Category: diversity

Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone

Well, hello and good morning, Sunday! I have a shit ton to get done today (what else is new? Same song, next verse) but that’s okay; I feel good and rested and as long as I don’t get sidetracked today, I should be able to get a lot finished. The new heating system continues to make the Lost Apartment livable (it’s almost embarrassing to think how long we just accepted that the Lost Apartment would just be freezing cold when the temperature dropped, without questioning whether the system was actually working properly) and so we watched more Ozark last night; Laura Linney and the rest of the cast continues to kill it every episode. The new season of Apple TV’s bizarre but compulsively watchable Servant also has dropped, I believe, and some other shows we really enjoy are coming back soon. (I also want to get back to Peacemaker.) While I was waiting for Paul to get home last night after I finished my day’s work, I decided to finish watching the reboot of Gossip Girl, which, having now binged the entire original, I can say with complete confidence–the new one is terrible. Too earnest, too determined to be socially conscious in a ridiculously heavy-handed Nancy Reagan way; the writers/producers completely missed out on what made the original a guilty pleasure: the new show simply isn’t any fun.

I also saw on Twitter this morning that Stephen King has yet another book coming out this year, Fairy Tale, which further reminded me of how far behind I am on his novels. Gah. I don’t have the time to read as much as I would like–what else is new–and the books keep piling up. And with the recent release of this year’s Edgar and Lefty nominations, my TBR pile continues to ridiculously increase. Hopefully I will go on a trip soon, so I can get some more reading done. I am driving up to Birmingham in the first weekend of February to do Murder in the Magic City (Saturday) and Murder on the Menu (Sunday in Wetumpka); so I am hoping to listen to a book on tape while driving both ways; it’s about six or seven hours in either direction. Then of course in April I am off to Albuquerque for Left Coast Crime, and later that month (hopefully) to New York for the Edgars–so that’s a lot of time on planes and in airports, so I should be able to get some reading done on those trips. I’m still planning on Sleuthfest in Florida later this summer, and Bouchercon in Minneapolis in October; whether those trips will actually happen remains to be seen.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But the good news is I don’t feel lazy this morning–which is a lovely change of pace; maybe because I made myself get up when I woke up rather than lounging in the comfort of my bed–so maybe, just maybe, I can get everything I need to get done this morning/afternoon. This is the first week where I have to go in four days per week (ugh) which hopefully won’t be a regular occurrence; someone supposedly wants to take over my Mondays, which would be rather lovely if and when it happens. (I am not holding out hope that’s actually going to happen, by the way–it’s something I’ve been told–and I am also expecting to be very tired on Thursday this week)

I am also trying to stay focused and not look beyond the immediately important; which means no thinking about other books I want to write the rest of this year, no more thinking about short stories and/or essays I want to write, no more character inventions or story ideas until this book is finished and emailed off to the publisher. This doesn’t mean I don’t still get ideas or thoughts or stop being creative–I have creative ADHD, after all–it just means that I write the idea down and get it out of my head and go back to work on the book. I have three chapters at least to get done today, and if I can manage that I should be close to being back on track for getting it finished on time (extended deadline by two weeks).

And really, getting up just an hour earlier today than I did yesterday has made a significant difference to my day and the productivity factor–well, that remains to be seen, of course, but when I reached the point yesterday that I almost was finished with the blog it was nearly eleven; and then I had errands to run and by the time I was finished with all of that I was hardly in the mood to do much writing after getting everything put away and the dishes taken care of and all that jazz. It was also much easier to convince myself that I could stop working when I hadn’t reached the day’s goal–which means I have to finish yesterday’s goal as well as get today’s done. (I knew I’d regret quitting early yesterday, but I am always about immediate gratification and tomorrow’s stress be damned–ninety percent of my problem, really.

And on that note, I should probably head into the spice mines for the rest of the day. You have a lovely and restful Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow morning.

Moonlight and Kisses

Thursday and I have the day off for a doctor’s appointment later. I slept very well last night–wasn’t sure how that would go, actually–and feel more rested and centered today than I have. I think I actually know what day it is today (I did keep thinking yesterday was Tuesday all day), and it’s not cold today, which is odd. New Orleans weather bipolarity at its best–it’s going to rain today and the rain is going to bring very cold weather behind it. Tomorrow is supposed to be very cold–30’s!–and I am, naturally, dreading it.

I have to work today of course; the to-do list progress belies the success of me making to-do lists, and so today must buckle down and get work done. The house is, as always on a Thursday, a horrific mess that belies, at a glance, that anyone has ever cleaned here; there’s a stack of filing to be done; and of course I haven’t even unpacked my backpack from yesterday. When I got home from work last night I was very tired and so just dropped off the backpack where I always do (next to the two shelf bookcase next to my desk) and unpacked my lunch bag and just kind of settled in for the night. I had also fully intended to start rereading Joseph Hansen last night, but my brain was fatigued and I couldn’t focus, so naturally I went down a Youtube wormhole–seriously, having access to Youtube on my television hasn’t been the best thing to develop for me technologically lately; it’s become yet another way for me to waste time and distract myself, but I also know that when my brain is fatigued as it was yesterday it’s useless to try to make it do anything, whether it’s read or write or anything productive. My mind also generally tends to wander when I am watching these videos–and they are slightly entertaining on some levels–and so sometimes I solve problems with things I am writing or dealing with in regular every day life while I am mindlessly, brainlessly watching a video about how Naples and Sicily had one of the most enlightened cultures of the Middle Ages during the Norman rule of the region in the twelfth century, and how they integrated Greek, Arab, and European culture and education into one, fusing them into a very enlightened society with equality for all and freedom of religion.

