Category: books i’ve read

It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me

Hello, Tuesday! We survived Monday, didn’t we? And that counts as an accomplishment. Don’t be a hater, dear. Considering how little sleep I’d had, making it through the first day of the week in one piece was in question. I slept better last night, so this morning I’m not quite as tired as I was yesterday, so there’s hope for this, my second long day of the week.

I made some progress yesterday with Scotty; I’m not sure why I am always so resistant to working on this book–oh, wait, yes I am: I am such a harsh critic of my own work that I think it’s not very good and the revising is going to take a lot of hard work to make it readable. Well, in reading the last five chapters last night and making notes on what needs to be fixed, I realized it’s not that bad. Yes, there’s some things that need to be added and some things that need to be removed, and there are sentences and paragraphs that are a little rough, but over all, it’s not as bad as I was thinking; it never is, and I never learn. So, I am very hopeful about getting it done now, which is also always a relief.

I also finished my reread of The Shining, and have some thoughts on it percolating in my head. I am looking forward to my reread of Pet Sematary, which will lead into my Diversity Project as well as a revival of the Short Story Project. Overall, The Shining is an enjoyable and terrifying read–the last one hundred pages are particularly spectacular; a veritable master class in how to build suspense, tension, and fear in the reader–but I have some problems with the book overall. Structurally, it’s very sound, and perhaps the most impressive thing about it is how internal the book is; how incredibly claustrophobic within the context of an enormous space King made it. I also have identified why I didn’t like it as much during that first read all those years ago; I do not, will not, and probably never will enjoy reading about small children in jeopardy. Given my general apathy towards children, this is a surprise; but it truly was a terrific book. Particularly insidious is the way King makes it seem perfectly understandable and normal as to why a wife would stay with an abuser, which actually makes the book very far ahead of its time. It’s hard to imagine but in the 1970’s, spousal/child abuse in families was just beginning to be seen as problematic; King wrote about this dysfunction long before the societal shift truly began, and made this complex psychological issue abundantly understandable–imagine how few options an abused wife had then as opposed to now (when there still aren’t many options and resources available). Both Jack and Wendy were damaged in their own ways by their parents–King also understood the cycle of abuse and how it works long before anyone else was talking about it in the public sphere. The Shining not only works as a novel of supernatural terror, but as one of domestic terror as well; the Overlook Hotel may be a bad place, but it only sped up the disintegration of the Torrance marriage–which was already on the ropes.

My kitchen is a disaster area at the moment; I was too tired yesterday to do anything about it, and I suppose I should take care of it this morning before I head into the office so I can come home to a clean home. Today I hope to get another five chapters of the Scotty read and notes taken and outlined; this weekend we are planning to go see The Favourite on Saturday before settling in for the Saints game on Sunday (GeAUX SAINTS!!!). I am curious to see the film; as I have said, I am not terribly knowledgeable about Queen Anne beyond the basics, but I am a huge fan of Olivia Colman, and I do like Emma Stone.

So, on that note ’tis back to the spice mines. Have a terrific Tuesday, Constant Reader, because I certainly plan to!

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Funkytown

Monday morning and it’s another work week staring us all in the face.

I didn’t get any writing or editing done yesterday; but that’s okay, really. Maybe not in the over-all scheme of things, but I do need to take some down time periodically, to rest and recharge the batteries. I cleaned and organized and cooked and read The Shining, mostly, which I am enjoying a lot more than I did when I read it when I was seventeen (?). I also think I know why I disliked it–well, that’s a bit strong; let’s just say I now understand why it wasn’t one of my favorites of his earlier work, and why I stayed away from rereading it for so long: I hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea of caring so much about characters who die in the end. King had already done this to me with Carrie and ‘salem’s Lot, but because The Shining had so few characters the stakes for me as a reader were higher. There’s no question the book had to take the path it took, as well as why it had to end the way it did. I’ve just finished the section that ends with the snow starting…the three standing on the veranda of the grand old hotel, watching their true isolation begin. It’s a terrifically written scene.

I also didn’t sleep well last night–hardly at all. I don’t feel tired this morning, or wrung out the way I usually do when I didn’t sleep, although I imagine I’ll hit that wall soon enough, and will be praying for death by the end of my long day today. This week returns my work schedule back to normal, which is sort of lovely and nice; trying to get used to my new work schedule while adapting my writing schedule around it got rather derailed due to the holidays….which kind of sucks because now it’ll be like starting over again, which isn’t precisely optimal. We’ll see how today turns out, won’t we?

