Category: diversity

Battle of the Dragons

Friday. I am taking a personal day today so I can try to get caught up on some things that slid while I was gone and haven’t had the chance to do anything about. I have to head out to Metairie to pick up my new glasses, have another errand to run out there, and also have a prescription to pick up at some point. I also have to make groceries and go to Costco sometime soon; maybe today, maybe not. We’re supposed to get a lot of rain this weekend–it’s summer in New Orleans: hot, humid, chance of rain–and am thus hoping that I’ll be able to not only get a lot done but be able to read cozily under a blanket while listening to the rain in the background. I slept very well last night, and am just going to do some mild stuff around here before it’s time to go run the errands and get back home to firmly set nose to grindstone. I feel very well rested this morning, despite getting up before eight (I actually woke up at five, but was easily persuaded into going back to sleep for a few more hours), and am looking forward to a restful if productive weekend.

I was a little surprised to see that the last two episodes of Stranger Things are much longer than the previous ones; the series/season finale is two and a half hours long. So we watched the one and a half hour second-to-last episode before switching over to this week’s Loot. I guess we’ll finish watching Stranger Things tonight, but it was disappointing; I thought for sure we’d be able to finish it last night. Why do the last two episodes total four hours of viewing? It doesn’t make much sense to me, and again, I was rather disappointed, primarily because I am really enjoying this season and am looking forward to finishing the series. On the other hand, watching the series finale will take up all of our television time this evening, so we won’t have to make a decision about what else to watch tonight at any rate. Conundrums a’plenty here, aren’t there?

I also want to finish Rob Osler’s book Devil’s Chew Toy, which is charming but I’ve been too drained to look at this week. I’m not sure what I am going to read next–I have so many options, all of them good–and of course today I have to polish a short story since the anthology closes for submissions at midnight. I’d like to get the copy edits for the Bouchercon anthology out of the way once and for all–a goal for the weekend–and I am thinking perhaps for my next read I might read something horror rather than mystery; I can’t really decide and as usual, will actually go ahead and decide once I’ve finished the current read and see what appeals to me. I have such a plethora of riches here in the massive TBR stacks and piles it’s not even funny. (I am also resisting the urge to buy more books, doing which would not be a good thing. A lot of really good books are dropping right now, but I have to be strong and hold firm.) I think when I get home from my errands today I may just curl up in my easy chair and finish the book. I don’t want to give the impression I am not enjoying it; my brain is often fried after I get off work and do some writing and/or editing once I get home and all I am good for is watching something mindless, like Real Housewives’ Ultimate Girls’ Trip, which has been highly entertaining so far, until Paul gets home.

I also need to pick out a Tennessee Williams quote for the opening of Mississippi River Mischief.

I’m not very exciting or interesting this morning, am I? Sorry about that, I think my brain didn’t reset over night or something; it feels rather intellectually burnt out, if that makes any sense. It’s okay, most of anything that I’ll be doing today doesn’t really require my creative brain but rather the editorial side, yet it would be nice to get some new writing done–on the other hand, I am going to be out running around in the heat today, which is going to be tiring and exhausting and probably by the time I get home from it all, I’m just going to want to collapse into my chair and read, which is also fine. A very important rule for being a writer is to also be a voracious reader, and I’ve not exactly been voracious in a while. I didn’t read hardly at all, for example, at Sleuthfest–but on the other hand I was also doing a lot there and not sleeping well. (I also didn’t write much while I was there; I did get some writing done in the mornings but it literally wasn’t a good writing weekend for me, either.)

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Another cup of coffee, another load of laundry, and some cleaning are in order for the next hour or so. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader!

Thousand Days

Last night was definitely the best night’s sleep I’ve had since I left for Florida last week, which was really nice. I still didn’t want to get up this morning, of course, but the weird thing is I feel very rested; I actually have every morning this week, which should say something about how well i’ve been sleeping, right?

Yesterday after work I had to head uptown to run an errand before heading home to the Lost Apartment, where I cleaned the kitchen and did a load of laundry before settling in with a grilled cheese sandwich (with bacon, guacamole, and two slices of Creole tomato–marvelous, simply marvelous) to watch some more episodes of Stranger Things, and I think we should finish it tonight. We also caught up on Only Murders in the Building, which I am enjoying–but not so sure how I feel about the latest plot twist in the story, but I am enjoying the show this season; the cast is top-notch, of course, and the writing is still strong, but the plot does seem to be dragging a bit this season. Not a complaint, merely an observation. We also have some episodes of Becoming Elizabeth to get caught up on; I love me some Tudor drama, and it’s funny how we very rarely see the incredibly turbulent times between the death of Henry VIII and the coronation of Elizabeth I on film or in novels (one exception: Anya Seton’s marvelous Green Darkness), so it’s nice seeing the years of Edward VI being dramatized; I’ve always felt the younger years of Elizabeth before she became Queen were just as interesting as those of her reign, particularly since the lessons she learned during those years held her in good stead when she did mount the throne…I wonder, now that I think about it, whether Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones was sort of based on Elizabeth Tudor?

