Category: books i’ve read

You’re the Top

One of the most frustrating things about being a queer American is the absence of any kind of history, really. Oh, sure, there’s Stonewall and some other riots/protests in the years leading up to Stonewall; the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. But since historians have done such a marvelous job of erasing us, trying to find our history isn’t the easiest task. You have to look for clues, coding, and signs.

Because, you know, we’ve always been here. We have also always consistently, despite the muzzling of the overarching culture and society’s constant attempts to erase us from the pages of history, managed to sneak traces of our existence and our sensibilities into the art of the times. Ever wonder why so many statues and paintings decorating cathedrals, cemeteries, and palaces in Europe are depictions of well-muscled, physically beautiful men? Because the artists were gay and the only way they could make art celebrating the beauty of the male body was to do so in a religious setting. (The depictions of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, in particular, are insanely homoerotic; one such painting was used for the cover art of Anne Rice’s Violin, which I think may be her finest novel.)

This entry’s title is also one of those sneaky gay songs passing for straight. Good old Cole Porter, the witty and intelligent composer and songwriter and overall bon vivant. Queer coding is everywhere in old books and movies and television shows and music. (I’m currently reading Matt Baume’s marvelous Hi Honey I’m Homo, which focuses on queer representation on old television series from the 70s and 80s, focusing primarily on comedy shows.)

There have been queer Kings and Queens and Emperors–and two of the greatest military minds of all time were gay Kings: Alexander the Great and Frederick the Great. But our history always gets erased–and homophobic historians will argue till their dying breath that unless there’s definitive proof, those sexualities and identities cannot be named. This is both infuriating and frustrating; take the instance of King James I of England–he of the King James Version of the Bible. He didn’t have female favorites–he had male ones, and he gifted them titles, money, jewels and estates and raised them into high positions of power. But because there’s no diaries where King James admits to taking it up the bum or going down on Robert Carr, there’s no proof. Well, likewise, the only proof the man was straight was because he was married and had children…which was also his duty as King. I know of no women favorites of King James. Likewise, there are no letters or journals written by Frederick the Great where he talks about some soldier having a nice ass or having sex with some hot young ambitious Prussian noble. So, no, there’s no actual proof. There are no photographs, no videos, no nothing. But…while he was married, he had no children; and he would go years without seeing his wife. Women were banned from his court. He also wrote his actually confirmed gay secretary a letter during the course of which he said: “My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock.” (The hoops historians will leap through to deny that Frederick the Great was a big ole bottom, and that sentence doesn’t mean what it actually said, are worthy of Ringling Brothers.) There was a lot of gossip, and Frederick’s preference for young men was openly gossiped about at other European courts. And most of his art collection celebrated homoeroticism.

I would love to write a biography of Frederick, seriously.

I also find Louis XIV’s younger brother “Monsieur,” Philippe, duc d’Orléans, fascinating as well–another one who’d be interesting to write about, especially since he is known as the Father of Europe; almost every European monarch from at least 1800 is one of his descendants, despite his sexuality and his predilection for wearing women’s clothes to court.

My story in The Faking of the President addressed this erasure; I chose James Buchanan to write about because he is the only president who never married and he was allegedly in a long-term relationship with Senator Rufus King (Andrew Jackson referred to Buchanan as “Aunt Fancy”). There’s no evidence that Buchanan and King were actually a couple; all of Buchanan’s correspondence was burned, on his instructions, when he died. I wrote my story about a gay historian who firmly believed Buchanan was gay…and after effectively wrecking his academic career, someone contacts him who claims to have the long lost letters to Buchanan from his fiancée when he was a very young man–and the letters will prove his thesis.

Believe me, I get the frustrations he experienced. I don’t think I’d go to the same lengths he did to get that proof, but I empathized.

But this also is an issue in even more recent history. When I was with Mystery Writers of America, at one point I wanted to try to figure out how many queer authors were members…but the impracticality soon became evident. First, you have to start with the question of what precisely counts as queer fiction, and what is a queer book? Is it the sexuality of the author what matters? What if they are openly queer but don’t write queer characters and stories? What about a straight person who writes queer stories and characters? Does that count? Lambda Literary went through hell over this, and there’s literally no way to please everyone. Is it the book, or the author? I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s the book when it comes to awards. Yes, the author gets the award, but it’s for writing the book. So, in my opinion, I would consider Call Me By Your Name a gay novel, despite the author being straight, and my own A Streetcar Named Murder to not be one, despite my being gay. The argument can be made, of course, that being gay gives me a different perspective and point of view that’s more queered than that of straight writers, but I don’t think there’s any “gay sensibility” to Streetcar.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not the final word on my books, really.

But this becomes problematic in two regards: one, if someone never officially stated anywhere that they weren’t straight, can it be inferred? Not every man or woman who never married was queer; but marriage itself isn’t proof of heterosexuality because a lot of queer people marry opposite sex spouses and get divorced when they come out later. I was engaged at nineteen; does that serve as proof to future generations that I was straight, despite all of my writings to the contrary? People still don’t feel completely comfortable coming out TODAY, let alone before Stonewall. Take Cornell Woolrich, for example. He never married, lived with his mother for a very long time, and was an alcoholic, pretty much had a miserable, horrible life. He never said he was, but would he have during the time in which he lived? Likewise George Baxt, who wrote a series about an openly gay Black police detective in the 1960’s. Baxt never made any announcements or pronouncements one way or the other; some of his acquaintances have said that he was but Baxt himself never did in any meaningful, definitive way. So, was Baxt or someone else the first gay crime writer? Joseph Hansen was definitely out, and his David Brandstetter series was not only groundbreaking but still remains one of the definitive gay crime series.

