Our thanks to all who submitted their nomination forms. The Lefty Awards will be voted on at the convention and presented at a banquet on Saturday, March 18, at the El Conquistador Resort in the Oro Valley of Tucson, Arizona. We are delighted to announce the Lefty nominees.Lefty Nominees for Best Humorous Mystery Novel
Ellen Byron, Bayou Book Thief (Berkley Prime Crime)
Jennifer J. Chow, Death by Bubble Tea (Berkley Prime Crime)
A.J. Devlin, Five Moves of Doom (NeWest Press)
T.G. Herren, A Streetcar Named Murder (Crooked Lane Books)
Catriona McPherson, Scot in a Trap (Severn House)
Lefty Nominees for Best Historical Mystery Novel (The Bill Gottfried Memorial) for books set before 1970
Dianne Freeman, A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder (Kensington Books)
Catriona McPherson, In Place of Fear (Severn House)
Wanda M. Morris, Anywhere You Run (William Morrow)
Karen Odden, Under a Veiled Moon (Crooked Lane Books)
Ann Parker, The Secret in the Wall (Poisoned Pen Press)
Iona Whishaw, Framed in Fire (Touchwood)
Lefty Nominees for Best Debut Mystery Novel
Erin E. Adams, Jackal (Bantam Books)
Eli Cranor, Don’t Know Tough (Soho Crime)
Ramona Emerson, Shutter (Soho Crime)
Meredith Hambrock, Other People’s Secrets (Crooked Lane Books)
Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club (Pegasus Crime)
Rob Osler, Devil’s Chew Toy (Crooked Lane Books)
Jane Pek, The Verifiers (Vintage Books)
Lefty Nominees for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories)
Kellye Garrett, Like a Sister (Mulholland Books)
Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden (Bantam Books)
James L’Etoile, Dead Drop (Level Best Books)
Gigi Pandian, Under Lock & Skeleton Key (Minotaur Books)
Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities (Minotaur Books)
I slept incredibly well on Sunday night–there really is nothing like your own bed–but despite feeling rested, my body was still exhausted and tired. I had to run some errands and make groceries, which us always tiring, but i also managed to get some other blog posts done yesterday morning. (After all, I didn’t post on either Saturday or Sunday, so had to catch up and make up for lost time.) I got the laundry caught up, and did some chores around the Lost Apartment–dishes, filing, organizing–and reread the manuscript to get a handle on where I am at so I could plan the next stages of finishing this sucker.
But yesterday was about re-acclimatization into my reality, and I think I did a nice job. I picked up my prescription and the mail, and made groceries. I was very tired still–exhausted, really–but managed to get some things done around the house; little things that are nevertheless time-consuming but need to be done. I think another project for the overall year will be to organize my picture files. They are a mess, always have been, and none of them are actually labeled or have been renamed; they all sit in my back-up drive as IMG-number, and only in a few instances have they been grouped into a labelled folder for ease of discovery. I also went to bed relatively early last night and finally slept through almost the entire night in a good, relaxing sleep. My legs still ache from soreness, a result of all that walking I wasn’t used to (I really do need to start going for walks–even if short–in the evening after work) over the weekend but not to the point of such exhaustion that I want to cry when I have to get up, thank God.
My voice is still raspy, too. But I feel much better this morning, which is a good thing as I have to not only go into the office but I also have to get back to writing the book this week and I can’t afford a single day off from writing or I won’t be finished by 1/31, which is the original plan. But I had suspected that my not feeling 100% and slightly flu-ey was a result of not enough rest, and now that I’ve slept well for an entire night, my suspicions have apparently been correct all along. I was too mentally fatigued still yesterday to do much beyond simple, menial tasks–my mind was too tired to handle any reading, so I won’t be getting back to Other Terrors until tonight after work. We also watched a documentary on Netflix called The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, which was interesting–I’d never heard of this story, but apparently it went viral in 2013–particularly on how some people in the entertainment field tried to cash in on his viral story and success without doing any due diligence or any looking into his past or who he was at all. That was the most interesting part of the story to me–the way people saw him as a way to make money and didn’t care about anything beyond that, and so it’s hard to feel sympathy for any of them when the truth–(no spoilers here)did finally come out.
It inevitably does.
I’ve still not completely wrapped my head around the end of my volunteer work. I spent some time yesterday archiving all the emails from the last three years and deleting the folders they were originally filed away in–which made me realize that my email folders need to be overhauled, as there are any number of them that are no longer needed or necessary, or are actually duplicated–and of course, organizing always makes me incredibly happy. I have a lot of work to do in this first quarter of 2023 (!!!! I still can’t believe it’s this far into the third decade of this century…) and I want to make this a good year for me productivity wise; I am going to start looking for an agent probably come March or April. Nothing ventured, after all, and let’s face it, I’ve never really made much of an effort into finding one, and maybe send out a couple of proposals before giving up and pulling back and hoping for the best. I need to make a blanket effort–going after all of them at the same time–but I am always afraid that they’ll all say no and that’s the end of it. Honestly, the way this business is so brutal on your ego while at the same time requiring you to actually have one (you have to believe in yourself to some degree otherwise you’ll never get going on it and that’s the end of that).
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!
At 3:00 pm, Saturday, January 14th eastern time, I officially (and symbolically) turned over my gavel as Executive Vice President of the Board of Directors of Mystery Writers of America.
