And what a fucking glorious night THAT must have been, seriously. I’ve always found it interesting that Joan Baez of all people recorded that song and made it a hit. Maybe I should take a look at the lyrics to see how they look from a modern perspective? That’s a thought. There’s so many things we didn’t even notice were problematic back in the day in our comfortable privilege. (I don’t think I can ever watch Sixteen Candles again, honestly, and it was one of my favorite movies. I’m not so sure what that says about me, either.)
Today is another day in the office; I am not sure but I think I have to help out with testing during the needle exchange program today–like I said, I don’t know, but I will be there if they need me. I have other things to do at the office–most of which feels a bit like ‘make-work,’ if I am going to be completely honest, but it’s also tedious little chores that need to be done, and so I might as well do it to fill my day otherwise it may not get done after all. This has been a very weird week for me; I’ve been tired most of the week when I get off work so I’ve not really been getting as much done as I need to be getting done, which means I really need to get motivated for this weekend. I can do that, of course…it’s not always easy, but I can do it. I just have to work on not getting distracted.
Which isn’t as easy as it may sound on paper. (SQUIRREL!!!)
We watched The Batman last night on HBO MAX and I have to say, I really thought it was outstanding. It was nice seeing Gotham City looking like, you know, an actual city as opposed to the dystopic nightmare it has been in almost every Batman film since Tim Burton first brought the Dark Knight to the silver screen back in the 80’s. I also am very impressed with Robert Pattinson, who might be the most interesting iteration of the character yet–and seriously, how did the sparkly vampire from Twilight turn into one of the most interesting and talented young actors of our time? Zoe Kravitz can also be added to the list of well-cast Catwomen from over the years, and there was actually a plot to follow that involved Batman using his investigative skills to solve the mystery and find the Riddler–another excellent take I’d given up on seeing on the big screen–and overall, I didn’t really notice that the movie was nearly three hours long because I could follow the plot, it made sense, and the character arcs were well developed. I think we’re going to rent the most recent Spider-Man (No Way Home) this weekend–I do love Tom Holland–and then we need to figure out something else to watch. A lot of good stuff dropped during the Festival and its aftermath–so we can have our choices of things to watch for quite some time, methinks, which will be really nice. BUT I HAVE TO GET WORK DONE THIS WEEKEND BEFORE I LEAVE FOR NEW YORK OTHERWISE IT WON’T GET DONE UNTIL I GET BACK AND THAT IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE.
Most of all, I need to get that fucking short story written.
I really need to get motivated to get writing again–and I need to start going back to the gym as well. My weight hasn’t fluctuated very much since I went down to 200 and ballooned back up to 212 again; I’ve been a pretty steady 210-212 since then, and while I always thought that 200 would probably be the best weight for me, maybe my body is telling me 210 is where it prefers to be? I know I could, with discipline and hard work and proper eating, maybe get back to below 200 but my word, what a lot of work that would be and since I really no longer obsess about how my body looks (one way in which getting older has been beneficial; I really do not miss those days of body dysmorphia and constantly berating myself for not looking like a Calvin Klein underwear model), I don’t think I have the dedication anymore to do that again. It’s hard enough finding the time to go to the gym in the first place, let alone start eating in a different way and counting carbs and all of that nonsense. No thanks, not for me this time around, thank you very much. I suspect that the mild depression I’ve been dealing with over this last month or so has a lot to do with the not-writing and not-working out aspects of my life. That loss of serotonin probably has everything to do with it. I really need to focus.
I also still haven’t picked out my next read. I am thinking about rereading something–or maybe I am going to give Hemingway another try (Don’t Know Tough had a whole thing about the main character reading The Old Man and the Sea–which, along with A Farewell to Arms, I was forced to read in high school which gave me a deep and abiding distaste for Hemingway). I have a copy of To Have and Have Not, which is, in theory, Hemingway’s only crime novel–it was certainly made into a classic Bogart/Bacall movie–but every time I think about Hemingway I groan inside. But maybe now I am old enough to appreciate Hemingway–I also read Fitzgerald when I was too young, but I’ve always enjoyed Faulkner, which is weird. Maybe because he writes about the rural South? I’ve wanted to give Sanctuary another go for quite some time now as well.
And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a happy Friday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.
I know, it catches people off-guard that a sixty year old gay man is a massive football fan, but I’ve never subscribed to stereotypes. I love football, with an especial love for the college game (I used to only watch the Saints in the NFL, but have started rooting for the Cincinnati Bengals because, well, Joe fucking Burrow); I think everyone knows I am a massive LSU fan. (GEAUX TIGERS!)
There really isn’t anything else in the world like a Saturday night in Death Valley. I will remember the 2019 night game against Florida probably for the rest of my life. God, what a great game, and it was so much fun. I am aware that I am digressing.
