Category: books i’ve read

Cool Magic

Yesterday was a wild one here in New Orleans. We were expecting inclement weather–high winds, possible tornadoes, and heavy rain with a strong chance of flooding. I was already planning on leaving work early–PT was scheduled for 3 pm yesterday–so I was able to leave the office without worry as things started shutting down all over the city. It was raining when I got home and hunkered down inside, and it pretty steadily rained all night. I went to bed after watching three episodes of Fool Me Once on Netflix, which we are really enjoying, while checking the score of the national championship game periodically. I was awakened by loud thunder and pouring rain at some point in the middle of the night, but I was able to easily fall back asleep–it really is so comforting to be buried in blankets and warm and dry while it pours outside, isn’t it? Rain always makes me sleepy. But I wound up sleeping very well and waking up with the alarm this morning (Sparky always climbs up into the bed with me when he thinks it’s time for me to get up and feed him, so I know it’s going to be time to get up soon). We still are having high winds today, but no rain, which is great, and Michigan beat Washington last night for their first national title in 27 years.

Good for you, Michigan.

My PT wound up being rescheduled because of the weather, too, so I have to get up at 5 on Thursday, which isn’t great but I can live with it. I do have a department meeting on Friday morning as well, and I’ll probably go into the office for it. I can do it from home, but I think it would be best for me to head over there and be out of the house in the morning, which will get me going on work-at-home duties and errands and so forth before the three day weekend.

And huzzah for a three day weekend, might I add?

I also started working out the five stories I have on hand that may fit for an anthology call (or two or three) that are upcoming, and one–which is just an idea–actually started coming together in my head yesterday while I watched more episodes of War of the Worlds, which took an interesting and slightly insane turn during the later episodes of the second season while I sat doodling in my journal while relaxing in my chair while rain pattered down outside. It also occurred to me how to fix and finish another one that could easily work as well. I need to put my writer’s cap back on and really start getting things finished and cooking on my computer again, methinks. But I also did some more chores when I got home yesterday, which included dishes and laundry, and this morning I woke up to a relatively clean kitchen (we won’t discuss the floors just yet), which was super great. I also wasn’t sleepy, groggy, or tired, which was also awesome. I may actually make it through the day AND the errands I have to run after work today (mail, groceries). I am definitely going to spend some more time with the new Tara Laskowski tonight when I finally get home from everything, and do some touching up so I stay on top of the chores so I am not coming into the weekend needing to clean the house.

I think it’s about time I started feeling like myself again for the first time in a long time, and it does actually kind of feel good. Last year was a cloud, and I just felt like I was drifting through the year for the most part. 2023 started off terribly, beginning with my injury in January and losing Mom in February; it’s little wonder that I sleep=walked through the year, which I’d been doing pretty consistently for a number of years. The pandemic wore me out, with the changes to the world and the changes to my day job, and things had been kind of my control for quite a few years before that. I kind of feel (probably mistakenly) like I have so control over my life again and am looking at things a lot more clearly than I had in years–which probably has something to do with having the right medications. Up until about 2017 or so, I could deal with the anxiety and concomitant insomnia with just Xanax, but the anxiety was out of control from that point on and was when I should have changed my medications to deal with the real problem rather than the symptoms.

I cannot emphasize enough how important the right medications are for your health and mental well-being.

I really do feel like a new person, or the best Gregalicious I can be, which isn’t quite the same thing. I’ve always tried to be the best version of me that I can–because no one, including me, wants to ever see the worst version of me, take my word for that, okay?–which is all I think anyone can do. I do feel more engaged with my work, and my writing, more so than I have in a while, which kind of felt almost like I was writing on autopilot, which does happen sometimes. It’s also kind of ironic that I did my best work during a time period where I really was hating writing and not giving it my full attention, treating it as an odious chore that had to be done rather than trying to do the best work I could. Maybe not trying did the trick? I don’t know. But what I do know is I need to get back on the horse and start creating again, and perhaps don’t goof off as much going forward.

After all, there’s nothing I can’t do if I want to and set my mind to it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–one never knows with a Gregalicious, does one?

The Message

Monday morning and back to the office blog. I have my final PT for dexterity today, before I take a couple of weeks off before starting the strength PT, which will be the final step of getting recovered from the surgery. It seems like it’s been forever, but the truth is I injured the arm initially almost a year ago–so I have been dealing with this for almost a year, and it will be well over a year by the time I finally get through the recovery. It’s taking me a moment to get used to not wearing a brace, frankly–but god DAMN I am so glad to not have to wear that fucking thing anymore. The weather is supposed to be horrific today–heavy winds and flooding rains–which I am not terribly excited about, in all honesty, since I’ll be out and around in it. But I slept really well last night, and am feeling awake and good this morning so far, so we’ll see how the rest of the day goes, shall we?

