Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and yesterday was a rather lovely day, in all honesty. I didn’t put any pressure on myself, but did make some progress on the apartment itself. I cleared out two boxes off the top of the cabinets, and know now what the others are–and know they can simply go into the attic once it is cleared out. This means…I am getting to the point where I can start working on the attic. This pleases me enormously, and there’s some other stuff that needs to be done here in the workspace this morning before I make a minor grocery run. We watched this week’s Bad Monkey, which I am loving, and then some more Solar Opposites. I also managed to get a week’s worth of dishes taken care of–I was really lazy and taking advantage of the entire “birthday week” excuse this week, I am a bit red-faced to admit–and reminded myself to never let it get that bad again…which will last probably about a week.
I also watched the Georgia Tech-Florida State game. I simply flipped over to it while looking for a movie to watch (to no avail; nothing sounded good) to see the score, and saw the end of the second half with the score tied 14-14. That intrigued me enough to continue watching, and it turned out to be a rather good game, as Georgia Tech kicked a field goal on the last play of the game to upset #10 Florida State, 24-21. It was a great game–I do sometimes watch college football when I don’t care about either team–made even greater by the upset win for Georgia Tech (I am not a FSU fan), and that kind of got me into the mood for football season. LSU’s first game is this weekend; Sunday evening in Las Vegas, of all places. I have no idea how good LSU is going to be this year–I am not one of those people who reads analysts and so forth and practice reports; they are meaningless really until it’s actually a game and they’re keeping score. I prefer to be surprised, and college football is always full of surprises. I don’t even pay attention to the NFL preseason, either.
I wasn’t a complete sloth yesterday. I did do some things around the house, and looking around this morning, there’s more that needs to be done. I’m not used to having all this free time, which is the primary adjustment I am having to make in the present day…and it’s kind of nice, you know? I still need to figure out how to be more productive, and how to utilize the time, but I worked so hard for so very long and never had a minute’s peace for so long that it’s just kind of nice to not be worried about things anymore. I plan to spend some time this morning straightening up the kitchen again, and picking things up and filing, and I also want to do the floors. I didn’t leave the house yesterday so I have to make that grocery run today (to make dinner tonight I have to go), but that’s not a big deal, really. It’s nice, though, to not be stressed and anxious about not working in my free time.
I even thought about writing projects yesterday. I am really leaning towards shelving Never Kiss a Stranger for now; I realized yesterday it was one of those stupid “stubbornly obsessive” things that I get into my head every once in a while. I remembered yesterday that originally I had intended to finish my novella collection this summer, which meant working on that, and then I realized it was more of a book than a novella, and decided to write that for the summer. And even though I was having trouble with it on almost every level of turning what I already had into a novel, I was stubbornly refusing to shelve it and move on, which was counter-productive. No one cares if I finish that book now or at some other time, or if I never write it at all. So, I am going to put it aside for now and forget about it for a while. It only makes sense to get back into regular writing with a Scotty book, and a Scotty book will be somewhat easier for me to write…and easier for me to get back into the swing of writing again after so much time away from it.
I also realized that the MAGA meltdown over Gus Walz was an excellent way to open my essay “Are You Man Enough?”, and so I did scribble some notes on that yesterday as well. I am actually kind of looking forward to this work week, believe it or not, and I do think getting to work on another Scotty–Hurricane Season Hustle–will be a lot more fun for me going forward.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Well, I survived returning back to work yesterday. I really thought I’d have trouble getting up yesterday morning, but I was awake when the alarm went off the first time–and yes, Sparky was a kitty puddle at the foot of the bed who immediately woke and strolled up along the side of the bed for head butts and purring to get me up. I also made it through the day without ever getting tired, and I was sure I would; I woke up several times during the night, and it seemed to always take a while for me to go back to sleep. I did sleep more deeply last night, and I feel pretty good this morning. Which is weird, of course; I shouldn’t feel more rested and better later in the work week, but when have I ever been normal?
I haven’t wanted to be normal in decades. And this particular oddness is something I’ve noticed before.
But overall, yesterday was a pleasant day. I wasn’t terribly tired when I got off work, which I’d been concerned about, and ran my errand and came home to play with Sparky. Paul worked at home yesterday and went to Hoshun to get us dinner (a treat for my birthday, delayed a day) and we watched the convention again last night. The DNC is simply killing it this year, aren’t they? Whoever planned this convention deserves a huge raise. It’s also lovely getting reminders of how good and deep the bench of next generation party leaders actually is. Who do they have? Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz? Give me Jasmine Crockett, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, Pete Buttigieg, and Eric Swalwell any day of the week over those fools. I stayed up to watch Governor Walz–and what a wonderful, amazing, normal family he has, and how much do they all love each other? I know Vance’s biracial children have been completely moved by how their dad has defended their mom–oops, never mind.
And tonight the Vice-President will accept the nomination, and I can’t wait to watch.
The humidity has broken here for a few days; we’re having an unusual cold spell which will result in lots of storms all week next week, and then…it’s Labor Day weekend and college football starts. LSU plays USC in Las Vegas that weekend on Sunday night, and I don’t know if I’m ready for another college football season this soon. I don’t think we’ll be going to any games this year, alas, but that’s okay. No one is really sure how good LSU will or won’t be this year, but most seem to be cautiously optimistic. The schedule is rough this year, too. Two of the non-conference games are USC and UCLA, and I think they play both Texas and Oklahoma this year in addition to the usual SEC meat grinder–although Auburn and Mississippi State have come off the schedule. (Note to self: print the schedule and put it on the fridge; same with the Saints. Sigh. I can’t believe it’s already football season! But I am ready for fall weather–or what passes for it around here, LOL.)