It’s going to take some getting used to, methinks.
As you get older, your perspective changes on things when you look back. I’ve never been one to look back at my past–I’ve always tried to focus on the present and the future–but once I hit sixty, it was inevitable. January 20th this month is the twenty-first anniversary of the release of my first novel,Murder in the Rue Dauphine, and with the closing of this chapter–my service to MWA–it’s hard not to look back and remember.
When I was first published, my mystery writer friends kept urging me to pursue mainstream markets and join mainstream organizations. A lot has happened since 2002: Lawrence v. Texas still hadn’t been decided so my sex life was still a crime; “don’t ask don’t tell” was still in place; and it’s not like you could get married to your same-sex partner when our sexuality was criminalized. That was a completely different world and society and culture than the one we currently live in. For one thing, for a gay mystery author, there were queer newspapers and magazines and bookstores. It was entirely possible to make a living and a career for one’s self outside of the mainstream–and this situation developed because of the mainstream’s rejection of most things queer. There had been some queer publishing booms, but I came in at the tail end of the last one–as all the New York publishers had started canceling queer imprints and slowly but surely removing queer writers from their lists. I decided that I would try to arrange signings and appearances at mystery bookstores as well as queer ones, and that was a lesson in homophobia I’ve never forgotten. One mainstream bookstore actually hung up on me after nastily cutting me off to say we don’t carry those kinds of books in our store–some variation of which I heard from all of them except one (which is why Murder by the Book in Houston will always hold a place in my heart). A friend bought me a membership in an organization as a gift (I won’t name it) but it was made abundantly clear to me that mainstream spaces weren’t welcoming or safe for a fledgling queer writer, so I didn’t bother joining any others or going to any mystery conferences–my concerns were always poo-poohed by straight mystery writer friends, which now, in reflection, was a kind of gaslighting, but I was inevitably always proven right (it’s always nice to be told you’re “nobody”). But when I emerged from the haze of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the wreckage it made of my life, publishing had significantly changed, as had the rest of the world. The queer stores were closing, and our newspapers and magazines were shuttering–as were some of our publishers. I took a look around and thought, what am I going to do now?
I took a deep breath and joined Mystery Writers of America. Within a year I was asked to run for my chapter board, and then was asked to run for chapter president, which would also give me a seat on the national board. I remember going to New York for my first board orientation, staying at the Roosevelt Hotel–I always loved staying there; it made me feel like an author the way I only really feel when I am in New York, to be honest–and walking into the room where the meeting was being held. I had already met MWA staffer Margery Flax (at the time administrative director, now Executive Director), who had made me feel not only welcomed but like I belonged, which was something I had only rarely ever felt outside of queer publishing. I remember being awestruck that I was in the same (proverbial) room where it happened; the same board meeting that giants of our genre had attended in the past. I was stunned when a beautiful woman asked me if the seat next to me was taken and I was like oh my god, that’s Harley Jane Kozak! (I knew her from my long addiction to daytime, but also from other films she’d done.) I sat there quietly, overwhelmed, absorbing it all, and that night at dinner I had the thrill of sitting next to Jess Lourey, and as we talked over dinner we became friends–something that has lasted to this day; I will always love Jessie–and over the next four years I slowly found my voice and began taking on more and more responsibilities. It became a huge part of my life, and I kept working, as is my wont, to try to achieve equity for everyone in MWA, specifically with the goal to make queer writers feel welcomed and a part of the organization as a vital part of our community. I made a lot of friends that I cherish to this day, and it felt very weird when my time there was finally up and I stepped away. Being involved with MWA, and making friends in the organization (which led to making even more friends in the genre) was what got me to start attending our genre conferences, getting involved and being more active in the community, and becoming better known than I was before.
It would have been easy to give up after the collapse of queer media and outlets. Mystery Writers of America gave me hope that my career could and would continue, and that the best part was yet to come.
So one can only imagine my surprise when four years after I left the board I was asked to return and serve as Executive Vice President (basically, chairman of the board). I was thrilled, flattered, and honored, particularly for being the first openly gay one in the history of the organization. What better way, I thought, to let queer writers know they were welcome than by being in a leadership position? There was admittedly some hubris involved in saying yes–the making history thing, for one, as well as thinking I could handle all that responsibility while maintaining a full time job and a full time writing career. I will never regret saying yes; the only regrets I have are the mistakes I made (there were plenty) and not having as much time to devote to the office as was needed so I could get everything done that I wanted to get done while I served. But I am not going to focus on the regrets, ever; instead I shall take pride in the things we were able to accomplish.
And now, it’s over. I could have served five years total, but bowed out after three. Were we still living in the same world we were in when I was initially approached in the fall of 2019, I probably would have stayed for the full five. But we’re not living in that same world–the pandemic that shut down the world within two months of my taking office overwhelmed every aspect of my life, from day job to running errands to my writing and publishing career to helping to oversee the operations of the organization. (I like to joke about how I was not only the first gay EVP in history but also the first EVP to cancel the Edgar banquet) Navigating an organization through the unknown waters of a pandemic and a changing world, where there was no previous experience to draw from was challenging, especially since I had to worry about my day job, adjust to working from home on some days and helping with the COVID testing at our office, exposing me to something that could quite possibly kill either Paul or myself every day I was there. The years between 2020 and now are all kind of blurry to me now; sort of the way everything from the Katrina evacuation through about 2009 is either a blank or blurry.
