Category: crime fiction

All I Need

I had a lovely, relaxing day yesterday of reading and cleaning, capped up with watching three more episodes of Sherlock; tonight we will finish that off and hopefully, there will be a new Veep to watch, else we’ll have to find something else. I am greatly enjoying The Sympathizer, am almost halfway finished with it so probably will get it finished today, which will then beg the question of what to read next. I’m leaning towards James M. Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress…but there are any number of other books in the running as well. The riches contained within  my TBR pile are simply mind-boggling; and it’s continuing to grow exponentially. Heavy heaving sigh. I also want to start doing some re-organizing of the storage attic today; that, along with some work on the WIP as well as some more cleaning around the Lost Apartment will probably account for most of my day. Paul will undoubtedly watch some of the French Open, and around mid-afternoon I will cook out for our late lunch/early dinner.

Another exciting day in New Orleans.

It feels really good to be so well-rested; and tomorrow is a late night at work for more–bar testing, so I don’t even have to go in until later, pretty much freeing up my entire day to get some more cleaning and organizing and writing done before I head to the office. I rather do think that three day weekends are much better than regular ones; the extra day off is really lovely. I wish there was a way I could rearrange my schedule to work four ten hour days and take a three day weekend every weekend….but that’s just not possible, alas. It would be lovely, though, wouldn’t it?

At least this will be a short work week.

The Sympathizer is, while a bit hard to get into at first, quite compelling. The first book to win both an Edgar (Best First Novel) and the Pulitzer Prize, it’s also the first time I’ve read about Vietnam from the perspective of a Vietnamese–which is certainly rather American of me, isn’t it? Everything I’ve read about Vietnam has been from the perspective of Westerners–from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American through Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War; and certainly the Western/white gaze has been pretty aptly explored on film and television (I should rewatch China Beach again); but this view, from a character who is not only Vietnamese, but a Viet Cong undercover operative implanted in the staff of a South Vietnamese general–to the point of also evacuating and spying on the refugee community in Southern California–is quite interesting. (I also have a copy of Vu Tran’s Dragonfish, which I am looking forward to reading.) I had an idea for a noir centered around a young man of Vietnamese/American mixed heritage, set in a small town on either the Gulf Coast of Alabama or Florida–writing this would require a LOT of research, obviously–but I think it could be interesting, and certainly would be fun to write.

But I need to get this revision done by the end of June, so I can spend the rest of the summer writing the next Scotty book.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Memorial Day hunk for you.

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One Less Bell to Answer

Last night was the best night of sleep I’ve had in at least a week; I slept for nearly ten hours, uninterrupted and deeply. This morning I do not feel groggy or like I need to go back to sleep at any time soon; which is an absolutely lovely feeling. I was very tired yesterday–the gym, errands in the heat, a week of feeling groggy and unrested–and also in the mail yesterday I received a bottle of pillow spray from a company called ThisWorks: a pillow spray that the posher airlines pass out to their first class cabin travelers to help them sleep. I sprayed my pillow lightly with it last night before i took to my bed, and along with my usual sleep assistants I slumbered deeply and well. Today, I feel like I can conquer the world, which is a wonderful feeling I’ve not had in a very long time.

Much to our surprise, we discovered last night that we’d forgotten about the BBC series Sherlock and there were actually two seasons (‘series,’ as they say in Britain) of the show we’d not seen; so we snuggled in our respective seats and started watching. I’d forgotten how much I love the series, due in no small part to the excellent casting. I read the Holmes stories when I was a kid–there was a Whitman edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles I’d purchased for eighty-nine cents and it was shelved with the Trixie Beldens; Holmes is so much a part of the popular culture that I of course knew who he was, and as a fan of mysteries, I felt it behooved me to read the Holmes stories. I wasn’t completely taken with them, although I enjoyed them–although it does occur to me that I may want to give them a reread–there’s an entire group of crime writers/fans who are quite literally obsessed with Holmes and Watson, and of course the terrific Laurie King has written her own tales, from the point of view of Mary Russell–and the awesome Lyndsay Faye has as well (I really need to read both King and Faye; I love King’s Kate Martinelli series, and Lyndsay is one of my favorite people on the planet).

So many books, so little time.

