Category: crime fiction

Keep Coming Back

It dropped into the forties overnight, and this morning, it’s struggling to get up into the low fifties. This is utter and complete madness; we even are looking at a possible freeze alert by Tuesday–a freeze alert in November. Utter, total, unquestionable madness.

The LSU game…well, they won and let’s just leave it at that.

The Saints play Cincinnati today at noon; I intend to write all morning and then take a break to watch them play, after which I will try to get some more writing done. I wound up spending most of yesterday relaxing and reading. I dove back into ‘salem’s Lot, my Halloween reread for this year (you see how well that went), intending to only read a chapter, but promptly got sucked into the narrative. I finished reading part one, and chose to stop with Part II, “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” The essay about ‘salem’s Lot that is currently brewing in my head–“Peyton Place, But With Vampires”–is slowly taking shape within my head, which is lovely. Whether or not I am ever going to have the time to write it is an entirely different question, of course.

One of the interesting things about rereading ‘salem’s Lot is also seeing how carefully King structured his novel; the book isn’t–which is the point of my essay–so much about the vampires and the fearless vampire killers (well, they are hardly fearless), as it is about the town. I love that King shows how the other people in the town react to what’s going on; they of course aren’t privy to what the main, core characters (Ben, Mark, Susan, Matt, and the doctor–whose name is escaping me now) are; one of the other things King does so remarkably well in this, only his second novel, is depicting how small towns really work–hence the comparison to Peyton Place. His depictions of small towns only got better and more realistic as his career progressed; I think the secret strength of Needful Things is the honesty and truth in how he depicted Castle Rock; with all the resentments and anger and feuds all simmering just beneath the surface (I also need to revisit Needful Things).

I plan to get back to Bury Me in Satin today. I wrote less than three hundred words yesterday, and this shall not stand; I also need to get back on track with this manuscript. I am a little torn about how to proceed–I am also having questions about the time line and so forth–but these things should sort themselves out as I write and move the story forward. We’ll see how it goes today. I also need to work on these short stories. Heavy heaving sigh.

I also managed to read something yesterday for the Short Story Project: “Remaindered” by Peter Lovesey, from Bibliomysteries Volume 2, edited by Otto Penzler:

Agatha Christie did it. The evidence was plain to see, but no one did see for more than a day. Robert Ripple’s corpse was cold on the bookshop floor. It must have been there right through Monday, the day Precious Finds was always closed. Poor guy, he was discovered early Tuesday in the section he called his office, in a position no bookseller would choose for his last transaction, face down, feet down and butt up, jack-knifed over a carton of books. The side of the carton had burst and some of the books had slipped out and fanned across the carpet, every one a Christie.

Last Sunday Robert had taken delivery of the Christie novels. They came from a house on Park Avenue, one of the best streets in Poketown, Pennsylvania, and they had a curious history. They were brought over from Europe before World War II by an immigrant whose first job had been as a London publisher’s rep. He’d kept the books as a souvenir of those tough times trying to interest bookshop owners in whodunits when the only novels most British people wanted to read were by Jeffrey Farnol and Ethel M. Dell. After his arrival in America, he’d switched to selling Model T Fords instead and made a sizable fortune. The Christies has been forgotten about, stored in the attic of the fine old weatherboard house he’d bought after making his first million. And now his playboy grandson planned to demolish the building and replace it with a space-age dwelling of glass and concrete. He’d cleared the attic and wanted to dispose of the books. Robert had taken one look and offered five hundred dollars for the lot. The grandson had pocketed the check and gone away pleased with the deal.

Hardly believing his luck, Robert must have waited until the shop closed and then stopped to lift the carton onto his desk and check the content more carefully. Mistake.

This is actually my first experience with reading Peter Lovesey.  I mean, I know who he is and that he is in the upper stratosphere of crime writers, but I’ve not read him before. Reading “Remaindered” certainly has made me want to change that. The story is multi-layered, and exceptionally cleverly structured. It begins with the sad and sudden death of a second hand bookstore owner; due to a crate of Agatha Christie novels he’s just purchased, as indicated in the excerpt above. And that is where the story starts to twist and turn, changing shapes and throwing out the occasional surprise, twist after twist after twist; all of them organic and foreshadowed, and the story itself does an excellent, highly honest job of depicting the characters, their needs, their wants, and their incredibly surprising histories. I do highly recommend it.

