Category: books i’ve read

The Itchy Glowbo Blow

Wednesday and we’ve made it halfway through the week, Constant Reader. Didn’t think it was quite possible, did you, when Monday dawned so early and ugly? We expecting thunderstorms today in New Orleans–it feels cooler and damp this morning, but I don’t know when we are supposed to have said storms; probably this afternoon. I slept really well again last night–it’s been lovely getting good sleep lately. I felt a bit tired yesterday when I got home from work, and so took it a little easier on myself when I got home. I managed to get caught up on my emails (such a weird feeling) and did some writing last night. I think I’m still a bit in the post-book malaise phase of things, so writing anything isn’t easy (not that it ever is) but Paul got home late so was left to my own devices once I finished writing for the evening. I did watch some documentaries on Youtube about the Hapsburgs last night (I also discovered an English-language biography about her–Margaret of Austria–which I added to the my list of books to buy…which is almost as out of control as my TBR stack, which is now essentially the entire living room), and I read a short story in Hitchcock’s My Favorites in Suspense anthology; a dark little Charlotte Armstrong story called “The Enemy.” Armstrong was a writer I discovered as a tween, when Mom let me join the Mystery Guild Book Club; I got an omnibus by her (The Witch’s House, Mischief, The Dream Walker) which I greatly enjoyed. I rediscovered Armstrong thanks to the work of both Sarah Weinman and Jeffrey Marks, which enabled me to continue reading in her canon.

Armstrong won an Edgar for Best Novel for A Dram of Poison, a charming if dark little story of suspense; maybe the rare Edgar winner where there’s no dead body but the plot has to do with preventing an accidental death? It’s very clever, and incredibly charming, but beneath that clever charming surface it says something dark and awful about human nature and character–people who are unhappy spreading their misery to others. Armstrong was also made a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America. Her work may seem a bit dated in the modern day–technology and society have moved on from the times she lived and wrote in–but I think it’s well worth the read. “The Enemy” is that same style of writing as Dram, a serious subject presented charmingly, and the death of a child’s dog the catalyst for an exposé of something darker and nastier…and yes, the plot also hinges on the darkness a human being is capable of creating. It’s a really clever, if slightly dated, story–and you can’t help but smile or laugh at the last line of the story. I am really enjoying these time capsules into the past, to tell you the truth. I bought a few more of these anthologies on eBay yesterday, too. It’s nice to have short story collections around for those times when my brain can’t really focus on reading an entire novel.

I have been listening to Carol Goodman’s The Drowning Tree on Audible, but I may have to break down and finish actually reading a physical copy because I can’t keep listening every day and with my memory a literal thing of the past these days, I’m not sure I remember enough of the story to pick it up again this weekend. I also picked up copies of her new novel, The Bones of the Story, along with Paul Tremblay’s new short story collection, The Beast You Are. I do like Tremblay’s writing–A Head Full of Ghosts was one of the best horror novels of the last decade, and I’ve liked everything else of his that I’ve read–and I think this may even be his second collection. I am also hoping to pull together another collection myself this year–This Town and Other Macabre Stories–but I am not sure if I will have the time. I also got the copy edits for a short story I contributed to an anthology in my inbox last night, so that has to go onto the to-do list, and I still have page proofs to get through. But for the most part, it seems as though I have a guilt-free free weekend, which one can never truly go wrong with, either. I’ll have some errands to run, of course–I always have errands to run–but there’s no stress or pressure on me either, which is kind of nice. I think maybe that’s the reason I’ve been sleeping so well this week? No pressure and my schedule has kind of normalized, gotten back to normal, settled back into the routine my body is used to, perhaps?

Yes, that makes total sense to me.

I also have ideas and thoughts pinging around in my head. I’m itching to get back to the works I have in progress; I want to get a strong first draft of two different novels finished before I leave for Bouchercon next (!!!) month. I actually, finally, made a to-do list yesterday; I am hoping that I can get my life back on track the way it was before the pandemic and the madness of the last few years. That doesn’t mean that my blood pressure won’t continue to go up predicated on the constant assaults on everyone who’s not a cisgender straight man from the demons on the right–which is part of the reason my interest in the Civil War and the 1850’s, that terrible lead-up to the split, has been heightened these last few months. I do see a lot of similarities in the split between conservative v. progressive today, which was predicated along the lines of abolitionist/pro-human trafficking back then. One of the books my father gave me to read was called Southerners in Blue, which was a novelization of the true story (albeit poorly written) of a Union sympathizer and others like him in Winston County, Alabama. (If you’re not familiar with Winston County, the easiest way to explain it is this county did not vote for secession and essentially stated that if Alabama had the right to secede from the Union, the county had the right to secede from Alabama. They did not secede from Alabama, just said they had the right to predicated on the secession arguments being presented, but have gone down in Alabama history and lore as having actually seceded even though they most certainly did not) Basically, in some of the northern counties of Alabama there was basically a second civil war, between the “secesh” and the “Unionist” supporters, and the mountains of north Alabama were filled with deserters from the Confederate Army, This was also novelized into a book called Tories of the Hills by Wesley Sylvester Thompson, which is incredibly rare (my uncle has a copy, which my aunt won’t let be removed from her house–wise, as I would totally steal it). I had read another book also while I was up there, about the Kansas-Missouri border war–which had a decided “secesh” slant to it, of course, while complaining that all previous histories were “unsympathetic to the Missouri slave-owner point of view”. I’m sure he had a point, but simply because there are two sides to every story doesn’t mean each side deserves to be heard, or that each side’s opinion has equal weight. It did spark my interest, though, and I really think there’s a book in this little-known history of north Alabama. Again, it would be difficult to write–lots of potential landmines there–but it’s also, as I said, not very well known and with today’s tribalism mentality–not to mention how loud the Lost Cause fanatics are–it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the notion that the South wasn’t monolithic in its thinking.

