Saturday morning and I am off to Alabama later this morning. I still have to make a packing list, finish some chores around here, and get gas on my way out of town, but there’s no rush and no need to stress about getting there. I’ll probably stop somewhere to eat lunch after I cross the Mississippi state line, and then will have dinner with Dad up there. I’m excited to see Dad again, but I am a little worried about the drive and my stamina. I am planning to drive back to New Orleans on Friday so I can have two days to recover from the lengthy drive, which will be exhausting. I am going to listen to Carol Goodman’s The Drowning Tree–which I started listening to on the drive back from Panama City Beach last October, but never finished; I need to start over but that’s perfectly fine; I love Carol’s work, and I am probably going to listen to Lisa Unger on the way home. I really wish I had started listening to audiobooks in the car years ago, you know?
Yesterday was nice and relaxing. I like working at home on paperwork and stuff because outside of an attention-needing kitten with BIG energy, I don’t have any distractions. I can focus in a way that I can’t when I’m in the office. But once my work was done I went out and ran my errands–picking up things for Paul while I’m gone, mail, prescriptions, etc.–and then came home and relaxed. We finished Dead Boy Detectives, which we both absolutely loved, and then caught up on Abbott Elementary before moving on to the new season of Hacks, which has not declined in quality at all. I did some cleaning around here yesterday, too–got the laundry finally caught up, and almost caught up with the dishes, too (last load needs to go in this morning before I leave), so I can leave with a clear conscience knowing I am only going to come home to Paul’s mess, and he really doesn’t make much of one in the kitchen anymore. He generally just uses the microwave or makes scrambled eggs for the most part while I’m gone.
I also signed and uploaded my tax returns yesterday–another refund, thank you, baby Jesus–and so that’s out of my hair. It’s always nice to not have to worry about things and go on a trip with a fairly clear conscience. I’ll probably take some stuff with me to read and work on, knowing I may not have time to do much of anything while I am there. Dad will have been gone for almost two weeks by the time we get up there on Monday, so he is going to have lots of chores to do–and he never allows me to help, which drove Mom crazy. This time it’s a stamina issue for me, which is truly sad given I’m sixty-two and he’ll be eighty-two later this year, but I also had two major surgeries since Labor Day and damn it, I am old. Twenty years ago I’d probably already be back to normal and going to the gym three times a week trying to burn off the fat I would think I had gained during my long inactivity. I put on a shirt the other day for work and wondered for the first time in years “does this make me look good or do I look fat?”–so maybe the vanity is coming back, which may not be an entirely bad thing.
I just checked the weather for both Alabama and Kentucky and looks like a lot of rain, warm during the day and cold at night. Well, we won’t be going anywhere at night but I’ll need to take a jacket of some sort with me just in case; a zip hoodie should do the trick.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely weekend, and I am not sure when I will be back. Possibly tomorrow, or who knows?
Work at home Friday, and Trip Eve, since tomorrow I will be off to Alabama. I slept really well last night, and of course had to get up at six to feed His Royal Sparkiness. I went back to bed for another hour before His Highness decided I either needed to get up or he was going to cuddle with me. That was peaceful for about five minutes, before he decided he needed to either eat my watch or bite off my Breathe Right nose strip. Comfortable as the bed was, I was awake and finally decided to just get up. I have a nice day of work-at-home duties to do, a couple of errands to run later, and I also have to start packing and so forth for the trip. The house is also a mess I can’t leave in this condition, so I’ll need to get the place cleaned up at some point today as well.
After work yesterday I picked up the mail, where I got my copies of Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett and The Bootlegger’s Daughter by Nadine Nettman. Both women are amazing people and amazing writers I get to call friends, which is another reminder of how charmed my life actually is. It’s so easy to get morose about life and everything because so many little things are there to get you down all the time, and those minor issues and concerns and irritations gradually build until you’re just grumpy all the time. I keep being hard on myself, but 2023 was a lot; one thing after another and I am still not completely healed from everything, and it’s okay to still have bad days now and then. At least there are more good days than bad.
And with the world burning down all around us, who isn’t having bad days?
I’ve pretty much decided on my reads for the trip. The audiobooks are of course going to be from Carol Goodman or Lisa Unger, and I am looking forward to listening to them in the car. I don’t know how much time I will actually have to read while I am up there, but I know when Dad is doing chores he refuses to let me help with (“you’re on vacation and you don’t do chores on vacation”–despite the fact that he always has) I’ll have some time to read. I’ve certainly spent more time in Kentucky and Alabama this past year than I have in probably ten years (Alabama is more like forty years), but I don’t mind. It’s nice to reconnect with your roots and your history, even after forty years, and every time I go up there I get inspiration for more stories and books about the county. Whether I will ever actually write them remains to be seen, but I do like the inspiration.
