Category: childhood

Tall Paul

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, which is quite lovely to contemplate this fine morning as I swill down my first cup of coffee and blearily look ahead to the rest of my day. Tomorrow I get to work at home, and I do have some tedious duties to do that should fill out the majority of the workday. I only have to work about six hours or so, which really isn’t that bad, and since I am at home, there won’t be much in the way of distraction…outside of Demon Kitty Sparky, of course.

I slept really well last night–the kind of dead-to-the-world sleep that I love, so I feel rested and relaxed this morning for the first time this week, so naturally it’s Thursday, right? This was happening before I left on the trip, if I am remembering correctly; the later in the week the more rested I was feeling, which again is odd. It doesn’t make sense, really, when you think about it, does it? You should feel more tired towards the end of the week? But you know what, I’ll take it. It’s nice to feel more like myself the way I do this morning. I am still struggling a bit with things–motivation is hard to feel these days for some reason–but things are getting better for me emotionally and so forth.

I’ve been following the Kansas City Chiefs kicker controversy, which just makes me shake my head. You’re beliefs are fine. Believe what you want to, and be happy however you need to get there as long as you aren’t harming anyone has always been my approach to other people’s values and way of life. If you need to believe you have an authoritarian sky daddy and the threat of eternal damnation to be a good person, well, that’s not really saying much about who you are at the core of your being, does it? I personally am not sure what I believe, to be honest, and I had some great conversations with my dad about faith and religion, and I appreciate his honesty and candor. He was raised by a mother who was a borderline religious fanatic (but never seemed to get any joy from her rather simplistic faith), and while religion took with his older siblings, it never really did with him. I grew up evangelical-adjacent; Dad never cared if we went to church or not, and when we did, he didn’t go with us. Mom was the one who started taking us to church, and she’d go without Dad a lot after they moved to Kentucky. I never understand the focus on the do’s and don’ts and dogma and ritual by the faithful…the rituals and dogma are the least of it. It doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever makes life easier for people, you know? Harrison Butken (and you know he was called Harry Butt all through his public education career, which would ordinarily make me a bit more sympathetic to him) didn’t need to get up on that stage and demean women as lesser figures in the eyes of the Lord. He didn’t need to get up there and slander the queer community with baseless, judgmental slurs and insults. ANd of course, the asswipes are out in force screaming “free speech!”

And once again, I will repeat for those in the back: the government isn’t punishing him for his views and speech; and the minute anyone starts screaming about their free speech rights, it usually means they can’t defend what was said in the first place so they fall back on the Constitution–something they’ve never read, do not understand, and cannot comprehend in any meaningful way. But these are the same people who’d argue that the Second Amendment gives you the right to a personal nuclear arsenal, so they aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.

But Harry Butt was also homophobic as well as misogynist; the misogyny is getting most of the press and commentary, but he basically called the queer community freaks and perverts and weirdos…as I always say, you only rarely go wrong suspecting someone with a dead Confederate general beard of being a jackass (there are exceptions; Eli Cranor, for example, who’s not only a gifted author but a super-nice guy, too); those kinds of beards always put my hackles up whenever I spy one, and yes I know it’s a stereotype, just like all the shit Harry Butt said about queers, but live by the stereotype, die by a stereotype. And misogyny and homophobia inevitably go hand-in-hand with racism, which leads me to believe the Chiefs will probably get a lot of roughing the kicker penalties in the upcoming season…

I did manage to get some things done when I got home from work yesterday. I cleaned the kitchen and worked on the laundry some more–but I’ll have to finish the laundry tonight when I get home from work. I was going to do errands tonight, too, but think I’ll push that off until tomorrow or the weekend. But it was nice to come down to a clean kitchen this morning, and that puts me ahead on chores for the weekend. Huzzah!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; you never know.

Yesterday Once More

I have sung the praises of Carol Goodman and her fantastic novels numerous times here on this blog; literally to the point that I have begun to wonder at times whether or not I have said certain things about her work before. I know I always bring up Dark Shadows and the great Gothic writers of my youth that I loved; give me a dark brooding mansion and a sinister legend of murders and ghosts and I am in my favorite place. But it does get repetitive, and that will hardly convince you, Constant Reader, to pick up one of her books (you won’t regret it), will it?