Because no group of people are, really, which is why I don’t like being asked for a gay perspective on anything; I can only speak for myself.

But while I continue to research this aspect of history and try to figure out a way to get a novel out of it, I am going to map out two others. One is already in progress, and the other is a New Orleans ghost story I’ve been wanting to write for quite some time now. The trick is to make it different from every other ghost story I’ve already written. Good luck with that, Mr. Repetitive!

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

A Kissed Out Red Flatboat

I did read some short stories this weekend from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies I’ve gotten from eBay over the last month or so, and they’ve been wonderfully delightful and deliciously wicked. They also remind me of where I got the idea that short stories should always have a wry, slightly ironic but gasp-inducing twist at the end. I remember vaguely watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents (we were always a family who were fans of Hitchcock) and, while I was too young to remember The Twilight Zone, I do remember Night Gallery. I am also loving reading stories by masters of crime fiction that I’ve not read before; in one of the anthologies the next story up is by the delightful Charlotte Armstrong. I just read one by Anthony Boucher (for whom Bouchercon was named) called “They Bite” that was incredibly creepy; in another one of the anthologies the next story is by Roald Dahl. I would love for us to go back to the wonderful world that existed back in those days, when the short story was a much more valued art form than it is today and there were all kinds of markets for them. Heavy heaving sigh.

So, I did pull out that story the copy-editor said was “powerful,” and as I read it my horror grew, until by the time I finished it I had noted so many errors and transition problems that I thought that cannot be the version I turned in and was in thorough panic mode when I remembered to check the laptop and sure enough, there it was. I did reread the story, did spot some mistakes, but the revision I did before turning it in was clearly the right thing to do, as the story was significantly better and made more sense and was actually, pretty good. It touched on themes I seem to keep returning to, over and over again, but what can you do? I cannot control my creativity that strongly, you know; I write the stories as they come to me. I do worry that I am repeating myself though–how many hangover scenes have I written over the years (which is hilarious, because I never really had hangovers the way other people have always talked about them)?

We started watching a new crime show that seemed to have a lot of potential, but there were a couple of annoying characters in the forefront of the show that undermined it for me, so we gave up after a couple of episodes. We did watch the final episode of The Ashley Madison Affair, which was pretty interesting to me. First of all, if anything, it emphasized the fact that not everyone is content with monogamy–and since we idealize monogamy and the nuclear family in this present day society (unrealistically, I might add), the concept of open and honest conversations about sexuality and monogamy and so forth are made very difficult to have. Women are trained from childhood to see cheating as the worst possible sin of all time, as well as to try to inhibit and control their sexuality as much as possible, denying themselves the same freedom to explore what they like and enjoy while also determining what they don’t like and don’t enjoy the way single man are often allowed. Dorothy Allison wrote very strongly about how societal views and beliefs and mores about female sexuality prohibited women from becoming their full selves; there’s always someone just raring to slut-shame a woman, isn’t there? A former friend of mine who claimed herself to be an ardent feminist (she became a TERF, of course) and that women had every right to be as sexually liberated as men would then turn around and slut-shame every female celebrity that ever came up for discussion. All models were really “escorts,” and every successful woman in entertainment slept her way to the top.

That’s an interesting feminist take, isn’t it?

We also started watching a gay teen movie, and turned it off within five minutes. It was terrible. We watched something else after that, but i honestly don’t remember what it was, to tell you the horrible truth. I hate this memory nonsense, seriously.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow (or later, whatever the case may be).

Private Eyes

I loved the Three Investigators.

When I was writing about rereading “The Birds” the other day, it brought Alfred Hitchcock to mind again. I have been revisiting the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies lately, and slowly (finally) realizing what an enormous influence on my writing Mr. Hitchcock was. Obviously, there’s the films, and the television series, of course, but even more so in books–books he had little to do with other than licensing his name–because hands down, no questions asked, my favorite juvenile series was The Three Investigators. I loved those books, and still do. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the other series–they don’t really hold up well for me now, but I can still enjoy the The Three Investigators as much today as when I first read them. The books are incredibly well written, and the three boys themselves are very distinct from each other yet not one-dimensional, and that holds true for all the members of their supporting cast–Uncle Titus, Aunt Mathilda, Hans and Konrad, Hitchcock himself, Worthington the chauffeur–as well as the primary settings, the Jones Salvage Yard and Headquarters, a wrecked mobile home hidden in plain sight, beneath and behind piles of junk, with secret tunnels leading to it.