I was so tired yesterday that I didn’t get as much cleaning done as I would like, so I am going to try to do that today around some revising and rewriting. I am itching to get to the WIP, and to possibly finish “Quiet Desperation” and send it out into the world. My goal is to get the revision of the WIP finished by the end of June as well as to get at least three short stories finished in that same amount of time; that’s quite a lot of work, but I also know I can do it. I also want to get more reading done. Reading is crucial to being a writer; I am always amazed at aspiring writers who claim they don’t read. A love of reading, at least for me, is integral to my wanting to be a writer in the first place; I love books, and everything about them. (Which reminds me, I need to get a library card.)

Also on the agenda for this weekend (probably tomorrow) is reading the manual for my car and teaching myself how to use all of its tricks. I’ve slowly figured out some of them, but it seems silly to have a car that has functions I don’t use because I don’t know how to when all I have to do is read the damned manual and then sit in the car and go over them all. Heavy sigh. I even forgot–until I got the manual out of the glove box yesterday–that the car has a CD player (seeing the CD’s in the glovebox–both by Fleetwood Mac–reminded me).

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

Here’s a Sunday hunk for you.

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Big Yellow Taxi

Christ, it’s hot. I think this is the first day so far this year where it’s been hotter than ninety degrees and humid, and yes, in case you’re wondering, it’s miserable outside. I had Wacky Russian this morning, then ran to the post office, the grocery store, and Costco. So, I am both exhausted and drenched in sweat. I just ordered our weekend treat–a Chicago-style deep dish pizza from That’s Amore–and if I didn’t have to walk to pick it up and bring it home, I would be in the shower right now. As there’s no point to taking one now when I am just going to get sweaty all over again, I am holding off.

But I am miserable, even in the air conditioned comfort of The Lost Apartment, as am still wet and sticky. Blech. But…that pizza is going to taste amazing, and then I can take a long, hot shower…then repair to my easy chair with The Sympathizer and some fizzy water. We finished watching The Keepers last night (color me unimpressed; there was such obvious editorial manipulation–which, of course, is always necessary in a documentary, but this was so blatant that it was noticeable, and it raised some questions that it never even addressed), and now will have to find something to watch tonight. I cruised through Netflix, Hulu, and Prime before the gym this morning, and while I did find some things of interest, overall nothing that was oh, I can’t wait to watch this!

Ah, well, we can always rent movies from iTunes, I suppose.

As I was cruising around New Orleans this hot, muggy afternoon, my mind went back to the stalled Scotty book and I realized that, once again, what I was doing wrong was trying to force the original story into the Scotty book. I thought I had figured that out already, and I did to a degree, but it occurred to me that part of what I feel was missing from the series since Katrina can easily be remedied, and if I go back to Scotty’s roots, the book will be that much easier to write. I imagined an opening scene with Scotty having lunch with his sister, Rain, at her house–which we finally saw in Baton Rouge Bingo–and thought it made sense to delve into the family again. As Rain is friends with some of the ‘Grande Dames of New Orleans’, it only makes sense, plus it gives me an opportunity to get Taylor into the story as well. I also need to figure out a way to get Scotty’s parents into the story, and it’s been far too long since there’s been one of these where Frank and Colin both were present–I had developed a  very bad habit of sending Colin off on missions and sending Frank away for wrestling tours so Scotty was all alone–and I want this book to be longer than the others, as well. I want to really get deep into it, in a way I feel I haven’t since Mardi Gras Mambo. 

On the other hand, maybe I’m not the best judge of this. After all, Katrina kind of intervened, and that changed the way I look at things…so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that’s what’s going on here.

Heavy heaving sigh.

The revision of the WIP is also going well; I am very excited.

Oops! Time to go get the pizza.

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader.

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You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Wednesday, and another late night of bar testing. But there is a three day weekend looming, which is an absolutely lovely thought. I do want to get quite a bit finished by Tuesday; I’ve been lazy and lethargic lately–I’ve been sleeping so deeply and well that I remain groggy throughout the next day, which is quite odd and is taking some adjusting. I am still reading The Sympathizer, which is extraordinary, and we are watching a rather frustrating true-crime documentary on Netflix, The Keepers. (It’s enjoyable, but I’m getting a very strong sense of documentarian manipulation; there are some fairly obvious questions no one is asking, and there are only two episodes left; which means it is either entirely possible those questions may not ever be asked–which is unforgivable in a criminal ‘investigation’–and if they are not asked until the last two episodes, well, it’s audience manipulation to stretch it out as long as possible. Either way, #epicfail.)

