Category: chores

In Our Angelhood

LSU is in the finals of the College World Series! Woo-hoo! GEAUX TIGERS! And what a great game that was last night, for real. A pitcher’s duel with no runs until the bottom of the 11th; when Dylan Crews hit a base hit and Wake Forest brought in a relief pitcher—whose only pitch was a home run! Tigers win, 2-0! Apparently that pitcher had also said in a press conference “who can beat us?” Well, there’s your irony, bud–your answer was LSU! And yes, the Tiger fans are on track to double the old Rocco’s Bar jello shot challenge record. (It amazes me that this has made the news all over the country; the fact Louisianans love to drink is one of the reasons I’ve always loved it here, even though I really don’t drink much anymore myself. )

Today is a work-at-home Friday, but we have a team building exercise today and our team’s supervisor is taking us out to lunch afterwards. I have some errands to run at some point today, and am really looking forward to getting back home into the cool. Yesterday when I got off work and walked out to the car I thought, hey it’s still kind of unseasonably cool, I would have thought it would be miserable again already and when I started the car and looked at the dashboard, it was ninety-seven degrees! Amazing what a difference lower humidity can make to how hot it feels around here. I slept marvelously last night–I think I was emotionally worn out after the rollercoaster ride that was the LSU game last night (there was also one of the most amazing defensive plays I’ve ever see in baseball, when Tre Morgan saved the game by making a play to home base that tagged the runner at home with seconds to spare; it was as big a play as the home run that won it) and so had an easy time of falling asleep. I have to make a list of what all I need to get done before I leave on Sunday morning for Alabama.

But I feel rested this morning, and I am very glad. I’ll probably take a Lyft to the escape room (that’s what we’re doing for team building; I’ve never done one before so I am intrigued to experience something new) and then another one home; ordinarily I would just walk or take the streetcar, but it’s sooooo miserably hot that I don’t want the heat to leech all my energy and will out of me because I have things to do today. I got some more good work done on the book yesterday, and I am hoping to be able to get it finished either tonight or tomorrow. Once it’s done and I am back from Kentucky, I’ll probably go ahead and share the cover and post about the book, how it came to be and all of that. I’m going to need to get the apartment cleaned up some, the refrigerator cleaned out, and I need to make a grocery list for the week so I can get supplies put in for Paul before I leave–although he’ll probably just get salads from Rouse’s or Subway–and I also have some books to drop off at the library sale on Saturday.

Mmmm, my coffee tastes marvelous this morning. It always seems to taste better when I’ve slept well. I also think I am over whatever that bug is that I was dealing with earlier in the week. I took some DayQuil yesterday which alleviated the symptoms and once it wore off, the symptoms didn’t come back. I still am a bit congested so I’m not completely over it, but I feel a thousand times better than I did, which is a relief. There’s nothing worse than a long drive when you don’t feel well, you know. I also watched the American Pain documentary, about the horrible twin brothers who ran the country biggest pill mills and helped create the current opioid crisis (it’s also lovely that the one who has done his time and been released takes absolutely no responsibility for what he did–because their addiction is their own fault since he didn’t make them take the Oxy; they chose to do that themselves. Sure, bud, their doctors got them hooked and you made profits off their suffering, but you do you, sociopath. What a monster–both brothers are just utter and complete pieces of shit. Their case is also an example of how different justice is for white boys from an upper middle class family than it is for non-whites or whites from a lower social strata–they’d been getting in trouble with the law since they were kids and never got more than a slap on the wrist; there were never any consequences for their behavior so they turned into sociopaths. You just know if they were Black or from a trailer park they would have been sent to jail in their late teens and the key thrown away. But because they were rich white boys…no one wanted to ruin their futures.

Look how that turned out. Disgusting.

And on that note, I am going to make more coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.

In the Gold Dust Rush

Hoping to get another “adult content” warning on Twitter with today’s post picture. I’ve been getting them a lot lately; trying to figure out what precisely sets off the prudish bigoted algorithm? I’ve certainly enjoyed being told by Twitter services that derogatory slurs aren’t a violation of their new Musk-like terms of service. Twitter was always a shitshow, but while it did raise my blood pressure on occasion for the most part I enjoyed engaging with friends on there; but since the Muscadine takeover, it’s not even fun to use for the sake of simple entertainment. I am really curious how people think he’s some kind of genius businessman. Dudes, he inherited a fucking emerald mine. GENIUS.