I also spent some more time down the Noah Presgrove wormhole. It’s just such a bizarre story, and that they still don’t know much despite the death occurring eight months ago. There were some more posts on the Facebook page yesterday, including one that triggered an outpouring from the page members about personal tragedies in their own lives–sons “murdered” by their wives; nieces and daughters and sisters whose murderers were never caught (I am really getting a bad opinion of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation–the OSBI), and more hard feelings. It’s a litany of tragedy and sadness and lack of closure, and you can’t help but feel bad for them all, even from a removed distance. I don’t know if I ever will base a book out of this story–trying to explain the injuries alone would be an exercise in madness–and obviously, it wouldn’t be based on the actual case but would arise from the same kind of situation. It feels morbid to talk about writing about other people’s tragedies, doesn’t it? But…I am a crime writer and it’s a very strange case. And it’ll eventually be a true crime documentary, I bet.
I also had my soul recharged by a phone call with a very dear friend who is also a writer yesterday, and it really did feed my soul. It’s very easy to feel depressed and discouraged and isolated when you’re a writer who doesn’t get the chance to talk, either face to face or on the phone, with my writer friends very often, and it’s always so enriching for my writerly soul. When I got off the phone I was in a very cheery mood and excited about writing again for the first time in a while. I’ve been dissecting my writing process a lot lately, and my process–easier to do when you actually aren’t doing anything, really–trying to remember the last time I actually enjoyed writing (it does seem like a long time, but…2023 seemed to last an eternity), and trying to figure out what I am not doing that I used to enjoy. I think it’s partly been depression and stress and anxiety, and now that the anxiety and stress are gone, it’s just a matter of getting back into the habit of doing it every day again. I am finally used to my work schedule and no longer mind getting up early in the morning, and I am only sometimes tired when I get home from work. What I think of usually as laziness was also do the recovery from everything and the surgery; my stamina is way down and hasn’t built back up again. This is my first trip of any kind since the surgery, so we’ll see how I do with the driving…
And on that note, I need to get ready for my ZOOM meeting at nine. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably check in again later.
Thursday morning last day in the office until Monday the 12th! GASP. But yes, I am meeting my dad in Alabama this weekend and then Monday the 5th we’re driving back up to Kentucky, from whence I shall drive back to New Orleans on Friday. I was very glad that I figured out that the trip hanging over my head was why I was a bit off this week, which was a very good thing to realize…I was getting worried about why I was off, you know? And at my age, sometimes (usually) it’s something. Sigh.
I went further down the Noah Presgrove mysterious death Internet wormhole, and the story just continues to gnaw at me. I also found a “Justice for Noah” Facebook group that is mostly people from the small town he was from (Comanche, Oklahoma) and the surrounding counties…and what a fucking gold mine that was, seriously. The town is only about 1300 people or so, and it’s a very rural area similar to the one where I grew up in Kansas. It was eye-opening, and a reminder of just how nasty small town/rural areas can be. The page is full of locals snapping and sniping at one another, accusing people of knowing more than they know, and when someone being called out responds to being called out, well, people go apeshit on them. One girl who was there telling people they had things wrong got buried with comments like “you were drunk so we can’t trust your memory” or “you’re in on the cover-up” and it’s wild how all these old hurts and resentments can come to the fore when something like this happens. I had been thinking about writing another book set in small-town Kansas (beyond the ones I’ve already talked about on here) called All Their Guilty Stains, but this story might be better than the one I dreamed up for that title.
That’s the “real America” for you, people. (Peyton Place and Stephen King’s Needful Things are excellent books about how stifling rural small towns can be, and they get the pettiness down perfectly. One of the reasons I love King so much is his ease at creating a realistic town with real people who basically harbor grudges and resentments until everything starts boiling over.)
But I definitely went down the wormhole with Noah’s murder/suspicious death last night; looking up podcasts and videos. And yes, I am well aware that I may not have even been interested in the story had the video that started the whole thing–a Banfield News report–not had a thumbnail of his senior picture and my first thought was that’s a very good-looking young man–he was possibly murdered? And then I went down the wormhole.
And of course, everything on the Facebook page I mentioned? You expect the family to of course talk about how marvelous and wonderful and kind he was, and that’s a lot of the posts on that page, too–basically, he’s been deified, and that American “don’t speak ill of the dead” custom often covers up all kinds of shit, and much as they like to believe they know everything about their kids, most parents don’t and are very surprised–as well as being in denial–about the deceased. I mean, no one is loved by everyone. And a good-looking star athlete in a small Oklahoma town? You can just bet there were kids with grudges and resentments built up over the years.
I felt good yesterday when I got up, as I do this morning, and I got a lot done at the office…but I started feeling tired and sleepy in the late afternoon. I had to also run errands on the way home (Sparky needs his treats!) and picked up my copy of The Dusk, a graphic novel co-written by my friends Elizabeth Little and the wonderful Alex Segura. I also had a royalty check waiting for me (huzzah!) and, of all things, a fan letter forwarded to me from Crooked Lane. I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect–the last time someone wrote me a letter it wasn’t exactly a fan letter, and I’d actually forgotten how nice that feels. I just glanced over it because I wanted to read it sometime when I could savor the ego-boast; which is something I’ve been needing, writing wise, for a long time. And you know what else it did? It kicked my fucking mind into gear. I’ve been struggling with this book I’m writing for a long time now, and it’s certainly taking me longer to write a draft than it usually does. Part of the problem was I couldn’t figure out the over-all point of the book, which I realized last night; there’s always got to be an underlying point to the story that I am trying to illustrate through the main character. It’s a satire of state-sponsored homophobia, and I of course created a homophobic group leading the armies against drag queens, transwomen, and queers. But that wasn’t personal, and that was why I wasn’t having as much fun writing it and why I was having so much trouble with this book. Last night, as I sat in my chair, digesting a gushing fan letter and Noah Presgrove’s murder/suspicious death, I started thinking about this some more and then it hit me: I need to know Jem’s personal story/growth through this book and it punched me right between the eyes–so much so that I scribbled it all down in my journal and hopefully, I can get back to work on this sooner rather than later.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for today. Have a great Thursday and I may be back later.