So, this time around, rather than talking about her Gothic sensibility, this might be a good time to look at this most recent read of hers in a different way.

“I’m just having trouble getting back on track.”

Nina Lawson isn’t the first student this semester–or even the first today–to attribute their academic woes to a deviation from some metaphorical track. As Dean of Liberal Arts, I’ve heard every excuse, sob story, and tragedy over the course of the last two years. But the image, coming as it does at the end of a long day at the end of a very long year, jolts me as if we’re both on a train that has suddenly jumped off the rails into an abyss.

To give myself time to craft a response I look down at Nina’s folder. I see that she comes from Newburgh–a small city about an hour south of campus–that she did well in her public high school even after her classes went remote in March of her senior year, and she’s earned the Raven Society writing scholarship to Briarwood on the basis of a short story she wrote in high school. There’s a note in my assistant’s meticulous handwriting that Nina had to defer admission for a year to help her single, out-of-work mother with the bills. She has a work-study job in the financial office and an off-campus job at a local restaurant. No wonder she looks tired, I think, gazing up at her. Her light brown skin is mottled with acne. She’s slouched in a zippered sweatshirt, hood up, eyes swollen and bloodshot, lips raw and chapped. “I wish you had come to see me sooner,” I say in my firm-but-gentle voice. “The withdrawal deadline passed six weeks ago.”

“Someone told me it had been extended,” she says, not looking up.

This opening scene establishes several things: the book is going to be set at a prestigious small private college; the school has an excellent creative writing program; and our main character is getting a little jaundiced and world-weary in her position. The “I’ve heard it all before” is a problem for people in these kinds of jobs, and often occurs in education–the weariness and suspicion that students are lazy and just don’t want to work eventually becomes so engrained that they have a closed mind before the student even starts talking. I’ve experienced this myself any number of times–this past week I related two experiences I had in school where I was basically called a liar by an educational authority figure only to get an apology later when I was proved to be telling the truth to my dad, which ended with an airy “teachers never believed me, ever”–which probably explains why I never really got into school the way other smart kids did. But fortunately, Nell gives Nina the withdrawal permission, because she thinks something else is going on with Nina and she wants to help her (which was lovely to read), but Nina won’t open up to her. Briarwood is getting ready to open it’s new Writer’s Center, and there’s a big celebratory party coming up–as well as a bad winter storm–and that night, at a traditional ceremony where the students carry candles up the side of a mountain, there’s an accident and Nina falls into one of the ice caves…and when she is rescued, the skeleton of a young woman is found–which triggers Nell’s memories of being a writing student twenty-five years ago, the friends she made in the program, and the secrets they’ve kept ever since.

Which means the book is also a dual-timeline novel, which is one of my favorite tropes in crime novels (any novels, really); the book is also a master class in how to do a dual-timeline novel. Part of Goodman’s skill is taking those young, wet-behind-the-ears college students and evolving them as they make their way through their college years, as well as who they’ve turned into in the intervening years. There’s not a single false step in any of the character development, which isn’t easy when you’re juggling any number of characters.

And in the present day timeline, Goodman pays homage to several classic crime novels–particularly Christie’s And Then There Were None, which was delightful. She also made several references, throughout the book, to MARY STEWART, who I often think of as Goodman’s literary godmother…and with the past story, there’s some real The Secret History stuff going on, too. The Stewart references aren’t for the terrific suspense novels she wrote, but the equally terrific Arthurian saga she created (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, This Wicked Day), which I should revisit sometime.

The suspense and tension continues to build, and with everyone trapped on campus by a winter storm–and characters start dying, one by one…the suspense almost becomes unbearable as the secrets and lies from the past finally come home to roost in the present.

(I will say that when I started listening to the book, I thought to myself if this were a Gothic novel this is who the killer would be–only to be correct! But the motive wasn’t what I thought it was…)

The Bones of the Story is well-written, with great language, terrific tone and style, and very literate and smart…so another feather in the cap of the divine Carol Goodman.