I managed to book an eye appointment for a Saturday in September, and yes, I booked it during the scheduled game that day, at South Carolina. Which is fine, actually; I don’t mind driving out to Metairie in the morning, and I can always get something to eat out there that I usually don’t have access to–which is even better. I probably should stop and make groceries tonight–we need a few things–and I also need to get gas as well. I keep forgetting I need to get gas every night this week on my way home, and if I’m not careful I’m going to wind up stranded on the side of the road somewhere. (Not the end of the world; my insurance has roadside service so I’d just have to wait for someone to bring me some gas so I can get to a station–but this is something I’d have had anxiety about before the new medications, and boy do I not miss the anxiety!) Note to self: get gas on the way home tonight.
I’m working at home tomorrow, so I get to sleep a little later than usual (if His Royal Highness Sparky will allow it–he will most likely not), and of course, I have some chores to get done this weekend. I ordered new kitchen towels for my birthday, which delights me to no end, and I am thinking about upgrading some other things around the house. I also need to clear out some more books and get the boxes down from on top of the cabinets, and maybe even start on the boxes in the attic. Whoa, Nelly, slow down; you’re feeling awfully ambitious this morning (it’s the coffee, no doubt) and by this afternoon you won’t feel like doing anything at all when you get home. There’s a load of dishes in the dishwasher to run, and there’s also some laundry to finish, too. It truly never ends!
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have an awesome Thursday, and I may be back later. I’m tricky that way.
Bring back that lovin’ feeling now it’s gone, gone, gone….
One of the worst things about being a writer with a very vivid imagination is that I often think I’ve written more of a short story than I have, and inevitably am a little shocked when I open the most recent draft of the story and what I remember writing isn’t there…and then it hits me that I either thought the story through until that point, or I scribbled ideas for it in my journal…so that gradually morphed into oh I never did write that scene/story/ending. I then sigh in disgust at past Greg for not actually writing it into the story itself and then try to remember what I can of it as I try transcribing it. The loss of my short term memory also plays a relatively large role in this madness, too. Can you guess why I am mentioning that this morning? Yep, this was the case when I looked up two short stories to add to my collection; I was trying to decide which stories I have unfinished that just needed a revision and I thought I was there with several more stories than I clearly was when I looked at them last night.
One of the ghastly things for me about being a writer is thinking I’ve written something when I actually haven’t. I was tired yesterday when I got home from work; I hit the wall at some point in the afternoon, so I succumbed to Sparky’s demands and let him cuddle with me in the easy chair when I got home from work. Paul worked at home yesterday, so when he came down we watch John Oliver and then finished Dirty Pop, the Lou Pearlman documentary. It did feel weird not having the Olympics to watch, but this is that fallow two weeks or so between the Olympics and college football getting started. Has the NFL preseason started? I am terrible about that, but since I no longer (refuse to) pay for the Times-Picayune (a ringing endorsement for the red candidate from their editorial board was the final nail in that coffin once and for all) it’s harder to remember about the Saints. I shouldn’t be surprised; the billionaire who bought the paper also is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who ran for governor back in the day. Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t remember the paper being slanted so heavily to the right back in the day. Anyway, there’s certainly no excuse for me to not get a lot done this weekend other than laziness….and laziness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either; I think it’s your body telling your mind to rest. I also have a four day weekend this weekend for my birthday, so that should be really nice. I suppose I should make a to-do list of projects to work on for those four day–definitely taking books to the library sale will be number one on the list.
I did sleep really well and got up pretty easily this morning. I’m still in that I could fall asleep again if I went back to bed stage, but the body is starting to awaken and my mind is feeling sharp. I hope I don’t get tired this afternoon the way I did yesterday, but I don’t really have any control over that. It didn’t, in fact, rain yesterday as was promised; it’s possible again today as well and we’re hitting a heat index of 112. Yay. It didn’t seem so bad yesterday as I drove home, picking up the mail on the way. I’m still listening to the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno, which makes me laugh multiple times in the car; it’s attempt at being sexy and provocative laughably bad, and their reactions to Belinda Blinked are hilarious. There’s many seasons of this, so I should be set for listening in the car for quite some time. I just haven’t been in the mood to listen to music lately while driving, which is unusual. I’m just tired of all my playlists and albums on Spotify, and I’m so disconnected from what is popular music that I have no idea what everyone is listening to these days, and odds are I wouldn’t care for it if I did. (The first time I heard something popular and thought what the fuck is wrong with kids today was when I was in my thirties…so yes, I’ve been a cranky old man shaking his fists at the clouds for thirty years)
One of the things I have been doing in the evenings is paging through a book I read several years ago called Weimar Culture: The Outside as Insider by Peter Gay (I’ve had Weimar Germany on my mind since about 2015 or so) and it got me to start thinking about my work as art, and its place in the overall world of queer art and literature. I don’t think students of queer literature in the future will be reading and/or studying any of my work, by any means; I think the only thing I have going for me is being prolific and producing a lot of work. I think there are many queer crime writers whose work would be seen as more influential and of more literary and artistic value than mine–Michael Nava, J. M. Redmann, Ellen Hart, Kelly J. Ford, Lev Rosen, Christa Faust, Margot Douahy and John Copenhaver, just off the top of my head, are far more likely to make up the reading list for a Queer Crime Lit class. We really do have some amazing queer crime writers out there currently and some pretty amazing ones in the past. I was thinking about writing about queer crime and its giants, but as a queer crime writer myself the possibilities for giving offense are simply too great for me to even attempt such a thing. I also haven’t read every queer or queer-oriented crime novel, either, so it would hardly be definitive, like Michael Bronski’s Pulp Friction. Besides, I’m hardly an academic; that kind of writing isn’t really my style. I admire it, wish it was a voice and style I could slip into comfortably, but it’s really not.