Well, I got all my tax stuff done yesterday and uploaded into my accountant’s portal and that’s the end of that shit for at least this year now. I don’t know why I always hate doing this; it’s not fun, to be sure, but it never takes super long and it’s such a relief when it’s done…praise Jesus. But that put me into a mood–not sure if it was depression or what, but I wasn’t exactly in the greatest mood after finishing. Not a bad mood, by any means, but just a kind of weird funky malaise of some sort. It didn’t help that it was raining and gloomy all day. I had to run errands after work (in the rain), made it home and just sat down for awhile and took a red pencil to “When I Die,” and there was a lot of deleted material. That also kind of made me feel not so great, either–even though a lot of the deletions had everything to do with switching the story from about two couples to three young men. Paul and I watched two more episodes of the Dead Boy Detectives, which is really quite good and we are enjoying it a lot. There’s some queer subtext going on with the show, but nothing truly overt other than the Cat King.
I woke up this morning to the news about Tulane calling out the cops and campus police to break-up a protest for Gaza on the campus last night…and they brought out horse cops. The irony that the cops only get called or try to break-up protests by progressives on college campuses doesn’t escape me, but no one ever cares about Nazi marches or things like what happened in Charlottesville not that long ago. I always hear people complaining about how college students and the young don’t vote, don’t get involved, etc etc etc. Well, now they are engaging in world affairs, and they really don’t like seeing genocide on their screens. So, I guess it’s about what they chose to be interested in? And I don’t think having them arrested or the police physically assaulting them is going to change their minds? It always bothers me whenever I see the police attacking protestors. It’s definitely a free speech issue, and of course with memories of Kent State lingering in my mind…I just don’t like it. If the protestors aren’t being violent or damaging property (remember, the police’s job is to protect property, not people), what’s the harm? Don’t come for me, either–I also feel Jewish students have the right to feel safe on campus and of course there’s no place for anti-Semitism anywhere in American society, but spare me the pearl-clutching from the right–you know, the people who believe there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville? I had read that the students had closed down St. Charles Avenue for a little while the other day–again, an annoyance to drivers, nothing terrible or serious or revolutionary in any way–and was kind of pleased. Apparently, Tulane’s president feels that the protestors aren’t students for the most part (the old “outside agitators” thing, thank you, George Wallace for that terminology), but again, I despair. I also despair at the people who think the protestors should be shot and killed, which…seems unconstitutional in ways you don’t have to be a lawyer or a legal scholar to recognize. The fear that the crowd might become uncontrollable or violent isn’t a justification for denying the students their First Amendment rights.
Again, property not people, and the sooner most white Americans wake up from their lifetime of brainwashing about what the role of cops actually is the better. And I say that as a crime writer. I don’t like the notion that the cops are above the law, can violate it with impunity as well as the legal rights we all share in theory. I was thinking about this lately, about how most crime writers never delve into police corruption or never really challenge the notion that the cops are the good guys when all too often their frail humanity gets in the way. I’ve thought about this a lot since the original police brutality protests about innocent Black people being murdered by the cops–at his point there are so many I can’t remember them all or what actually got the country riled up in the first place. I have taken to thinking that I write a lot of copaganda; my police officers–always supporting characters and never the lead–are honest, hard-working, not corrupt, and can be counted on.
I do not feel that way in real life. I have had an idea for a book about police corruption in New Orleans for a really long time now; the problem (for me) is that it’s a Venus story, and I don’t think I necessarily have the chops to write from the perspective of an older Black woman cop nearing retirement. I’ve wondered how I could turn it into a Chanse or a Scotty book, where Venus hires them to look into a case that’s been written off; I had wanted to call it Just Another Random Shooting, but if it’s a Chanse or a Scotty I have to stick to the title scheme I started with. Or I could spin off Jerry Channing, my true crime writer, who has appeared in several of my books already and who I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time.
Interestingly enough, my hearing aids haven’t been working that great lately and I was beginning to think I’d have to take them in again for repair…but last night after I got home from work, both ears popped (a pressure thing) and this morning my hearing aids feel like they are turned up way too loud! I had to turn them down. Today I can hear my fingers clicking on the keys, I could hear Sparky whining for treats upstairs, and so on. I feel pretty good this morning and it looks like it’s going to be another beautiful (borderline too hot) day today after the gloom and rain of yesterday. Huzzah!
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, stranger things have happened!
Monday and back to work in the office day. I slept like the dead last night, which felt rather nice, so I am feeling pretty rested and good this morning. My coffee is good, Sparky’s been fed, and I am going to get cleaned up and head in to the office relatively soon. This Monday feels much better than last Monday did, to be sure. Yay!