Anyway, I grew up in a Southern football family (even if we didn’t live in the South, we were from the South and that’s all that matters), so it was inevitable that I should become both a football fan and a football player. I played all four years in high school, all of my cousins also played, and I have close relatives who played at both the college and professional levels (and I don’t mean some small college in the middle of nowhere; I mean in the SEC–Auburn and Alabama, and there may be even more that I don’t know about). I have relatives who were successful coaches. Every fall Saturday the television was tuned into whatever college game was playing–even if we weren’t fans of either team; it’s hard to imagine now with the 24/7 college football coverage, but when I was growing up ABC had a monopoly on all NCAA football games. They would usually play one game of national significance, and then the second game was regional–important to that region. As we did not live in the South, we rarely got to see SEC games other than Alabama–Alabama was almost inevitably the only Southern team of “national interest” throughout the 1970’s (I really don’t remember the 1960’s much, but we lived in Chicago so I imagine we saw a lot of Big Ten and Notre Dame games; I don’t really remember a lot of my life before the suburbs, really–some things, yes, but most things not so much)
I’ve never really read a lot of fiction about football, though; it inevitably winds up being something cliched and tired. I loved North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent; hated Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins; but do remember enjoying End Zone by Don DeLillo (I was going to reread this recently; but there’s so much to read. I did try to to reread Semi-Tough–but when I opened the book there were racial slurs and other mess on page one, so I threw it in the trash; no thanks). And I’ve also enjoyed other books with football involved, even if it wasn’t necessarily what the book was about. (The Hardy Boys were on the Bayport High football team in The Crisscross Shadow–the only time football is mentioned in the series.) There’s also a tendency, in books about high school and football to make the football players and cheerleaders the villains of the story, which has never really sat right with me. I was never bullied by anyone on the football team, and maybe the cheerleaders weren’t bitches to me because I was on the team and my sister was a cheerleader, but that wasn’t my experience (one thing I truly appreciated about Stephen King’s Christine was the horrible bullies at Libertyville High weren’t the football players but the hard-case kids–which was also my experience; which is probably yet another reason the book is one of my favorites of the King canon, methinks).
But…I can also see why it’s so attractive to make the jocks and cheerleaders the villains of high school dramas. And I sort of did something similar in #shedeservedit, didn’t I? Those boys on the Marysville and Steubenville high school teams certainly fit the bill of villainy.
So, when people started recommending Eli Cranor’s debut Don‘t Know Tough to me, I wasn’t so sure. I just published a book of my own about high school football and the toxicity it can engender in a small town (#shedeservedit), and revisiting my memories of high school and football was harder than I had thought it would be; I thought I could be dispassionate about it all while writing about it (I often write about things to try to distance myself from them and gain some perspective) but I was wrong. It was hard to write that book, much harder than I thought it would be–and it took years (first draft was written in 2015; published in 2022).
But enough people whose opinions I respect were raving about the book, so I got a copy and once I started reading it, there was no way I could stop.
Still feel the burn on my neck. Told Coach it was a ringworm this morning when he pick me up, but it ain’t. It a cigarette, or at least what a lit cigarette do when it stuck in your neck. Just stared at Him when He did it. No way I’s gonna let Him see me hurt. No way. bit a hole through the side of my cheek, swallowed blood, and just stared at Him. Tasted blood all day.
Tasted it while I saw in Ms. Miller’s class. Woke up in Algebra tasting it. Drank milk from a cardboard box at lunch and still, I tasted it. But now it eighth period football. Coach already got the boys lined up on either side of the fifty, a crease in between, a small space for running and tackling, for pain.
This my favorite drill.
I just been standing back here, watching the other boys go at it. The sound of pads popping like sheet metal flapping in a storm.
“Who want next?” holler Bull. Bull ain’t the head coach. Bull coach the defense. He as mean as they come.
One of my favorite books of all time about small towns is Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show (I also love the film, which is extraordinary and one of, in my opinion, the best films made during the 1970’s). I did try to reread it recently–I was interested in refreshing my memory of its gay subplots and the mental breakdown of poor Joe Bob Blanton, but I’d also forgotten the part about the bored teenaged boys decided to fuck some calves, so when I got to that part I put the book down in distaste. But now that I’ve finished Don’t Know Tough, I kind of want to go back and reread The Last Picture Show again (I can skip that distasteful part…weird that I didn’t remember it).
Don’t Know Tough is yet another incredibly impressive debut, further confirming the truth of what I said at the Lefty Award banquet–the last few years have seen so many amazing and diverse and extraordinary debuts that the future of our genre is in very good hands. I won’t lie–when I started reading the book, I wasn’t sure I could keep reading it; I was worried that the entire book would be written in that grammatically garbled first-person voice but as I kept reading that first chapter I got into the rhythm of the language and started seeing the beauty and fluidity of the style choice–which is no small feat to pull off, and pull off consistently, throughout the entire book…to the point I was also a little disappointed that the entire book wasn’t done in that same style. Billy Lowe is the character whose voice this is; and the story of the novel revolves around him and the horrific Shakespearean tragedy that his life actually is. His mother is an alcoholic, and lives with an abusive piece of shit who obviously directs violence at Billy. He has a younger half-brother who was fathered by this POS; he also has an older brother who lives elsewhere. Billy’s situation has turned him into a wild beast of rage with an exceptional gift for channeling that rage into playing football. He’s not big enough in size to go major college, but his coach feels like there’s a chance he could get a football scholarship to a smaller college, and break the cycle of poverty he is trapped in at the moment. Billy is exceptionally compelling–it’s hard to read his first person point of view and not have your heart break for this kid; and hope that it’s all going to work out for him in the end, despite the disturbing pattern of violence in both his life and behavior.