Snakedriver

Ah, Alabama.

Despite everything that is wrong with Alabama culturally, societally, spiritually, and politically, I’m not ashamed of being from there (and never will be). I do shake my head with every new law passage or court ruling there that flies in the face of decency and the Constitution, because it is sad that the majority of people there are not only so lost spiritually and intellectually, but also defiantly cling to their backwardness. My part of the state, where my people are from, used to be very remote and rural; many native Alabamians, when I tell them where I’m from, are often confused, having never heard of it before. It isn’t on any interstate, rooming options are limited, and you really have to drive for about an hour from the nearest interstate to get there. It’s not quite as remote as it used to be; many of the roads that were dirt and/or gravel when I was a kid are paved now…but there are still plenty of unpaved roads up there in the hills and along the countryside. It’s very different there now, too–the country stores are all gone, and there’s definitely a lot more McMansions than there ever was when I was a kid. (Dad and I often marvel at the palatial homes we come across driving around the county, as Dad shows me places from his childhood and when he and Mom were first married.)

And it’s not cheap to buy property there, either, which was also a bit of a surprise.

Dark Tide was my first attempt to deal with my history and where I am from, but was cowardly in the end and wound up editing most of the backstory of my main character out. It didn’t really fit and made the book something different from what I was trying to do with the book, but as I edited it all out I also felt that I was being a bit cowardly. I knew I was going to have to deal with the troubled history (and present) of the county and state, so I wrote Bury Me in Shadows to not only try to get a better understanding of the area, but to deal with that troubled past. It wasn’t easy–I often found myself cutting things to a bare minimum in a stupid attempt to not give offense, and there were many times while writing it when I’d wince or skip a scene because I wasn’t sure how to word it properly without being preachy. I wanted to show through the story how refusing to face the past with a realistic and jaundiced eye can cause generational trauma and how that, in turn, perpetuates societal racism and homophobia in an endless cycle that strangles growth.

But writing that book also took me down a research wormhole that I’ve never really climbed back out of, and being there last weekend also reawakened some memories as well as creativity and potential future stories. (Dad and I found a really sad set of graves in the same cemetery as my maternal grandparents and uncle; parents and two small children –one was only four months–who’d died on the same day. We speculated as to how that happened, tornado or car accident or house fire, but a distant relative my father also knew explained that the father killed them all and then himself…which naturally started churning things in my brain again.)

I also discovered, during the pandemic, a horrifying documentary called Alabama Snake, which focused on the snake handling churches of northeast Alabama and a minister who tried to kill his wife with snakes…and then discovered there was also a book about the culture from a reporter who’d covered the trial, and continued investigating and looking into the snake handling churches.

I finally read it last week.

The first time I went to a snake-handling service, nobody even took a snake out. This was in Scottsboro, Alabama, in March of 1992, at The Church of Jesus with Signs Following. I’d come to the church at the invitation of one of the members I’d met while covering the trial of their preacher, Rev. Glenn Summerford, who had been convicted and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison for attempting to murder his wife with rattlesnakes.

The church was on a narrow blacktop called Woods Cove Road, not far from the Jackson County Hospital. I remember it was a cool evening. The sky was the color of apricots, and the moon had just risen, a thin, silver crescent. There weren’t any stars out yet.

After I crossed a set of railroad tracks past the hospital, I could see the lights of the church in the distance, but as I drew nearer I started to wonder if this was really a church at all. It was, in fact, a converted gas station and country store, with a fiberboard facade and a miniature steeple. The hand-painted sign spelled the preacher’s first name in three different ways: Glenn, Glen, and Glyn. A half dozen cars were parked out front, and even with the windows of my own car rolled up, I could feel the beat of the music.

It’s very difficult to think about Alabama without religion being involved in some way. Alabama is a very religious state, with churches everywhere–one of the things I always comment on whenever I am up there driving around with Dad is “there sure are a LOT of Churches of Christ up here”–you really can’t go anywhere without driving past at least two. Both of my grandmothers were devout (paternal family was Church of Christ; maternal Southern Baptist, although both my mom and uncle married into CoC and joined), but only the CoC was a fanatic with a Bible verse for everything and the uniquely American/Christian methodology of interpreting everything to justify her own behavior and conduct–which wasn’t actually very Christian (memorization doesn’t mean comprehension). I can remember driving around down there once with my grandmother–either in Alabama or the panhandle of Florida, where she wound up after retiring–and driving past a church (I won’t name it because she was wrong) and I said something and she sniffed in disgust. “They speak in tongues and take up serpents,” she replied. “Which is apostasy.”