Plus, education by osmosis. I’d known that already, of course, but not in great detail and it was interesting to me intellectually. (The post Roman Empire history of Italy is actually incredibly interesting.)

Anyway, today I am going to try to get dug out from under my emails (knowing, of course, that emails always beget emails) as well as work on the book; I also have some housekeeping to manage on the Bouchercon anthology front–that, while incredibly tedious, needs to be done–and of course, a sink full of dishes and loads of laundry to tackle. Yesterday was pay-the-bills-day, and I of course only paid the immediately due rather than everything that falls due before the next Pay-the-Bills Day, so at some point over the course of this weekend–so much work to do–I need to go ahead and get those out of the way as well. (It’s always so depressing.) But I feel like, daunting as everything may seem, that I can get it all done if I focus on the job at hand and start working my way down the list, everything will get done and it’s much easier, after all, to focus on one task and disregard the others until you can give them your full attention. That has always worked before, and has always put me in good stead.

And so, on that note I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will catch you on the other side.

Whisper You Love Me Boy

I am so messed up this week. I literally had no idea what day of the week it was for most of the day and had to keep reminding myself it was Tuesday and not Monday. It was very annoying and terribly irritating, as I am sure you can imagine. And it kept messing with me the entire day. I kept thinking oh two more days in the office despite the fact that there was actually only one (I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday so have taken the day off) and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the notion of it being Tuesday all day. I certainly hope today isn’t going to another disorienting don’t know what day it is kind of day.

So far so good this morning, really. I feel more awake and a lot less discombobulated than I did yesterday, which is definitely a plus. It also doesn’t feel as cold today as it did yesterday, which I am also taking as a win; Friday is supposed to be miserably cold, but I’ll deal with that when that comes around (note to self: look for other space heaters this evening when you get home from work); hopefully it won’t cause the “cold paralysis” I sometimes experience–when it’s so cold I can’t do anything but huddle for warmth under blankets. Our heat isn’t working again; I turned it on last week and it came on…but then it turned off and hasn’t come back on again since. I really hate our new system because I cannot grasp how it works, and it seems to be so incredibly sensitive to everything that anything even just the tiniest bit incorrect will shut it down completely and we have to call the guys out again. I don’t even know if Paul has bothered mentioning it to our landlady this time, to be honest. It seems like having a working HVAC system is simply not in the cards for us.

Yesterday I got some lovely new editions of Joseph Hansen’s first four Dave Brandstetter mysteries in the mail, which is very exciting. It’s been decades since I read Hansen; and frankly, I am not entirely certain I read the entire series–but that’s lost in the murk of the past; I cannot imagine I didn’t if they were in print, and I do distinctly remember some lovely paperback editions I picked up at Tomes and Treasures in Tampa…but I don’t recall reading them all. So I have decided that I am going to reread Hansen’s novels again–it’ll be interesting to see what my take on them is now that I am also twenty years into a mystery-writing career as opposed to the mystery-writer-wannabe I was when I originally read them (I also seem to recall picking some up at the Borders in Minneapolis at the corner of Lake and Hennepin). Hansen isn’t nearly as remembered as he should be, frankly; I think it’s a disgrace he was never an Edgar finalist or named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America.

I got the cover art and the proofs for an anthology I contributed a story over the last few days: Cupid Shot Me: Valentine Tales of Love, Mystery and Suspense, edited by Frank W. Butterfield. This is the place where I finally found a home for my nasty little story “This Thing of Darkness”, which was inspired by a visit to New Orleans a few years ago from someone I went to high school with–I met him at Tacos and Beer, which is just around the corner from my house, and of course while I waited for him and watched the crowd there, I started writing a nasty little story in my head that began precisely that way: the protagonist meeting a friend from high school he hasn’t seen in forty years for dinner in New Orleans at Tacos and Beer (which just goes to show–a writer will take inspiration from pretty much any-fucking-where), and as I wrote the story in my head while I waited it took a much darker turn. I was working on the Kansas book at the time (yet another draft of it) and here I was seeing someone from high school back in Kansas…so it really took a dark, nasty turn. I had been doing some research on, of all things, the nuclear missile bases scattered across Kansas (there was one near our high school) which led me into another Youtube wormhole about the TV movie The Day After…and also made me think about an entire book that could be built around one of the abandoned missile bases…anyway, after dinner I went home and started writing this story. It wasn’t originally called “This Thing of Darkness” (which is from Macbeth, by the way); I don’t remember what I originally called the story, but “This Thing of Darkness” was originally the title for the story in Unburied, “Night Follows Night”, but was too good of a title to not use, so I switched whatever the title of this was out for it.