Honestly.

But it’s Wednesday and Pay the Bills Day again; always a joy and pleasure. But at least I can pay them, as I always like to remind myself when the horror of paying the bills rolls around every two weeks. I am hoping to get further caught up on paying the bills down (or off, what a precious dream that is!) this summer; I’m getting my teeth fixed in September and that’s not going to be free or cheap, and you don’t even want to know how much my hearing aids are going to cost. So, paying down the debt is very important because I am about to be taking on a lot more of it, alas. But I am happy to get my mouth taken care of, and hearing…well, it can wait a little longer because I am not entirely sure not being able to hear 100% is necessarily a bad thing anymore. I haven’t slept well this week, and feel tired and achy this morning. I still have this bug or whatever it is that Paul gave me over the weekend, but now that I’ve been awake awhile I am feeling somewhat better than I did when I first arose from the shallow depths of Morpheus this morning. I hate waking up and spending the first few moments out of bed coughing and gagging, but…I do feel better now. Just tired and achy a bit this morning. The COVID test yesterday was negative, thank you, baby Jesus, so whatever this is, probably has something to do with summer cold/heat wave/barometric pressure fucking with my sinuses.

LSU won again last night, beating Tennessee, but now in order to stay in the College World Series they have to beat Wake Forest twice, since they lost to them the other night. The score was 3-2, so it was close and LSU led most of the game, so there’s a chance they can do it. It’s really now just a matter of seeing who Florida is going to play for the championship, either LSU or Wake Forest. Gah.

I got some more work done yesterday on the book–I need to get a lot more done, as I am way behind now–but I am thinking I can iron these thorny problems out mostly today, and thus get it turned in. Obviously, I wanted to get it in already but being sick and not sleeping isn’t helping. Hopefully tonight I’ll be so exhausted that I’ll have a lovely nice deep sleep tonight. One can hope, anyway. We finished watching the 100 Years of Warner Brothers documentary last night–I still think cramming the first fifty or sixty years of the studio’s history into one episode (which didn’t even mention Joan Crawford!) was a mistake, but it was also produced in house for HBO MAX, so…it’s a fluffy promo piece. We then watched the third season premiere of The Righteous Gemstones, which was okay, and this week’s episode of Platonic, which is one of the funniest shows currently airing. I am really becoming a very big fan of Rose Byrne, who is excellent in everything she does and can play a wide range of characters and styles and is perfectly at home in any of them.

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

Five Ten Fiftyfold

Tuesday and back to the office with me today blog.

Yesterday was a bit of an off day for me; I didn’t feel good for most of the day. Paul’s been sick since Thursday–coughing, lots of congestion and post nasal drip–to how crappy I felt yesterday was at least not as bad as he was at his worst; and this morning I feel fine. Not sure if it was some twenty-four hour thing, but hope that feeling better lasts through the rest of the day. We had some amazing thunderstorms last night while I was sleeping; it’s kind of gray and icky looking outside right now. The forecast is the usual–hot, humid, chance of thunderstorm–so I’m hoping my sinuses remain under control for the rest of the day as well.

Yesterday morning I finished reading Chris Clarkson’s delightful That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which I really enjoyed, and have selected Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman as my next read. I’m not sure when I’m going to have the time to actually spend reading it thoroughly and enjoying it–probably will go with me to Kentucky as my “before I go to sleep” read. LSU lost a heartbreaker to Wake Forest yesterday 3-2, so now have to fight their way back out of the losers’ bracket if they want to win the College World Series. Hope springs eternal for an LSU fan–we did break the Jello Shot Record at Rocco’s yesterday–but I’m just delighted they made it to the World Series this year. GEAUX TIGERS!

