Category: diversity

Big Love

Sunday morning and another good night’s sleep. The bed was enormously comfortable and I didn’t want to get up–knowing how much I had to do today–but c’est la vie; I knew that was going to be the case. I felt unwell most of the day yesterday–slightly feverish, low energy, no appetite–which was probably my usual flu-shot reaction (I know you aren’t supposed to get sick, but I always have a reaction to a flu shot) and I stupidly had them give it to me in the same arm I got my COVID booster injected into, so my left arm was achy and sore all day yesterday. It was okay, I knew I needed to just rest and relax, and fortunately, it was college football Saturday, so I curled up in my chair and started watching college games when the chores I was doing eventually wore me out and I had to retire to my easy chair with ‘salem’s Lot (more on that later) while watching games–and the two I wound up watching (Alabama-Tennessee and LSU-Florida) were pretty epic games.

The Tennessee-Alabama game was amazing, and deepest sympathies to my Tide friends; what a stinging loss, and to a bitter rival–even if it’s one you’ve beaten every year since 2006 (it was Nick Saban’s first loss to Tennessee at Alabama; he also had some pretty memorable wins over them at LSU). 52-49 was the final score, with the Tide missing a last-minute field goal with the Volunteers making theirs to hold off the furious Alabama comeback and capture the biggest win in Knoxville in decades. One thing you have to give Alabama–their losses are almost always incredible games because they never give up.

I didn’t have very high hopes for my Tigers going into the Florida game. Like Alabama-Tennessee, it’s a rivalry game (I don’t know how that happened or came about; maybe it’s because we are both swamp states with a large alligator population? I honestly don’t know, but it’s true) that has mostly been dominated by Florida throughout the series–but LSU has been catching up. The series record is now 33-33-3; tied. LSU has won four in a row against Florida for the first time since 1977-1980 (when Bear Bryant was still at Alabama, Florida had no national titles and LSU only had one), and because it had been so long since LSU won four straight, I figured history would be telling and LSU didn’t have much of a chance. The game was also the first between new coaches for both teams. LSU has won 8 of the last 10 games in the rivalry–losing in 2012, 2016, and 2018–and has won 10 of 13. And for the first time this season LSU looked good; usually this year they’ve fallen behind very quickly in the first half and had to dig their way back out, but not yesterday. Florida’s opening drive last two plays before they went up 7-0 and I thought oh, here we go again but LSU matched every Florida score and then added another just before half-time to take a 28-21 lead; by the end of the third quarter the score was 42-21 and despite a furious Florida comeback in the fourth (similar to Alabama’s, actually), held on to win 45-35. Nerve wracking, but exciting–and it was nice to see LSU finally starting to gel as a team. The schedule doesn’t get easier now–we have Mississippi, a bye, then Alabama followed by Arkansas and Texas A&M–and two of those teams are currently sitting in the Top Ten. LSU and Alabama are tied for second place in the division behind Mississippi, which makes both of those games crucial for all three teams (Mississippi and Alabama have yet to play as well; Alabama also plays LSU and Mississippi back to back) so it’s going to be an interesting November in the SEC West–while the Tennessee-Georgia showdown in the East also looms.

And the sting of the blowout loss to Tennessee at home doesn’t seem quite so horrific now that Tennessee has also beaten Alabama and scored 52 points to do it. I think that’s the most points scored on Nick Saban? It may even be the most points ever scored on Alabama? You just never think of any team ever scoring fifty points on the Tide. It’s definitely a weird season. And of course, Mississippi is coming to Baton Rouge in almost the same position they were in back in 2014, when they were 7-0 and ranked third; LSU won 10-7. This is only the third time Mississippi has started a season 7-0 (the other was 1962). Definitely an interesting season when there’s a chance that the SEC Title game could be between two unbeatens–but instead of Georgia-Alabama, which is what everyone was expecting, it could be Tennessee-Mississippi. How weird would that be? Tennessee hasn’t been in the title game since 2007, and Mississippi never has.

Definitely a weird college season, but very happy with my Tigers. It’s always lovely to beat Florida.

And today the Saints play the Bengals, which brings Joey Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase back to the Superdome for the first time since the 2020 national championship game against Clemson. I think I’ll hav the game on in the background–I can’t root against the Saints under any circumstance, but I also can’t ever root against Joey B and Chase, either.

I did finish reading Interview with the Vampire the other night (I’ll write about it when the TV series is finished), and yesterday I started rereading ‘salem’s Lot, which is one of my favorite novels of all time and was the book that turned me into an unabashed Stephen King fan. I had bought a used hardcover copy on eBay sometime in the past decade (which I also had done with The Shining) and so as I was reading it yesterday I caught a typo–I’d never read this copy of it, and the typo was weird, so I flipped back to the front of the book to discover that it’s a first edition. I don’t think the person selling it knew they could have gotten a lot more for it than I paid for it; it was so inexpensive it never even crossed my mind it was a first edition (I had the same insane luck with a copy of In Cold Blood, getting a hardcover copy off eBay for less than ten bucks, only to have it arrive as a very well-kept first edition…signed by Truman Capote. You never know how lucky you can get on eBay, I guess is the point of this sidebar?) so I was pretty thrilled to see that my copy is actually an undiscovered treasure. Anyway, as I started rereading–and remembering just how great a novel it actually is–I started thinking about length; my longest book is around 100k (I don’t think I’ve ever exceeded 100k in a book, or by much if I did) and the average length for books I am hearing these days is 80k. Out of curiosity, I decided to see how long ‘salem’s Lot is; it’s just over 157k words. As I was rereading it–and enjoying those early chapters again, as King creates the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot so beautifully and perfectly–I also was thinking what would an agent/editor cut out of this to submit it for publication today if this was a first or second time author in modern times? They would cut out a good third of the book, I think; sure, there’s a lot in the story that doesn’t really advance it at all–a lot o the supporting characters and subplots could easily be cut without notice, but at the same time I think that would serve to damage the book and turn it into something else; as I was reading, I kept thinking “this is really just Peyton Place as a horror novel” and that, for me, is one of King’s strengths–the way he writes about small towns, and how interconnected everyone is, and how everyone has dark, dark secrets that aren’t quite as secret as they might prefer. I think when I finish reading this book, I may move on to another King that I’ve not read–there are any number of them in my cabinets; the days when I used to get King on release day (still do that) and then read the entire book within forty-eight hours are long gone, and so many of his book are really long…