I would, at some point, like to engage in scholarship. Maybe after I retire. Maybe I could take an on-line class on literature and/or one on writing essays. So many potentialities, so many possibilities…kind of nice.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader and one never knows; I may be back later.
And now we come to the last (so far) Chanse novel, lucky number seven.
Took me awhile to get here, didn’t it? But it also took me awhile to get around to writing the seventh Chanse book. I worried a lot about this series as it developed–mainly because my original plan had derailed, and I never really sat down and mapped out the rest of the series with the new calibrations, so I was flying by the seat of my pants for the last two books, and in retrospect that sense that the series was going stale was a direct result of that fly by the seat of my pants style, which never worked for Chanse. So, essentially I’d forgotten how to write the series, and so…when I was running into problems with the seventh, it was easy enough to believe I was out of story for him and the series itself was becoming repetitive and stale. I’ve come up with more story for him since then–I’ve written a Chanse short story and started a novella, and had an idea for another entire book, so maybe I will revisit Chanse again in the next few years?
I had always thought of the series as lasting for seven novels, and when I sat down to come up with ideas for the seventh book, I started thinking about ending the series. The Chanse series, as you may have noticed once you’ve read these entries, almost ended every single time I published one–and by this time I felt like I was running out of ideas for him, and felt like I was writing by the numbers; following the same story beats and patterns I had already established in earlier books rather than pushing myself. I also worried that if I kept writing something I felt was getting stale, the book quality would also start to slip. I never wanted to be one of those authors who just keep writing the same old series long past its expiration date. Yes, they always sold well and yes, the income was nice…but…-and I began thinking that I may need to end the series before the readers began to notice the stories were starting to fall into a recognizable pattern; certainly the stories were beginning to have the same beats repeated, over and over. I wasn’t happy to not write another Chanse book, after all; Chanse really launched my publishing career and the series was very good to me over the years–but I felt it was the right decision for the time.
The electronic gate began rolling to the left with a loud clamor.
I closed the driver’s side window of my “billet silver” Jeep Cherokee, shivering. I turned the heater back up to high. I was cold even though I was wearing my black trench coat and a black knit Saints cap. It was in the low thirties. The sky was gray and covered with clouds, the air the kind of chilly damp that goes right to your joints. Last night there had been a freeze warning for all of southeastern Louisiana, so I’d had to turn all my faucets on to a trickle all night to keep the exposed pipes under my house from freezing. The grass on either side of the paved driveway had turned brown, and in the rearview mirror I could see the grass on the levee on the other side of the road behind me had as well.
This cold snap had every New Orleans weathercaster worked up into the kind of energetic, wide-eyed frenzy they usually reserved for hurricane season. The possibility of snow either tonight or sometime tomorrow had them practically drooling. The one currently breathlessly going on and on about how we all needed to bring inside all pants and pets inside before sunset was getting on my nerves, so I turned the radio off. It had snowed maybe three times in all my years of living in New Orleans. Those rare, occasional snowstorms always brought the city to its knees. Businesses closed, people holed up in their homes afraid to drive anywhere, and nothing got done.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as the gate lumbered open slowly. My lower back was starting to ache, which wasn’t a good sign. I pressed the button on the steering wheel thatcontrolled the heater in the driver’s seat. Heat always seemed to help with the pain, but taking a pain pill wasn’t an option. Not if I wanted my brain to be functional when meeting a pair of prospective new clients, anyway.
Finakky, the gate was open wide enough for me to drive through, and I pushed the gas pedal down.
With the big metal gate open, I could see the house. In spite of myself I gasped. I’d seen Belle Riviere depicted many times on postcards, but the reality took my breath away.
The Arts District has always been in my neighborhood (sort of); it’s just on the other side of Highway 90 on Camp, with the nexus being I guess Camp and Julia Street. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is across the street from the Community Arts Center, the Arthur Roger Gallery is there, and there are any number of smaller galleries scattered throughout the area, which is why White Linen Night is held there. I had thought about setting the case during White Linen, but…it’s so miserably hot. The last time I went, in the 1990’s, I literally thought I was going to have heat stroke–and I’ve never gone again. Writing about it would mean going again, and there was just no way I was going to do that.
The plot was actually brought to me by way of a friend who knew one of the people involved in the real life case; which I found fascinating. My friend’s friend was one of those effortlessly sexy and beautiful men; the kind everyone’s eyes turn to when he walks into the room, and being one of those, he landed a very wealthy partner more than double his age. (Yes, I know, age-gap relationships are real, but doesn’t everyone assume the younger, pretty one in these types of relationships are in it for the money?) Anyway, the story was they had been robbed, and the burglars had stolen some of their art. They reported it to the police, but the police didn’t believe their story, and thought they were committing insurance fraud!
This was very bizarre to me, but it centered on art and galleries, which is why I wanted to do with this book, and so I thought, I can make this work. I used the same basic premise–age-gap gay relationship; older guy is wealthy, younger has sordid past; art stolen and the cops don’t believe their story so they hire Chanse. I also wanted to get into how Chanse–a former college football player and a long time gym regular–was aging, and the aches and pains. He had a back injury from a car accident, and it was still bothering him in this book. He also was still dating the guy he met in a previous case–Rachel Sheehan’s younger brother–but I wasn’t sure where that was going so edited a lot of it out.