Apostasy. What a marvelous word, and one that has always snaked its way through my brain, and comes up often whenever I talk about religion. But I digress; I will someday finish the essay in which I talk about my relationship with Jesus and my rejection of dogma.

I also liked the phrase “taking up serpents,” and always wondered why she said that instead of snake-handling.

I had originally thought, when I bought this book, that it was about the attempted murder by rattlesnake and subsequent trial, like the documentary I mentioned; rather it’s an exploration of this sect of Christianity by a curious reporter, and how being exposed to this style of worship made him rethink his own past, his relationship with his own faith, and about Alabama people in general. One of the reasons I enjoyed the book so damned much–even as I was repelled by its subject matter (snakes are the source of some of my worst nightmares; even harmless little garden snakes turn my stomach and engage my flight mechanism)–was because Covington has a very easy, natural and authentic authorial voice, and he really can put you into his mind as he witnesses and experiences this uniquely American brand of Christianity. It was also interesting as he got caught up in the entire experience, as he talked to the members of the various sects (there’s no national structure to the snake-handling churches, as there is with say the Southern Baptists or the Methodists), and watched them actually take up their serpents in the name of the Lord.

There’s also interesting information in the book about how these sects were created–or how they were descended from, surprisingly enough, the Methodists and how that evolved into these Appalachian sects, as well as where the people of the Appalachian regions came from, and that entire Southern mentality of fighting for their traditions and their “way of life” (it was also interesting that it’s a white phenomenon, at least as best I could tell in the book); of how they secluded themselves up in their mountains and hollows and were self-sufficient…but modern technology has forced them into a world that has left them behind.

I’ve always wanted to write about snake handlers…but as I mentioned before, snakes are the stuff of my worst nightmares, so yeah going to witness in person their rites is a big “no” from me, but I feel like I can maybe do that now, or at least make an attempt. I don’t know how much more research I’d need to do to fictionalize snake handlers, but some day it will happen.

Three Stars

Here we are on Monday morning and I am awake much earlier than I have been in well over a week; part of the problem of finishing a vacation, alas. I feel a bit sleepy still this morning, which is probably very much a result of the alarm going off this morning and waking me up (along with Sparky’s need to be fed), but that’s okay. I am going back to the office in a little while and I am feeling a bit more trepidation than I usually do on Monday mornings. Yesterday was okay; I got some things done around here and the kitchen doesn’t look like an utter disaster this morning, which is always a nice way to start the week. I have to pick up prescriptions on my way home from work tonight, but other than that can come straight home and collapse into my chair.

But a normal routine again might be nice to slip back into, you know? I am thinking I might take a week off later this summer (around my birthday, most likely) just to have some down time at home when I can relax and work on things around here that inevitably get pushed back from week to week due to lack of time and exhaustion. I know I want to read some more of my book tonight, and of course as always there’s some filing work that needs to be done at some point. I did manage to get two entries managed yesterday about the books I read over the last week, and I have two more (Salvation on Sand Mountain, The Bones of the Story) to get done, and I had started one about Dead Boy Detectives before I left on the trip that I absolutely should get finished at some point. I don’t know what’s waiting for me at the office this week, but I am not terribly worried about it, either. Worrying, as Mom used to say, is just borrowing trouble–which is an interesting quote from someone who suffered from generalized anxiety disorder.