And I just checked my email to see that I’ve placed another short story. Woo-hoo! More details on that as they develop.

And now back to the spice mines with me. I am going to have another cup of coffee and go read some more of ‘salem’s Lot before getting cleaned up and getting to work on the book. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader!

She Loves Him Still

I absolutely adore the Meg Langslow series by Donna Andrews.

When I was taping Susan Larson’s radio show the other day (oooh, how fabulous do I sound?), one of the things she asked me about was, simply, what exactly is a cozy mystery? I don’t remember what I said–something about how the primary point of them was to make the reader feel comfortable, and escape the worries of the every day, or something equally moronic–and of course, as always, later on I came up with the perfect example of how to define a cozy. Cozies are about communities, pleasant and warm communities where neighbors take care of neighbors and everyone watches out for each other and primarily is operating from a good place. The main character has to be someone the reader can not only identify with but has to like; and whenever there’s a new volume in the series it feels like we as readers are getting another lovey vacation to visit with dear old friends we only get to see once or maybe twice a year (fortunately, Andrews is on a two-book per year schedule; her Christmas crime caper for this year just landed at the Lost Apartment this week).

This is precisely the feeling i get when I read one of the Meg Langslow novels; like I’ve taken a lovely little vacation to my favorite little city in Virginia, Caerphilly (which I always pronounce “carefully”), and see Meg and her friends and family. It’s a place where everyone is neighborly or nice–and those who aren’t, everyone tries to steer clear of or just accepts that they just aren’t as nice as everyone else (they inevitably end up dead, anyway). Caerphilly College, where Meg’s husband is chair of the Drama Department, has served up any number of choice murder victims over the years–there was that horrible English department for awhile, and of course everyone loathes the Business Department; which is the source for the mystery in this exceptionally fun and funny mystery.

“We need more peacocks!”

I glanced up from my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I call my combination to-do list and calendar. Dad was standing just inside the back door. He wore elbow-length white leather gauntlets and a pith helmet with heavy netting thrown back to reveal his face. His beekeeping outfit.

“If you’re looking for peacocks in the beehives, that’s probably why you’re not finding any,” I said. “The pair you gave us for Christmas tend to hang out at the far end of Rose Noir’s herb field.”

“I know,” Dad said. “I was tending the hives when I noticed them. They’ve lost all their feathers.”

“It’s called molting,” I said. “I hear they do it every year.”

“Well, I know that.” He knocked some mud off his garden boots and clomped over to sit across the kitchen table from me. “I’ve already called Clarence Rutledge.”

I looked down at my notebook. I was up earlier than I liked and had a busy day ahead of me–busier than usual, thanks to all the things Mother had asked me to take care of in preparation for my brother Rob’s upcoming wedding to Delaney, his fiancée, now only a few days away. Then I glanced up at the clock. Already eight o’clock. Which said everything about how I expected my day to fo. Most mornings I’d have said “only eight o’clock.” But if there was something wrong with our peacocks…

The series comes full circle with this volume; the first in the series was Murder with Peacocks, and our first introduction to Meg came with her heavily involved in the planning on not just one, but three weddings, including her mother’s and her brother Rob’s; Rob’s fiancée is the one with the bright idea for peacocks as wedding decor (I remember thinking as I read this, that woman has no knowledge whatsoever about peacocks) and here we are again, with Meg heavily involved in planning another wedding for her brother Rob…and once again, peacocks are involved (there’s one hilarious scene in which Meg has to take a truck to “borrow” peacocks for the wedding since hers are molting, and she gets trapped in the truck when the peafowl launch an attack).

But as Meg goes about her day to day life with all the added burdens of the wedding planning, her nephew Kevin asks her for help. He and a friend have been doing a podcast about cold cases in Virginia, and someone tried to run his partner over with a car the previous weekend. Could this be connected with one of their cold cases? Meg, mainly to get out of wedding duties, agrees to look into the cold cases–which include a cheating scandal at the business school and a suicide, as well as the disappearance of an exceptionally talented coffee house singer from Charlottesville–which leads her to a lot of questionable antics (such as breaking into the business department to look at donor records) that are not only hilarious and improbable but Andrews always makes it completely realistic and completely believable, which is one of the many reasons I love this series so much: each volume is hilarious, completely unexpected, and absolutely marvelous, with Meg managing to never be caught off-guard or nonplused by anything that happens or comes up.

I absolutely love this series, and it’s always a delight when there’s a new one to read–and I do have the new one to read already! Huzzah!

Straight Back

G’morning, Saturday! How you doing? I slept well, woke up sans alarm, and feel kind of rested and good this morning. The sun is ridiculously bright this morning–it was yesterday as well–but that’s fine. Today is a long day of college football, and I have one errand to run this morning later on. Yesterday was a fairly good day; I got my work done during the day and ran the errands that needed running. I made Swedish meatballs (my version of them, any way) for dinner last night, and we settled in to watch the finale of Bad Sisters and of course, Halloween Ends, which was remarkably different than what I was expecting and despite a slow start, turned out rather interestingly after all.

