Category: errands

Mickey

Friday morning work-at-home blog, and the weather is supposed to get more back to normal for this time of year—highs during the day anywhere from the lower 70s to the mid 80s, dropping to the 60’s at night. It makes it even harder to get out of bed in the chill of the morning–and my blankets are incredibly warm and comfortable, as is the bed. But li’l Tug expects to get fed every morning around six (and is more than happy to let me know six is nigh by leaping over Paul and landing on me, before curling up next to my head while waiting patiently for me to get up and feed him and give him fresh water), which is going to make the time change this weekend a bit irritating. I also hate going to work and coming home in the dark, which is also soul-destroying because you feel like you’ve lost the entire day at the office.

But I slept well last night and let myself go back to sleep after the daily six a.m. feed-me Tug attack, which felt great. There’s a mail run to do and Tug’s first vet visit to fit into the day, and we’re going to Costco after I finish my work at home chores later. The constant, on-going kitten-proofing of the apartment can also prove challenging because you never know what’s going to catch his inquisitive must-play-with-that eye, and he is very curious and adventurous about anything. Cabinets can’t be left open. He’ll climb into the dishwasher as I am loading it–but no curiosity about the dryer yet. He’s also fascinated by water, like Skittle was–but the shower was uninteresting to him; not the case with Tug. He’ll tightrope around the rim of the tub while I’m showering and also walk between the shower curtain and the liner. He’s adorable and completely in charge around here, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

And I love having a purring kitty donut sleeping in my lap while I watch television or read.

Last night we watched this week’s The Morning Show, which absolutely felt like a season finale; I’m not sure if it was or not but it felt like it. I wasn’t super-tired when I got home, but Tug was especially needy so I repaired to my easy chair where I watched this week’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–which was kind of dull; but the fun of watching these shows is watching and reading the reactions of the fans and the recaps and so forth. I was thinking yesterday that these shows create community within their fans, as people want to talk about the cast and what’s going on with them, happily judging their lives, their behavior, their clothes, their make-up, their hair, their homes and their families. I was thinking this was unique to reality shows–remembering how everyone used to talk about Survivor and The Bachelor and American Idol back in the day, similar to how soaps would have group watches on campus where everyone talked about the storylines and the characters and their interactions. But we also did that with Glee and Lost and Desperate Housewives and various other shows. I do wonder what is it about film and television that drives people with the urge and need to talk about it with other people?

Then again, I always wanted to talk about books with other people–so I guess I can get it.

I was realizing the other day that this year in December will mark nineteen years of this blog–first on Livejournal and then moved here when I’d finally had enough of the Russian propaganda and spam over there–which is a longer commitment than most straight relationships and marriages, which is an interesting way to look at it. I started keeping it around Christmas of 2004, while we were still living in the carriage house–we wouldn’t move into the main house until June or July 2005; only to be moved back into the carriage house by Hurricane Katrina later that year. It’s also hard to believe sometimes that Katrina–and the Incident with Paul–was so long ago now; just like the Virginia Incident was a long time ago. Time inevitably passes, and just going through your every day routine living your life as best you can one morning you realize a lot of time has passed. The pandemic shutdown was almost four years ago, for fuck’s sake. We are now in year three going on year four of the COVID-19 pandemic, although no one really talks about it anymore. I am going to write about that whole experience at some point–there are at least three more Scotty books I want and/or need to write, which will take New Orleans through the cursed Carnival of 2020 (and the Hard Rock hotel collapse) and the shutdown and then afterwards. I think that’s been part of the creative malaise lately; knowing that the Scotty series, about to debut its ninth volume, is finally winding down. There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to avoid with these books but with the series continually going, I don’t have a choice. Scotty’s grandparents are all in their nineties by now–so death is going to have to come to the family. On the page or off the page? I do think it might be interesting to explore the Bradley side of the family a bit more; perhaps the death of the Bradley grandparents and a struggle over the will or something could be the basis for a book; perhaps COVID-19 might claim them, I don’t know. But I know I’ve not written about the shutdown or the pandemic, and it feels kind of cowardly to not address it in fiction yet.

Maybe I should finish that pandemic short story I started, “The Flagellants.”

I’m also thinking about getting blinds for the kitchen windows at long last; a do-it-yourself project I think I can handle.

And on that note, I’m getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Friday, and I’ll be back later with more blatant self-promotion.