What I liked the most, though, was that the plots of the mysteries themselves were very intricately plotted, and the criminals were actually pretty smart, so it took a lot of good detective work, thinking, and intelligence to outwit them. Many of the books were treasure hunts, which of course I love love love, and often required the solving of a puzzle, which I also loved. The three boys who formed the investigation were Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews. Jupiter (First Investigator)had been a child star on a Little Rascals type television show as “Baby Fatso”, which he doesn’t like being reminded of, or being called fat (this was actually one of the few kids’ series that dealt with fatphobia and flat out said making fun of people for being overweight was cruel; think about how much Chet Morton gets teased for being fat in The Hardy Boys and the same with Bess Marvin in Nancy Drew); he is also the brains of the outfit. He has a quick deductive mind, pays attention to details, and has read a lot so he’s got a lot of arcane knowledge in his mind that comes in handy quite often. Pete (Second Investigator) is strong and athletic and not nearly as bright as Jupiter. Pete also gets scared easily, but an ongoing theme in the books is how Pete always overcomes his fears to come to the aid of his friends. Bob Andrews is Records and Research; he works at the local library so can do research for them, and he also is the one who writes up all their cases to present to Mr. Hitchcock, to see if it’s worthy of his introduction. When the series begins, he has a brace on one leg from a bad fall down a nearby mountain–so he doesn’t get to get involved in any legwork or in-person investigations for several volumes until the brace comes off.

And of course I loved learning from Jupiter’s vast stores of knowledge.

“Help!” The voice that called out was strangely shrill and muffled. “Help! Help!”

Each time a cry from within the mouldering old house pierced the silence, a new chill crawled down Pete Crenshaw’s spine. Then the cries for help ended in a strange, dying gurgle and that was even worse.

The tall, brown-haired boy knelt behind the thick trunk of a barrel palm and peered up the winding gravel path at the house. He and his partner, Jupiter Jones, had been approaching it when the first cry had sent them diving into the shrubbery for cover.

Across the path, Jupiter, stocky and sturdily built, crouched behind a bush, also peering toward the house. They waited for further sounds. But now the old Spanish-style house, set back in the neglected garden that had grown up like a small jungle, was silent.

“Jupe!” Pete whispered. “Was that a man or a woman?”

Jupiter shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Maybe it was neither.“

Jupe and Pete are on their way to call on a prospective new client, referred to them by none other than Alfred Hitchcock himself. Professor Fentriss had bought a parrot from a peddler, primarily because he stuttered and was named Billy Shakespeare (Fentriss is an English professor). The parrot says “to-to-to be or not to-to-to be, that is the question.” But this is in and of itself mysterious, as Jupe points out, because parrots don’t stutter; they have to be taught to stutter. Why would anyone teach a parrot to stutter? But the stuttering parrot is just the start of a bizarre and unusual case, with twists and turns and surprises everywhere the boys turn. Their detecting soon leads them to the revelation that there were six parrots and a mynah bird the peddler was selling, and they were all taught specifically to say one phrase. The phrases are clues to a treasure trail, and the prize is a magnificent and incredibly valuable painting by a master.

This book is an excellent example of precisely why I loved this series so much. The pacing is always excellent, the characterizations are three-dimensional, the mystery is intricate and puzzling and hard to figure out, and the conclusion of the book, where the boys have to beat several bad guys to actually find the painting, which takes place in a spooky abandoned cemetery on a foggy night, is some of the best atmospheric writing I’ve ever encountered. You really feel like you’re lost in the fog with bad guys you can’t see out there somewhere.

I’ve never understood why these books never achieved the popularity of the Hardy Boys and other series like them. They were better written, better stories, and just over all vastly superior to the Hardy Boys in every way. The first book in the series, The Secret of Terror Castle, remains one of my favorite kids’ books to this day (several books from this series make that same list). The problem with the series was time, really. Alfred Hitchcock eventually died, and they had to get someone else to fill in for him. Eventually, recognizing that Hitchcock’s name alone dated the books, they removed the references. The books themselves were never updated, which is also a shame because it dates the books but at the same time gives them a kind of nostalgic charm, as well. The Secret of Terror Castle was about the home of a silent film star whose career was ended by talkies, who turns out to be still alive. That was a stretch for me even when I first read it in the early 1970’s, let alone today. Whenever I think about writing my own kids’ series, I always think of it in terms of being Hardy Boys-like, but really what I would want to do is emulate the Three Investigators, whose books were well-written and a lot of fun to read.

Be sure I will talk about them again another time.

Spooning Good Singing Gum

Saturday morning, and at some point I need to walk to Office Depot and get ink for my printer. I suppose I should really let go of this obsessive need to have everything printed on paper just in case. It’s terrible for the planet, for one, and I am sick of spending the money on ink. Who will win here, the neuroses or the economist?

Yesterday wasn’t a good day. I didn’t feel good still throughout most of the day, and I even took the horrifying step of getting Pepto Bismal at the grocery store. Shudder, wretched stuff. But it also occurred to me that maybe I was just hungry–another neuroses there–because I keep forgetting to eat or don’t eat enough when I am not in the office. So I ate something and did feel significantly better. And whenever that feeling started up again, I had something else. It worked. (Part of my food/eating thing is that I don’t ever get hungry and will forget to eat until I feel sick. That, sadly, is nothing new that can be blamed on the long COVID or anything.) But I was also very tired and feeling a bit burnt out from not sleeping well. Paul and I watched the first two episodes of the Ashley Madison documentary series–there will definitely be more about THAT later–and then I went to bed for the night. I did get some things done yesterday but the primary problem for the day really was not feeling good. Today I feel rested, hydrated, and not hungry, so we’re off to a very good start. I want to catch up on some correspondence this morning, and I need to write a first chapter of a book that I was asked to write this week. I intend to relax for the most part today; I have some cleaning up to do around here, which is fine–I am going to start listening to Carol Goodman’s The Drowning Tree while I clean and organize the kitchen–and I think I’m going to barbecue burgers for dinner later. Can you stand the excitement? I barely can.