It’s going to take some getting used to, and it’s going to take a while before it sinks in that it’s no longer my responsibility.
I wouldn’t trade the experiences–both good and bad–for anything. Even though sometimes it was stressful and disruptive, and there were times when I got incredibly frustrated because I was very short on time and in the middle of a book that I needed to focus on, it’s going to be weird for me for awhile. It was very weird checking my emails this morning and seeing that there were none with (MWA) in the header line. I worked with some great people and made some friends–at least I like to think so, their mileage might vary–that I would have never made had I not served. I learned a lot about myself, and strangely enough I also think serving somehow has made me a better writer somehow; I know the work I am producing now is vastly superior to the work I did before I served. I know I have a stronger sense of the genre after my total of seven years of service.
The hardest part, I think, is going to be remembering that I no longer have anything other than an opinion and that I am now just one of the many members.
Thanks to everyone I served with, the membership, and the community. I no longer feel like an outsider looking in at the community, and maybe, just maybe, I made a small difference.
When I was a kid, my grandmother got me started watching the 3:30 afternoon movies on WGN (I think); most of them were classic old Hollywood movies (where my affections for Stanwyck, Crawford, Davis and Hepburn began) but essentially, they were usually older films or ones that had already been shown once or twice in prime time before being relegated to afternoon and late night. They were also edited for content and for “appropriate” viewing for kids–since we were all home to watch–and housewives. I remember watching A Walk on the Wild Side with Barbara Stanwyck and Jane Fonda, but it didn’t make a lot of sense–primarily because it was a racy film and they’d shredded it to get it past television censors; every once in a while I think oh you should watch it again because you can probably get the unedited theatrical version through some service or another but never get around to it. A friend recently posted that he was going to watch it that evening, which led me down a rabbit hole which ended with me discovering that it was based on a novel (which I hadn’t known), and that the author was the same man who also wrote The Man with the Golden Arm, which was made into a rather good film with Frank Sinatra, Nelson Algren. Algren was one of those literary lions who was championed and respected by critics and literature professors–The Man with the Golden Arm won the very first National Book Award–but seems to be relatively forgotten today. My pompous and condescending Lit professors in college certainly never assigned us any Algren; so it made me rather curious. I had also forgotten that a significant part of the story is actually set in New Orleans–which was all it took for me to get a copy.
I finished reading it as my flight to New York was taxiing to the gate.
“He’s just a pore lonesome wife-left feller,” the more understanding said of Fitz Linkhorn, “losin’ his old lady is what crazied him.”
“That man in so contrary,” the less understanding said, “if you throwed him in the river he’d float upstream.“
For what had embittered Fitz had no name. Yet he felt that every daybreak duped him into waking and every evening conned him into sleep. The feeling of having been cheated–of having been cheated–that was it. Nobody knew why nor by whom.
But only that all was lost. Lost long ago, in some colder country. Lost anew by the generations since. He kept trying to wind his fingers about this feeling, at times like an ancestral hunger; again like some secret wound. It was there, if a man could get it out into the light, as palpable as the blood in his veins. Someone just behind him kept turning him against himself till his very strength was a weakness. Weaker men, full of worldly follies, did better than Linkhorn in the world. He saw with every enviously slow-burning.
“I ain’t a-playin’ the whore to no man,” he would declare himself, though no one had so charged him.
Six-foot-one of slack-muscled shambler, he came of a shambling race. That gander-necked clan from which Calhoun and Jackson sprang. Jesse James’ and Jeff Davis’ people. Lincoln’s people. Forest solitaries spare and swart, left landless as ever in sandland and Hooverville now the time of the forests has passed.
Whites called them “white trash” and Negroes “po’buckra.” Since the first rock has risen about the moving waters there had been not a single prince in Fitzbrian’s branch of the Linkhorn clan.
Sigh, where to being with this?
First, let’s get the obvious out of the way–the book is very, very dated. There’s language and mentalities and attitudes–while probably common usage for the time it is set as well as the time it was written, we’ve progressed a lot since then–that do no hold up today and made me wince as I came across them–and not just about race, either; there’s a lot of misogyny and ableism pervading the manuscript. There’s also not really a story here, either; the book focuses on Ftiz Linkhorn’s son Dove, who becomes involved with a diner owner but then robs her and takes off riding freight trains to New Orleans. He encounters a young runaway–Kitty Pride–on the trains but they become separated, and he gets to New Orleans on his own and becomes one of the con artists who always seem to proliferate here, but the focus of the middle of the book turns away from Dove and to Dockery, who runs a bar and bordello on Perdido Street (where they moved after Storyville was shut down) and the story shifts to some of the hookers, the bordello owner, and Dove exists only on the periphery; Dove actually becomes a sex worker–it kind of glosses over that he gets paid to let people watch him deflower a virgin (who is actually another one of the bordello girls)–while he learns how to read and write, learning from one of the hookers with whom he is kind of involved with, which brings him into conflict with a former professional wrestler and circus worker who has lost his legs–and Dove gradually winds up going back to south Texas, back where he came from, no better off or worse than when he left.
