Category: documentaries

Turn My Way

Last night I made it to the gym for the first time in forever, and it felt marvelous. Since it had been a few weeks, an my muscles are old (everything is old, frankly), I only did one set of everything at the weight I was doing the last time I went to the gym. (Never go full tilt when you go back after a break; that results in the kind of muscle fatigue and soreness no one wants, and isn’t good for you, either) Tomorrow night I’ll do two sets, and Friday I’ll be back to three, with Sunday beginning a new week of full workouts. Huzzah!

I actually did some work on Chlorine last night as well; and I am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. For once I know how a book is going to end when I started writing it; it’s the middle and how to get to that desired end that is going to be the problem here. But I love my not-so-heroic hero already, and and it’s really coming together remarkably well. I am also trying to edit and pull together my story “Death and the Handmaidens” for an anthology call that ends in the middle of next month; it’s been through so many iterations already and I really do think my original version–all the rewrites were to try to get it to a place where it would fit the submission call I was sending it to–and so today at some point I am going to read the original and most recent versions and figure out how to make it work. (I used the basic structure of the story, and its original opening, for “The Silky Veils of Ardor.”) I watched some videos on YouTube last night about old Hollywood (and the closet), while I scribbled in my journal while Scooter slept in my lap. I also did a load of dishes and a load of laundry last night–I was pretty motivated and efficient last night; obviously, I wasn’t tired when I got home from work the way I usually am on Mondays, meaning I slept well and am over-all well rested.

Hell, I feel well rested again this morning. Go figure. I woke up before my alarm (4:30, to be exact, just like yesterday) but stayed in bed until it was time to rise. My muscles and body feel relaxed, stretched, and worked, which is a lovely feeling–the stretching before the workout always feels so fucking good–and I am looking forward to a relatively pleasant day. The sun is rising outside as I swill my first of two cappuccinos this morning–the new machine is most excellent, as is my new washing machine (although it’s much more complicated and fancy than it needs to be, which of course makes me nervous), and I continue to make progress on cleaning up and out the apartment. I think tonight–after putting away the laundry and the dishes–I may start breaking into some of the living room boxes to shed more books. The primary reason I’ve not already done this is because it will require disassembling a lot of the living room, but having taken the laundry room apart and put it back together lately, I don’t really see that as the enormous challenge I was seeing it as being, and if it gets more books out of the house that are superfluous, more power to the disassembly. Paul was working on a grant last night, which is why we didn’t continue our viewing of Very Scary People (we are probably going to skip the Bobby Durst episodes, having watched the HBO mini-series on him and his “alleged” crimes already, The Jinx), and perhaps if Paul is working on the grant again tonight I can get caught up on Superman and Lois. There’s also those marvelous Marvel superhero series on Disney Plus we haven’t watched–WandaVision and the new Falcon and the Winter Soldier–and Loki is also coming, which should be a lot of fun; there’s really so much content nowadays it’s more of I can’t decide WHAT to watch rather than there being nothing to watch. I also want to watch that new Kate Winslet crime series on HBO, too.

The weather was absolutely lovely yesterday, too–but we are going into a lengthy period of flash flood warning, beginning this afternoon and running through Thursday, so getting home this afternoon after work should be a good time. Yay? Heavy sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Sorry to be so short and dull, today, Constant Reader–but it’s Tuesday. Perhaps tomorrow I can be more entertaining.

Vicious Circle

Ugh, Monday morning. I slept really well again last night–woke up before the alarm, in fact–and feel relatively well rested, if not completely mentally awake yet. I am sort of feeling like myself again; like my batteries have finally recharged, even if it meant putting some things off for a few days and just allowing myself to relax completely. The Lost Apartment is all pulled back together again; I’ve made some terrific progress with my writing, and my creativity is firing on almost all of its cylinders again, which is more than I ever thought would happen for me again. I finished reading The Russia House yesterday–it’s quite good, if unexciting; the writing itself is so marvelous the coldness of the story itself doesn’t matter, really–and we started watching season two of Very Scary People, getting through the Son of Sam and Night Stalker cases, and then part one of the Coed Killer (honest takeaway from this series: California sure has a lot of mass murderers and serial killers/rapists) before retiring for the evening. I also started reading Jack Olsen’s The Man with the Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders (interesting title, because the term “serial killer” hadn’t really been coined yet), which is extremely well written, and also paints an interesting picture of Houston; coupled with Thomas Thompson’s Blood and Money–I’ve always wanted to write about Houston. I lived there for two years, and then six months again a few years later, and it’s an interesting, complicated city that no crime writer, at least that I am aware of, has set a crime series in, or written a crime novel set there….which is something I find interesting. I think it’s also true of Dallas.

Interesting trivia Greg fact: the Chanse series was originally set in Houston, and the first book was called The Body in the Bayou. I later, when I started writing it seriously (and got beyond two chapters) I moved the series to New Orleans and the story evolved into Murder in the Rue Dauphine, which is the real reason why Chanse was from Texas: he was originally supposed to have lived in Houston, playing for the (at the time) Oilers after attending Texas A&M before getting injured and becoming a private eye. (In the published series, Chanse went to LSU instead of A&M, and was injured in his final college game, which kept him from playing in the pros.)