I am starting to feel sort of back to normal again, so I am recovered fully from the trip this past weekend; and since I am not going anywhere again until September for Bouchercon (provided any of our current pandemics don’t suddenly worsen between now and then) I can get settled into a routine and hopefully–hopefully–start making it back to the gym again as well as settling into a routine of writing and editing. It’s not with the slightest hesitation that I can happily state that I am pretty much finished with all editing for A Streetcar Named Murder (all that is left is the page proofing), and all Imposter Syndrome aside, it’s actually not a bad book. After going through the copy edits and doing some slight tweaking, it actually holds together pretty well; I think my main character is likable enough; and I think I may have actually done a good job with the New Orleans stuff. Suffice it to say, I am pleased with it and hope that everyone who does read it will be as well.

Huzzah!

I have one other major chore on my list to get done by Monday, and then once it’s completed I can go ahead and get down to work on the new Scotty and everything else I am working on. Everything is a process, of course; but once I get the errands I need to run done tomorrow (which I am taking off) I should be able to sit around and focus on everything I need to get done in the meantime. I am excited about getting my new glasses tomorrow (the ability to see clearly is vastly underrated) and at some point I need to run by Costco as well as make a significant grocery run–there’s literally so little food in the house we would be hard-pressed to get through an entire weekend, quite frankly–and perhaps part of my “straight home from work” night chores should include a thorough cleaning out of the refrigerator (I may make grilled cheese again tonight; Creole tomato season doesn’t last forever after all) as well as reorganizing things in there to utilize the space better. I have a load of clothes in the dryer that will need fluffing and folding once I am home, as well, and I have a short story to edit before turning it in tomorrow for a submission call I’d like to make it past the cut–but on the other hand, I won’t be terribly upset if I don’t. I am not sure my story actually fits within the perimeters of the actual call, so it’s already a long shot before taking into consideration whether the writing or anything is any good.

I also need to figure out where I am with a lot of other things. This weekend will be good, methinks, for centering myself. I also want to finish reading Devil’s Chew Toy this weekend, and I also have a blog post or two about some things I’ve read I need to finish and post. It’s always something….

Until tomorrow, Constant Reader!

Long Distance Winner

Wednesday and I got the copy edits done! Woo-hoo!

I honestly don’t know why I am so weird about edits and so forth. Both my editorial letter and the copy edits this time around were practically nothing–incredibly easy fixes that literally required very little thought or effort– yet in each and every instance I put off doing them because I was just so goddamned sure that navigating them would be a nightmare. But now I can finally put A Streetcar Named Murder into the “finished” folder (I will still have to proof pages, of course, but for all intents and purposes this manuscript is pretty much finished; I won’t be working in Microsoft Word on it anymore and so I can close the file) and give all my attention to the things I am working on now. I need to get through the copy edits on the Bouchercon anthology and I need to edit/polish a short story this week before submitting it for an anthology call that is due this coming Friday.

I had to run an errand last night–which required me going into Mid-city during rush hour (the horror of it all!) before coming home. It actually didn’t turn out too badly; I took the highway and got there in no time at all, and it was shockingly easy to get home as well. There was some massive rain in uptown yesterday–it sprinkled at the office–and I could tell there had been flooding in my neighborhood. I suspect our street–which has only flooded once in the nineteen years we’ve lived there–is going to flood more in the future since the hideous condo building went up over two empty lots (where the water used to spread out; something I think is going to continue to be problematic for the entire city as our green spaces and empty lots disappear because there’s money to be made in real estate why should anyone be concerned about flooding in a city below sea level?) on my block…I really need to finish that story about killing a greedy real estate contractor, don’t I?

But in the wake of finishing the copy edits of my book (huzzah!) I am now trying to figure out what I need to get done next and how to best utilize my time. My new glasses have arrived, so I can go pick those up on Friday (I am taking the day off to do that and some other things that need doing) and I get to pick out a new, more current author photo. Sleuthfest gave us the option to pay to have new headshots done, and as little as I wanted to do this…I also recognized my black-and-white author photo is from 2008 and the one of me with the stacks of books is from 2014 or so. I mean, I look the same as I did then–if not as thin, at any rate–but some of these photos are good. and I’m also getting to the point in life where I just don’t care that much anymore. I spent so much of my life worrying about how I looked–the curse of vanity coupled with insecurity–and how my body appeared that it’s rather freeing to not really be so concerned about it anymore as I used to be. I don’t know if the insecurity was put to rest by getting older, or whether the vanity fell by the wayside, or some combination of the two, but now I want to get back to the gym not because of the cosmetic effect but to make my muscles and body feel better; I definitely need to get stretched out at some point. I just wish I had a dedicated open space in the Lost Apartment where I can sit on the floor and stretch everything.

Someday.