I do like the story, twisted as it is, but it also got me to thinking about patterns in my short stories and how I write them–which I would talk about it here but the thought is still completely unformed, which has never stopped me before, of course, but it is so unformed that I would embarrass myself writing my way through exploring it, and I am not entirely sure that I actually regularly do what I think I do–following the same story structure in all of my stories–so I would need to reread more of them at once to determine whether that is something I actually do with my work…

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

You Don’t Have to Tell Me

There really is nothing quite like a good read, is there?

Alafair Burke has become one of my go-to’s; an author whose every book I preorder and start salivating when I get the shipping notice. I’ve not read her extensive backlist as of yet; I was late to the Burke party and began with The Ex. I do possess most of the backlist and it’s all in my TBR pile, but I’ve gotten so addicted to reading the new ones when they come out I never think to go back to the shelves to get one of the older titles–which is something I clearly need to do; and never have I felt that pull more than while reading her latest.

You see, she wrote a series about a New York cop named Ellie Hatcher–and Ellie comes back as part of the ensemble cast of Find Me, and what I saw of Ellie made me want to go back and read more about her. Well done on that front, Alafair! (This is something that I absolutely love when authors do; like how whenever Laura Lippman needs a Baltimore private eye, she brings in her old series character Tess–which is always a welcome joy whenever it happens….and maybe something I might be able to do with Chanse at some point. Hmmm.)

But I was very excited when Find Me was delivered into my hot little hands, and yesterday, while I was freezing inside the Lost Apartment, I grabbed a blanket and repaired to my easy chair, intent to read for an hour.

I didn’t stop until the book was finished.

Hope Miller shifted her gaze from the gas nozzle to the pump. When the gallon counter hit twelve, she scolded herself for not filling up before her trip into the city. She couldn’t risk an empty tank.

The nearest customer leaned against his green Jeep, sharing her same awkward wait, watching the digital numbers tick by. She noticed him looking at her. When he noticed her noticing, he flashed a practiced grin. She didn’t smile back.

That phrase, “It takes more muscles to frown than smile?” She had googled it once. Turns out, facial descriptions are subjective. Smiles, sneers, frowns, and smirks are all in the eye of the beholder. And the so-called facial nerve controls forty-something muscles, but some people have all of them, while others are missing almost half.

But scientists did agree on one thing–that smiles are innate. Reflexive. And viewed across cultures as a sign of friendliness.

A single man smiling at a single woman alone at a gas station at night?

Pretty great opening, isn’t it? The entire opening chapter is an exercise in suspense: is the woman imagining that this man isn’t just some stranger at a gas station? Is she being paranoid, or is this just the start of an innocuous encounter encapsulating the micro-aggressions directed at women by men on a daily basis? I understand that paranoia myself a bit–I experience it every time I travel throughout the deep South and have to stop for gas or to get something to eat; I am always on high alert during these times, paying attention to any and everything around me, and especially the people. I’ve stopped for gas and noticed someone staring at me before, and then following me back onto the highway, my heartrate increasing and adrenaline pumping through my veins as every mile ticks off on the odometer; I will often deliberately slow down to force the suspicious vehicle to eventually pass me…and this happens more regularly than it probably should. Anyway, I can relate to the main character’s paranoia; this is masterful suspense writing by the author, because now I have been pulled into the story and I am worried about the main character.

The book is mostly set in the Hamptons, with some scenes taking place in New York City; there’s even a detour to Wichita (KANSAS!!! It keeps popping up everywhere lately!). The main character of the story is NOT the paranoid young woman in the first chapter (and I cannot explain to you, Constant Reader, how wonderful that first chapter is; everything in that first chapter, every tiniest detail–everything she feels and thinks and remembers–is crucial to the story), but rather her sort-of adopted sister, criminal defense attorney Lindsay Kelly. The young woman in the first chapter, Hope Miller, is already, in and of herself, a mystery. She was found some years earlier, as a teenager, thrown from a wrecked vehicle with no memory of who she is, where she came from, or how she wound up in New Jersey. (The car had Indiana plates and was reported stolen.) Eventually, she takes the name Hope Miller and moves in with the Kelly family–a woman without a past that Lindsay somehow feels responsible for; more so than as a friend or as a sister. Hope is damaged, obviously, and has only recently decided to take control of her life and start over somewhere different than the small town in New Jersey where she’s been living since the Kellys took her in–she wants to go somewhere where everyone doesn’t know her as “the mystery girl with amnesia.” Hope disappears, and Lindsay is desperate to find her; has her true past finally come back to haunt Hope? Who is she? And what, if anything, does she have to do with the murder of a local charter fisherman who was murdered around the time she disappeared? Is she dangerous?

The search for Hope soon draws in some more characters–including, as mentioned earlier, police detective Ellie Hatcher from Manhattan–and there are multiple stories going, all of them tied together, all of them leading back to Hope’s mysterious past, and there’s also a potential link to a serial killer Ellie’s father investigated back when she was a girl. The characters are all well-drawn and developed enough to be real enough to draw the reader in to root for them; Burke is also masterful at pacing and when is the right opportunity to play yet another card that will either further confuse or enlighten the reader as the story continues to take shape out of the amorphous confusing mist entangling the characters.

Juggling all of the subplots and keeping them tied into the main story is also not an easy task for a writer, but Burke manages to do so, tidily winding up every loose end to leave the reader, as they close the book, smiling and satisfied with the experience.