I have some more work to do on this manuscript before I turn it in. This is the revising/fixing phase of the edits; where I have to do the more macro things. I had hoped to get this done yesterday but I wasn’t feeling well, and as such couldn’t really focus the way I needed to–I did try, of course–so tonight after I run my errands on the way home from work (there’s always something, really) I hope to sit down and bang out the rest of this to get it finished and out of my hair and out of my way. We started watching a documentary series about the history of Warner Brothers last night, which is always fun; I always like learning more about Hollywood history. The documentary didn’t really provide me with anything new or insightful about the history of the studio, other than further confirmation that Jack Warner was an asshole. There are two more parts, so that takes care of our television watching needs for this evening, at the very least. I figure with show episodes dropping this week and me being gone next week will help our shows build up back episodes to watch.

It’s also weird that it’s Tuesday already. I feel like I am going to be off this entire week because of it, then I’m out of the office for a week, and then I come back to the abbreviated 4th of July holiday week. As much as I love having extra time off, it’s always a weird week when the work week is truncated this way; I always feel kind of somehow off my game no matter what. But it’s a short week, I’m off next, and I need to get organized. I need a to-do list, most importantly, and to figure out where I’m at with everything. I always have this tendency to be as laser-focused as someone with (undiagnosed) ADHD can be; which means the book is the biggest priority and everything else is an incredible inconvenience that I don’t pay much attention to other than the occasional yeah yeah I know I need to work on you, but give me a minute.

Despite not feeling well yesterday–I also was feverish most of the day–I was able to get chores done around the house so it looks a little neater and a little less fraternity dorm room. I do want to drop books off for the library sale this coming weekend before leaving town, and I also want to get the car washed and cleaned out–chores for Saturday! Huzzah! I think we’re doing an escape room team bonding thing on Friday morning and then having lunch, then I can go home and do data entry–woo-hoo! It doesn’t get much more exciting than that, does it? And then of course Sunday it’s up to Alabama to meet Dad. I had a bad day one day last week about Mom; when the grief came back and I wasn’t able to reason or breathe or mind-clear my way out of it, so I just gave in and had a nice, good cry for a few minutes, and then I was able to get moving again. It’s been four months since we lost Mom, and I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to but rather something I will gradually just be able to live with. I don’t think any of us can expect more than that, really.

And on that note I am heading out in the thick heavy air of a hot summer day in June. I’ll catch you later, Constant Reader; hope you have a lovely day.

Glass Candle Grenades

Monday and a holiday; it’s lovely to have another day at home to work on these edits, which I am hoping against hope to complete today. Yesterday was lovely and relaxing; I worked on the micro edits–the lines/copy edit–which is always a long and tedious process. The macro edit, to me, is more fun if more creatively taxing. I’ll be digging into that a little later, when my mind is more awake and I have more caffeine in my system. It’ll be a weird and short work week for me, and then of course next week I am on vacation. I’ll be taking lots of books with me on that trip, although I’m not sure I’ll have much time to read. I’m not really sure what Dad and I will be doing in Kentucky. I know when I’ve been up there before he’s mentioned going sight-seeing; like to Cassius Clay’s home (the original, the one Muhammed Ali was named for at birth; he was Henry Clay’s brother and one of Kentucky’s leading abolitionists) or to the Kentucky Derby museum. Which is fine, I love history and while horse racing history isn’t something I’ve ever looked into much before, but you never know. I had thought about writing a mystery around the horse racing at the Fairgrounds…I knew a horse trainer back in the day–but never got around to it. I mean, Dick Francis kind of cornered the horse racing mystery market, did he not?

Of course, I’ll come home to another short week because of the 4th holiday, too–so it’s going to be three weeks before i do another full five day work-week. I slept decently last night–not great, but not bad, either–and so this morning feel a little bit dragging around, but that’s fine; coffee, a shower, and some time reading should get me over the hump. We abandoned City on Fire last night; we just had no enthusiasm for watching, and so moved on to The House of Hammer, which is about, of course, the twisted history of the Hammers through the lens of Armie Hammer, the actor, getting canceled for his abusive sexual preferences. It was interesting–I am always fascinated by twisted rich families that hate each other so passionately–but we need to find something meaty, like a good crime series, to dig into. It’s amazing how we can hve so many options yet can never find anything to watch, isn’t it?