We continued watching Stranger Things last night, which we are really enjoying–but I could do without the Russian subplot, quite frankly. It’s weird seeing how much older the kids have gotten since that first season, but time waits for no one. I do enjoy my 1980’s nostalgia, even if it was a hellish decade and one that on a personal level I would love to completely forget like it never happened, but I still like a lot of the cultural stuff from that decade–music, books, movies, television shows, etc–but I don’t know that I would ever write anything set during that time period. I have lots of ideas for stuff set in the 1970’s–I gravitate toward that decade, methinks, because it was so formative and it was my adolescence for the most part–and “Never Kiss a Stranger” is even a 1990’s story…but it never crosses my mind to write anything about the 1980’s. The decade simply doesn’t inspire me, and I am sure a lot of that is me not wanting to revisit the personal angst I went through then. (I have been thinking a lot about my novella “A Holler Full of Kudzu,” which is a Corinth County story and is set in the 1970’s lately, as well as my 1970’s Chicago suburbs story Where the Boys Die, which is a great title but I don’t think I want to use it for this particular story, to be honest; but it’ll do as a working title because, as we all know, I cannot write anything if it’s not titled.)

But I am looking forward now to getting back in the saddle and writing again. Mississippi River Mischief is developing nicely in my head; another project I am working on is also starting to coalesce, and I need to plan out the next few chapters of Chlorine. Feeling pretty good about things–I assume that will last about another hour.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

The Highwayman

And he is home in the Lost Apartment, swilling coffee after having a good night’s sleep for the first time since, well, last Tuesday night, really; I had to get up at five on Thursday, after all. I got home around nine last night; I got a ride to the airport many hours before my flight–which I don’t mind, as long as I have something to read and an Internet connection, I am more than capable of entertaining myself. The flight home was uneventful, I retrieved the car and there wasn’t any traffic to speak of on I-10 so the drive home was practically nothing. Now I have to adjust back to my normal reality, which is also fine–it can be very tiring and exhausting being at a conference for the weekend, but as I mentioned yesterday, I had a marvelous time. Sleuthfest is a lovely event (kudos to the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America, with an especial shout out to president Alan Orloff and chairs Michael Joy and Raquel Reyes) I’ve always enjoyed when I’ve had the opportunity to attend; I certainly hope it works out for me to go again next year. I met some new people and reconnected with others I’ve not seen since pre-pandemic (some of course I’ve met and seen since the pandemic started), and over all, it was truly a lovely weekend. I also managed to get some writing done over the course of the weekend, which is always a pleasant surprise when it happens.

But there’s also something quite lovely about being home, in my own desk chair drinking my own coffee and looking at my big desktop screen instead of the laptop. I have a million emails to get through and try to answer; data to enter for my day job; and at some point later today I have to run errands and finish re-acclimating to New Orleans and my usual, ordinary, day to day existence. I did manage to finish reading my friend’s manuscript (which I greatly enjoyed), as well as The Great Betrayal, and got about half-way through Rob Osler’s debut Devil’s Chew Toy, which I hope to finish this week. I have some stories to finish polishing to get out into the world this month, and I need to get back to the writing, of course. I’m also still a little reeling from how well my reading from Chlorine went at Noir at the Bar; yesterday people were still coming up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed it and how much they were looking forward to reading it when it’s finished. I suspect Chlorine might be the breakout book I’ve been waiting to write most of my career…it certainly seems like it, doesn’t it?

I am feeling a bit better about where I am at with everything and my writing, I have to say. That’s the lovely thing about events like Sleuthfest–writers with careers like mine often are operating in a vacuum. Sure, people say nice things to us about our work on social media or in Amazon or Goodreads reviews, but for the most part we don’t get many opportunities to engage with readers or other authors in person. I doubt, for example, that I will ever be so popular that my signings or readings or appearances will be ticketed events. It’s always possible, of course, but at this point hardly likely. having in person interactions with other writers and readers. Writing is different from other jobs; you mostly do it by yourself and it’s not like you have an office filled with other co-worker authors to go to every day. I never am overly concerned about how good of a job I am doing at my day job; I know my job inside out and I provide good care and education to my clients every day. But writing is an entirely different animal. You work on something by yourself for quite some time and polish it and edit it and rewrite it and you have no idea what’s going on with it–if it’s any good or not, because you’re not a good judge of your own work, and then you send it out and wait and wait and wait to find out if it’s any good or remotely publishable. And even then, you don’t get any feedback outside of your editor for months and months and months after you wrote it–and in some cases, by the time the book or story comes out, you’ve completely forgotten what it was about and who the characters were and so on.

Heavy sigh.

That’s why, at least for me as an author, going to events like Sleuthfest are so important. I need that reinvigoration every once in a while; it inspires me and pushes me and gets me back to feeling like an author again. It’s really nice.

But now I have to get back to reality–balancing day job with writing and volunteer work and keeping the house–and I know my next event will be Bouchercon in September, at the end of the dog days of summer and as football season once again kicks into gear. So for now, I am going to make another cup of coffee, put some things away and start doing some chores around here before I dive back into the duties of my day job. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.