Nothing But Heartaches

It’s cold again on this Martin Luther King Jr Day here in the Lost Apartment, and as always when it’s cold and I don’t have to get up, I malingered in my bed much longer than was absolutely necessary. I won’t apologize for not wanting to get out of a warm, comfortable bed and from under a pile of warm blankets to brave the cold, either. Our new system came on briefly the other day when it was cold, and since then–nothing. I don’t know what I may have done wrong with switching it from cool to heat, but as usual, the guys are going to have to come back out and reset it or do something to make it functional. It’s not that big of a deal–the cold never really gets to the point where it is so incredibly unbearable (like last year on Fat Tuesday) that I am not functional, but it sometimes skates very close to that edge.

Yesterday came dangerously close, frankly. I was freezing all day to the point where I needed to use the heating pad underneath my blankets in my easy chair, which finally made me feel close to comfortable. I did manage to finish reading Alafair Burke’s marvelous Find Me (which you should also read), and then we finished watching the second season of Cheer–which sadly kind of limped along to the end, and by the season finale, poor Monica was simply a wreck; I think the show’s producers might have hit the “cost of fame and how to handle it” a little bit harder than they intended; but that message did come across fairly clearly, so maybe that was their intent. Dealing with the fallout from the scandals that arose in the wake of the first season–especially in the case of the breakout star who was accused of sex crimes with young boys–certainly put the producers (and the cast) into an awkward position: how do we deal with this? The episode that did deal with it did a fairly good job, and it’s also sad to see that abuse of children is just as rampant in cheerleading as it is with other sports at this level (gymnastics, figure skating, wrestling, football).

We always hear so much about how “children” need to be protected from books and ideas almost every day–and yet protecting them from sexual and physical abuse doesn’t seem to be as big a priority with people. Hate to break it to you, but a book never sexually assaulted a child.

The sun is out this morning and I feel much better than I did yesterday morning. I overslept yesterday, if you remember, and felt sort of unable to engage my ignition yesterday and get the Greg started, if you know what I mean. I did make some notes yesterday and I did clear out the spam from my email inbox, but today I actually do have to get work done since I didn’t do much of anything yesterday. Today I am going to work pretty hard on the book, and I am going to try to read a Laura Lippman short story later on as a kind of reward for getting work done. My kitchen this morning is in pretty good shape overall; I do have a load of dishes to put away and some laundry to do around the writing schedule today. But I feel this morning like I can actually get stuff done tonight and not be derailed or distracted…probably because it’s not as cold this morning as it was yesterday (and believe you me, I am dreading getting up at six tomorrow morning). But I am going to get this finished, work on a review of the new Alafair Burke while drinking coffee and folding clothes and putting away clean dishes, after which I am going to get cleaned up and dive back into my manuscript.

I feel more like me today, if that makes any sense. It’s been a hot minute, frankly; I don’t know if it was subconscious depression over not being able to go to New York or something, but today is the day I would have been home–I was flying back yesterday–and so maybe my mind/subconscious was depressed and/or mourning the loss of the trip? I think I probably slipped into an alternative mindset/reality the moment the trip was cancelled and it’s taken me until when the trip would have been over to get over that loss, if that makes any weird kind of sense. Maybe I navel-gaze too much, but I know I can tell when the chemistry in my brain is off, and it always affects everything in my life. But the point is I can look at my to-do list and not be concerned about it to the point where I panic and think I’ll never get that all done but rather, “one task at a time gets all the jobs done”–which is kind of where and how I am feeling this morning. This is, of course, a good thing. I will admit that I had some ideas last night while watching Cheer (reading Alafair’s book helped in that regard as well) about other things to write and other things i need to get done. I also have edits on a short story I have coming out in an anthology next month–quick turnaround, what can I say?–but I have to say my year is getting off to a good start–despite the cancelled trip to New York.

Fingers crossed the year continues to remain not only on track but continues to get better rather than worse. But one can never tell these days–if we’ve learned anything from the last five years it’s not to constantly be optimistic that things will inevitably get better as we continue to move along.

And on that note, it’s time to drive right back into everything and get my act together once and for all for today. I will check in with you again tomorrow, Constant Reader.

Ask Any Girl

Sunday morning and I wish I was coming down.

But a cold spell has descended upon New Orleans overnight, and its chilly in the Lost Apartment this morning. I overslept–much later than ever–and didn’t rise until ten this morning; obviously, all that “outgoing energy” I spent on the MWA ZOOM board orientation drained my batteries completely. That, and the cold, I suspect, combined to make me not want to get out of bed this morning–in fact, I could just as easily go straight back to bed and probably could fall asleep for a while. I am sure that has more to do with the cold than anything else; all I really want to do is get underneath a blanket and stay warm–so when I finish this I am going to go sit in my easy chair under a blanket and read some more of the new Alafair Burke novel before diving into this morning’s writing. I am going to do my best to pretend my email inbox doesn’t exist today and solely focus on resting, reading, and writing.