I just got the official notice in the mail yesterday that our health insurance provider at work is no longer going to be our health care provider come January 1. I have literally no idea what that means for the future–will I have to buy my own and be reimbursed by the agency? Will we have to take on worse insurance than we already have out of desperation? I’ll be sixty two next month, do I really need to have this kind of stress and aggravation now that I’m getting older and am more in need of medical attention? Thank God I’m getting my teeth fixed in September because who knows what January will bring? Yay. I suppose I should start looking into Medicare and how that all works so I am not blind-sided in a couple of years. Who knows, maybe Medicare is the solution to this pending issue and then I just need supplemental insurance. It makes me head ache just to think about it all, truly. This is the part of being an adult that I really do not like.

But yes, the kitchen is a mess and I need to reorganize myself, which is the goal for today once I get this chapter written. I also will have the cover of the first book I did for this new publisher today soon, and when I share that cover is when I’ll talk more about the book, Constant Reader. I know this vagueness is troublesome, and it may read as coy (I hate coy), but it just makes sense to me to not talk about the book until I have a cover to share. I also think I am going to try to finish some of the entries I have in draft form, or delete them. (Some are over three years old and let’s face it, I’m probably never going to finish those. I can cut and paste what was written and save them as potential personal essays, which is probably the best way to do it.) I do want to go back to doing entries about my own books and why I wrote them–as best as I can remember; the two post drafts I have on here are Need and Timothy–which was kind of fun. I don’t obviously remember everything about those books, the ideas for them and how they came to be, but it’s always fun to try to remember these things.

I am also going to try to get started on Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman once I’ve finished everything today that I need to get done around here (I suppose I should make a list, shouldn’t I?). I have too many great books on top of the TBR pile–books by Eli Cranor, Kelly J. Ford, Megan, Alison Gaylin, Jordan Harper, Christopher Bollen, and S. A. Cosby, a new true crime anthology by Sarah Weinman, and I’ll be getting the new Laura Lippman once it drops–that not reading every day is truly criminal. I also want to read more of these classic short stories from the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies I’ve been getting from eBay. It’s funny, so many retired people tell me how much I am going to miss going to work and how bored I’m going to be once I retire, which is endlessly amusing to me. I will never be bored, as long as there are books to read and books to write. As long as I can function and think and type and read…I’ll never get bored and miss my job. I suspect I will find that time management will be the big problem for me once I retire–allowing time to slip through my fingers since I no longer have to be focused because I don’t have to plan my life and writing around my job anymore–which means I’ll need to make a to-do list for every week as well as one for every day. This is what I did when I used to have to do before I went back to work full-time, and I did still waste a lot of time. The key is structure; I need structure to be productive. And I think–between the tiredness, the hunger, and not feeling well–this last week wasn’t meant to be anything other than a slow and painful transition back to reality. It wasn’t really a work week, since the holiday fell on Tuesday…this coming week is my first full week back to work in three weeks. Next week I have to take a day off for a doctor’s appointment, so there’s that, too. And then it will be August, my power bill will peak for the year and start going back down again, and at the end of the month I will be flying all the way across country to San Diego for Bouchercon.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. That chapter won’t write itself, and the apartment won’t clean and organize itself, either. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow or later. It’ll be a SURPRISE.

Fly Like an Eagle

One of the first Alfred Hitchcock movies I ever saw was The Birds. We watched it on our big black-and-white television, and it was absolutely terrifying. What made it even more terrifying was that we as viewers–along with the characters in the film–had no idea what had turned the birds into vicious flocks of attacking predators. The movie was absolutely terrifying to a very young Gregalicious, who ever after always gave whatever birds he saw a wary look. That innocuous scene where the birds start gathering on the jungle gym? First a few that you notice, then you look again and there’s more… you look back another time and there are even more….more and more with every look until you have a sick feeling and think maybe I better get out of here–yes, I related absolutely to that scene in the movie and whenever I see a flock of birds gathered anywhere I have a bit of an uneasy feeling. You never really think about how vicious and terrifying birds–descended from the dinosaurs, after all–can be. Sure, we all know about the birds of prey, with their sharp claws and razor-like beaks; but sparrows? Blackbirds? Crows? How do you defend yourself if a flock comes for you? God, even now, just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

I recently rewatched the movie (during the Rewatch Project during the pandemic) and it’s not as good a film as I remembered, but it’s still terrifying. I was curious to see how I would react to the movie, because in the intervening years I had read the short story it was based on, and the story is much, much better than the movie.

The fact it was written by Daphne du Maurier didn’t hurt.

On December the third the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Until then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The earth was rich where the plough turned it.

Nat Hocken, because of a wartime disability, had a pension and did not work full time at the farm. He worked three days a week, and they gave him the lighter jobs. Although he was married, with children, his was a solitary disposition; he liked best to work alone, too.

It pleased him when he was given a bank to build up, or a gate to mend, at the far end of the peninsular, where the sea surrounded the farmland on either side. Then, at midday, he would pause and eat the meat pie his wife had baked for him and, sitting on the cliff’s edge, watch the birds.

In autumn great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy, spending afternoons in motion; now wheeling, circling in the sky; now settling to feed on the rich, just turned soil; but even when they fed, it was as though they did so without hunger, without desire.