I still think someone should write a cop or private eye series set in Houston. As wild and crazy as these true crime books set there make Houston seem, I doubt very seriously that the city isn’t wild and crazy still. I remember going to see the stage version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) there, the very first time it was publicly performed (little known Greg fact), and the audience was interesting….I loved the guys in their formal jackets, ties, Wranglers and boots escorting women in evening gowns and furs and dripping with diamonds ( needless to say, I was wearing a nice pair of slacks and a dress shirt, but I spent the intermissions and the pre-performance time in the lobby literally just staring at the fascinating fashion choices for Houston’s moneyed class).

Oddly enough, there were not many children there; considering it was the stage production of a Disney animated film, you’d think there would be more kids there…but it was a world premiere, and more about Houston’s higher class showing off jewels, furs, and gowns more than anything else.

I also had fun brainstorming the background work for Chlorine over the weekend; naming characters and loosely sketching out bios for them, as well as trying to figure out how to pull off the plot and how to make it work. This is the really fun part of a book–figuring out everything–before the drudgery of actually writing it starts. I am very excited about writing this book, though, and it’s been a hot minute since I was excited about writing a book–in fact, so long that I can’t remember the last time I was actually excited to write a book–it may have been Lake Thirteen, all those years ago–which is different than being happy to write a book. I also have to be careful not to worry about expectations of other people, too–Chlorine began its life as just a vague idea I had one morning while writing my blog, which somehow caught on with some of my friends on Twitter who started tweeting at me (some of them still, periodically, will bring up Chlorine on social media, wondering where it is and when I am going to write it), excited about the idea.

I also spent some time yesterday coming up with a to-do list, which I always enjoy doing when I’m not stressed and worn out. When I am stressed and worn out (hello, first three months of this year), to-do lists simply make things worse more than anything else; emphasizing how far behind I am and how much I have to get done and sometimes–not always, just sometimes–the to-do list defeats me once it’s written. Just looking at it causes me stress. I’m not sure how long I am going to be able to hold off stress at the moment–it’s always just lurking there, in my peripheral vision, waiting to pounce on my like a tiger and hold me down–but I am hoping that having the apartment back together and having the two deadlines in my rearview mirror will help stave off it’s inevitable return for a little while, at least.

Tonight I am planning–we’ll see how that goes–to return to the gym for the first time in a couple of weeks, which means basically starting over with one set of everything, which means I won’t be there for terribly long, which for a Monday night is a good thing, most likely. Here’s hoping this will also help me fall asleep tonight; insomnia so frequently derails me. The office is also on track to going back to full staffing and regular open hours, possibly as early as May; I am curious to see how that winds up going. I’ve gotten used to the tumbleweeds blowing through our mostly empty department, and it will seem weird having other people around when they actually starts to happen.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Monday, all, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow morning.

Touched by the Hand of God

Sunday morning, and I am swilling coffee and eating coffee cake and trying to wake up. I slept very well again last night, and am starting to feel more…normal, whatever that means for me, since I am anything but normal. I have things to get done today, but the apartment is starting to feel like home again for the first time in a while (since everything went haywire week before last). The laundry room is mostly reassembled, and the book shelves in there look neat and tidy and organized, which rather pleases me. The living room is….well, the living room. I am always going to have too many books in my house (even typing that a voice inside my head was shrieking you can never have too many books what are you talking about?); but I am developing a certain heartlessness as I continue to fill boxes with books for the library sale. At some point, I am going to have to start going through the boxes of books on top of the kitchen cabinets and the ones in the storage attic, and my goal is to have cleaned out not only the attic but the storage unit I’ve rented for far too long.

We finished the first season of Very Scary People on HBO last night, concluding with the two-parter on Jim Jones (we skipped Gacy–have seen enough of him lately already–and Aileen Wuornos, because we watched one on her already recently) and will be moving on to season two probably this evening. I am way behind on Superman and Lois–mainly because it’s something I started watching without Paul and so, rather than trying to get him caught up, I am just going to continue watching without him (I always, inevitably, have to fill him in on super-hero backstory and so forth anyway in most cases, though I think he knows enough Superman lore–doesn’t everyone, really–that he wouldn’t need explanations in this case).

I’ve started–sort of–working on Chlorine this weekend, mostly free hand and mostly in my journal, mapping out backstory and so forth for the main character, and I’ve also started working on the backstory for the body in the surf, and the plot–which was kind of amorphously planned in my head, but yesterday I started nailing down specifics in the plot. It’s going to be kind of fun to write, I think–I always think that going into a manuscript; ever the optimist–and while it’s very tempting to use real people as characters, I think I will make the ones who actually are on the page and participating in the story fictional, but mention others–Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, etc.–in passing. I know the studio is going to be fictional–tempted as I am to use Fox or MGM–and I also know I need to sprinkle in some of the conservatism that reigned then, as everyone was afraid of Communists and having to testify in front of HUAC in Washington; it was the time of ‘the lavender scare” (also the title of a terrific history of the period and this very thing, by David Johnson; I highly recommend it) and so homosexuality was also driven even further underground because we were seen as security risks, particularly if we worked in government since it put us at risk for blackmail by Communists (I touched on this briefly in my story “The Weight of a Feather”, collected in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories).