Destiny

Sunday morning and my last day in Fort Lauderdale for Sleuthfest. I am about to go forage for coffee, come back up here, get cleaned up and packed. I am heading to the airport early–I have lots to read with me, and of course, I can always pull the laptop out and write if I want to while I wait for my flight. I struggled writing yesterday, to be completely honest; I was trying to write every morning over my coffee before heading down for the afternoon slate of panels (nobody needs to see me here before noon, seriously) and tomorrow I will be at my own home after sleeping in my own bed, and will probably do a final wrap up of Sleuthfest and the marvelous time I’ve had here. I am always nervous about public speaking on panels and so forth, and it’s lovely when it always goes well.

I was on two marvelous panels yesterday; the first was about how does one decide between an amateur or a professional detective, moderated astutely by Marco Carocari, and then the How to Write a Mystery panel, moderated by the always marvelous Oline Cogdill. I sat in between Jeffrey Deaver and Elaine Viets; so pretty much my head was spinning the entire time–I’m sitting next to Jeffrey Deaver and Elaine Viets!!!–and somehow managed to not make a complete fool of myself…or everyone was simply being very kind. Both panels I thought went really well, thanks to expert moderation and marvelous people on the panel, and I also discovered some marvelous new-to-me writers this weekend, including Yasmin Angoe (whose debut Her Name Is Knight is neatly packed into my bag to take home, and Genevieve Essig, who actually lives in the French Quarter! (I am buying her book today when I go downstairs.) Yes, I bought too many books while here–just what I needed, more books, right?–but you can never have too many books.

I also discovered yesterday morning when I wanted to work on the first chapter of Mississippi River Mischief that I started this part week (in a very lame and ineffective attempt to get the book started) that I actually already had started writing the first chapter a few months ago–I told you my memory is a sieve–and I then found some notes that I had made on ideas for the book and realized dumbass, you had already plotted almost the entire thing out already; it just needs tweaking. Needless to say, I was incredibly thrilled and delighted to discover that I was not, in fact, needing to start completely from scratch but had already made some great progress; so now I am going to finish the first chapter while figuring out the story, plot, and structure of the novel–there’s a lot I need to fit into it; more than I had thought, which makes the book even more ambitious than I was recently thinking it would be. Gulp. But I always say I like a challenge…

But on the other hand, as lovely as it is to immerse myself into the world of writing and publishing, that always has to come to an end and I get to return to the mundanity of the Lost Apartment and my every day life in New Orleans. Tuesday morning I return to the office (Monday is my work at home day, and I have a massive stack of data entry to do), and now that I won’t be traveling again until after Labor Day, it may be time to start going to the gym (despite having to walk in the miserable heat of the summer over there) again. I want to get in better condition–I don’t care, for the first time, about the marvelous side effect of changes to my body–because i am getting older, and need to start worrying about things like muscle loss and bone density and things like that, and a regular weight routine will help with that. I should also probably try to eat healthier as well–I know, who am I and what have I done with Gregalicious–because of genetic things, like high cholesterol and heart disease on both sides and eating better will help with that as well. I also need to stay focused and stop feeling so defeated by the enormous amounts of things I have to do all the time; I’ve simply got to get the organizing of my life under control so I can get things done and not feel so oppressed and defeated all the time.

And on that note, I need to get cleaned up and packed and going on my day. Have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow morning from my desk in the Lost Apartment.

Ooh My Love

Sleuthfest Saturday!

Yesterday was marvelous for one Gregalicious. I had a lovely panel with marvelous writers–talking about POV, which I really cannot speak to with any authority, but I winged it and I think I did okay? It was quite fun–Alan Orloff and Elaine Viets, whom I already knew, were their usual witty and intelligent selves; and the new to me writers (Thomas Kavanaugh and Tammy Euliano) were also phenomenally smart and clever and I had a marvelous time. Several people also came up to me (out of the blue) to tell me how much they enjoyed my reading from Chlorine Thursday night, which was so nice and lovely and cool, and really meant a lot to me.

I then had a marvelous dinner in Boca Raton at Kuisine, a Peruvian-Asian fusion restaurant, with some writer friends. It was lovely; the food was remarkable and the company of course very interesting. I suspect I talked too much–I had a glass of rosé before we left for Kuisine and I had a marvelous specialty cocktail with dinner; as we all know, it’s very hard to shut me up once my brain has become infused with alcohol. But my companions were very gracious, for which I am eternally grateful.

I have two panels today–one about Amateur v. Professional detectives, followed by one on How to Write a Mystery, which I was a contributor to, and both should be marvelous. Marco Carocari is my first moderator, with the wonderful Oline Cogdill moderating the second. It’s been lovely ever since I arrived. I’m having a wonderful time, and I do highly recommend Sleuthfest for aspiring writers in Florida to attend; lots of good information and helpful workshops and panels on mastering the craft.

I also managed to write quite a bit yesterday morning; logging in over two thousand words on one of my many projects that I am working on. It was a very pleasant surprise, frankly; I just kind of wanted to see where I was at with the chapter I was working on, and just kind of went to town from there with it. I think it’s coming along nicely. I have three chapters done on this, about to go onto the fourth–but of course I’ve been writing this off the top of my head (pantsing, I suppose you could say) but I already kind of knew how these first three chapters or so would play out before even trying to write it–it’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, really–and maybe it will turn into something; maybe it won’t, but for now, I am having a good time with it so why not keep riding that rollercoaster while I can? I also need to get to work on the new Scotty–I am falling behind, and that is simply unacceptable. This weekend, as I had hoped, is kind of invigorating me and my creativity.