Restlessness drove them to the skies again. Crying, whistling, caslling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore.

Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell on them, and they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

I love Daphne du Maurier.

The story was originally published in her collection The Apple Tree and Other Stories; when the film was released in 1963 it was rereleased as The Birds and Other Stories. (One of the problems with trying to read all of du Maurier’s short stories is because her collections inevitably have at least half the stories that have appeared in other collections; so you can wind up buying a collection for the two or three stories in it you’ve not read; for example, my first du Maurier collection was Echoes from the Macabre, which included “The Apple Tree” (title story of another collection) AND “Don’t Look Now” (also the title story of another collection) AND “Not After Midnight” (which, as you probably already guessed, is the title story of another collection). I have yet to find a definitive list of du Maurier’s short stories anywhere, and it certainly is long past time that all of her stories are collected into a single collection (are you listening to me, du Maurier estate?).

The reason I love the story so much is because it really is a master class in tension and suspense. It’s also a much more intimate, small story than the film. Nat is a simple worker, loves his wife and kids, and wakes up one morning to winter and bizarre behavior from the birds. The way du Maurier describes the sight of the seagulls all gathered out on the sea, rising the waves in silence, is creepier than any shot of Suzanne Pleshette sprawled out on the walk with her eyes pecked out. The radio–there only method of communication and getting news from the rest of the world–is reporting on the strange behavior of the birds, and that they are attacking people. Most of the action–the truly terrifying action–takes place inside Nat’s cottage while they are under siege; the attacks have something to do with the tides. During the lulls he boards up the windows and tries to lay in supplies, as he slowly begins to realize that the birds are winning. They wait out the attack one night and in the morning turn on the radio…only to get static. It soon begins to feel like they are, or may be, the only humans left alive. And Nat also realized that it’s just the smaller birds–sparrows, wrens, seagulls–and worries about what will happen when the birds of prey join in….and of course, they do…the story closes with the hawks attacking the front door while Nat resignedly waits for them to get through.

If I were teaching a suspense writing class, I would definitely teach this story. It’s simply brilliant.

Cool Change

On my way home from Kentucky over the weekend, I started listening to Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water. The book was too long, however, for me to finish before I pulled up in front of the Lost Apartment Saturday night; I have been known to stay in the car for another fifteen to twenty minutes to finish an audiobook, but when I checked with this one, I still have over an hour left to go. There was no way I was going to sit in the car for another hour with the apartment merely a dozen or so yards away from me, so I unplugged the phone and started unloading the car, figuring I could listen to it on Sunday while doing things. I was exhausted and had too many other things to do that day, so I put it off until the morning of the 4th, when I finished listening while doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen.

And what a marvelous tale it is, indeed.

My favorite story when I was small, the one I begged for night after night, was “The Selkie.”

“That old story,: my mother would say. She’d say it in the exact tone of voice as when my father complimented her dress, Oh, this old thing, she’d say, her pale green eyes giving away her pleasure. “Wouldn’t you rather something new?” And she’d hold up a shiny book my aunt Sophie, my father’s sister, had bought for me. The Bobbsey Twins or, when I was older, Nancy Drew. American stories with an improving message and plucky, intrepid heroines.

“No, I want your story,” I would say. It was her story because she knew it by heart, had heard it from her mother, who had heard it from hers…a line of mothers and daughters that I imagined like the images I had seen when I stood by her side in front of the mirrors in the lobby.

“Well, if it will help you sleep…”

And I would nod, burrowing deeper into the blankets. It was one of the few requests I stuck to, perhaps because my mother’s initial hesitation came to be part of the ritual–part of the telling. A game we played because I knew she liked that I wanted her story, not some store-bought one. Even when she was dressed to go out and she had only come up to say a quick good night she would sit down on the edge of my bed and shrug her coat off her shoulders so that its black fur collar settled down around her waist and I would nestle into its dark, perfumed plush, and she, getting reading to tell her story, would touch the long strands of pearls at her neck, the beads making a soft clicking sound, and close her eyes. I imagined that she closed her eyes because the story was somewhere inside her, on an invisible scroll unfurling behind her eyelids from which she read night after night, every word the same as the night before.

“In a time before the rivers were drowned by the sea, in a land between the sun and the moon…”

I’ve always loved the selkie story, myself, and what a marvelous opening this was for the novel!

Our main heroine, Iris Greenfeder, is an ABD (all but dissertation) trying to patch together a living from being an adjunct writing teacher at several different schools. This particular semester, as the book opens, she is also teaching a writing class at Rip Van Winkle Prison. Iris’ mother was a sort of successful fantasy writer who was killed in a fire before she could either write or complete writing the final volume of her trilogy. Iris’ father manages the Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, a luxury resort hotel with stunning views of the Hudson River Valley. Her mother was killed when she was about eleven, and was checked into the dive hotel as “Mr. and Mrs. John McGlynn”–but only her body was found. Was it an affair? Was it something else? This mystery hangs over Iris’ life when the book opens, and her own writing career gets a boost when she sells a story to Caffeine magazine, whose editor kind of pulls Iris back into the orbit of the Equinox Hotel. She lands a top agent who also has more than a passing interest in Iris’ history, and her mother.