Denton High has made the Arkansas state play-offs, but without Billy in the backfield their chances of advancing are practically nil. It’s important for Denton to do well in the post season because their coach’s job depends on it. Trent Powers is a born-again Christian, whose last coaching job in California crapped out–winning only three games in his final three seasons before being fired. This job is another chance for him, even though his wife and daughters hate relocating to a small town in Arkansas from California (much is made throughout the book of Coach Powers’ Prius, seen by the locals are weird and strange and almost otherworldly and unmanly). Coach Powers also has a very soft spot for his star player, and not just because he’s a star player–he actually feels compassion for the horror the young player’s life has been up to that point, and he wants to help–even if Billy doesn’t want any help from anyone. Billy’s future, to Billy at any rate, is already set, and he’s not going to end up going anywhere or doing anything or having a good life and decent future. He doesn’t see himself being worthy of anything or of doing better than his assigned lot in life.
The Powers family is a direct contrast to Billy’s; loving and nurturing couple, raising two daughters and trying to do right by them. How far is too far to go when helping someone in Billy’s situation, is the question. Coach’s wife–the daughter of a successful football coach who took Trent in when he was a kid from a similar background as Billy’s…and yes, he slept with his coach’s daughter and got her pregnant. So both Coach and his wife have the fear that the same thing will happen to their daughter and Billy–especially when the daughter starts opening up to Billy.
But one night Billy’s abuser is murdered. No one would blame Billy for killing the abusive bastard–well, the law would. But the story of what happened that night is far more complicated, and far more surprising, than the reader can imagine.
The pacing is also exceptional, and I love the contrasts between the third person point of view we see much of the novel in, with the Billy point of view chapters mixed in. The language choices and imagery are spare and tight yet full and rich and immersive–reminding me not only of Megan Abbott and her brilliant Dare Me, but also with a healthy dash of Daniel Woodrell, Tom Franklin, S. A. Cosby, and Kelly J. Ford (all masters of Southern Gothic) mixed in. The little touches of how claustrophobic small Southern towns can be, the class disparities between the haves and the have nots, and what teenagers in those types of environments was simply masterful.
I was completely blown away by this amazing work, and suspect that you will be as well. Highly recommended. I cannot wait to see what Eli Cranor does next.
Ah, the Carpenters. I loved them so when I was younger and Karen was still alive and recording. That voice…simply amazing. One of the stranger Youtube wormholes I’ve gone down recently are young people who’ve never heard the Carpenters before reacting to their music–and without the contexts of the time when the Carpenters were recording, they can simply appreciate the music as beautifully produced and the timeless beauty of Karen Carpenter’s voice (the Carpenters weren’t considered “cool” at the time they were recording their hits and becoming one of the biggest musical acts in the country; they were clean cut, all-American goody two-shoes types that even Richard Nixon praised as “the right kind of young Americans”–and of course, the Nixon stamp of approval guaranteed they would never be considered cool).
Then again, ABBA wasn’t considered cool, either. I’ve always thought you could tell a lot about a person as to whether they liked and appreciated ABBA and the Carpenters or not.
I was again tired when I got home from the office yesterday. I did some laundry and a load of dishes while Scooter howled constantly at me to go sit down so he could sleep in my lap. Usually he’ll sleep there for about five minutes then get bored and go somewhere else; this time he stayed in my lap for hours. I couldn’t focus on reading anything new–I tried, but my brain was too tired–and so I went down a Youtube wormhole for a while watching history videos. I didn’t work on my story at all yesterday, but I did get some other things–more of a mindless nature–worked on as well. Slowly but surely I am making progress down my to-do list, and I am not feeling quite so overwhelmed today as I was feeling yesterday morning. I still have ridiculous amounts of work to do and get done, but it’s not so seemingly impossible this morning as it looked yesterday morning. It may have something to do with the terrific night’s sleep I enjoyed last night–one never can be sure, after all–but I do feel very well rested this morning and maybe not quite “I can conquer the world” good, but more awake and aware and alive than I felt yesterday morning.
I’m also starting to get excited about next week’s trip to New York. I am still dreading having to get up on-stage and speak–fortunately I don’t have to be up there for long–which is still long enough for me to spend the entire day stressed and worried and unable to relax. But New York will be marvelous, and I hope to see friends while I am up there in and around and at the Edgar banquet. I’ve not been to the banquet is a good long time–we also haven’t had one for two years, but even before that it had been a hot minute, maybe four or five years since the last time I went? So I am looking forward to the trip and looking forward to seeing people, but there’s also an underlying sense and feeling of dread.
I still haven’t decided what my next book to read will be; there’s so many good ones in my TBR pile that it is very difficult to decide sometimes. I got some more book mail yesterday, every last one of them looking really interesting and fun to read, and so on top of the pile they went. Heavy heaving sigh. But I will have airport time and flights to get some reading done next week; so it’s just a matter of deciding what I want to read on the trip. Which reminds me, there’s yet another trip for this summer I need to plan, provided the world doesn’t shut down again. Heavy heaving sigh.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
The traditional mystery often gets a bum rap by mystery fans. I’m not sure why that is; these books have never gone out of style, have never decreased in popularity, and have always been the backbone of the crime/mystery genre. They are often (wrongly, I think) identified with Agatha Christie–if anything, Christie should be identified with every sub-genre of crime/mystery fiction. She wrote private eye novels (Poirot); dark noir (Endless Night); spy fiction (N or M?, The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to Baghdad); historicals (Death Comes as the End); and even romantic suspense (as Mary Westmacott). Sure, she often relied on the amateur sleuth–her most famous amateur being probably Miss Marple–but she literally did everything first, really.
Probably why everyone refers to her as the Queen of Crime Fiction.