The writing is very good–I marked some pages that had some insightful sentences that were beautifully constructed–but over all, this falls into the category of what I (snidely) refer to as “mid-twentieth century straight white man MFA style.” We don’t need a story with a beginning, middle and end; we don’t need to see character growth or development; Dove is precisely the same person he was when the book opened. There’s also no real depth to any of the characters; it’s written in an omniscient point of view, like someone is telling you the story but because it’s being narrated, we don’t really get to know any of the characters–who they are and what makes them tick and what makes them behave the way they do–and this is something I’ve always taken issue with when it comes to books about the poor and those who lived on the margins; Algren creates these fascinating characters but gives them no complexity or depth, because they are poor, we are led to believe, they are simple and stupid and incapable of growth and since those kinds of people aren’t really people–we don’t need to see any of their humanity, therefore we are unable to identify with any of the characters or even feel empathy for any of them; which we really should. Why write about these characters and this world and this life if we aren’t going to get any insight? For me, it felt like a peepshow; he’s holding back the curtain to give us a peek into the lives of desperate people but in more of a “point and moralize” way which I frankly didn’t like or enjoy. It felt like poverty porn to me (don’t even get me started on The Grapes of Wrath), and he didn’t even remark on the symbolism of these bordellos and bars being located on Perdido Street–perdido means lost in Spanish–and rather than feeling any sympathy or rooting for these characters, they just left me cold since we didn’t understand their motivations or who they were or had any insight into why they were doing the things they were doing.
I don’t regret reading the book–I never even thought about putting it aside and not finishing–so that’s something. I was just disappointed, I guess, by the lack of insight. I guess that’s why I enjoy genre fiction so much; characters are everything in genre fiction, and I want to know the characters I am reading about rather than just having the curtain pulled back and being a passive viewer at the window into their lives.
(And yes, Lou Reed did get the title for his classic song from the title of this book and film.)
I got home last night around seven, exhausted, bone-tired, and delighted to be able to sleep in my own bed after four nights of insomnia. I got some sleep while in New York, but not much–and I also exerted myself a lot more than I have in, well, years. Mt Fitbit would let me know every day that I’d reached the goal of ten thousand steps (which never happens, but I do need to start taking walks more regularly, as it’s disturbing how physically out of condition I am–my legs are achy and sore from all the walking), and of course I had cut my heel accidentally the morning I left, so it’s kind of achy and painful. But I slept deeply and well last night, the sleep of the exhausted, and I actually feel rather rested and awake as I re-acclimate to my normal reality. As I expected, I didn’t write hardly anything while I was gone, so I need to climb back up on that horse today. It’s a work holiday–there’s no way I could be functional at the office today (I always take an extra day off to recover from the trip upon my return home), and now I have to figure out what I need to get done to get back in control of my life.
First thing on the list is to get back on track with my writing–so hallelujah for a day off! I don’t even want to think about the horror that is my email inbox just yet, and I may avoid it for another day so I can get my proverbial shit together (oh, my OWN coffee that I made myself just is so much nicer than buying it somewhere). I am most likely going to have to hit the grocery store today, as well as pick up the mail and a prescription and put gas in the car. There’s some filing and sorting that needs to be done this morning, and of course I need to think about what to take for lunch to the office for the rest of the week. So much to think about, so much to do, so much to remember. I believe this may even call for a to-do list. Yay!
I did have a lovely time in New York; it’s always invigorating to spend time in the company of other writers. It was a bit cold for my liking, but I think I walked all over Manhattan, had some amazing food, got to reconnect with friends (some I hadn’t seen in years in person), and of course, the highlight was seeing Hadestown. I’ve already downloaded the cast recording to Spotify; it may be different to listen to than when watching it performed live, but I am looking forward to listening to it on walks–because I’ve decided that walks are de rigeur in my future–and maybe, just maybe, i could also start listening to audiobooks when I am taking my walks. I want my heel to heal first, of course–all that walking in New York probably wasn’t optimal for that, but one of my goals this year to become more physically active, and what better way to get that going than by taking walks? I can also, you know, take pictures with my phone, too, of my neighborhood and the Garden District or wherever I may go for a walk. It also occurs to me that one of these weekends I should spend a day exploring the World War II museum (which could help with some backstory for Chlorine).
As you can see, the trip has rather invigorated me, even as I am physically worn out as I type out these ambitious plans.
I started reading the Horror Writers Association’s latest anthology, Other Horrors (edited by Vince Liaguno and Rena Mason) on my flight home, and am quite enjoying it. The premise of the anthology is for it to be inclusive and to highlight diverse authors and voices; and so far it’s been fun. There are stories I like better than others, of course, but that’s any anthology and it’s very fun to discover new authors and voices that I wasn’t aware of–again, the point of the anthology–and there’s nothing I love more than discovering new voices, you know? Plus, reading it has me itching to write some more short stories–which of course I really can’t do because I’ve got to get this book finished–but I also want to map out the rest of my writing year and come up with a plan for my future. I think I am going to take the plunge and write that romance I was thinking about the second half of last year–just for something different to do and something to sharpen my skills; I think we should always try to write outside of our comfort zone as often as we can, which is why I dabble in horror sometimes. And why not give romance a try? I’ve always liked romance, even if I don’t read very much of it (I can’t keep up with my crime and horror reading, let alone anything else), so why not give a whirl?