We finished watching Murders at Starved Rock last night, which was actually kind of annoying; the entire premise of the documentary is the man who served over forty years for the murders might be innocent, and yet they finished filming before the DNA tests came back (due in 2022)? I mean, sure, they can always do one more episode later, but come on–you left the audience hanging? Why put the documentary together and release it now? Paul and I found this to be terribly irritating and annoying. We then moved on to Season 2 of Cheer–I had wondered if they would do another season, given how incredibly popular the original was back in those early days of the pandemic; I actually think it may have come out before the pandemic–it’s so hard to remember these things now. I had wondered how they would do the second season–given how successful the first was–and I have to say, the decision to focus on how the sudden fame has affected everyone there at Navarro College and the town, while still trying to get prepared for the next Nationals–and taking a look at their arch-rival from Trinity Valley as well–was a very wise choice. The Trinity Valley coach also makes a good villain, so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. So far so good; will keep you posted as we get further into the season.

We haven’t even gotten to the part where one of the breakout stars is arrested for inappropriate behavior with an underaged boy yet–although I am not sure I am all that keen on watching how that plays out, really, other than in a “can’t look away from the train wreck” kind of way. And isn’t that really the allure of reality television in the first place? The opportunity to be voyeurs without judgment? (Hmmm, that would be an excellent jumping off point for an essay, wouldn’t it? Hmmm.)

But I need to write today; reshaping and revising my manuscript so that it’s ready to go to the editor, and everything else I have to do is going onto the back-burner to simmer for a little while longer. I have been thinking also a lot about a couple of stories I need to get finished, “The Rosary of Broken Promises” and “Solace in a Dying Hour,” and I need to go over “The Sound of Snow Falling” one more time. I was also very pleased to see the Cincinnati Bengals won their play-off game yesterday (I don’t really care about the NFL outside of the Saints, but I, as an LSU fan, am also a huge fan of both Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, who are now killing it at the professional level so I follow the Bengals a bit; I also pay attention to the Chiefs more than I ordinarily would because two favorite LSU players are also on their roster.)

And on that note, I am getting another cup of coffee and retiring to my chair to read some more of Alafair’s new book before diving back into mine.

Have a happy Sunday, Constant Reader!

My Heart Can’t Take It No More

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and I slept fairly well. I will be spending most of my day on ZOOM with the new Board of Directors for Mystery Writers of America doing Orientation (we should be doing it in person in New York today, but yet another event is a victim of the coronavirus variants). I am not a fan of ZOOM, for obvious reasons–I cannot stand seeing myself on camera, and hate the sound of my voice–and while I can’t necessarily hear my own voice, I can see my face on screen, and I really don’t like that. I don’t really have space for a ZOOM studio in my little nook office right off my kitchen–and I need to make sure all the counters are cleared off and the cabinets are closed, etc.–and so I’ve avoided doing ZOOM things like the plague during these plague years. I am not an extrovert by any means (and yes, well aware that my claims to be painfully shy, socially anxious, and introverted are often greeted by laughter; but the appearance of calm and ease I project in these situations is always just pure dumb luck because I am always a twisted tangle of anxiety-ridden knots on the inside the entire time, and completely exhausted when it’s over), and thus these things are never easy on me. I imagine this afternoon when the calls ends I will adjourn to my easy chair with a drink and will spend the rest of the day there.

Yesterday we started watching Peacemaker with John Cena on HBO MAX; it took a minute for us to get involved in the story but we eventually got sucked in. It’s an odd kind of super-hero show, really; Peacemaker is theoretically a villain (I’m not familiar with the Suicide Squad and haven’t seen any of the movies) but he sees himself as a hero. John Cena is a very charismatic leading man; there’s something about him that is very watchable, and he plays comedy very well; which is surprising, since he comes from the world of WWE (then again, Dwayne Johnson and Bautista also did, and also play comedy very well, so maybe it’s not surprising), and he really shines in this part. I’ve always been a fan, and am glad to see his career outside of WWE taking off. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the show. We also started watching a docuseries on HBO MAX after we finished the three episodes of Peacemaker that have been loaded for streaming called Murders at Starved Rock, which is interesting enough but probably isn’t going to have a resolution.

I did started reading Alafair Burke’s Find Me yesterday and am enjoying it thus far–maybe when the meeting is over I can spend some time with the book, which would be marvelous and a definite reward for spending so much of the day talking to my computer (which is some seriously weird Jetsons shit). I started making a to-do list yesterday so I can keep track of everything I need to do and need to get done and with some sort of time-line involved; I am confident I can get everything done but it’s going to take some serious focusing on my part to get it all done. It’s a bit overwhelming and stressful to be sure, but as long as I can get a handle on everything I need to do, it can all get done. Over the next two days I am going to work, over my morning coffee, on getting my email inbox cleared out once and for all; I am going to get some filing in order; and I’d like to finish reading Alafair’s book. I think we’re probably going to watch some movies in the evening–Power of the Dog and The Tragedy of Macbeth are at the top of my list–over the next couple of days, and I am also hoping to start back at the gym tomorrow morning (after getting all my morning chores finished); hope springs eternal. My weight has climbed back up somehow, and so getting back to the gym is a lot more important than it has been. I hate that my weight is climbing again, and I am sure it has to do with me being more sedentary over the last few months than I had been in the months before. (Just thinking about how good it will feel to stretch and work my muscles out again just sent a shiver of delight down my spine.)