The entire point of The Short Story Project was intended to be a sort of graduate course in short story writing for me. At the beginning of this year, the intent was for me to write a lot of short stories and to work on my craft with them, to improve as a writer. I’ve not had that much success with any of the new stories I’ve written this year; the rejections continue to stack up. But I shall continue to try writing them. I also realized last night that two stories I have coming out in anthologies next year are similarly themed, and I have like two or three more following not only a similar theme but a similar pattern in the works. Ruh roh.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Free Your Mind

Well, I slept deeply and well last night, only waking up twice–and both times I was able to go back into a lovely, lovely deep sleep. I also didn’t wake up until almost nine. I know, right? It’s so lovely to feel rested.

LSU’s game isn’t on until tonight, but there are some terrific games on throughout the day. I suspect I can finish the floors and cleaning the living room around and during some of these games; I can also get some writing done as well, methinks. I am leaning towards editing some short stories rather than working on the book–yes, I know that will put me two days behind where I want to be with it, but I am also stuck. (And no sooner did I type that, did I come up with a way to start Chapter Four in a way that will help advance the plot somewhat. Huzzah!)

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I stopped at the Latter Library on my way home from work to pick up a book I’d requested on-line, Volume 2 of Otto Penzler’s Bibliomysteries. If you aren’t familiar with the “Bibliomysteries,” these are slightly longer than your average short stories, written by today’s top crime writers, and have to focus or be centered around a book or a bookstore. I first became aware of them when I was a judge for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story a few years ago (maybe more than a few; time has become so fluid and untethered for me–particularly when I realize it’s fucking 2018 sometimes), and in fact we picked John Connelly’s Bibliomystery, “‘The Caxton Lending Library and Book Depository,” as that year’s Best Short Story winner. Since then, I’ve read others–Megan Abbott’s “The Little Men,” Laura Lippman’s “The Book Thing,” Denise Mina’s “Every Seven Years”–and been blown away by their absolute brilliance (which reminds me, I really need to get back to the Short Story Project, which has sadly fallen by the wayside); so I am very excited to read this second collection of these singles; the stories are, you see, originally published as singles–you can buy them as ebooks or you can get a print copy.

I love the library, and was extremely pleased with myself, as Constant Reader is probably already aware, for finally getting my library card. I haven’t had one since I left Kansas in 1981; and even in Kansas I hadn’t used mine for years when we moved. Libraries were very important to me, as a kid and as a teen; I don’t know why I stopped using them–other than the fact that I often lost library books, or forgot to return them on time, which meant fines, which meant lectures from my mother about irresponsibility and on and on and on it went–but I remember the Tomen Branch of the Chicago Public Library fondly; the library on 6th Street in Emporia, and the little library in Americus, as well as when the Bolingbrook Library opened. I often spent time in my school libraries as well as a kid. Stupidly, I suspect I stopped using libraries when I started working and had my own money to buy books with; I loved owning books, always coveted other people’s, and for years was also sentimentally attached to books and didn’t want to get rid of my copies of them. I still am, and I still hoard books, always buying more when I haven’t read all the ones on hand, and I was the same with the library; always checking out more than I could possibly read because I also wanted choices about what to read. I’m looking forward to reading–and reporting back–on the stories in this book I haven’t already read–the Abbott and Mina stories are also inside this collection of them. Writing a Bibliomystery is a bucket-list thing for me; but I will also need to become more important of a writer to be asked.

Last night, as I laundered the bed lines and blankets and coverlets, it took longer for the dryer to dry things then planned–it was damp yesterday, and damp always affects the dryer–so I had to stay up a little later than I wanted to, so I started streaming an 1980’s classic thru Prime: Night of the Comet, starring Robert Beltran, Catherine-Mary Stewart, and Kelli Maroney. I saw this movie in the theater when it was released; it’s not the greatest movie in the world, but it also recognized that it wasn’t a great movie and embraced its camp sensibility. The premise of the movie is this: a comet with an enormous orbit through space is going to pass close by Earth again for the first time in sixty-five million years (hello, dinosaur extinction event!), and of course, it turns into this thing, with comet-watching parties and so forth. Our two leading ladies manage to miss the comet by falling asleep inside of steel–Stewart in the cinema where she works in a steel-walled room for storing film; Maroney in a steel shed in the backyard–and the comet turns everyone into either dust or murderously insane zombies, and they have to survive somehow. Fortunately, the women–sisters–have a father in the military who taught them how to protect themselves. Beltran plays a truck driver (who passed the night inside his truck) they encounter, and eventually team up with for survival. I was just far enough into the movie to get to the part where they run into Beltran for the first time–having already realized most of the world is dead–when the blankets were finished. I also remembered some trivia–Stewart’s big break was being the original Kayla on Days of Our Lives (her replacement became one of the most-loved and popular stars of the show), and Maroney started out playing a manipulative spoiled bitch teenager on Ryan’s Hope. Stewart was also the female lead in a favorite scifi movie of mine from that same period, The Last Starfighter. Both kind of faded away which I always thought was kind of unfortunate–although watching the movie again last night and seeing their performances clearly, it’s really not that surprising.