I read more of Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat yesterday morning over my coffee, and it is truly addictive and mesmerizing. I am having the best time reading it, and shouldn’t have an issue spending about an hour or so with it again today. I also did some more filing and organizing and cleaning yesterday, as well as made dinner and some other things for the week. There’s another load of dishes that needs doing tonight when I get home from work and PT and everything else, but if I manage to stay caught up on these things, maybe the three day weekend won’t be as disrupted by needing to clean. I’ve narrowed down the stories I have on hand for the possible anthology submissions, so they’ll require reviewing again in addition to revising and editing. I watched some more War of the Worlds, which is interesting, and then I watched a bit of the Golden Globes before I went to bed–you can tell how much I cared about them by the fact that I couldn’t tell you who won any of them, really. I used to care about awards shows, but I don’t anymore. There are rarely any surprises, and there are so many of them now…by the time the Oscars roll around, it’s relatively easy to figure out who’s going to win most everything.

I can’t believe it’s already Carnival, too (but am loving that it’s also king cake season). Parades will be starting in a few weeks, and the Australian Open, and the figure skating championships, and the Festivals are on deck…Lord. I do get tired just thinking about it, in all honesty. But at least the brace is gone. It’s taking some getting used to–not having it on–and periodically I’ll experience some new sensation in the arm, but that’s also the nerves getting used to not having the brace support anymore. Thank God for the new meds, because I’d be a ball of anxiety by now otherwise.

I also saw the previews for a new show I am rather excited about–Mary & George, which is about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and his ambitious mother, who essentially groomed her handsome son to charm and seduce King James I (he of the King James Version of the Bible, no less), who preferred the company of men and had male favorites at his court. I’ve been meaning to track down a copy of Antonia Fraser’s biography of him, just to see how she handles the questionable sexuality of England’s first Stuart king, or if she erases or elides it. There were several queer kings of England–Richard I, Edward II, James I, Queen Anne–and I’ve also seen things questioning the sexuality of William III, too. (James was also the son of Mary Queen of Scots.) I can’t think of as many French kings that were queer; of the top of my head I can only think of Henri III and Louis XIV’s brother Phillippe duc d’Orléans, Monsieur. It’s also early and I’m not caffeinated enough, frankly, to face the day or put any more thought into gay French royalty. Anyway, one of the guys from Red White and Royal Blue (Nicholas Galitzine) is playing George Villiers, the handsomest man of his age, and if you remember your Three Musketeers, the British minister who was in love with Anne of Austria, Queen of France.

George got around, apparently.

The seventeenth is also one of my favorite centuries.

And on that note, I should head into the spice mines. We’re going to have some bad weather today–potential hail and tornadoes–as well as heavy rains. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to PT this afternoon and then home safely. Have a great Monday, CR, and I may see you again later.

Goodbye to You

And just like that, the brace is gone! Hallelujah! Not wearing it is going to take some getting used to, but that is something I can live with. I also had my first piece of king cake yesterday, officially marking the opening of Carnival season–and am going to have another this morning, thank you very much. I can’t believe it’s Carnival again already; last year’s was all tied up with Mom going into hospice and dying; I missed the first weekend driving up to Kentucky, and the second driving to Alabama for the funeral. I used to associate Carbival with Whitney Houston dying; she died on Endymion Saturday that year, but I guess now Carnival–and especially Valentine’s Day, will now always have losing Mom as an association. It’ll be rough these first years, I suspect, but gradually it’ll become more of a nice, regular reminder.

My surgeon also moved up my strength therapy, from twelve weeks post to eight weeks post. I have one more dexterity therapy session tomorrow, and then I can sit out until around the 21st or so of this month before I get to start that again. So the recovery is going well, the surgeon is very pleased, and so, frankly, am I. Now that the webbing mesh is off (he removed it) the incisions are so small the scarring is actually going to be minimal, which was an unexpected delight, and the stitches themselves will gradually dissolve. It was so nice to go make groceries and drive without the damned brace, you have no idea, Constant Reader, and going to bed without it was even better. Managing to and from work in addition to the therapy is going to be a bit of a bitch during parade season, but I’ll figure it out somehow. But right now, today, I am going to enjoy the fact that I can type without the inconvenience of the brace–but I also have to pay attention to the arm, and when it gets tired and so forth.