I also worked on getting organized yesterday. I did a lot of filing, and took a lot of books off my desk and replaced them with ones I’ll be using for research and background for this book. I kind of feel like I already know my main character (even though I couldn’t remember his name yesterday as I wrote notes in my journal); he grew up in Kansas, was caught by his father in a “compromising position” with his high school basketball coach in the tiny little town he grew up in and was forced to enter the military at age 17–going into the Navy and serving in the South Pacific, where he found other men like himself, and thus became familiar with the underground gay community within the military, as well as in Honolulu and Los Angeles (on leaves). After mustering out in 1946 he comes to LA to become a movie star, is discovered by a Henry Willson type agent, and at the start of the story his seven year control with Pacific Pictures is coming to an end, they aren’t going to renew his contract, and he is in fact being sacrificed to a tabloid in order to protect another client, a rising star the tabloid was going to out–loosely based on how Henry Willson sold out Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter to Confidential to save Rock Hudson; but unlike them, my character’s agent has a plan for him: a long-term contract to work with an Italian film company making sword-and-sandal epics.

It’s a great set-up, and one that I hope to not let down…right now I am feeling confident that I can write this and it will be amazing; of course, once I start the doubts and imposter syndrome will start creeping in and I will spend most of my time wondering what the hell I was thinking to try to write such a thing in the first place.

I couldn’t have picked a better career path for a neurotic, could I?

I also lined up all the potential short story calls I am interested in submitting to, matched them up with an in-progress story that fits their call (or at least what does in my mind; I am really not that great a judge of these things, in all honesty) and need to plan out when to reread and when to rewrite. It’s very strange; now that I am coming out of the exhaustion from the writing of the two books back to back I am amazed at how light I feel; I don’t feel that oppressive burden nor the stress that comes from carrying it. I know both manuscripts need work and I need to revise and rework and edit one last time with each, and there’s a deadline for the first for sure–but I am going to put that off until next weekend, when I have the time to sit and go through Bury Me in Shadows from beginning to end, making notes, making corrections, and so on and so forth to get it polished into a diamond…or as close to one as I can get one of my books.

So, I am going to spend the rest of this morning swilling coffee and trying to finish reading The Russia House. I love LeCarré; he is such a terrific writer I can get lost in his sentences and paragraphs forever–but I find myself not loving the plot or the characters in this one, which is why it’s taking me so long to get through this one, I think. He also does an excellent job of taking me back into that 1980’s world/mentality of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union–that halcyon time when the fear of nuclear annihilation began to fade somewhat but at the same time the worry of what would fill the vacuum created by that collapse was almost nearly as intense (it didn’t take long for conservatives to replace Communists with Muslims as the scary other from another part of the world determined to destroy us); not to mention the wondering if glasnost and perestroika weren’t real or sincerely meant; LeCarré does an absolutely amazing job with that cold intelligence paranoia.

And then, for something similar yet completely different, I am going to reread Dorothy Gilman’s The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax.

I also would like to get back to the gym today; it looks absolutely lovely outside, and the walk will be lovely.

Until tomorrow, Constant Reader. Have a lovely Sunday!

Academic

Friday morning, and I slept well again last night. The washing machine arrives this morning (between 9:15 and 11:15) so I am up earlier than I would be ordinarily, but despite using an alarm to get up (I need to be sufficiently caffeinated when they get here to remove the old one and install the new one) and then it will be “catch up on the laundry day” while I do my home data entry today–which means the new one will be getting quite a workout today. I also had to remove the doors to the laundry room last night–it’s going to take some serious maneuvering to get the old one out and the new one in, and I figured the doors would be in the way–which made me feel quite butch and masculine. The feeling didn’t last.

The electricians came and replaced the fuse yesterday as well–so now I can use my dishwasher and the coffee maker can be on the proper counter where it belongs again. Slowly returning to a sense of normality here at long last, and starting to not feel quite so fried and exhausted, which is actually lovely.

I also have to do a conference tomorrow, which I need to prepare for, and honestly–my brain is so fried I keep forgetting that it’s happening and that I agreed to do it. I cannot remember being this discombobulated and fried before when I finished writing a book–but then again, it’s also been quite a while since the last time I finished two books in such quick succession without a break in between. Having everything around the apartment go on the fritz almost immediately thereafter was also not much of a help in that regard, and of course, that created more stress and insomnia…I’m really surprised I was able to sleep so well the last two nights, to be completely honest; but that was probably a result of exhaustion from the stress of things.

