Category: crime fiction

Somebody’s Watching Me

I actually finished the first draft of a short story yesterday. It’s very rough, but it’s still a draft, and it’s finished. I’ll take it, thank you very much, and it was only 1200 words or so when I started working on it and it’s now about 3700, so I’ll gladly take a 2500 word tally for the day. Huzzah! I also started writing another one that’s at about 500 words right now, and I sort of have an idea where it’s going to go and how I’m going to finish it, so I take that as a win. I also have to write another one this weekend, and do some Scotty work and some other things, but am very excited to be writing again.

I’m still afraid I’m not able to do it on a daily basis, and everything I am writing is garbage, but hey, what can I say? Even producing work makes me feel insecure.

Paul and I have been watching the Hulu original series, Future Man, and Constant Reader, it’s hilarious, especially if you catch all the 1980’s references. But no worries, it’s just as enjoyable if you don’t. It’s a science fiction/time travel mess, borrowing tropes openly from other scifi–everything from The Last Starfighter to The Terminator to The Abyss–but it’s done reverentially, and it is very much aware. It does start a bit slow, but once it gets going it is hilarious. We’ll probably finish watching it tonight after the LSU-Texas A&M game.

The best character in the show is Wolf, played absolutely straight by Derek Wilson, who is absolutely pitch-perfect in the role. The show’s premise–a combination of both The Last Starfighter and The Terminator–is that in a dystopic future, the ‘Resistance’ sent a video game designed to find someone who would be their ultimate savior back in time, so that they can come back and kill the person who is, in this time, ultimately responsible for the dystopian future they live in. That person turns out to be Josh Futturman, who works as a janitor at Kronish Labs and lives with his parents. Played perfectly by Josh Hutcherson from The Hunger Games, Josh is just an ordinary guy, a bit of a loser with no girlfriend and no future–until the characters from his favorite video game, Tiger (Eliza Coupe) and Wolf (Derek Wilson) suddenly show up in his bedroom and change everything, Eliza Coupe is also terrific as Tiger–but the show doesn’t really hit its stride until they start traveling through time to save humanity from its ultimate destruction in their future. And my God, is it ever funny. Derek Wilson steals the show right out from under the rest of the cast, though–and if he doesn’t at least get an Emmy nom for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, there needs to be investigation into Emmy voting.

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Here’s Derek Wilson as Wolf:

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And now, back to the spice mines. I want to finish that short story this morning before it’s time for the Iron Bowl.

And by the way, Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley continues to enthrall.

 

Hold Me Now

Happy Thanksgiving! We have our deep dish pizza in the refrigerator, which we will be heating up later when our friend Lisa comes over to watch some movies; which is what we do every year for Thanksgiving. (Lisa is the one who introduced us to each other.) Today I am going to take a day off from writing and stressing; no news, no worries. Paul is going in to the office tomorrow, so I’ll have tomorrow to do some writing and editing and so forth and I also have Monday off as well. He’s departing to visit his mom for a week one week from today as well. So, yes, today is the day where I am not going to be stressed about anything and just relax and enjoy the day. I’ll probably spend Saturday doing copy edits and working on the Scotty Bible (which means, going through the books with post-it notes to mark pages with references to regular characters so I can check for continuity).

I finished reading Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds last night, and it is definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year; it’s a remarkable concept, and Sternbergh delivers on it completely. It’s just exceptional. I’m going to review it here, but I am going to let my thoughts on it brew for another couple of days or so. I also started reading Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley last night, and while I am only a few chapters in, it’s already blowing me away. This is some extraordinary writing and character development, people. I have Ivy’s earlier books in my enormous TBR pile, but I wanted to read this one and review it since it’s more current; her books will be moving up in the TBR pile now. I’ve now read some amazing books back to back; If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin, Sunburn by Laura Lippman, The Wife by Alafair Burke, and now The Blinds, and as I said, the Pochoda is also exceptional; I’ll be reviewing the others here closer to their release dates.

Glad I am not judging any awards this year or next. Whoa.

After abandoning the other short story I started working on another one. I wrote its first draft about thirty years ago, and of course, it’s terrible, but I liked the main character and I liked the setting, which are about the only things I am keeping for the story. I have, over the years, realized that the story is actually a great noir set up, so I am revising it accordingly, and while the story was originally about unrequited gay desire…I am changing it to something darker. The gay desire will still be there, but it’s just going to be a lot darker. This draft is just to get the story down; after which I will do another draft to deepen the characters, and then another to make the story itself stronger and more horrific/shocking, and then once more for language. This was the problem with the other story; I couldn’t get the story down and it was taking forever. (Although I am now itching to take another run at it, if you can believe that. Lord.)