I did think about the book last night while I was waiting for Paul to be ready for television viewing (and while I was doing some chores and making dinner), so I think I may have some success working on it this morning. I am going to try to get this done, put the dishes away and do some other chores before taking a shower and getting cleaned up to work on the book before I have to run the errands. And while I am of course hoping that Alabama cleans Tennessee’s clock today, the LSU game isn’t until this evening so I have the day pretty much all free heading into that, so there’s no reason I can’t get some writing done today and tomorrow (note to self: check the time of the Saints game today so you can plan accordingly). I don’t need to make another grocery run this weekend–or even order anything for pick-up–so I can pretty much plan on having the time to get things done around here. I have to work Monday morning in the clinic (covering for someone) but I also don’t have to be there until eight-thirty, either. Huzzah!

I also want to start rereading ‘salem’s Lot today; but I also have some other things I want to read as well. There never is enough time for everything, seriously. I have a couple of short stories written by friends that I need to look over (I promised feedback months ago) and I also have that Shirley Jackson Edgar-winning story I want to read, too. At some point I want to drive around the city and take pictures of Halloween decorations too–maybe I can take a walk with my phone tomorrow morning around the neighborhood and the Garden District–because I feel like I don’t document life in New Orleans as much as I should.

But then this blog has never really had a theme other than really just being a kind of diary for me, more than anything else, one where I don’t really talk about personal things as much perhaps as I would in a diary but just a way of situating myself and seeing where and how I am every morning. I have some pending entries that I also need to finish–entries talking about other books I’ve written, other books I’ve read and yet not done an entry for yet–and of course that takes time out of my day every day as well as time away from my other writing. But I do have a rather funny one about Nancy Drew and New Orleans I really should finish sometime–I have a weird love/hate thing with Nancy Drew; my OCD required me to collect and read the entire series, yet she was never really a favorite of mine; there were other juvenile series I vastly preferred to both Nancy and The Hardy Boys–but I had wanted to pay homage to Nancy’s adventures in New Orleans in the new Scotty book, so I reread the two books where Nancy came to New Orleans (The Ghost of Blackwood Hall and The Haunted Showboat) and whoo-boy, were they dated, wrong on almost every level, and horrifyingly racist. (Sidebar: I’ve always wanted to write my own juvenile series, similar to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and at the same time I’ve always wanted to write a murder mystery set at a fan convention for one of these series–because I belong to some fan-pages on Facebook and let me tell you, those folks are interesting)

I also have my entry about Donna Andrews’ marvelous Round Up the Usual Peacocks to finish, and I also have a rather lengthy entry about Interview with the Vampire I think I’ll wait to finish until I am done with watching the show.

I am not going to lie, I was curious about Halloween Ends primarily because I absolutely hated the second film in this sequel/reboot series, or whatever the hell it is considered. I was impressed by the creative decisions made on how to handle this absolutely, finally the last chapter (the end definitively ends it, trust me); but I am not entirely sure how I felt about the focus being moved off Laurie and Michael Myers. I guess I was a little disappointed–I was hoping to see, I guess, a balls-to-the-wall Laurie v. Michael battle, which we did kind of get, but it also wasn’t the primary focus of the film? I appreciated the new story as well as the new cast members like Rohan Campbell (who plays Frank on Hulu’s The Hardy Boys reboot), but I came away a little disappointed, but that was due to my own expectations, not any failure of the film itself. (I was also really amused to no end that Kyle Richards of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who played one of the kids Laurie babysits in the very original Halloween, was brought back to reprise the role in the new trilogy. After listening to her talk about “filming” all season, and “having to focus on learning her lines” while dealing with RHOBH drama…only to watch the actual film to see she has exactly two scenes and at most five lines made me laugh out loud–and of course, Paul shadily said “I find it really hard to believe a bartender in Haddonfield could afford all that plastic surgery” which sent me into gales of laughter. I did enjoy the movie, though, and appreciated the different direction it took. If you’re a fan of Halloween, I think you’ll enjoy it, too–but understand it’s different going in.

All right, on that note I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and GEAUX TIGERS!

Empire State

Friday has arrived, Constant Reader, and it’s glorious (although I keep thinking it’s Saturday because I’d gotten used to going into the office on Fridays). After all the week’s insomnia, I slept gloriously last night–when I first went to bed Scooter joined me, cuddled up to me and started the purr machine, which draws sleep like a moth to a flame. Paul got home later than expected, so we watched Andor and an episode of Chucky, which we are about to give up on. It’s campy and funny, but it literally makes so little sense–which is admittedly also a part of its charm, and I do love that two of the three main characters are a young teen gay couple–we might be giving it up fairly soon. I also have some errands to run today–I have to get my flu shot and pick up a prescription–and I am also debating whether to make a Five Guys run while I’m out there. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced the glory that is Five Guys…but on the other hand, I could look at it as look how well I’ve done not eating any fast food for so long and not go, too. Decisions, decisions.

Then again it is Halloween season–we’ll probably stream Halloween Ends tonight–so it doesn’t seem right to not be watching horror, you know? I hope to finish my revisit of Interview with the Vampire today and move on to a reread of salem’s Lot; I also have Paul Tremblay’s short story collection and Joe Hill’s so perhaps I should consider diving into some short stories for a while as well. I think I only got one story into each–and I also want to read Shirley Jackson’s Edgar Award-winning short story at some point as well as part of another long term project I am working on (because how many things can I be working on at the same time? Let’s find out!), and I also got both the new Donna Andrews and the new Raquel V. Reyes novels (Dashing Through the Snowbirds and Calypso, Cooking and Corpses, respectively). Lots of good reading in my future, really–but there always is; my TBR stack is a who’s who of brilliant writers, really.