But Mother’s Day without Mom is becoming easier. Last year’s was horribly sad, when the loss was still incredibly fresh. This year wasn’t so bad. (I can’t speak for Dad, though.) Everything becomes easier with the passage of time, which is another one of those incredibly sad realities. This year? I felt sad only a couple of times throughout the day. The Mother’s Day newsletters and sales didn’t feel like a gut punch every time I saw one. I already knew the only way to get past the grief was to let time pass, a lesson I’ve learned far too many times in my life already, but because I’d been through a lot before I knew how this would run its course. It feels a bit cold not to get emotional about it anymore, but the sadness is slowly giving way to fondness, where the memories make me smile rather than make me seize up with grief–which is a dramatic improvement, quite frankly, even if there’s a slight element of guilt involved, too.

Well, I thought this would probably be brief this morning, and I was correct. I’ll probably be back later at some point, Constant Reader, so go ahead and have a great Monday, and I’ll chat at you after spending my day in the spice mines. Bonjour!

Down by the River

My appreciation of all things Gothic is at least partly due to the old soap opera Dark Shadows, which I watched as a child and has crept its way into my work, my reading, and the majority of my entertainment consumption ever since. I have always loved anything with a touch of the Gothic in it, and spent my teen years (and a lot of my twenties and thirties) loving and consuming Gothic fiction. The post-war style of Gothic literature, marketed primarily towards women, was being done by authors whom I loved like Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt and others (while Mary Stewart’s work was also considered Gothic and featured many of the tropes of Gothic fiction, I consider her books to be Gothic-adjacent, and I will probably explain that better and in more depth at another time) and I couldn’t get enough of them. Holt and Whitney, to me, were the two best at this subgenre, and when Gothics stopped being published in such great numbers, I was disappointed and mournful.

Which is why I love Carol Goodman’s books so much. Her books have that Gothic feel to them, are beautifully literate in their prose and structure, and they are also incredibly smart. The books also cover art, education, and the classics; every book is filled with classical references that inevitably make me feel smarter for reading them.

The Drowning Tree is no exception.

The river feels wider from the shallow boat, the humpbacked hills of the Hudson Highlands looming like the giants Dutch sailors believed dwelled there.

“Just put the water behind you,” he says.

I can’t see the man in the boat behind me, and I don’t want to risk my precarious balance turning to see him.

“You’re been through the drill,” he goes on.

And I have. Six weeks practicing in the indoor pool under the watchful eye of the kayaking instructior, tipping myself into blue chlorinated water and rolling up again, gasping, into the humid air, all in one long in-drawn breath. I’ve practiced it until it’s become second nature, but it’s one thing to turn over in the clear, warm pool water and another to imagine myself hanging upside down in the cold gray water of the Hudson, trapped in the currents…

“This is where the current is most dangerous,” the voice says. “The Dutch called it World’s End.”

Like many of Goodman’s novels, this book is set in the Hudson Valley and there’s also an institute of higher learning–Penrose College–involved. Our main character here, Juno McKay, runs a stained glass restoration business in the same town where she went to college and grew up; she also lives in the building that houses her glass works. Her best friend from college, Christine, is coming back to the college to give a lecture into her research into a stained glass window at the college that Juno’s company is in the process of being restored. But before the lecture, Juno sees Christine arguing with the school president, the most recent Penrose, and afterwards when they have drinks together before Christine catches her train back into the city, Juno gets the impression that somethings’s going on with Christine–and then she is found, drowned in a creek along the shoreline of the original Penrose estate, near a sunken sculpture garden, in a scene very reminiscent of the scene in the stained glass window Juno is restoring. IS there a connection? Was it an accident, or was it murder or suicide?

Like any intrepid heroine in a Gothic novel, Juno is soon drawn into the mystery Christine was looking into–what happened years ago, between the first Penrose, his wife and her half-sister? How many secrets does the abandoned estate (very Nancy Drew, too–it reminded me of The Clue in the Crumbling Wall a bit) conceal? What secrets did the original Mr. Penrose, an artist and painter, conceal in his paintings and art and stained glass windows? Briarwood, a local mental institution, also comes into play as well; years ago, Juno’s ex-husband tried to kill her and their infant daughter by drowning them in the river. They survived, but his mental health did not and he’s been in Briarwood ever since. The pattern of three from the past with Penroses and the half-sister also seemed to play itself out with Juno, Christine, and Juno’s ex-husband, pulling the reader into all these complicated skeins and twists and turns, until the book comes to an extremely satisfying end with all secrets revealed and life back to normal at the end.