She isn’t there long when she realizes that many mysteries shroud not only her own past, but the hotel as well. As she starts trying to figure out her mother–no one believes she was having an affair, despite the police conclusion–and what happened all those years ago, she finds that her mother was also involved in a crime involving some of her friend–the McGlynn, one of whom went to prison and her friend, his sister, threw herself in front of a train after visiting her brother. He was in jail for robbing a hotel, but did he actually do it, or was he framed? Did Iris’ mother know the truth? Slowly but surely Iris starts following the clues and trying to figure out what the truth about her mother was–and there are also people who are looking for that final manuscript of her trilogy. Why? Who cares about an old unpublished manuscript? Iris also is in a long term relationship with an artist that isn’t really giving her what she needs, either–but can she trust the younger, sexy ex-con from her class at the jail that she hires at the Equinox?

This book is classic Goodman; erudite and literary, with ties to writers and the publishing world and legends and fairy tales, all woven together in an enthralling mystery that is very hard to put down.

Definitely another five-star for Carol Goodman!

Throughout the Dark Months of April and May

Well, yesterday felt normal–as opposed to all the energy and the fabulous mood I was in on Monday, yesterday I felt more like the way I usually do on a midweek morning coming into the office. It was busy and we did have some odd and unusual issues, like we did on Monday, but it all worked out and I managed to get everything done and get out on time. I wasn’ tired when I got home, but there were men working on the house on our side of the building until about eight o’clock, playing (bizarre) music (choices) really loudly and of course, hammering and drilling and all those other power tool-esque things construction workers use. I’d intended to get some things done, but this successfully irritated me enough to make me lethargic. Then Scooter climbed into my lap and started purring and head-butting me and that was all it took; I was down for the evening. I did manage, however, to do a load of dishes so the evening wasn’t a complete waste. I feel more awake and alert and energetic this morning than I did yesterday, so that’s a step in the right direction, I think. Tomorrow I’ll be working from home, and trying to get caught up on the data entry and quality assurance stuff, as well as doing some yearly, on-line trainings about safety that are due (biohazard, fire prevention, HIPAA, etc.) so I’ll have a pretty full plate tomorrow, which is cool. I hope to spend some time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman this weekend, and I also would like to get some more entries finished–I have a review of Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water to post, and I have more entries about my own books to write. and on and on and on.

We watched more of Red Rose on Netflix last night, and we’re really enjoying it. It’s a horror series about a deadly app teens have on their phones; it’s an interesting modern take on the horror trope of the haunted device, and a very clever use of cell phone technology to base a horror series on. We’ll probably finish it over the course of the weekend, we’re about halfway through with four more episodes to go.

I’m also getting better at figuring out where I am at in my life and getting a grasp on everything I am doing and what needs to be done going forward. I want to spend the rest of this month trying to get one of my in-progress manuscripts finished, or at the very least, a first draft finished. I also am going to start trying to pull together another short story collection, and I want to get these novellas finished and out of the way, too. I am also aware that is a far too ambitious plan for me; there’s no way I’d be able to get all that writing done in twenty-five days. I also have another Alabama book swirling around inside of my head; I keep thinking Beau Hackworth, Jake’s boyfriend in Bury Me in Shadows, deserves his own story and would be the best place for me to continue on with Corinth County tales; I have others in progress (two novellas, in fact, “Fireflies” and “A Holler Full of Kudzu”) and numerous short stories. I have one actually coming out in an anthology this fall, predicated around breaking the Father Brown rules for a mystery story–mine was “include a supernatural element,” natch–called “The Ditch” that I’m rather pleased with. I want to revise my old story “Whim of the Wind” again, too, because I think I’ve finally unlocked the key to solving the problem in the story (with a grateful not to Art Taylor, whose story “The Boy Detective and the Summer of 74”) but have never gotten around to actually, you know, making the changes to the story.

That story, “Whim of the Wind,” is uniquely special to me. After being told by my first creative writing professor that I would never be a published author and to “find another dream” sent me into a tailspin that resulted in my flunking out of college and putting off seriously pursuing writing as a vocation for over a decade (there were flashes of time when I’d put some effort into it, writing stories and so forth before giving it all up as pointless and impossible for me) I took creative writing again when I went to a junior college in California in an attempt to get my GPA up enough to allow me to re-enroll in the California State University system. We were allowed to take that class twice, so I took it in both fall and spring semesters. The first semester my stories were derivative and trying too hard, but the teacher was very encouraging, which I wasn’t used to, so I decided to take it again in the spring–he urged me to do so. One day in class we were talking about stories and structures and writing, and I just had this idea pop into my head and I started writing in my notebook. All throughout the rest of the class I kept writing, and I finished it when I got home that night. That story was “Whim of the Wind,” and not only did the teacher love it (he wrote on the first page, excellent, you should send this out which was a huge thrill for me. The class also loved it and didn’t critique it very much–there wasn’t anything negative anyone had to say about it. But the story was flawed; there was a strong flaw in its premise which inevitably always got the story kicked back from anywhere I may have submitted it; editors would even admit they loved the story but it was missing something–but no one has ever been able to tell me what the story needed…and please remember, what I turned in was a first draft, I’ve never rewritten the story because I didn’t know how–and it’s really one of those “kill your darlings” examples; I can’t change the opening paragraph because it’s poetic and beautifully written and…I can’t bring myself to make any changes to that, and I suspect that’s really what it needs. Maybe I’ll take another look at it this weekend.