And when I finished writing it, I still thought that was a little too paint-by-the-numbers and not enough of a challenge to write–so maybe it’s time to give him a break, and that’s what I did. I do think the novella I want to write is more of a novel, really; and I like the idea and I also have another. So who knows? Chanse may be coming back at some point.
And I am not dissing the book–I’m proud of it, and think it’s one of the better Chanse books, for that matter.
The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.
I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.
I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.
I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”
As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.
And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.
Sunday morning after a marvelous Saturday here in New Orleans. I slept late this morning, but no judgments or being rough on myself about it; obviously, I needed the sleep. It’s really funny how much my brain function has changed since starting the new meds. I also think it’s partly that my brain fog from the anesthesia has lifted at long last. I’m still forgetful, of course–that’s the “wisdom of age” everyone talks about, forgetting things–but my mind is clearer than it’s been since I had COVID in the summer of 2022. But I feel like today will be another good day like yesterday morning was, and it’s already looking like another beautiful day outside, too.
Yesterday morning I got up, felt very rested and energized as well as mentally there (this has been going on almost this entire last week and it’s wonderful; you have no idea!), and it was a gorgeous day. I ran my errands, and on my way home I stopped to wash my car at the self-wash place on Louisiana (the car was horribly filthy; and looked like a flock of birds had dive-bombed it with their nasty shit), and then got my dry cleaning. I came home and went to work. I cleaned, I organized, I filed, I did laundry and dishes, and last night I lit up the grill and cooked out, which we’ve not done since last summer. The burgers were great, too; no more frozen ones simply for the ease. There’s nothing like fresh hamburger meat, either. Today I am going to make Swedish meatballs.
I didn’t write a lot yesterday but while I was filing and organizing, the next phase of “When I Die” came to me, as did how to finish two other stories that are in progress and have been for several years now. I also worked out some other things in my head for other projects, and so I have to say I was very pleased with myself last night as I lit the charcoal and sautéed mushrooms and sliced a red onion. After dinner, we watched this week’s Abbott Elementary and started True Detective: Night Country, which is very stylized and very well done. I’ve not watched a season of the show fully since the first one, which I didn’t much care for (despite the adoration straight men threw its way), but I am liking this season a lot more than I ever did that first one. (May have to try to watch the previous seasons again at some point.) I also watched a two hour documentary on Youtube titled “LSU Football Time Capsule,” which went back to show great clips of LSU’s storied football history, from 1958 through 2018. While I was watching, I decided to come up with a list of my top ten favorite LSU games since 1998, which was also kind of fun to do (and I’ll probably post when the season is about to start again this fall).
So, yes, I am rather smug about my day yesterday, and I am thinking that today I will mostly focus on writing and reading, with some leftover cleaning to do and potentially some more pruning of the books. I also need to update my to-do list for the week, organize and deal with my medical bills, prepare for a fight with my health insurance (which I’m actually looking forward to beating them into the ground as they so richly deserve), and of course, get ready for the new week. I also just realized this is the first Sunday morning I’ve not dreaded the start of my new week, too.
Progress for sure.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines, and will most likely be back some time later. Have a fabulous Sunday in the meantime!
Oddly enough, the second Chanse was the fourth novel I published, and therein lies a tale.
Funny how with these earlier books there’s always a story, isn’t it?
So, I sold Murder in the Rue Dauphine to Alyson in September of 1999–but the pub date wasn’t until February 2002. I saw no point in writing a sequel to the book immediately; primarily because there was a nearly two and a half year wait between signing the contract and when they were able to schedule me in. So, I figured I had about a year and a half before I needed to get it finished (everyone told me it would be released a year after the first, and in all honesty, what was the point of writing two or three books while waiting for the first to come out so the others could be scheduled?), and so, with time to spare and a lengthy period of time to “waste”, I decided to start thinking about the “what ifs”–what if the book sells super-well and is popular? What if this isn’t just a one-off standalone and could be turned into a series? The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea and I liked letting my mind roam.
So, what would I do if the series took off and I needed to write more?
Being creative and full of energy in my late thirties, and thrilled to death that now I wouldn’t die without having published a novel, I reread the manuscript and my analysis of who Chanse was and why he was who he was, and I started mapping out a personal journey for him, that lasted several books. He was a cynical loner, with a couple of friends, and he was still really not adjusted to being gay when the first book opens. He was estranged from his immediate family of younger sister and brother and his parents; he never returned to Cottonwood Wells after leaving for LSU. He’s ashamed of his family but he also knows they will never accept his sexuality, either, so it’s very easy for him to cut them off almost entirely. So, his journey was going to be like that of the main characters of the show Moonlighting; each case would teach himself something about life and himself, and he would grow from the lesson learned in each book. Each book going forward would have a life lesson for him (Rue Dauphine did as well; the lesson was ‘you can’t just trust someone automatically because they’re queer.’); and the one he’d learn in the second book would be about love and trust (the third would be about sacrifice, the fourth would deal with his family, the fifth would have him fall in love with someone else, the sixth would deal with him dealing with losing his best friend to her husband and realizing he does need other people, and the seventh, the swan song for the story, would find him ready to finally commit to someone and live with them, so the series would be seven books long).