And Beltran, of course, was part of the Paul Bartel stable, also appearing in Eating Raoul and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. Interesting that Bartel’s films, which were kind of the same style as John Waters movies, aren’t remembered or talked about much anymore. (Bartel and his usual female muse, Mary Woronov, also were in another classic from the period, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School–but I don’t remember if Bartel directed that one.)

I may finish watching Night of the Comet at some point today; we shall see how the day goes.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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That’s What Love Is For

Well, another week is in the books. I stopped on my way home from the office at the library to pick up my first-ever checked out book from the library (I even requested it on-line and they held it for me), picked up the mail, and stopped at the grocery store.

I don’t think I even have to leave the house now over the weekend. How awesome is that?

Pretty fucking awesome, if I do say so myself. The older I get, the less I want to leave the house. If I could possibly manage it, I would probably become a recluse. How I miss the days of working at home! Going to the gym whenever I felt like it, going to get the mail and grocery store when I was in the mood or stuck on whatever I was writing or editing; when the only pressing things were deadlines and the due-date of bills. I hope and I pray that someday, someday, I will be able to return to those halcyon days of yesteryear.

I am stuck with the book. This morning before I went into the office I opened a word document for Chapter 4, and literally just stared at it blankly. Nothing. Not a single word. I had no idea where I wanted to take the story and the characters next. And now that I’m home, I’m still in that same mindset. So…given that I’ve done about ten thousand words on it thus far, give or take, I think I am going to take the rest of the night off from writing. Maybe reread the first three chapters again, get an idea of where I was going, maybe jot down some notes in my journal…and hopefully will get kick-started again tomorrow when I wake up; hopefully well-rested and refreshed and raring to go.

One can hope, at any rate.

Well, I now have the groceries and a load of dishes put away; the second load of laundry is in the dryer, and I am making some sort of progress on getting everything straightened in the Lost Apartment; cleaning and filing and so forth, so I can spend the weekend relaxing and reading and writing. I also have a freelance editing job I should get out of the way this weekend. Huzzah!

And now ’tis back to the spice mines. A Gregalicious’ work is never done.

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Just Take My Heart

Hey hey hey, it’s Friday! Constant Reader, we did it again–we made it through yet another week. Huzzah for us! We rock.

The weather is supposed to get down into the fifties over the course of this weekend; it’s been humid and wet most of this week already. Some colder weather is probably overdue, particularly since Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks now.

My troubled sleep patterns continue; I sleep deeply for about two to three hours, wake up, and for the rest of the night go into light sleep with occasional wake-ups. I would dearly love to sleep through an entire night at some point, but luck has simply not been on my side on that account this week. It’s troubling, but I’ve not been sleepy nor tired during the day, so I suppose I am getting rest? It’s workable, though; it’s the dreaded being tired and sleepy all day that bothers me the most about my chronic insomnia.

I wrote another chapter of Bury Me in Satin last night; it’s really bad, if I am being completely honest, but that’s why it’s called a rough draft. The story is taking shape in my head, though, which is kind of nice. I do think this is going to be, as I said, a very rough draft; but I am hoping to get this draft almost 2/3rds finished before I head to Kentucky for the holiday. (I also need to give Royal Street Reveillon another going over, which I am hoping to do whilst in Kentucky as well.)

This weekend LSU is off to Arkansas, and I’m not sure where or who the Saints are playing, but here’s hoping their winning streak continues at least for another week. I have some things to do this weekend; I’m not sure what time I’ll be getting off today. I am working at the main office today, helping them pack since they are moving to the new building on Monday. Also, a book I requested is being held for me at the library–look at me, using my new library card! I’m terribly excited about this, needless to say.

I also need to finalize some short stories for the collection as well. I have decided to pull “Don’t Look Down” and replace it with two others; I am going to rework “Don’t Look Down” and publish it, methinks, as a Kindle single.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

Have a lovely Friday, everyone.