Maneater

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I also decided to go in a half-hour later than usual and stay until five instead of four-thirty; alert the media! I know how hard it is to go on without knowing these minute details of my life. But it was cold this morning, and Tug woke me at the usual time–but curled up and went to sleep next to my head on my pillow once I hit snooze for the first time. Of course now that he’s awake and eaten and had some water, he’s all over the kitchen counters this morning knocking things off. He is particularly fond of pens and cigarette lighters–Paul is missing any number of them, and I’ve noticed he always make a beeline to any lighter lying around. Why the fascination with my pens and Paul’s cigarette lighters is a mystery for the ages.

I was tired when I got home yesterday. I had book mail yesterday (Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, which is a horror writer’s version of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, which I’ve already read two fictionalized versions already–Lori Roy’s and Colson Whitehead’s). I’ve not read Due before–my own fault, and no one else’s–but am really looking forward into digging into this one. I was also oddly tired by the time I got home; I felt fine when I left work, but after a couple of errands I was exhausted by the time I got home. The termite exterminator came by yesterday morning (the hole in the kitchen roof was partly rot and partly termite damage), and apparently Tug was fascinated by the Terminix man. I also watched another episode of Moonlighting last night–guest star was a very young, pre-China Beach Dana Delaney–(that’s another show I wouldn’t mind revisiting; does anyone else remember China Beach?) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Paul and I then finished The Fall of the House of Usher, which was really quite good and very well done; I also had read a piece recently which stated that Mike Flanagan has placed Ryan Murphy and American Horror Story as everyone’s go-to horror television creator. I will even go further than this and say Flanagan’s surpassed him. There were, at best, three top-level seasons of AHS–“Murder House,” “Asylum” and the election one; but it would be hard for me to say than any Murphy season is superior to any of Flanagan’s work; Midnight Mass alone was so superior to any of Murphy’s seasons that it’s not even a fair comparison–and Murphy had Jessica Lange and all of those other amazing talents in his repertory company.

I also recognized yesterday that I’ve been in a bad place since somewhere around last Thursday. There have been moments this week where I’ve come out of it and gotten some things done, but it’s still there. When I came home yesterday I intended to finish laundry and the dishes, but Tug wanted a lap bed and I gave in, figuring I wouldn’t be there for very long. This was incorrect; he slept there for several hours and since I was tired AND comfortable, I didn’t disturb him and just stayed there, watching Youtube documentaries about the Holy Roman Empire and how it slowly but surely divested itself of its association with the Papacy; Charles V being the last emperor to be actually crowned by a pope. I’ve also been reading The Rival Queens, which is marvelous–it’s a history of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and her daughter Marguerite, Queen of Navarre–known to history and literature as Queen Margot (which is also the name of the Dumas book about her). I’ve always wanted to write a suspense/intrigue novel set during that time period, and having to do with Catherine de Medici’s Flying Squadron–women who were trained spies and seductresses in her employ. Margot herself is fascinating–and both women would be in my history The Monstrous Regiment of Women about all the women who held power in the sixteenth century. Margot was as equally fascinating as her mother, and pretty much lived her life the way she wanted…which of course made her notorious. But the French, surprisingly enough, loved their princess with the loose morals–and the arrangement between her and her husband, Henri King of Navarre (eventually Henri IV of France) where they lived apart and took as many lovers as they could handle was also surprisingly modern for a royal couple.

I am hoping to spend some time with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride this weekend. Lou has become one of my favorite writers and favorite people in the crime fiction community over the years, ever since that fateful panel at Raleigh Bouchercon where I met and made some new friends who also are amazingly talented. (I think Lori Roy has a book coming out soon, too–huzzah!), and I also want to make a plan to stick to for getting things done this weekend. The LSU-Alabama game is Saturday night, so that will require me to do some strategic planning. I just hope for a good game. Obviously my preference would be for LSU to win–that’s always my default–but as long as we don’t get humiliated I am good with a close and/or exciting game–emotionally exhausting as that will be. I know my anxiety was involved in this funk I’ve been in for longer than I think I’ve been dealing with it–me thinking it started sometime late last week is laughable in its naivete–but I need to get some things done and underway before i get derailed with the surgery. Nineteen days from today I will go under the knife. YIKES.

Which reminds me, I need to review my medical file and see what they say about the recovery period, or if it’s mentioned at all. And sometime before then I am going to get my teeth! Huzzah!

And on that note on this cold Thursday morning in New Orleans, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later, okay, for some more blatant self-promotion.