But the traditional mystery, for some reason, gets short shrift in our modern world, despite being one of the most popular subgenres of crime fiction. Why? I don’t really understand it. Sure, there’s not any blood or sex or violence–the sort of thing generally used to sell everything from television shows to movies to laundry soap and deoderant. Many of us grew up reading books about amateur detectives, from Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys to Trixie Belden. So why do so many turn their noses up at the traditional mystery, also known as the cozy mystery?
I think it’s much harder to write about crime without using the tough guy male lead (stereotype), blood, violence, swear words, and sex. Is it this lack of the “rougher” aspects of crime that earned these books the nickname “cozy”?
What precisely does the word cozy mean, used as a book descriptor in this way? Ask five mystery fans/writers, and you will get five different answers. It’s often hard to quantify the variety of subgenres within the mystery/crime field. Everything else aside, I think the most important thing, the key, for a mystery novel to get this kind of classification is that the book focuses, on one level, on a sense of community; the reader develops a warm, comfortable feeling, the kind that you usually get from visiting family and friends you don’t get to see all of the time. You open the book and start reading and already feel relaxed and at home; happy to see people you care about, are interested in, and are excited to find out what they have been up to. Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series is an excellent example of this; so is Leslie Budewitz’ Spice Shop mystery series (both series, obviously, are favorites of mine). These books welcome you in, invite you to put your feet up, get comfortable, and spend some time with your old friends you’ve not seen in a while.
This, naturally, is very difficult to establish when writing the first book in a new series of this kind; how do you immediately establish this warm environment where the reader feels comfortable enough to kick off their shoes and relax? It’s not the easiest thing to pull off for an accomplished writer; so it’s all the more remarkable when someone nails it in their very first book.
Mia P. Manansala nailed it in her debut.
My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.
Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American (or dead bodies, but more on that later), but all the hallmarks are there.
Girl from an improbably named small town in the Midwest moves to the big city to make a name for herself and find love? Check.
Girl achieves these things only for the world to come crashing down when she walks in on her fiancé getting down and dirty with their next-door neighbors (yes, plural)? Double check.
Girl then moves back home in disgrace and finds work reinvigorating her aunt’s failing business? Well now we’re up to a hat trick of clichés.
And to put the cherry on top, in the trope of all tropes, I even reconnected with my high school sweetheart after moving back to town and discovered the true meaning of Christmas.
Okay, that last part is a joke, but I really did run into my high school sweetheart. Derek Winter, my first love.
First of all, can we talk about the voice?
It is impossible not to fall in love with Lila’s voice from the very first sentence of the book. She is smart and funny and eminently likable, which is important in a traditional mystery (no one wants to read a cozy whose main character is an unlikable bitch) and much harder to do than most people who don’t actually write books think it is. Lila is a remarkable character; very clear-eyed about what she wants and what she doesn’t, as well as who she thinks she is and wants to be. She’s returned from her big escape to the big city to the small town she wasn’t terribly happy in when she was growing up–her past experiences continually are reminding her, and not in pleasant way, of why she left in the first place. She never intended to return home (as Thomas Wolfe said, you can’t go home again), but she is back and rather than focusing on what she is certain everyone she knows or is related to sees as her “failure,” she intends instead to focus on helping save her aunt’s restaurant business.
The immense strength of this story rests upon those family bonds, and Lila’s recognition of just how important those bonds–family, friends, community–actually are to her; and her growing realization, over the course of the books, that those things she once thought were strangling and restraining her are actually where her own power comes from.
The mystery itself is also strong: Lila’s wretched local ex, whose mother has since married a businessman who rents Tita Rosie’s building to her and is a total dick, has taken to writing shitty reviews of local restaurants, apparently targeting one and trying to destroy its business before moving on to another. Lila’s relationship with him is also strained; and she also doesn’t like the dickish stepfather either. It is while she is serving them lunch that her ex keels over face-first into his plate–dead from arsenic poisoning. In the food Lila fed him, and came from her aunt’s kitchen. The financially strapped business is shut down pending an investigation into the murder and a health department inspection, and there is the very real fear that Tita Rosie may lose her restaurant. Lila takes it upon herself to investigate and find the real culprit, to clear herself as well as her aunt and the beloved family business of any wrongdoing and scandal. The journey, which introduces us to her friends and family, and welcomes the reader into their charming world and community, twists and turns and is full of surprises every step along the way–as Lila also learns just how much the restaurant, her family, and her friends really mean to her.
This book is absolutely charming, well-written, and very fun. I cannot wait to revisit Lila and her crew in the second book, Homicide and Halo-Halo. Mia P. Manansala is definitely one to watch, and it’s going to be fun watching her career reaching even more heights than she has already achieved.
In March of 2020, something I had only been vaguely aware of became something I was acutely aware of, seemingly overnight: the world, in fact, shut down in the face of a virulent and potentially deadly disease that was communicable. I went to work one morning and all of our appointments had been cancelled; they’d put up shields everywhere in the testing rooms and at the front desk; and after we were there for about a couple of hours the word came down from the chief medical officer: we were shutting down. It happened so fast my head spun. Within days the Tennessee Williams Festival was cancelled, the Edgar banquet was in jeopardy, and false information was spreading even more quickly than the virus. I also remember thinking that the measures we were taking as a country were so drastic that “surely it would be over in a few weeks.”
Ah, naivete.