I do think my constant juggling act with the flaming chainsaws gets to me periodically. Yes, I have a day job (going on seventeen and a half years at the same employer, a record for me–previously the record of holding a job for me was five years) that I enjoy doing and I absolutely believe in the mission of what I do forty hours a week–but it’s not my identity (I think that may have always been the problem I had with previous jobs; they held my interest until i mastered it, and then I got bored. And jobs that have no value or connection with you other than the actual paycheck eventually become drudgery and I started resenting the job, which inevitably would lead to the downward spiral ending with me quitting or getting fired), but when I don’t have the opportunity (thanks, pandemic) to escape from that into the role that I do Identify with–writer–by being around other writers, talking about books and writing and so forth, which is my identity, it’s easy to slip into depression and everything that comes with that. Exhausting as events like this are–I tend to get overloaded and fried by all the talk and being around people and meeting new people and engaging with friends I only get to see at events like this, and i never sleep well when I am on the road–they are also invigorating. When I get home tomorrow evening, I will be energized and excited despite being completely exhausted. This is a very cool thing, of course.

My neck is also a little stiff this morning, which means I must have slept wrong on the pillow last night. It’s irritating getting old and having your body start betraying you on a regular basis. Heavy heaving sigh. But I think I am going to finish this now, do some stretches, take a shower and do some writing before I head back downstairs. Have a happy Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be checking in with you again, as always, tomorrow.

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?

I really hate working on my MacBook Air. I mean, I guess it’s okay but it’s really difficult for me to get used to, you know? I really love the bigger screen of my desktop computer–but then, maybe that will change when my new glasses come in–if they ever come in; they were due to come in this week, in fact. Heavy heaving sigh. I’ll end up having to go out to Metairie to pick them up next Saturday, most likely. Yay. It’s always such a joy for me to head to Metairie for any reason.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Well, it’s Friday and I’m in Florida (not as lyrically magical as “Friday I’m in Love,” but this is why I am not a songwriter). I did my reading at Noir at the Bar last night, and yes, I did read from Chlorine, and it went over very well, I think. People seemed to be appreciative of it, or at least very kind, at any rate. The other readers were all fantastic–JD Allen, Tracy Clark, John Copenhaver, Jeffrey Deaver (!!!!), Tori Eldridge, and Alan Orloff. I was quite intimidated when. I got up there as everyone was killing it, but I surprisingly didn’t have my usual stage fright and nerves beforehand, and much to my surprise as I was reading, my hands weren’t shaking and I couldn’t hear my voice shaking either. I did have the big adrenaline crash afterwards, of course–that will never change, methinks–but it was kind of lovely not having my usual stage fright jitters before hand; I think that may have been because I was sitting and chatting with friends before hand? Anyway, it turned out to be a much more pleasant experience than usual, and I can check “Noir at the Bar” off my bucket list.

I have a panel later on today, which should be fun, about point of view; and then I have two back to back tomorrow afternoon. I slept okay last night–more restful physically than actual deep rest, which was odd, given how long I had been up but then again, strange bed and a lot of stimulation during the day. It happens, I suppose. I just figured I would zonk out after getting up so damned early yesterday and flying and everything. Ah, well. Maybe tonight? One can hope.

So I am going to just take it easy this morning, methinks. I will have to go foraging for coffee at some point–they have some in the room, but…yeah, not the greatest and only one cup so a-foraging I will go. I know they had free coffee in the bookshop this morning but I missed that by lounging in bed much too long and now writing this, but I want to be able to be chill and witty on my panel later this afternoon. It’s really nice to come to these kinds of things; it’s always lovely being around people who love books as well as people who also write; we all have that struggle in common–that weird love/hate thing, not to mention the total insanity of publishing and how the business works which we are all trying to figure out somehow even though there really is no way to figure it all out. It’s also nice being inside a conference bubble for a weekend, where I can pretend that nothing is going on in the world outside and everything else is great and hunky dory and I can put off dealing with reality until I go home Sunday.

Ugh, reality. Not my favorite.

Okay, Constant Reader, it’s time for me to go forage for coffee. I’ll probably come back up here and write for a while before it’s time for my panel. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader–I’ll be back to annoy you again tomorrow.

If Anyone Falls

I absolutely loved the tag line for the marvelous television adaptation of Megan Abbott’s equally brilliant novel Dare Me: “There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenaged girls.” It’s also incredibly accurate; our teen years often impact and influence who we become and can color the rest of our lives. I loved Dare Me; it was lyrically, hauntingly written, and the story it told, while actually pretty simple, showed how the intricacies of relationships between young girls and authority figures who aren’t much older than they are, can become so complicated and complex; layers of love intermingling with hate and jealousy, the power dynamic shifting and changing as the characters themselves shift, change, and grow from their experiences.