And on that note, I need to go fold some laundry and start organizing my life and kitchen and office space again. Have a lovely Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
As you will recall, That Bitch Ford got me to come down around eight for coffee, and then we started exploring and eating our way through Manhattan (I’ve now had Irish pub food, Chinese, and Cuban), and of course we saw Hadestown last night, which was FANTASTIC. I knew it was the Orpheus story, and as I said to TBF afterwards, “You know, I was thinking as the show started that writing a musical in which there has to be a song so amazing that it would enchant Hades–a god–and convince him to let Eurydice go is really setting the bar high for the guys writing the score” but you know, it worked. It’s a beautiful show, just gorgeous, and the cast was fantastically talented and the production was incredible–choreographing dancing and singing on a stage that is moving pretty quickly is not easy–but my favorites were Hades and Persephone. He was a hot silver fox daddy, and the voice on Persephone? I kept thinking to myself, how is this talent not a major recording star? They were all wonderful, and ironically the actors playing Orpheus and Eurydice were the understudies, and all I could think was these two weren’t talented enough to be MAIN CAST? WOW. It was a spectacular evening, and as TBF said in his Facebook post of the two of us sitting in the theater before the proverbial curtain going up (they didn’t have one), sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of what humans can create in this world. I also loved that the sets, the costumes, and the music all had a New Orleans/Storyville/jazz age feel to it, as well, and it was very easy for me to believe it was actually set in New Orleans because it works.
Seriously, if you come to New York and have a chance to see Hadestown, do it. You won’t regret it–and you can thank me later.
I generally don’t like movie musicals (there are some exceptions, but it is safe to assume going in that if it’s a musical movie I probably didn’t or won’t like it–Cabaret and Chicago are notable exceptions), but as I was greatly enjoying the show yesterday I realized that musicals really work best (at least in my mind) on stage, where they originated. In a theater, with live performances, it’s much easier to suspend the belief that people will suddenly break into song and everyone around will suddenly turn into a singing and dancing flash mob than it is in a movie–at least that’s the logic in my brain.
And yes, this is me, the one and only Gregalicious, raving about a musical. NOW I WANT TO SEE ALL THE MUSICALS CURRENTLY PLAYING ON BROADWAY. Gah. I guess the Broadway musical gene was always there, it just needed to be activated…
Regardless, when I dragged myself up to my room after walking back from the theater I was exhausted. I had insomnia on Wednesday night, which made yesterday seem even longer than it was. At one point my Fitbit actually went off to let me know I’d made my “step goal” for the day (I never make it, and it’s arbitrarily set for the goal it had when it was made rather than one I set, and I only wear one because it helps with the health insurance costs–having it and syncing it to its app, which feeds into the insurance company’s website, is all that’s necessary. It would make more sense to me if it were more performance based–which would get me to actually go for walks–but it’s not). I did manage to sleep much better last night that the night before, which is lovely. I just went down and had breakfast and a lot of coffee and have some down time. I am going to try to get some writing done before I have to do anything else–yay down time!–and get cleaned up for tonight. Although lying down sounds awfully appealing. Maybe I’ll just read a bit before hitting the shower…I don’t know; I’ve been so on the go since I got here it’s odd to actually have some free time. I definitely do not want to go anywhere or do any walking, so relaxing is probably the way to go here.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, everyone!
I am soon to depart for the airport, where I am catching a flight to LaGuardia for a weekend in New York; I am flying back home on Sunday. It’s going to be a short but busy trip, where I will get to see all kinds of people i really like and run all over the island and do all sorts of things. I also need to carve out time to write while there as well–I have gotten really bad about writing when on trips over the years, but I really can’t go without writing the entire time. I made quota again yesterday–it was a little harder to get motivated and not quite as easy to get into a proper rhythm, but it was also a transitional chapter and my first goes at those are always stilted and awkward and people don’t really talk like that, do they? But I got through it, the transition was made, and the stage has been set. Now we move on to act 2, which is why it really cannot wait. Hopefully, if I am not too tired when I get to the hotel, I can spend a few hours working.
My flight is already delayed, I see–so I don’t have to leave quite as early for the airport as I had originally thought, which is fine. Our Internet was spotty last night, going in and out, so we ended up not finishing watching the Golden Globes and I went to bed early. It seems to be working fine this morning, so I am not going to worry about it–I’m the one who always has to deal with it, the Cox bill is in my name, etc. etc. etc. It would suck for Paul to have no Internet for the weekend, but I am going to assume that last night was an aberration. Our cable box is also so old they can’t even service it anymore, so I need to go get a new one at some point; the Cox office is near my office, so I can run by there during lunch someday when I get back. Sigh, it’s always something.
I am taking A Walk on the Wild Side with me to read on the plane and at the airport, along with a rather short book by Harry M. Benshoff, Dark Shadows, which is a kind of academic breakdown of the original show that I am kind of looking forward to reading. Dark Shadows probably had a much bigger impact on me than almost anything else–my preference for Gothics, supernatural stories, murders–and I should probably do an entire entry about Dark Shadows and its influences and impact on me creatively. I am also trying to decide what other books to take on the trip with me–I need at least one more for the flight home–and am kind of torn as to what to read next. I’ve got some great cozies stacked up in the TBR pile, but I also have some books by other favorite authors and some other books that have gotten some high praise from either reviewers or friends on social media. Maybe someday I can get the TBR pile under control but it won’t be anytime soon, I can promise you that. I am really looking forward to reading more this year than I have in past ones.