Stressed out and concerned about everything and everyone, I did what I always do in stressful times: I turned to books. And, as is my wont, I decided to read about plagues. I got down my copy of Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror to read the bubonic plague chapter again; I have a copy of a book called The Black Death (whose author I cannot recall) that I also read; I revisited The Stand by Stephen King (an all-time favorite of mine); Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice; Camus’ The Plague; and even got down Katherine Anne Porter’s short story collection to reread “Pale Horse Pale Rider.” I was, as you can obviously tell, interested in seeing how previous plagues had been dealt with, survived, and the changes they wrought on civilization and society. I also wondered how to write about the pandemic (it not being my first pandemic, either; I always felts queers of a certain age were a little better prepared for the coronavirus outbreak than the rest of the world because we’d already been through HIV/AIDS), and if I would eventually; I wrote a short story called “The Flagellants” which I hope to publish someday somewhere, probably in a short story collection of my own, and even came up with an idea for a Scotty: Quarter Quarantine Quadrille.
But I was also seeing people saying they wouldn’t read fiction set during pandemic times; and other authors shying away from it. I kind of shook my head but understood; I remember how New Orleans writers didn’t want to deal with Hurricane Katrina afterwards–I certainly didn’t when I was living through the aftermath–but we all eventually came around to writing about it. Even if it’s fiction, I feel like we need to have documentation of what it’s like to go through things like hurricanes and pandemics and other paradigm shifts that change the world as we used to know it before the shift.
This past week I started reading an advance copy of the new Chris Helm book, Child Zero, and finished it yesterday–and yes, it’s a pandemic story, and no, it’s not about COVID-19…but what it is, is one hell of a read.
Pike and his men reached the encampment’s southwest gate at precisely 3:15 a.m.
Twelve minutes earlier, their sleek black SUV’s–three in total, armored, tinted, and stripped of emblems, license plates, and VINs–entered the Lincoln Tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey, having passed the darkened tollbooths without slowing. Two minutes after that, they emerged beneath the murky waters of the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan and zigzagged until they reached Eighth Avenue.
The stoplights blinked yellow in all directions. They encountered neither traffic nor pedestrians. Three years ago, Pike thought, these streets would’ve been bustling–even at this time of night. Now, thanks to the citywide curfew, they were empty save for police cruisers and sanitation crews.
The forer rolled lazily through intersections, or idled nose-to-tail beside one another so their drivers could converse. The latter clung to the side of tanker trucks in hazmat suits, or wandered two-by-two with smaller canisters strapped to their backs spraying bus stops, subway stations, and other public spaces with disinfectant foam. Fresh from the nozzle, it was enough to make your eyes water, but within minutes it dissipated to a lacy film that turned to fine white dust when touched, and smelled like some fragrance chemist’s idea of clean.
My assumption is that smell was either lemon or pine, or a combination of both?
Child Zero is, more than anything else, a rapid-paced thriller about a future world in which antibiotics have become useless; a virus has spread throughout the world rendering them (I won’t go into the technical details here; it’s explained much better within the pages of the novel and I am no scientist) ineffective in stopping infections or bacteriological diseases of any kind. A cut or a scratch can literally lead to death, and the world has clamped down into an authoritarian society that is even more frightening to contemplate than the pandemic itself. Would this be considered a science thriller? I’m not sure how you would classify this book within the world of crime fiction; it’s definitely a page turning thriller (once I got going yesterday there was no way I was putting it down until I reached the end), and kind of reminded me of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, only better (The Andromeda Strain scared the shit out of me when I read it as a teenager a gazillion years ago); Chris Helm is a better writer than Michael Crichton at his best, and it’s amazing what a difference sentence structure, word choices, and intense character development can make in a thriller. Focusing on a pair of cops, one white male and one Muslim woman, who get drawn into an investigation into a mass shooting event at a quarantine camp in Central Park (“Park City”), their investigation soon runs afoul of powerful people, within the government and without; Jacob Gibson is soon put on leave but soon they are witness to another mass death event; and find themselves helping a young illegal immigrant, twelve-year-old Mateo–who is the target everyone is looking for.
You see, all the murder victims in Park City were, surprisingly enough in a time of pandemic, completely healthy–which makes no sense. Somehow, Mateo is the key to everything…and time is running out because Jacob’s four year old daughter is sick.
This is a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish, but what makes it better than your average thriller is not just the timeliness of the story but the fact that the characters aren’t two-dimensional Hero, Sidekick, and Target, the way they so often are in thrillers. They have interior lives, are sharply drawn, and you care about what happens to them–which, to me, is perhaps the most important part of a thriller (and why so many thrillers, in my opinion, miss the mark).
Get it pre-ordered if you haven’t already. It’s truly terrific.
It’s really strange to look back at old music–from really not that long ago–and see how actually pedophilic and disturbing the lyrics to some of these songs actually are. Today’s title, for example, is about a guy being tempted by a girl who’s much too young for him–but while he at least recognizes this, the song itself makes it sound like she is the seductive temptress, which again: weird and uncomfortable. Granted, the version I am most familiar with is Donny Osmond’s, and he was prepubescent when he recorded it, so there is that. But imagine how creepy it would sound if sung by someone in their twenties? Thirties?
I am sure you get the point.