One of the things I realized I need to do is gather all my notes on this Scotty, to make sure I am getting everything included and wrapping up all loose ends by the end of the book. As I edit, I am also outlining, trying to make sure I’ve eliminated all inconsistencies. There’s probably going to be some rewriting that’s going to need to be done–last night as I watched the Golden Globes, it occurred to me that there’s one scene in particular that either needs to be completely rewritten, eliminated, or has to be set up in a completely different way. I am going to have to put the WIP aside until I get this revision finished; it’s simply far too easy to get caught up in it rather than doing what I need to be doing.

Which is counter-productive, and more than a little annoying.

Heavy heaving sigh.

We watched the Golden Globes last  night rather than finishing Homecoming, which we will probably either finish tonight, or stretch over tonight and tomorrow. As the new year progresses, shows we regularly watch will be returning, which solves the problem of what do we watch tonight, at least for a little while. Schitt’s Creek will be returning for another season, and so is Futureman on Hulu, and How to Get Away with Murder should be coming back relatively soon; it’s gone way over the top and is completely ridiculous, but it’s still so much fun to watch.

So, onward and upward with this week. I am going to finish rereading The Shining if it kills me (I don’t think it will) and I need to start gathering all my notes on the Scotty to ensure it’s the best it can be so I can get back to work on the WIP, and make it the best it can be.

Did I mention it’s king cake season officially? I believe I shall have a piece with my coffee this morning.

And now,  back to the spice mines.

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Ride Like the Wind

Yesterday I felt fantastic. Yes, I overslept, not getting out of bed until a disgraceful almost ten am, had a couple of cups of coffee while checking social media and writing yesterday’s blog entry, and then buckled down to clean, organize and write. I got about 2400 words down on Chapter Ten of the WIP–which I originally thought was Chapter Nine but I had already written that chapter so this was ten, which means the first draft is over halfway done. How marvelous is that?

Pretty mother-fucking marvelous, if I do say so myself.

I slept well again last night, but set the alarm so I wouldn’t stay in bed as late. As it is, I set it for eight and hit snooze repeatedly, not to sleep more, but rather because I felt so relaxed and comfortable in the bed I didn’t want to get up. But I still have some laundry to do, a grocery store run to make (KING CAKE!), and I want to spend the day cleaning and editing a hard copy of the Scotty book. (Yes, I do my original edits on a paper copy. SUE ME.) I also want to finish rereading The Shining so I can move on to Pet Sematary. I am not reading as quickly as I used to, which is aggravating. Once I finish these two rereads, I am going to dive into reading for the Diversity Project, and I also want to get back into the Short Story Project. I also need to clean the apartment more thoroughly–I spent most of the day yesterday organizing and filing, as well as purging books. But I need to get the floors done today, and finish the laundry. This is my first full week of work since before Christmas, and I am hoping if I can focus on getting to bed at a decent hour on the nights before I have to get up early, I can get things done and not wear myself out too terribly along the way. I am not going to try the gym this week, as I need to get a handle on my work schedule and see how I can make that work, with plans to make it back to the gym this coming Friday or Saturday. There’s also no Saints game today, which makes today easier. One of the things that was amazing to me yesterday was how much time I had…it’s amazing how that works. No LSU or college football, and the day is suddenly wild and free. Go figure.

And yesterday was Twelfth Night, so it’s now officially Carnival. Hurray! The city will soon be festooned in purple, gold and green; the bleachers will be going up on Lee Circle and St. Charles Avenue on the downtown side of the circle; King cakes will have their own enormous display table at the grocery store; and that sense of anticipation of the coming madness can be felt in the air. It’s going to be weird not going to work on Parade Days, but it will also make life a little bit more interesting. I’m obviously hoping to get a lot done on those days, but we shall see how that all works out, shan’t we?

I also need to do some cooking today; trying to get food for the week ready and for our lunches. Which means making a mess in the kitchen and something else to do for the day; cleaning the mess. But I don’t like going into the week with a messy apartment; it gets messy enough during the work week when I don’t have the time or energy to keep up with it (or the filing, for that matter). So, there’s some touching up I need to do on my office space, and I can vacuum and so forth while I am editing.

Last night we started watching Homecoming on Prime. What an amazing cast–Julia Roberts, Bobby Canavale, Sissy Spacek, and Dermot Mulroney, just for starters. The plot is also interesting–we’re about half-way through. and will probably finish this evening. We may go see The Favourite  next weekend, which is kind of exciting. I can’t remember the last time we saw a non-popcorn movie in the theater. I’m sure the film is rife with historical inaccuracies–what historical films aren’t–but my knowledge of Queen Anne is fairly limited; I’ve not even read the Jean Plaidy historical fiction about her, so perhaps that won’t be too much of issue to keep me from enjoying it (I’ll watch the new Mary Queen of Scots movie when I can stream it for free; every film biography of Mary Stuart is rife with license and inaccuracy; but it’s always a great opportunity for two great actresses to chew the scenery. The 1971 version with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson is probably, in my opinion, the best; I always picture Glenda Jackson whenever I think of Queen Elizabeth). I did know that Queen Anne had seventeen children that all died; she didn’t particularly want to be queen, and she had female ‘favorites’–it wasn’t common, but several English kings and queens had same-sex favorites, including Edward II, James I, and Queen Anne. Histories and biographies and encyclopedia entries would mention this, but gloss it over….it wasn’t until my late teens that I began putting together the coding and realized these monarchs were queer.