I spent some time yesterday with Chris Clarkson’s adorable That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which is charming and fun and delightful to read, and may even be able to finish reading it today, with any luck and some strong motivation, at any rate. I think from that I will move on to either Megan Abbott or Eli Cranor; I can’t decide which of the plethora of great 2023 new releases to select from, to be honest. I know I’ll be listening to Carol Goodman in the car next weekend on the way up and I’m not sure who I’ll listen to on the way home.

A quick glance at Twitter has shown me that LSU fans have now surpassed eleven thousand shots in the Rocco’s College World Series Shot Competition, and are well on pace to break the record (just over eighteen thousand) set by Mississippi last year. Oh, how the bars and restaurants in Eauxmaha must love LSU fans! I mean, even if the shots are only a dollar, that’s over eleven grand in receipts on those shots alone, not counting everything else being sold there. LSU is playing Wake Forest tonight, and it will take a strong effort for the Tigers to pull off the win. If they do pull out a win, I’m thinking the shots record will fall tonight.

I also read an old short story yesterday that I remember from when I was a kid. Periodically, Mom let me join a book club. The first one I joined was the Mystery Guild, and those selections i received from the Mystery Guild really kind of shaped my future both as a reader and writer. I still remember the books–still have some of the original copies–and over the years, I’ve tried to replace the ones lost over time to cross-country moves. Recently I repurchased a copy of Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Month of Mystery on eBay, and there was a story in it I read as a kid that I never forgot; and I wanted to reread it. It was called “The Queen’s Jewel” and was written by Robert Golding (I’d forgotten the name of the author). I took the book down yesterday afternoon to reread the story, and it was amazing to me how much of it I still remembered, the details. The main character, Jane Farquhar, owns a small hotel of sorts with guest cabins in the brush in Africa. One of her ancestors was a server for the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, and before her execution she gave him the pendant of a ruby set in a heavy gold chain with four carat blue-white diamonds surrounding it. It is very valuable, and Jane’s father raised her to be prepared, always be prepared, because someone will eventually come to try to steal it from her in some way…and thus the story is about her defending herself against a criminal pretending to be an American cousin. The story holds up and works, but it opens with Jane discovering the body of her poisoned guard dog–which did make me wonder, would this story be published today? Opening with a dead dog?

I also didn’t know much about Robert Golding, so after reading the story I used the google to find out he was one of the many Ellery Queen ghostwriters (I only recently found out that many Ellery Queen novels were ghostwritten) and it turned out Golding wrote two of my favorite Ellery Queen novels, The Player on the Other Side and Calamity Town, which is one of my all-time favorite mystery novels; little wonder his short story connected so well with me. I don’t remember The Player on the Other Side other than that it was one of my favorites; but Calamity Town? I remember a lot of that novel, and it was primarily about the Wrights, the first family of Wrightsville–a location so popular that Queen kept returning there for more murder mysteries (The Murderer is a Fox was another great Wrightsville mystery). He also apparently wrote a lot of the juvenile Ellery Queen mysteries–published as Ellery Queen Jr.–which I also enjoyed as a kid; Ellery Queen Jr. and the Jim Hutton 1970’s television series Ellery Queen (which I loved) were what originally brought me to reading the adult Ellery Queens; the first I read was the one they actually filmed for the pilot, The Fourth Side of the Triangle, which was marvelous, and then I started buying his books or checking them out from the library. So thank you, Robert Golding, for being an influence on me and my writing without my knowing it. I’m really looking forward to reading some more of these old short stories. I got another Hitchcock (Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked) and an old MWA one, edited by Robert L. Fish, With Malice Toward All, which also looks rather fun.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a bit while my brain continues to wake up before tackling the manuscript. Have a lovely holiday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you later.