What a great read, and a great example of why I love Goodman’s work so much.

Goodbye Baby

Ah, Sunday. I slept in this morning–almost all the way to ten o’clock, it’s like I don’t even know me anymore–but it felt good and I am awake and enjoying my first cup of coffee this fine morn. I did some errands and chores yesterday, which was great, and watched a lot of nothing on the television while I was playing around doing research on-line. I did finish reading Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Bones of the Story (more on that at another time), and spent some more time with the Scott Carson I started reading in Kentucky. There’s still a lot that needs doing around here, but it’ll get done and I still am a little worn out from the drive home, so maybe today’s not the day to try to be super-productive. I also spent yesterday trying to catch up on the state of affairs in the country and world (glad to see people still dragging the puppy slaughterer), which was depressing but necessary. I am way behind on my emails, which is something I will have to address (tomorrow). Heavy sigh. But one can’t hide in their unreality longer than one can and still be functional, can one?

Ah, well.

I also got a signed copy of the new Lori Roy novel, Lake County, in the mail yesterday, which was marvelous. She’s one of my favorite writers, and has been ever since I met her on a panel at Bouchercon a million years ago and then read her Edgar Award winning debut, Bent Road, which was incredible, and I’ve been loving her (and her work) ever since. Once I finish the two novels I am reading, I am digging into the new Roy. Huzzah! I have so many good books on hand to read–I still have the latest Angie Kim, among many others, in that stack on the end table in reach of my chair–that it’s hard to decide what to read next, and then books like the Angie Kim (and the Celeste Ng, and the Angela Crook, and the Jess Lourey, and on and on and on it goes) end up not getting read in an expeditious manner. I have certainly been enjoying all the reading I’ve been doing lately, and need to stay on top of it as much as possible.

The more I look into the suspicious death of Noah Presgrove, the more intriguing the story becomes. It is, as Carol’s latest title proclaims, ‘the bones of the story’; obviously I am interested in what happened the last night the young man was alive and how he actually died, but the basis of the story, it’s fundamentals (small rural town; corrupt local justice system; three day long weekend party serving minors illegally; and of course the battered naked body in the fetal position on the side of the road) make for a fascinating and interesting foundation for a fiction novel, exploring the bitterness and old hurts and feuds and nastiness in a poor, small rural town in Oklahoma (which I will probably change to Kansas, naturally), and peeling back the layers of deceit and resentments and lies and relationships is kind of appealing to me.

It’s also Mother’s Day today, my second without one, and I am not actively avoiding it today, either, the way I did last year. Last year it was still too new and too fresh for me to even be on-line much on that day, but this year is easier. Seeing Dad around Mother’s Day (since it’s always the weekend after Decoration Day, or The First Sunday in May) also made it easier. We talked about her a lot, and Dad told me a lot about their teens and the early years of their marriage, when they were very poor (I didn’t realize how poor we actually were when I was a child and a teen until many years later; living in Kansas kind of twisted that as we were considered well-off there), which made me smile a lot. Obviously, I will always miss my mom, but it’s not as painful to think about her as it used to be. That’s progress, and now I can remember her without recriminations about being a bad son or taking advantage of her kindness or disappointing her. I think that’s normal when you lose a parent or a loved one; you regret time not spent together and think about all the times you were a shitty person. But…I was also horribly spoiled by my parents, and they never stopped trying to spoil me even after I was an adult, because to them I was always their baby and since I didn’t have kids…well, they never stopped seeing me that way. Then again, it may just be a parent/youngest child thing.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later–I have soooo many entries to catch up on; the books I’ve read alone need to be discussed–but I am also not putting any pressure on myself about getting things done today as I am still in recovery mode from the trip. So have a great Mother’s Day, everyone; hug your mom for me and if yours is also gone like mine, I am giving you a big virtual hug.