I started reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat, which is quite good and sucks you right in, yesterday and will most likely spend some more time with it today. I worked on filing and organizing and getting the apartment back into shape again for the most part yesterday–dishes and floors and filing, oh my–and there’s a little touching up that needs to be done around here today while I write and read and get things done around here. We also started watching the new Harlan Coben show on Netflix, Fool Me Once, which is also quite engaging, and will probably finish it today. I also watched some more War of the Worlds and an episode of the original Jonny Quest show, which I had started rewatching a long time ago but they didn’t have all the original episodes available. Jonny Quest is one of the first cartoons I can remember watching, and I loved it–the Rick Brant science adventure series reminded me a lot of this show, and is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. It doesn’t quite hold up in modern times and with modern sensibilities as it did when I was a child with a single digit age, but it was done very well–outside and around the rampant racism that was everywhere in entertainment in the 1960’s. I may rewatch the entire original series so I can review it and assess it here, but the show also pulled me into the world of mysteries and adventure, so there’s always that, too.

I still want to write a series for middle-grade before I die, too.

And this morning’s slice of king cake (and yes, you always leave the knife in the box, unless you’re a heathen) is delicious.

I feel good this morning, which is terrific, and hopefully will last through the morning and the early afternoon. I suppose we’ll watch the Golden Globes until it’s time for me to go to bed so I can get up early and start my work week, but next weekend we have another three day weekend, which is going to be amazing and lovely again. So far, 2024 has gone well, and let’s keep that mentality and energy going, shall we?

And on that note, I’m going to make a second cup of coffee and get going on my day. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows with me, do we?

Stand or Fall

Twelfth Night, and I just added a king cake to my grocery list. Huzzah!

In a moment, I’ll be getting cleaned up and going to see my surgeon to get my stitches removed and hopefully losing the brace for good. After that, I am making a grocery run before returning to the safety of the Lost Apartment for the rest of the weekend. I didn’t ger as much done yesterday as I would have liked; after completing my work-at-home duties yesterday and the laundry I kind of repaired to the easy chair and just kind of sat there watching television until it was time for bed. I was tired from PT yesterday morning, and I kind of needed the rest. I did watch LSU Gymnastics triumph over Ohio State, which was a lovely opening to the season, and then was just kind of a cat bed for the rest of the evening before I finally went to bed. I slept well, too. Paul had an appointment yesterday afternoon in Uptown, and brought home a pizza from The Midway on Freret, and it was probably one of the best pizzas I’ve had in years. A very pleasant surprise treat, as it were. Plus, it’s really nice to be able to eat pizza again. I always forget about the plethora of good places to eat that has developed on Freret Street uptown, past Napoleon; and I really do need to be better about experiencing the city and writing about it. I’m already thinking about the next Scotty, with him and the boys temporarily housed in the Diderot carriage house in the Garden District.

I’m not sure what my plans are for after I get home this morning. I do have a to-do list that I need to work through as well as update, and if I do nothing other than organize and file, well, that will be a huge improvement. I know I’ll be able to start reading the new Tara Laskowski, which is exciting–big fan here–and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get some writing done as well. Stranger things have happened, after all.

It rained pretty hard yesterday, starting in the afternoon and continuing to just come down like a waterfall through the evening. It was a street flooding kind of rain, which is probably the best way to describe it, and of course, coupled with the cold it made me lethargic. It’s sunny but cold this morning, and soon I’ll have to start getting cleaned up and ready to head out for my appointment. I do feel good and rested this morning and awake, which is always a good sign. I do know I am going to make something in the slow cooker either today or tomorrow; it will depend I suppose on how I feel when I get home from everything and put the groceries away. But the kitchen/workspace definitely needs some work before I do anything this morning. There’s dishes to clean and a dishwasher to empty, and I need to clean out the refrigerator and maybe organize it a little better. Heavy sigh. I never have seemed able to get caught up on everything that needs catching up on, you know? Maybe this weekend will be the time…

You have no idea how badly I want to ditch this brace, Constant Reader.

And on that note, I should start getting ready for the appointment. I may be back later, one never knows, and if not, have a lovely Saturday.

Space Age Love Song

Work at home Friday, and I have PT in a little while. Tomorrow I finally see my surgeon again, and here’s hoping that the brace will be a thing of history tomorrow, so I can throw it in the trash and be done with it once and for all.

One can dream, at any rate.