Yup, queers have been systematically erased from history, glossed over and forgotten, for centuries. Yay.

Part of the research/reading I am doing into New Orleans history is precisely to try to uncover the city’s queer past; trying to find the clues and coded language in books as we are glossed over and hidden from incurious minds. Every once in a while I’d find a glimmer of a hint in Gary Krist’s Empire of Sin, for example, that there were gay male prostitutes working in Storyville, and I kind of want to write about that. As I’ve said a million times before, New Orleans history is rife with terrific stories that would make for great fictions. One of the reasons I am so bitter about the Great Data Disaster of 2018 is not only because of the time spent reconstructing things but because it so completely broke my momentum and totally derailed me. I’m not sure how to get back on that streetcar (see what I did there?) but I’m going to have to relatively soon. But i’ve also been so focused on the Scotty and the new WIP that I’ve gotten away from it. I think diving back into The French Quarter by Herbert Asbury will help.

I also bought some cheap ebooks on sale yesterday, including Sophie’s Choice by Williamt Styron and Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. When I was checking the Kindle app on my iPad to make sure they downloaded properly, much to my horror I discovered that I have almost 400 books in that app–which doesn’t include the ones I have in iBooks or the Barnes & Noble app. YIKES. Clearly, I don’t need to take any books with me when I travel, because there are plenty in my iPad. I also have a ridiculous amount of anthologies and single author short story collections loaded in there…so yes, the Short Story Project will be continuing for quite some time, I suspect. There are also some terrific books in there I’d like to read, or reread, as the case may be…I have almost all of Mary Stewart’s novels on Kindle, for example, and a lot of Phyllis Whitney’s. I also have a Charlotte Armstrong I’ve not read, The Seventeen Widows of San Souci, and on and on and on….I really am a book hoarder, aren’t I?

Ah, well, life does go on.

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

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The Rose

Good morning, first Saturday of the new year, how you doing?

It was cold yesterday in New Orleans; in the forties when I woke up, and I felt ill pretty much most of the morning. I ate breakfast and felt somewhat better, but the rest of the day was pretty much the same–one minute I’d feel fine, then the next I’d feel bad again. This was unfortunate because our office holiday party (delayed) was also last evening; I wasn’t able to have anything to drink because I didn’t trust my stomach and I wound up leaving early to come home. I was also very tired all day; my sleep was restless and wretched, which undoubtedly had a large part in the not feeling well. Last night I managed to sleep for almost eleven hours…so yes, I must have been terribly tired, and this morning, while it is cold again in the Lost Apartment, I feel rested and much better than I did yesterday.

My blood sugar–which I was concerned about yesterday as well–seems to be okay this morning as well. I guess the blood sugar thing–which was a concern yesterday–wasn’t really anything to be concerned about. It’s so lovely getting old; such a myriad of things to run through your head when you don’t feel well, you know?

As such, when I got home from the holiday party I gratefully sank down into my easy chair and finished watching Great Greek Myths on Prime; the Oedipus myth in particular is gruesome and horrible and grim. Poor dude; and none of it was his fault. The episode filled in the back story of his parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta, and all the horror that happens to Oedipus is because of something his father did before he was even born. Truly horrible, right? Those Greek gods…now I want to find my copy of Edith Hamilton and reread it; it’s been years. (Shameless Greek mythology plug: read Madeline Miller’s Circe! It was one of the best–if not the best–book I read last year. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)

Today I am mostly going to hang around the house and clean/write/edit. I’m going to go to get groceries tomorrow; Paul has errands and appointments today, so I am going to take advantage of the quiet and still around the house to get things done as well as be productive with my own stuff. I also want to finish my reread of The Shining, which I am enjoying and appreciating more than I did before. I am also figuring out why I didn’t care for it as much as I did before–which I always assumed was based on the holes in the plot (why would anyone build a luxury hotel in the Rocky Mountains that can’t be used for winter sports and is closed for the winter season? AND WHAT PARENTS WOULD TAKE THEIR SMALL CHILD SOMEWHERE SO REMOTE AND CUT OFF FROM MEDICAL HELP?) but I am also starting to understand that it triggered some things in my subconscious that made me predisposed to not enjoy it; I am not a big fan of small children in peril, particularly if the peril is from one of his/her parents. But it’s terrifically written and structured; the shifting POV from all three members of the Torrance family is particularly ingenious as it helps create a strong sense of claustrophobia within the enormous hotel. The book also serves as a marvelous kind of time capsule; The Shining probably couldn’t be published today because readers would have little-to-no sympathy for Wendy. But in the 1970’s, while certainly becoming more common-place, divorce was still enough of a taboo that women wanted to avoid it and make their marriages work no matter what the cost–even after her husband breaks her son’s arm. (The story would end there today; corporal punishment and spankings and so forth were still considered fairly normal in the 1970’s….but today Jack would have been talking to the police after Danny’s arm was set.)