The Hollow Men

Sunday and the midpoint of the holiday weekend, as New Orleans swelters in what is, even for here, an unusually potent June heat wave. I stayed inside as much as I could yesterday, in the marvelous cool of the Lost Apartment. I slept well Friday night, which was great, and while I wasn’t feeling especially motivated yesterday morning, I did get my daily blog entry done as well as a Pride post. I read more of That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which is just absolutely charming (you should get a copy, Constant Reader), and then I did some more cleaning chores around the house before digging into the edits of this manuscript. I got the macro edit along with the copy edit, so I can get it all worked through, hopefully this weekend; I would love to be able to get this to the editor on Monday. We shall see how it goes. I did get some progress made yesterday; we’ll see how things go today. Yesterday was kind of nice, actually. I got some rest, too–today I feel really rested–and we finished watching Butchers of the Bayou, got caught up on The Crowded Room, and started watching City on Fire, which…is interesting, but I guess we’re supposed to believe Manhattan is an incredibly small town? It’s based on an “it” book from a couple of years ago that I never read; I had a copy but eventually donated it in one of my many purges. I’m not sure we’ll continue watching, to be honest; it’s okay but not riveting. There was no disappointment last night when I called the evening after a couple of episodes.

LSU won their game yesterday at the College World Series (GEAUX TIGERS!). We watched part of the game before switching over to The Crowded Room once I was sure the Tigers had the game under control. I have to say, it’s very fun living in Louisiana and being a sports fan. I of course always will root for any team based in Louisiana, with the Saints and LSU having my deepest loyalties, but part of the fun is how different Louisiana sports fans are from fans in other parts of the country. Tiger Stadium and the Superdome can get loud enough that it hurts your ears, but the thing I love the most about Louisiana sports fans is that they are also fans when it’s not easy, if that makes sense? It’s why Saints players become so attached to New Orleans; we’ll turn out to welcome them home from away games at the airport even when they lose. When the Saints were in the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans decided to have a Saints parade that Tuesday night before the second weekend of Carnival, where they won or lost; a celebration if they won and a thank you for a great season and making it to the Super Bowl if they lost. Maybe the turn out for that parade might not have been quite the mob scene it was had they not won, but I like to think that it would have been pretty close to the same thing. I also love all the stories about how Omaha (which we’re calling Eauxmaha the way we always Louisiana-ize everything) loves our fans and hope we make it to the College World Series every year. There’s a bar in Omaha that has a shots contest for all the fans of the teams there–LSU is of course way out in front of second place, and at one point you could combine the other seven schools and LSU still won. It also reminds me of how when LSU played Oklahoma in the 2019 college football play-offs in Atlanta, a lot of the bars around the hotels and stadium ran out of beer and bourbon the first night (this was NOT a problem when LSU played in New Orleans for the national championship; New Orleans never runs out because we’re Louisiana too). I also imagine that the servers and bartenders must make a ton of money in tips from LSU fans, who are also as generous as they are friendly. (I was also thinking the other day as I rewatched highlights of this past year’s LSU-Alabama game, what a night for recruiting that must have been! As a high school football player, visiting Tiger Stadium on a night like that, when the entire stadium was rocking (the stadium’s reactions to the over time touchdown and the two point conversion both registered on the campus Richter machine), how could you not sign with LSU? I’m trying not to get overly optimistic for football season, but LSU and the Saints (and Tulane, even) are poised to have great seasons.

Fingers crossed!

It looks kind of hazy outside the windows this morning. The heat advisory/heat wave is supposed to last until Tuesday; I’ve not checked the weather yet this morning to see how bad today is going to be. AH, yes, heat advisory, partly cloudy, and the potential for a severe thunderstorm later this afternoon. I was hoping to barbecue today, so here’s hoping the thunderstorm either holds off until I do or is over before I want to. I’m not going to run errands until after work on Tuesday, on my way home from the office. We have plenty of stuff on hand to eat without me having to go to the store, and I’m not going to be getting a lot when I do make a grocery run because I will be out of the house all next week. The reason I am coming back on the following Saturday is so that I can do a grocery run before heading to work on Monday.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday of your holiday weekend, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back before you know it.