And of course, I also had to take down one of the laundry room shelves, just in case, and will have to put that back together once the washing machine is installed again.

So yeah, pretty big day around the lost apartment this morning….hopefully I can get going on my data entry before they come, and it’s probably what I am going to be doing for most of the day today. I make condom packs for hours yesterday–and ran out of condoms, so I don’t have that to do today, unless I run by the office to take these others and drop them off, and pick up some more…but I don’t really see that happening today…although….hmmm. Something to ponder before the washing machine gets here. (Of course, it would also depend on when the washing machine gets here as well…if they get here early I could run over to pick up my prescription, then head to the office, drop off the finished condom packs and pick up at least one more box….never mind, I shouldn’t think out loud on here. Suffice to say I have options.)

I actually don’t remember what all I watched yesterday while I was making the condom packs, but I am proud and happy to say that I broke the streak of serial killer documentaries at long last. I know I watched some interesting documentaries about queer horror movies, or why horror appeals to gay men (I honestly have no memory of Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which apparently is the gayest non-gay horror movie ever made?) as well as some documentaries about apocryphal books on the Bible, including Enoch–which led me down a rabbit hole into videos about the nephilim and pre-Flood Biblical history, as well as some interesting discussion about how things get mis-translated from the original archaic Hebrew into other languages over the years and then became stuc–like how “Lucifer” wasn’t really a reference to the devil (or Satan, or whatever) but a literal mistranslation of a verse probably referring to the recent fall of the Assyrian kind and his empire, rather than a reference to angels being cast own from heaven and sent to Hell to have dominion. I’ve always found that sort of thing to be interesting–potentially lost books of the Bible and prophecy, etc.–have always wanted to write a book about a missing or secret book of the Bible that was smuggled out of Constantinople before it fell to the Crusaders in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, to keep it out of the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, only to disappear for centuries; a lost book that would revolutionize and change Christianity forever (not really an original thought–this sort of thing has been done before, most notably–for me, anyway–in Irving Wallace’s The Word); I’ve always seen it–since 2001, anyway, as a Colin novel (yes, the Colin stand alone novel I’ve been thinking about for twenty years; I’ve always kind of wanted to spin him off into his own espionage thriller series–think gay Dirk Pitt/Indiana Jones/James Bond hybrid), but again–when will I ever have the time to write such a book?

So, in a moment I am going to start doing my data entry for the day; while I wait for the washer to arrive and be installed. When I am done working for the day I intend to get down my Henry Willson biography and start mapping out Chlorine–yes, world, I am finally ready to start writing Chlorine, or at least work on it, anyway–and I also am going to start figuring out what to do with these short stories and so forth that I want to get out for submission. So, the goals for this weekend–after getting my work done and the laundry room reassembled–is to finish reading The Russia House, get some work on short stories done, and fill up another box to donate to the library sale (maybe two), and get the outline/character bios for Chlorine started. (I’m very excited about this….although I am getting a little more excited about the next book I want to write, Where the Boys Die.)

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines for the day. Have yourself a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

I Told You So

Finally, a good night’s sleep last night, and I feel rested finally–physically, emotionally, and intellectually–for the first time this week. I didn’t sleep through the night–I was awakened just before four this morning by a simply marvelous thunderstorm; lightning so close it was simply a white flash and then thunder claps that seemed to go on forever as the rain came down torrentially; the emergency notification alerts also came through on both of our phones at the same time. I didn’t get out of bed–I assumed it was a flash flood warning, given the strength of the downpour–but upon rising this morning you can imagine my shock to check my phone to see that it was a tornado warning “for this area”. However, in checking just now I don’t see any tornado reports for the area, but we were in a flash flood warning for four hours (it actually ends in about fifteen minutes–but it’s clear outside). The storms dropped three to five inches of rain a couple of hours–which means at some point I should go make sure the car didn’t get water inside.

But there really isn’t anything like being in bed, warm and comfortable under the blankets, while it’s pouring down rain outside.

I am working at home today, and I have to also get the apartment ready for the delivery of my new washing machine at some point tomorrow. I think I am going to have to take the saloon doors off the laundry room–that’s not going to be much fun–and I am also going to take the bottom shelf down from above where the washer and dryer sit for maneuverability purposes, as well as getting some other things out of the way to make it as easy as possible for the delivery guys. It’s going to be lovely, frankly, having a washing machine again–there’s a load of clothes that needs to be washed, and I also want to do the bed linens, since I couldn’t last week–and hopefully, that will do away with this weird, slightly off way I’ve been feeling since the washer broke last Wednesday night and flooded the laundry room and kitchen.