But one thing that is particularly stellar about the book is that sense of impending doom. The reader knows, obviously, that the Overlook is a bad place and going there for the winter is an enormous mistake for the Torrances; but King also does a really good job of showing their desperation and that this winter job is the last chance for them to make it as a family. But you can’t help but hope they’ll somehow survive the winter, and one thing I think the film missed out on completely was how the book showed Jack. Yes, he is a terribly flawed human being with a horrible temper and an alcoholic, and a lesser writer would have simply allowed Jack to become the villain of the story, which he kind of is…but King creates him as a complex character and shows all sides of him; and he clearly loves his wife and son even if he is a fuck-up. The real villain in King’s novel is the hotel itself, a bad place, and how it exploits Jack’s weaknesses. The way King shows his psychological collapse, and how the hotel’s evil influence slowly starts to take control of him, is masterful…particularly given how early in his career he wrote this book.

And so, once I post this, I am going to get cleaned up and start laundering the bed linens. I want to also clean out some of the books–another purge–and perhaps some light cleaning while I read and edit and get the things done today that I need to get done today. I feel very rested (thank you, long night’s sleep) and use this day to get organized once and for all. I started getting things organized that I am working on yesterday morning, despite feeling like shit, and I feel much better about things, quite frankly. But organized is always better than disorganized, and it’s unfortunate and sad how often I allow laziness to let me slip into disorganization and being scattered.

It’s just wrong.

And something I should work on.

But then again, what isn’t?

And now into the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Saturday, all, and Happy Epiphany Eve!

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O Holy Night

The last day of 2018. I can hear the garbage trucks outside getting the trash, which means I’ve actually woken up at a relatively decent hour. Today is our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace with Jean and Gillian, which means very inexpensive martinis and all that entails. I also registered for Dallas Bouchercon yesterday and booked my hotel room. So much getting things done! I also worked on my technology issues yesterday–yes, they continue, Mojave is the stupidest thing Apple has ever done as an operating system–and have also been trying to update my phone, which doesn’t seem to be working. I really don’t want to have to get a new phone, but it seems as though this is what Apple is pushing me to do, which is infuriating.

But the desktop seems to be working the way it’s supposed to. Hmmm.

I read a lot of books last year, but I also judged for an award so I really can’t talk much  about any books that were actually released in 2018; which is unfortunate. I really enjoyed The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young (for a book not published in 2018). I also read a lot of short stories. The Short Story Project was originally inspired, and intended, for me to read a lot of short stories and work as kind of a master class for me as far as writing short stories are concerned. As a project, I originally began it in 2017, but didn’t get very far with it. As a result, I decided to give it another try in 2018 and was much more successful with the project. Not only was I reading short stories, I wrote a lot of them. Some of those stories were actually sold; “This Town” to Murder-a-Go-Go’s, “The Silky Veils of Ardor” to The Beating of Black Wings, “Neighborhood Alert” to Mystery Tribune, “Cold Beer No Flies” to Florida Happens, and “A Whisper from the Graveyard” to another anthology whose name is escaping me at the moment. I also pulled together a collection of previously published and new stories, which will be released in April of 2019 but will be available for Saints and Sinners/Tennessee Williams Festival, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I also wrote another Scotty (I really need to finish revising it), which will also be out in the new year I think but I don’t have a release date yet. That was pretty productive, and I also managed eight chapters of a young adult novel, the current WIP.

Not bad, coming from someone who wrote practically nothing in 2017. So, on that score, I am taking 2018 as a writing win.

I also edited the Bouchercon anthology for the second time, Florida Happens, and read a shit ton of short stories for that as well. I was very pleased with how that book turned out, in all honesty, and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

I also published my first ever Kindle Single, “Quiet Desperation,” and also finally got the ebook for Bourbon Street Blues up for Kindle. At some point I do hope to have a print edition for sale as well, but I am happy to have the ebook available. I also have to finish proofing Jackson Square Jazz so I can get that ebook up as well.