But making the list made me feel much better about things, honestly; I don’t know why I have so much trouble falling back into the habits that help me get things done and reduce my stress.

I bought our first King cake of the season yesterday–and yes, it’s quite delicious. I don’t think I bought any last year, since there were no parades or hardly anything Carnival-like; I doubt very seriously that Paul and I will be heading down to super-spreader central out on the corner this year. It’s a shame because we’ve always loved the parades and catching throws, even when the weather is bad; how many times have we stood out there in the rain to catch things? (It’s actually more fun in the rain because most people leave and there’s more room and they throw more because there are less people to throw to…) But I just can’t see taking the risk of getting sick out there–and you know there are going to so many unvaccinated people out there who won’t wear masks at all; the parishes surrounding Orleans are ridiculously defiant when it comes to taking measures to protect other people, which is terribly sad–but those are also the people who drive in to the city and hang out along our parade routes (while posting comments on news articles about how much they hate New Orleans and how the city is so dangerous and riddled with crime–keep your racists asses out in your paradise parishes then, trash), so yeah, no desire to put myself at that much risk, thank you very much. I can only imagine what Carnival is going to do to our infection rates.

Given how many people used to die annually in New Orleans AND Louisiana from malaria, yellow fever, and other pandemics that used to rage through the population, you’d think we’d handle things better as a state, city and parish, but nooooooooo….(if you ever want to read a great book about the horrors of a pandemic and massive death in New Orleans during the nineteenth century, Barbara Hambly’s Fever Season is pretty amazing)

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. I have to hide things from the computer camera and do some straightening up as well as preparing. Heavy heaving sigh. And I will see you tomorrow, Constant Reader.

(You’re Gone But) Always in My Heart

The late Joan Didion famously said we tell ourselves stories in order to live. I’ve parsed the statement any number of times–it’s most commonly taken to mean that it’s important we tell stories of the human experience (the good, the bad, the mediocre and all the varieties in between) to better understand ourselves, our society and culture. I had never read Didion myself until several years ago; of course I knew who she was and what she had written–although if asked before reading her work, I would have only been able to name Play It as It Lays, which I still haven’t read. One of my co-workers had a library copy of her Miami in his officer a few years ago, and I idly picked it up when I was in his office. He recommended very strongly that I read Didion, and so it was with Miami I started; the opening line (Havana dreams come to dust in Miami) sold me on the book. I enjoyed it, and went on to read other works of hers: A Book of Common Prayer, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and After Henry, among others. I loved the way she wrote; that the complexity of her work came from her poetic use of language and words rather than on complicated sentences. It was reading Didion’s essays (and Laura Lippman’s) that made me start thinking about writing essays myself; I started one trying to use a similar style to Didion–which was interesting–but think it’s rather more important to stick to my own voice, for better or for worse; there was only one Didion, and there should only be the one.

As I was being interviewed the other night I was talking about my re-education; about having to unlearn and relearn things from when I was a kid. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately; part of it was turning sixty this past year, part of it was writing two books back-to-back that are sort of based in my own personal history–so remembering what Alabama and Kansas were like for me meant exploring a lot of my past, reliving and rehashing it with the perspective of time having passed and with a coldly sober, unemotional eye. I remembered, as I was talking about the Lost Cause and other American mythology we are taught as children (Washington and the cherry tree; Honest Abe the rail-splitter; and so many other Americans of the past we have deified) , the Didion quote and found a new meaning in it. When I was a child, I remember that in the South, for some reason, my cousins and their friends and the adults never would refer to someone as a liar; etiquette, perhaps, or politeness being behind this oddity. What they said instead of saying you were lying was “Oh, you’re telling stories.” If someone was a liar, you’d say “he tells stories.”

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

Given this weird rural Southern thing about “telling stories”, this can be reinterpreted as we tell ourselves lies in order to live–and it all falls into place, because we do tell lies to ourselves in order to live with ourselves, within this culture, within this society. Never has this been more evident than is this strange battle the right has started about Critical Race Theory–which wasn’t being taught in any American public school below the collegiate level. If there’s nothing in American history that we should be ashamed of, why is there so much opposition to the truth? Why are we taught lies in order that we may live?

The war cry of the white Southerners who want to keep their monuments to white supremacy and treason has been “Heritage not hate!” But the heritage is hate, which was the entire point of Bury Me in Shadows. You cannot have it both ways: you cannot celebrate a history of treason against the United States, while claiming to be “more patriotic” that other Americans who do not celebrate the killing of American soldiers (ask Jane Fonda about how posing on an enemy gun goes over). The bare facts of the matter are that some (not all) of the states where it was legal to enslave people were afraid they would lose their right to enslave people, and as such they decided they were better off starting their own country. They wanted a war they couldn’t possibly win, and the fact that it didn’t end quickly has more to do with the incompetence of the Union generals and their political ambitions (there are reasons there are no statues of George McLellan anywhere to be found) than the righteousness of the Confederate cause and the brilliant leadership of Robert E. Lee. They abhor Sherman as a war criminal (“he waged war on civilians!” Um, we also firebombed Dresden during the second world war, and what were Nagasaki and Hiroshima if not the obliteration with atomic weapons of civilian populations? Sherman said “war is hell”–you cannot start a war and then complain about how the other side chooses to fight it.). They claim it had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with “states’ rights”…when the reality is the only state right they were concerned about was the right to enslave people–they certainly wanted the federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act against the wills of the free states, didn’t they? Their end game in Congress and the courts was to force the federal government to permit enslavement in every state of the union and every territory; this was the crux of the Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court, which more than anything else set the stage for the war.