I’ve also been going through my journals looking for things–ideas, story fragments, etc.–that I’ve forgotten about, and I must say there’s quite a lot of that. I’ve even started writing short stories in my journal that I never finished and they are just sitting there, minding their own business and waiting for me to remember them so I can finish them. It’s also interesting seeing what I write in those things, too–sometimes I just free-write, which is open it, take a pen and just start scribbling whatever pops into my head, which makes for a kind of interesting (to me) look at how my brain operates when free associating…I am sure some future psychoanalyst (or even current, for that matter) would look and see a need for medication if not multiple psychoses. I also free associate write when I am playing with ideas for stories or novels in progress, so that’s always interesting to see again later.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will be back with you later.

Ella Megalast Burls Forever

Well, it’s the fifth and it’s back to the office with me this morning. It’s also Pay-the-Bills Day, woo-hoo! An oddly weird work week, the aftermath of a trip, and that weird stage of being beyond writing, if that makes any sense. I do have proofs to correct and other edits to come on something else, but I am not writing anything at the moment. I have some ideas I am toying with–a New Orleans ghost story, an Alabama book, among others–but for the moment I am just re-acclimated to myself and my world. I took yesterday off for the most part, and it was nice. I slept well again and felt good all day. I made holiday waffles for Paul, and I ate the Subway sandwich he’d purchased for me on Monday, I did some chores this morning while listening to the end of Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water (more on that later), and then Paul was up. I had thought about doing some work, getting started on the proofs or something, but once he was up I thought, we haven’t both had an entire day to ourselves in a long time so therefore, everything else could wait for another day.

We binged through a Paramount Plus show called School Spirits, which essentially is about a high school girl who is murdered, and her soul is trapped at the school with the spirits of other students throughout the school’s history who died there and cannot move on. She doesn’t remember how she was murdered or who had done it; there were gaps, and the other ghosts estimate that perhaps once she remembers everything she can then move on. It was cute enough, and entertaining enough, with some interesting twists here and there that it held our interest, and we watched all the way through until the season finale. We then moved on to the first two episodes of a horror series on Netflix, Red Rose, which was interesting and intriguing enough for us to continue, and decide to continue until we finish it. It was, all in all, a lovely relaxing day, and I am glad of it.

I also reread Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” yesterday. It’s really quite a wonderful and creepily intimate little story. I think it’s creepier and scarier than the film Hitchcock made of it–although the film is terrifying in an entirely different way. The story is very intimate and small–it focuses on a farmer trying to protect his family from the sudden turning of the birds, and how they have to fortify themselves in their house during the attacks, which in the story have to do with high tide. It’s really quite something, but du Maurier was such a master. I may write more about it later; the jury is still out on that.

I slept deeply and well last night, but didn’t wake up earlier than the alarm this morning nor am I awake and alive and ready to spring into action at work the way I was Monday morning. I don’t feel tired, I just don’t feel like I am fully awake just yet, which of course is fine. I do not regret taking yesterday off for myself; I am trying to not make myself crazy with that sort of thing anymore. No one can work at full capacity every day, after all, and there’s nothing wrong with me taking some time for myself and time off from everything every once in a while, to stop from going completely insane or at least wearing myself out. It’s much easier to take care of yourself, and I am trying to pay attention to my health on all fronts, including getting rest and not allowing my brain to get burned out. I think protecting my mental health, particularly since having the long COVID last year, is much more important now than it has ever been before in my life. I may not do a lot of thinking or writing this week, but there’s only two in-office days this week and a work-at-home Friday in my future, so maybe waiting until this weekend to do any of that sort of thing is perhaps for the best. I do want to start reading my new Megan Abbott novel; perhaps when I get home from work today I can use my writing time for reading.

Plus I need to figure out what I want to do next and come up with a plan of some sort for the next few years.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow, if not later.

Fluffy Tufts

Tuesday morning and I have the day off for the holiday blog. Huzzah! Although it’s going to seriously fuck with my head once I return to work tomorrow. I love these short work weeks, quite frankly; but at the same time they inevitably disorient me and make me uncertain of both day and date. But I will survive and get through this.

Yesterday was a bit of a revelation. I slept deeply and well Sunday night for the first time since leaving for the trip (I did manage one good night’s sleep in Kentucky, but that’s another story involving a massive thunderstorm, a loud weather alert alarm in the other part of the house and a brief power outage) with the end result that returning to the office for the first time in over a week wasn’t an unpleasant experience. There were some things I had to get caught up because they’d slid while I was gone (I take care of so many little things that are nevertheless important that my co-workers don’t even realize need to be done), and of course it was a lame duck workday–wedged between a weekend and a holiday–so the energy was weird and and we had a lot of unexpected problems to handle for clients, which we did handle with aplomb, but I felt off-balance all day and the time just flew; next thing I knew it was time to pack up and leave for the day–but I never got tired. I usually am groggy and partially out of it all morning, and hit a wall in the middle of the afternoon, but yesterday I felt just as energetic and relaxed as I did when I got to the office at seven thirty yesterday morning. I had to run over to Midcity to pick up my PrEP prescription, then swung over to Uptown to get the mail (a check! a check!), stopped at CVS to pick up some Claritin-D and my Xanax prescription before heading down to Tchoupitoulas to make some groceries at Rouse’s. I also bought too much perishable food, as it my wont; I want to make watermelon soup today (because it’s cool and refreshing) and chicken salad…and I also want to make a bowl of salad. I was thinking about making Shrimp Creole for dinner–but again, hot. I also bought hamburgers to cook out; I’ll probably go ahead and do that anyway at some point this afternoon or in the early evening. (Paul got me a turkey sandwich from Subway for dinner that I’ll need to eat at some point today.)