And when I am finished with my work for the day, I think I am going to start planning out the rest of the Scotty book (after finishing the chapter I am currently struggling with). It certainly can’t make writing it any harder, right?

A few weekends ago I talked to Ricky Grove, the host of The Paperback Show podcast about Daphne du Maurier and My Cousin Rachel (you can listen here if you’d like), which was a lot of fun–any excuse, really, to talk about Daphne du Maurier will be leapt at here in the Lost Apartment, for future reference–and Ricky is always fun to talk to; I can’t believe how long I’ve known Ricky now, where does the goddamned time go, anyway?

It has been quite a long time since I got into this business–as I said the other day, I’ve been doing this a third of my life now, which is simply insane, really, to think about–and it’s been quite a ride, to be certain. I’m a totally different person than I was twenty years ago, and there’s no way in hell twenty years ago I could have foreseen what those two decades held in store, just waiting for the time to be right to pounce on me. But it’s cool, you know; I’m pretty happy with the life I have and the direction it’s heading, even if I am more aware of the ticking down of the clock than I was before, to be sure. I’m behind on everything as always but progress was made this past week, and now that I have the schedule back that I prefer for the day job, I am hoping I will adapt to it rather quickly again and so I won’t have the insomnia or the “tired all day” feel that brings with it. There’s a short story deadline tomorrow that I wanted to make, so I thought last night about potential stories I have on hand that I could possibly polish tomorrow and try to get turned in–if they say no, they say no, and you can’t be accepted if you don’t turn anything in at all–so that’s a potential thing for me to do tomorrow. I also want to drop some books off at the library sale, and maybe wash and clean out the car. LSU plays a night game tomorrow, so I have the entire day free (I’ll probably have the Alabama-Tennessee game on in the background, ROLL TIDE!) to get things done and write and read and clean and…I guess we’ll just have to see how it all goes, won’t we?

And on that note, I am. heading into the spice mines before i head over to the office to get my flu shot. Have a happy and productive day, Constant Reader.

Book of Love

Wednesday and another edition of the biweekly Pay The Bills Day! Woo-hoo! But this is also my last paycheck at my old rate of pay; I am curious to see what my paychecks will look like when they reflect my raise–check back, Constant Reader, in precisely two weeks to find out.

Can you stand the suspense? I barely can.

I was very tired yesterday, and I slept about the same last night so I can also plan on hitting the wall today around three. I took a long lunch yesterday to record Susan Larson’s marvelous radio show The Reading Life, which will air on December 6th, and that was naturally delightful as every moment spent with Susan is. But by the time I got back to the office and got settled back into the seeing clients routine, I was very tired. I had a ZOOM meeting when I got back home last night, which was interesting and fun–it’s always lovely seeing that group of people (queer crime writers! Woo-hoo!)–and then I settled into my chair to watch Reboot and another episode of Diary of a Gigolo, which is just so much fun. I did get some writing done yesterday–terrible writing, I might add–but am hopeful that tonight I’ll get back on track. I feel like I slept about the same last night, waking up several times and never really falling deep asleep again, but this morning so far I feel good. I managed to somehow get quite a bit finished yesterday, which I didn’t think would actually be the case, given how sleepy and tired I was yesterday afternoon, but looking back over the day I can see that yes, indeed, I did get a lot done despite the exhaustion. I am adjusting to the new work week schedule, methinks; tomorrow is my last day in the office and usually I am worn down the day before my last day in the office for the week, so this is a major plus.

And now to consult the to-do list…sigh. It can wait until later, surely?

I don’t know why this morning I feel like I’ve turned some kind of corner, which makes absolutely zero sense, but that’s kind of how I feel; like I’m shaking off some kind of malaise or stupor and my mind is functioning correctly again. It’s entirely possible the booster shot I got on Monday fogged my brain for a few days–I’m blaming the insomnia issues on it for fucking sure–and now this morning that fog has cleared. I don’t know, I really can’t explain it other than that, but this is one of those mornings where I feel like I am mentally rolling up my sleeves and taking a look at all and everything I need to get done and diving in headfirst. LOL, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts, won’t we? But I feel good–and that is reflected in my mood, I guess; I’m in a pretty good mood this morning (at least thus far) but it’s probably too much to hope for that it will last the rest of the day.

Probably not, but you never know.

I was thinking last night–after talking to Susan about the next book (should there be one) in the new series, and of course my copy of Raquel V. Reyes’ second novel arrived yesterday–about how important the second book in a series is, and how much different the second books in both of my series are from the first book in each series. In the first book you have to introduce the characters and their backstories and how they relate to each other (the kind of relationships they have with each other) as well as who your main character is and try to get the reader to relate to them and like them enough to buy into the series as a whole. In the second book, you’ve already done all of this work so all you need is little sound bytes here and there to recap those backstories and so forth and you can spend a lot more time developing your plot and story. Murder in the Rue St. Ann was very different than Murder in the Rue Dauphine; revisiting the Scotty series I can see how much more complicated and layered the story of Jackson Square Jazz was in comparison to Bourbon Street Blues, which had a much simpler plot. Likewise, A Streetcar Named Murder is the launching place for this series, and hopefully it will continue (my second one is tentatively titled The House of the Seven Grables, which will probably be changed by the publisher if there is a second book in the series), and the plot I have in mind for this second Valerie book is a lot more all over the place and complicated–especially as we dig deeper into the Cooper family mystery that was brought to light in the first book.