Secondly, it also becomes a matter of privacy as well. I know any number of authors who identify as queer but don’t write queer; how do you know how far out of the closet someone actually is in their life? There’s a hugely successful thriller writer who is a gay man, but I won’t say his name here or to anyone else because I don’t know how out he is…and whose business is it, anyway? There’s a hugely successful crime writer that I know for a fact is a lesbian. But if I google her name and lesbian, there are no hits. I generally put myself into their place, really, and ask myself, okay, what if you had somehow managed to start getting published when you were closeted? You wouldn’t have written books or stories about gay men, for one, and for another, I absolutely hated when people speculated about my sexuality–because it never meant anything good for me would come of it.

I’ve never been militant about people’s need to come out, and I also don’t think it’s anyone’s place to out anyone; with the caveat that if you are closeted and actively doing the community harm, you absolutely should be outed. That congressman from Illinois, the über-conservative congressman from Illinois who was outed? Ah yes, Aaron Schock. He deserved it–and while I don’t think he ever repented from his self-loathing brand of conservatism, he certainly has been living the gay high life since it happened. J. Edgar Hoover should have been outed; he was a monster, as was the always disgusting Roy Cohn. But actors and singers? Models? Writers? People who are just navigating their lives and coming to terms with who they are? Everyone should have the time and space to come out when they are ready.

The closet is a horrible place, and it seriously fucks with the people who are living there. I can be empathetic because I know how hard it is, how terrifying it can be. It can twist people (Aaron Schock, for example, clearly felt the need to be über-homophobic just to show he wasn’t one of those people, and yes, that is twisted and sick and sad, and why I am able to feel some empathy–not sympathy–for him as his life must have been hellish, even if it was his choice), and warp them into horrific behavior….but accountability, respect, and atonement are also necessary if the closet turns you into an Aaron Schock. I mean, how much self-loathing had to be there in his mind?

Not everyone has to be a spokesperson. It depends on your level of comfort. And please give people the grace to come out at their own pace and on their own terms. Struggling to accept and love yourself–realizing there’s nothing wrong with you–is a process that isn’t made easier by speculation. I’ve indulged in speculation about actors and singers and other public figures. That kind of speculation usually happens because there are so few queer role models in the public sphere; but I can also understand why people in the public sphere would want their privacy. Being a role model is daunting and full of pressure and potholes and dips and swerves in the road. And it also begs the question–what do we out queers owe to the rest of the community? What is our responsibility? Can we opt out of those things if we aren’t comfortable? I’m certainly not comfortable speaking for the entire community; I always say “in my experience” rather than making my own the community’s.

And we do live in dark times. There is a vast right-wing conspiracy (thank you, Madam Secretary, for that accurate phrase) to wipe queers off the face of the country–and don’t you dare call me an extremist for thinking that. We are being dehumanized and devalued on a daily basis by a bunch of evil people who think they are somehow doing God’s work (that arrogance alone will keep them from Heaven), and if dehumanization isn’t the first step towards eradication, study your Weimar Republic history. This country is at a tipping point–and it wouldn’t take much to tip us over into becoming the 4th Reich, which is terrifying. Oh, Greg, you always look at the worst case scenario!

That may be true, but I’m rarely wrong–and usually the reality is much worse than I imagined.

But I still hold out hope that decent people in this country outnumber the monsters, and that decency will inevitably prevail again. The importance of coming out, because the more of us there are and the more visible we are, cannot be underestimated. This is also where that lack of history bites us in the ass. It’s very easy for haters and bigots to dismiss us as “something new” or “it was better when you were quieter” or the ever-popular “I don’t care just don’t shove it in my face” (which literally has the opposite effect on me–tell me that and I will rub your nose in it) because we’ve been erased from history and a lot of the language around us is new. Language has changed and evolved over the course of my life, as we get more information and learn more, and yes, that means you have to keep up and might actually make a mistake by saying something you didn’t know had become dated or offensive. I am learning all the time, and want to continue to learn because I want to keep growing into the best version of myself that I can be (thank you again, Ted Lasso) and I don’t understand people who don’t want to grow but would rather stagnate and calcify.

Grail Overfloweth

Work-at-home Friday morning, and I have some errands to do in a moment before I do my work-at-home duties. Or maybe I’ll do it later…wait, it’s summer again, so earlier is better but not by much in New Orleans. I was very tired when I got home last night from work–not sure why; I think the heat and humidity sapped my energy on my way into the house from the car (seriously, that’s all it takes) but I did get some of the laundry going. I slept really well last night, which was marvelous, despite waking up before seven yet again. I stayed in bed for a while though, just relaxing and luxuriating in the comfort until I decided that coffee was sounding good and it was time for me to get up. But now I am awake, sipping said coffee, and really looking forward to my three-day weekend. I have to revise a manuscript (as always) but that’s it; and I don’t think this is going to be as hard as the last one. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but whatever works. I’m not dreading it at all, which is a significant change from the past.

We watched The Other Two–this season’s not quite as good as previous–and another episode of The Crowded Room. I think I’ve already figured out what’s going on, two episodes in, but it’s a slow burn show; and it’s not easy to figure out what is going on. It’s extremely well cast, and everything about the show is top notch, but the story itself is being played out a little too slowly? Maybe the pacing will pick up as the show goes, but I worry–as we have noted with other series; the need to fill out eight or ten episodes often leads to a lot of filler and sidetracked episodes that don’t advance the story. That’s a story-telling problem fairly unique to the streaming services–sometimes shorter is better. Not everything needs to be eight or ten episodes long. Tom Holland is really good in this–I think he’s a much better actor than given credit for; but playing a Marvel super-hero stacks the odds against him (although I think he does a good job playing Peter Parker) when it comes to praise for acting and awards. (I thought he was brilliant in Cherry, but no nominations for anything.)

My desk area is a mess and so is this kitchen, so I’m probably going to spend a little time cleaning up around here after finishing this. I am my mother’s son, after all, and now that I have gotten some of the authorial pressure off me, maybe I can spend some more time cleaning up this place and reading and relaxing and so on. I really want to finish the book I’m reading, and I have some absolutely amazing ones on deck to get to–with even more coming out the rest of the summer. I will never get caught up on my reading, will I? Ah, well. I can listen to Carol Goodman on my drive up north in a couple of weeks, and on the way home, too. I’ve not taken an entire week off in a very long time, so that, too, is going to be weird. I am going up to meet Dad in Alabama for their anniversary, and then we’ll convoy back up to Kentucky. I should be able to finish a Carol Goodman on the way up as well as one on the way back.