I think I’ve also been feeling more than a little off-center (off-kilter, off my game, whatever) because I was already not centered as I went into the big (and exhausting) push last weekend to get the book finished and turned in. Finishing a book is always an enormous relief, but that final push to get it done is always, inevitably, exhausting on every level–and then having to get up early for work (or to take Paul to Touro) just wore me down. Insomnia also bedeviled me almost every night this week (until last night, thank the Lord), so finally getting rested last night was most essential and very important. Paul got home late as well, so I sat in my easy chair for most of the evening going down Youtube video wormholes because I was really too tired to be able to focus on reading…although I am hoping to get back to The Russia House after I complete my work-at-home duties today as well as get everything moved around that needs to be moved around preparatory to tomorrow’s washer delivery.

And now I’ve got serial killers on the brain. A friend tipped me off to a series on HBO MAX, Very Scary People, which takes on serial rapists, mass murderers (yes, there’s two episodes about the Manson family) and serial killers. There’s a new book idea formulating in my head–when isn’t there, really?–and I’ve been making notes and so forth this past week, as well as looking up more information about Dean Corll on-line…plus I’ve been trying to remember the early 1970’s and life in suburban Chicago, which is where and when the book will be set. I know, I know, I’m going to write Chlorine next–when my creative batteries have completely recharged and reset–and I also have some submission calls I want to submit short stories to. I wanted to spend this week doing just that–writing/revising/editing short stories–but I just haven’t had the bandwidth to focus and look at the calls (and the in-progress stories I want to write for them) to figure out when things would be due and how much work would need to be done, etc. But I think it’s okay for me to take a week to let my brain recalibrate.

AH, so much to do and as always, the clock is ticking.

I’ve also started reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmerman Telegram. Everything I’ve read of Tuchman’s has become a favorite (A Distant Mirror may be the best history I’ve ever read), and while I have yet to get through her entire canon (The Guns of August is still in my TBR pile), I thought it would be interesting to read this tale of the inflammatory telegram that was primarily responsible for the United States entering the first World War. (I’ve also become very interested–primarily through the writing of my Sherlock Holmes story–in the historical period from, say, 1910-1930, particularly in New Orleans. I would love to write more Holmes pastiches, but am not entirely sure there’s a market for them; I do have one on deck right now–one of the afore-mentioned short stories in progress; I am trying to decide if writing a Holmes pastiche for the submission call would be a smart thing to do, or whether I should just write the story and leave Holmes out of it entirely.) This creative ADHD thing really does suck sometimes…but I am going to actually not berate myself for my brain being all over the map this week because–well, damn it, I just wrote two books totally approximately 195,000 words in total over the course of about five months, give or take. My brain should be fried.

And on that note, I am going to head back into the spice mines. I need to get some things done before I start working for the day. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader.

Vicious Streak

I skipped posting yesterday because we had to have Paul at the hospital for his colonoscopy by 6:45 am. We were home by nine, but I was completely exhausted–undoubtedly in no small part by turning in the manuscript on Monday–so I decided to just kind of take the day off from everything. I read for a while, Paul and I finished season 3 of Mr. Mercedes, and then a Jeffrey Dahmer documentary, which was creepy as hell and then we found a weird docuseries on ID network in which convicted killers talk about their crimes….also creepy as hell.

Which could explain last night’s insomnia. I slept for about four hours straight through before waking up, and just kind of drifting the rest of the night before the alarm went off. I imagine I am going to be incredibly tired after work tonight; I was thinking about heading to the gym, but I am going to see how I feel when I get home tonight. I’ve not been to the gym in over a week–I correctly recognized going to the gym inevitably wears me out and unable to write (the voice of experience speaking in my head) and so I skipped until the book was finished. I should have gone yesterday, but again–was very worn out and tired for most of the day.

Sunday night as we finished watching The Clown and the Candyman, I kept thinking, some of these neighborhoods and suburbs sound familiar. Constant Reader may remember that I grew up in Chicago, and moved out to the suburbs when I was ten, where we remained for another four and a half years. I grabbed my iPad and typed in the name of our suburb, then asked for the distance between it and Des Plaines, which was Gacy’s stalking ground….and he was thirty miles away from where we lived. I don’t think he and his recruiters ever ventured that far outside their area, but it was still kind of scary and chilling.

I would have been the right age and the right type they were hunting for during the time they were killing.

I think subconsciously that’s why Gacy–and by extension Dean Corll (I’ve been spelling it wrong) in Houston–have always been so interesting in a macabre way to me; if we had lived in that neighborhood in Houston when Corll and his recruiters were killing, again, I was a bit on the young side for Corll when he started killing but would have just squeaked in before he was killed and the spree came to an end.

Yikes.

I also found my copy of Jack Olsen’s The Man with the Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders, and there’s an idea about this story forming in my head for a future book…because of course. It’s been nagging at me since we started watching the Gacy/Corll documentaries; today between clients I will probably scribble down some notes for it.

My new espresso machine arrived yesterday, and I was able to use it this morning. It’s much simpler and easier to use than the previous one, and it works just fine. Huzzah! (It also takes up less space on the counter.) I also got an email that our new washer shipped yesterday, so it should be arriving on Friday. I am really looking forward to having everything in the apartment operational again–the electricians still haven’t come out about the fuse that keeps tripping, though. But the new washing machine will make me feel less like I’ve lost a limb, which is kind of how I feel about it now.