I am also enjoying American Gods. It’s been years since I read the book–which I remember enjoying, but none of the details; I do remember the over-all concept of the book, which the show is illustrating very nicely. I probably won’t reread the book–my TBR pile is still absolutely insane, and I feel completely defeated every time I see it, considering it’s most of the living room AND the laundry room–but I do want to reread Good Omens, which I think IS getting filmed as well. I read it a million years ago, and all I remember about it was that it was about the Apocalypse yet was hysterically funny. I am also enjoying my current non-fiction read, The Affair of the Poisons, which is giving me such a clear picture of what life was like at the French court in the seventeenth century that I may even be able to begin sketching out the plot/structure of a secret project I’ve been wanting to write for over twelve years.

I’m also getting a much clearer picture of how to write/restructure Crescent City Charade–walking away from it to work on the secret project was probably the smartest thing I could have ever done; the book is becoming much clearer in my head, and I think it’s going to be maybe one of the funniest and best Scottys ever. Once I get finished with the revision of the secret project, I am going to be able to dive head-first into the Scotty, and am betting I’ll be able to get through it rather quickly (always a plus). I have another book I want to write this year, so am thinking if I can get the secret project revised/rewritten by the end of June, I can spend the summer doing the Scotty and can spend the fall writing the other book, Muscles, which will be my first straight-up noir.

I am itching to get started on it…but time. Patience, Gregalicious, patience.

Okay, I need to get my errands done and some clean-up work around the house as well.

Here’s a Hump Day Hunk for you.

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Monday Monday

I slept so deeply and well last night that not only did I not want to get up this morning, I am still groggy, despite many many many cups of coffee. It’s generally not a good thing to start a week off groggy, but there is a three day weekend on the horizon (HUZZAH!) look forward to. You’ve got to love that, don’t you?

I started reading The Sympathizer yesterday, and got about fifteen pages in. It’s quite good, and like the Whitehead novel, I suspect it’s going to take me a while to get through it. It’s interesting to see the Vietnam War from the perspective of an actual Vietnamese person (thus far I’ve only see the white/American gaze on the war), and I’ve been wanting to write a noir with its roots in the Vietnam War for quite some time, so this book is kind of a godsend. There’s also a very large Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, which I’ve also always wanted to write about (Poppy Z. Brite wrote about the New Orleans Vietnamese community in his novel Exquisite Corpse, which I should probably reread). The idea for the noir is still swirling around in my head; I have some basic idea of what it will be about and the story, but it’s still in that amorphous state. I didn’t get much writing or revising done yesterday (I did get some done, though. Don’t judge me.), but I did have a great brainstorm about the WIP, which is told in a very rigid, third person point-of-view; maybe I should show it from the occasional point of view of other people? I’ve made a note about this, but I am going to try to revise it with the point-of-view as originally seen intact; or maybe try one chapter in another p.o.v., see how it goes.

See? Revising can be fun.

I do want to get the new draft of “Quiet Desperation” finished this week, and I found a place to submit “Keeper of the Flame” to, so I am most likely going to do that on Wednesday, when I have a late night and as such don’t have to come back into the office until later.

And on that note, best to get back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for you.

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Sunday Morning Coming Down

Summer humidity finally arrived yesterday in all of its noxious glory. This morning, there is rain in the forecast for most of the day and my windows are covered on condensation. I slept very well last night, and also got most of my weekend chores done yesterday so today I can devote myself to writing, revising, and editing. It’s very lovely, you know, to wake up feeling rested. I think there’s another load of dishes that need to be run through the dishwasher, but other than that (and straightening up) I have my entire day free. I am trying to decide what novel to read next, and am leaning towards Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, but there are also some other books in the running. I’ll make up my mind at some point later today when I need to take a break from writing/revising/editing.

Last night, I did read Megan Abbott’s brilliant short story, “Girlie Show,” from Lawrence Block’s In Light or In Shadow. As always with Abbott, I was immediately drawn into the story; her remarkable gift for choosing just the right words, and for coming up with new, extraordinary word choices to describe something that create the picture in your head perfectly. She is also a very spare writer, able to do things with a five or six word sentence that other writers would need a lengthy paragraph to get across. The book itself is gorgeous, with reproductions of the Hopper paintings that inspired the writers. It’s also an incredibly impressive list of name authors–everyone from Block himself to Stephen King to Lee Child to Joyce Carol Oates to Jeffrey Deaver to Abbott herself; it is actually an incredible honor to be nominated in the same Anthony category as this book, frankly.