Yesterday was nice and relaxed for Paul’s birthday. We watched a couple of things, and then started watching Dead Boy Detectives on Netflix, which we are really enjoying. You can’t go wrong with a property from Neil Gaiman; I could be wrong, but I think they originally appeared in the original run of The Sandman comic. I am really looking forward to the return of that show, too; watching convinced me to reread some of the anthology collections of the original run of the comic book, which was a lot of fun and reminded me of how much I used to love comic books. I’m hardly an expert on comic books and the super-hero lore from either DC or Marvel; I started reading comics when I was very little with Richie Rich and Little Lotta and Sugar and Spice before moving onto the Archie books, which eventually led to Superman and the rest. But The Sandman, reading the Gaiman run on that comic let me see, for the first time, that comics–and their stories–could be art.
We spent the afternoon watching the second season of CNN’s The History of Comedy, which was interesting. It’s really funny to remember all the censorship stupidity of television when I was a child–when you couldn’t even say damn on television, let alone other curse words1. Sexual content or references? Not so much. Even as a kid I thought it was weird. My dad swore, my mother rarely (when she did it was serious) but I always have. I added swearing to my vocabulary repertoire in junior high, even though I really didn’t know what I was saying…years later I would realize a lot of so-called bad language was really dumb and not at all what the words meant. (Is “bastard” really a modern day insult? It really means the child of unmarried parents, no more no less; this used to be a horrible insult but really? It’s not the bastard’s fault they are a bastard, and there are a hell of a lot more of them around now than when I was a kid. As an insult, it’s archaic since there’s no shame or embarrassment around being one today, so kind of pointless.)
I didn’t get much done this weekend, between recovering from being exhausted from last week and Paul’s birthday yesterday (which was kind of nice). Being a bad boyfriend, I didn’t get him anything other than a pizza for dinner, but he truly doesn’t care (nor do I). I mean, we’ve been together for thirty years next summer (!!!), which seems astonishing to me. Thirty years. I would have never believed in a million years had someone told me in my early thirties that I would find the perfect person for me. And yet, here we are. Kind of pleasant surprise how my life turned out in the end, wasn’t it?
The Kristi Noem “dog killer” memes continue to flood social media and she, like so many others of her ilk, refuses to admit doing anything wrong. Sorry, Governor, you’re never going to get everyone in the country to agree that “living on a farm means tough decisions”-2-I recognize the attitude about animals, my parents and their siblings pretty much all had the same mentality but never had pets. She’s another one of those pretty Republican women with the dead eyes–nothing behind them at all–like the Republican women who came before her. Remember Michelle Bachman? Empty, dead eyes–although Bachmann’s also had that crazy look to them, too. At any rate, Noem may survive politically in South Dakota, but she’s done nationally. She might wind up as a senator from there, God help us all, but any further national ambitions are pretty much dead…no one is ever going to forget she shot a puppy in the face because she hated it.
I also read a bit more of Michael Thomas Ford’s Suicide Notes, but not much. My mind was too scattered to settle down to focus on reading, so I gave up. Not an indictment of the book, mind, but more a critique of my fevered brain.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.
Curse words, and swearing, are a subject for another time but an interesting one. ↩︎
Especially since farm people are weighing in against her. ↩︎
Sunday morning and I slept pretty well. Sparky of course annoyed me out of bed to feed him around six, and then I did go back to bed for two more hours. Our big day of errands wore us both out yesterday, and I also just realized the primary thing I went to Costco for? I didn’t get. AUGH. Oh, well, it’s just sweet-and-low packets; I can get some anywhere and then go for the three year supply the next time we head out there. Still irritating, though. After we got home and put everything away, we settled in to finish Vigil, which I greatly enjoyed, and then we moved on to a rather clever slasher flick called Bodies Bodies Bodies, and then we tried Baby Reindeer, which was very strange and really just kind of sad. I don’t think we’re going to continue with it, but it was something different, to be sure.
Yesterday wasn’t a total wash, just as today won’t be. It may be Paul’s birthday–I’m going to get us a pizza for dinner, and maybe rent something to watch, lie Dune Part II–but I can get some things done this morning before he gets up. I’m also not going to wake him up until he wants to get up, and I also promised to make him waffles, which I’ve not done in so long it’s almost shameful, frankly. Paul is 61 today, and I will be sixty-three in a mere four months. I did make some writing notes yesterday, and of course I was also thinking a lot most of the day about the things I’m working on. I also recognize my incredible skill at rationalization here as well…no one can rationalize or justify the way I can when it comes to excuses for not writing. I also downloaded some biographies of King James I–the influence of Mary and George, no doubt–but I am not entirely sure why I’ve avoided biographies of King James before. I have a lifelong interest in both his mother (Mary Queen of Scots) and his predecessor (Elizabeth I), as well as his Stuart descendants; yet have always avoided King James. I’m not sure why that is; but other queer kings and royals have often been of interest to me, but James didn’t come to a bad end the way most of the others did and so can be considered a successful queer King. (Frederick the Great is another.) It also seems like this Elizabethan/Jacobean era was rife with sodomy all the way through to the eighteenth centiury, both in England and France. The last son of Catherine de Medici, and the last Valois king of France, was gay (Henri III); so was the brother of Louis XIV and one of his illegitimate sons, the Duc de Valentinois; and of course James I’s great-granddaughter Queen Anne was a big ole lesbian. The queers disappear from European royal history for a while, certainly in England and France in the eighteenth century. I’ve always wanted to write about Louis XIV’s brother, and it may be interesting to write about Henri III from the point of view of one of his mignons. The French court in the 1580’s was a hotbed of intrigue, conspiracy, and murder; a very turbulent period I’ve always wanted to write about.