And on that note I am going back to the spice mines. I need to get this place looking more ship-shape before Lisa arrives, and I have a shit ton of filing and organizing to do.

Here’s something I have always been thankful for: Calvin Klein underwear ads.

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Say It Isn’t So

Yesterday I gave up on a short story that was so fucking painful to write. I’ve literally been working on this story stubbornly for over a week, crested three thousand words yesterday, was nowhere near finished, and it took me about five hours to get about five hundred words done–and I questioned every single one of them. Do I still think it’s potentially a great story? Yes, I do. Am I going to waste any more time trying to write it right now? Hell no. I had wanted to submit it for the MWA anthology, which has a deadline of December 1, but if I am having this much trouble trying to get a first draft finished…there just ain’t no way I would have a polished and pristine version to submit that would have a chance of getting published against the hundreds of other amazing stories being sent in. Getting into one of the MWA anthologies is on my bucket list, but this year apparently isn’t going to be the year. It’s enormously disappointing, to say the least, but I should have given up on this story before now. I have too many other things to do before December 1 to justify having wasted so much time trying to get this story written. It just rings so false.

And it had so much potential. Oh, well. Sometimes that’s just the way the ball bounces, you know?

Slogging through writing that stupid fucking story has also fucked with my self-confidence, seriously. Not that I have a lot to begin with, but when you’re a writer you are in a constant state of questioning yourself: can I still do this? What if I’m burned out? What if I’ve suddenly lost the ability to do this? WHat if I can’t write anything decent anymore?

I mean, not being able to bang out the first draft of a short story? I used to be able to do that in about three hours, if I focused. And now I am wondering if I no longer have the ability to focus. See how that works?

Ah, well. So, now I am going to try to go work on another short story; a completely different one, a more noir-esque tale of lust and desire turned to murder in a damp Florida panhandle town, reeking of the sea and Spanish moss and towering pine trees and white sand. And I need to get back to work on the Scotty book, and I’ve got some editing to do.

Whatever.

Here’s another Calvin Klein underwear ad.

 

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Dancing in the Dark

Well, I finished Alafair Burke’s The Wife last night, and wow. Just….wow.

That is three, count ’em, three, amazing novels by women I’ve read recently; all of whom–Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman, Alafair Burke–were already writing fantastic novels, and yet somehow manage to get better with each new one.  As a writer myself, reading these fantastic novels is a bit daunting–it puts me in mind of why do I bother I will never be this good–but as a reader who loves books, they make me want to send off fireworks.

I also started reading Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds last night, and it’s also exceptional. I’d read his Edgar Award nominated debut, Shovel Ready, which was amazing, but somehow had missed his second novel; but got a free copy of The Blinds at Bouchercon (thank you, Harper Collins author signing party!) and have heard raves about it, so I decided to tackle it next. And yes, wow. I am also still processing The Wife, and Lippman’s Sunburn, and Gaylin’s If I Die Tonight. I will of course discuss all of these books closer to their release dates, in great detail, on here. But if you love great books, Constant Reader, you need to go pre-order these right the fuck now. You will not be sorry.

You’ll only be sorry if you don’t.

I don’t have to go into the office until late; which is lovely as I have about a gazillion things to do around the house this morning. I also have several errands to run: I have to stop at Garden District Books to pick up a book about the New Orleans Jewish community (more on that later); CVS to pick up a prescription; and of course, as always, I have to get the mail. I need to spend the morning outlining some short stories–one is due at the end of the month, and I am going to have to really get moving if I intend to get it finished–and I also seriously need to get some Scotty stuff finished. I also need, this week, to tear apart the WIP so I can figure out how to restructure it and add in the things that need to be added. I’d like to get that finished by the end of the year, and I think going about doing all of this in an organized fashion makes the most sense. It’s weird how disorganized I am about writing, when I try–almost to the point of being obsessive–I am about everything else in my life. I also need to start restricting my access to social media; that doesn’t help me with my attention span, which seems to be getting shorter and shorter as I get older. I’ve always had trouble focussing and maintaining that focus; I’ve got to be more laser-like in my focus if I’m going to get all of this stuff done by the end of the year.