Yesterday wasn’t one of my better days, frankly. I woke up at five in the morning and of course, was wide awake (fortunately, Scooter decided that was the time to start howling for food and water, so it wasn’t a total disaster; he would have woken me up then anyway so hurray for already being awake, at least). But I felt very–not tired, but also not entirely checked into my day, if that makes any kind of sense? It’s a weird feeling, and not one I am particularly fond of, either–but what can you do? Try to function as best you can, is the only answer–along with hoping that tomorrow will be better. It’s sort of the like the post-novel writing malaise I often experience when I’ve turned a book in; but it’s not quite the same. I tried working on some writing yesterday to no avail; I did get a bit done but very very little. But after abandoning the attempt to write, I sat down with Chris Holm’s Child Zero, which is quite compelling and extremely well written. I got only a few chapters in before Paul got home from the gym (it’s so lovely having a husband again; it’s been like four months of having a roommate I never see), and thus had to reluctantly put the book aside.
We’re also getting some nasty weather later this afternoon–hurricane force winds are predicted, and potential tornadoes (again). The worst of the weather will be north of us–sorry, Mississippi, please stay safe, my Mississippi friends–but it’s also supposed to be at its worst right around the time I get off work and head home. There’s also potential for power outages–as always with high winds–so who knows what’s going to happen around here? I will have to figure out precisely what to do when it’s time for me to come home, I suppose. Yay? AH, well, weather has become even more threatening to us down here over the last few years, I suppose.
We also started watching season two of The Righteous Gemstones last night, which is a very underrated show–it’s quite funny, and of course, the goings-on behind the scenes at most megachurches always is interesting to me on some levels. John D. MacDonald’s One More Sunday is maybe my favorite novel about a televangelist family (MacDonald was a stunning writer, one of the best and one of my favorites, definitely an influence on my career); and of course, in one of its many iterations the Kansas book (now #shedeservedit) was about a megachurch in Kansas; which might still become a book, although probably no longer set in Kansas. Although hypocritical evangelicals has become a cliche…
But it’s also pay-the-bills day (yay?) But at least I can pay them and not worry about buying groceries and so forth, so definitely yay.
And hopefully, tonight when I get home we’ll have power so I can do some writing.
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me! Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!
Sunday morning and oh so much to do. I slept in this morning until eight thirty (oh dear! The vapors!), and feel a bit groggy but also rested and well, which is lovely. I think the panel yesterday went well–one never knows for sure, does one?–but I think the panelists were smart and entertaining and fun and informative; I certainly enjoyed listening to their answers to my borderline puerile questions. I also didn’t stick close to the topic–I never do, another reason I am a shitty moderator–but the most important thing is to stay out of the way of the panelists as they talk about their writing. Whether I succeeded or not remains to be seen; moderating isn’t my strength by any means, I loathe doing it, and it’s also not something I enjoy doing, for that matter.
Then again, that might just be more evidence of Imposter Syndrome. Who knows?
I also woke up to a cover reveal for the Magic is Murder anthology! Edited by the wonderful Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley, this lovely anthology includes my story “The Snow Globe,” which is another example of Gregalicious never letting a story idea die. This story began life as a Halloween story (original opening line: Satan had a great six-pack), was converted to a Christmas story (opening line: Santa had a great six-pack–only had to move the n!) and finally found a home. Thanks to the Terrific Trio for all their help with my story, and I am, as always, excited to see another short story of mine in print. Huzzah!
I need to add a caveat to my earlier “well-rested” sentence: my legs and hip joints ache from walking to the Monteleone and back two days in a row. My legs feel terribly tired, and my hip joints are very achy this morning–as evidenced just not when I got up to make another cup of coffee. I am sure it has something to do with the new shoes and needing new shoe inserts; it usually does–but it’s still rather annoying at the same time. I guess I am grateful it’s not my knees or ankles, but nevertheless, pretty aggravating. I have a lot to do today–I’ve already made a list of what needs to be done today–and I am probably going to spare some more wake-up time to reading Alex Segura’s marvelous Secret Identity. I spent some time with it yesterday while taking breaks from everything I need to scratch off my to-do list, and I am really enjoying it. I am enjoying the feel and vibe of the comic book world and New York in the 1970’s; it would be really fun to see a Mad Men/The Deuce type show developed by Segura set in the comics world of this time. I spent some time last night unwinding over a couple of episodes of Young Justice, which I am also enjoying, and then watched two DC animated movies: Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, both of which I deeply enjoyed; the lovely thing about the animated movies is they can actually use the entire cast of DC heroes and aren’t as limited as the television shows or live-action films by casting. I love seeing the DC heroes of my comic fandom days in action–Red Tornado, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Blue Beetle, etc.–turning up in the animation; I’ve missed them as the movies focus on the bigger names and the television shows are also slightly limited by casting as well–they aren’t using first tier, like the movies, but what I would call Tier 1A. (Although I will gladly argue that the CW’s Superman and Lois is the best take on the characters since the Christopher Reeve Superman films.)
I also spent some time watching the World Figure Skating championships, which was delightful. Two American ice dance teams medaled (a rare occurrence), and I think this may be the first time in history that the US has gotten a medal in every discipline? I know we’ve not had a pairs champion since 1979 with Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia, and it’s been a while since we had a pairs medal of any kind. And our future looks bright with two up-and-comers in Men’s.
So, I had probably best gird my loins and venture into today’s spice mines. Paul will be home tomorrow (yay!) and I need to not only get the apartment not only under control, but everything else in my life, and I am feeling better about everything, really. I don’t know why I allow myself to get so wrapped up in despair and overwhelmed by everything I have to do; everyone has things to do and everyone has their own pace, and well, it just is what it is, you know?
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Y’all have a great Sunday, okay?
I have always hated the cutesy phrase “make love.”