And now, back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!

Elegia

Ugh, Monday morning.

At least I finished the draft of the book yesterday, so huzzah! It’s probably still a big old mess, and a whole lot of revision and rewriting is going to be required by my ever-patient and long-suffering editor, but it’s fucking done. And I have to say, in addition, that I’m kind of glad to be done with that manuscript, at least for now, and at least it’s in some sort of shape that makes sense and is hopefully fixable.

The espresso machine is still not making cappuccino shots, still only making an espresso shot despite having enough water for the larger shot; apparently just turning that extra water into steam. The new one should arrive today, so this morning will be the last time I have to use this old, no longer properly working one. I’ve also learned my lesson from the debacle of last Wednesday as far as how to drink the proper amount of caffeine this morning. What I should do is not make another and simply swing through the Starbucks drive-thru at St. Claude and Elysian Fields and pay a ridiculous amount of money for one of their lattes with a shot of vanilla in it…but as it also still causes me physical pain to pay that much money for one, I will most likely repeat the enormous mistake of last week and wind up over-caffeinating. I’ll be sad to get rid of this espresso machine; it was cheap and served me well for seven years almost, but I am really looking forward to using the new one, and seeing what it does.

I have tomorrow off so I can take Paul to his colonoscopy. Big excitement, right? At least I can take The Russia House with me to read while that’s going on. We don’t know what time his appointment is for; he has to go get a COVID test today, and once they get the result will call to let him know what time he needs to come in tomorrow morning (or afternoon; it could be at any time). Our new washer is also being delivered this Friday, and now of course I am stressing about how they are getting the old one out and the new one in. I’ll probably go ahead and remove the laundry room door on Thursday, as well as taking out the bottom shelf and everything on it to make as much room for them in the tight space as possible. I keep telling myself they’re used to this sort of thing and not worrying; after all, they were able to deliver and install the original one, weren’t they? And we’ve had three dryers delivered and installed over the last sixteen years, so I am probably worrying about nothing, right? Right? But so many things have been going wrong around here for so long–this weekend, we kept blowing a fuse in the kitchen–which is worrisome, especially since the last time it blew yesterday it wouldn’t flip back, and it was hot to the touch, so I let it sit for about two hours and then tried again. It worked that time–the kitchen lights are still on this morning (it’s also the same fuse the refrigerator and dishwasher are on, so I’ve not been able to. use the dishwasher as the fuse goes every time) so here’s hoping the guys can come out today and replace the fuse or figure out the problem with it so it will stop tripping.

We finished watching The Clown and the Candyman yesterday, as they tried to make the connection between the two notorious serial killers and the John Norman pedophilia ring, and as I watched and listened, I kept thinking to myself this sounds like where that QAnon pedophile conspiracy theory probably got its start–which doesn’t mean that it’s not based in some kind of fact; the QAnon conspiracy theory might actually be grounded in some kind of reality–which doesn’t, of course, mean what they are saying on those message boards and so forth is true, either. But it was interesting, to say the least, and the parallels and possible connection between these two mass murderers is fascinating to contemplate. And of course, the entire time I was watching I was scribbling down notes and ideas for stories and so forth. We also finished watching Resident Alien last night, which was exceptionally clever and rather well done; I am assuming last night’s final episode we watched was the season finale because the end was the perfect cliffhanger.

Fun!

I’ve also fallen behind on Superman and Lois, and with this draft of the book finished, I should be able to get back on track with everything else that I’ve fallen behind on–groan, my email inbox alone–and I have to do some tweaking of Bury Me in Shadows, which I am hoping to get to work on this coming weekend. I kind of want to take this week to kind of chill and relax and get a handle on everything. I’ve never felt caught up at all at any time over the past year, which is terrible and drives me crazy; there’s nothing worse than feeling behind all the time and like you’re never going to catch up.

And on that note….tis back to the spice mines with me! Happy day after Easter, everyone!

Chemical

Sunday, and time for the final push on the book. I’m at the point in writing where I feel like my entire life has become subsumed by the book; that point where it has seized almost complete control of your brain and you are thinking in terms of when this is done I’ll have my life back. I am also at the point where I hate everything about it, am heartily sick of the story and the characters when I am not actually working on them, and also when I am questioning any and all of my life choices.

I had a socially distant drink (or two) with a friend in from out of town for the Easter holiday, and her mixology skills may have gotten me to switch my allegiance from vodka to gin when it comes to martinis. They are two very different drinks–I’d never particularly cared for gin when I’d tried it in the past, but the traditional martinis she made me yesterday were quite tasty. I did all the errands I had to do yesterday, including the laundromat trip I’d talked about–which was interesting, and I did get much further in The Russia House while I was waiting to switch clothes from washer to dryer and then to finish drying–and then I came home to work for a bit before the cocktail date. It has been quite a long while since I’ve had anything alcoholic to drink, and it was so nice and normal I wasn’t quite sure how to act. After I got home and made dinner, we watched the regional final (LSU qualified for the national semi-finals; they did better than they had the day before, but it was still a rather sloppy meet for them; they can do better and score higher than they have) and then it was on to watch another serial killer documentary series–The Clown and the Candyman (recommended by a friend on Facebook).