Steppin’ Out

Wednesday morning and it’s cold outside this morning. It’s currently in the forties, and I turned on the heat once I came downstairs. This isn’t going to last long–I believe it’ll be back in the eighties for the weekend–but this morning going outside is going to be more than just a little painful, methinks.

I got off work yesterday and swung uptown to pick up the mail–the pothole at the end of the street finally resurfaced, and so my street is being resurfaced at the St. Charles end and is closed to access from that way, which makes getting home a bit more challenging than usual. I have to go uptown on the way home again today–long story short, I ordered a new lunchbox because Tug broke the strap on the old one, and it was overdue anyway; I should have ordered a new one long ago, and the new one is being delivered today in theory. It’s also the first of November, which kind of feels weird. This year has lasted an eternity already and yet here it is almost the end of the year already. I kind of feel in some ways like I’ve frittered the year away–and let’s be brutally honest, most of this year was spent working on things that were supposed to have been finished last year, and somehow nothing since those were both completed. Blame it on what? The heat, a difficult year, the injury, and everything else that seemed to go off the rails for me this year. Paul was working last night so I didn’t get a chance to do much of anything last night. I was too tired to read, and I also had an operating system upgrade to finish on the computer. It’s working in a most lovely fashion this morning, which is super awesome; upgrades have always worried me since the Great Data Disaster of 2018.

Which reminds me, I need to back up the back-up, as it has been a moment.

I honestly don’t know why I was so off last night, or how I managed to waste most of the evening. I started reading the new Lou Berney (Dark Ride) yesterday morning at the dentist’s office (oh wait, that explains the entire day being off, doesn’t it? I hate being so immured in my ruts of routine) and it’s quite good, although I didn’t get very far into it before it was my turn to get in the chair for the dentist. It was the final fitting for my new dentures, which fit snugly and tightly and look marvelous in my mouth. The next time they call me, I will come out of their office with my new teeth, which is very exciting. I am quite delighted at the thought of eating solid foods again. I also had to go out to the UNO campus to record “My Reading Life” with Susan Larson, who is always a delight and is one of the few promotional things I actually enjoy doing. And duh, that is why I was tired and off all day long; the usual daily routine was disrupted. I had to drive out to Jefferson Highway almost to Harahan for the dentist appointment, drove back into the city for work, then had to go out to the lakefront to UNO and back. That’s a serious disruption to my routine, and as I am learning, that’s the sort of thing that drains my batteries now.

But I greatly enjoyed this year’s Halloween Horror Month, even if the bad quality of the videos of Friday the 13th the Series on Youtube caused me to abandon the rewatch of that show for the month. We’ve been watching The Fall of the House of Usher, which has been a lot of fun and very well done, too–hopefully we can get that finished tonight or by the weekend. It was fun revisiting The Dead Zone, and the other reading I did this month was pretty awesome too. I am going back to crime fiction reading again, because the horror reading has been making my brain go into the horror direction, and I’m not really a good horror writer.

Yesterday Death Drop launched into the world–I’m going to do some more promotional posts about the book as well as some for Mississippi River Mischief, which is also dropping next week (this is what happens when you don’t make your deadlines, people–don’t be a Greg)–and it’s always nice when that happens. It sometimes feels a bit anticlimactic, and I am terrible about promotion anyway (doing it always makes me feel very self-conscious, which is something else i need to work on, because it’s also rooted in my anxiety). My anxiety has also been off the charts lately, and I don’t know why that is. The lack of an LSU game last weekend, perhaps, which served as another disruption to routine? I’ve also been studiously not answering my emails since last week sometime, as well, which is also not like me and another sign that the brain chemistry isn’t working properly again. But now that I know what the problem is with my brain chemistry (better late than never, right?) we are going to change my medications because I’ve been on the wrong ones, and come up with a different coping plan. I feel like I’m in the middle of yet another reboot of my life–new teeth, surgery on my arm, writing cozies, thinking about exercise and eating right again–which might be needed. It just feels like everything has been a slog for so long now; I do think it goes back to the Great Data Disaster of 2018, which started the whole mess. Or maybe it was the expense of buying a new car and having a car payment every month, which kind of did me in financially for a while (starting to see daylight again)–there’s no stress like financial stress, after all. Anyway, I’ve not really felt centered or in any semblance of control over my life for quite some time now, and I’m kind of tired of letting my life happen to me–which was where I was at when I was thirty-three and did the first hard reboot of my life.