I write, sometimes, books where the main characters are young–teenagers, either in high school or college or having just completed college–and those books are often labeled and marketed as “young adult” fiction, even though I generally just consider them novels about young people. I mean, technically novels about young people are young adult novels, and yet while I am resigned to this marketing label I am never certain if my books truly qualify or not. Perhaps that’s some kind of internalized arrogance and a sense of subconscious superiority to what I consider something lesser; it’s definitely something I should unpack at some point. But I think it is also an interesting starting point for one of my endless essay ideas, and perhaps someday–when I am less scattered, less all-over-the-place mentally and creatively–I’ll be able to sit down and write all those essays I want to write.

Which brings me to John Copenhaver’s second novel, The Savage Kind, which I just finished reading yesterday.

If I tell you the truth about Judy and Philippa, I’m going to lie. Not because I want to, but because to tell the story right, I have to. As girls, they were avid documentarians, each armed with journals and buckets of pens, convinced that future generations would pour over their words. Everything they did was a performance. Everything they wrote assumed an audience. After all, autobiographers are self-serving, aggrandizing. Memoirists embellish. It’s unavoidable. To write down your memories is an act of invention, to arrange them in the best, most compelling order, a bold gesture. Some of the diary entries that follow are verbatim, lifted directly from the source, but others are enhanced and reshaped. I reserve my right to shade in the empty spaces, to color between the lines, to lie.

You may balk, dear reader, but I don’t care. I need to get this right.

I could take different approaches. I could contrast the teenage girls: the black hat and the white, the harpy and the angel, the cunning vamp and the doe-eyed boob. Or I could draw them together, a single unit: Lucy and Ethel, Antony and Cleopatra, Gertrude and Alice, Holmes and Watson, or even, I dare say, Leopold and Loeb. But neither of those angles would work. The complicated facts are inescapable. These girls are both separate and together, but many times, they followed their own paths and even crossed one another. Things are never that simple, never that black and white, that good or evil, or that true or false. I’m not writing this to assign blame, or to ask forgiveness, or to tie it up in a bow for posterity. It’s not that kind of book.After all, an act of violence committed by one may have originated in the heart of the other. That’s to say, this is a story about sisters, and like many of those dusty and gruesome stories from ancient literature, here sisterhood is sealed in blood.

I should know. I was one of them.

Great opening, right?

John’s debut Dodging and Burning won the Macavity Award*, and was quite the impressive debut. II was completely blown away by the book myself–it showed a maturity and sophistication in theme, writing, and characters that one rarely sees in a debut novel. One of the things I thought was very interesting about the book was that while it did focus on a gay story, the main voices in the book were young straight women; I thought that was a risky thing to try to pull off, but he did a really excellent job.

As good as Dodging and Burning was, I wasn’t prepared for how good The Savage Kind would be.

The heart of the book is the friendship/relationship between two damaged young women in the post-war afterglow of the late 1940’s in Washington DC. (Both of John’s novels are set in the post-war period, when the world was trying to go ‘back to normal’ after the massive paradigm alteration of a global war that left most of Europe and significant parts of Asia in ruins; tens of millions dead, billions in property damage, and the world needed to rebuild from the rubble–and normal was also being redefined; the paradigm shift caused by the war made going back to “the way things used to be” practically impossible–which makes it a very interesting time to write about.) Philippa’s mother died giving birth to her and she has a slightly adversarial relationship with her stepmother, Bonnie. Judy was raised in an orphanage and adopted by a wealthy couple who had lost a daughter in a particularly brutal way–Judy was adopted to replaced their raped and murdered daughter, but her adoptive parents are still too scarred and damaged from the lost of their own child to raise and love another, and this history also colors Judy’s personality and who she is. The two girls find each other and become very close friends; so close that their love for each other might go even deeper than the Platonic ideal of friendship–their teenaged hormones raging out of control, are romantic/sexual feelings also developing between the two of them?

They are also playing girl detectives, trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that they don’t know has anything to do with them beyond the idle curiosity (and their dangerous boredom) but as they look further into the mystery revolving around a classmate, a favorite teacher, and that classmate’s family–as well as their own–they become more and more deeply enmeshed in danger and cling even tighter to each other.

As if that juggling act isn’t tough enough, Copenhaver makes all of these characters realized, fully developed and realistic in their emotions, their feelings, and their reactions. He also tells the story in alternating points of view between the two girls while they are experiencing the events, as well as a narrator voice from the future, telling the story in retrospect as well as talking directly to the reader. This is hard to pull off, particularly the omniscient future narrator–the last time I saw this used so effectvely and memorably was in Thomas Tryon’s The Other (at least, this is the book that popped into my head as I was reading, and it’s a favorite of mine).

The Savage Kind was nominated for a Lefty Award, and it very deservedly won the Lambda for Best Mystery recently. I highly recommend it!

*I may be wrong here, but I think he might be the first openly gay author of a book with gay characters and themes to win the Macavity Award; I know I was nominated once for a short story–but my characters and themes weren’t queer.