My favorite part of writing a book is the planning stage, really.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again tomorrow.

Beautiful Child

GEAUX TIGERS!

It is insanely early to have a kickoff in Tiger Stadium at eleven in the morning–I think I actually went to a game that started this early; I remember we had to get up at eight to get ready and barely managed to get into the stadium and into our seats as the band took the field for Pre-game (always one of the highlights of a game there; if you don’t know what LSU’s Pregame is, it’s that song the band plays that has those four notes–bah, BAH bah bah! (to me it always sounds like Hold That Ti-ger!)–and the entire stadium erupts. I mean, it really does. If you ever have a moment to kill, go to Youtube and search for LSU Marching Band Pre-game–you should immediately recognize the music. But having the game so early for me means I’ll most likely be emotionally and physically drained after it ends, and I’ll probably get sucked into the chair watching games all day (I mean, I should watch the Georgia-Auburn game, even if it is going to be a bloodbath), but hopefully I’ll find some time to make notes and do some reading as well.

I slept very well last night (again), which was really super nice, and we finished Your Honor last night–didn’t see that ending coming, apparently it’s been renewed for a second season–and also started watched this past week’s episode of Bad Sisters–God, how I hate John-Paul–and also caught this weeks Queer for Fear, which focused primarily on James Whale and Alfred Hitchcock, with a lovely section on Anthony Perkins (my God, what a beautiful man he was) and how Psycho essentially ended his career–to this day his failure to even be nominated for an Oscar for that performance is a crime; he should have won; it’s one of the best screen performances of all time–which both Paul and I enjoyed tremendously; I’m also looking forward to more of this documentary series. Yesterday I got my work done and ordered groceries to pick up tomorrow morning; I’m beginning to see this as a marvelous convenience rather than as simple laziness now and I kind of like this because it also keeps me from making impulse buys, which always drives the price up. I did pick up the mail and make a quick stop for a few things at the Fresh Market (they carry Clearly Canadian, which I used to love back in the day, but they never have strawberry, just cherry and blackberry–I always get blackberry), and I made Shrimp Creole for the first time in a very long time; I’d forgotten how marvelous that is. There’s plenty left over for me to take to work this week as well, which is even nicer. Huzzah!

I’m hoping for a lovely, restful, relaxing day today. I’ll probably do some cleaning and organizing during the games–have to do something with all that nervous energy, after all–and tomorrow is going to be a massive work day. I am going to finish Chapter Five tomorrow if it kills me, and possibly do Chapter Six; I have some other things to do as well that I need to add to the list so I don’t forget and wind up fucked. I’m also getting my booster shot on Monday; hope that doesn’t make me feel unwell. If it does, or is anything like the last one, I should just feeling mildly unwell for a day and be over it at that time.

I also picked up Interview with the Vampire to reread again, since it’s Halloween season and all, and the show is airing. I’ve not read Mrs. Rice’s work in a long time–I kind of want to go back and finish reading The Feast of All Saints, although I am sure it’s problematic now, as it is about the Free People of Color before the Civil War–and I’d forgotten how lushly stylized her writing is; I am also probably going to want to revisit The Witching Hour as well before it’s television adaptation starts airing in January. I rather famously didn’t care for this novel the first two times I read it; I finally was enthralled with it upon my third reading, in Hawaii. I read all of her work after that until she switched to Jesus and angels; I never really came back to her when she turned to werewolves before finally coming back to Lestat and vampires. At some point I intend to read the final Lestat novels, and I should probably read The Mummy sequels she co-authored with her son.

I’ve not been feeling terribly creative this past week, despite the need to work on the book as well as the little work I have done on the book, and I am hoping that changing my work schedule will help me to feel somewhat less off-kilter in my life than I’ve been feeling since I started coming in on Fridays and staying home on Mondays. I’ve never really adjusted to it, honestly, and this feels so right, you know? I feel like my life has sort of gotten back on track since this switch was made again. I could be completely wrong; who knows? By Tuesday it’s entirely possible that I might be so tired and exhausted I won’t be able to function the way I should be able to when I get home from the office. But I am hoping that won’t indeed be the case, obviously, and thus far it has made a significant difference in how rested I feel.

Which is a good thing, really.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–I may be back later, you never know; if not, I’ll chat with you tomorrow.

Love in Store

Friday and my dream has come true: I have switched my work-at-home day from Monday back to Friday,. effective today, and I am so pleased. I’ve never adjusted to not being in the office on Mondays (I’ve always, no matter what, come into the office for regular workdays the entire time I’ve worked here unless it’s a holiday or I was on vacation), and now I can finally get a handle on what goddamned day of the week it is from now on.

Jesus.

I slept really well last night, which was marvelous. We watched more of Your Honor last night (which is one of the longest limited series I’ve ever encountered, every time I think well, this episode must be the finale it will end and queue up yet another episode. It turns out (I just looked) that there are ten in total, so I think we have two more, and it’s apparently been renewed for a second season, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I mean, it’s an interesting show–I also love that the local crime family’s name is Baxter, which for some reason just cracks me the hell up–but it doesn’t really hold my interest the way it should; I often find myself scrolling through social media apps on my iPad while the show is on, so I miss things that could probably help it make more sense than it does; but as Paul said last night, “they really make New Orleans look beautiful,” which the show does quite well.