Speak No Evil

Well, if there was any doubt left, summer has returned in full force to New Orleans. It’s a heat wave; in which the heat index has been over 110 for several days. When I ran my errands yesterday I was completely exhausted after getting back home and the groceries inside; this kind of heat saps your strength and your energy and sometimes, even your will to live. Opening the apartment door was like opening a preheated oven. I managed to get all my work-at-home duties taken care of, but tried to spend the rest of the day battling feeling tired and getting chores done. This is a three-day weekend, and I have a lot of work to try to get through over the course of this holiday weekend. I am also hoping to not set foot outside at any time until I have to go back to work Tuesday morning. It’s nice having another short work week, and then of course the next week I am heading north to spend some time with Dad. It’s hard to believe this year is nearly half over, isn’t it?

I was thinking yesterday that Elmore Leonard’s most famous piece of writing advice was “never start with the weather,” which is a “rule” that I break all the fucking time. The weather, especially in New Orleans, is almost a character here; it tells you everything you need to know about the time of year the story is set, for one thing. You can’t set a book or story in New Orleans in the summer time and not mention the weather; you just can’t. The weather impacts everything here, because we have what I lovingly and sort-of-jokingly refer to as “aggressive.” The heat and humidity is aggressive; hurricanes and thunderstorms here certainly are, and even the cold spells we get every winter (brief, always brief) can be also considered aggressive. It impacts people’s moods and what happens, really; so that advice cannot be followed when writing about New Orleans. I was primarily thinking about this yesterday when I was out in the heat and losing my will to live, mostly, which was completely understandable. Paul walked to the gym to ride the bike for a while yesterday and went through two bottles of water. So, yes, the weather here is aggressive and oppressive, and impacts story and character and setting and scene and place in New Orleans.

We started watching an ID true crime documentary series about the serial killers in Baton Rouge around the turn of the century and just after, Butchers on the Bayou, which is kind of interesting. I remember when it was happening–yes, a serial killer in Baton Rouge will make the news in New Orleans–and I remember when the first one was caught; I didn’t remember there was a second one operating at the same time. No wonder the police were overwhelmed; especially with all the crossing of jurisdictions and so forth–it’s the same problem they had with trying to solve the murders of the Jeff Davis Eight (eight women murdered over a several year period in Jefferson Davis Parish). And yes, I do at some point want to base a novel on the Jeff Davis Eight case; I keep thinking it fits more as a Chanse story but I’m not really sure I want to write another Chanse book. It wouldn’t really work as a Scotty story, and I have wondered and considered writing a new series–I have a character, Jerry Channing, who writes true crime and is a gay man that has appeared in several different books of mine; the problem with Jerry was when I was fleshing him out I realized what I was doing was combining Chanse and Scotty into a single person, and that wasn’t working for me. This also probably had something to do with me trying to come up with something whilst I was immersed in numerous other projects and not really being able to give it my full attention. I still might just go ahead and do it once I have all these current projects off my plate once and for all.

It is a good story, and it makes sense for him to be the one to investigate it–since he writes true crime. My primary concern about this is, obviously, there’s tons of novels about true crime podcasts and true crime writers and bloggers–Only Murders in the Building, anyone?–but it does make sense and works better. I guess there’s naught to do but give it a try and see.

I’m hoping to be able to spend some time reading this morning, too, before i head into the spice mines. I want to finish writing this and maybe write another Pride post over the course of the weekend; I’ve started several, but am trying to decide if I want to be Angry or if I want to be up-lifting. Some of the posts are angry–it’s hard to write about homophobia you’ve experienced without getting angry; and in one of them I am calling out homophobia I’ve personally experienced from the mainstream crime community. Sometimes I wonder if I should call this stuff out; there’s a part of me that sees talking about it and calling it out as vengeful–like ha ha ha, you were awful to me so now I am calling you out years later–and there’s a part of me that worries that I’ll come across as self-serving. (There’s nothing I hate more than the narcissistic activist; those who are only in it for themselves and don’t care about the broader picture and the macro.) I’ve known and seen some of this over the years more times than I’d care to–like the author who was all over #ownvoices, until she won a major award and now no longer mentions it at all, or “we need diverse books”–so, now that you’ve made it the work no longer needs to be done? Way to pull up the ladder behind you, sister! I certainly don’t want anyone to think that my primary concern is revenge or for me to become more successful; my mentality is “this happened to me and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else because it really sucked for me.” But times have changed, and while there are still instances of it that pop up from time to time within the community, it’s becoming a thing of the past and people are starting to call it out when they see it–which is a huge switch from when I was first getting started. The crime fiction community is a lot more welcoming to queer people in 2023 than it was in 2002. It’s lovely, of course, but I do think we should never forget our less progressive past–particularly since it wasn’t that fucking long ago.