Rooms on Fire

Saturday morning and I slept late, and it was indeed marvelous. I have to make groceries and gas up the car (will probably need a bank loan for that), but my primary focus today is going to be reading and writing. I will also probably start going over the edits for one of the two manuscripts sitting in my inbox right now, but that’s also going to depend pretty heavily on how nasty it is outside. It rained off and on most of yesterday–I do love the New Orleans rain, especially if I don’t have to go out into it, of course–but it’s very bright and sunny outside my windows this morning. My morning coffee feels marvelous and tastes even better, and as I glance around the workspace and the rest of the kitchen I see some odds and ends that need straightening and putting away. There’s also some dirty dishes in the sink that need being taken care of at some point. The rugs needs to be straightened, and the entire downstairs needs vacuuming. I would also like to get a box of books down from the attic and start cleaning that out a little bit this weekend as well. An ambitious program to be sure, but one that isn’t impossible…if i stay focused.

Which is always the big if, isn’t it?

We did get caught up on The Boys last night–this third season is the best so far, and there was a great twist in last night’s episode, which doesn’t bode well for the future but I also can’t wait to see how it plays out (although that will probably come in season four). I wasn’t tired when I got home from the office yesterday the way I usually and ordinarily am, but there were things to do, and I immediately set out to get them done once I had reached the safety and respite of the Lost Apartment. But it all got done for the most part, and Scooter got his lap for a goodly portion of the evening while I doom-scrolled social media waiting for Paul to get finished with his work (he worked at home yesterday) so we could watch The Boys. I even fell asleep in my chair a few times while waiting–Scooter’s super-power is the ability to get both of us to fall asleep when he cuddles with us. I did spend a lot of the evening thinking about writing and things I want to write–there’s never enough time for me to write as much as I want to, really, even though I have to force myself to do it.

I also realized last night that I need to get ready for Sleuthfest. I am doing a reading on THursday night and haven’t picked out something to actually, um, you know, read, let alone rehearse. It’s my first-ever Noir at the Bar, and will be in the hotel bar. I’ve published so much stuff that I’ve never gotten the chance to read from, you know? Should I read from one of my recent books? Should I read a short story? Should I perhaps read something in progress–Chlorine, for example? I also am on a panel about MWA’s How to Write a Mystery, in which the other panelists and I are going to talk about our essays…and I really don’t remember much about mine other than it’s about dialogue, so perhaps I should go ahead and reread it at some point before the panel so I don’t sound like an utter blithering idiot.

Then again, maybe people enjoy me being a blithering idiot. I don’t know.

I can’t help but think that is not the case, though. I prefer to believe audiences laugh with me and not at me, but one can never be entirely sure.

Ah, well, there’s plenty of time to get petrified with fear about standing up in front of an audience. But I do have to decide what I am going to read on Thursday. Heavy heaving sigh. I was thinking “Moist Money,” from the Down Yonder anthology–mainly because it’s shorter, but it’s also one of the nastier things I’ve ever written; my short stories tend to be nastier than my actual books (by “nastier” I mean darker, not pornographic, FYI) but there are so many choices…and I need to make up my mind because I am going to need to rehearse before I get there…I can’t just get up and read the way I used to, completely unprepared and stumbling over words and…heavy sigh. There I go again, working myself up into a lather of anxiety about something happening in five days, which will end up being fine in the long run.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head to my easy chair to read some more of The Savage Kind, which I hope to finish today. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

One More Big Time Rock and Roll Star

And now it’s Friday, Three Day Weekend Eve.

It rained again yesterday, so it wasn’t terribly awful while running my errands after work last night. I came home, put away dishes and did some laundry, provided a lap for Scooter–who stayed there all night, and even when I would get up he would just jump back into my chair and go back to sleep (Paul didn’t get home from work until after I’d gone to bed, so he was feeling abandoned the way he always does when there’s only one of us at home), and did some more brainstorming and plotting for the stuff I am working on. I feel good and rested again this morning (I did get a bit tired yesterday afternoon), and hope springs eternal for another productive long weekend at home. The theme for the weekend is clearly editing, since i have copy edits for two manuscripts to start working through, and two short stories to edit–I also need to go through my “call for submissions” folder and see what is possible and what is not ( as well as tossing the ones that have already passed).

It seems weird to be celebrating Independence Day this year, since the radical, highly politicized “supreme” court continues to demolish every right and protection anyone non-white and not male have fought for and earned since the second World War–even going back as far as JOHN FUCKING MARSHALL to overturn decisions–as they work to establish a Fascist state once and for all. I was thinking about this last night while watching Real Housewives Ultimate Girls’ Trip 2 and remembering why I didn’t miss seeing Jill Zarin on my television, and I was also thinking about memoirs and memories and writing about my life. One of the primary reasons I’ve always backed away from it (and yes, I am aware that I am talking about being reluctant to write personal essays about my past and life in MY FUCKING BLOG) is not only because I know my memory to be faulty, but also because I know that–like most other people–I also have a tendency to rewrite my memories to make me look better or to justify bad behavior on my own part, and that isn’t fair to the other people in said memories who don’t have a platform (no matter how small) to tell their side of the story (which has also been undoubtedly rewritten in their own minds to make themselves look better). No two people ever see the same situation exactly the same; our interpretations and reactions to things are often predicated and formed by our life experience, our education, our opinions, and our beliefs and values that have also developed over a lifetime. An event that may have seemed completely throwaway and inconsequential to one person can be life-changing to another.