I feel good this morning, rested and awake and alert and energetic and ambitious, and it’s been awhile since I felt that way. I may run out of steam at some point today–it does happen, after all–but I am starting to feel good again about a lot of things and when I can look at positives rather than be overwhelmed by the negatives…I’ll take that as a win gladly and keep going.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous mid-week, and I will check in with you again later.

Dirty Laundry

Tuesday and soon enough I’ll be heading out to the dentist for my final fitting of the dentures–which means the next time I go, I will actually get them and be off this hateful soft food diet once and for all. I’ve kind of gotten used to it, though–but as much as I will miss the pint of ice cream, I can still have yogurt and the super-hot-and-spicy ramen on top of everything else. I think I am going to give myself to the end of the year–since I missed out on so much unhealthy food since the surgery–before I change my eating habits in order to be healthier going forward. The New Year will also be about six weeks after the surgery, so hopefully I’ll be in better condition by then to actually go ahead and change the way both Paul and I eat–Paul already eats much healthier than I do; so I just need to adjust mine a bit. But I can cut the ice cream out, as well as some of the snacking. Popcorn is really healthier, and it’s not hard to make, either. And I like it, just as I like pretzels, which are also healthier than chips (I think). At any rate, I need to spend some more time in the kitchen figuring out how to cook things I’ll like that are good for me.

And every once in a while, I can make Swedish meatballs or shrimp-n-grits as a treat…

Yes, because looking at food as a potential reward/treat is completely the healthy mindset I should have.

I’ve always had issues with my body and with food, for that matter; a lot of it stupid, a lot of it a product of my malfunctioning brain, and part of it from being, well, shamed for not being in the best physical condition possible. I don’t know when it all started, but I know when I was in high school–when I really started paying attention to male bodies–that I wasn’t built like other boys, and certainly not the ones all the girls were madly crushing on (for the record, I have never, nor will I ever, understand straight women’s taste in men), so I began thinking there must be something wrong with my body. I did eventually stop doing sports and so forth once I was in college, and that was also right around the time my metabolism slowed down from what it had been previously, so I gained weight–and I’ve never really been right in the head about my body and weight management ever since, I’m over sixty now, of course, and a lot of that body image stuff is in the past–but I do sometimes see pictures of myself and cringe at how big I look, which is patently absurd on its face and a mentality I need to get rid of once and for all. This soft food diet has helped me drop some extra weight–about ten pounds or so at this point–and I bet I lose even more after the surgery. Note to self: you need to buy a wagon to carry groceries in from the car, since you won’t have the use of both arms for a while.

It’s below sixty this morning and we’re having a middle of the week cold snap, even getting colder than fifty theoretically tonight. It’s also supposed to rain throughout the day. I am off to the dentist in a little while, so it’s one of those wretched days when I have to run all over town throughout the day, which is fine. I woke up this morning at five–and of course, Tug did his usual morning leap over Paul onto me and curled up on my pillow at around five-forty-five, waiting for the alarm so I would get up and feed him. He really is adorable, and loves to play like all kittens do; I need to buy him some toys, is what I need to do, and several laser lights because he got hold of the original one I bought and it’s disappeared, probably either under the couch or behind something. Maybe I should either swing by Petco or order something from their website to be delivered. I think he’d love one of those birds on a stick things; he was playing fetch with one of Scooter’s mice last night. But he’s adapted completely now to being our indoor cat, and he definitely feels like he is King of the Castle. He’s also curious about everything and still fearless, climbing under the couch or the dishwasher or wherever he can get–and he loves getting into the cabinets. He also broke my lunchbox yesterday; he knocked it off the counter after I packed it, and the clip for the shoulder strap broke. Sigh. I had to order another one.

I also got some book mail yesterday: Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives and Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents. Lisa Unger is one of my favorite writers, but is one of those I always forget to mention when people ask me about favorite authors in interviews and things. I read some more short stories from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories That Scared Even Me, and they were okay; more morbid and weird than anything else, but interesting. One was “It” by Theodore Sturgeon, which was very peculiar and strange but was kind of fun to read (even though a dog dies terribly in it) and “Casablanca” by Thomas M. Disch, which was interesting; about an American couple visiting Morocco when a nuclear war breaks out between the Soviet Union and the United States, and how things change for them during that period, as they slowly lose their ugly American haughtiness and privilege. It was difficult to feel sorry for them because they were so awful and so used to their being American being a magic ticket that they become nasty and unpleasant as they begin to realize that being American means nothing anymore. It was kind of haunting to remember that paranoia we were so used to living with when I was a child; that fear that at any moment bombs would be incoming that would change the world forever; the American cultural obsession with nuclear doomsday when I was growing up was really something and popped up in movies and books and stories all the time. The one I remember the most (literature wise) is Alas Babylon, and the movies–Testament and The Day After. When I was in high school PBS ran a documentary about the possibility of nuclear war and what it would like; which was when I learned nuclear missile bases dotted the Midwest and particularly Kansas–the abandoned missile base just outside of Bushong in north Lyon County was actually mentioned in the show as a target despite being abandoned in the early 1970’s (that missile base shows up in my story “This Thing of Darkness,” and sometimes I think it might be fun to set an entire book there–high school kids exploring an abandoned missile base only to find something horrible and deadly there), which was all we could talk about at school that week–the morbid fascination that out there in the middle of nowhere Kansas we were still Soviet targets.

Ah growing up in the second half of the twentieth century was such a joy.

And on that note, I am going to get showered and cleaned up and head for the dentist’s office. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Nobody

Sunday morning and I managed to get a lot done yesterday while watching games occasionally. I got bored watching Georgia throttle Florida, laughed about the Kansas win over Oklahoma, watched Tulane almost blow a significant lead and lose to Rice, and got bored with Tennessee-Kentucky so switched over to Elité on Netflix–and this seventh season is simply terrible. We have one more episode in this season and it’s over, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go.

But I did get a lot done yesterday. I cleaned. I ran errands,,,and I worked on the filing. Yes, there’s still work to be done, but my workspace no longer looks like I need to. just take a flamethrower to it, and even the laundry room is beginning to look like it’s more together than it should be. I do have to do some refiling, but everything is properly sorted and where it needs to be, if not alphabetized properly. I also discovered a lot of duplicate files–I am sure there are even more to be found, once the filing truly starts getting compiled and sorted properly. I also need for some of these files to just go away; I am never going to get to all of these ideas and I am never going to write all these stories and novels or essays and nonfiction books, either. But which ones to keep, which ones to abandon for good? I’ve been saving ideas and files and stories and scenes and characters for well over forty years now; you can only imagine how much I’ve forgotten about that are buried deep within this insane file-hoarding situation; it’s almost as bad as my book situation.

But getting all this clutter and debris sorted and put into a semblance of order also helped me get focused more–I think perhaps that’s been part of the problem with focusing on writing anything, really; knowing how out of control the filing had gotten and not knowing where anything was, or what I was working on could be found, and so forth. I’m going to try to get back to work on my next book today–after I get some more of these blog entry drafts completed and posted–and I am also going to try to work on the files some more. I decided that I am not, after all, going to be able to get my story “The Blues Before Dawn” finished in time to submit to the Bouchercon anthology, so it’ll go back into the files for now for a while. I never could quite get the story write, but that opening–my main character walking home in the misty morning hours of the Quarter while listening to someone playing the blues on a saxophone on a balcony, hidden away in the fog. I love that image, and I know that my main character is an apprentice waiter at Galatoire’s and sometimes turns tricks for money at Ma Butler’s bordello in Storyville; I also know it’s a Sherlock Holmes story from the perspective of someone who has a crush on Mr. Holmes–and now has to depend on Sherlock to save him from wrongly being accused of murder. The rest? Not so much…and it’s due on Tuesday, so that’s not going to happen. A pity, yes, but a Sherlock story from the perspective of a sometime male harlot was a long shot for the Bouchercon anthology anyway.

I did start reading The Lonely Ghost by Mike Ford, which is quite delightful, along with a reread of Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels (also one of my favorite books of all time, and definitely one of the greatest ghost stories of all time) when I had a few down moments to spend (I’ll get back to The Lonely Ghost later on this morning), and I also have to make a cheesecake this morning and get the white bean chicken chili started so it’ll be ready for tonight and the rest of the week, of course. Halloween is going to be one of those frantic unsettling days, but that’s okay; I can make it through it all.

I slept really well last night, which was lovely; my sleep lately has been pretty marvelous, honestly. Relaxing in the evenings last week, letting the anxiety not get to me, and getting good night’s sleeps this past week was really kind of lovely and nice. I also slept late this morning, opting to stay in bed later than I usually do because it frankly felt nice, you know? Today I am also planning some self-care and grooming, which will be nice. Maybe even take a walk later in the day, when it starts cooling down? Although without the humidity yesterday’s low eighties felt marvelously and delightfully cool.