I’m also looking forward to writing a lot more this year, too. I can’t believe what a roll I’ve been on since Christmas (or just before); I’ve written at least three thousand words a day on average ever since (some days I skipped, others I did from four to six thousand words), which is quite a bit, really–somewhere between forty-five and fifty thousand words, which is kind of impressive, I must say. It’s also not been wearing me out, or making me very tired. I think some of that has to do with the lessening of outside pressures and stressors–I’ve been sleeping very well (well, last night was kind of spotty) for the most part, feeling rested, and not letting things get to me the way they always seem to have been doing for the last three or four years. I really hate stress and anxiety, and I really need to make sure I continue to focus on reducing those thing. Staying off social media more has done a good job of that, too–nothing can quite raise the blood pressure the way reading something racist or homophobic or misogynist or transphobic from people who should know better, and I’ve started unfollowing and/or blocking people who are, for wont of a better word, assholes. And it actually feels good to hit unfollow or block, knowing you never have to interact with that person or read their shitty screeds ever again.
And it’s not required that I follow every crime writer on social media, either.
I went to a lot of events last year, and will be scaling back dramatically on that this year. Probably Bouchercon in San Diego is all I am going to do involving air travel, and yes, I’ve been offering my short stories and books up for Lefty and Agatha consideration, but I won’t be attending either event so even were I to score a nod, not being present doesn’t help your odds of winning. (For me, being present isn’t enough, either.) It’s weird to think that after this weekend’s trip I probably won’t be flying anywhere again until Labor Day weekend for Bouchercon, and I’m actually feeling kind of iffy about that, to be honest. I hate the thought of traveling over Labor Day weekend, but at least if I fly home on Sunday I’ll have Monday off to recalibrate and recenter and recover from the conference.
I just hope I can sleep this weekend. Let’s focus on getting through that first, shall we? LOL.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and start packing. I made a list of everything I need for the trip, and I got the big black suitcase out last night so everything is in place and ready to go. I may check in with you tonight from the hotel–stranger things have happened–but one never knows. I was actually thinking the other day that I’ve gotten into a bit of a rut with this; I always write it in the morning with coffee and maybe, just maybe, sometime during the day I may write another entry, usually about a book I’ve just finished reading or something–and there’s really no reason for that other than habit. Maybe the blog entries that require a more awake brain, for logic and reasoning and making a rational argument either for or against something, can be worked on during the day or in the early evening or around my writing for the day. I have any number of entries I’ve started over the years–dealing with things like racism and homophobia and all the other, irrational bigotries and prejudices that run rampant in our modern world, and it would be nice to finish them all, get them out there into the world to be read by the two or three people who actually check in with me every day and read these meanderings of my mind.
I have to say, it’s really difficult sometimes to be a pro-New Orleans person the way I am, but it’s not New Orleans that is the general problem, it’s some people. After the massive debacle around the Krewe of Nyx and it’s problematic and racist leadership (they defiantly paraded last year to non-existent crowds; maybe some tourists who didn’t know better were out there, but after the parade before theirs, everyone left the parade route), I thought it would be hard for any krewe to do a worse job of public relations or, for wont of a better word choice, reading the goddamned room. However, this past weekend the leadership of the Krewe of Endymion basically said to Nyx, “hold our beer” and named noted anti-Semite, misogynist, and homophobic racist Mel Gibson as celebrity monarch (co-monarch, to be precise).
I don’t go to Endymion–it doesn’t go past our corner; we’d have to walk to Harmony Circle (I keep calling it Liberty Circle since it was renamed, anything is better than Lee Circle) to see it–and I’ve only ever seen it on the rare occasions when it does come down St. Charles Avenue (rained out on Saturday; abbreviated route after Katrina), or when we used to go out that Saturday night, walking to the Quarter up the route (and getting buried with beads on the way)–so it’s not like I would be boycotting it anyway; but they did rescind the invitation but rather than admitting they made a HUGE mistake, decided to blame the outrage and cite concerns for their safety as the reason.
Fuck all the way off, Endymion, seriously. Yes, blame the outrage instead of your incredibly poor decision-making skills.
Nyx, by the way. went from 3500 members and riders to less than 200. And yes, that will wind up in a book someday–it’s too good to not use it, you know? Also of note: that last pre-pandemic Mardi Gras, back in 2020? Two people were killed by floats during parades that season–at Nyx and Endymion. Perhaps the gods of Carnival were letting us know in advance?
Then again, Carnival has a horrifically exclusionary and racist past we tend to gloss over a lot here (read Lords of Misrule sometime).
It’s dark out this morning and I didn’t sleep as great last night as I would have liked, which is fine. This is my last day in the office this week, and of course tomorrow morning I’m off to New York, so if I’m tired, I’m tired. I did manage another three thousand words on the book yesterday–it really is going well, and I am actually enjoying writing it, to be completely honest–and I managed to get some chores done yesterday when I got home from work–the dishes, mostly. Tonight I’ll need to pack; the flight isn’t until 12:15 tomorrow, so I don’t have to leave for the airport until almost ten, so I can sleep a little later than usual on a Wednesday; which will prepare me for the insomnia of the hotel…which I honestly am hoping won’t be the case this time. After doing the chores last night and writing, I watched a documentary about the Eastern Roman Empire for a while before switching over to the national title game–which was kind of boring and not much fun to watch; I mean, what the hell, TCU? And how on earth did they beat Michigan? Ohio State was a missed field goal in the closing seconds away from playing in the title game; and they lost to Michigan at home. I know it’s pointless to do comparative scoring and so forth because every game day is different, but I can guarantee you neither Alabama nor Tennessee would have gotten rolled 65-7. Hell, even LSU played Georgia better in the conference championship game and they played terribly. I guess the only teams capable of stopping Georgia from doing what no one else has ever done–three in a row–are from our conference.
But it will be fun watching Georgia fans become even more hated than Alabama’s this coming year. And they play in Knoxville this next season. The 2023 season, I think, is going to be even more interesting to watch than this year’s.
You heard it here first.
I need to make a packing list today, too. I already checked the weather for the weekend and it won’t be much worse than it is here when it gets wintery, so that’s bearable for me. Hat, jacket and gloves are all I need, and I think I can manage without getting super cold and whiny, so we’ll see how all that goes. I’m actually more than a little excited about the trip, to be honest. This may be my last trip to New York for quite some time and I am not going to be there for very long; That Bitch Ford has done an absolutely marvelous job of Julie McCoy-ing our weekend up there; we’re going to see a play (Hadestown), to Chinatown, and we’re going to a noodle place, too–I love noodles–and I am meeting others for drinks and so forth–it’s quite marvelous, really. I just hate the drudgery and getting to and from the airport, and the flights themselves–although usually once I am on the plane and have my book open in my lap, I don’t mind the flights quite as much–and I have no plans for tomorrow evening, so hopefully once I am checked into the hotel and unpacked, I can write for a while and then read myself to sleep…or watch a movie on my laptop, or something. It should be a great trip, and I even have the Monday holiday off so I can recover as well as do things to get ready for the week without having to do it around going to the office.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
Monday morning and back into the office. I only have two days in the office this week and three next, thanks to the holiday next Monday–huzzah! I had an incredibly productive weekend, Constant Reader, thanks to some terrific sleep every night and no college football. I know that tonight is the national championship game but I won’t be staying up to watch it again this year–that’s three consecutive years I’ve not watched–because I have no skin in the game and can always watch highlights tomorrow. My preference would be for a TCU win; they’ve not won anything since the second world war and it would be a fun change to see a program come from nowhere to win it all this year. (LSU was 10-3 in 2018, so we knew they’d be good in 2019; we just didn’t know how good they would be.)
I slept well again last night. I think I may have finally found the right mixture of things at night to help me sleep, so hopefully the big test–New York and a hotel bed–will be passed with flying colors.
Yesterday was a good day. I spent most of it working–I wrote six thousand more words yesterday, bringing the weekend’s total to ten thousand, which is pretty damned good–and after I was done working for the day, we finished watching The Rig, which was kind of interesting and weird and way different than what we thought it might be–again, there’s no greater suspense than people being trapped and isolated somewhere and there’s some kind of threat, especially when group dynamics and politics start getting involved. I am enjoying writing again–the last book I wrote was nightmarish to try to get done for some reason, but I am back into a writing groove again and it feels terrific. I only needed to rest for a day or so, too, between different writing projects before diving back into it. I kind of let my emails pretty much go, though, over the course of the weekend so it’s going to take me some time to get that back under some kind of control today. But I feel pretty good this morning, my coffee continues to taste marvelous, and while I do have a lot to get done before leaving for New York on Wednesday, I am neither daunted nor bowed by the amount of work that needs doing; rather, I feel very empowered this morning.
I also spent some more time reading A Walk on the Wild Side, which I am sort of enjoying a bit more than I did originally. I am probably going to try to read some more when I get home from work tonight and after I get my quota for the day. I also need to make some lists about what to take on the trip with me and I need to check what the weather is going to be like up there; there’s also a weird bit of sadness associated with this trip as well, since it will be my last official trip for Mystery Writers of America. It’s hard to believe it’s been three years, but two of those years were sucked up into the pandemic and no traveling, so there’s that. That probably won’t completely sink in until I am back home from the trip this weekend, either.
I also need to make a to-do list for this week. I have errands to run after my day at the office as well. Heavy heaving sigh. I know I have some short stories I need to get written and some other things that have to be done at some point soon–and I really need to dig through my email inbox to make sure everything’s been put on the calendar so I don’t forget anything. I also want to watch The Pale Blue Eye, but that may have to wait until after I get back from this trip and get all settled in again here in my own life. I also need to decide what to take with me to read on this trip. Obviously, I am not going to finish the Algren before I leave, so that’s going with me, but what to read while there and on the trip home? I think I am going to continue immersing myself in cozy mysteries for a while before going back to a different sub-genre; on the other hand, I could also take either a Carol Goodman or a Ruth Ware with me, so I can continue working my way through their oeuvre…decisions, decisions, always decisions to be made.
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.
I’ve kind of slowed down on my blatant self-promotion for A Streetcar Named Murder, mainly because the enormous thrill and rush of Release Day/Release Week has already come and gone. It isn’t like I’ve run out of things to say about New Orleans by any means; I could be here blogging for the rest of my life about New Orleans and never do more than scratching the surface. The depth of my lack of knowledge about New Orleans is bottomless. One thing, for example, that I can never completely wrap my head around is where the train tracks and stations were in the city, back when rail was king and vitally important to the operation of our port. I know there was a station in Storyville; part of the reason it ended up being closed was because so many men went through New Orleans on their way to serve in Europe during World War II, and the Department of War looked askance at the soldiers disembarking in a red light district (can’t say as I blame them, but on the other hand, they were heading off to the miseries of the trenches and what was, at the time, the bloodiest and deadliest conflict in human history, so why not let them get laid and party it up before getting on their troop transport?
I have always considered New Orleans to be a dark city–despite its many charms and enticements–not just because of the history here (which is plenty dark) or even the crime “problem” (which goes back over three hundred years), but because it really gets dark here at night; not quite as the true dark you can get out in the country, but for an urban area? New Orleans is the darkest city where I’ve lived. I’ve never experienced an urban area that gets so dark at night once the sun has set.
It’s like all the lights from houses and street lamps and businesses just \gets somehow sucked into the darkness and vanishes. When I come home after dark and park on my street, it always catches me by surprise when the inside of my car is lit up by one of the street lights. This happens, I think, because the massive live oaks everywhere inevitably block out the lights with their enormous branches. Oddly enough, cloudy nights generally are lighter than cloudless ones–because the cloud cover reflects back the neon of the French Quarter, turning the night sky clouds reddish-pink; it’s a phenomena unique to New Orleans that I really love. And the street lamps here seem to only cast light downward rather than up and out; it’s very hard to read street signs in New Orleans after dark.
See how dark it gets at night? It’s like the light gets eaten by the night.
Then again, that could be my eyes getting worse with age. My sister can’t see hardly at all after dark now, which worries me a little, but not a lot: her eye issues were different than mine. I was horribly near-sighted while she had an astigmatism, but my mother also has trouble seeing at night, too and she never had to wear glasses (she has reading ones now) so that doesn’t bode well, does it?
Another part of the reason it gets so dark here at night also has something to do with how many of our street lights are out, too. New Orleans street lights aren’t the kind that go up and then hang out over the street, either. Ours are the old-fashioned kind, with a bulb and its cover going up in a straight line–I think they were the old gas ones, adapted for electricity; I am not sure one way or the other. But I do like the antique, old timey look to ours. Now that I think about it, we couldn’t have the ones that hang out over the street, either; because of parade clearance! The low hanging branches of the live oaks that line St. Charles are also a problem for the larger floats, too; which is why so many of them are festooned with beads riders accidentally toss into the trees instead of to the outstretched hands of eager parade-goers–it’s going to be Carnival here sooner rather than later.
New Orleans’ haphazard approach to street lights and keeping the city lit up and visible at night also plays, interestingly enough, a role in A Streetcar Named Murder, actually; that darkness has a very strong hand on the finale of the book. When I was driving back from Kentucky after Thanksgiving, I noticed that once you got over the twin spans from Slidell and are back in Orleans Parish the lights on I-10 either don’t work or weren’t on, which gave the busy highway an eerie, almost hypnotically haunted feeling as I arrived in New Orleans East and climbed the bridge over the Industrial Canal. It even feels like the headlight beams of my car also get swallowed up into the darkness.
Is that darkness metaphorical? Maybe.
But I can only imagine how dark it must have been here at night when there wasn’t any electricity or gas, for that matter. And of course, it was very dark here after Katrina when most of the city lay in ruins. That was such a weird time.
I read a great review of Gary Krist’s Empire of Sin yesterday, which pointed out that the book was about a thirty year battle between the city of New Orleans and its brand of lawlessness, debauchery, and sin; which really is spot-on accurate. New Orleans has always been fighting that branding almost from the day the French settled on the high land along the river here. There has never been a time in her history when New Orleans has not drawn in tourists due to the branding with debauchery and sin. Someone was telling me the other day that the primary problem with dating apps in New Orleans is they are always full of tourists looking to get laid and not wanting to pay for it–which made me laugh; it reminded me of the old gay truism about not looking for hook-ups on-line the week before Decadence, Halloween or Carnival–because the chatrooms etc. were full of people coming in for the weekend and looking to make hook-up dates in advance…which was so patently absurd because seriously, back in the day if you couldn’t get laid just by going out during those events…well, you should just hire an escort and be done with it. People come here specifically to have the kind of good time they can’t have at home.
So, yes, the city has always had that kind of reputation and branding, which is why I always roll my eyes when the whites who fled the city for the suburbs and/or the north shore clog up the comments on social media and news articles about crime in New Orleans, clutching their breasts and casting their teary eyes up to the heavens as they bemoan how New Orleans has somehow slid into the gutter and how crime has gotten completely out of control. Fuck off, racists–we know what your dog whistles are because we’ve listened to them ad nauseum, ad infinitum: crime is a stand-in for oh no the black people and don’t pretend like you left New Orleans because of “crime”; you left New Orleans because of desegregation, so fuck all the way off. (The people who were protesting the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans were not from New Orleans, either.)
So, yes, there is crime in New Orleans–always has been, always will be–and I don’t know what the answer to reducing it or bringing the numbers down. But you can be the victim of a crime anywhere–the Clutters were murdered in rural Kansas back in the 1950s, after all–and it just means always be aware of your surroundings–which is always good advice for anywhere, really.
Queer and Loathing in America 