Category: crime fiction

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Today’s title is my favorite Christmas song, probably because the kids sing it at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Whatever the reason, it and “Silver Bells” are the two I never tire of hearing, no matter how much I do hear them during the season.

I just think they’re pretty.

It was a glorious weekend of rest and relaxation in the Lost Apartment. I spent yesterday finishing getting caught up on The Mandalorian, doing some writing, and reading Watchmen. I only have one chapter of it left; and of course, we watched the season finale last night. I love the Watchmen series (and the graphic novel), and do have some regrets about waiting so long to read the graphic novel; then again, had I read it before, I wouldn’t have the great pleasure of reading it now, so there’s that. The graphic novel is probably the most extraordinary comic I’ve read since Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and there is no higher praise I can give than that. I can also see the influence this has had on the comics industry overall since it was first published. It’s smart, it’s mature, it’s layered, and the story itself is a cautionary tale on many levels. I also love how excerpts from diaries, newspaper stories, and memoirs are interwoven in to provide even more context to the illustrated pages.

In other words, as a friend said to me on Twitter the other day, “it’s nice when something exceeds the hype” to which I replied, “it deserves all the hype and more; it should get all the hype.”

I also got some work, as I alluded to earlier, finished on the book. I feel better about things–about the book, my career, life in general–than I have in quite some time. I feel as thought Ive turned a corner of some sort–not truly sure what that corner was, or what it means, or even if this feeling is going to last–but I woke up with my alarm this morning and rather than grousing about getting up, I just got up, made my coffee, and started working on getting on top of the day already. The only person who can affect positive change in my life is me, and only me, and therefore it’s time to start being a spectator in my life and hoping for the best…it’s time to start working to make things better. Things can always get better; things can always get worse, but we can at least have some say in how they develop…and a lack of participation in one’s life rarely ever makes it better, if you know what I mean.

I haven’t felt like I could make change in my life for quite some time–and the truth is, there are some things that are immutable; I cannot change my salary at my day job; I cannot stop the aging process; I cannot control how many copies of my books get sold. But I can control my attitude and my approach; I can get motivated and make plans; I can write the best books and stories that I can; I can start actively looking for literary representation. It’s a shame that I allowed the malaise to take over, and take over for so long, frankly; I’ve been depressed for quite some time, and the lack of sleep back then didn’t help. But there was also a medical issue involved and now that’s been resolved; I’m sleeping well and getting rest and am not tired all the time–and really, there’s fewer things worse than feeling tired and knowing you aren’t going to be able to get rest when you need it.

I can’t blame the “not writing” on any of that, of course; I could, but the truth was I also saw no point in writing–the depression speaking again–and yes, while it does feel sometimes like I am beating my head against the wall, and perhaps not getting anywhere with my writing career, the truth is I’ve never written for the money or the fame–if I had, I would have taken my career in a much different direction. But I allow those immutable things over which I have no control–sales, reviews, etc.–to color and affect my motivation to write, and I can’t do that; one should never allow things over which you have no control to defeat you. There may be roadblocks or speed bumps you can’t control, but you certainly shouldn’t stop driving because there’s a roadblock or a speed bump. That’s just silly.

I also don’t take the time to ever sit back and revel in what success I have enjoyed thus far in my career. Over thirty novels, over twenty anthologies, and over fifty short stories thus far is nothing to sneeze at; I may not win regularly, but I’ve been short-listed for a lot of awards over the course of this career. (And it makes me appreciate the times I do win much more than I would if I won every time.)

And I do have readers, for whom I’m eternally grateful. One of my co-workers has been working their way through the Scotty series–I gifted her with a copy of Royal Street Reveillon, in gratitude for her buying all seven of the earlier books–and I’ve also enjoyed answering her questions about the books. It’s very weird when my two worlds cross and intersect–the day job and the writing, which I manage to keep segregated almost completely–but sometimes there’s overlap; like weird moments when a client will rather timidly ask me if I am Greg Herren the writer. It’s always a little strange and it inevitably catches me off-guard; I don’t, I think, handle those weird little moments of being recognized for my other career well, as a general rule.

But I do like being called Greg Herren the writer.

I have to say, the teens have been an overall wretched decade–I am hoping the twenties will roar. It’s weird to think we are coming to yet another decade in just a few weeks; that it will be 2020.

Let’s all shoot for the brass ring in 2020, shall we?