Then again, New Orleans is beautiful, so they are starting from a very good place there. (One of the only reasons I could bear watching Southern Charm: New Orleans was because the city was shot so beautifully)

Today, as I already mentioned, I am back to working at home. I got my second monkeypox vaccine this week, and my body’s reaction to the second shot has been a lot more interesting than the first. The first just left me with a small pinkish red circle on my arm, maybe about a half-inch in diameter. The second left an enormous angry red circle on my other arm with a large bump in the middle so that it kind of looks like a massive spider-bite. This morning its size has receded a little bit, but I imagine I am going to end up with the same thing on this arm as I have on the other; a small slightly reddish circle around the injection spot. (When I show it to people, they can always pick out where it is but you have to actually look to see it, if that makes sense? It’s not noticeable unless you’re looking for it.) I am getting my next COVID booster on Monday, and I am really thinking that as cold/flu season is upon us again I may start masking everywhere again because it’s really been lovely not getting either a cold or the flu the last couple of years. Are masks a pain in the ass sometimes? Absolutely. But so is getting sick, and I don’t understand how putting yourself at risk of catching any illness is some kind of power statement. I don’t care if I am nauseous and feverish and can’t keep food down for a few days! FREEDOM!

I was exhausted when I got home again last night–I am kind of hoping the change in “work-at-home” days will help me with that–and so I pretty much just vegetated for the majority of the evening. Scooter demanded a lap to sleep in and I was only too happy to oblige. How did I pass the evening before Paul came home? Lost in thought about my book and mindlessly, effortlessly scrolling through social media feeds until Paul came home. The exhaustion is problematic, to be sure; when my brain is too tired to actually focus enough to read a book–which is and has always been one of the great pleasures of my life–to escape reality and allow my brain to relax, well, there’s something wrong and I don’t like it. Am I just getting older? I am sleeping better–more deeply and longer–than I have in a very long time, and yet…

But I did think about the book last night while I idled away my early evening, which isn’t a bad thing. The plot is a bit complicated, and as always, I worry about straying away and creating subplots and misdirections that I’ll forget to tie up and/or resolve by the end of the books, and since I’m not Raymond Chandler, my plots have to make sense. Sigh. It must have been nice being Chandler and getting away with having plots that didn’t make sense; I’ve not read all of Chandler’s work and right now I have The Long Goodbye sitting in my TBR pile–and as much as I want to get to it, I need to finish reading my current book and read some horror for the month of October. I want to find my copy of Interview with the Vampire for one thing–maybe during the LSU-Tennessee game I can do some work on the books, with the intent to find my copy of that as well as clear out some more for donations–so I can reread it and ‘salem’s Lot back to back, and maybe even revisit a Peter Straub before moving on to new writers and new books I’ve not read. I also recognize how ambitious that sounds, given how much trouble I’ve been having focusing on reading, but rereads aren’t the same as new reads–and it was rereads that got me back into reading again after the Shutdown in 2020.

Sighs happily. That was when I revisited Mary Stewart, and how delightful was that?

All right, I should head into the spice mines now. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader–and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow before the game.

Can’t Go Back

And here we are on Wednesday again.

It’s really amazing to me how sometimes it feels like the weeks just fly past; I think a lot of it has to do with Monday being my work-at-home day instead of Friday. By the time I come into the office what feels like Monday is actually Tuesday, and then Wednesday I wake up stunned that we’re already in the middle of the week. Maybe I should go back to working at home on Fridays instead? It’s definitely a thought. Working at home on Mondays has really kind of fucked with my sense of time and day and date significantly; not having cable television anymore has also messed with that since I no longer really pay much attention to what day of the week any show I am watching actually airs–I just check my “up next” list on the Apple TV every day and see what’s ready to be watched again.

So weird how my television viewing habits have changed so much since the introduction of Netflix, marathons, and binge-watching. I mean, I used to subscribe to TV Guide, which I don’t think even exists anymore, does it? Ch-ch-ch-changes.

I had a restless night’s sleep last night, spending most of the evening waking up every hour or two all night before the alarm finally went off this morning, so I suspect I will spend most of my day fending off the creep of weariness into my body. It’s very dark outside this morning, too. Heavy heaving sigh. I imagine the time doesn’t change until after Halloween–it’s been getting later and later it seems every year–but this getting up in the dark is very unpleasant and not conducive to me waking up. The weather has remained cool in New Orleans this week, too–not humid, mid to high 70’s, windy but sunny at the same time–which has been a very lovely thing.

I also rewrote Chapter Four yesterday; I took the 1677 words from the other day that were absolutely abysmal, picked them apart and pulled them back together, and wound up with slightly over 3000 words on the chapter yesterday, which was a pleasant surprise, particularly taking into consideration how tired I was when I did get home last night, having run some errands after work. Paul didn’t get home until late, and so we caught this week’s Reboot (seriously, this show is hilarious) and one of Little Demon, an animated Netflix show whose premise is the main character is the anti-Christ; her mother had sex with Satan and now the child is 13 and coming into her powers. It’s slightly twisted, obviously, so we clearly are enamored of it; I’m curious to see where it goes in the rest of the season, plus it’s also short–half hour, tops–which helps somewhat since we are always trying to find something to kill a half an hour with before we got to bed every night, and we should probably check out Abbott Elementary at some point.

But it felt good to start writing the book again yesterday; and it actually flowed relatively easily, too–which is always a plus; it means the well hasn’t run dry quite yet and I can still potentially write books. Saturday the LSU game is at the absurdly early hour of eleven, which means I can probably do things after two when the game is over–like run errands or clean or write–or I can spend the day reading with the football games on the television in the background. I need to finish reading my book because i’d like to revisit some horror this month before the month ends. I got my second monkeypox vaccination yesterday, and now to get the fourth booster for COVID at some point as well as a flu shot. I am hoping that continuing to mask this winter will help me get through any year without getting sick–really, what a difference wearing a mask has made these past few years; other than actually having COVID this summer, I’ve not been ill at all since the pandemic started, really.