If there’s nothing terrible about the actual history, why so much fear around the truth?

We tell ourselves lies in order to live.

If the truth is too terrible to be faced, then it absolutely needs to be.

There’s nothing quite so romantic as a lost cause, is there? Whether it’s the Jacobites in England with their toasts to “the King across the water”; the emigres from the French Revolution; or the Confederacy, losing sides inevitably always romanticize their defeat and the loss of a better world their victory would have created. An entire industry has developed in this country around the mythology of the Lost Cause; how could it not when one of the most successful American films of all time portrays the Lost Cause so sympathetically? The opening epigram of Gone with the Wind reads “There once was a land of Cavaliers and cotton fields known as the Old South…” And yet the movie depicts an incredibly classist society, predicated on the enslavement of Africans; the entire idea behind the founding of this country was the elimination of class distinctions–the equality of all.

But even Margaret Mitchell, when asked if the Tara in the movie was how she pictured it as she wrote about it, scoffed and said, “Tara was a farm.”

And not everyone in the old South was rich or owned a plantation. Not everyone was an enslaver, and not everyone was on board with the Lost Cause. But we rarely hear about the Southerners who fought on the Union side in the war; we never hear about Southerners who were abolitionists; and we never hear about the atrocities inflicted on those loyalist Southerners by the rebels, either.

And speaking of war crimes, what about Andersonville?

We tell ourselves lies in order to live.

We cannot celebrate our achievements without acknowledging our failures. It is far worse to not learn from a mistake than making the mistake in the first place. It is not unpatriotic to look at our history, culture, and society critically, to examine and evaluate how we are failing to live up to the ideals upon which our country was founded. The Founding Fathers were not mythical gods of infallibility; they were all too human, with all the concomitant jealousies, pettiness, arrogance and ego that comes with it. They were, for one thing, mostly unable to conceive of a society where women and non-white people were deserving of equality under the law. But they also knew they were not perfect, which was why they created a system that could adapt to the changing tides of history.

George Santayana’s famous quote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is something I think about every day. I also love the George Bernard Shaw quote, “What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.“

We need to stop telling ourselves lies. The truth might seem to be too much to be faced; it might be ugly and hideous and shameful…but it will also set us free.

I’m In Love Again

Monday.

I was supposed to leave for New York on Wednesday, but thanks to anti-vaxxers and maskless wonders, our in-person board orientation for Mystery Writers of America was cancelled for the second consecutive year, which is annoying. I could cancel my vacation requests, but…am kind of hoping that I can use the time to get caught up on everything and my book is due soon, so….extra time certainly can come in handy about right now. So I only have two days in the office this week, and since next Monday is a holiday, I have essentially a week off from work, which is lovely.

I worked on the book yesterday–huzzah!–and now have only one chapter left to do and the revisions. The revisions aren’t going to be easy–but at least with the New York trip cancelled I’ll be home on vacation starting Wednesday, which should give me some breathing and working space in the meantime. Huzzah? Huzzah. At least the cancellation of the trip has a good side effect in one manner. Tonight after work I have to rush home to do a phone interview and after that, the January Bookathon for Bold Strokes Books; so it’s going to be a rather long day for me. I need to try to edit my short story and try to finish/edit the article I have due today between clients–which won’t be easy–so overall, it could very easily be a rather stressful day for me; long at any rate, and will undoubtedly be very tired when it’s finally comes to an end this evening, about an hour or so before I have to go to bed so I can get up early tomorrow morning…but then I have Wednesday off, so we’ll see how it all goes. Wednesday I definitely am going to have to spend writing and revising my butt off….Thursday and Friday as well. Sigh. But I like the book and think it is going to turn out okay, which is always pleasing for me–the crippling self-doubt will inevitably come later. It’s been a fun challenge working on this book; I am relatively certain by the time Monday rolls around I’ll be quite over it by then, in all honesty. but it’s a fun little book and I hope that the revision process develops it into the nice little read it has always intended to be (my brain is feverishly working on how it all turns out and how to get to that place in the story).

We got caught up on Yellowjackets last night, and have come to the sorry conclusion that this is merely season one and not a self-contained mini-series last night; I see no conceivable way they can wrap this all up and all the mysteries with a single hour episode–and I also suspect we are probably not going to get the answers we want and need, either. Which is fine; we certainly have been enjoying the ride thus far, and the writing and acting are pretty pinpoint sharp, too. We also started watching the new Harlan Coben Netflix show, Stay Close, which is also quite fun if a bit confusing. I still don’t understand how all the disparate storylines all come together or what is going on, but as always, it’s just fun to sit back and enjoy the ride with Harlan’s shows.