I know I can do it, and I am actually feeling a lot more confident than I should be. But the busier I am, the more I have to do–the more likely I am to get things done.

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

Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you, Constant Reader. Enjoy.

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All Night Long (All Night)

Well, it’s Sunday. I made it through another week and it’s grim and gray out there again this morning, with a grocery run staring me down and some serious cleaning, organizing, writing and editing to do ahead of me for the rest of the day. Heavy heaving sigh. But that’s okay; I have a lot on my plate. Some exciting things dropped into my lap recently–pretty much all in the second half of last week–which means I have a lot of things to work on but very little time in which to do them. This also, of course, means all the damned procrastinating I’ve been doing pretty much this entire year needs to come to an end, and I’m already regretting the whatever it was that was allowing me to be lazy all year.

Bad Gregalicious! Bad Gregalicious!

I had wanted to get some more reading done this weekend–Alafair Burke’s The Wife is truly extraordinary and it’s killing me having to read it in bits and pieces–but it doesn’t seem likely. I’ll probably get to finish it this week, as I am doing a lot of testing events this week and can read between clients. We also finished watching Mindhunter last night, which was absolutely amazing, and started watching American Vandal, which is a clever idea…we’ll give it another episode because we’re a bit on the fence about it. Watching Mindhunter also put us behind on our other shows that are currently airing, so we’ll need to get caught up on those tonight.

I do feel extremely motivated today; I slept really well last night so am feeling all I can conquer the world today, which is an absolutely lovely feeling. It’s certainly been awhile since I’ve felt that way, and I really do love the feeling. I have to work late nights tomorrow and Tuesday; the rest of the week is normal, and of course next week is Thanksgiving! Where oh where did this year go?

And I have SUCH a plethora of riches in my TBR pile; the new Donna Andrews, the new Ivy Pochoda, the new Adam Sternburgh…not to mention everything else that’s in my pile and has been for YEARS.

And speaking of which, I need to get back to the spice mines or nothing’s going to get done.

Here’s a Sunday hunk for you, Constant Reader:

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Missing You

So, this came in the mail yesterday.

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Yup, it’s the Anthony Award I received for Best Anthology for editing Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016. I was at the airport boarding my flight home when my name was called; my phone immediately began blowing up and I was more than a little stunned, surprised, thrilled and I don’t know what all.

So cool. It’s gorgeous, and a lot heavier than it looks.

So, since I wasn’t there to accept in person, I am going to give an acceptance speech. (I didn’t have one prepared; I was so certain I wasn’t going to win we booked our flights home for Sunday.)

The first time I signed a contract to edit an anthology I didn’t know the first thing about doing an anthology. So I asked an editor whom I had long admired for some advice. All he said was “only work with good writers.” With Blood on the Bayou, that was certainly the case. I didn’t know what we were going to get when I put the call for submissions out; we wound up with so much good material we could have done two anthologies. So, let me thank everyone who submitted for doing such exceptional work, for giving me such an embarrassment of riches to work with. I want to thank the people whose stories did wind up being used–you were all amazing, a joy to work with, and I wouldn’t have this if it weren’t for you. I need to thank Eric Campbell and everyone at Down and Out Books; again, you had no problem whatsoever with my moods and my oddities and my quirks and I greatly appreciate that. I owe Heather Graham and Connie Perry, the New Orleans co-chairs, a big thank you as well for letting me do this anthology, and I also need to thank Art Taylor, who put the whole thing in motion for me–none of this would have happened without Art. I also want to thank everyone I’ve ever known in my entire life.

One of the great ironies of editing this anthology–I think it was the twentieth I’ve done–was that when I finished editing the last one I said, “this is the last time I’m doing this. This is my last anthology.” And yet…here I am.

But this is just so lovely. I never dreamed I’d ever actually win an Anthony Award. I mean, I hoped, of course–who doesn’t hope they’ll win an award in their field? I hope for all kinds of things, but I don’t expect to get most of them.

And it didn’t seem quite real until now–that’s it here and I can look at it.

Wow.

And it’s Friday, just like that. I have so much to do this weekend. Sigh.

 

Karma Chameleon

I had some seriously strange dreams last night. The first was a nightmare involving reptile and snakes–that’s all I remember of it–but Paul had to wake me up because I was crying out in terror in my sleep. (Thanks for the rescue.) In the second, more benign but also scary dream that I remember, I was teaching a creative writing class, focusing on short stories. I suppose the subliminal message my mind is telling me is how terrified I am of writing short stories, and I have any number of them on deck that need to be written, and time is rapidly running out before they are due. Heavy heaving sigh. Maybe in the first dream the snakes and reptiles symbolized the deadlines.