Which is something I’ve never really understood about anti-masking, really; why wouldn’t you do something simple that would help you not get sick? Not just with COVID but every other germ and virus out there? I’ll show you libtards by spending the winter dealing with colds and the flu! FREEDOM! (Not to mention that even saying “libtard” is offensive to disabled people–I’m not insulted when someone calls me that, frankly, because it says everything about the speaker and nothing about me–because it’s a derivative of the pejorative term “retard,” which we really shouldn’t be saying in 2022 anyway. Ah, yes, the United States in the twenty-first century, when the words liberty and freedom have been so bastardized and robbed of meaning that now it essentially means I can be a complete and total asshole and tell OTHER people how to live!

Heavy heaving sigh. And on that lovely note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Walk a Thin Line

Tuesday morning with dark pressing against the windows. When does this hateful Daylight Savings Time shit happen this year, anyway? The extra hour of sleep in the fall is always lovely and nice; it’s the paying it back in the spring that totally sucks. Ah, well. I slept well last night and feel fairly wide awake (I actually wrote wild first; wild awake sounds like it should be a thing, really) and am looking forward to another exciting day at work. I recently had my job changed a bit–I got a substantial raise and a new job description, that I have to sign today at the office–and the new stuff goes into effect with the start of the new pay period on Friday. It was very nice–it was the meeting I had yesterday–to have years of dedication to my employer acknowledged and appreciated (I knew I was appreciated, but it’s nice to get financial and employee level recognition as well). It will help me get these bills paid off faster as well, which is kind of nice. I’ve not made enough progress on that front as I would like this year, but it looks like I’ll get further ahead by the end of the year.

I also wrote about 1677 words yesterday; the first work on the Scotty book in weeks, and yes, it was literally along the lines of pulling teeth. The gears had rusted and were most definitely creaking as I tried to get them moving yesterday. It wasn’t easy, but I am hoping that getting started will help grease the wheels somewhat and will help me get more done, bit by bit, day by day, until it is finally finished. I always, every time, forget that things don’t have to be perfect the first time through–even though time is running out already–and I am trying to not to let the impending deadline make me crazy.

We watched a few more episodes of Your Honor last night, which completely changed course and direction in a completely unexpected way in last night’s two episodes; I’m not really sure what is going on with the show–it’s almost like they took on a new show-runner and writers after episode 4. It was a significant change in tone and direction, and a new character was added out of nowhere in a weird transitional method of getting to the new direction/new story. It’s clever enough–although we did have to laugh because (and yes, it’s a New Orleans thing) that he was trying to drop off the extortion/blackmail money during the Red Dress Run, which is always on a Saturday in August which means it’s hellish outside, temperature wise…but on the show, it was clearly a weekday for some reason because he went to the bank first to remove the money, and no one was hot or sweating and it looked kind of chilly out, to be honest. (For the record, I put the Red Dress Run into Garden District Gothic as the opening sequence; Scotty taking Taylor to his first Red Dress Run.) But it’s entertaining enough, and yes, I am aware how snooty we who live here are about shows and movies set and filmed here but not in a bad way; I personally just get amused by the bizarre geography they use for them. But like I said yesterday, it’s about shots that reflect New Orleans to the viewers, and to do that sometimes you have to create a new geography that makes no sense to us, but works for everyone else.

There has been an endless on-going thing on social media over the last few days about Billy Eichner’s tweets about his disappointment in his new film Bros not performing as well at the box office as he had hoped and the studio had projected; basically, it boiled to him saying straight people didn’t show up for a gay movie. I get his frustration as a queer artist; queer authors could all easily say we would be more successful if straight readers bought our books, too; it’s not like a lot of straights show up for us, either. But…I don’t know how true that is. I don’t know who reads my books or who my core audience is; I assume it’s gay men, with a smattering of lesbians and straight women thrown in for good measure, based on social media interactions and responses to my blog posts. (And yes, I know I am being heterophobic in assuming there are very few, if any, straight male readers of my work. I am okay with this completely because I really don’t write with straight men in mind, to be honest.) Again, I get the disappointment–and some people on Twitter do miss the point entirely; Bros was the first major studio film release about gay men starring gay men and employing almost entirely queer people behind the scenes, which does make the movie groundbreaking in some ways (bringing up the success of other gay films from big studios is an apples to oranges thing; since most of those were straight written, straight produced and starred straight people in a queer film targeting to straight people). So, yeah, I get why Billy Eichner is disappointed…I don’t know that I would have taken the disappointment to social media, though. (Oh, I know the answer to that, who am I fooling? You never take disappointment to social media unless you enjoy feeling like a carcass being picked apart by vultures.) I’m not a particular fan of his; as someone whose persona also is drily funny sarcastic bitch, he always seems angry to me, and anger makes me uncomfortable rather than amused. I’ll watch the movie when it’s streaming, but I do think the lower box office than predicted might have to do with people not being comfortable going back to a movie theater just yet; and while I recognize this as an assumption, I feel pretty safe in concluding that the Venn diagram of people who would tend (or be interested potentially) to see a gay rom-com in the theater and those who are still taking COVID precautions seriously is pretty much one big circle, you know? I think Fire Island did really well for Hulu over the summer, and we don’t know that Bros is a flop yet, either. I don’t see the underperformance of Bros as necessarily the death knell of queer cinema from the major studios, either; yes, it won’t help the next film get produced but I don’t think it will stop the next one from being produced. And for the last time, it’s impossible for any queer film to represent every queer experience in the world because every queer person has a different experience. No one film (or television show, for that matter) can adequately represent the entire community, and we need to get past that kind of thinking–was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? representative of all straight married couples?