God, and football season is looming again. What kind of season with the Saints and LSU have? There seems to be a lot of excitement around our new quarterback, Derek Carr (a fellow alum of Fresno State), so there’s no telling. There’s also a lot of expectation for LSU this season, after their remarkable turnaround last year under first year coach Brian Kelly; I’m going to not over-anticipate so as not to be horribly disappointed. Can LSU beat Alabama two years in a row? That’s a feat that only two coaches have accomplished in consecutive seasons–Les Miles at LSU (2010-2011) and Hugh Freeze at Mississippi (2014-2015). Freeze is now the Auburn head coach, and in 2024 Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC (LSU plays host to Oklahoma that year, I think; while Alabama goes to Norman and also gets to host Georgia). College football has changed so dramatically from when I was a kid…I of course remember when the SEC was merely ten teams, before Arkansas and South Carolina were added to make twelve, and Texas A&M and Missouri were added to make fourteen in 2011. It’ll be an entertaining season, to say the least. (In 2024, LSU also goes to play USC in Los Angeles, and UCLA comes to Baton Rouge. LSU doesn’t have an easy schedule that season…)

Okay, time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday before the holiday weekend, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely be back again at some point soon.

Perhaps Some Other Aeon

Tuesday morning and heading out to Metairie for an appointment. I took the entire day off because I have no idea how long this might take or how I might feel after, so I figured it was better to not have to deal with clients. It’s nothing serious, and perhaps by being vague I am intensifying interest in what my appointment is; I’m just not comfortable talking about it just yet. Who knows? Tomorrow I might be here telling everything and more, always more than you could possibly want to know. Then again, you are here, after all.

I got some great work done on the book last night, and I am feeling most self-satisfied to the point where I can barely stand myself today. I hadn’t planned on using today to finish the revision when I asked for the day off, but how opportune this has turned out to be for me. When I get home, I can do some chores around here and then dive into the final two chapters of the book. Yes, I said the final two chapters. The end is clearly in sight, and the work I did today successfully pulled the story back in from some dead ends and subplots that were not absolutely necessary. I cannot wait to get home and finish it off this afternoon. But…we’ll see how it goes. One never knows when fate is going to throw a monkey wrench into your plans. (And what an odd phrase that is. I wonder what it’s origin was?)

We finished watching The Lake last night and it was quite fun and cute. I really like Justin Gavanis, and Julia Stiles is epic as Maisie the bitch no one likes and everyone fears. We also started watching the new Apple Plus Tom Holland series, The Crowded Room, which seems relatively intense and sad at the same time. But we’re intrigued and will most likely continue with it this evening. I also like Amanda Seyfried, and she’s the female lead.

I didn’t fall into a deep sleep last night but I rested, which is all that matters. I’ll hit a wall at some point this afternoon without doubt; but that’s okay. As long as I can get my work done once I’m back home from this appointment, that would be super great. I can also get some more chores around here done, too. Or I could get back to reading, if my brain isn’t too fried. Funny how reading used to be the thing for me when I was tired, to relax and refresh and reboot my brain, and now that I’m older I can’t focus enough to read when I’m tired. My reading has slowed down a lot this past year or so; the pandemic gave me a lot of time to read, but for the longest time I couldn’t. I did reread a lot of Mary Stewart novels to get me into reading again–I also reread some other marvelous older titles that I love, like Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters–and that broke through that barrier to reading. Maybe I should do that again, once I get my current book finished reading? But I’ve also got some killer reads to get to–new books by Kelly J. Ford, Eli Cranor, Megan Abbott, and S. A. Cosby, with a new Carol Goodman and Laura Lippman coming later this summer. And then of course there are all the books I’ve got here that I haven’t read, because I am a book hoarder.

And I got the notes for the other manuscript I am trying to get finished and out of my hair as well. So, if I can get the last two chapters finished today, and write the epilogue, I can start doing the macro edits. I have a long lovely weekend ahead of me, thanks to the Juneteenth holiday, and of course the week after that I am heading to Alabama and Kentucky to spend some time with my dad. Their anniversary is–was–June 26th, so I am going to meet Dad there in Alabama for their anniversary and then we’ll caravan back up to Kentucky. And then we’re in July–another truncated work week for me–and next thing you know it’s Bouchercon and football season and then the holidays and the year ends and that, my dear Constant Reader, is how you run out of time and how quickly life shoots past.

And on that cheery note, I am going to head into the spice mines and start getting ready for this appointment. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Shallow Then Halo

Monday morning and heading into the office to start the work week. I have tomorrow off, as I have a dentist’s appointment, and with no idea how long that would take or what they might be doing to me while I am there, I just figured it was easier, much easier, to simply take the day off so as not to worry about coverage and when I can get to the office and so forth. I am very sick of my mouth and very sick of dealing with my teeth; I am very tired of looking like someone from the holler and I’d like to get it all taken care of once and for all. I will spare you my rant about dentists and my teeth, but make no promises for how I may be after the appointment.

Probably safer to take the day off.

I slept well again last night and feel very rested this morning, which is a lovely way to start the week but I am not fully awake yet, I don’t think. Come on, coffee, work your magic. I did get progress made on the revision this weekend, which has me actually back on schedule, which, of course, is absolutely lovely. I shall just keep plugging away at this every day until it’s finished, which will be this week and then I have to do revisions on another book and when that’s finished, I can breathe again. Both of these should have been finished long ago, but then again here we are, you know? I didn’t expect everything to go off the rails the way it did after Thanksgiving (although things were already off the rails and had been for quite some time, frankly, I just refused to accept or admit it), but that also just goes to show you need to be careful when setting incredibly tight deadlines–you can never completely and fully prepare for everything life is going to throw at you, but it definitely appears as though scheduling tight deadlines is kind of asking for it, in a way. You’d think I’d eventually learn, but then again–I am a stubborn-ass kind of fool who never learns when it comes to deadlines.