Gacy is the more famous of the two serial killers who targeted and tortured boys and young men; Gacy came after Dean Korll and is better remembered for some reason. I guess it’s the whole clown thing, but Korll was, I think, even more sadistic than Gacy and the whole candyman thing–he used to work in his mother’s candy store and gave candy away to kids. It’s kind of terrifying, really, to think about how things usually associated with children were twisted around by these horrible killers. It’s like if the ice cream truck driver turned out to be a serial rapist/killer (Stephen King kind of did this in Mr. Mercedes), or some other trusted person people felt safe having around their kids. This documentary touches on something the Gacy docuseries briefly touched on; that Gacy may have been involved with a nation-wide ring of pedophiles involved in sex trafficking boys. The similarities between the Korll and Gacy murders are eerie and creepy; the assumption has always been that Gacy kind of copied what Korll did, but what if they actually were connected in some way–which is even more terrifying to think about or consider. I’ve always wanted to write about Dean Korll; I heard about the mass killings in the Heights when I first moved to Houston back in 1989, and have been fascinated by the story ever since. I am really looking forward to watching the second half tonight….if I finish my book.

Speaking of which, I am so close to being finished!

So, when I finish this I am going to go back and read the previous drafts of these last two chapters–I don’t think there’s much to be saved from them, frankly, but hey, stranger things have happened–and get them reworked to fit the final narrative. It’s been quite a journey writing this book, frankly–going back all the way to the summer of 2015 when I wrote the first draft in a burst of energy and excitement that hot and fetid July in New Orleans. I’ve also been so horribly disorganized, computer wise, since the Great Data Disaster of 2018, when things started going haywire with my desktop computer and nothing has really been the same since (I’ve not really tried to organize my computer files since then, with so much to do and so much going on; one of the things I decided yesterday was to make sure that, with the manuscript finished and so forth, that I spend some time over the next month–when not revising Bury Me in Shadows one last time–getting all my files and so forth organized–it’s been an absolute bitch revising this manuscript because there are so many versions and so many drafts scattered throughout all my storage–iCloud, dropbox, back up hard drive–that I am never entirely sure I am using the most current version of any of it, to be honest; but it’s fine, really. I am pleased with this version of it, and if there exists better drafts of chapters I’ve been working on, oh well). It’s just so time consuming to go through everything, opening and reading files, determining where the right space for them is, and so forth.

Sigh. So much organizing to get done.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Easter, and have a lovely day.

I’ll Stay With You

Good morning, Saturday, hope you’re doing fine!

I can’t even begin to tell you, Constant Reader, how unsettling it is has been for me–and I know this is an entirely a mental disorder of some sort–having that full laundry basket sitting on top of my unusable washing machine these last few days–to the point where I am seriously considering going to the laundromat on Magazine Street this morning an just getting it over with, you know? Annoying as it could possibly–and probably will–be, it’s really bothering me that I have that basket full and knowing that, even though the new washer is coming this Friday, the laundry will just continue piling up. It’s also unsettling because I usually launder the bed linens on Friday and obviously, I was unable to do that this past week as well. I am such a creature of habit–and such a completist–that it is unsettling to me that I started to do laundry and never got very far with it; I think that’s the real reason it is bothering me. So last night before I went to bed–we did finish the Gacy docuseries, and someone has recommended another one, that connects Gacy with Dean Corll, the Houston mass murderer who also targeted young men and boys–that I may have to check out.

It’s horrible, isn’t it, that watching these true crime serial killer documentaries gives me story ideas? I was scribbling away in my journal last night as we watched (we also watched LSU in the regional college gymnastics preliminaries; despite having an incredibly bad night, riddled with falls and mistakes, they qualified for the regional final–which tells you how good they really are. They have the potential, if everyone hits, to win the national title) and making notes; particularly for a short story idea I had a while ago for a deeply disturbing story about a young man being held by a psychotic, called “Oubliette.” I actually wrote the opening paragraphs while watching the docuseries last night, and I also realized that one of the primary reasons that the images of Gacy–those videotaped interviews are fucking chilling–bothered me so much was because Brian Dennehy was so brilliant playing Gacy in a TV movie back in the day that I always picture Dennehy whenever I think of Gacy, so adjusting my brain to register no, that really is Gacy and the reality is so much creepier than the Dennehy performance it was kind of hard to wrap my mind around it.