It’s always been used to get around censors, back in the days of the Hays Code for movies and of course, the ones who kept network television squeaky clean and almost infantile; a unique term for fucking required by puritanical Americans because, you know, the f word is just too nasty to say. Fornicate sounds like sin (usually it’s only used by preachers and ministers), and of course, there’s “having sex”–which sounds completely clinical and sterile and about as un-erotic as a colonoscopy. The other words for it–balling, screwing, fucking, humping, riding–are considered too vulgar for polite society. So someone, somewhere, came up with the innocuous phrase “making love.” (This also is yet another societal effort–whether intentional or not–to equate sex with love; one of the biggest mistakes in modern culture and society) And this doesn’t even begin to touch on “going to bed with” or “sleeping with.”
I don’t know when “making love” began to irritate me, but it was very prevalent for a very long time on soap operas, and every time someone would say it, I would flinch or internally recoil. (Although it’s fun to go back and replace it in movie and song and television show titles: Making Love becomes Fucking; Let’s Make Love becomes Let’s Fuck or Let’s Have Sex–which completely changes the tone, doesn’t it?)
I guess this is on my mind because I am preparing for my workshop today on sex in fiction–that, of course, and then today’s title popped up on my title list and I reflexively rolled my eyes. My workshop is:
Friday, March 25
2:30 – 3:45 PM—SAS Master Class
GREG HEREN: WRITING THE EROTIC
Writing about sex is more challenging than it appears. This master class will help writers produce erotic writing grounded in character, setting, and voice, with an eye on how erotica can contribute to, build, and/or resolve story conflict. We’ll explore how the implicit is often more effective than the explicit, and how to make explicit scenes compelling and authentic. With a focus on finding fresh imagery and an original approach, we’ll also look at how humor, bad sex, or even problematic sex lend themselves to a fuller—and more erotic—interaction between two characters. Questions addressed include: How can we make use of the erotic to create more exciting fiction that better reflects the real life and aspects of a character? How can the erotic be the center of a story without being explicitly so? What do we do about hyperbole and how do we grapple with the often hyperbolic feelings around the erotic? How is erotica different from sex writing or porn? And, how can we ultimately make the erotic fit naturally, as an integral part, into the flow of a good story. This workshop will encourage participants to take chances and experiment with building eroticism into their work mindfully and seamlessly, and/or give them the tools for creating a story that is primarily driven by the erotic, but that has a freshness and originality often lacking in the genre.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal C
I didn’t write that description–I am filling in for Trebor Healey, the original instructor, who broke his leg or his foot or something. It happened in time for the program to be corrected before it went to the printer, and you know me–I am the seat filler for all last minute cancellations at Saints and Sinners. I don’t mind; it eases Paul’s mind to know he can count on me to fill in if necessary; it’s why I usually am not programmed into it to begin with because I’m the wild card that can be played on any hand. I’ve taught erotic writing workshops before–I used to write a column for the Erotica Writers’ Association, which I don’t think exists anymore? I could be wrong–but there’s always pressure to do a good job and say smart things that the audience will be able to use to improve their own writing. Add that in with my stage fright and absolute soul-wrenching terror at having to stand up and talk in front of people, intensified by the fact I haven’t done it in over two years maybe even three, and yeah, you get where I am at this morning.
AIEEE!
Ah, well, I need to get over it.
Last night I watched the latest Superman and Lois, another couple of episodes of Young Justice, and the latest two episodes of Minx, which is really growing on me. I like the show–even though I am a bit concerned about some aspects of it–and of course, shows set in that time period–the 1970’s–are ore than a little nostalgic for me. I am almost finished inputting the edits into the manuscript–I am hoping to get that finished when I get home after my class today–and so am feeling pretty productive. Once I have this manuscript finished and returned to the author, I can focus on getting back into my own writing again. YAY! I am hoping to do that very thing on Sunday. Fingers crossed.
And now I need to start preparing for the workshop. Wish me luck, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Well, last night was a bit intense there for a while.
Yes, we had really horrific weather events down here last evening. I was sitting in my easy chair, relaxing and watching episodes of Young Justice when my phone started blaring the emergency alert. I knew there was a chance of tornadoes because we were having high winds all day (another emergency alert) and thunderstorms would be moving in during the early night. Sure enough, the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in torrents and lightning was flashing–and then my phone emergency alert started going off. I immediately paused the show and switched over to Margaret Orr on WDSU (since Nash Roberts retired, Ms. Orr has been my go-to local weatherperson, and saw that the “tornadic” (a new word to me) storm was on the West Bank–and there was another, separate one entirely, on the North Shore. The location of this tornadic storm placed it pretty much directly across the river from my neighborhood–needless to say, a bit terrifying knowing it was literally that close–but the path the storm was following indicated it would probably jump the river just below the French Quarter, into either the Marigny, Bywater or lower 9th ward neighborhoods. (Even more scary–I know a lot of people in those neighborhoods, so of course I was scrolling through social media rapidly making sure my friends were all okay and worrying.) Then came the visual confirmation there was actually a tornado on the ground over there–and yes, know and love people over on the West Bank as well–and then it jumped the river into the lower 9th.
I grew up with tornadoes–they weren’t common but did happen in Chicago; but of course, five years in Kansas. My first thought was great there are no basements in southeastern Louisiana and second was fuck there’s really not even an interior place for me to huddle in this apartment if it comes here and third was acceptance: oh well, if it comes this way hope for the best.