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Real Love

Thursday morning feeling fine. How’s about you and your’n?

I wrote another chapter of Bury Me in Satin last night, and it’s….rough. But it’s a first draft, and usually I use the first draft as more of an extended outline rather than anything else; to get the story out, get a feel for the characters, and work out subplots and whether they work or not. The story, which has swirled amorphously in my mind for years now, is starting to emerge from those shadows and take shape, which is kind of cool (even after however many books it is I’ve written, this still amazes me every time it happens).

The day job move continues apace; yesterday I worked at the main office, helping to pack up stuff and clear things out–as with any move, it’s startling to see how much has accumulated over the years, and stuff that needed to be either shredded or thrown away years ago somehow just got put in a box and filed away somewhere. We all do this, I know; there’s nothing like moving to force you to purge.

I managed to borrow a copy of Alecia Long’s The Great Southern Babylon from my friend Susan yesterday, and I am really looking forward to reading it. I can’t believe, as I have said many times recently, how little actual New Orleans history I’ve read; the only actual history I’ve read is the delightful Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren, John Churchill Chase’s brilliant history of the city, told through how the streets were named; and given the unique and strange street names we have here, it makes for a fun read. I highly recommend it; I may even need to take another read through its pages at some point. One of the most interesting things–to me at any rate–is how little mention there is of queer New Orleans history in so many of these books. It’s hinted at obliquely, or in passing–veiled references to “sodomy shows” and the occasional side reference to male prostitutes in Storyville in Empire of Sin–and even looking through the indexes of some of these books you find no mention of sodomy, homosexuality, or any of the other key secret words you would expect to find–which means my research is going to be difficult if not nigh impossible. But the best news about this is I have so many friends and connections in the city with research–I have a lot of friends at the Historic New Orleans Collection; I have friends who are local historians; and of course there are enormous archives at the UNO library, the public library, and at Tulane.

The only question is when will I have the time to do this research?

Time for me is always the question. And while I self-deprecate and self-lacerate a lot about my laziness, the truth is I just don’t have a lot of spare time–and I can’t work non-stop. You have to be able to recharge, relax, and rest, otherwise the work you do isn’t going to be much good.

But once the day-job move is over and I settle into yet another new weekly schedule and adapt, I think I’ll be able to get things going. And I am really looking forward to spending more time in the library.

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Would I Lie To You

Wednesday.

I’ve not been sleeping well for the last two nights; I’ve woken up after sleeping for a couple of hours and then been kind of half-asleep the rest of the night. Relaxed, resting, but not fully asleep. I’m not sure why this sudden change, especially after getting an amazing night’s sleep Saturday night, but there you have it.

I started working on Bury Me in Satin last night again, in an attempt to get past the stress and tension of election night. I am very pleased this morning to see that Louisiana passed the initiative to require unanimous verdicts in criminal trials; finally, that hideous Jim Crow law is off our books. I wasn’t able to concentrate fully on the writing, though, and eventually took to watching reruns of Jeopardy on Netflix, which is a lot more binge-addicting than you might think. Before I knew it, Paul was home and I’d burned through about five episodes–but it’s nice to know I can have that on now in the background as I do chores or read or make writing notes.

Once Paul was home, we watched the final episode of Bodyguard, a BBC political/suspense thriller starring Richard Madden (aka Robb Stark from Game of Thrones). It’s quite good, very twisty, and incredibly nerve-wracking; I do highly recommend the show. Madden, who is also very pretty, has been mentioned lately as a contender for taking over James Bond. I’ve not really seen it, to be honest; he was good (if annoying) on Game of Thrones (not his fault; the character, really) and he was good in Medici Masters of Florence, but I just didn’t see him as Bond. After watching Bodyguard, I can actually see it; he would be a very good choice (if we can’t have Idris Elba).

Our office moved this week; today I am working out of the main office, and then it’s back to the new building tomorrow and possibly Friday. I am not sure; I may have to go to the main office to help them pack up on Friday, as the rest of our department is moving over to the new building next Monday. The new building, on Elysian Fields past Claiborne on the UNO side, is quite nice and lovely. Lots of unpacking and setting up remain to be done; we are going to be operational and seeing clients apparently next week. I do miss the client contact, quite frankly; it’ll be nice to start seeing clients and getting used to the new work space.