Yesterday I started feeling low energy in the late afternoon before I came home, and was a bit on the tired side once I did get into the apartment. I did do a load of laundry before settling in for Real Housewives Ultimate Girls’ Trip: Legacy, which Paul came home during and we watched this week’s Reacher as well as Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I went to bed shortly after that, which was nice and once again I slept well. I didn’t really want to get up this morning, which means it must have gotten really cold last night. It’s about fifty outside now. I am going to run a couple of errands after my PT this morning before returning home for work-at-home duties and other chores. Next weekend we do get a three day weekend again, which will be nice, and I am hoping to get some things done this weekend. I have my surgeon tomorrow morning, and will probably make a grocery run immediately thereafter. I’ve also picked out Tara Laskowski’s latest, The Weekend Retreat, as my next read, so I am looking forward to getting started on that later today. I loved her first two novels, and I am sure I will enjoy this new one.

And here’s hoping the weekend will be a productive one, you know? The kitchen is finally starting to look less like a disaster area and more like a comfortable work space again, for the first time in months. I plan on doing the floors at last (and finding out how Sparky feels about vacuum cleaners; he does not like the hand vac at all), which will make a difference, and I also need to start looking at ways to make my eating habits more healthy. (While the goal is to eat healthier, anything that’s already in the cabinets or the fridge is being grandfathered in rather than wasted, which seems logical and fair to me.) I’ve lost around twenty pounds, give or take, and my stomach is noticeably flatter than it was several months ago. Why give up on that progress? My goal weight for 2024 is 200; I am already down to 205. I also need to be more physically active before I return to the gym once all the healing and PT is over with, which will make returning to the gym that much easier.

I also saw a call for submissions yesterday that looked like something I may have something on hand that would be perfect for; I’ll of course do more looking into it and then I need to decide which story would work best and revise and reedit and rewrite accordingly. I know there’s one other that’s coming up, and maybe working on a short story tonight before the gymnastics airs will help kickstart me into getting truly back into the swing of writing again. I do enjoy writing short stories, and one thing I think I may do this weekend is also looking to see how much work the next short story collection needs before I can turn it in. Oh, there are so many things in the files that aren’t finished…maybe I should focus on getting everything finished that’s in progress before starting anything new? I don’t know. I’m no better at figuring any of this out than I was back when I was getting started over twenty years ago…

And on that note, I am going to get ready for PT. I may be back later, one never knows.

You’ve Got Another Thing Coming

And now it’s Thursday, the last day in the office for me this week, and I somehow made it through the entire week of going into the office without being tired by the end. The jury of course is still out about today–I’ll have to see how I feel at the end of the day, or mid-afternoon, of course–but I am very pleased to be awake and feeling rested this morning. I took it easy when I got home from work yesterday, spending some quality playtime with Sparky and watching some Real Housewives–my God, the Salt Lake City finale was some epic reality television–and couldn’t decide what to read next. I am leaning towards R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface (because I love me some publishing noir about authors behaving badly), but there are others in the running as well (most notably Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat). Tonight when I get home from work I will decide; I am coming home straight from work again; no need to run errands on the cusp of the weekend. I also need to get back to writing, and the sooner the better. I have high hopes for this weekend because it appears as though I won’t be tired going into the weekend, and the kitchen isn’t nearly as big a mess as it usually is on Thursdays–so if I can get the dishes handled tonight, I’ll be way ahead of things when I get home from PT tomorrow morning. I am seeing Dr. O’Brien at last on Saturday, so I am hoping to kiss the brace goodbye once and for all. LSU Gymnastics also has their first meet on Friday night, which is always fun to follow. The team is really loaded this year, too. GEAUX TIGERS!

I also want to get to the library sale this weekend to donate some books, too. Maybe I can spend some time tonight and tomorrow night pruning out more books. The laundry room is nearly under control again, but there are still even more books that can go.

And I should really started copy-editing Jackson Square Jazz so I can finally get that ebook up and available for readers. I am losing money every day that book isn’t available, and I might be able to run a promo when it becomes available (I am thinking of offering Bourbon Street Blues for free and Jackson Square Jazz for $1.99 for about a month or so). I mean, it makes sense: Scotty turns 21 this year, so I should be promoting the hell out of the Scotty series this year–and should really write another to get out this year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve always focused more on writing the books than promoting them; I only have so much bandwidth, and writing/editing generally uses up the megabytes in my brain that have to do with writing/publishing. I’ve also been very shy about promo, too–which was the anxiety bedeviling me. Maybe now that I am on the right medications, that won’t be a problem going forward. It’s already helped me with some aspects of doing public stuff; so maybe my nervous aversion to doing things in public has become a thing of the past? Worth a try, at any rate, right?