Seriously, y’all. Major major yikes.
I know at least one person died in St. Bernard Parish (Chalmette/Arabi), and I’m not seeing any estimates on damage yet (haven’t done a deep dive) but I do remember I drove through the East on a trip out of town after the tornado there a few years ago and being horrified by what I was seeing (not on the level of the ‘disaster drives’ I took around the city when I returned after Katrina, but still pretty fucking horrible; Katrina’s a very high bar, after all). I know thousands are still without power this morning, and I’m not sure how this is going to affect my work day–I don’t know if there’s power at the building, for example, but I think I would have heard something by now–but I wouldn’t be surprised if my appointments have a rather high percentage of no-shows today.
The new book’s cover reveal was graciously hosted by none other than Dru Ann Love this morning; you can find it right here! I love this cover–the look on the cat’s face, based on Scooter, is absolutely perfect–and I am very excited about the new book. I am hopeful it will become a series–it was a one-book only deal, so hopefully it will continue. Huzzah!
I did manage to get quite a bit done yesterday, and was tired a bit when I got home last night so wasn’t able to get any reading or much else of anything done other than watching Live Justice and the second episode of Minx (I have some thoughts on this show, which I am enjoying but not sure if I should be, if that makes sense? But I will discuss that more at another time, and feel like I need to give the show a few more episodes before making up my mind one way or another; I will say that the thing I found problematic in the first episode was that the main character–whom I liked–was very much a 70’s feminist stereotype: humorless, strident, angry–not that they didn’t have every right to be, mind you, but I often find that this lazy stereotype inevitably leads to lazy character development: let’s watch as the uptight opinionated humorless feminist learns how to relax and shed the systemic misogyny training she received as a woman growing up when she did, and of course, being around a porn publisher and porn models…you see what I mean? I like the positive representation of porn and the people who work in it, but…maybe I am making more of this than I should. I don’t know) before of course the tornado alarm went off on my phone, which shifted everything for the rest of the evening.
Paul’s moving into the hotel today so I will also be home alone for until Sunday night or Monday morning. Sigh, Festival widowhood staring me in the face again.
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely and safe day, Constant Reader!
I’ve been sleeping well lately, which I suppose means I’ve not been wicked for awhile? Isn’t it “no rest for the wicked?” (I’ve also always considered Ways to Be Wicked one of my potential memoir titles; one of many, to be true, but maybe when I retire I’ll write a memoir every year! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!
If that didn’t send a chill down your spine…well, it should have.
Shudder. I can’t imagine anything more terrifying.
I had appointments and things yesterday, so I took a personal day from the day job and decided–once I was home, having been poked and prodded and all those lovely, distasteful things that are chalked up as “routine maintenance” on an sixty-year-old car–to take a Gregalicious day yesterday; no emails, no day job duties (I had taken the day off, after all) and little to no Internet for most of the day. I wanted to focus on me and my own work for the rest of the day, without any distractions or interference from other places (and yes, that kind of has put me a bit behind on the to-do list, but that’s okay; I also remember and realize that stress and pressure are mindkillers; they induce paralysis and keep me from moving ahead by allowing me to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things I have to get done. And once I kicked it into gear, I got a lot done yesterday. I reread the most recent drafts of six short stories that are stalled and I’ve been unable to unlock to secret to solving the problems to make them publishable; for whatever reason yesterday I was able to divorce myself from those creations and edit/review them with a very cold and distant eye. The result? I solved those problems, was able to write extensive notes on how to make them stronger and better stories for the next round of revisions, and even came up with notes on one that is in progress and needs to be turned in by the end of April. Huzzah!
Today I am back in the office, and while the return to the gym I’ve been wanting to make hasn’t happened quite yet (as I said, I really went into the world of self-editing yesterday and by the time I’d gotten through everything I was working on, it was too late to go to the gym), I am hopeful it will be soon enough (maybe this weekend; we shall see). I also continued watching Young Justice last night, which I am really enjoying. It’s sort of another take (with a different title) on Teen Titans, a comic I loved when I was younger (kind of like how Super Friends was the Saturday morning version of Justice League, but don’t get me started on how stupid that show was and how it undermined canon characters who were actually cool in the comics but bad on the show–cough cough, Aquaman, cough cough–but Young Justice, while geared clearly for a younger audience, doesn’t talk down to them the way Super Friends did. The show kicks off with the sidekicks being brought to the Hall of Justice–all of them expecting to become members of the Justice League now, only to discover it’s just step one of the journey and they actually aren’t going to be involved in any cases/adventures for the League. Speedy walks out, and the remaining three sidekicks (Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad) decide to answer an emergency call about a fire a Cadmus Labs, which leads them to the clone of Superman; whom they release. Lots of action and adventure end with Cadmus Labs being taken down and the clone becoming Superboy; the older heroes decide to give them an abandoned League facility for their own headquarters and add another young hero to the group: Miss Martian (a really stupid name), who is the niece of the Martian Manhunter.
(One thing I really like about this show is that it doesn’t just show the big names in the League but the lesser ones–Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado, etc.–as being active and vital members of the League. Well done, adapters!)
I am also hoping that when I get home from the office tonight I can spend some more time withAlex Segura’s marvelous Secret Identity. Next up will be Chris Holm’s Child Zero, and then I am not sure which treasure to pluck from the TBR pile. But I have a lot to get done this week and I need to get ready for work, so I am going to bring this to a close. Have a happy Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 