And I am hopeful work on the novel will continue to go smoothly. The second chapter is my bane, a transitional chapter, which means it will seem odious and take me forever to slog through writing it. But I am excited to be finally writing this book, having thought about it forever–it started as a short story called “Ruins” that I wrote in the 1980’s, and while I like Ruins as a title, there’s a rather famous Scott Smith novel called The Ruins, and so I am not quite certain calling this one that is a good idea. I do like Bury Me in Satin as a title, and I am going to be trying to figure out my complicated plot a bit this weekend after I get deeper into the manuscript.

It’s probably the most complicated plot of a young adult novel that I’ve written, but I like my main character, Jake Chapman, a lot. He’s smart smart smart, and I like the idea behind the concept of the book. It remains, however, to be seen whether I can actually pull it off. We shall see.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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I Wanna Love You

Ah, it’s Tuesday, an Election Day in the republic, and I certainly hope everyone is voting today. We kind of take that for granted–the right to vote–and it’s more than a little bit on the shameful side, all due respect.

I’ve also not worked on Bury Me in Satin since Sunday; Monday was a bit of a crazy day, but I am hoping that tonight I can get back into the book.

On the other hand, I am so anxious about this election I don’t know if I can sufficiently focus or not. Heavy sigh. But then again, going deep into the manuscript might also be just the ticket to keep my mind off everything; it’s going to be a late night and I don’t know how much of it I can take. So there’s also that. I hate that every election now is so stressful, and there’s so much urgency!

I voted, of course, as I always do; I’ve voted in every election since I turned eighteen. I vote in midterms. I vote in local elections. I vote in all national elections. Hell, I’ve worked on campaigns and I’ve knocked on doors and I’ve donated money. There wasn’t a lot of terribly important things on our Louisiana ballot today; some ballot initiatives–one of which was incredibly important; requiring a unanimous verdict in criminal trials; the old law, requiring merely a majority, is a horrific Jim Crow holdover which was put into place precisely to send people of color to prison; I very proudly voted to require verdicts to be unanimous. Our local House rep was, of course, up for reelection; there were some judgeships on the ballot, and of course, secretary of state. I walked over to the International School on Camp Street and voted; the ladies who always work the elections told me this was the busiest election with the highest turnout that they can remember. I found that interesting,  particularly because there was so little on our ballots.

I finished reading Empire of Sin this weekend during the Saints game; I really enjoyed it, and I’ve now requested an inter-library loan of Alecia Long’s The Great Southern Babylon. We have a copy of it somewhere; she and Paula are friends, and she has been at the Tennessee William Festival numerous times. I also started reading Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter, while I wait for the Latter Library to get the Long book in. One of the things I love most about New Orleans history is that the city has always been rough-and-tumble; so many of the original settlers the French sent over were criminals and/or shady people. It was actually kind of interesting to read how, in Empire of Sin for example, even back then–the 1890’s through the 1920’s–the locals shook their heads and lamented the crime rate in the city, and the corruption/incompetence at City Hall.

Some things never change.

But I got the contract for Royal Street Reveillon today in the e-mailbox; signed that sucker and sent it back. So a release date will be forthcoming shortly, and sooner rather than later there will be a cover reveal. (I also played around with potential Scotty titles for the next book in the series; came up with some really good ones, but am not sure what the plot should be…Scotty went to Jesuit High School, which has been roiled in some sex abuse scandals lately; along with, of course, the Archdiocese of New Orleans…it’s something I’ve always wanted to write about, but I don’t know if Scotty is the vessel for such a story. I am also thinking about something voodoo-ish; but then I think well, yeah, there’s SOME woo-woo in the series but for the most part the series is fairly reality based so would that even work? There’s also the whole Jean Lafitte thing I’ve always wanted to do. Heavy heaving sigh. It never ends…and I really need to focus on the book I’m writing, don’t I?)

FOCUS.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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When I Look Into Your Eyes

GEAUX SAINTS!

Friday, while running my errands, I decided to finally stop at the Latter Library on St. Charles Avenue and get my goddamned library card. Yes, I have lived in New Orleans for over twenty-two years and had never gotten my library card. I had tried once before but that was when you had to fill out an application. Mine was denied because I used my mailing address rather than my actual home address; I got the denial in the mail and was highly annoyed. Instead of being an adult and thinking, oh, I’ll just swing by another time I never did; even though I have actually been to the Latter Library a gazillion times in the meantime. So Friday I finally did it; and amazingly enough, it’s all automated now. She entered my information into the computer and activated my card and voila, I walked out of there the proud owner of a New Orleans Public Library card.