I’ve also come to realize that I need to be more ambitious with my writing rather than saying oh that’s too complicated or too hard or too difficult for me to write. I’ve been putting off my historical interest writing for quite some time, always thinking that someday I’ll feel competent in my skills to try it. It’s actually a cop-out; I should have written some of these years ago, or at least got started. My Sherlock story (still so incredibly proud of it) was my first real historical story (one written in a period of time I was not alive and cannot remember), and all of my fears about it were so clearly misplaced. You don’t have to know a period so intimately that you might as well have lived then in order to write about it. How much research is too much research? The difference between a short story and a novel, of course, are significant–clearly, you don’t need to know as much with a short story as you would with a novel–but again, how much is not enough and how much is too much? The problem (for me, at any rate) is research is like planting seeds–more ideas grow the more research I do, it’s an ADHD thing, I’m pretty sure. But I am definitely going to start the research for my seventeenth century novel, methinks; I love history, so why not? I can scratch two interests at the same time.
Saturday morning I will leave for Alabama for Decoration Day, or what I always thought it was called, The First Sunday in May. That’s what it’s always been called, it’s definitely what my grandmothers and mother called it, and that’s how it’s lodged in my memory banks. I’m going to help my dad put out the flowers and clean the graves, and then on Monday morning I’ll follow him north to Kentucky. It’ll be a nice week away, and I am going to try to get some work done and a lot of reading done while I am there. (Dad called it Decoration Day in an email the other day, and I thought, well, that makes a better name for it but for me, it will always be called The First Sunday in May.) I did notice last year that the only people out doing it were my age or older, so it’s probably one of those county customs that is dying out in these modern days of the Internet, cell phones, and streaming. A pity, to be sure, but sometimes traditions do die out. “The old ways”, as they say in creepy tones in Gothic novels that I love so much. I also imagine my creativity is going to explode while in Alabama as it always does.
And on that note, I am going to eat breakfast, get cleaned up, and head into the spice mines for the day. I may be back later, one never can be certain–but if not, have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
Saturday and a big day of being out of the house. I had planned on not doing much outside the apartment vis-a-vis errands, but Paul’s state ID expires today (and he only realized it last night) so somehow only getting the mail today has morphed into the DMV, Costco, lunch out, and the mail. Ah, well, I can come home and write in my easy chair. I finally figured out why my Macbook Air doesn’t sync with my Microsoft accounts; it needed to have Word updated and the passwords reset…so now I can access everything from the laptop, which makes life ever so much easier for me. I was actually working on the revision of “When I Die” yesterday when Paul decided he was done for the day and came downstairs so we could watch Mary and George (still superb) and more of the second season of Vigil, which is absolutely fantastic.
I did get some chores done around here yesterday–I laundered all the bed linens and another load of laundry, and worked on the dishes, which need to be finished this morning, and did some picking up and organizing–and while I am relatively certain these errands are going to wear me out today, at least I feel rested this morning. I was still a big tired yesterday from the week, and when I woke up was a little groggy. This morning I feel ever so much better, frankly, and so I hope I can go ahead and make it through the day.
I have been watching with macabre enjoyment this bizarre civil war within the Republican party, and am not entirely sure how this is all going to end up. Yesterday the news broke and went viral about South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, one of the potential VP candidates for the right, who wrote in her self-promoting-I-am-to-be-taken-seriously-on-the-national-stage-book-about-me-in-an-election-year that she hated a fourteen month old puppy who “couldn’t” be trained (that’s a you failure, Madam Adulteress) so she decided to shoot him in a gravel pit–and then shot a goat she didn’t like on top of it when that didn’t sate her bloodlust. I immediately knew when I saw the Guardian article about it that she was 1) pretty much finished and 2) not really aware about the divide between urban and rural when she wrote that in her book. I know exactly the kind of mindset she has about animals–she’s rural–because it’s the same mentality my parents had about animals because they grew up on farms and you don’t have animals in the house as pets, for one thing, and for another, when you grow up on a farm and are used to killing animals for food–cows, pigs, chickens, etc.–you don’t get really sentimental about them because they die. I also knew it wasn’t going to play well with voters and most Americans, because most of us love animals and try to do whatever we can to save them, not shoot them. She also doesn’t get it, still; she defended herself with a post or statement of some sort where she talked about that very thing–and how many animals on her ranch/farm/whatever she’s had to put down recently. Way to throw gasoline on the fire, Madam Adulteress!
And way to not understand the American electorate. And if you don’t know that the vast majority of Americans love animals and especially dogs–you’re probably too ignorant and out-of-touch with most Americans to lead anywhere other than an extremely rural state, and most definitely not the entire country.
Interesting how many Republicans have been horrific dog owners–Noem, the Romneys, and the Huckabees of Arkansas.
My parents may not have had any sentimentality about pets, but they also didn’t have any.
Ah, Mary and George. I hope you are watching, Constant Reader–even if you aren’t into history, the show is the kind of bitchy back-stabbing plots and subplots and twisty/turny show that reminds me, with its wit and bitchiness, of some of the greater nighttime soaps and even of Real Housewives shows. I also like how fluid everyone’s sexuality is at the Jacobean court. I really need to read a bio of King James; I’ve certainly read enough about his mother Mary Queen of Scots and his son, Charles I, who lost his head during the second English civil war. I know Antonia Fraser, whose superb Mary Queen of Scots I read when I was eleven, wrote a bio of James that I always wanted to read but never did. Perhaps this is the proper time? I also should read bios of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu to get a stronger sense of the time period…and I really am beginning to think I might be able to start writing Milady, my long-dreamed-of novel, later in this year.
And on that note, Constant Reader, I am heading into the spice mines to load the dishwasher and get the day’s business started. Have a fabulous day, and who knows? I may be back later.
Work at home Friday, and all is well in Gregworld. Granted, I haven’t looked at the news today or checked in on social media (probably should avoid that, to be honest), so my cheery mood should last until at least I finish this entry. I do have to go to the gym today, and I need to run a couple of errands, but other than that I think I am going to at least try to stay inside for most of the weekend. I may take a walk tomorrow morning, depending on how I feel, but I can’t just keep pretending the stamina will come back on its own, and it’s going to be tough getting it back. My eating habits are getting better, I am sleeping better, and my anxiety is almost completely gone.
I did a little writing last night, and it felt kind of good, so I am hoping to get back on that horse this weekend completely as well. I felt off all week, not sure what that was about, but today I don’t anymore. This week was also one of those weird weeks where I was more tired at the beginning of the week than I was at the end, which I am sure has everything to do with changing the sleep schedule on the weekends and then having to adjust back. I am not going to get up at six on my off-days; that will never happen–I have never been a “spring right out of bed wide awake” person, and I think that will last my entire life. I can live with it, to be honest. I hope to have a great weekend. I don’t have to do much more than touching up around the apartment, so I can get into a deeper clean this weekend–more paper is going to be tossed, as well as more books being pruned for the library sale. I’m looking forward to reading more of Ford’s Suicide Notes and possibly finishing it this weekend…and then perhaps reading some nonfiction until I leave on the trip. I still haven’t finished Rival Queens, and that’s something I really need to finish so I can move on to another.
We also finished the first season of Vigil, which was terrific right up to the closing credits. We immediately dove into season two, which is another murder mystery with international intrigue involving military operations in a fictional country in the Middle East (it occurred to me yesterday that middle east is very Eurocentric; it probably started being called that during the Roman Empire, when that was, to them, the middle east; is there another way of referring to that region that I’ve missed somehow? Something to ponder), so it’s similar but extremely different from the first season. There’s also going to be a new episode of Mary and George today, which I am very excited about. Oh! I should read The King’s Assassin for nonfiction; the show is based on the book and I do have a copy! Perfect! The day just got that much better!
I still need to rein in and focus my creativity, which is still bouncing all over the place like a whack-a-mole. But I do think if I settle into writing and Sparky doesn’t harass me, I think I should be able to get a lot done. He did start trying to get fed at his usual time, and he is nothing if not determined. He didn’t relent until I finally gave up and got up at seven thirty, and now he is nowhere to be seen. I do love the little rascal, and he’s so happy to have us both home at night together that I hate to think I’ll be gone for about seven days starting next weekend. I also need to get my shit together for that trip, too. I think I have my audiobooks downloaded and prepared–Carol Goodman’s The Drowning Tree for the way up, and either a Lisa Unger or another Goodman for my drive back. I think I’m going to take the Tremblay, the Ford sequel, and one of the Koryta as Carson books.
I also dug out my old essay “Recovering Christian” to look over, with an eye towards revision/rewrite and possibly either sharing here or over on Substack (I”m not sure if we’re supposed to still be using Substack or not, but for longer form essays it’s probably better than here). I’ve been thinking a lot about Christianity lately, and how it’s been thoroughly debased and weaponized in this country (just as it was for centuries in Europe) and has become about everything except the teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ. The modern American version of Christianity is undoubtedly the whore of Babylon from Revelations; and false prophets abound in our modern times. See what I mean about my creativity? I saw some “christian” tomfoolery on social media the last few days, and it was enraging. I may not go to church anymore, and I may not consider myself to be an actual Christian, but I swear, how do I know the Bible and their faith so much better than so many so-called Christians?
“Blind faith”, I guess.
And on that note, I am going to get something to eat and start getting ready for my day. Hope you have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later on.
I did get tired yesterday afternoon, but I think it was more from malnutrition somehow than anything else. My breakfast and my lunch did notfill me up1, and after I had lunch I did feel like my batteries were starting to run down a bit. It was, all in all, a good day for the most part. I did make it through the workday. I ran errands after work (got some things for Sparky from Chewy, and the last batch of new shirts arrived); started organizing the draft blog posts to determine which can be combined (same topic started on different days, months, years) and which can be finished and which can be deleted; I finished the revision of “Passenger to Franklin” (and I think it’s much much better now); and started getting my (delayed and extended) taxes together. Ideally, I can get that done this week and to my accountant by Friday so that will be one thing more that’s been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles out of the way. Huzzah! I also took a look at “When I Die,” and while this one is going to take a lot of fucking work, it’ll be so much better when I finish it!
I slept well last night, and my coffee is rather delicious this morning. It was cold yesterday morning when I left for work–surprisingly so–but it warmed during the day so my car was very hot when I got into it after work. It’s going to get warmer consistently later in the week–I still can’t get over it being eighty-eight last Friday, it’s only April for Pete’s sake–which means it’ll probably be hot and sunny as I visit graveyards with Dad the weekend after next. I was thinking last night, as we watched Vigil (it’s terrific, highly recommended), that I’m almost in a good place again for the first time in almost ten years or so. My stress levels are way down, my moods generally are good and even, and I don’t have flashes of anger anymore (mostly while in my car). Other idiot drivers are still annoying, but don’t send me into a rage anymore. Now, it’s more like I get annoyed, say very calmly, “yes, you’re an asshole who can’t drive” or “yes, you are so much more important than all the rest of us”, but as I said, it’s calm–and I can absolutely live with that.
I got a short story rejection email yesterday, and I was completely ambivalent about it. The problem is you’re never sure if the story just doesn’t work for them or if the fact that the main character is gay was a problem for them. Sure, the rejection had the standard form please submit to us again, but…yeah, not so much. This is what straight white cisgender people don’t get, with all their whining about “merit”–the only people who they think actually earn their careers are straight white cisgender people, after all–because you can never be certain that it’s the story that they didn’t like enough or whether homophobic concerns come into play: our readers might get mad at is if we shove queer down their throats or we don’t want to become known as the queer crime publication and every other iteration of that you can imagine…any excuse not to publish a queer writer. Many years ago, I decided that I would never allow suspicions of homophobia affect my writing career, and I would always assume it was the story that was the problem. But…you have to wonder. When a magazine only buys your work when you send them things with straight main characters (twice) but rejects everything with a gay main character or even a gay theme, you have to start to wonder.
And given how few of the magazines that actually pay well for short stories (or pay at all) there are and how little queer work they actually publish…you begin to wonder. You don’t want to believe it’s homophobia or homophobic concerns, but here we are, you know. The stories I am working on now aren’t really crime stories, they’re more supernatural/horror stories, but I do think “The Last To See Him Alive” is not only a good story but it’s written really well. I need to revise it and edit it, of course, but it’s in really good shape already which is pleasing. “When I Die” needs a complete overhaul, but that’s fine. It’ll be a better story for it when it’s finished. And while these stories I am working on could complete the collection, this morning I am wondering if I should include horror in this book or not.
I really do not understand these new state laws (here in Louisiana we got one, too) allowing people to drive their cars into protestors, something which inbred morons Tom Cotton of Arkansas and eternal bitchboy Josh Hawley of Missouri are all about. Nothing says leadership like telling people to kill or injure other people. As always, these kind of Nazi-lite fascistic laws come to you courtesy of the Republican Party and MAGAt. I personally am looking forward to driving my car into a crowd of Trump protestors and hitting the gas pedal, frankly. When I saw this on social media yesterday, I responded with Never thought I’d see the day when the Kent State massacre would have fanboys, which prompted some responses which, of course, made the most sense: they had them at the time. I was too young to remember the right-wing response to the Kent State shootings, I just remember being appalled that the National Guard murdered four students on a campus, and I have always viewed it as a disgrace and a tragedy…but of course the right did not see it that way–just as they backed William Calley as a hero after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Even I–who have always known how vile and unpatriotic the right in this country is and always has been–didn’t think they were that callous and awful.
They are, they always have been, and they always will be.
The thing that always amuses me about this is the “patriots” of the right always forget that the only reason we exist as a country was because of mass protests….which led to a revolution. So, by that way of thinking, the most patriotic thing you can ever do is protest, really. Remember the Tea Party, the seeds that grew into MAGA? Remember the stolen election of 2000? Remember how Reagan dismantled and changed (and ruined) Social Security? The only reason there’s an issue with it now is because of Reagan, St Ronnie of the Right. The Republicans are the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and people like Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz are their heirs.
Remember back when I was thinking about starting to read and study poetry? I got a great recommendation from a dear friend at S&S of where to start–Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early–and I’ve been paging through it randomly, reading poems here and there, glimpsing fragments, and I think I’m slowly starting to come to an understanding of poetry I never had before. I am not going to review poetry on here as I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself self-teaching and coming to what regular readers of poetry already understand from studying it. It’s a wonderful education, and one I kind of wish I had started earlier. Ah, well.
I also decided to postpone reading the Paul Tremblay and take it with me to Kentucky to read. Instead, I’ve decided to reread a book I don’t remember much of–Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford. He published a sequel this past year that I would love to read, but not remembering the first one was a problem, so I decided to go ahead and reread it. I don’t talk about Ford much, but he really is one of the most underrated queer writers of our time. He can basically write anything (a blessing and a curse, as I know all too well), and he does it extremely well. Rereading the first chapter last night pulled me back into the story effortlessly, and the voice is so compelling and hauntingly real…and likable. I’m looking forward to reading more of it.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.
I also ate dinner late on Sunday night, which I usually don’t do and am sure that had something to do with it, but given I don’t really get hungry all that often it was kind of cool. ↩︎
I am a bit tired this morning. All those errands I ran yesterday? Apparently I have not recovered my stamina yet, because I am feeling it this morning. My legs are very tired, and I did not want to get out of bed this morning…which was also partly because Sparky turned into a purring cuddlebug while trying to get me to get up–lying on me and rolling and purring and head butts and making biscuits. It was actually kind of lovely, really, but now I am up, a load of laundry is started, and I am drinking and loving my coffee. LSU is competing for the national championship in Gymnastics at 3, which is probably going to suck all the oxygen out of the day, so I’ll need to get a lot of things done today before three, won’t I? GEAUX TIGERS!
Yesterday was a rather interesting day, social media-wise. After I posted yesterday morning and as I was getting ready to dive into the day, I shared the post on my social media as I always do, and I had some extreme irritations, all related to my years in Kansas, of all things; like all this writing and thinking about Kansas and ideas for books/stories there manifested some people I went to high school with, as well as some other unpleasantness. For the record, straight white cisgender, this is the sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about microaggressions and safe spaces. The first thing that popped up at me on Facebook was some tired old bitch of a white woman’s post sharing an interview with Dawn French, in which she not only defended the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, but chastised everyone. After all, as a straight cisgender white woman, it’s our responsibility as queer people to explain it all to HER, and if we’re not willing to do so, their lack of understanding is on US.
Fuck off, Dawn French. Queer people don’t have to explain their humanity to you, you miserable fucking bigoted bitch. “Well, I don’t understand this, so please explain to me why you deserve to be treated like a human being.” That’s it right there. Doesn’t sound so nice when it’s put that way, does it? Is it really too much for you to treat other people with respect and kindness even if you “don’t get it”? And when exactly do I get my fucking paycheck for explaining our HUMANITY to someone with a blackened, dead soul and no empathy for anything outside their own experience? The arrogance!
Anyway, this former Facebook friend shared this and said, “I agree.” Someone else, another former Facebook friend, commented “Yes, absolutely.” I unfriended and blocked both, and then posted in my anger “If you are a defender of the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, just unfriend me now.” Another former Facebook friend then announced his departure. He only unfriended, so I blocked his homophobic ass, too.
As if that wasn’t enough, someone I went to high school posted a funny meme I was going to comment on, when a homophobic piece of trash from high school tried TAGGING me on it because I had unfriended her after getting sick and fucking tired of her MAGA posts and remembered the time I heard my “friend” mocking me with other people in the high school cafeteria for being gay. Again, I don’t owe anyone any explanations for cutting you out of my life because I fucking refuse to explain why I deserve to be treated like a human being and not as the butt of a joke or something to hate and despise because a verse in Leviticus says so.
Jesus, right? It’s so tiring.
And then, in the biggest irony of ironies, another person I went to high school with–who is always posted queer ally stuff, which I’ve always appreciated–did so again yesterday further down on my feed, and of course someone had to come in waving their cross and Bible, but what was truly nice was seeing how many people went after the Bible-thumper, quoting the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount back to her, and it was on that thread I discovered she had a younger sibling that is gay (I wasn’t the only one to graduate from that school, apparently) and then someone else from high school commented “My brother is gay, too”–and the irony of that was almost too delicious to savor. You see, the second “my brother is gay” poster? She and her troglodyte best friend loved called me a fag quite often and quite happily my senior year…and while that was satisfying enough, I then remembered that she and her bitch friend would say it and laugh…in front of her brother….so his situation was worse than mine, and I went from smug to sad. Her brother was also an asshole to me (which I understand; I avoided other kids who got slandered and mocked and called that), but knowing that he was gay and was listening to his sister and that other bitch call me that? How he must have hated himself every time she said it. I wonder how suicidal he was? And truly, how sad was it that we are so socialized to avoid other kids with that same stigma and shame we experience rather than supporting each other? I think that’s also one of the many reasons I have trouble trusting gay men as I do straight people–another kid who was gay-presenting at my high school in the suburbs and was friends with people who treated me like shit….out of curiosity I looked him up and he too is out and proud now. How sad he joined in so his friends wouldn’t think he was a fag, too.
But at the same time, it’s giving me an insight into Kansas that I didn’t have before. The state, which I should have known, isn’t full of homophobic MAGA trash, and neither is the area I lived and suffered through for five years. And that could make for an interesting approach to another book. I had thought Sara, with my out gay character in a rural Kansas high school, was a bit much–I didn’t think kids could be out there–and turns out that while it’s not appreciated, those brave kids are facing it all down and defiantly throwing it back in their tormenters’ faces. I actually even thought for a moment last night that it might be worth it to go back sometime, to just look around and see how different everything is from my old memories.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and going on my day. I may be back later, I really do want to get all of these draft posts finished and out of the drafts file at some point, but I also don’t know how the day will play out so we’ll just have to see, Constant Reader. Have a great Saturday regardless.
Queer and Loathing in America 