But back to Abbott’s story.

“She went udders out.”

“No pasties even?”

“Like a pair of traffic lights.”

Pauline hears them on the porch. Bud is telling her husband about a trip to New York City a few years ago. Going to the Casino de Paree.

Her husband says almost nothing, smoking cigarette after cigarette and making sure always has a Blatz in hand from the metal cooler beside him.

“Nipples like strawberries,” Bud is saying. “But she never took off her G-string. And she never spread her legs.”

The story is a return to period pieces, stories set in our more societally repressed past, like her early novels The Song Is You, Bury Me Deep, and Queenpin. I love her more recent novels, that are set in the present day, but no one writes period pieces quite as beautifully as she does. I’ve tried writing period stories, but am incredibly terrible at them, and I envy the ease with which Abbott spins her tales. She gets to the heart of her characters is such minimal yet insightful and clever ways; almost like she is tossing off a sentence so casually that at first it seems to just be another sentence, but there is so much truth and meaning contained within those few words that the reader gets an almost complete picture of who that character is…kind of like the story of Bette Davis, trying to understand her character Margo in All About Eve, and asking writer/director Joseph Mankieowicz for some insight. Davis later recalled, “He just shrugged and said ‘Margo is the kind of woman who treats a mink coat like a poncho,’ and I immediately knew exactly who she was.”

Abbott has that ability, and it’s always a pleasure to get lost in the richness of her words, the textures and layers of her stories.

And isn’t it way past time for a collection of her short stories? Just sayin’.

As I head back into the spice mines, I shall leave you with a Sunday hunk.

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Another Saturday Night

Well, it’s early afternoon in New Orleans. I’ve done my workout, run errands for both myself and Paul–including the always dreaded grocery run–and now am home, a bit worn out and needing to hop in the shower. The humidity is thick out there today, so thick I’ve already had to take a Claritin-D, and my kitchen is a mess and I have lots of laundry to do. I don’t think I’m going to do any writing today–my brain is tired; that may change later, one never knows–but I think I am going to just spend the rest of the day relaxing, reading, and slowly but surely getting the apartment straightened up and cleaned up and organized; the never-ending struggle not to live in a slovenly dump. Heavy heaving sigh. I also want to get back to reading About the Author, and select what I am going to read next (although I suspect, having gotten two anthologies in the mail–Storm Warning: Chesapeake Crimes and In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper—I may just curl up with some exceptional short stories.

Stranger things have happened.

We got all caught up last night on both The Handmaid’s Tale (which continues to be incredibly gripping while horrifying) and The Mick, which is a truly demented sitcom we are enjoying tremendously. I’m not sure what we are going to watch tonight–we’ve started watching the new season of American Crime, which seems to be about migrant worker, sex trafficking, and the opiod addiction crisis, and it really looks really gripping and good; I am really sorry the show has been cancelled. We never did watch the first season, so we can also always go back and watch it, but it’s a shame. Then again, a highly intelligent show about crime that shows the same crime from many different perspectives, with all the necessary nuance and complexity, without clear cut villains and heroes–well, it was bound to not last long.

Okay, some time has passed, and I indeed curled up in my easy chair with About the Author, and finished it. It’s terrific, full of twists and turns and surprises; and the author, John Colapinto, did a most excellent job of making an extremely unlikable protagonist, well, likable. I can highly recommend it; it still holds up, even though it is nearly twenty years old–obviously, technology has moved on–but other than that, it is so well done and so well told that you don’t really notice that sort of thing. Most, most excellent. I am currently grilling hamburgers while reading Megan Abbott’s story, “Girlie Show”, in Lawrence Block’s Edward Hopper anthology; it is, thus far, quite sublime.

And now, I need to go flip the burgers.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you.

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Skies the Limit

Well, this has been a pretty good week for one Gregalicious. Tuesday my new Todd Gregory book was released officially, and yesterday I found out that Blood on the Bayou made the Anthony short list for Best Anthology. Needless to say, that was pretty cool. I spent most of my free time yesterday making sure I was thanking everyone for their kind congratulatory posts and messages, since I didn’t want to miss anyone. (Today I’ll have to make a blanket thank you post on Facebook and Twitter, just to be on the safe side.) It’s also kind of cool to be in the same category as people like Lawrence Block, Eric Beetner, Jen Conley, and Jay Stringer. I mean, whoa. Not bad for the teen-aged kid from Kansas with big dreams, right? I don’t expect to win–I mean, seriously, look at the competition–but I’ve ordered copies of the other finalists; it should be great fun to read them.