I am really pleased with myself, which is kind of interesting. As I’ve said before, I’m reading Empire of Sin, and am wanting to do even more research into New Orleans history–and of course, the library card is an important first step for me. Part of this is my desire to write a short story collection called Monsters of New Orleans, which would be my foray into horror; I have some things already written that would work for it, but the majority of the stories would be original and new, and I want to base them in actual New Orleans history. Empire of Sin has been a veritable treasure trove of ideas for me; I am also looking at writing a historical mystery novel set here sometime between 1900 and the 1920’s. Maybe it will end up just being my short story “The Blues Before Dawn,” or maybe it will be a novel called The Blues Before Dawn.

Maybe both. Who knows?

The Saints are playing the unbeaten Rams today; this has not been a good football weekend for me; kudos to Alabama. I don’t see anyone even staying close to them in a game this year; other than possibly Clemson. The lovely thing about LSU being out of contention now means that I don’t really have to commit so thoroughly to watching college football games all day on Saturdays anymore; I’ll only need to watch the Tigers so my Saturdays have suddenly become more free. Ultimately, not a bad thing.

So, GEAUX SAINTS indeed.

One of the funny things about being a football fan is how committed one can become to one’s own superstitions; there are certain LSU shirts I won’t wear during games anymore, and the same with a pair of sweatpants, pictures to use on Facebook, and so forth. I realized how silly this was yesterday–like anything I could possibly do has any effect on the outcome of a game, as opposed to the other hundreds of thousands of fans–and wrote down some notes for an essay about how weird being a fan can be; more fodder for The Fictions of My Life.

And yet…I wouldn’t wear my yellow LSU sweatshirt yesterday. I just couldn’t make myself do it.

I realized yesterday as I watched the Georgia-Kentucky game that we are several days into November and I haven’t yet started my unofficial Nanowrimo project, Bury Me in Satin; I intend to rectify that this morning. That extra hour of sleep has me up before eight this morning and feeling rested and inspired; it only took three days to get to this point. I did manage to clean yesterday during football games; I wasn’t terribly committed to watching Georgia-Kentucky, and during the stretches when Auburn was stinking up the field against Texas A&M I also organized and vacuumed and washed clothes, etc. So this morning, the Lost Apartment is relatively–relatively being the operative word–clean and looks nice. But not feeling fatigued this morning is quite lovely, to be honest; I worried I’d have one of my patented lazy moods today, and that is most definitely not the case. I want to get the chapter headings put in for the Scotty so I can get it turned in at long last; I want to get those tweaks done to Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories done; and of course, I simply have to get started on Bury Me in Satin. I also spent a lot of time reading Empire of Sin yesterday; I am now up to the part about the Axeman, and it’s absolutely riveting, particularly since I want to write a Venus Casanova story called “A Little More Jazz for the Axeman,” which I’ve already started, honestly. I also made some notes in my journal yesterday. Progress comes in all shapes and sizes, and I will embrace any and all of them that I actually experience.

And now, on that note, it is back to the spice mines. I should take full advantage of being wide awake so early in the morning; if I can get all of this stuff finished and done and out of the way before the Saints game, well, more power to me indeed.

And I may even be able to finally finish reading Empire of Sin today at long last–something to help keep my mind off the Saints game.

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.

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Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven

Thursday, and the first day of a four-day weekend that just kind of dropped into my lap. The office move and so forth has had some complications; I’d planned on taking today off anyway, and then it occurred to me yesterday that I should just go ahead and take Friday as well; what was, after all, the point in taking Thursday off, working on Friday, and then having the weekend off? I’ve been very tired lately, badly in need of recharging the batteries, and the two-day weekends just haven’t been cutting it; so why not take a mini-vacation?

So, here I sit at my desk, looking outside at a gray day. Shadow is watching birds atop the stone fence outside my windows, there’s no sign of the sun anywhere, and it rained pretty heavily at some point in the early morning as everything is wet and shiny and dripping out there. I have a load of dishes and a load of laundry to put away; another load is running in the dishwasher, and the kitchen/office is completely out of control. Yes, indeed, there are plenty of things for me to do today, when the spirit so moves me.

We finished packing up the office Tuesday, and the movers came yesterday. I worked at the main office yesterday; a long ten hour day mostly doing paperwork, making condom packs, and then doing testing last night.  Apparently we’re waiting for some final clearances from the city before the new office building is up and operational. It was a little poignant saying good night and good luck to the office on Frenchmen Street when I left Tuesday night, and there were a couple of times  during that day when I felt a wave of sadness coming…but I made it. Yay, me.