It was a nice weekend, really. I couldn’t focus on reading non-fiction, so spent some more time with nonfiction, which is nice. I really should make the time to read for an hour every day. I think it would help stimulate my creativity, and reading is always a learning experience for me. I try to shut off the editorial brain when I am reading something for pleasure, but it’s not always easy–nor is the oh, that was a clever way to do that or I wish I had thought of that or what a lovely piece of writing that paragraph was! Nope, that’s just as hard to turn off as the editorial brain. I’ve also been editing a manuscript, and that also has something to do with the editorial brain; I am already in that mode and I was also revising one of my own; not really surprising that I’m not able to consume and enjoy fiction whilst in the middle of doing that. I did get some chores done and I did get some revising done and I also got some rest, which is always important. We finished watching Now and Then on Apple, which was full of surprises, and then moved on to season two of The Lake, a cute little half-hour comedy on Amazon Prime. The stars are Julia Stiles (who plays the uptight bitch stepsister to perfection) and the guy who played Felix on Orphan Black, whose name I can’t think of at the moment…JORDAN GAVARIS. I think he’s an out gay actor (or he’s an actor who primarily plays gay men) who was simply brilliant in Orphan Black (the entire cast was terrific, but it was hard to notice given Tatiana Maslany’s tour-de-force as all the clones), and he is fantastic as a self-absorbed drama queen on this show, which is clever and original and funny. I recommend the show; it’s witty and funny and pretty original–and no one is talking about it, which is a shame.

Of course I am going to spend a week with my dad later this month and hopefully, I won’t have to worry about having anything due or checking emails that week, so I should be able to get a lot of reading done while I am up there. I’ll probably listen to another Carol Goodman on the way up there, but I am also starting to run out of Carol Goodmans (write more, Carol!) but I also suppose I could find another author who’d be fun to listen to in the car. (Another author I was listening to on long drives really pissed me off with her last one I listened to, so won’t be going back to her for a while.) Oooh, Lisa Lutz! Lisa Unger! Jennifer McMahon! There are so many good writers and I have soooo much reading to catch up on, too…

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

But I’m Not

Sunday and I slept late this morning and i am not a bit ashamed of it, quite frankly. The opportunities to sleep in are rare these days–getting up early so often for so long has adjusted and shifted my body clock in ways I’m getting used to but don’t like, and chief among those ways is the inability to sleep in. Yesterday I was up before eight, for example, but this morning it wasn’t even nine when I got up, and I could have easily stayed in bed longer. But there’s spice to mine today, and while there is still a lot of it to get done, I am feeling very good about things this morning. I actually felt really good about them yesterday if I am going to be completely honest. I got two chapters done and finished editing a manuscript (not my own) and turned it in to the publisher, which felt marvelous to be finished with that. Deadlines and juggling projects is something I’ve always done, but something I’ve noticed since the pandemic shutdown is deadlines are much more stressful and demanding on me, and take a bigger emotional toll than they used to. Probably part and parcel of the long COVID rewiring of my brain, but whereas before, I relished the pressure and it drove me to work harder, now it shuts me down and/or depresses me, which has the exact opposite reaction it used to have with me: instead of driving me, I think oh I’ll never get this all done so why bother and I end up blowing things off completely. Depression is quite the bitch, you know.

But I am very pleased with the work I got done yesterday and look forward to today’s work. I also did a load of dishes and laundry yesterday, and some cleaning. But after I was finished with work for the day, my brain was too fatigued to read so I watched movies on television, discovered two gems I’ve been wanting to revisit: Cruising and The Last of Sheila. I wanted to watch Cruising because I remember all the controversies about the movie while it was being filmed (yes, even in rural Kansas we heard about the gays being mad about the movie). I eventually watched it in the mid-1990’s. Paul is a huge Al Pacino fan, and when we moved in together he owned almost the entire Pacino filmography on videocassettes, so one night we watched Cruising. I didn’t much care for it when I watched it the first time, but I’ve wanted to watch it again–when I watched I wasn’t yet a published crime writer–because the story itself is interesting to me. A hot young ambitious cop sent undercover into the gay BDSM/leather community to look for a serial killer? The question of identity and sexual confusion that could arise from playing the part, which entailed going out and picking up (or being picked up) by gay men expecting some sex? I mean, you have to admit that’s a great set-up and concept for story. The Oscar winning director William Friedkin (he won for The French Connection but was much better known for directing The Exorcist) failed and ended up with a deeply flawed film. Pacino was also robbed of a far greater performance due to the homophobic cowardice of the either the director or the studio. Rewatching, the film’s flaws are even more apparent, but it’s a shame. It could have been a great film–and it does remain one of the few Hollywood films that actually depicts gay bar culture of the late 1970s the way it was–but I don’t know what went wrong with it, but it’s still a great idea. I also liked seeing New York as dirty and grimy, the way it was during that time period before gentrification came to Manhattan. It’s also fun seeing old movies where people who went on to greater stardom later had bit parts or cameos; Ed O’Neill popped up on screen at one point, as did several others that made me think, hmmmm.

If I had the time or inclination, I would take that basic framework of an idea and turn it into something stronger than the film. There was also a book it was based on, but it’s rare and used copies are insanely expensive. It also reminded me of a gay crime novel I read as a teenager living in Kansas; I may have been in college, I don’t remember, called A Brother’s Touch by Owen Levy. The book was about a brother who comes to New York to look into his estranged brother’s life after he is murdered–they were estranged because the dead brother was openly gay–and begins to question his own sexuality after being enmeshed into the gay community of Manhattan at the time. It was reprinted recently and I got a copy (by recently I mean in the years since Katrina; I have no concept of time and its passage anymore); I should move it closer to the top of the TBR pile. I wish I could still read as voraciously as I used to…something else that has slowed down with getting older.