I’ve also begun recognizing and finding holes in my memory. For some reason I had always believed we’d moved, for example, from the south side of Chicago to the suburbs in the winter of 1969. That was firmly cemented in my brain as fact…until a year or so ago when I realized I was ten when we moved to the suburbs, which means we didn’t move out there until the winter of 1971. That’s a significant difference, which has skewed the order of memories in my head.

Some friends have been encouraging me to write personal essays, but I’m not really sure I should or not. For a long time I shut the door on my past as much as I could; it was painful to remember and it was simply easier for me to shove everything into a corner of my brain and lock the door behind them. When I started rebooting my life at age thirty-three, I still looked back a lot with sadness and heartbreak and bitterness–but I also began trying to put it all behind me at the same time because it was sad and heartbreaking and I didn’t want to be trapped into that quagmire of negativity. After Paul and I had met and we’d moved to New Orleans and my new life was beginning to take shape–the life I’d always wanted and had dreamed of for years; those dreams sustaining me through even the darkest of times–I decided to put it all behind me once and for all, deciding that I loved my life and was very happy with it, which meant that everything that had happened–no matter how terrible–was necessary to put my feet firmly on the path that led to my happiness and so therefore I should have no regrets about anything. It was helpful to distance myself from my past and never look back, so I tried never to do so. But now that I’ve reached sixty–I’ve started reflecting about the past a lot more over these past few years, plus writing my last two books (Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit, respectively) required me to start digging around in those inner rings of the giant redwood of my life, as did watching It’s a Sin, which, despite being set in London, took me back to the 1980’s and brought a lot of painful memories back. It made me realize that while that coping mechanism of “no regret, not looking back” was necessary for my growth into who I am now, and for me to build a writing career, it wasn’t long-term healthy because a lot of unprocessed pain, anger and grief (and joy and laugher, as well) had never been recognized, processed, dealt with, and moved on from. I think part of the reason I decided to finish those two in-progress-for-years books was precisely so i could start processing and dealing with my past…and sometimes that means revisiting painful memories. It’s also part of the reason I moved “Never Kiss a Stranger” up on the lengthy list of things I want to write and finish and get out there; I want to remember the mentality of what it was like to be a gay man in New Orleans in 1994, just really coming to terms with your sexuality after being closeted at least most of the time for most of your life, and beginning to explore what it means to be gay while the specter of AIDS hung over your head like a death sentence just waiting to be pronounced. As prevention and treatment options continue to lower the risk of infection as well as the threat of death over the last decade or so, people are slowly beginning to forget what it was like back then–and the literature of the period is going out of print and disappearing. I now have clients who don’t remember what it was like because they weren’t alive then, and while it is so wonderful and lovely that they didn’t come out and experience life with that shadow hanging over their heads, periodically I feel a bit of pang remembering all those wonderful bright lights that were extinguished so cruelly, and the old embers of white-hot anger at the societal and governmental neglect, often deliberate and intentionally cruel, that allowed them all to die returns.

Which is why unveiling a commemorative stamp honoring Grendel’s mother, aka Nancy Reagan, during Pride Month was tone-deaf as well as a slap in the face to those of us who survived in spite of that miserable bitch and the raw sewage she married.

I also think this most recent pandemic and the memories it stirred up, timed with watching It’s a Sin and some other things, is why I am so exhausted all the time (well, that plus being sixty); it’s a sign of depression from all of the unprocessed emotions and feelings from locking away my past and turning away from it. It may have been necessary in 1995 to move forward, but it wasn’t healthy, and the longer I kept those memories locked away without dealing with them the worse it became. So I am going to set a goal of trying to write an essay every two weeks about something from my past, unlocking a memory and trying to find the meaning in it, how it impacted and affected my life–and not with regret, but with the cold, unflinching eye of the non-fiction writer. I also feel like something snapped inside my head this past week–I know how weird that sounds–but Wednesday I was really down. Memories flashing through my head, triggered by the reversal of Roe (I remember a pre-Roe United States, and also remember when the decision came down) and what that meant for other decisions revolving around personal privacy/freedom and government overreach. The four or five days following the Dobbs decision were dark ones for me (I cannot imagine what they were like for women), and yet, somehow, in writing something Wednesday afternoon something snapped in my head and I got past it all–and I realized I’d been dealing with a lot more anxiety and depression than I thought I was (and I thought I was dealing with a lot as it was). I have felt much better since getting over that hump on Wednesday, but I am also not foolish enough to think I am past it all, either–it will come back.

If I learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it’s that trauma and depression come in waves. There will be good days, and there will be bad days. I usually deal with darkness by writing–not writing makes the darkness even darker–which is something I also need to remember: writing always makes things better for me.

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