Shortly after I sold the first book, I again learned that lesson myself–the case in the first book was inspired by a gay con artist who’d gotten involved with a non-profit here in the city and then blew out of town overnight, having stolen/embezzled a shit ton of money and leaving a pile of debts behind. I had written to a local color magazine for the gay community (I can’t remember the name!) about writing for them. I wrote something for them, and they hired me to be editor of the magazine, as the business was expanding and it would free up the founder to focus on the new directions while I ran the magazine. It was fun, I got to work with a lot of fun new friends, and…then it all blew up in our faces. It was very similar to the earlier situation–a gay con artist blows into town, makes a lot of promises, runs up a lot of debt and then it just blew up completely. Turns out the guy was a con artist with a record of credit card fraud, and he was on the FBI watchlist so yes, I did get interviewed several times by the local office of the FBI.
The second book, which had the working title Murder in the Rue Royal, was based on that story, but I had already been playing around with a stalker storyline, and then I realized how I could cross the two stories into one seamlessly and write the book. I managed to get another first draft finished when a two-book deal to write the Scotty series for Kensington and Alyson dropped the option for the second book, saying “two mystery series with a gay main character in the same city by the same author are too similar to each other”–which I took as a challenge to make Bourbon Street Blues and Scotty as different as I possibly could to prove them wrong. So, the manuscript went into a drawer and I started happily working on Scotty instead…and again, it was a stand-alone that morphed into a series.
This was the Insightoutbooks edition cover of Murder in the Rue St. AnnThis is the new cover the book got when Bild Strokes Books republished the book as an ebook.
I took a streetcar named St. Charles down to Canal, crossed the street and walked down to Royal.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning on one of those splendidly sunny September days that makes you glad to be alive. Taking the streetcar had been a good idea. The long heat of summer had broken, and the air was crisp and in the mid-seventies. The sky was that blue unique to New Orleans, with wispy white clouds scattered across its expanse. There was just a hint of cool moisture in the air. There were a lot of people milling around the sidewalks on Canal— a good sign for the tourist season. Canal used to be the main shopping drag of the city, with huge department stores like Maison Blanche and D. H. Holmes. Those were long gone. They had either gone out of business or fled to the suburbs— now it was mostly hotels, fast food, and Foot Lockers.
There were hopes that putting the Canal streetcar line back in place would stimulate a recovery for the street. So far, all the construction work had simply made the Quarter difficult to get to from uptown. Add to that the chore of trying to find a place to park that would get me a ticket in two hours or cost ten dollars, and I was kind of glad I was having car trouble—the streetcar down and a cab home was very simple.
Not that riding the streetcar didn’t bring its own set of aggravations. If the cars ran on any fixed schedule, I’d never been able to figure it out. You could wait for one for half an hour and then three in a row, all packed to the gills, would show up. The streetcar ostensibly operated as public transportation, but was also a de rigeur tourist attraction. There was no way of telling when you’d be able to catch one with a place to sit. But when you did, it was nice to find a window seat on a sunny day and enjoy the city clacking by.
So, when Alyson chose to drop the Chanse series after I signed with Kensington, Murder in the Rue Royal went back into a drawer, which was fine–it wasn’t a good book–and I moved on with my life. The advance for signing with Kensington paid for our move back to New Orleans from Washington, and moving back here was absolutely worth ending the Chanse series for, seriously. I still didn’t have an agent, but I’d been signed to book contracts by two publishers already, and I figured it might be easier now. We accomplished the move, get our new apartment set up on Sophie B. Wright Place, and started putting our lives back together. I don’t remember the timeline of how it came to be, but I was still working with Alyson on my first and second erotic anthologies (Full Body Contact and FRATSEX), so I was aware when my editor left and a new person, that I knew slightly, moved from assistant editor to senior editor. We were talking on the phone one day about Full Body Contact and she casually mentioned, “I don’t see your second Chanse book here on the schedule, what’s going on?” and I told her the story, “Oh for fuck’s sake, when can you get it done by?” and that became the second contract for Chanse.
So, after finished Jackson Square Jazz and turning it in, I broke out Murder in the Rue Royal (the title had already been changed on the contract to Murder in the Rue St. Ann; my new editor didn’t like the alliteration) from the drawer, blew the dust off it, and reread the manuscript. I looked at my timeline for the series, and saw that this was the one where he was supposed to fuck up his relationship, but I didn’t see it in the manuscript. I reread the first book, thought long and hard about Chanse and who he was at this point in his life and after several long days of musing it hit me, between the eyes: jealousy. Jealousy would be what fucks up his relationship, and it only made more sense to me that Chanse would be the jealous one. Paul had a loving, accepting family and was more secure in and of himself as a gay man and what he wanted out of life. Paul was considering becoming ground-based at the New Orleans airport so he could settle down and have more of a life with Chanse, which also has Chanse very alarmed and makes the jealousy even more intense….so what would be the thing that would set Chanse’s jealousy off? Something from Paul’s past that Chanse didn’t know but finds out about in the worst possible way?
I had had some issues, believe it or not, with stalkers over the years. I had always wanted to write about a stalker, so what if Paul had a stalker? Why would Paul have a stalker? And then it occurred to me that Paul had a past he wasn’t ashamed of, but had never mentioned to Chanse. Not out of a fear that Chanse wouldn’t understand, but mainly because he had no need to tell him because it wasn’t anything dark. He had done some nude modeling when he was younger and he had also done some soft-core wrestling fetish porn, which is where the stalker came from. And what if I could work the con man he’s been hired by was someone Paul knew from the soft-core fetish porn? What if the guy contacted Paul because he’d been getting threatening notes on top of everything else going on in his life? And what if Chanse ran into Paul when he was leaving the con man’s offices, which brings all this out about Paul’s past? What if it shook a jealous, possessive, insecure Chanse enough for them to fight about it? And what if Paul disappears after the con man is murdered?