I also need to work on the procrastination thing I’ve been dealing with for the majority of my life. Why do I always feel the need to wait until the last minute for everything? Why will I always goof off now instead of doing the things I need to do so I can goof off later? This would always immediately play into my anxiety, and always made my stress levels go off the charts. Was that what drove me to get so much done? Stress and anxiety and the pressure I used to put on myself? Will I be able to get as much done in the future now that the anxiety is medically handled? It does make me a bit worried, but I am sure I’ll get back on that horse when I need to.

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

Glory Glory Hallelujah

One of the things I’ve always lamented is the shortage of Black Louisiana crime writers.

There have been Black characters who were the main characters in Louisiana crime series, but they were always written by white people and while I did enjoy some of the books, I always felt a little uncomfortable with reading them. Can a white person really do a Black main character in a Louisiana crime series justice? I am sure if I went back and reread them now I’d find them more problematic than I did in the first place.

So, when my friend Ellen Byron recommended that I should read Danielle Arseneaux’ debut novel, Glory Be, I couldn’t wait to get a copy and read it.

And I am so grateful that I did, because it’s an absolute joy.

Glory Broussard was tired of waiting. She figured this barista was new, and she would know since she was a regular at CC’s Coffee House. With each drink order, he nodded and flipped through the pages of a thick manual, going back and forth between the espresso machine and the book.

It didn’t help that he was grinning like a goddamn fool at that white woman. She was wearing a pink ribbed tank top, and as far as Glory could tell, no bra. Her jean shorts were so scant that you could see the bottom curve of her ass. Glory had seen enough of this recently at the Acadiana Mall to know it was not an accident but a trend, and a disgraceful one at that. Wet hair crept down to her waist, making her look like a creature that had crawled out of the Atchafalaya Swamp.

Glory edges up to the counter, closely behind the braless woman. “Excuse me,” she said to the barista. “Are you the only one working behind the counter? Y’all should be better staffed for the after-church crowd.”

“I’m not sure. I’m new here.”

“Clearly.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead, a useless gesture in Louisiana this time of year.

What made this even more exciting to me was the book wasn’t set in New Orleans–as so many inevitably are–but in Lafayette, which was also refreshing. Lafayette is a more Cajun city than New Orleans, and is the heart of what we call Acadiana here. I really like Lafayette; I went up there with some friends who were touring Louisiana and had a great time and some truly great food. It’s also a gorgeous little city, too, with lots of charm and its own Carnival, and very different than New Orleans.

The above is the opening sequence in which Arsenault introduces us to Glory Broussard, a deftly drawn, deeply complex character who worked as the produce manager at a grocery store for years until she got custody of her ex’s betting book in the divorce and took over for him, spending every Sunday after church at CC’s and taking bets. Glory is prickly and proud, and never takes any slight lightly. By the end of the first chapter her best friend, a nun she grew up with named Sister Amity Gay, has committed suicide. Glory doesn’t believe it for a minute and is furious when the police write it off as a suicide, even though she is certain Amity would have never committed suicide…so she decides to take it upon herself to investigate for them.

The investigation itself is worthy enough for reading, but the way the book is structured, the way Arsenault slowly plays out her cards letting us get to know Glory better by revealing why she is the way she is at the opening of the book truly kicks into gear where her lawyer daughter Delphine shows up, ostensibly to help her fight the condemnation of her house the city is processing because of complaints–and by showing the house through Delphine’s eyes, as well as her mother, gives us an entirely new perspective on Glory herself, as she also recruits Delphine to help her look into Amity’s death…and oddly enough, there are any number of motives for someone to want Amity out of the way–including the corruption behind a new petrochemical plant’s approval that Amity is fighting–as well as a connection to the drug kingpin of Acadiana.

I loved getting to know Glory, I loved seeing her take charge of her own life again after several years of depression, and the pages simply flew past. Arsenault has an amazing gift for a turn of phrase, all of them purely Louisiana, and a masterful authorial voice.

I can’t wait to read the next one.

Goody Two Shoes

And here we are on the third day of the new year, and I am starting to feel more like me again, which is great. I did get tired yesterday afternoon at work (getting up at five for physical therapy truly sucks), but not as bad as I was last week–last week was horrifying, how tired I felt; literally like I needed a jump start or something. It’s also pay-the-bills day, and it has rained all night, which has made it a little warmer outside than it has been. The rain is supposed to let up by noonish, but the colder snap seems to be over for a little while, at least.

Yesterday when I got home I wasn’t super-exhausted, and I did some chores. I finished the laundry I’d started on New Year’s, and also did a load of dishes. I finished reading Glory Be by Danielle Arsenault (more on that later), but Paul was working upstairs once he got home, so I just sat in my chair and watched some documentaries on Youtube. Nothing interesting or new, just some more folklore and legends of the South on the “Dixie After Dark” channel–and all the stories are of murder and ghosts and vengeance and brutality…the South the Lost Cause folks don’t like to mention because it isn’t genteel enough to fit their narrative of a “lost civilization now gone with the wind”, and these stories kind of show up the lies that false narrative creates–like Aunt Jenny, whose husband was strung up in front of her and her children by the Home Guard, and made her sons swear on his corpse that they wouldn’t rest until the men who hanged their father (who opposed the war–Southerners opposed the war?) were all dead. And she got her revenge too, and used the skull of the captain to drink water from for the rest of her life. Learning the history of northwest Alabama in greater detail over the last few years has opened my eyes to a lot of things–and given tons more ideas for things to write.

Which is exactly what I need, right? More things to write?

But overall, it was a nice, relaxing evening and I can’t get over how awake and alive and like a Gregalicious I feel this morning. It’s been a hot minute, you know, and I’m glad to see my decision to not be a slug as much as I would like in the new year is already working out for me. I see my surgeon on Saturday and hopefully can say goodbye to this goddamned brace once and for all. I did also work on the book a bit last night, which also felt good to be getting back into that groove again. I can head straight home from work after my time in the office today, and hopefully will be able to do some writing in addition to cleaning and organizing. I cleared out a shelf in the cabinets last night, and am going to use it for some things I store in the bottom cabinet (espresso machine, milk frother, coffee grinder) which will open up some more room on that side of the kitchen.

I’m not sure what I am going to read next, but the TBR pile is chock full of great books by terrific writers, so I won’t be disappointed by anything I choose. I was thinking about revisiting Larry Kramer’s Faggots, thinking that it might be interesting to revisit it now with the perspective of being in my sixties and looking back at those wild and crazy 1970’s in Manhattan and on Fire Island…but if I am going to do that, I also need to revisit its flip side, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, which I’ve also not read in decades. Or I could just read another mystery. So many choices, so many options.

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

Athena

Up ungodly early to start off the new year with PT and then off to work. I slept well last night, and feel rested this morning; there was no tangle of blankets this morning, so I wasn’t restless, and I don’t feel very tired this morning, which is good. The other nice thing is now getting up at six tomorrow will feel like I’ve actually slept in some. I feel like I’ve rested enough now, although all the time off from the holidays is going to make going back to work five days a week challenging, to say the least.

Yesterday was a decent day, really. It was a low energy day, for some reason, and while I did get some chores and things done yesterday, I didn’t do much of anything for the day. I did read quite a bit of Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, which I am really enjoying, and then settled in to watch the LSU game, which they did finally win in the last minutes, 35-31. I think the offense going into next year is in pretty good shape, but the defense needs a lot of work still. We then watched Michigan rally to beat Alabama, and I watched some of the Washington game before going to bed–and woke up to see the national title game will be between Michigan and Washington. Good for them, and now I have no need whatsoever to watch that game, either.

And it’s a new year, which means all the things I’ve not been paying attention to, or responding to, has to be picked up and taken care of this week–like emails; I definitely need to clean out the inbox. I also am behind on day job in the office duties that I will have to get back on top of this week as well. I need to do some things around here when I get home tonight, too, so I hope I am not terribly tired when I get home the way I was last week when I had to get up early for PT. I will have to get the mail on the way home, and maybe even swing by the grocery store…I don’t know. Tomorrow is also pay day and pay-the-bills day, too. (It always seems a little brutal when the first pay day of the new year is in the first week of January, a brutal reminder that bills never take time off as we start a new year.)

I have finally started feeling more like myself lately, which has been really nice, too. I have felt a little off ever since the surgery, which I suppose is normal. I really don’t think I need the PT anymore, but I don’t see Dr. O’Brien again until this next Saturday morning, so I won’t officially be released from it until then. I am also hoping to be freed from the brace this weekend, fingers crossed and prayers aloft. I don’t really think I need it anymore, but I also don’t want to take it off arbitrarily until I am officially cleared either. The arm seems to be doing better, frankly, which pleases me enormously. Overall, this whole experience wasn’t terrible, other than that first terrifying week after the surgery when I was essentially trapped in my easy chair for eight days before I was finally off the ice machine and could return to my bed for sleeping. That seems like a million years ago now…

It’s also only forty degrees out there this morning, with a predicted high of a mere fifty for the day. Woo-hoo. I haven’t been feeling the cold as much this year, but I’ve also not been going outside a whole lot lately, either. But it’s definitely been helping me sleep at night, and the bed has been feeling super-comfortable lately. I feel as though my sleep is finally under control with the new meds, which is awesome, and I don’t feel as tired and groggy as I used to be before the medication switch. And to think, this could have been the case all along had I had a decent primary care physician at any point in the last eight or so years. But no sense weeping about what should have been or what might have been. It won’t change anything, and the past can never be undone–which is why I spent so much of my life never looking back. But looking back doesn’t mean missing the past or wishing it had been different, either; neither extreme is the best option, really. I’ve been doing more of that since Mom died (almost a year ago), and it hasn’t been bad at all. In some ways, it’s been helpful. My pre-thirties life was kind of miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled, and so I never wanted to remember either the 70s or the 80s. But it doesn’t hurt or hinder the present by looking back without regret, either. For me, it’s been more about “okay, why do I handle things like this instead of like that?” and remembering the root cause of so many of my anxiety-driven neuroses has actually kind of helped unlock the neurosis and freed me from it. I am still, at sixty-two, very much a work in progress.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you soon, if not later today.

Sweet Time

And it’s New Year’s Eve.

I slept well last night but my blankets were all tangled up this morning, indicating the sleep was more restless than it has been for weeks. I also wasn’t in the mood to write my blog when I first woke up, so I decided to read, drink my coffee, and maybe have some breakfast before getting cleaned up. I usually write this over my morning coffee, and since I don’t reread or re-edit once it’s written, that could explain the run-on sentences, word repetitions, and occasional poor grammar no one ever points out to me. This blog began nineteen years ago (!!!) on Livejournal (the anniversary was 12/26), migrated over here in about 2016 or so, and still somehow keeps chugging along. It always surprises me that people read it, to be honest. It was always meant mainly for me, and was originally intended as a daily exercise to get me writing again. I guess it worked. When I started I had published four novels, a few anthologies, and some short stories. Nineteen years later, I’ve way surpassed that total, despite some fallow years in which I produced nothing.

I did some more picking up around here yesterday while watching football games. It was fun watching Mississippi beat Penn State, and don’t even get me started on the Florida State-Georgia game. I get the disappointment at not making the play-offs, but you also knew you were scheduled to play Georgia, another team disappointed in not making the play-offs, but instead of showing everyone that the committee was wrong and showing up to beat Georgia…and Georgia also had star players injured and over a dozen opting out and even more entering the transfer portal. This would have been a play-off game had either Auburn or Georgia beaten Alabama this year, but that’s how things go. Auburn went 13-0 in 2004 and wasn’t invited to the BCS title game. You don’t always get what you want in life or sport, and the question is how you handle that. If this was going to be the case, don’t accept the damned bowl bid. Your fans spent a lot of money to go to that game, and it was incredibly disrespectful to the team, the fanbase, and the university to show up and get embarrassed like that. After Coach O was fired in 2021, LSU went to its bowl game with 39 scholarship players and got trounced by Kansas State….but how does it appear in the record books? KSU 42, LSU 21. Twenty years from now when people look back at the history of college football and bowl games, it will read Georgia 63, Florida State 3. It’s a program and culture problem, and all the FSU fans apologizing for this disgraceful beating–do you quit when you don’t get a raise or promotion you worked hard for and feel like you deserved? The word for that is quitter…and for the record, Georgia played it’s back-ups, walk-ons and so forth in the second half and still beat your ass 21-0.

And if LSU went 12-0 and didn’t get picked for the play-offs…and pulled the same shit? Sure, I’d be angry about the play-offs but I’d also call out the Tigers for embarrassing the state and the university that way.

I’m really enjoying Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, and am savoring every word. What a fresh and unique voice! I have to say I am so glad I realized I needed to be better about my reading choices and should read more diverse writers. It’s been a great education for me as a reader, a writer, a person and a citizen. I’m still learning how to be better about race and gender and gender identity and sexuality; and I strongly encourage other readers to do the same. Crime fiction is so much stronger and healthier when it represents everyone, I think, and while I don’t consider reading diverse writers to be the total education I need on any social issues facing the country–I need to read more non-fiction and theory.

I rewatched The Birds yesterday after the football games, and it was pretty much as I remembered it. I’d only seen it twice before; originally as a child edited for television, when it frightened me so badly that I had nightmares (I was prone to them growing up) and for years could never see crows on a jungle gym or a wire without feeling uneasy and then again as a rental in college after I’d read the short story again and wanted to see how faithful the film was to the story. I didn’t care as much for it the second time around–the acting is really terrible and so is the script–but the suspenseful parts still held up and were scary. This third time around confirmed my second viewing; and I noticed some other flaws in the picture. Rod Taylor’s mother isn’t much older than he is, and why is there about a thirty year age gap between him and his sister? I think the short story is better than the film, but I can also see why people like it. I do consider it one of Hitchcock’s lesser films.