Also Tuesday morning, the ebook of Bourbon Street Blues, aka Scotty I, went up for sale at long last. I’m very excited about this; it’s been unavailable for far, far too long, and people have been asking about it for years. But it’s finally a thing, and eventually a print version will also be available. If  you’re interested in getting the first Scotty ebook, you can get it right here. This makes me really happy; you’ve got no idea, Constant Reader. Especially since I am in such a Scotty state of mind with my writing these days.

Hopefully, Jackson Square Jazz (aka Scotty II) will be up by the end of the year as well, and all Scotty books will thus be available for anyone who wants to buy and read them.

I also finished writing Royal Street Reveillon  (aka Scotty VIII) Monday night. I am going to go ahead and get that turned in this week. I just need to add the chapter headings, which is always a fun part of the wrap-up process. I also have to do the afterward, but that’s going to have to be short–the book is clocked in at 101,000 (and some change) words. This is the longest book I’ve written in years. I guess I am writing longer these days. Not sure what that’s about, but there you have it. I feel relatively confident I can get these finishing touches on the book done today.

The rest of this week I am going to focus on replacing “Don’t Look Down” with two other stories for the collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I’ll probably start working on Bury Me in Satin, my Nanowrimo project, on November 1 and hopefully will have a healthy first draft finished by the end of the month, after which I will spend December revising it and tearing apart/restructuring the WIP, which is what I plan on doing in the first two months of the new year; I’ll then have to spend another month or so writing a new ending for it, and then another month or so revising and polishing. Hopefully, come April, it’ll be in good enough shape to try to lure in an agent. One can hope, at any rate. And then I want to spend the summer writing Muscles, and then I am going to spend the fall trying to write something historical about New Orleans; I am just not quite sure yet what that project will be.

I didn’t sleep well Sunday night, so Monday I was tired all day. Monday night I slept deeply, but had to get up earlier than I wanted to; I felt rested but still slightly sleepy. Sleepy is better than tired; there’s a difference, and that distinction is important–kind of like the difference, from working out, between sore and tired. Since this is the week of the office move, my work schedule was disrupted; I had to get up early every day until today, which made me cranky and tired every night. I’m not really sure what my schedule is going to be next week. Alas, uncertainty is not one of my stronger suits. But I did sleep very well last night, getting up just around nine this morning and I feel rested and alert. This is a very good sign for the rest of the day, and the potential for productivity.

I also started gathering my essays over the last couple of evenings, which was interesting and fun, yet weird at the same time. There were essays I’d published that I’d forgotten about writing and publishing–seriously, who else forgets work they’ve done and been paid for? This mook, that’s who. (MOOK? This is what comes from following David Simon on Twitter.) So yes, that is definitely going to take a while to get in order. It’s always interesting–at least to me–to come across old things I’ve written, whether I remember them or not. If I do remember writing them or what they’re about, I almost always discover my memory is wrong when I start rereading them. I don’t mind it; it’s just odd. That’s kind of where The Fictions of My Life comes from; my memories aren’t correct so frequently because of the interpretive personal filter I view everything through that I often suspect my memories differ so much from the reality that they are closer to lies than truth.

And on that note, I think I shall head back into the spice mines.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

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Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad?

Well, it’s Sunday morning and there’s a Saints game today; I will probably ignore it, as my blood pressure and heart can’t really take it, and spend the day continuing to keep my head down and try to plough through all this work I have to get done today.

I got very little done yesterday. I had, despite the good night’s sleep and the good rest I got Friday night, it turned out my batteries were still too low for me to get anything requiring a great deal of thinking and thought done. It’s a shame, and I may not have been wise to spend the day resting and watching television and reading, but it was what my brain and my soul needed. I also refuse to beat myself up for taking me time anymore; I am too old and no longer have the energy and/or wherewithal to work constantly without taking time to refresh and recharge and revisit.

The news of course doesn’t help; the constant sense of outrage and anger at events transpiring in the world every day drains me of a lot of energy. Social media, which used to be a fun way of recharging and seeing what people are up to, has turned into a cesspool of lies, ignorance and weaponized hatred. I refuse to engage with trolls or trollish behavior; my rule of social media has always been if I won’t say it to your face I won’t say it on-line. This, of course, can be intensely problematic because I will say it right to your face. But my energies are best spent elsewhere; hearts and minds cannot be changed or altered through nasty social media battling, and I have neither the patience or energy to waste on lost souls with no capacity for reason or logic or compassion for other human beings.