That was something I could work with, and so I did.
I’ve always called Murder in the Rue St. Ann my most under-appreciated work. By the time the book had come out, Paul had lost his eye to the muggers and we were in recovery mode. I didn’t do much of anything to promote the book (other than a signing at Outwrite in Atlanta, where I signed all of my books until they closed), and it kind of came and went quickly. I felt it was the most unappreciated of all my books. Jackson Square Jazz had come out earlier in the year before Paul was attacked, and it sucked all the oxygen up that year intended for me–it was the Lambda nominee, not Rue St. Ann–and I didn’t pay much attention to the book after it came out, either. The ‘christians” came for me a few months after the book’s release as well, and then Katrina…so yeah, Rue St. Ann got no press, got no attention, but somehow still managed to sell well.
I did have the next one planned, Murder in the Rue St. Claude, which there was a proposal in for, but Alyson was also going through other, deeply concerning changes that showed how little the higher-ups knew about anything, let alone publishing. But that’s a tale for another time, I think.
Yesterday was a wild one here in New Orleans. We were expecting inclement weather–high winds, possible tornadoes, and heavy rain with a strong chance of flooding. I was already planning on leaving work early–PT was scheduled for 3 pm yesterday–so I was able to leave the office without worry as things started shutting down all over the city. It was raining when I got home and hunkered down inside, and it pretty steadily rained all night. I went to bed after watching three episodes of Fool Me Once on Netflix, which we are really enjoying, while checking the score of the national championship game periodically. I was awakened by loud thunder and pouring rain at some point in the middle of the night, but I was able to easily fall back asleep–it really is so comforting to be buried in blankets and warm and dry while it pours outside, isn’t it? Rain always makes me sleepy. But I wound up sleeping very well and waking up with the alarm this morning (Sparky always climbs up into the bed with me when he thinks it’s time for me to get up and feed him, so I know it’s going to be time to get up soon). We still are having high winds today, but no rain, which is great, and Michigan beat Washington last night for their first national title in 27 years.
Good for you, Michigan.
My PT wound up being rescheduled because of the weather, too, so I have to get up at 5 on Thursday, which isn’t great but I can live with it. I do have a department meeting on Friday morning as well, and I’ll probably go into the office for it. I can do it from home, but I think it would be best for me to head over there and be out of the house in the morning, which will get me going on work-at-home duties and errands and so forth before the three day weekend.
And huzzah for a three day weekend, might I add?
I also started working out the five stories I have on hand that may fit for an anthology call (or two or three) that are upcoming, and one–which is just an idea–actually started coming together in my head yesterday while I watched more episodes of War of the Worlds, which took an interesting and slightly insane turn during the later episodes of the second season while I sat doodling in my journal while relaxing in my chair while rain pattered down outside. It also occurred to me how to fix and finish another one that could easily work as well. I need to put my writer’s cap back on and really start getting things finished and cooking on my computer again, methinks. But I also did some more chores when I got home yesterday, which included dishes and laundry, and this morning I woke up to a relatively clean kitchen (we won’t discuss the floors just yet), which was super great. I also wasn’t sleepy, groggy, or tired, which was also awesome. I may actually make it through the day AND the errands I have to run after work today (mail, groceries). I am definitely going to spend some more time with the new Tara Laskowski tonight when I finally get home from everything, and do some touching up so I stay on top of the chores so I am not coming into the weekend needing to clean the house.
I think it’s about time I started feeling like myself again for the first time in a long time, and it does actually kind of feel good. Last year was a cloud, and I just felt like I was drifting through the year for the most part. 2023 started off terribly, beginning with my injury in January and losing Mom in February; it’s little wonder that I sleep=walked through the year, which I’d been doing pretty consistently for a number of years. The pandemic wore me out, with the changes to the world and the changes to my day job, and things had been kind of my control for quite a few years before that. I kind of feel (probably mistakenly) like I have so control over my life again and am looking at things a lot more clearly than I had in years–which probably has something to do with having the right medications. Up until about 2017 or so, I could deal with the anxiety and concomitant insomnia with just Xanax, but the anxiety was out of control from that point on and was when I should have changed my medications to deal with the real problem rather than the symptoms.
I cannot emphasize enough how important the right medications are for your health and mental well-being.
I really do feel like a new person, or the best Gregalicious I can be, which isn’t quite the same thing. I’ve always tried to be the best version of me that I can–because no one, including me, wants to ever see the worst version of me, take my word for that, okay?–which is all I think anyone can do. I do feel more engaged with my work, and my writing, more so than I have in a while, which kind of felt almost like I was writing on autopilot, which does happen sometimes. It’s also kind of ironic that I did my best work during a time period where I really was hating writing and not giving it my full attention, treating it as an odious chore that had to be done rather than trying to do the best work I could. Maybe not trying did the trick? I don’t know. But what I do know is I need to get back on the horse and start creating again, and perhaps don’t goof off as much going forward.
After all, there’s nothing I can’t do if I want to and set my mind to it.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–one never knows with a Gregalicious, does one?
Up ungodly early to start off the new year with PT and then off to work. I slept well last night, and feel rested this morning; there was no tangle of blankets this morning, so I wasn’t restless, and I don’t feel very tired this morning, which is good. The other nice thing is now getting up at six tomorrow will feel like I’ve actually slept in some. I feel like I’ve rested enough now, although all the time off from the holidays is going to make going back to work five days a week challenging, to say the least.