Stupid short stories anyway.

We’ve finished watching season 2 of Freakish, and alas, it’s not as good as Season 1. We’ll probably watch the third season, if there is was, to see if it recovers its lost promise; but yeah, jumped the shark and went off the rails in the second season. Plus, it has The Walking Dead problem; to up the ante they have to  keep killing off characters and introducing new ones. The problem (spoiler!)is they keep killing off ones we like and keeping the unlikable, stupid ones…and adding more unlikable, stupid ones. In the first season, part of its charm was that Breakfast Club thing of kids who have nothing in common and are from completely different social circles, for the most part, having to work together and come together and bond to survive. That was lost in the second season; which is a shame as it was one of the show’s strengths; the developing relationships and bonds between the characters.

We’ve also started watching Mindhunter on Netflix, which is fucking amazing. The first episode was a trifle slow, but still interesting; episode 2 really gets the ball moving and when it was finished, I was really disappointed we didn’t have time to stay up and watch another episode. It really is terrific–and the guy who plays the Co-ed Killer should win an Emmy for Best Guest Star. He was absolutely riveting. They also have done a remarkably good job of capturing the late 1970’s; as I said to Paul last night, ‘wow, I had no idea or memory that the late 1970’s were so aesthetically ugly; colors and designs and so forth. Blech.’ Can’t wait to get home tonight and watch another.

I read another chapter of Alafair Burke’s marvelous The Wife last night, and that story is also really starting to pick up. One of the great things about Burke’s writing is her attention to little details that make the story and characters seem absolutely real and authentic.

I also–speaking of short stories and so forth–got some revising of early Scotty chapters in the new book done, and realized that a scene in Chapter Three is eerily reminiscent of one in a short story I am writing. Ah, well, I guess there’s no harm in slightly plagiarizing yourself, is there?

The weather was weird yesterday; it appears to be more of the same out there outside my windows this morning. Heavy heaving sigh. At least today I know to take a Claritin before i leave the house.

And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, Constant Reader, actor/model Gordon Scott:

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Ghostbusters

Wednesday and a gray morning here in the Lost Apartment. For a brief moment I thought it was Thursday; I don’t know where the hell that came from, but it’s indeed Wednesday, and as I sip my second cup of coffee and look at cats sleeping on the scaffolding outside my window, I am girding my loins for an incredibly busy day at the office.

I’m enjoying thoroughly Alafair Burke’s The Wife, which I am reading about five to ten pages at a time at night before I turn off the light and go to sleep; I look forward to being able to dive into it a lot more thoroughly. I also managed another 1500 words or so on Scotty yesterday, and finished that darned essay. I don’t have to turn the essay in until this weekend, so I am going to let it sit for a few days before I reread it and tweak it. It’s about censorship, banning and sensitivity readers; my big fear is the points I make are going to be offensive.,.but maybe the fact that I’m worried about unintentionally giving offense is a good sign? I dunno.

We will have to see. It’s a very charged topic.

My kitchen is a mess this morning; and I have yet to decide what to take with me for lunch. Heavy sigh. I should clean up this mess so I don’t have to deal with it tonight; I should have dealt with it all last night. I hate when I do that.

I’m feeling good about my work again; which is something. Getting writing done is always the key to this; there’s an anthology I want to submit a story to whose deadline is the end of this month and I’ve only written a small part of the story. I’d hate to not submit, but the story also has to be really good. I could focus on it over the Thanksgiving break, of course, but I’d like to have a rough draft figured out and written before then. I hate when I do this to myself; and I have another that I’ve agreed to write by the end of December that I haven’t really started yet.