So, writing and publishing wise, 2018 was a good comeback of sorts; I managed to get back into the swing of writing again, and started producing publishable work, which was absolutely lovely. I started to say I got my confidence back, but that wouldn’t be true; I’ve never had much self-confidence when it comes to  my writing. I also started writing in journals again in 2017, which was enormously helpful in 2018. (I actually went through my most recent one last night–the one I am currently using–and found a lot of stuff that I thought I’d lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018; things I shall simply need to retype and of course will back-up immediately.

Yesterday, while electronic equipment repaired itself and made itself usable again–we’ll see how usable it is as the days go by–I watched two movies–The Omega Man and Cabaret on Prime, as well as the documentary Gods of Football (I highly recommend this one for eye candy potential; it’s about the shooting of a calendar in Australia to raise money for breast cancer charities, starring professional rugby players in the nude, and yes, the eye candy is delectable). I watched a lot of good movies and television shows over the course of the year–The Haunting of Hill House and Schitt’s Creek probably the best television shows–so it was a very good year for that. (I have some thoughts on both The Omega Man and Cabaret, but will save those for another post at another time.)

I also got my first New Orleans Public Library card this past year, and began reading New Orleans histories, which were endlessly fascinating, which led me into another project, Monsters of New Orleans, which is another short story collection about what the title says, crime stories based on real cases in New Orleans but fictionalized. And there are an incredible amount of them. I read the introduction to Robert Tallant’s Ready to Hang: Seven Famous Murder Cases in New Orleans, and while I am aware that Tallant’s scholarship is questionable (I figured that out reading Voodoo in New Orleans), his books are always gossipy, which makes them perfect for New Orleans reading. What is real, what is true, and what is not is always something one has to wonder when reading anything about New Orleans history; some of it is legend, which is to be expected, and unprovable; some of it is very real and can be verified. Some of the stories in this collection, which I am going to work on, off and on, around other projects, will inevitably be complete fictions; but others will be based on true stories and/or legends of the city, like the Sultan’s Palace and Madame LaLaurie and Marie Laveau. It’s an exciting project, and the more I read of New Orleans history the more inspiration I get, not only for this project but for other Scotty books as well…which is a good thing, I was leaning towards ending the series with Royal Street Reveillon, but now that I’m finding stories that will work and keep the series fresh…there just may be a few more Scotty novels left in me yet.

My goal of losing weight and getting into better physical condition lasted for only a few months, and didn’t survive Carnival season–it was too hard to get to the gym during the parades, and between all the walking, passing out condoms, and standing at the corner, I was simply too exhausted to make it to the gym, and thus never made it back to the gym. I began 2018 weighing 228 pounds, the heaviest I’ve ever been, and have managed, through diet and portion control, to slim down to a consistent plateau of 213. This is actually pretty decent progress; not what I would have wanted to report at the end of 2018, but I am going to take it and put it into the win column, and we’ll see how 2019 turns out.

The day job also had some enormous changes; we moved out of the Frenchmen Street office, after being there since 2000 (I started working there in 2005) and into a new building on Elysian Fields. This also caused some upheaval and change in my life–I’m not fond of change–and it wasn’t perhaps the smoothest transition. But I’m getting used to it, and making the necessary adjustments in my life.

Now we are on the cusp to a new year. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about new goals for the new year. It is, of course, silly; it’s just another day and in the overall scheme of things, a new year really doesn’t mean anything is actually new; but we use this as a measure of marking time, and new beginnings. I’ve always thought that was rather silly; any day is a new day and a new beginning; why be controlled by the tyranny of the calendar and the societally created fiction of the new year?

But it is also convenient. If you set new goals every new year, you then have a way of measuring success and failure as it pertains to those goals. I am not as black-and-white as I used to be with goals–which is why I use goals instead of resolutions, as there is also a societal expectation that resolutions are made in order to not succeed–and a goal is merely that, a goal, and not something that is fixed in stone. The endgame we all are playing with these goals and resolutions is to effect change in our lives and make them, in theory at least, better. So, any progress on a goal is a way of making your life better.

I didn’t get an agent this year; that was on my list of goals yet again. I am not certain what my own endgame with the agent hunt is; I need to come up with a book idea that is commercially viable for an agent to want to represent, and that isn’t easy. Most of my book-writing decisions were made, not with an eye toward the commercial, but with an eye toward I want to see if I can write this story. Was that the smartest path to take as a writer? Perhaps not. I don’t know what’s commercial. The manuscript I was using to try to get an agent never worked as a cohesive story for me, and in this past year I finally realized why; I was trying to make a story into something it wasn’t. If I ever write what I was calling the WIP but is in reality ‘the Kansas book’, I have to write it as I originally intended it, not as what I am trying to make it into. And that’s something that is going to have to go onto the goal list for 2019.

On that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a happy New Year, everyone.