I slept really well again last night, too. Paul and I finished watching The Suspect, which was interesting and disturbing at the same time, and then moved on to this week’s Platonic (which is hilarious; you should be watching this show) and finally to Deadline with James D’arcy, which is quite interesting. I stayed up later than I usually do–almost midnight–because I never felt tired, and yet once I went to bed I went into a deep sleep that lasted until around six, and then I was able to sleep again until seven thirty. I feel good today, too; rested and energetic and peaceful, which is nice. I honestly feel better than I have in months, for two days in a row now, which is lovely and marvelous. (I also have cut back on my caffeine the last two days…which also may have something to do with it.)

So, what are my big plans for this holiday? I have some chores to do, as always, and of course I need to rearrange the refrigerator from the Costco run on Sunday (Paul helped put things away, which I appreciated but…I am like my mother in that while I appreciate the help, it always means I’ll have to redo it at some point….it’s really frightening how like my mother I am), and I want to finish listening to Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water, which I have about an hour left on (I can do it while folding laundry and reorganizing and cleaning this morning), and then I want to get started on Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman. Also, one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents volumes purchased on eBay opens with Daphne du Maurier’s superb story “The Birds” (yes, the story Hitchcock’s film was based upon) so I’ve been rereading that lately. Du Maurier was such a master; I’ll probably talk about the story more once I’ve finished rereading. At some point Paul will get up and we’ll probably watch some movies this afternoon. I’ve really only been in the mood lately for true crime documentaries or comedies (we watched Dirty Grandpa before I left for the north; wrong on so many levels and yet hilarious) lately, and much as I am enjoying the new Tom Holland series on Apple TV (The Crowded Room), it’s been much too heavy for me to watch lately. We may get caught up on it today, who knows?

I also have an out of nowhere unexpected offer to write another book, which is also lovely. But it will be from scratch, unless I can find something else to repurpose. I’ll spend some time brainstorming that today, too.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader…I’ll probably be back later.

How to Bring a Blush to the Snow

Monday, and the 3rd of July. It is back to the office with me today, but of course tomorrow is a day off with pay so this week is going to be weird and off-kilter too. Yay? But this week I have page proofs to go over, errands to run, and a life to get back on track. I feel rather disoriented from being gone for an entire week for a change, which was weird. I did wind up feeling much better yesterday as the day progressed; we made a Costco run in the midst of that dreadful heat advisory (felt like 114) and I also did a lot of laundry. I emptied the dishwasher and reloaded; it isn’t full yet. I am going to try to stay efficient this week, and hope that efficiency–doing the dishes when I get home from work every night, keeping up with the laundry, putting things away rather than let them pile up–is maintained as we move sluggishly through the rest of this blazing hot summer.

We started watching a true crime documentary series last night called The Suspect, and got two episodes in (out of four total). The show is from CBC, and is about a murder and trial in St. John, Nova Scotia. It’s always interesting to watch these shows and see how the police and prosecution actually operate as opposed to the way they do in fiction. It’s actually kind of terrifying, really, and of course, it gave me an idea for a book to go with this great title I came up with in the car the other day.

I’ve also been thinking about my writing and what I want to do with it and where I want to go. I really am not in a place where I should be coming up with new concepts and structures and characters for a new novel when there are already so many in progress around here that I need to finish at some point, not to mention the short stories, too. Heavy heaving sigh.

But I slept so deeply and well last night. I woke up a few times, always afraid that’s the end of the sleep for the night, but I was literally out like the power after a hurricane. And I had no resistance to getting up to the alarm, either. I feel rested, which is wonderful. I wish I could figure out a way to get sleep like that while I am traveling, but I also think I over-caffeinate when I travel, too. I don’t nearly follow my necessary daily routines when I am traveling; I don’t drink nearly as much water and, like I previously said, over-caffeinate. This inevitably results in me becoming dehydrated, and when I am dehydrated I generally don’t get hungry, either, and I often wind up skipping meals and so forth, which means my blood sugar drops precipitously as well. In other words, I need to retrain what I do when I am traveling and/or on the road and take care of myself better than I usually do while away.

I feel terrific this morning and my mood has also significantly improved. I don’t think I’ve completely rehydrated yet, either; but I feel so much better today than I did yesterday that it’s almost like I’m an entirely new person. This is always lovely, frankly. There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep; I just wish I could unlock the secret to getting good rest every night, but no such luck.

We also watched Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, which was okay. If you’ve never read a biography of Hudson, or seen any previous documentaries about his life, there’s nothing much new here. I’ve learned a lot about Rock Hudson doing research for Chlorine–if you’re writing a novel about a closeted gay actor in the 1950’s, who better to read about than Rock?–so this documentary was nothing new for me. It was well done, and I liked that they interviewed his surviving gay exes or gay friends (for the record, I’ve also researched Tab Hunter–whom I met a few times–and Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, and several others. I find that I really like doing research, to be honest. The whole time I was gone at Dad’s I was reading and learning more about Alabama history, which I think will make my future Alabama novels much better than they would have been, and also inspired more ideas for Alabama books.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the rest of the day. It’s been so long since I’ve been at work…anyway, have a great pre-holiday Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.