I also need to get back to reading once I finish this book; I’ve not been able to focus on doing any reading lately because I’ve been focusing what little energy I have on writing the book. I was on quite a roll there for a while, and it would be very nice to get back to reading again. The TBR pile continues to grow, and it’s past time for me to do another living room book purge. I’d intended to get another box down from the attic this weekend but…book and cleaning focus prevented that; I may be able to get to this whilst I am on vacation this week. (I suspect I am planning to be overly ambitious again this week with my time off, and of course a gazillion other things will pop up in the meantime that will distract me from getting everything finished that needs to be finished–as always–but hope will always spring eternal.)

Seriously, just looking at my inbox gives me the hives.

But recoiling away from it isn’t going to solve the problem, so it’s best for me to grit my teeth, put on my helmet, and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

Let Me Go The Right Way

A question I’ve been hearing a lot lately, when it comes to my new book. is why do you question whether you are the right person to tell this story?

It may entirely be a side effect of the long psychological disorder (one of many!) I possess that is more commonly known as Imposter Syndrome; but over the last decade or so there have been so many questions about who can tell what story that I don’t really think it’s so surprising that I would be concerned about my right to the tell the story of #shedeservedit that I chose to tell. It’s a book about toxic masculinity in a small town that manifests itself in a rape culture that devalues women, especially the girls, at the local high school; that toxic masculinity culture was created by the town’s worshipful devotion of the high school football team. Fans derives from fanatics, after all, and living in the South (and being Southern) has exposed me to the ‘football fan mob mentality’ that I was trying to recreate in my story. I’ve seen, for example, LSU fans rise up in righteous fury and indignation at the questioning of whether it’s animal cruelty for them to have a live tiger mascot with an amazing habitat on the campus; I’ve seen them rise up in defense of the administration and the players when players have been credibly accused of any number of crimes (not the least of which sexual harassment/assault of female students); and there are any other number of examples here I could cite–and that’s just LSU.

But in a story about toxic masculinity in a small town, I also centered a teenaged boy in the story; we see it all through his eyes, not that of any of the girls. That’s really the primary concern I had about how this book would be received: how could you put a boy at the center of a story about rape culture?

And I guess my response should be why wouldn’t I?

Because, as I read the articles and books that served as background research (there’s a chilling amount of research out there for anyone who is interested), all I could keep thinking was what is wrong with these boys? And from there I began to extrapolate further in my never-ending mental gymnastics. What do the kids who are not football players think about the privilege the players enjoy? High school is, after all, wanting/trying to fit in, not wanting to attract bad attention from people, not standing out from the crowd with an unpopular view or opinion. As I continued to read and research–and in the beginning, you have to remember, I started looking into all of this to begin with not because I wanted to write about it, but because the Steubenville/Marysville cases stoked my curiosity.

It was actually during the reading on Marysville that it hit me right between the eyes: the Marysville victim, Daisy Coleman, had not only been a cheerleader but her older brother was on the football team; the guys that got her drunk and assaulted her were not only guys she knew but felt safe with but were her brother’s teammates and friends.

And that was when I realized, you need to change the Kansas book to be about this, and write about the brother of a past victim when there is a new victim.

And then the other day, in an irony of ironies, I got my copy of Laura Lippman’s new collection, Seasonal Work, in the mail–and there it was, in the table of contents; her own story inspired by the Marysville incident, “Five Fires”; which I read when it was initially published; a story Laura and I had, in one of our infrequent but marvelous alcohol-fueled conversations, talked about (I’d forgotten what an integral part of shaping my own story that conversation with Laura all those years ago played).

“Five Fires” is quite marvelous.

“There was another fire last night.” That’s the first woman. Tennis skirt, Lacoste polo, gold chain with a diamond on it, like a drop of water.

The other woman–I don’t know either of them, you can’t, even in a town as small as ours, know everybody–says: “That makes three this month, doesn’t it?”

“Two. The one at the vacant–you know that place. And now behind Langley’s.”

And the playhouse, I want to say. The first one was that playhouse. But I don’t say it, because, again, I don’t know them. But three is right. There have been three since August 1, and it’s only August 10.

Whereas my story is told from the point of view of a victim’s brother–who is also on the football team–Laura’s story was inspired (if I remember correctly) by a newspaper article on Marysville, when the victim’s house was burned to the ground in a nasty work of arson–as if the family hadn’t been through enough already–and I don’t remember whether it was a photograph or a video she’d seen, of a vigil supporting the accused; there was a young woman in the picture that caught her attention and made her think, now why would that girl not support another young woman in a horrible situation? Why is it so easy for her to not believe the victim? And she thus wrote the story, to try to get into the mindset of a young teenaged girl who found it easy to believe an accused rapist and blame the victim.

It’s really quite an extraordinary story, and rereading it now, after all these years, I am even more impressed with how well done–touching, sad, and poignant–it is. It would be easy to make a villain of this girl, but Lippman approaches her with a strong sense of empathy, and while the character’s views and behavior can be quite repellant, the fact that Lippman gets so deep into her head and point of view makes character all the more compelling, and heartbreakingly sad at the same time–all the while never ever losing sight of who the real victim in the story is. It’s a terrific story, incredibly well done, and I strongly recommend getting this collection of stories; it’s worth it for “Five Fires” alone.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader!