy it. Read it. Tell your friends.