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The Coventry Carol

New Year’s Eve Eve, and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment this morning. Scooter has been fed and given treats, so  he’s gone back to bed; Paul is curled up with him upstairs. I overslept again this morning, not as late as yesterday but still–I woke up just before ten. Obviously, I need the rest, but at the same time it becomes a little frustrating because I generally do my best work in the mornings.

I did some work yesterday but not much. I got sucked into the college football vortex after going to the grocery store and picking up the mail, and wound up mostly just reading The Shining most of the time. I finished reading the first part, which is all set-up; we meet the Torrances (Jack, Wendy, Danny) who are point-of-view characters and learn about their background–Jack’s drinking and violent temper; how he broke Danny’s arm in a rage and almost destroyed the marriage; Wendy, who still loves him but isn’t sure she should be staying with him, and young Danny, with his unusual talent and desperate love for both his parents and wanting them to stay married. This is also the tale of how they came to stay at the Overlook Hotel over the long, remote, brutal winter; one of the things that has always been a flaw to me with this book is the idea of a luxury hotel in the Rocky Mountains that is so high up in the mountains that it has to close for winter sports season. But King presents it as a fact; it is a necessary one for the story to work–the Torrances have to be completely cut off from civilization, and that again makes The Shining a novel of its time; even today there would be wi-fi service all winter up there; Jack would be able, undoubtedly, to look up all kinds of information about the hotel on-line (probably would have before taking the job) rather than having to dig through the stuff in the basement. But I am enjoying this reread, and I am also enjoying recognizing why some of the issues and problems I had with this book come from a personal place; I don’t like, for example, stories where children are in danger–whether from supernatural forces or from their parents or from anyone or anything, really. And that is also an interesting thing to unpack: why do these stories bother me so much, get under my skin, make me recoil from them?

I am really looking forward to my reread of Pet Sematary.

So this morning I need to finish cleaning and organizing. I may write today after the Saints game–none of the main players will be in the game, as they’ve already clinched the Number One seed and home-field advantage during the play-offs, so why risk your stars getting injured in a game that doesn’t matter (and games that don’t matter is another thing I dislike about the NFL; all games should matter) so I don’t know how intense the game will be or how wound-up in it I will get. But probably not very; since the game doesn’t matter.

We had a deep-dish Chicago style pizza from That’s Amore last night and it was everything. Everything. It is seriously my favorite pizza in New Orleans, but it’s so thick and heavy you can’t have it regularly; it’s perfect as an occasional treat. We hadn’t had one in months, so having one for dinner (and the second half of it today for today’s dinner) is probably the smart way to go. We are having our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace tomorrow–which will be wonderful–and I am going to simply make baked potatoes for our evening meal tomorrow night; Tuesday I’m going to make Shrimp Creole in the slow-cooker for dinner, and we’ll probably cook out for lunch for the LSU game (GEAUX TIGERS!).

Tomorrow morning’s blog will be my year recap; it’ll be curious to go back to my New Year’s Day blog from last year and see what the 2018 goals were, and if I made any progress on any of them (unlikely). It was an interesting year, to say the least, and one that I’m not in the least bit sorry to see ending. One of my year-end goals is to clean out my various email inboxes, as well, and to henceforth try to stay on top of these things.

We shall see how that plays out, won’t we?

I took some awesome pictures with my phone last night on the walk to pick up the pizza at That’s Amore. I’ll post them on Facebook at some time today.

And now, I am going to dive headlong back into the spice mines. I want to revise another chapter of the WIP and I am going to reread those last five chapters of the Scotty during the Saints game.

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Silent Night

Friday and we are somehow getting through this infernal time between Christmas and New Year’s. Every year I think to myself self, next year you need to take this time off, and every year I forget. Like an idiot.

I’m putting this on my 2019 calendar right the fuck now.

Seriously.

But we’ve made it to Friday, haven’t we, Constant Reader? I’ve managed to get back to work writing–although I should be working on polishing the Scotty, I’ve been bogged down with Bury Me in Satin so keep trying to work my way through it. But I need to get back to the Scotty and cleaning it up; the problem being I am so heartily sick of the opening chapters I don’t even want to look at them anymore. I am going to try to revise and polish the last six chapters, and then work my way back through the entire manuscript, and I still have to write the epilogue. I need to snap out of this malaise/funk I’ve been in ever since the Great Data Disaster, and seriously climb back into the writing and editing, else it will never be done. NEVER. I also need to start reading again. I’d like to finish my reread of The Shining, so I can move on to my reread of Pet Sematary, and then I am going to work my way through the TBR pile….as I’ve said before, I’m going to try to read more minority and diverse writers this next year. I’ve been buying their books all this time, of course, but the books have been languishing in my TBR pile–along with a lot of other books and authors–and I also need to read outside of the crime genre for a while, as well.