Since tomorrow is a day for thinking ahead and coming up with some goals for the new year, I suppose today should be a recap of sorts of this past year. It was, as I mentioned in a previous entry, a rather up-and-down rollercoaster of highs and lows with very little level ground in the middle. The recognition of mainstream award nominations for my work–even queer work–was a delightful surprise this past year. But even more important than that is I think my work is getting better. I had felt, some years ago, that my writing was becoming stale and that I wasn’t growing as a writer anymore; I’d become stagnant and that was one of my biggest fears. I wound up deciding to take some time away from writing books on deadline and write things just for me, things that I wanted to write but also wanted to take the time to do correctly. It was during this time that I worked on both #shedeservedit and Bury Me in Shadows in early drafts, and also started the novellas and working more intently on my short stories. I accepted the challenge of writing stories to themed anthologies, and produced some terrific ones of which I am really proud. When I dove back into series work with Royal Street Reveillon, I wanted to write something non-formulaic for the Scotty series. I also wanted to shake things up with Scotty a bit, as the series was getting a bit too comfortable and safe for me. Royal Street Reveillon certainly was neither comfortable nor safe, and neither was Mississippi River Mischief.

Bury Me in Shadows was not easy for me to write. When I went back to the book after setting it aside for awhile, I realized several things: I couldn’t ignore race and racism, I had to address the Lost Cause narrative, and I also had realized while doing more reading and research that the stories my paternal grandmother used to tell me about the Civil War and Alabama and the family were apocryphal stories you can turn up about almost everywhere in the rural South. The book wasn’t working, in fact, because I was trying to elide those issues because I was afraid of doing it wrong…so it pushed me to do better. And actually addressing those issues made the book easier to write. The same thing was true of #shedeservedit; I’d been working on this book in one form or another since I actually lived in Kansas. But again, I realized when I went back to it that what I was doing didn’t work because I wasn’t going there with toxic masculinity and rape culture because it wasn’t personal enough for my main character, and so I bit the bullet and made it more personal for him. It dredged up a lot of memories, some of them painful, but it also made the book better and stronger. I had been wanting to write a cozy for the longest time, and decided to try it for something different and new–and that became A Streetcar Named Murder. I was also very pleased with it, even though the deadline and the turnaround on it was a bit insane…but I still managed to take my time and turned it into something I was proud of when I got the final author copies.

My two releases of this year–Death Drop and Mississippi River Mischief–are also books of which I feel proud. I also published three terrific short stories this year: “Solace in a Dying Hour” in This Fresh Hell; “The Ditch” in School of Hard Knox; and “The Rosary of Broken Promises” in Dancing in the Shadows.

I think I’m settling finally into an acceptance that I am pretty good at what I do. I may not have the master’s or PhD in creative writing or literature of any kind; but I’ve never really wanted to be an academic writer. I never wanted to be Faulkner, but Faulkner did inspire me to interconnect novels and stories in my own fictional world (also Stephen King). I would like to do some non-fiction studies of genre and writers I enjoy, but in an accessible rather than academic way. Academics used to make me feel stupid and uneducated, and I also used to envy those writers who had that kind of background because I felt it made their work stronger than mine, or gave them insights into writing and building a novel that I’d never had, which made me and my work somehow lesser. But that wasn’t on them; that was on me. I was the one who felt inferior and lesser, not talented or good enough. That chip was on my shoulder and I was the one who put it there. My peers actually consider me a peer, and newer writers look at my longevity and my CV and are impressed by the prodigious output, if nothing else. I used to think all the award nominations were kind of hollow because I so rarely won; which was incredibly ungracious because some writers are never nominated for anything…but it doesn’t mean their work isn’t good. Now, I just find myself grateful to make a short-list of five out of all the possibilities for that slot, you know? I’m lucky, and I’m blessed.

I’ve reflected a lot on my life and my career this past year–Mom’s death had something to do with that–and I’ve identified, in many cases, why I am the way am by remembering the event that triggered the response in my brain of “okay, never want to experience that again” which led to so many self-toxic and self-defeating behaviors. But the bottom line of it all is I’ve finally accepted myself for who I am, have determined to stop self-deprecating, and take some pride in myself and my career and my life. I know the most amazing people and have the most incredible friends. I have a day job where I make a difference in people’s lives. I have an awesome life-partner, an enviable writing career, and I get to live in New Orleans.

Not bad, right?