And on that note, this kitchen isn’t going to clean itself. For your Hump Day Hunk, here’s professional wrestler Ashton Vuitton:

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Owner of a Lonely Heart

Tuesday, Tuesday. I managed to slog through another thousand words of the new Scotty yesterday, and some things I want to do with the book are starting to take shape. I also managed another five hundred words on an essay I am writing and need to finish, but it’s a tricky one–one that could easily give offense. I am going to go back to the beginning of it again this morning and see if I can start revising at the start, and maybe then I’ll be able to finish it. I feel a bit rusty–I used to be able to knock off a couple of thousand words in an hour or two, no problem, every morning, and now it’s more of a slog. I am going to blame it on a lack of practice, and that I need to simply get my writing muscles back into shape.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I have to say that I finished reading my advance copy of Laura Lippman’s Sunburn this weekend, and was completely blown away by it. I’ll post a review when it’s around time for the book to be released, where I will go into more detail about how incredible this book is, but reading it and the new Alison Gaylin (If I Die Tonight) was truly inspirational. Ironically, I myself have had an idea for a noir thriller lying around in my files for decades now, also called Sunburn–which, obviously, I won’t be able to use now, if I write it I’ll clearly need a new title–but they have nothing in common other than the title and the sensibility. I love noir so much, and I really want to write more of it. I also started reading my advance copy of Alafair Burke’s The Wife Sunday night, and got more into it last night, and it, too, is quite extraordinary.

Reading such amazing work by friends is inspirational, but also a bit humbling. But I also kind of love reading books that make me think, boy, I have to work harder and do better. 

And on that note, I should get back to the spice mines and get to work.

Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you:

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Hello

When I was cleaning out/working in my storage unit a few weeks ago, I uncovered the only surviving copies of two anthologies I edited pre-Katrina: Shadows of the Night (horror) and Upon a Midnight Clear (gay Christmas tales). I picked them up Saturday night during the Alabama-LSU game and paged through them, and laughed as I realized I’d published a story of my own in each anthology, but being afraid of being accused of ‘self-publishing’, I used a pseudonym. The pseudonym was one I was going to use for writing horror, and the name I chose makes me laugh really hard: Quentin Harrington. Quentin came from the old show Dark Shadows, and “Harrington” was a variation of my last name that, sometimes but not very often, people used to actually think was my name (along with Harris, Herron, Heron, Huron, Aaron, etc.).

The stories, which I’d completely forgotten about, were “The Troll in the Basement” and “The Snow Queen.”

The books have been out of print for about ten years now, and Shadows was actually a Lambda Literary Award finalist (the first time I was nominated twice in the same year; I was also nominated in the Men’s Mystery category that year for Jackson Square Jazz, and was also the first time for me to lose twice in the same year). Shadows was inspired by two thoughts: one, how much I enjoyed Michael Rowe’s two Queer Fear anthologies, and by knowing how many writer friends I had who enjoyed horror but didn’t write it. I thought it would be interesting to get a group of writers who didn’t write horror, and see what they could come up with. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about my own story; which isn’t bad, but isn’t great, either. It had one of those 1950’s EC Comics endings–something I still tend to do, even with crime stories, and is something I need to get away from.

Upon a Midnight Clear was an anthology I’d been wanting to do for a very long time before it came to fruition. I’d always wanted to do an anthology reclaiming Christmas for LGBTQ people; there is so much out there–TV shows, movies, specials, books, etc.–for Christmas but none of it exploring it from the queer outsider’s point of view. I’d gotten a story submitted for another anthology that was Christmas-themed, and didn’t really fit that particular anthology; but it also triggered the why not do a queer Christmas anthology? It could be a perennial seller at Christmas time. And that’s how the anthology was born. I got some terrific stories (of particular note: Jim Grimsley’s “Comfort and Joy,”  David McConnell’s “Christmas 1989,” and “Our Family’s Things” by Jay Quinn–but they were all lovely stories in one way or another) and the book sold a fair amount of copies. My own story was a twist on Han Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen,” not an exact rewrite or retelling, but something I took and twisted and made my own. I liked the story a lot, but had completely forgotten I’d written it.

Alas, I only have one author copy of each anthology; someone on Twitter was looking for queer Christmas stories and ‘Nathan Burgoine recommended Midnight Clear,  and if I had even one spare copy I would have sent it to the person looking. But I don’t, and so I can’t part with my copy.

I also was invited to write a story for an anthology yesterday, which was thrilling (it’s always nice to be asked) and the story itself is going to be a challenge to write, which is also thrilling. I do love me a challenge.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning and finishing reading Laura Lippman’s astonishing Sunburn, and started reading Alafair Burke’s The Wife last night. I have a lot of thoughts about the Lippman, just as I do about the Alison Gaylin I finished Saturday night, but will review them and talk more in depth about both books closer to their release dates. I am enjoying Alafair’s book, too, by the way.

And now, back to the spice mines.