Some things for me to ponder, I suppose.

And on that note, I am going to drink some more coffee and do some chores around the kitchen before I read for a bit and then work. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again at some point.

Grail Overfloweth

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

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

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

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

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

Wax and Wane

Thursday and last day in the office for the week. I was very tired yesterday, despite not working on Tuesday, and so when I got home I didn’t do a whole lot of anything. No chores, nothing of that sort. I didn’t even read anything! The heat and humidity have returned and it was so miserable when I went out to the car after work yesterday that I felt drained by the time I got into the coolness of the Lost Apartment. I slept decently last night–not great, but restful, waking up a couple of times throughout the evening, but I feel a bit groggy this morning, which is also fine. I think we have a fairly light schedule today at the office and I have some other things I need to get done around seeing my clients. But I’ve almost made it through another week, survived it all, and now we’re at another three-day weekend, which is lovely. I have a lot of work to get done around here this weekend, so the extra day is going to be super great to have.

I need to get caught up on my emails–which won’t take nearly as long as it used to, because I don’t get nearly as much as I once did, which is kind of nice. It’s not that I consider email to be an odious chore or anything, and it’s not like I get problem emails anymore (thank God; I no longer cringe and cower and have to steel myself before pulling up my email), but there’s also not as much urgency with them anymore, either. The decline in the amount as well as the not-quite-as-urgent sensibility of it has resulted in my being pretty lazy about it. (My email provider also recently changed a lot, which is irritating because I don’t like the way it looks now and it wasn’t an improvement to make it easier to use; the Spotify app on my phone recently did the same thing. The lovely thing about technology is the constant need to have to relearn how to fucking use it. That was sarcasm font, by the way.)

So, rather than being my usual lazy self and wasting time finding things on Youtube (primarily to see if they are there), lately as I sit in the easy chair with a purring kitty in my lap I’ve been trying to do some research, that hopefully will stick in my head. Mostly I’ve been looking up videos about the HUAC and Confidential magazine in the 1950s, among other things for that period–also beefcake and peplum–as research for Chlorine. I’m also digging into the 1970’s–mostly music and pop culture, along with historical stuff from the decade–because I want to write a book called The Summer of Lost Boys, which has been simmering in my head since the earliest days of the pandemic. I’m leaning towards setting it in 1975–the summer I turned fourteen and started my sophomore year of high school. It has some potential I think, and while the idea is still amorphous up there in the clouds in my brain, I really like the idea and think it could be a really good book…but I really want to get these two noirs done in first draft this summer. If the heat and humidity doesn’t wear me down too much, I should be able to get both drafts finished by the end of summer.

Unless I get lazy, which is always a possibility. The heat seriously doesn’t help, either. But the thing I always forget is the best thing to do when you get home from work in New Orleans in the summer is take another shower and get cleaned up. I sleep better and I feel better and it generally results in me being a lot more productive. I need to do laundry tonight, put away dishes, and reload the dishwasher, and I am going to start rereading this book that I am about to revise per my editorial letter (I still will be getting one for Mississippi River Mischief, too) and I want to finish reading my book, which I’ve stalled out on now for a couple of weeks…but I need to finish it if I want to move on to my AMAZING TBR pile. I have some errands to run tomorrow morning, too, before starting in on my work-at-home duties, and after that–I am hoping to not leave the house again until Tuesday when I return to work. It would be nice to get some more de-cluttering done this weekend, but I also want to relax, write, and read a lot.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will see you again tomorrow.

Perhaps Some Other Aeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shallow Then Halo

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

Probably safer to take the day off.

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

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

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

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