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Away in a Manger

I’ve already posted (finally) my blog about LSU and Joe Burrow this season (GEAUX TIGERS), so this is not another GEAUX JEAUX post–just so you know.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. The weather has been lovely here in New Orleans this weekend, and I slept incredibly well both nights. We went and visited a friend who’d recently had surgery yesterday afternoon, and it was nice. I also feel good about things. One of the loveliest things about my life is having a partner who loves and supports me–even when I’m not particularly lovable or supportable. I’m so used to dealing with things by myself for most of my life that I still default to that (stupidly) when I’m not in the best place with my life, and that I don’t have to shoulder my burdens alone anymore–even after twenty-four years I still forget sometimes–and I also forget how good it feels to just let all of that out to someone who listens.

It’s lovely to unburden yourself–and I need to remember that.

We started watching The Mandalorian last night, and yes, it’s completely and totally worth the money I am paying Disney Plus–particularly when you consider I bundled it with my existing Hulu and ESPN+ accounts, so it’s only costing me $2.01 per month. $24.12 per year to have access to every Star Wars movie and series, as well as everything from Marvel, and all those classic Disney films? Oh fuck yes. And yes, I am completely and totally loving The Mandalorian, and yes, baby Yoda was a fucking genius move by show-runner Jon Favreau. If I were indeed younger, or had more disposable income, or was more of a hoarder (I’m trying to get rid of stuff at this point in my life) I’d definitely be wanting a baby Yoda plush toy.

We also finished off Castle Rock this past week–and while this second season did seem to go completely off the rails from time to time, the final episode pulled it all back together beautifully. No spoilers, but it was definitely a Misery pay-off. I should probably reread Misery again; it’s definitely one of my favorite Kings, and it’s been far too long since I’ve read it. I also would like to reread Christine and Carrie, the two novels I consider the closest things to y/a King has written.

I’m going to spend some time this morning reading more of Watchmen (which is extraordinary) as well as a few more chapters of Laura Benedict’s The Stranger Inside, which so far as I can is a worthy successor to such classic suspense tales centering women as those of Charlotte Armstrong and the great Gothic writers of the mid-to-late twentieth century. I am quickly becoming a Laura Benedict fan–and I suspect you will, too, if you start reading her. I also hope to get some writing done today.

About fucking time, wouldn’t you say?

And on that note….tis back to the spice mines!

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O Come All Ye Faithful

I got my copy of the graphic novel Watchmen this week, and it’s way past time for me to read it; particularly since I’m loving the television series so much.

Then again, Regina King can do no wrong.

I did start reading Watchmen, and while not even halfway finished–not only am I hooked, but I am completely blown away by the story-telling…and the art is extraordinary. I can now see why it’s been talked about so much since its first publication. This is some epic story-telling, and even more amazing world-building. The storylines have layers and textures, the relationships between the characters, and the characters themselves are messy masses of contradictions and layers; it’s just simply mind-blowing how well this is done. The story itself, and how it’s structured, is also incredible. Watchmen not only lives up to all the hype–it surpasses the hype and deserves even more hype. The graphic novel is so stupendously good that it only emphasizes how incredibly well-done the show is–the show is a sequel to the graphic novel, some thirty years later.

And obviously, while it isn’t necessary for one to read the novel to watch the show, reading it does enhance the show tremendously.

I had also started reading Laura Benedict’s The Stranger Inside last week–just the first few pages, getting a taste for it, and it really grabbed me. Yesterday I read the first few chapters and am also greatly enjoying it. This has been an exceptional year for crime fiction, and may even go down as one of the genre’s greatest years.

I’m now up to Prohibition in Richard Campanella’s Bourbon Street, which was, quite naturally, an interesting time in New Orleans. I am pondering writing a crime series set during that time; the first woman police office, Alice Monahan–known as “Mrs. Officer”– worked during that time, and I think basing a series on her, dealing with everything going on in New Orleans and the country at the time; plus it’s a chance to explore the entrenched racism and misogyny of Jim Crow New Orleans.

Storyville is merely an added bonus.

Seriously, New Orleans history is so rich and vibrant, there’s material everywhere.

One of the reasons I wanted to write about Christmas in New Orleans in Royal Street Reveillon is because Louisiana’s culture is so rich and vibrant that it surprises me that we don’t have our own Christmas stories here. Sure, there’s The Cajun Night Before Christmas, which I love, but where are the other Christmas stories? As I mentioned the other day, I tried writing a Christmas fable once, “Reindeer on the Rooftop,” but it was so sentimental and sappy that it nauseated me. I tried revising it and making it more real and less sentimental for Upon a Midnight Clear, but I just couldn’t get anywhere with it. I did write one called “The Snow Globe,” which was more of a horror Christmas story, for an anthology that didn’t take it; I did get good feedback, and one of these days I’ll sit down with the story and the feedback and pull it together. Not sure where I’d try to get it published, but most likely it would go into my Monsters of New Orleans collection.

I just used the google to check, and I was correct: there are no hits on “New Orleans Christmas stories,” but broadening the search brought up an out-of-print volume called Christmas Stories from Louisiana, edited by Dorothy Dodge Robbins, and with quite an impressive collection of contributors. There are also some more listed here.

And wouldn’t a Hallmark Christmas movie set in New Orleans be amazing?

We even have a year round Christmas shop on Decatur Street, for Christ’s sake! (And don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind to write a series around that Christmas shop, either.)

But all these stories, at first glance, are simply plays on traditional Christmas stories–nothing new or unique to Louisiana or New Orleans.

So, maybe it’s up to me to create one?

Hmmmm.

Perhaps that is just what I’ll do.

I mean, why don’t we have something terrifying, like the Icelandic Christmas cat?

Maybe there’s a Christmas rougarou story that needs to be written.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. I have been itching to write for days now, and I am going to spend the morning writing. Paul and I are going to stop in to see a friend who’s  been dealing with an injury this afternoon, and then it’s back home and to the computer. Tonight is the Heisman Trophy presentation, and I imagine we’re going to tune in to that in case Joe Burrow (GEAUX JEAUX!) wins that tonight–he’s already won every conceivable quarterback award under the sun over this past week. The kid is definitely an LSU legend…and then I can finally finish and post the lengthy post I’ve been writing throughout the season about him.

Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!

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All I Want for Christmas

Joan Didion once wrote “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” in her title essay in the collection The White Album. 

I have grown to love and appreciate Didion’s work over the last couple of years, but I’ve always puzzled over that particular quote. The full quote is “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”

Often that first sentence is taken from its original context and used as a stand-alone quote; my first thought on seeing it somewhere (without having read Didion) was, yes, this is true. This is why our memories of the same event are all different; we interpret and remember that event through the prism of our personal experience and therefore it is colored by who we are as a people; we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives.

This is one of many reasons I am hesitant to even attempt to write personal essays or a memoir; my memory lies to me all the time. It was only recently that I realized, for example, that my recollection of when we moved from Chicago to the suburbs was in 1969; I’ve always believed that, but recently remembered wait, I was ten when we moved; I turned ten in 1971 and sure enough, looking at the dates on some old pictures, yup, it was December 1971 when we left the city for the burbs…so writing personal essays, or a memoir, would require me to research and fact check my own life.

Which would be bizarre, to say the least.

So, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. Christmas is sort of like that, isn’t it? All of these Christmas stories, all these myths…all these stories and traditions that have absolutely nothing to do with what the actual holiday means and was originally intended to be; it’s also kind of amusing to me that something that theoretically began as a Christian religious holiday has been so thoroughly secularized; and at the very least, the majority of Christmas “traditions” are heavily Catholic; so much so that in the early days of the Reformation Protestants didn’t celebrate Christmas (or Easter); some still don’t to this very day. Santa Claus is derived from St. Nicholas; so evangelical children who are taught about Santa Claus are actually celebrating Catholicism–which is why I am always amused by the bumper stickers and billboards stating “Keep the Christ in Christmas.”

Um, there’s no Rudolph or Frosty or Santa Claus or reindeer in the New Testament, so telling your children those stories, or letting them watch the specials or movies, or making that a part of their Christmas isn’t keeping the Christ in Christmas; if anything, it’s helping take the Christ out of Christmas. (And Christmas is a contraction of Christ Mass, so again, Catholic in the first place.) What do lights and a Christmas tree or any of that have to do with the birth of Jesus?

NOTHING

Most Christmas stories–novels or film or television–inevitably are predicated on a belief in Christianity; the stories always boil down to having faith in the unseen and having that faith reaffirmed, or developing that faith. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol probably did the most in popularizing and secularizing Christmas; it’s a morality tale which everyone knows by heart–how many fucking adaptations of that classic story have their been? (I think the first one I saw was with Mr. Magoo.) But it’s a ghost story–ghost stories have always been a part of Christmas, for some reason; the Holy Ghost, perhaps?–and it’s a classic story, even if repetition has made it cliche and tired. It’s also a compelling psychological breakdown of a desperately unhappy man, who takes out his misery on everyone else around him and doesn’t celebrate, or enjoy, Christmas; the ghosts of his past Christmases show him how he became the man he is today–and his future. It has been adapted so many times–even It’s A Wonderful Life is a variation on the story–that is, as I said, the hoariest of all the Christmas cliches; I think the vast majority of sitcoms when I was a child would always, inevitably, do a take on the story for a Christmas episode, to the point that I would cringe when it opened. I read the actual story about twenty years ago, and I was quite surprised to see the changes that were made to it in order to film it…changes that were incorporated into every version filmed ever since. (Bob Cratchit wasn’t Scrooge’s family in the original story; just an employee. Scrooge’s nephew is never in the story, except at the end when Scrooge joins his nephew’s family, not the Cratchits, for the holiday feast.)

But none of these traditional stories, as I’ve mentioned, center queer people–or even include them. A queer version of A Christmas Carol has probably been done by someone–I don’t keep up with queer publishing outside of mysteries the way I used to–but it would be incredibly difficult to do it well; making Scrooge a gay man wouldn’t be enough of a change to make it fresh and new…although the nineteenth century trope of the “broken hearted man who vowed to never love again and thus died a confirmed bachelor” has always read as code for “big old homo” to me (hello, James Buchanan?) because it is incredibly difficult for me to believe that a man of any time would go his entire life without having any sexual experience; although I suppose they wouldn’t have recorded “So instead of a loving marriage, Buchanan spent the rest of his life using prostitutes for his needs.”

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines.

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Brilliant Disguise

Good morning, Wednesday, and it’s pay day again–aka pay the bills day. Hurray! But, as I always say when it’s pay-the-bills day, at least I can pay the bills.

Just another thing to be grateful for this holiday season.

I also slept so fucking well last night! I feel like I’ve been renewed, despite waking up to wretched issues with my computer, which seem to have been taken care of by rebooting the stupid thing. (The mouse wouldn’t click on things; imagine how frustrating that would be as you try to delete emails.) Heavy sigh. It’s also cold and gray this morning; the temperature dropped about twenty-thirty degrees yesterday around noon; it was very strange if typical for December in New Orleans. (I’m also trying to pay the bills, but Google Chrome doesn’t seem to want to cooperate; as you can imagine, I am having a rather frustrating morning here in the Lost Apartment thank to shitty, undependable Apple products. Not a fan of Windows by any means, but the decline in quality of Apple products since the death of Steve Jobs has been incredibly swift, surprising, and unsuspected; although I did think when he died Apple was probably going to go into the toilet. I just didn’t expect it to be this fast.)

We watched another episode of Truth Be Told on Apple Plus last night, only to discover, to our shock and surprise, that it’s episodic; unlike Hulu or Netflix, Apple Plus’ shows air like a regular network’s–a new episode per week. We’re enjoying Truth Be Told but primarily because the acting is terrific–Octavia Spencer is luminous; you simply can’t look away from her–even if the writing (the dialogue in particular) leaves a little something to be desired.

And yes, I am probably going to take the plunge and get Disney Plus. The allure of The Mandalorian is simply too great for me to resist. I can always cancel it later, after all.

As I ponder this chilly morning two weeks before Christmas about what to say about Christmas–you see how bad I am at this? I thought, hey, every day during Christmas season–after of course Thanksgiving–you should post something about Christmas, since the book is set during the holiday season and therefore you can promote your book some more, thus using the blog the way it should be. But here I am, frustrated with my computer functionality and unable to think of a single thing to say about Christmas.

Ah, well, perhaps I’ll have better luck at this tomorrow.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Victory

And wasn’t yesterday’s entry boring as fuck? I should think at this point that it’s pretty clear, Constant Reader, that I don’t utilize this blog the way one is supposed to when one is a writer: as a conduit to convince readers to buy my books. I think I’ve done an excellent job over the years of proving that I, without question, have no idea how to sell books or how to make my work sound appealing enough for people to want to read, let alone buy.

I really suck at promoting myself. But to give myself credit, I never once believed “social media” would sell books, and from everything I’ve been reading lately, I was right. But it can make loyal readers aware you have something new coming out, and since the gay and lesbian bookstores are long gone…yeah, I’ve literally got nothing when it comes to reaching out and finding new readers, or reconnecting with old ones. I tried the newsletter thing way back in the days of my first website, but was always a little shocked whenever I’d send one out and people would ask to be removed…I was always a little, Why did you sign up in the first place? I never simply added people to my newsletter; you literally had to fill out a form to get on the list…and after a little while it was kind of depressing, so I gave up on the newsletter thing. It’s not like I’m that fascinating, anyway.

I do applaud those who do one, though.

It’s Christmas season already–according to some merchants, it has been since September–and of course, I’m a bit of a sucker for the Christmas season. I’m not a sucker for Christmas displays in September, or endless playing of Christmas carols over and over again on the radio or in public spaces; and while I also understand the importance of Christmas to our (retail) economy, I tire very quickly of Christmas commercials on television–my personal favorite the ones where people gift each other CARS for Christmas, because really? I’m not a Christian anymore; I’ve been in recovery for nearly thirty years, but the “reason for the season” has been forgotten by almost everyone else in the clamor for dollars and status and spend spend spend mentality of the holidays. The basic presumption behind Christmas–peace on earth and good will to all men–is a lovely one that I can certainly get behind; but Christmas has not only been commercialized it has also been politicized…because nothing says put the Christ back in Christmas like commercializing and politicizing the holiday that ostensibly celebrates the birth of Jesus. As always, I tire very quickly and easily of hypocrisy; and I tire of all the nonsense Christmas seems to trigger annually.

But I do like Christmas and the mentality behind it. I like the idea of a season to celebrate peace and love amongst all of humanity. I always wanted to write about Christmas; which is incredibly hard to do without giving into what I call ‘cheap sentimentality.’ I wrote a story a long time ago, my own attempt at writing a gay Christmas story because, frankly, there weren’t any that I was aware of, and it of course was terrible, absolutely terrible. It’s very difficult to come up with anything original about Christmas; but there’s also the possibility that the comfort of familiarity is what many enjoy about it. They enjoy watching the same films and television specials, listening to the same music recorded by the same artists, and follow the old traditions that transport them back to when they were children and the world seemed so much less complicated than it does as adults, and they want to give their kids that same comforting holiday experience they remember. I was quite mercenary as a child, and for me, for the longest time, Christmas was about the gifts I was going to get. As I got older, it gradually became more about the gifts I was giving as I began to understand the message more–and the message does seem to get lost all too frequently.

I also greatly appreciate the extra days off from work as well.

But I wanted to write about Christmas, as I said earlier. Early in my career I realized there weren’t many, if any, gay Christmas stories, so I decided to do an anthology of them, Upon a Midnight Clear, which was, I think, released in 2004. (My story, of course, turned out to be a horror tale, “The Snow Queen,” and I used a pseudonym.) I greatly enjoyed doing that anthology, and am still rather proud of it today. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to get when I asked writer friends to write a story for me; but all of the stories were inventive and new takes on Christmas, from a gay perspective.

Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series (which Constant Reader knows is one of my favorites) releases a Christmas mystery every year, and the way Andrews manages to turn out a highly original mystery every year centered on Christmas in Caerphilly is absolute genius. She never descends into cheap sentimentality, and yet manages to infuse the books with a healthy dose of the Christmas spirit each time. Caerphilly is one of my happy places; there’s no greater joy than spending some time there every year. I have already mentioned that Andrews kind of inspired me to write a Scotty book set during the Christmas season, and I am probably going to have to do another; the plot for this one was pretty much already set when I decided to have it take place in December, and so it kind of became a Christmas book by default….I will undoubtedly do another one at some point, one that is more centered on Christmas itself rather than just the season. I’d love to play with Christmas tropes and traditions a bit more–especially since Scotty and his parents are pagans.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, all.

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Diamonds

Saturday, and later this afternoon is the SEC championship game (GEAUX TIGERS!). But this morning I am going to focus on cleaning up and straightening things up around here, as well as trying to get some writing done. I’ve been horribly lazy this week; I made some decent progress at the beginning of the week on the Bury Me in Shadows revision–comparatively speaking, I didn’t do that much–and I need to get back on that horse before it escapes the barn and leaves me in the dust.

Last night, we started watching V Wars on Netflix. It’s entertaining, and good enough, but it feels a little…I don’t know, familiar? The premise of the show is that melting ice in the Arctic frees up some biohazard that awakens an inactive gene in human DNA–not everyone has that gene–and turns them into vampires. As the germ (I am calling it a germ; they hadn’t really gotten into what it is yet in the show) spreads, more people become vampires–and these vampires are brutal killing machines, whose victims don’t also become vampires (at least, not so far). It’s okay….entertaining enough but it didn’t grab either one of us, probably because it’s too similar to other shows we’ve watched/seen; The Strain, for one example. Ian Somerholder is gorgeous as ever as the main character–as he gets older he gets better looking; he now looks like he could be Rob Lowe’s brother, and he’s a good enough actor to carry the show. The dialogue was a bit stiff, and some of the situations in the first episode or two seemed a bit over the top, ridiculous, and unbelievable. The problem with plague stories like this is the slow development–the inevitable “only one person who figures out the truth and has to convince everyone else as more people die” trope; who in the cast is going to die, etc. etc. etc. Stephen King brilliantly did this in The Stand; once the plague was spreading he jumped ahead a week or so to the point where most people were dead and the survivors were coming to terms with the end of civilization, trying to figure out what to do next, and then begin having the dreams that drive the rest of the story. The Walking Dead put Rick Grimes into a month-long coma, and when he woke up most of humanity had turned into walkers. Both The Strain and V Wars depend on the “fighting impending doom” narrative to build suspense; but it also makes the story drag a bit. As Paul said, “when do we get to the wars part?” Because the very title makes it abundantly clear that the plague is going to spread and it’s going to come down to a war between those afflicted and those who are not–of course, our noble doctor wants a cure to save the afflicted; the government is more concerned with a vaccine and killing the infected–setting up the inevitable conflict between the forces we’re supposed to be rooting for, even though whether they are on the right side or not remains to be seen. We might come back to it at another time, but it just didn’t grab us. Your mileage might vary. The show is based on a book by Jonathan Maberry, and it apparently became the most-watched show in the world on Netflix the day it dropped–so kudos to all involved. It’s done very well, as I said; it just didn’t grab us. Check it out–you might like it. It’s entirely possible we just weren’t in the right place at the time. And we’ll probably go back to it. Anyway, kudos to Jonathan–who is an incredibly nice and generous man–for having a major Netflix hit.

This morning I have some chores to do around the house before I run to the grocery store to pick up a few things; I really don’t want to go, and am looking for excuses not to. But it won’t kill me to go, and it’s never a bad thing to get out of the house. Today we’re going to have our last “tailgate” of this year’s college football season–barbecuing burgers and dogs for the SEC championship game–and I really need to get this apartment under some sort of control. After I finish this I am going to spend some more time answering my emails and cleaning out that inbox once and for all, and then I am going to work on the manuscript for a little but before I head to the grocery store. I’ve been writing a lengthy entry about this LSU season–I started writing it after the Alabama game, and then realized I should wait until the season is over to post it; that way I can reflect on the entire, magical season; I’ll undoubtedly finish that tomorrow morning and finally post it.

Yesterday I got an ARC of an anthology being released next year that I contributed to: The Faking of the President, edited by Peter Carlaftes and from Three Room Press (who did the Florida Happens anthology and were an absolute dream to work with). It contains my story “The Dreadful Scott Decision”, which, of course, is a play on the Dred Scott Decision, a horrific Supreme Court ruling that made secession and the Civil War just a little bit inevitable; and yes, I wrote about James Buchanan. I’m very pleased with my story, and I am even more pleased to be in this anthology, with co-contributors on the level of Alison Gaylin, Eric Beetner, Sarah M. Chen, Nikki Dolson, S. A. Cosby, S. J. Rozan, Alex Segura, Erica Wright, Angel Luis Colon, Gary Phillips, and several more people whose talents I’ve long admired. You’re going to want to pre-order this one, people.

It’s also the time of the year when everyone is making their best of lists; I am slightly uncomfortable doing that, quite frankly–although I always do qualify my choices by calling such lists The Best Books I Read This Year, which is really what all of those lists boil down to. I read a lot of amazing books this year, and am completely terrified that I’ll miss one in making such a list; but seriously, 2019 was an amazing year in crime fiction–and the women are fucking killing it. Steph Cha, Jamie Mason, Lisa Lutz, Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman, Kellye Garrett, Rachel Howzell Hall, Angie Kim–I could go on forever.

Which reminds me, I also want to spend some time with Laura Benedict’s The Stranger Inside this weekend.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and get going on my day.  Hello, spice mines!

Y’all have a good one, you hear?

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Just to See Her

And we have made it to Friday yet again, Constant Reader. Isn’t it lovely? I slept well again last night, which was, as always, a lovely and wonderful experience. I have a short day at the office today–data entry, which is always a joy–to ease me into the weekend. I’ll need to stop at Rouse’s on my way home again so I won’t have to leave the house over the course of the weekend. I am trying not to get too hyped or worked up about the LSU-Georgia SEC title game Saturday afternoon; we’ve enjoyed an absolutely glorious season, filled with enormous highs that just kept getting better as the season progressed; everything now is undoubtedly gravy. It should be a good game, and one can never completely rule Georgia out.

This whole season, for both LSU and the Saints, has seemed like a fever dream at times.

I also hate to see the season winding down. I love football, and I love football season, and am always a little sad to see it end. The season opener we attended, the Georgia Southern game, seems like it was an eternity ago, and yet the season has also seemed to fly by. And here it is Christmas season, with the conference championship games this weekend and then the bowls and the play-offs for college; there’s another month or so of the regular season for the Saints before the play-offs as well…and then it’s Carnival.

The end of the year/beginning of the year is always jam-packed around New Orleans.

I didn’t really get that across, I think, in Royal Street Reveillon; the way the holidays and football season’s climax all crowd in around each other and then suddenly it’s time for the parades and Carnival–but in fairness, theres a lot of plot and a lot going on in that book, and Scotty was a little too-distracted by all the goings-on to think about the holidays or football season too much.

It’s hard to believe sometimes that I’ve been writing Scotty since 2001; that his first adventure was published sixteen years ago, and I’m still writing about him. I never dreamed Scotty would stick around this long; I never dreamed readers and reviewers would embrace him so much. The advance for Bourbon Street Blues enabled Paul and I to move back to New Orleans in 2001 after That Horrible Year Away; so for that reason alone Scotty would alway have a special place in my heart. I was interviewed last weekend for a radio show (“The Adam Sank Show”); and getting asked questions about Scotty–and the book–kind of put me into a sort of reflective mood about the character and series. I never imagined I’d still be writing and publishing and talking about Scotty in 2019; then again, I never look that far ahead. But had someone told me back then that my happy-go-lucky go-go boy would still be around seventeen years later, going strong and with the possibility of yet another adventure hanging around on the horizon, I would have most likely laughed really hard in that person’s face.

Scotty and the boys have aged gracefully and well.

But if I do decide to write Hollywood South Hustle, there are a number of things I’ve been putting off that need to eventually be addressed at some point; Frank really should retire from professional wrestling–but there’s a professional wrestling murder mystery/adventure for the boys I’d want to write before that happens (Redneck Riviera Rhumba). The collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel construction site also provided a bit of inspiration for my Scotty gentrification novel, Bywater Bohemia Bougie (or Boogie, I can’t decide which one works better. I like the idea of addressing gentrification as well as the whole “bougie” thing; but boogie also works as a really good, fun word and as long as the title is alliterative, I don’t really care which word I use. (For the record, I sometimes sit around and think up Scotty titles, because I enjoy alliteration; others I’ve come up with include West Bank Waltz, Lake Shore Limbo, North Shore Novelty, Swamp Edge Swing, etc.; just on titles alone I could probably wind up writing Scotty books until I’m in my seventies). I still need to pull together the Scotty Bible, which would make writing any future Scotty books much easier, and strengthen continuity while eliminating mistakes.

As long as I can keep it fresh and new….which basically means as long as I don’t bore myself, really.

And on that note, tis time to head into the spice mines. Happy Friday, Constant Reader!

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Casanova

It’s Thursday morning in New Orleans and all is well–or right–in the world; well, at least in mine. It was also chilly and my bed comfortable and warm; and as I was sleeping well for yet another night, I didn’t want to get up. But I have things to do this morning before I head into the office, and once I’ve had enough coffee to sharpen and get my brain under control, I shall accomplish these tasks before getting ready for work.

I managed to get some chores done when I got home from work yesterday, so the Lost Apartment’s kitchen is not a disaster this morning. I made mac-and-cheese again (I think this week’s is better than last week’s was, frankly) but used some of my training from McDonalds as a teenager to “clean as I go” and as such, when the mac-and-cheese went into the oven everything I’d used to make it was cleaned and in the dishwasher already. I don’t know why I don’t do this every time I cook; it’s so lovely to finish cooking and have all the dishes and bowls and so forth I used be clean already.

The lessons one learns from working in fast food as a teenager will hold you in good stead later in life, apparently.

My mind is not fully cognitive yet this morning, but the space heater is blowing lovely warm air on my legs and my coffee is delicious and it surely won’t be much longer before I am functional. Or so I hope, at any rate.

Then I’ll start cleaning out the email inbox. I kind of need cognitive abilities to answer them all, and won’t it be lovely to have an empty inbox? That’s always my goal, every morning and every week, and it’s been far too long since I unlocked that achievement.

It also occurred to me–sometime late in November–that I should use my December blog entries to write about my most recent book; focusing not only on my characters but also on New Orleans, Christmas, and Christmas in New Orleans, since the book is set during the Christmas season. And not to worry–I have lots of pictures of hot guys in Christmas-type attire to share along with those entries. So, yes, y’all, Royal Street Reveillon is an actual Christmas-in-New-Orleans book in which I resisted the urge to try to adapt a traditional Christmas story to both Scotty and New Orleans–although it was incredibly tempting and I might do that very thing later in my life and in the series. One of my favorite Christmas episodes of any television series was the very first Christmas episode of Moonlighting–anyone else remember the show that made Bruce Willis a star?–in which Blue Moon Detective Agency secretary Miss DiPesto found a baby in a manger at Christmas time. They played very heavily on Christmas stories and traditions to tell the story in that extremely brilliantly witty way the writers had in the first season or so of the show; those first two seasons are some of the best television ever written and filmed. I thought about trying to do something similar with Royal Street Reveillon, but I also wanted to get the Grande Dames of New Orleans story into the book, and there was simply no way to graft all the reality show stuff onto a Christmas tale; so the book wound up simply being set during Christmas.

The Scotty series, which was originally intended to simply be a stand-alone, and then merely a trilogy, was built around holidays to begin with; the first was during Southern Decadence, and when it became a trilogy I decided to use the trinity of gay holidays in New Orleans: Southern Decadence, Halloween, and Carnival. When Book 4 rolled around, I set it around Easter and had the book open with the Gay Easter Parade. Book 5 was built around New Orleans winning the Super Bowl; Book 6 was built around Mike the Tiger (LSU’s live tiger mascot) and Book 7 didn’t really have a holiday or anything truly local to build it around. I’ve always felt there was some separation between the first three books in the series and the four that followed; primarily because of the gay holiday associations with the first three.

I decided, when putting this one together, to set it during the Christmas season because Christmas in New Orleans doesn’t get as much play as other holidays (not here, I mean nationally; no one thinks of “Christmas” and “New Orleans” together), and I do love Christmas–some of it. I love the idea of Christmas and its message; I despise the unrelenting commercialism and the playing of carols in September and the Christmas stuff being stocked in stores before Halloween and don’t even get me started on the horrors of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and so forth. I did think I could possibly work some of that into the story, of course; but there was literally so much going on in the book that snark about commercializing Christmas wasn’t needed or necessary, even though it would have been fun.

And let’s be honest: Charles Schultz did it best with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1966.

But I’ve enjoyed Donna Andrews’ Christmas mysteries in her Meg Langslow series so much that I thought I should give one a try. And the result was Royal Street Reveillon.

And now it’s Christmas season in New Orleans; football season is winding up, but I am hoping that after this weekend, I can take a Saturday afternoon to head down to the Quarter–or drive around the city–taking pictures of Christmas lights and decorations and so forth. New Orleans, as I said in the book, loves nothing more than holiday decorating, and it’s so dark here at night the Christmas lights look even more magnificent.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

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Point of No Return

So, what did we learn from our first Monday back at work? One, that it’s very important to get physical and mental rest from the day in, day out of full time employment, and that if I can stay focused and motivated…well, there’s really nothing I can’t do if I want to do it.

But that has always been true. It has always astounded me how much I can do–and what I can do–if I put my mind to it and ignore those horrible voice in my head (depending on what it is, they alternate between my parents, really–every so often a former teacher will pop into my head, working on my confidence and trying to paralyze me into useless futility). All that stuff I’d been dreading, and putting off? Handled yesterday with aplomb, minimal irritation or embarrassment, and now completely out of the way.

What have we learned from this? Probably nothing.

Last night, for the first time in over a month–since I was sick at Halloween, actually–I sat down, opened the latest version of Chapter One, and started revising. And while it wasn’t as easy as I would like–I deleted about a thousand words and added a thousand new ones, that make better sense and work better; certainly the voice of my main character is better defined and sounds more realistic–I still managed to get some work done, and it was good work. Very good work, with which I am very pleased. I was truly worried, frankly, that this book was never going to get kicked into gear; now it has, and now it’s possible that I might–just might–get this book finished this month and ready to do something with in January.

What a glorious feeling.

I slept really well again last night–going to bed earlier on the nights before these early mornings really does make all the difference–and since Paul was out to dinner with some friends, I came home and cleaned the kitchen, preparatory to getting some writing done, and so this morning my kitchen is pretty clean–there’s still a load of laundry in the dryer that needs to be folded, but I doubt I’ll get to that this morning–and so I am pretty pleased with that as well. I am pretty certain I’ll start feeling run down and tired by the end of the week again, but as long as I keep getting good sleep at night, I should be okay.

Or so I hope, at any rate.

It’s hard to believe it’s December already. Where did this year go? Football season can’t be almost over already, can it? Heavy heaving sigh. I was just thinking yesterday that the next few months are going to be nothing but madness, sheer madness. There’s Christmas, then New Year’s; and then of course it’s Twelfth Night and Carnival has started. There’s college football bowl games and play-offs; the Saints will be in the play-offs as well, and then after the parades are all over, at the end of March is the Williams Festival. Heavy heaving sigh. I am also heading up to New York in the middle of January; it’s been years, and that should be a lot of fun–exhausting, but fun.

And 2020! A sparkling new decade, exciting and new. That will be the decade I hit sixty at long last, and should I live that long, the decade where I finally am able to retire from the day job. Sooner would be better than later, of course; I am considering my options for going early–but that would also mean paying off most of my debt and the car. I think the car will be finished being paid off towards the end of next year or early 2021; I am on track to get it paid for in less than the five years of the loan, and who knows? I may, if there’s a windfall of some sort, even be able to get it paid for even sooner. And if I can make that Honda last twenty years–which I should be able to–I hopefully won’t ever have to buy another car before I die.

And on that cheery note, tis time to get back to the mines of spice. I want to get some more reading of Laura Benedict’s book, The Stranger Inside, done today, and obviously, it would be amazing to get more progress done on the book.

But I’m writing again, am excited about the book (as it goes into yet another draft), and feeling pretty good. Yay, Gregalicious!

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