Just a Little Too Much

I got home last night around seven, after eleven hours on the road from Kentucky on what was actually a rather beautiful day for a drive. I finished listening to The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman, and timed it perfectly so I could queue up her most recent, The Bones of the Story, to listen to for the rest of the way. I was tired, and as always, when I got hungry I was on a lengthy stretch in northwest Alabama where there is hardly anywhere to stop. By the time I got into an area with places, I wasn’t hungry and debated in my mind at every exit whether or not to stop. Again, though, it was a beautiful drive and a beautiful day. There wasn’t even traffic when I got to New Orleans other than the usual backup before the bridge across the river. It was nice to get home, relax in my chair, be stalked by Sparky, and just be home. I did keep thinking all day that it was Sunday, and had to remind myself regularly that it was, in actuality, Friday. I slept well last night after getting home–I missed my bed, my cat, and my partner, as always–and of course, Demon Kitty got me up at six this morning for his feeding. But…he also got back into bed with me for mostly cuddling and purring with the occasional apex predator cat attacks. It’s good to be home. I spent the evening last night watching our shows and getting caught up (Mary and George, Hacks, Abbott Elementary) and I can now stream The Iron Claw on Max, so we’ll probably watch that later. I have to definitely run errands this morning–mail, groceries, prescriptions, library sale–and am kind of looking forward to a nice weekend of re-entry into my regular life and settling in.

I also have lost track of the world because I really wasn’t doing much on-line other than the occasional deletion of unnecessary emails and the very rare moments when I would look at social media on my phone while I was waiting for something. But on the other hand, I am not so sure that’s a bad thing. It was nice to be away from the world and social media and everything else and just relax, you know? I also managed to read two books on the trip (Salvation on Sand Mountain and The Killer Inside Me; more on those later) and started a third (Where They Wait by Scott Carson), which was fun, and also thought about writing and my future, in a more macro and overarching way. But whereas before the trip that would have overwhelmed me and I would have to walk away from the computer, this morning I feel more inspired and clear-headed about everything than I was before I left…which points out how important it is for us writers who work full-time jobs to actually take a break from ALL work, not just the day job.

The trip itself was nice. I got to spend time with my dad, and another baby picture of me appeared, and one that actually showed my face! It’s kind of a family joke, but we have boxes of pictures of my sister in the first two years of her life–and two in total of me (and she’s in one of them). It doesn’t mean anything–there aren’t many pictures of either of us taken between 1963 and 1967 or so, for example (when Dad bought his first camera). They were living with my grandfather after my sister was born and they were still in high school; so everyone around them was taking pictures of the baby (and my sister was a beautiful baby); I was born right before they moved to Auburn for my dad to go to college and we were very poor for a long time; they had no camera and they didn’t know a lot of people there, either, but it’s always been a family joke about having no baby pictures of me as opposed to the intensely documented first two years of my sister’s life. I did scan said picture with my phone, so I may share it someday. I also got to learn some more family history–Dad reminisced about the early years with Mom and the two kids; and it really is staggering how hard they worked and sacrificed for us both. Dad of course thinks he never made things easy enough for her, but he also never takes into consideration how much Mom loved him. He’s doing better, but he’ll never be the way he was before, either.

And on my drive back yesterday when I stopped for gas in Toomsuba (I always stop there on the way home, it’s only about another three or so hours from there and the anticipation of being home starts there) when I noticed I had a text message from a friend that was rather cryptic, and I was puzzled, but it mentioned “Donna Andrews” and Bouchercon so when I got back in the car I texted back, and then checked my emails. So yes, once again I am nominated for an Anthony–that’s three years in a row, which is very cool–for the anthology School of Hard Knox, which I “co-edited” (I really didn’t do much) with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor. It IS an excellent anthology, and if you like crime short stories, you really can’t go wrong with it. But it was nice to be nominated again; I didn’t think I really had any chance this year for a nod, so that was a very pleasant surprise…and you know, I’ve never really basked in the glow of sharing credit with two people whose work I respect and who I also respect and love as people.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. I feel a bit hungry this morning, so I need to eat something and start my day. It’s so good to be home, and I’ve missed you, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be in and out all weekend here, trying to get caught up on talking about books I’ve read and other things. So have a lovely Saturday, and I’ll chat with you again later.

Bobby Sox to Stockings

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?

I Want to Walk You Home

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.

So Fine

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!