So, today I am going to get cleaned up, do some chores, and I am going to focus on getting some writing/revising/editing done. I had hoped to be finished with the Scotty revision today, but the end goal of being able to turn it in by November 1 is still a distinct possibility, even by not doing any work on it yesterday. One of my primary concerns, as I may have mentioned, was the fear that I am rushing the revisions on these final chapters in an attempt to get it finished on my self-imposed deadline, and yesterday I also realized that I still have an additional three to four days to get this done by the 1st. There’s no need, absolutely no none, to revise three chapters today when I can actually manage one per day and still finish on time. Stop adding stress and pressure to your life, Gregalicious–it will be done when it is time for it to be done.

I got a copy of Joan Didion’s essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and dived into it some yesterday while football games played in the background (I have to admit I enjoyed watching Georgia do to Florida what LSU did to them; and that untimed play touchdown for the win by Kentucky over Missouri was amazing–definitely going down in Kentucky lore, which is usually about near-misses and coming close. As it happened, I thought to myself, you know, these are situations where Kentucky used to always lose. Maybe there has been a sea-change in the Bluegrass State; we will see what happens when they host Georgia next weekend). Didion is a great stylist; the way she uses words and creates sentences and paragraphs with an eye for a very telling detail is extraordinary. (I have some issues with Didion and the lens through which she sees things, but despite that lens the way she writes is exceptional. If I ever sit down and write about Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls, I will probably address them at that time.) And as with any writer who is truly terrific, reading her words made me think about my own, and gave me some thoughts.

As I said at the time, reading Bolin’s Dead Girls made me start thinking about my own essays; I’ve written quite a few over the years, and of course, as my friend Laura points out to me, my blog is essentially me writing a daily personal essay. I don’t know if I ever say anything truly earth-shattering or profound; I don’t think of myself as a great thinker, or being particularly perceptive and incisive in my points of view on many subjects. My intellect–and my ability to write essays–are still things I don’t have a lot of confidence in; thank you, public education and land grant colleges for making me insecure about these things. One of the myriad of reasons I started writing this blog back in December of 2004 on Livejournal was because I wanted to write about things no one would pay me to write about; to share my observations of the world, society, politics, and culture through the lens of a gay man in a highly homophobic world; it was also why I wrote about gay characters and themes in my fiction. My writing, by virtue of my lavender lens, is always going to be somewhat political; despite my privilege as a white man I still didn’t hit the privilege trifecta of straight white male, and while the privilege of being white male is still much better than any other variation of that, gay also negates a great deal of that.

I had originally, and always thought, that if I ever wrote about the Virginia experience, it would be an entire book, which I always jokingly called, to myself, Gay Porn Writer, because that was the way I amused myself throughout the entire banning experience–laughing about me being described in so many newspapers and angry emails and complaints as “gay porn writer Greg Herren.” Over the years since all that nonsense, and over the last few years in particular, I realized that isn’t enough material to write an entire book around, and realized I needed, if I was ever going to write about that experience, another hook. I thought about extrapolating that happening to me in 2004 with the changes in publishing and society since then; but it was always kind of amorphous. I thought maybe using that experience as a jumping off spot to talking about race, gender, and sex might be a great idea. Realizing that the Virginia experience was the basis for a personal essay, a long one, to be added to a collection of other essays I’ve written as well as others I could write, that I could write about my life and my experience and call the collection Gay Porn Writer: The Fictions of My Life was probably the best way to do this, and more workable than simply trying to piece together a non-fiction narrative about how gay work is seen as porn by so many homophobic people because the very word gay makes them think about sucking cock or butt fucking.

And I’ve written so much! I had no idea how much non-fiction I’ve actually done in my career; how many author interviews, how many book reviews and fitness columns and whatever else may have you I’ve written and published over the years.

One of the things I did do yesterday around the laziness was start writing down essay titles I remember having written in my journal, in order to start searching through files and computer drives for them, to put them all into one easily accessible folder for me in the future…which also startled me; I remembered so many, and there are probably many more that I don’t remember. But that’s one of the chores I’ve assigned myself today; start pulling those together. I know my essay from Love, Bourbon Street, about Katrina and the evacuation, is rather lengthy and would have to be the anchor to the book.

And now, back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

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