After watching this I wanted to rewatch a classic old crime film of the old school, The Last of Sheila, which I’ve always loved. Co-written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins and directed by Herbert Ross, it’s a whodunit worthy of Christie herself, in which a widowed producer invites some film community members on hard times for a week on his yacht. Everyone invited was at the party a year before where the producer’s wife Sheila wound up being killed by a hit-and-run driver, and the producer, whose known for loving to play games, has come up with a game for his guests to play. Everyone gets a card, and every day they will stop somewhere they will look for clues to the identity of whoever holds the card of the day–the first is a shoplifter, the second is a homosexual–and of course, the game turns dark and ugly when the producer host–played to sadistic asshole perfection by James Coburn, is murdered…and it turns out the game their host was playing had layers none of the guests knew about going in. The cast is a perfect time capsule of early 1970’s stardom: Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, James Mason, Joan Hackett, a beautiful young Ian McShane, and of course, Coburn. It has twists and turns and surprises, and is so markedly clever that it’s hard to describe without spoiling anything…and the surprises are what make it such a great and fun film. This was one of our Sunday movie-after-church movies, I think; I do remember seeing it in the theater and being impressed and amazed. One thing I absolutely loved in the rewatch was the books scattered over every set–they are all mystery novels by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, and Erle Stanley Gardner, which should tip the viewer off that you are in for a mystery influenced by the master crime plotters of the time. It’s really a shame the film wasn’t a success, because it would have been amazing if Perkins and Sondheim had collaborated on more scripts like this one. As I was watching, I kept thinking how much I would love to write a puzzle-type mystery like this one; I’ve always feared such a thing was outside of my wheelhouse so I have always been afraid to try. Who knows? Maybe I will.

I feel very rested this morning and I am not dreading diving into the book this morning, which is nice. I don’t think I have the mindspace and bandwidth to work on multiple things all at the same time anymore, if that makes sense. I don’t know if it has to do with the long COVID rewriting of my brain waves or what, but the last few books I’ve written or worked on–going back to Bury Me in Shadows–have been more stressful than fun for me to write. Writing on a deadline is always stressful, and I rarely, if ever, actually make deadlines. But having multiple projects going on at the same time now feels like I am not devoting enough of my time and attention to any of them, let alone all of them, and that makes me feel uncomfortable about the work. Of course, my last three books–and my last anthology–have all gotten a lot of mainstream award attention, which makes it seem weirder. Which, of course, makes me wonder if the stress and the heavy burden pressure of multiple projects going is somehow making me produce somehow better work than before, and do I really want to mess with that at all? It never ceases to amaze me how neurotic I am about being a writer, and how afraid I am that any change or variation means it’s all over for me now.

I do wonder sometimes if other writers have that same secret fear: that the well will eventually run dry or that we’ll forget how to do what we do. People like to call me prolific; I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that I am and that it’s not a bad thing (I always try to figure out if being called something is bad–which goes back to being called a fairy as a child and thinking he was saying ferry and being very confused). John D. MacDonald was prolific; so were Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, and Erle Stanley Gardner. I think my insecurities came into play when people started calling me prolific; I am so used to being insulted that I assumed it must be an insult as well, like it was something I should be ashamed of or something. I’ve decided to embrace it as a compliment. I am sure there are literary writers who produce one novel every ten years or so who would think it an insult, but I don’t respect them so don’t really care much what they think. And if I am not as prolific as I used to be–which I am not–it’s nothing to be ashamed of; I’ve gotten older, have gone through some things, and I don’t have the energy that I used to have. My imagination still rages out of control at any and all times, of course, but I don’t have the energy to fool myself into thinking every idea I have will turn into a short story, an essay, or a novel. I certainly won’t live long enough to turn all the ideas I already have into longer works of whatever style and kind.

And on that note, I am diving back into the book. I am getting another cup of coffee and putting some bread in the toaster for later, and I may or may not do another Pride month entry later today. Anyway, you have the loveliest Sunday possible, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

Absolutely Fabulous

I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend Nancy Garden lately.

Nancy was seventy-six when she passed in 2014, and I’m still not used to living in a world without Nancy in it. She was wonderful, and one of the most kind people I’ve ever known. She was a small woman with an enormous heart, and she wrote books for children and young adults. Much to my own shame, I didn’t know anything about Nancy until I reviewed her book The Year They Burned the Books for Impact News here in New Orleans. It was a riveting account of censorious parents gone wild, demanding books be removed from schools and libraries; led by a zealot, they even burned the books in a bonfire, The book was told from the perspective of a group of teenaged friends, some of whom were questioning their sexualities (and gender identities) who were outraged and fought back. The kids triumphed in the end, and the book was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

But the thing that came out of this read that was transformational for me was reading in the press release that the book was based on real events…and then I wanted to know more.

What happened was Nancy had written a young adult novel in 1982 called Annie on My Mind, which was one of the first young adult romance novels to focus on two teenaged girls falling in love. Intrigued, I got a copy and read it…and loved it. It’s such a beautiful, heartfelt and emotional story, so gorgeously written…the thought that anyone could have objected to this book was, frankly, offensive to me. I started digging around to find out more. It was a suburban Kansas City school district that banned Annie for obscenity; and yes, the angry parents’ group burned the books. In 1992. (Thirty years later and here we are again.) The students and the ACLU sued to get the book back, and it went to trial. Annie and the First Amendment won that fight, but listening to Nancy tell the story about the trial, and being cross-examined–and the scope the judge allowed in her cross–was horrifying to me. Nancy met and fell in love with her partner when they were in college. They were still together when Nancy passed. A long-term, completely monogamous and loving same sex marriage any straight couple would envy…and she had to answer questions about her morality; her sex life; how many partners had she had during the course of her life; what they did in bed together–intimate, private details that had nothing to do with whether the book was obscene but effectively dehumanized Nancy, her partner, and their relationship for the court record.