Yesterday was a decent day, really. It was a low energy day, for some reason, and while I did get some chores and things done yesterday, I didn’t do much of anything for the day. I did read quite a bit of Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, which I am really enjoying, and then settled in to watch the LSU game, which they did finally win in the last minutes, 35-31. I think the offense going into next year is in pretty good shape, but the defense needs a lot of work still. We then watched Michigan rally to beat Alabama, and I watched some of the Washington game before going to bed–and woke up to see the national title game will be between Michigan and Washington. Good for them, and now I have no need whatsoever to watch that game, either.
And it’s a new year, which means all the things I’ve not been paying attention to, or responding to, has to be picked up and taken care of this week–like emails; I definitely need to clean out the inbox. I also am behind on day job in the office duties that I will have to get back on top of this week as well. I need to do some things around here when I get home tonight, too, so I hope I am not terribly tired when I get home the way I was last week when I had to get up early for PT. I will have to get the mail on the way home, and maybe even swing by the grocery store…I don’t know. Tomorrow is also pay day and pay-the-bills day, too. (It always seems a little brutal when the first pay day of the new year is in the first week of January, a brutal reminder that bills never take time off as we start a new year.)
I have finally started feeling more like myself lately, which has been really nice, too. I have felt a little off ever since the surgery, which I suppose is normal. I really don’t think I need the PT anymore, but I don’t see Dr. O’Brien again until this next Saturday morning, so I won’t officially be released from it until then. I am also hoping to be freed from the brace this weekend, fingers crossed and prayers aloft. I don’t really think I need it anymore, but I also don’t want to take it off arbitrarily until I am officially cleared either. The arm seems to be doing better, frankly, which pleases me enormously. Overall, this whole experience wasn’t terrible, other than that first terrifying week after the surgery when I was essentially trapped in my easy chair for eight days before I was finally off the ice machine and could return to my bed for sleeping. That seems like a million years ago now…
It’s also only forty degrees out there this morning, with a predicted high of a mere fifty for the day. Woo-hoo. I haven’t been feeling the cold as much this year, but I’ve also not been going outside a whole lot lately, either. But it’s definitely been helping me sleep at night, and the bed has been feeling super-comfortable lately. I feel as though my sleep is finally under control with the new meds, which is awesome, and I don’t feel as tired and groggy as I used to be before the medication switch. And to think, this could have been the case all along had I had a decent primary care physician at any point in the last eight or so years. But no sense weeping about what should have been or what might have been. It won’t change anything, and the past can never be undone–which is why I spent so much of my life never looking back. But looking back doesn’t mean missing the past or wishing it had been different, either; neither extreme is the best option, really. I’ve been doing more of that since Mom died (almost a year ago), and it hasn’t been bad at all. In some ways, it’s been helpful. My pre-thirties life was kind of miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled, and so I never wanted to remember either the 70s or the 80s. But it doesn’t hurt or hinder the present by looking back without regret, either. For me, it’s been more about “okay, why do I handle things like this instead of like that?” and remembering the root cause of so many of my anxiety-driven neuroses has actually kind of helped unlock the neurosis and freed me from it. I am still, at sixty-two, very much a work in progress.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you soon, if not later today.
I slept well last night but my blankets were all tangled up this morning, indicating the sleep was more restless than it has been for weeks. I also wasn’t in the mood to write my blog when I first woke up, so I decided to read, drink my coffee, and maybe have some breakfast before getting cleaned up. I usually write this over my morning coffee, and since I don’t reread or re-edit once it’s written, that could explain the run-on sentences, word repetitions, and occasional poor grammar no one ever points out to me. This blog began nineteen years ago (!!!) on Livejournal (the anniversary was 12/26), migrated over here in about 2016 or so, and still somehow keeps chugging along. It always surprises me that people read it, to be honest. It was always meant mainly for me, and was originally intended as a daily exercise to get me writing again. I guess it worked. When I started I had published four novels, a few anthologies, and some short stories. Nineteen years later, I’ve way surpassed that total, despite some fallow years in which I produced nothing.
I did some more picking up around here yesterday while watching football games. It was fun watching Mississippi beat Penn State, and don’t even get me started on the Florida State-Georgia game. I get the disappointment at not making the play-offs, but you also knew you were scheduled to play Georgia, another team disappointed in not making the play-offs, but instead of showing everyone that the committee was wrong and showing up to beat Georgia…and Georgia also had star players injured and over a dozen opting out and even more entering the transfer portal. This would have been a play-off game had either Auburn or Georgia beaten Alabama this year, but that’s how things go. Auburn went 13-0 in 2004 and wasn’t invited to the BCS title game. You don’t always get what you want in life or sport, and the question is how you handle that. If this was going to be the case, don’t accept the damned bowl bid. Your fans spent a lot of money to go to that game, and it was incredibly disrespectful to the team, the fanbase, and the university to show up and get embarrassed like that. After Coach O was fired in 2021, LSU went to its bowl game with 39 scholarship players and got trounced by Kansas State….but how does it appear in the record books? KSU 42, LSU 21. Twenty years from now when people look back at the history of college football and bowl games, it will read Georgia 63, Florida State 3. It’s a program and culture problem, and all the FSU fans apologizing for this disgraceful beating–do you quit when you don’t get a raise or promotion you worked hard for and feel like you deserved? The word for that is quitter…and for the record, Georgia played it’s back-ups, walk-ons and so forth in the second half and still beat your ass 21-0.
And if LSU went 12-0 and didn’t get picked for the play-offs…and pulled the same shit? Sure, I’d be angry about the play-offs but I’d also call out the Tigers for embarrassing the state and the university that way.