I’ve always believed reading is a crucial part of writing; you can’t be a good writer if you don’t love to read, and reading is also an excellent education in writing. The best writers should inspire you to want to equal or better them, or at least to do better with your own writing. I think not publishing anything for quite some time has also done a number on my confidence as a writer; I think we all tend to be our own harshest critics. I need to stop listening to those horrible voices in my head with their nasty whispers that undermine my confidence and make me worry about my writing; that give me Imposter Syndrome and encourage me to not bother writing anything.

Which is also self-defeating, and self-annihilation, and self-destructive.

So I am going to try to use this long weekend to reboot my life and reboot my brain and get back on track with everything. I need to read some more New Orleans history, and I need to figure out what short stories need to be finished or reworked; I realized the other day what is wrong with my story “The Problem with Autofill” and I don’t know if I can rework it properly; I don’t think the premise actually works. I probably need to free-associate the story and the root problem at its core, and figure out how to fix it. The title is probably going to have to go–perhaps I can use it for another story with a different plot–but I think there’s something there with the story and I can make something work with it.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

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Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

So it’s Christmas Eve. May you all who celebrate have a lovely day, and those of you who don’t, may you also have a lovely day! I’m not really sure what’s on the agenda for today around the Lost Apartment, to be honest. I know I want to do some writing and reading and possibly some editing–I don’t think the old but it’s a holiday is going to kick in for me today after all. I had a terrific day yesterday; I cleaned and organized, the Saints won (although why they always want me to have a heart attack before the conclusion of every game is beyond me) and now have clinched the Number One seed and home games throughout the play-offs thru the Super Bowl, and I actually wrote yesterday. I wrote about another thousand words of Bury Me in Satin, finishing that bear of a Chapter Eight finally, and now I think I can move forward. I think, though, I need to go back and do some revising on the earlier chapters while writing Chapter Nine.

I also discovered something incredibly convenient–yes, I know, I am nothing if not mostly oblivious most of the time and it’s insane when something so obvious smacks in the side of the head. My computer is still acting wonky–mostly when I have Word open–and so yesterday, incredibly irritated with the Apple Spinning Wheel of Death and the concurrent Microsoft Word Not Responding message, I closed my Internet browser and Word continued to operate–still not as fast as I would prefer, but faster, at any rate–and not having the distraction of getting push alerts from Twitter and Facebook and every time I got a new email enabled me to tear right through that chapter yesterday. I had my phone with me at my desk, and so whenever I was bored or needed to look something up on-line I was able to use that. I left the browser closed, in fact, for the rest of the day, just checking in on things periodically with the phone or my iPad. This was smart, and I am probably going to do the same thing today.

I started rereading The Shining yesterday, and while I am only a few chapters in, I have to say those initial chapters are remarkable, as King sets up the Torrance family–Jack, Wendy, Danny–as initial point-of-view characters, and we get to know the three of them very well. I remember when The Shining first came out in paperback–remember, this when I was living in Kansas and there was no place to buy hardcover books because the only local bookstore (the News Depot on Commercial Street in Emporia) only carried paperbacks, so I always had to wait for the paperback editions of everything–I started reading it after I bought it and didn’t care for Jack Torrance at all, so I stopped reading before I got to the chapters from Wendy and Danny’s points of view, and put it aside. It was about a year or so before I picked it back up again–it was the shiny all silver cover, with the faceless head of the boy blending into the silver–and then read it all the way through. I didn’t reread it as much as other King novels of the period, and it’s never really been a favorite of mine, preferring ‘salem’s Lot, The Dead Zone, The Stand, and Christine by far and away; but it’s considered by many to be one of his best books and certainly one of the most terrifying books of the late twentieth century. This was also the second consecutive novel of King’s to have a writer as the main character; but Jack is a failed writer, and maybe that was one of the reasons the book never quite found a place in my heart the way other Kings of the same period did; perhaps I could relate to Jack’s failure far too much for me? I will continue reporting back as the reread progresses further.

I also managed to get some cleaning done.

Paul went out last evening after the Saints game (GEAUX SAINTS!), and so I stayed home, reading The Shining and watching A Clockwork Orange on Amazon Prime for the first time. I’ve always wanted to see the movie; I have the book somewhere in my TBR pile or on one of the TBR shelves, and when I saw yesterday that it was free for streaming on Amazon I thought what the hell and decided to watch it. It is…interesting, for wont of a better word. Kubrick was a great director; there’s no question about that, but I also felt, from the few films of his that I’ve seen, he was very cold as a director; his movies always come across as kind of emotionless and cold. That style works incredibly well with the subject matter of this film and its theme. It’s also visually stunning, and despite the cold distance afforded by the camera lens, it’s portrait of a future desensitized to all kinds of violence–both sexual and physical–and the equally horrific answer the government comes up with to it, cannot help but keep your attention but also will make one think. I suspect I will be thinking about A Clockwork Orange for some time…and now I really would like to read Anthony Burgess’ novel.

So many books I need to read. Heavy heaving sigh.

But as I said earlier, I think I am going to continue with the Short Story Project going into the new year, and I am going to also have my own Diversity Project, where I am going to try to read everything in my TBR piles that were written by minority writers of some sort. It’s called leading by example, people, and I hope some of you will join me.

And on that note, this work isn’t going to do itself, unfortunately, so yes, even on Christmas Eve, I must spend some time mining spice.

Have a lovely day, everyone!

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Blue Christmas

And a Merry Christmas Eve Eve to you all!

I cannot believe that Christmas Eve is tomorrow. But I have three more days of my holiday weekend, and I am going to try to get some writing done around other things. The apartment is a mess–something I need to focus on today–and I need to do some writing today as well. The Saints game comes on at noon; I think I may actually cook out today–it doesn’t seem that cold outside (granted, I have my fabulous space heater on in the kitchen and it was worth every penny), and even if it is, I won’t be out there in it that much, after all.

It is incredibly tempting, though, to blow it all off and not do a damned thing, as it is every damned day. I know tomorrow and Christmas I will undoubtedly do one of those but it’s a holiday! justifications to not do a fucking thing, kind of like I do on weekends–everyone else gets a weekend! 

This, as you can see, is why nothing ever gets done.

I mean, even now as I glance around the kitchen at the piles of paper than need to be filed and the dishes that need to be washed and the clothes that need to be folded, I just think fuck this I’m going to go read for a while.

I said the other day I needed to diversify my reading in the new year, which means moving all those books I’ve bought by minority writers to the top of the pile. I also think I need to read some non-crime genre novels in the new year; I think reading a lot outside of the genre in which you write helps you as a writer, just as reading the best in your own genre will inspire you. Obviously, reading outside my own experience as a white person should also broaden my mind. And you know, I am really looking forward to this, as well as continuing the Short Story Project going into the new year.

So, I think I am going to spend the rest of 2018 rereading some Stephen King (The Shining and Pet Sematary, to be exact) and then I might give The Other by Thomas Tryon a quick reread as well. And then moving into 2019, I’ll finish the novel I started reading this past week and then move into some minority writers interspersed with some of the non-crime novels I have in the pile.

And we’ll see what happens.

GEAUX SAINTS!

And now, ’tis back to the spice mines with me.

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Sleigh Ride

Today we’re going to see Aquaman. I am very excited for this, if you couldn’t tell by me pretty much mentioning it every day for the last week. I didn’t discover Jason Momoa until Game of Thrones (I know, I know, bad gay), but have been a huge fan ever since. And while my initial reaction to the news of his casting was problematic (but Aquaman is blond!) I got over it pretty quick. I’ve always been a fan of Aquaman–yes, I love Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but have always had a place in my heart for the ‘lesser’ heroes–Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, etc. So I am excited to see Aquaman get his own movie, and I do hope someday they give Green Lantern another shot.

I slept in this morning, later than usual–last night I even fell asleep in my easy chair, showing how tired I was (although that’s happened twice this week), and I feel very rested this morning. I have to run to the post office this morning, and I have some things to get at the grocery store (the Saturday before Christmas! Hurray!) before we head out for the movie. I did work a little on Bury Me in Satin a little bit last night, but I also had dinner with some friends in from out of town, which was lovely, and then we also watched the Schitt’s Creek Christmas special. I do want to talk some more about this show, but I am going to give it, I think, it’s own entry because it deserves it. Seriously, people, if you aren’t watching this show you need to. It’s hilarious, but incredibly warm and sweet at the same time.

It definitely deserves an entry of its own.

My kitchen is a mess; and I have loads of chores to do this morning. I’d like to, obviously, get as much done today as possible, so tomorrow I can focus on the Saints game and editing the Scotty book, maybe log some time in on Bury Me in Satin, do some reading, etc., and then have both Christmas Eve and Christmas to not only do some writing/editing in the morning, but spend the rest of each day relaxing, which will be lovely. I get a three day work week this week and next (huzzah!) and so here’s hoping that some of that free time will be spent productively.

Or not. We’ll see. Oh! I have to stop at the library today, too. They’re holding a book for me. Yay! I love having a library card, and being able to reserve books on-line. I do think one of these days I need to just go spend a day in the library, though; try to remember what it was like when I was a kid and used to spend whole afternoons in the Tomen Branch of the Chicago Public Library on Pulaski Boulevard. And the Latter Library on St. Charles Avenue here in New Orleans is so, so beautiful.

I am also, by the way, in total denial that Carnival is just around the corner.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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