I am still reading About the Author, just haven’t had a chance to get back into it this week yet. I am hoping I’ll be able to get into it tonight. I also need to get back to work on the WIP. There never seems to be enough time in the day, does there? Heavy heaving sigh. Well, I am hopeful I’ll be able to get things done this weekend. I have to get to the gym more, too. *eye roll* I’ve been saying that for months now, haven’t I? But hey, I’ve gone down a pants size! That counts for something, doesn’t it? Hush, you in the back!

Honestly. Some people.

But I’ve been having a good week, clearly; and it was sorely needed. The rollercoaster of emotions also known as my writing career has been kind of extreme lately; I’ve taken some blows, sadly, but I’ve also rediscovered how much I actually love writing, and have even managed to figure out how to enjoy editing/revising my own work–which is a serious breakthrough for me. I am also finding that leaving my work to simmer for a while before getting back to the revising/editing is an enormous help as well; I can see things that I didn’t notice before, and I am not quite as tied to the story as I was originally, or how it is structured, and so on. My ridiculous stubbornness along with my natural inclination towards laziness can also prove to be problematic.

Onward and upward!

And here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you: Jan-Michael Vincent in the flower of his beauty and youth. I had a huge crush on him as a teenager.

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Wildest Dreams

ANTHONY AWARD NOMINATIONS

Eep! I’m up for an Anthony Award!

The 2017 Bouchercon organizers announce the Anthony Award Nominations. Congratulations to all. The Anthony Awards are given at each annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention with the winners selected by attendees. Bouchercon is the World Mystery Convention. This year Bouchercon will take place in Toronto, Canada, October 12-15, 2017. 

Best Novel

You Will Know Me – Megan Abbott [Little, Brown]
Where It Hurts – Reed Farrel Coleman [G.P. Putnam’s Sons]

Red Right Hand – Chris Holm [Mulholland]
Wilde Lake – Laura Lippman [William Morrow]
A Great Reckoning – Louise Penny [Minotaur]

Best First Novel

Dodgers – Bill Beverly [Crown]
IQ – Joe Ide [Mulholland]
Decanting a Murder – Nadine Nettmann [Midnight Ink]

Design for Dying – Renee Patrick [Forge]
The Drifter – Nicholas Petrie [G.P. Putnam’s Sons]

Best Paperback Original

Shot in Detroit – Patricia Abbott [Polis]
Leadfoot – Eric Beetner [280 Steps]
Salem’s Cipher – Jess Lourey [Midnight Ink]
Rain Dogs – Adrian McKinty [Seventh Street]
How to Kill Friends and Implicate People – Jay Stringer [Thomas & Mercer]

Heart of Stone – James W. Ziskin [Seventh Street]

Best Short Story

“Oxford Girl” – Megan Abbott, Mississippi Noir [Akashic]
“Autumn at the Automat” – Lawrence Block, In Sunlight or in Shadow [Pegasus]
“Gary’s Got A Boner” – Johnny Shaw, Waiting to Be Forgotten [Gutter]
“Parallel Play” – Art Taylor, Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning [Wildside]
“Queen of the Dogs” – Holly West, 44 Caliber Funk: Tales of Crime, Soul and Payback [Moonstone]

Best Critical Nonfiction Work

Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life – Peter Ackroyd [Nan A. Talese]
Letters from a Serial Killer – Kristi Belcamino & Stephanie Kahalekulu [CreateSpace]

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin [Liveright]
Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker – David J. Skal [Liveright]
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer – Kate Summerscale [Bloomsbury/Penguin]

Best Children’s/YA Novel

Snowed – Maria Alexander [Raw Dog Screaming]

The Girl I Used to Be – April Henry [Henry Holt]

Tag, You’re Dead – J.C. Lane [Poisoned Pen]
My Sister Rosa – Justine Larbalestier [Soho Teen]

The Fixes – Owen Matthews [HarperTeen]

Best Anthology

Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns – Eric Beetner, ed. [Down & Out]
In Sunlight or in Shadow – Lawrence Block, ed. [Pegasus]
Cannibals: Stories from the Edge of the Pine Barrens – Jen Conley [Down & Out]
Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016 – Greg Herren, ed. [Down & Out]
Waiting To Be Forgotten: Stories of Crime and Heartbreak, Inspired by the Replacements – Jay Stringer, ed. [Gutter]