I’m really enjoying Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, and am savoring every word. What a fresh and unique voice! I have to say I am so glad I realized I needed to be better about my reading choices and should read more diverse writers. It’s been a great education for me as a reader, a writer, a person and a citizen. I’m still learning how to be better about race and gender and gender identity and sexuality; and I strongly encourage other readers to do the same. Crime fiction is so much stronger and healthier when it represents everyone, I think, and while I don’t consider reading diverse writers to be the total education I need on any social issues facing the country–I need to read more non-fiction and theory.
I rewatched The Birds yesterday after the football games, and it was pretty much as I remembered it. I’d only seen it twice before; originally as a child edited for television, when it frightened me so badly that I had nightmares (I was prone to them growing up) and for years could never see crows on a jungle gym or a wire without feeling uneasy and then again as a rental in college after I’d read the short story again and wanted to see how faithful the film was to the story. I didn’t care as much for it the second time around–the acting is really terrible and so is the script–but the suspenseful parts still held up and were scary. This third time around confirmed my second viewing; and I noticed some other flaws in the picture. Rod Taylor’s mother isn’t much older than he is, and why is there about a thirty year age gap between him and his sister? I think the short story is better than the film, but I can also see why people like it. I do consider it one of Hitchcock’s lesser films.
Since tomorrow is a day for thinking ahead and coming up with some goals for the new year, I suppose today should be a recap of sorts of this past year. It was, as I mentioned in a previous entry, a rather up-and-down rollercoaster of highs and lows with very little level ground in the middle. The recognition of mainstream award nominations for my work–even queer work–was a delightful surprise this past year. But even more important than that is I think my work is getting better. I had felt, some years ago, that my writing was becoming stale and that I wasn’t growing as a writer anymore; I’d become stagnant and that was one of my biggest fears. I wound up deciding to take some time away from writing books on deadline and write things just for me, things that I wanted to write but also wanted to take the time to do correctly. It was during this time that I worked on both #shedeservedit and Bury Me in Shadows in early drafts, and also started the novellas and working more intently on my short stories. I accepted the challenge of writing stories to themed anthologies, and produced some terrific ones of which I am really proud. When I dove back into series work with Royal Street Reveillon, I wanted to write something non-formulaic for the Scotty series. I also wanted to shake things up with Scotty a bit, as the series was getting a bit too comfortable and safe for me. Royal Street Reveillon certainly was neither comfortable nor safe, and neither was Mississippi River Mischief.
Bury Me in Shadows was not easy for me to write. When I went back to the book after setting it aside for awhile, I realized several things: I couldn’t ignore race and racism, I had to address the Lost Cause narrative, and I also had realized while doing more reading and research that the stories my paternal grandmother used to tell me about the Civil War and Alabama and the family were apocryphal stories you can turn up about almost everywhere in the rural South. The book wasn’t working, in fact, because I was trying to elide those issues because I was afraid of doing it wrong…so it pushed me to do better. And actually addressing those issues made the book easier to write. The same thing was true of #shedeservedit; I’d been working on this book in one form or another since I actually lived in Kansas. But again, I realized when I went back to it that what I was doing didn’t work because I wasn’t going there with toxic masculinity and rape culture because it wasn’t personal enough for my main character, and so I bit the bullet and made it more personal for him. It dredged up a lot of memories, some of them painful, but it also made the book better and stronger. I had been wanting to write a cozy for the longest time, and decided to try it for something different and new–and that became A Streetcar Named Murder. I was also very pleased with it, even though the deadline and the turnaround on it was a bit insane…but I still managed to take my time and turned it into something I was proud of when I got the final author copies.
My two releases of this year–Death Drop and Mississippi River Mischief–are also books of which I feel proud. I also published three terrific short stories this year: “Solace in a Dying Hour” in This Fresh Hell; “The Ditch” in School of Hard Knox; and “The Rosary of Broken Promises” in Dancing in the Shadows.
I think I’m settling finally into an acceptance that I am pretty good at what I do. I may not have the master’s or PhD in creative writing or literature of any kind; but I’ve never really wanted to be an academic writer. I never wanted to be Faulkner, but Faulkner did inspire me to interconnect novels and stories in my own fictional world (also Stephen King). I would like to do some non-fiction studies of genre and writers I enjoy, but in an accessible rather than academic way. Academics used to make me feel stupid and uneducated, and I also used to envy those writers who had that kind of background because I felt it made their work stronger than mine, or gave them insights into writing and building a novel that I’d never had, which made me and my work somehow lesser. But that wasn’t on them; that was on me. I was the one who felt inferior and lesser, not talented or good enough. That chip was on my shoulder and I was the one who put it there. My peers actually consider me a peer, and newer writers look at my longevity and my CV and are impressed by the prodigious output, if nothing else. I used to think all the award nominations were kind of hollow because I so rarely won; which was incredibly ungracious because some writers are never nominated for anything…but it doesn’t mean their work isn’t good. Now, I just find myself grateful to make a short-list of five out of all the possibilities for that slot, you know? I’m lucky, and I’m blessed.
I’ve reflected a lot on my life and my career this past year–Mom’s death had something to do with that–and I’ve identified, in many cases, why I am the way am by remembering the event that triggered the response in my brain of “okay, never want to experience that again” which led to so many self-toxic and self-defeating behaviors. But the bottom line of it all is I’ve finally accepted myself for who I am, have determined to stop self-deprecating, and take some pride in myself and my career and my life. I know the most amazing people and have the most incredible friends. I have a day job where I make a difference in people’s lives. I have an awesome life-partner, an enviable writing career, and I get to live in New Orleans.
Queer and Loathing in America 