I read from Annie on My Mind when I participated in my first ever Banned Books Reading, at the House of Blues in 2006. They’d invited me because I had been banned a few years earlier (hello, Virginia!), and I decided to honor Nancy by reading from her book that was actually burned because the one person and the one thing that kept me sane during that entire Virginia situation was Nancy. When it first happened, Nancy called me immediately as soon as she knew. Being the self-absorbed person that I am (that most authors are), I was freaking out for any number of reasons, but it was personal. Talking to Nancy on the phone made me realize that the principle at stake here wasn’t me or my career, but the kids at the school and the queer kids in the area. I had to remove myself and my personal feelings from the situation and look at it in a more broader sense; ignoring it or doing nothing was cowardly. I never wanted to be an activist, really, but there are times…when you don’t have a choice. (I will write more about that incident at another time.)

And whenever I went to the dark side while all of that was going on, all I ever had to do was email or call Nancy. What she went through was so much worse than what I did; I cannot imagine the horror of seeing your own books being burned by zealots, nor being forced to testify in court about the private, most intimate moments of my life.

And maybe, just maybe, for Pride you might want to give Annie on my Mind a look-see? You can order it here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/annie-on-my-mind-nancy-garden/10375680?ean=9780374400118.

Thanks, Nancy. I wish you were still with us to provide wise counsel and advice to us as we battle the latest wave of homophobic banners and censors. But I’m also glad you didn’t live to see have to fight this tiresome battle yet again. Thanks for everything, my friend. I miss you.

Road, River and Rail

Work at home Friday, and all is well thus far in the Lost Apartment. I did make it through the day somehow–don’t ask me how–but I didn’t feel tired for most of the day and it wasn’t until I headed home that I hit a wall of sorts. I had to pick up the mail–yay for my copy of All The Sinners Bleed!–and then picked up a prescription during a massive thunderstorm, which was kind of fun. I actually love when it rains; I just don’t love that no one in New Orleans seems to know how to drive in rain. One would think that, given how much torrential rain we get here, that–I don’t know–that drivers here would have learned how at some point? (I also got some other buys from eBay in the mail; Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked, which looks fun, and Mary M. Luke’s A Crown for Elizabeth, which picks up the tale of the Tudor dynasty with the continuation of the story from Catherine the Queen, covering the years 1533 thru 1558. I am excited about both, to be honest.) Paul worked on a grant last night while I watched the last extended gay disco remix episode of the Vanderpump Rules reunion, which was remarkable. I do want to write about reality television, particularly the Bravo flavored kind, but I am also trying to do all these extra Pride entries about not just being a queer crime writer but being a queer American trying to navigate an increasingly hostile world. There’s also been so much coverage of the scandalous last season of this show–along with its mother show, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–that I don’t really have anything new to add to the discourse, other than to make some observations from a cultural and societal perspective? I think it also might not hurt to unpack why I get so caught up in the (usually) manufactured drama of these shows.

But after I got home and watched, my brain was a bit too fried from the day and the week for the work to be able to make up for the lost time last night and get back on track. It’s getting very close, to the point where I am almost starting to get antsy and have to resist the urge to hurry and finish it as quickly as possible. I am always afraid the endings of my books are rushed because I am so heartily tired of it already and cannot wait to be finished and on to the next thing. I am looking forward to this weekend, primarily for the rest and also for getting things very caught up that have kind of slid this week. I have some chores that have to be done today around the work-at-home duties, and I’d like to finish reading Chris Clarkson’s That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street this weekend, since I now have the latest S. A. Cosby, Megan Abbott, and Christopher Bollen novels to get through. My reading has definitely slid a bid this year, too. I spent some time last night reading the introductions to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology as well as an old MWA one, edited by Robert Fish, that came in Wednesday’s mail, With Malice for All (or something like that). I read the first story in the Fish MWA anthology, and it was very creepy and very short and quite the punch in the face to start off the book.

I really need to get back to the Short Story Project, too.

It was a pleasant week, for the most part. I got a lot of work done this week, which feels great, and I feel pretty confident about moving on and getting this all finished sooner rather than later. I’m looking forward to sleeping in both mornings this weekend, and while I am going to have to leave the house to run errands at some point, at least this morning I can sit here in my chair sipping coffee and thinking I may not have to leave the house all weekend. At one point this week during the office I wandered up to the front desk where some of my co-workers were sitting during the needle exchange (making it Wednesday afternoon, thank you, logic modules in my brain) and they were asking each other icebreaker type questions. When I walked up, the current question was what animal would you want to be so I replied, “My cat, because never leaving the house and sleeping 22 hours a day sounds really appealing.” Scooter has been super-cuddly and affectionate lately, more so than usual, which is saying something because he’s always been super-cuddly and affectionate. I worry about him because we’ve now had him for thirteen years this September, and he was supposedly already two years old when we got him. He’s a sweet boy. I think we’ll probably always have a ginger cat; I suspect when we lose Scooter we may even end up with two of them.

The Strand Critics’ Award nominations came out yesterday, and as always it’s a friend-studded list. Shout out to every finalist. The books nominated that I’ve read are superb, so the choice of a winner isn’t going to be easy–glad the choice didn’t fall into my hands. I am already glad I am not judging any awards this year–I’ve already read so many good books this year that I don’t know that I could chose just the one–and like I said, I’ve not gotten to this year’s releases by some of my favorite authors (and people) and there’s a new Laura Lippman dropping this summer. Woo-hoo! And of course, my TBR pile is already stacked with amazing reads I’d love to make a serious dent in this year.

And on that note, I think I’m going to grab another cup of coffee and put the dishes away and start making a dent in the mess that is the Lost Apartment before I start working for the day. May you have a fabulous Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again later.

Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires

Wednesday Pay-the-Bills day, and I am awake and slurping coffee, which is truly hitting the spot this morning. I slept well last night, and I think I am actually getting used to getting up at this ungodly, abhorrent hour. When I sleep well, I have no problem getting up in the morning (although I always long to stay in bed longer) and I am pretty well conscious, for the most part. (The coffee will do it’s job indubitably before I have to leave the house for the office, which is lovely, as always.) Yesterday wasn’t too bad. I did run uptown to get the mail on the way home (there was exactly one letter; my copy of All the Sinners Bleed, the new S. A. Cosby, won’t arrive until tomorrow), and I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home. I unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned out the sink, revised another chapter, and just chilled out for the rest of the evening. I’ve got a couple of nonfiction reads going at the same time (Hi Honey I’m Homo by Matt Baume and The Way They Were:  How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen by Robert Hofler–I do love books about the making of movies! And of course I am still reading The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough) so I finished the Hofler last night (cannot reiterate how much I love books about the making of classic films. The Way We Were, however flawed it may be, it probably my favorite Barbra Streisand movie–either that or What’s Up Doc.

I have a ZOOM meeting tonight as well, so I’ll probably come straight home from the office today after work. The excitement never stops, does it?

I was also thinking some more about my Pride writings, and whether or not I really want to talk about the homophobia I’ve experienced in my career. I do think these things need to be addressed–absolutely no one should have the false impression this kind of shit doesn’t still go on, isn’t still happening–but at the same time, it’s hard to write about those things without getting angry, or becoming THAT Gay Man (similar in some ways to the Angry Black Woman, I think; a trope that is easily dismissed by the dominant culture rather than examined in the ways it should be; if a Black woman is angry, why not find out why rather than being dismissive?) who people can easily stop listening to. Homophobia sucks, and being on the receiving end of it is no pleasure for anyone. It’s even less pleasant to experience and write about. But these things happen, and not shining a light on these unacceptable behaviors allows them to fester and grow. I like to believe sometimes (when feeling more charitable than usual) that people aren’t aware sometimes that what they are saying or writing is homophobic because that shit is baked so deeply into our society and culture; if you never examine yourself, you never learn and grow.

It amazes me how many people think they already “know enough” and don’t need to continue learning and growing. I always want to keep learning, keep modifying myself into the best version of myself that I can be (thank you, Ted Lasso), and growing into a more compassionate, empathetic person. It would be nice to talk about gay joy, you know?

For me, coming out was like a rebirth of sorts. I was absolutely miserable before I started living out loud as a gay man; I kind of led two different lives in which I had two different sets of friends that knew nothing about the others. But the real life was the closeted one, even though hanging out with other gays and going to gay bars was like a breath of fresh air after being stuck in a smoke-filled room for hours. I was keeping so much from either set of friends that I never really felt super-close to any of them; I loved them all dearly, but felt disconnected from them because they didn’t really know me. I was thirty when I started merging my two lives together, and believe me, coming out didn’t solve much for me, either. I felt freer, but I also had to start learning how to navigate being gay all of the time instead of having a few brief hours of freedom every week. I didn’t make many gay friends, and most of the gay people I knew were my co-workers…and the last thing I ever wanted to do was get physically and emotionally involved with a co-worker. There was still a lifetime of self-loathing and self-flagellation stuffed into my head as I started to reeducate and reevaluate myself and my life. The lovely thing about coming out at thirty meant I wiped the slate clean and had to start really figuring out who I actually was. It also makes sense that my writing never went anywhere while I was closeted; I wasn’t a complete person,. so how could I write and create compelling characters that are fully rounded when I was still under construction?

The weird thing is that thirty-one years later, I still feel like I’m figuring out who I am and what I want from my life…as the sands in the hourglass continue to run out. But while there have certainly been difficult times since I waltzed out of the closet, I’ve also been happier and more content and at peace than I ever was before. It might be age and experience, I don’t know, but I believe that I could have never reached that point while living in the closet. Had I continued to deny my true self, how miserable would my life have turned out? It was already going down a dark path already; the 1980’s and HIV/AIDS still cast a long shadow over my life.

But I’ve also known joy in the second half of my life; joy I never experienced or felt in the first half of it. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything…I’ve never regretted it, not once, not even when all the forces of the religious right and their useful idiots in elected office have arrayed themselves against people like me.

On that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

I Wear Your Ring

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. Woo-hoo! The excitement never stops, does it? I slept pretty well last night–well enough to not want to get up this morning–and so feel a bit groggy this morning. I’m not certain how busy we’ll be at work today, but I am hoping it will be an easy day. Yesterday wasn’t a bad dat; I managed to make progress on the book, got some things done around the house, and we watched the new Arnold Schwarzenegger Netflix show FUBAR, which was entertaining enough. In some ways, the show almost feels like a sequel to True Lies, in which he played a spy whose wife had no idea what he actually did for a living. This show takes that premise to its next logical conclusion, should the wife never find out she’s married to a spy. It had some funny moments, has a really good cast, and high production values. This week the Vanderpump Rules final reunion episode airs, but some of my shows–Ted Lasso, sob–are completed. Not sure what we will be watching next–I imagine I’ll be watching the Randall scandal documentary (more Vanderpump Rules drama) at some point, but not terribly sure that’s something Paul will want to watch.

I didn’t read a lot this weekend; the little writing I was able to do, along with other miniscule irritations over the course of the weekend, managed to tire out my brain to the point where being able to focus on reading wasn’t likely. Progress is progress, after all, and maybe I’m a bit behind my usual schedule, or the one I was trying to keep with it, but it will get completed on time, methinks.

I have my dates and everything all screwed up again; I keep thinking it’s later in June than it actually is. Part of that has to do with the usual “working on a book so not paying attention to dates” thing I inevitably get caught up in, and I imagine the rest has to do with the year being very off-balance for me thus far. I handed over MWA in the middle of January, whilst in the midst of revising two of my own books while editing another, and then Mom died and then it was the festivals and then Malice and now suddenly it’s June, which doesn’t seem real–and I am going back up north the last week of this month. I’d wanted to take a week off this summer just to work on things around the house–purging the attic, for one, and doing a deep, thorough cleaning for another–but looks like that time is going to be burnt being there for my dad. There are, of course, worse things to burn off your vacation time with; and it’s nice feeling closer to my father. I just hate the reason behind it, you know?