I don’t know why we hold queer films (and television series, for that matter) to higher standards than we do straight films and series, but probably because there are fewer of them, and less still that are written, produced and star actual queer people. My usual issues with queer film isn’t that they aren’t representative, but mainly because they just aren’t very good (the few that are good are quite marvelous, actually–I will always hold that the best gay movie is Beautiful Thing)…but that’s a discussion for another time.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

Tusk

Monday and a work-at-home day, for data entry and other things. I also have a meeting at one (yay) and I am hoping to get some things delivered today so I don’t have to leave the house. Yesterday started out well; I wrote my entry and did some writing planning and then repaired to my easy chair to read; but then Paul got up and came downstairs and I decided that as long as I kept my notebook/journal handy, I could make notes while thinking and watching television. We missed the Saints game; I’d forgotten it was in London and by the time I checked what time it was starting it was already over so I can’t even blame the Saints for my complete (well, pointed, at any rate) failure to get as much done yesterday as I had wanted to–which means it’s entirely my fault.

I did watch the first two episodes of the new Interview with the Vampire series, and it put a lot of thoughts into my head. I thought it was remarkably well done and well-cast–I would have gone for a Skargaard for Lestat, but that could be True Blood’s fault as well–and it was beautifully filmed. The changes made to the original book (I liked that it’s structured as a follow-up interview to the original interview) and story were barely noticeable. It’s also amazing how different Jacob Anderson looks as Louis as opposed to Greyworm from Game of Thrones. It also made me start thinking about vampires and how/why they are so popular with queers–this show has no gay subtext, it’s right there in your face–and also remembered how incredibly disappointed I’d been when I first read the book, as a teenager. At that point in time, I’d forgotten that Dark Shadows had turned a vampire into a romantic leading man–my thoughts about vampires were entirely shaped at that time by Dracula and ‘salem’s Lot, and that was what I was expecting from Interview…and that is most definitely not what the book was. I read it again about ten years or so later, and still didn’t care for it much; I didn’t come into an appreciation of Anne Rice’s work until the 1990’s–a friend told me to read The Mummy so I did and enjoyed it, and then I read and loved The Witching Hour, so I took the first three volumes of The Vampire Chronicles with me to Hawaii on a vacation and that time…well, that time I got into the books and enjoyed them. Mrs. Rice soon became a “buy in hardcover on release” author for me, and remained that way for a very long time. I do think there’s a line from Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows to Lestat/Louis to True Blood/the Sookie Stackhouse books; I once described True Blood as “Dark Shadows with sex, violence, nudity and blood.”

We then watched the first episode of Queer for Fear, a documentary series on Shudder about queer themes and subtexts in horror films, which was fun and certainly fit the theme of the day, but then we moved on to Your Honor starring Bryan Cranston, filmed and set in New Orleans (again, we marveled a lot about the geography–“oh, look, they’re transporting him from the courthouse to OPP but for some reason are coming in from I-10 which means they somehow detoured through Metairie”–and we can’t quite figure out where Cranston and his son live; they are always taking the bridge across the river, but Cranston can go jogging from his front door down St. Charles Avenue down to the lower 9th ward (clearly, training for a marathon of some sort) and back, so I am not sure why they have the need to go back and forth to the West Bank (Paul: this would only make sense if they lived in Algiers, but why would he cross the river to go jogging?). I know, I know, it’s fiction and make-believe and has everything to do with shots and visuals that remind the viewer it’s New Orleans; both the Crescent City Connection and the Huey P. Long bridges will do that, as will the drawbridge over the Industrial Canal, and nothing says New Orleans quite like the streetcar. I also know it’s being nit-picky and “more New Orleanian than thou”, but I can’t help it when I watch something filmed here (I was also identifying where scenes were shot in Interview with the Vampire as well). I’m sure New Yorkers do this a lot, too. We also watched this week’s House of the Dragon, which I am enjoying–there’s really no good characters to root for in this one; they are essentially all terrible people; at least in Game of Thrones we could root for the Starks as the only decent people in Westeros. We also watched the new episode of The Serpent Queen, as Catherine is now slowly coming into her own. I really am enjoying this series; I hope it doesn’t go off the rails at some point.

But now it’s October already–yikes; it seems as though this year has sped past but on the other hand January also seems like it was a million years ago already–and I’ve really got to start getting things done.

As I’ve been doing my entries about writing my books, it’s been a fun journey down memory lane, as I remember things I wanted to do and plans I had that somehow were either forgotten or pushed aside as other things crowded them out of my brain. Watching Interview and Queer for Fear reminded me of my own world of the supernatural I was trying to create with some of my horror writing (I don’t really consider my vampire writing as horror; yes, vampires, but the primary focus of them was the eroticism), and somehow I’ve managed to stick to the rules of that weird world of the supernatural I was creating through short fiction that spilled over into the erotica; so far I’ve done vampires and witches, rougaroux and le feu follet, all tied around parishes on the other side of the river and west/south of New Orleans. I have a couple of short stories to write still, and a book to get done–and I want to read more. I want to finish reading my current book and I think the first book for Horror Month will be a reread of Interview with the Vampire, perhaps followed by a reread of ‘salem’s Lot; why not explore the vampires?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely first Monday in October, Constant Reader, and I will be checking in with you again tomorrow morning before the sun comes up. Yay.