I wrote yesterday, and if I stick to my plan the book will be able to be turned in on Monday, which is lovely and also an enormous release of pressure for me. These final chapters are turning into something I think is kind of wonderful, but I am not entirely sure I’m going to stick the landing–I so rarely do, let’s be honest–and I am also worried about the length of the book; it’s right now already over ninety thousand words, and I don’t know that I want it to go over a hundred thousand–and at the pace I am going that is going to happen. I suppose during the editorial process I can trim ten to twenty thousand words from the book; Bury Me in Shadows also came in long (as did, now that I think about, Royal Street Reveillon) and will probably need some judicious pruning; I have until the end of this month to revise and edit it, with my editorial notes. I’m not sure why I started writing long again–but it’s also kind of nice; the last really long book I wrote was Mardi Gras Mambo and I was also beginning to think I couldn’t write long anymore.

Apparently not a problem. Although Chlorine really needs to be tight, lean and nasty.

So, this morning I am going to go to the laundromat (taking The Russia House along with me; I read some more of it yesterday), dropping off a library book, getting the mail, and making groceries. I also have a prescription to pick up, and a friend is in town and we’re going to have (socially distanced) drinks later, after I get my work done. I haven’t ha an actual drink–Paul and I were talking about this last night–since I went to New York for the MWA board meeting last year in January–Paul hasn’t had one since last year’s Carnival. How weird, right?

I can’t remember the last time I went for over a year without a drink–but it’s not like I actually missed it, either.

I am actually looking forward to being finished with this book, but am also glad my creativity is kicking into gear again.

And on that note, I need to get ready to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow.

Jetstream

Good Friday!

Yesterday was not one of my more pleasant days–although it wasn’t nearly anything as horrible as Wednesday was. Paul and I took Scooter to the vet for his bloodwork (he’s a senior kitty) and to check on how his diabetes is going, and then headed out to Costco to look at washing machines. We found one we liked, I took a picture of it (you can only buy them by ordering on line), and after we got back home we ordered it. We will have a brand spanking new washing machine delivered here next Friday, and I’ll have to deal with not doing any laundry between now and then–although I can use the one in the carriage house if need be in the meantime. (It’s very weird; not being able to do the laundry until next week makes me itch a little bit–not that it matters in the least. We have plenty of clothes, we bought some really nice new towels at Costco so that situation is under control for now, so I am not really sure why precisely it’s making me itchy that I can’t do a load of laundry…go figure.)

I was also tired all day yesterday; despite the good night’s sleep; I think all the stress and mood swinging of Wednesday night just completely drained me. I had little to no energy; after we picked up Scooter from the vet and I had my board meeting, I literally collapsed into my easy chair and dozed off for a bit, which never happens. I am not now, nor have I ever been, someone who either could nap; whenever I was able to take one, it kind of defeated the purpose of the nap because I would inevitably wake up from the nap feeling more tired and wrung out than I did before taking the nap. But I dozed off yesterday afternoon, woke up and did some things around the Lost Apartment, and then dozed off again during the early evening–definitely not like me. (A purring, sleeping kitty in my lap didn’t help me stay awake. Paul and I have long since recognized Scooter’s super-power is the ability to put us both to sleep; or in my case, most of the time, paralysis; I lose the desire to do anything but flip through channels or watch videos or find a documentary to watch.)

I did discover, by scrolling through the documentary listings on Netflix last night, a 2019 documentary about Dolly Parton, and let’s face it, I’ll watch anything with or about Dolly Parton because, well, I will always love her. I think the most interesting part of the entire thing was watching Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda trying to describe who Dolly is; whether it’s a persona or if what we see of her is really who she is. I also find it interesting to see the the similarities in the rags-to-riches tales of our biggest stars–like it’s almost a prerequisite for them to achieve massive stardom is to come from practically nothing; as seen in Tina earlier this week as well. (I also love how the story of how Dolly turned down Elvis’ offer to cover “I Will Always Love You” because he always required fifty percent of the publishing rights to everything he sang; the wisdom of that refusal seen when Whitney Houston turned it into one of the most popular single recordings of all time in the early 1990’s–and how incredibly gracious Dolly always is about that very thing; “She made me rich!”)

And when that was finished–all too soon, I could watch anything about Dolly for hours–we found a documentary series about John Wayne Gacy (Paul is fascinated by serial killers, and Gacy in particular) that uses actual footage from an interview Gacy gave several years after his conviction in an attempt to convince the press of his innocence; footage that was never seen until now…and Christ, how creepy was the guy? We watched the first episode, with me sort of awake–I kept dozing off and waking up again–and once it was finished we both retired to bed. I slept deeply and well last night, and feel rested today; my brain feels like it’s functional again and my muscles and body feel rested; which is good because now I have to really do a deep dive into finishing the book.

That’s really all I have to do this weekend–I am not even planning on going to the gym again until the book is done because I know it’ll wear me out and I won’t want to work afterwards. Much as I hate putting off the gym like this, I also know myself a little too well to pull of the self-deception of oh of course I’ll work on my book after I work out…when inevitably I am always exhausted afterwards. I feel good and better after a workout of course, but eventually the muscle fatigue sets in and then I am done done done.

And on that note, the book ain’t going to write itself, is it? See you tomorrow morning, Constant Reader! Be well an stay safe!