At least the Internet is continuing to work for me at home. (Probably just jinxed that.)

It apparently rained overnight; part of the reason I slept so well, probably, and so today is one of those weird mornings where it feels cool because the humidity hasn’t fully recharged yet from the rain.

I’m also trying to decide what my next Pride month entry should be. I’ve got a couple already going–one about being confronted by homophobia within the mystery publishing community–but I find myself hesitant to post it because of not wanting to be “that gay”, which is stupid. If I don’t call out homophobia where and when I see it, I am contributing to the problem. I guess I should be a little less concerned with hurting people’s feelings, or something? I don’t know. But I am heading into the spice mines this morning, and will check in with you later. Maybe there will be a “homophobia in crime fiction” entry posted later, you never know…but one thing for sure, I will be back tomorrow morning.

Fotzepolitic

Sunday morning and things went about as well as could be expected yesterday. Friday evening I had some items delivered from Sam’s Club, but hadn’t noticed that one of the items ordered actually had to be shipped; it arrived this morning here at the Lost Apartment. And while I was waiting for my Cox cable technician to arrive (I rearranged the entire morning to accommodate their 10-12 am window), I got a text message at 11:30 informing me that my appointment was cancelled; then came the email stating we know things happen! Reach out and reschedule! I reached out, only to be told that the technician arrived, called, got voicemail, and departed DESPITE MY HAVING GIVEN THE SAME INSTRUCTIONS I ALWAYS GIVE: OUR BUZZER DOESN’T WORK SO YOU HAVE TO CALL OR TEXT WHEN YOU ARRIVE.

Also, I had my phone with me all morning, so I wouldn’t miss the call. No one called, I have no recents, and I have no voicemails.

This obviously threw me off my game yesterday for writing, but I did get some done. I am a bit behind on the schedule I’d given myself, but I think it’s going to go relatively easily from now on. I ran some errands, came home, got cleaned up, and dove into the writing. I wasn’t really able to shake off the mood, so after struggling for a few hours to get the chapter done, I called it a day and repaired to my easy chair. Needing to cleanse my soul, I did a rewatch binge of the first episodes of Ted Lasso, which are even more charming on rewatch because you get to see all the callbacks you might have forgotten about later in the run of the show, like Keeley acknowledging that she “dated a 23 year old footballer when she was seventeen, only now I’m thirty and I’m still dating 23 year old footballers” while talking to Rebecca. You can almost see the light come on in her eyes–what the hell am I doing–which kind of opens the door for her breaking up with Jamie later. Even though they don’t know each other well, she recognizes that it’s time for her to grow-up and start thinking about her own future, while talking to Rebecca–which is the first building block in their close friendship. Then later, when Paul was finished working for the day we watched Bama Rush, which was kind of disappointing. Originally focusing on four girls about to go through sorority rush at the University of Alabama–which I guess is this viral thing on TikTok–it got a bit derailed with the director started seeing similarities in behavior of the girls planning to go through rush as she went through being a lifelong alopecia sufferer…which could have been made a lot more interesting, but I always thought the point of a documentary was the director didn’t make themselves a part of the story? I think the point she was trying to make was valid, but the way the documentary was a edited together simply didn’t work. The focus shifted, and it derailed after that.

But Jesus God in heaven, those sorority houses in Tuscaloosa! The fraternity houses! They’re enormous. I had kind of figured Greek life at universities would be declining, given how old-fashioned and restrictive they can be, especially sororities–and this newer younger generation doesn’t seem as interested as preserving traditions and institutions as previous ones were, but Bama Rush showed me things I didn’t know…that “Rush Consultant” is actually a career, for one thing…and the documentary only briefly touched on the Machine, a supposedly secret society made up of representatives from every fraternity and sorority that controls everything at the University. (I kind of love that shit; I’ve long been an admirer of Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, which kind of touched on that kind of thing.)

Today I am going to get shit done. Later this morning I am going to make a very brief and short grocery run to the Rouse’s in the CBD, and then I am coming home to spend the rest of the day writing and reading. I didn’t read yesterday, which was a bit disappointing; I’d hoped to finish reading my current book this weekend so I could move along to Megan Abbott’s new one; but anticipation is always lovely, and perhaps I can get along to that next week. One can always hope, can’t one?

But I feel rested and awake this morning. My back and legs are a bit tight and sore, so I think I’m to use that massage roller thing for my back and maybe do some stretching (which I should do every day) to see how it feels. I am planning on getting a chapter finished, maybe doing some reading, and then making my grocery run so I can come back and do more writing. I need to write most of the day, to make up for the last couple of days of irritation and aggravation that kept me out of the proper mindset.

My mind has been all over the place this week, which is weird, but also kind of normal for me. Whenever I am in the weeds with a book my mind goes off in all kinds of directions and produces all manner of thoughts and ideas. I started writing several other entries yesterday, specifically for Pride Month and specifically about being gay–sometimes about being a gay author and what that’s like; I always forget that people never really quite grasp or understand what it’s like to be a queer writer in an intolerant country, of what it feels like to be othered by every community in which you try to find a place where you belong. I’ve never wanted to be THAT gay; the one constantly having to remind people of what is and isn’t homophobia, and is always having to point it out and teach straight people about what it’s like. It’s exhausting, frankly, and sometimes the well-meaning ignorance is highly offensive, but you know they don’t mean it that way so you push down the offense and ignore it while calmly trying to explain to the person why they can’t say or do that…while also not trying to hurt their feelings (although had they put even the tiniest bit of thought into it, would have never said anything offensive in the first place). It’s exhausting having to see trash equate your sexuality with pedophilia and grooming on a daily basis. It’s exhausting having to constantly have to defend your right to exist, having to constantly prove you’re a human being worthy of being treated the same as everyone else…

The mental health of queer people is always under constant assault.

And on that note, I am going to get some more coffee and start working. Either on the book, or on one of these Pride entries. I can’t decide which. We’ll see. Anyway, enjoy your Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.