Best Novella (8,000-40,000 words)

Cleaning Up Finn – Sarah M. Chen [CreateSpace]
No Happy Endings – Angel Luis Colón [Down & Out]
Crosswise – S.W. Lauden [Down & Out]
Beware the Shill – John Shepphird [Down & Out]
The Last Blue Glass – B.K. Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2016 [Dell]

Blank Space

It always feels good to finish a project. It’s not entirely in the books yet, of course–there’s another round of edits, and then page proofs to get through–but this stage is completed and it feels lovely.  Ironically, it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would; I’d started working on it Friday night, and had gotten much further along in it than I’d remembered. I then repaired to my easy chair and read some more of About the Author, which is terrific; a really great noir I can’t wait to finish. I did have to put it aside, though, because it reached that point I always call the “uh-oh” moment; the part where the character makes the really bad decision that will eventually bring him down. It’s an extremely well put-together novel, structurally speaking, which gives me some ideas about a noir I want to write–the long-thought about Muscles.

Reading is such a lovely gift to one’s self, really. I am so glad I learned to read very young, and fell in love with it. It’s a terrific pleasure.

Last night, TCM aired the old Lana Turner movie Imitation of Life, directed by Douglas Sirk, and I watched it for the first time, while paging through Sam Staggs’ gossipy book about it, Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of “Imitation of Life.” I love Staggs’ books; I’d already read both All About ‘All About Eve’, Close-up on Sunset Boulevard, and When Blanche Met Brando. They’re wonderful books about the stories behind the making of iconic films–including gossip, of course–and also wittily written and compulsively readable. I do want to read the others again; I recently bought a bunch of them in a lot on eBay  just for that purpose. This one also includes information around the notorious Johnny Stompanato murder–he was Lana’s abusive lover; one night he was threatening her and he was stabbed by her daughter, Cheryl Crane–and it was after this scandal that Lana was cast in Imitation of Life. The movie itself works on so many levels; it’s campy but self-aware, and everyone plays it straight, which makes it even better. Turner plays Lora, an aspiring actress with a young daughter, whose life becomes entwined with that of Annie and her daughter, Sarah Jane–Annie is black and the two come to live with Lora and her daughter Susie, who is about the same age. Lora of course becomes a huge star, and the drama surrounding her has to do with her own self-absorption and basically she allows Annie to raise Susie–but it’s the story of Annie and her light-skinned daughter–who hates being black and passes for white, abandoning her mother until of course, at the very end, Annie has died and Sarah Jane comes back too late, that is the real story here. The movie doesn’t face any of the racial issues, they just are–there’s one perfectly horrible scene where Sarah Jane’s boyfriend, who has found out she is black, beats her (played by Troy Donahue) which is about it, really. There’s a sort of sense, at least on my first viewing, that the terrible situation for people of color in the US at the time was taken for granted; but I can only imagine how controversial the movie was at the time of its release. It was an enormous hit, and Juanita Moore and Susan Kohlar, as Annie and Sarah Jane, both got Oscar nominations. The film is flawed, but Turner is actually pretty good in the role (she was always considered a beauty who couldn’t act), but I also couldn’t help thinking how amazing Joan Crawford could have made it–it was the kind of role she or Bette Davis or Olivia de Havilland could have played in the late 1940’s/early 1950’s.

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If you like books about Hollywood, you have to read Sam Staggs’ books. They’re terrific.

So, this week I am getting back to the WIP, and hope to get some good work done on the short stories I’m struggling with. Woo-hoo! But I’m actually looking forward to getting back to the work I had to put aside to work on the edits of this other manuscript. (Keeping up? Sometimes I can’t keep up with what all is going on with me, so I am often curious if people reading this can follow along.) I should make it clear that the manuscript I just revised from editorial notes is one that will be published under a pseudonym; and the one I am now getting back to is neither a Scotty nor a Chanse. I mentioned a few entries ago that I was looking through Mardi Gras Mambo, and I do think I do need to make the time to reread the entire Scotty series as written thus far before trying to get back into writing another one. It’s long overdue, frankly; I’ve not reread the pre-Katrina Scottys in years, and I think, for this next one, it’s kind of necessary. The nice thing is it’s not like I need to read them deeply, I can sort of skim-read, get a sense of the voice and the characters, and the story.

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