And on that note, the spice ain’t gonna mine itself, so off I go. Have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again.

Heartlight

Saturday and no LSU game, so the day stretches out in front of me a yawning empty chasm. But I feel incredibly well rested after a very relaxing deep good night’s sleep, which is simply marvelous. I have things to do this weekend–out of the ordinary things, different from the usual to-do list–so I have to figure out when to get those things done. I’m going to need to make a grocery run at some point–I have to make a cheesecake for a work potluck this week, and I am thinking it’s probably smart to make some white bean chicken chili in the crockpot at some point (soft food, after all); regardless, I need more ice cream and microwave ramen. I really like that super-hot ramen, and am also very low on yogurt. Maybe I’ll get up tomorrow and head for a grocery run on the West Bank or to the Rouse’s on Carrollton–which I could also just do this afternoon, depending on how I feel. I want to really clean up the house and get stuff done–filing, organizing, and so forth–and I can always have the football games playing on my computer while I am in the kitchen, which desperately needs work. I also want to go for a walk around the neighborhood later on today, to get a look at how the neighborhood has dressed up for Halloween.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I managed to get my work-at-home duties taken care of and made it to my pain management appointment, which was unnecessary as I am not in pain–I think my surgeon thought I was in pain from the injury, which is cute–I wouldn’t have let it go this long had I been in actual constant pain from it. But it was one more box to check off on the list of things that need to be done before the surgery, so that makes it one step closer to when I am going to be rehabilitating the arm. I think having this hanging over my head isn’t helping much with my anxiety or getting things done; I can try to compartmentalize all I want, and try not to think about things, but the truth of the matter is I cannot control my subconscious–especially when I don’t know what’s going on with it. I think I’ve been more relaxed and rested this week because I’ve not been trying to get much done or worrying about anything; I just came home, sat in my chair with Tug sleeping in my lap (Paul is calling him Puma now, because his claws are so sharp), and read or watched television. I did watch another episode of Moonlighting yesterday while doing work-at-home chores (“My Fair David”) and then finished reading The Dead Zone but also Adam Cesare’s marvelous Clown in a Cornfield (more on both later), and am now trying to decide what horror to read next before Tuesday–which is the end of Halloween season as All Hallow’s Eve itself falls on Tuesday. I am leaning toward Mike Ford’s middle grade The Lonely Ghost, which has been in the TBR pile for far too long, and then maybe something by Chris Grabenstein if I get that done quickly–The Hanging Hill looks like it could be quite fun, or perhaps a reread of my favorite ghost story of all time, Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels. I also have a kids’ ghost story anthology–Alfred Hitchcock Presents Ghosts and More Ghosts, actually edited and compiled by Robert Arthur, who created one of the best kids’ series of them all: The Three Investigators. After Paul got home from the gym we also watched this week’s The Morning Show.

And just looking at the college football television schedule, I am not seeing anything other than Georgia-Florida to watch with any degree of interest, and it’s tough–I despise Florida with every molecule of my existence, but I also kind of want Georgia to lose…but I just can’t root for Florida. (Georgia always winds up being my default team in the East because I hate Florida and Tennessee both with the white-hot intensity of a dozen burning suns, and pretty much everyone else is kind of irrelevant. Kentucky and Missouri never break through, nor does South Carolina, and Vanderbilt is…well, Vanderbilt.) I’m trying not to get overly worked up for the LSU-Alabama game, which is a must-win for both. I don’t get nearly as worked up over college football as I used to, which is a good thing–as I have slowly began to recognize that while they may be athletes, they’re also kids, and they shouldn’t be subjected to the scorn from fans. The coaching staffs and administrations, on the other hand, can have all the scorn, as can the conference hierarchy AND the NCAA. I’m not overly excited about all the conference expansion because I’m not so certain that the needs of the student-athletes are being taken into consideration as much as they should be in the pursuit of the almighty television deal dollar, and that NIL stuff isn’t something I quite understand other than that college athletes are now getting paid.

I can’t get over how good I feel this morning, and how good I felt all week, frankly. I’ve got to get all this filing under control and work on the kitchen, too–the living room and the laundry room are complete disasters; although I did start working on the laundry room shelves a bit yesterday. I do get to go for the final fitting for my dentures on Tuesday morning (the same day I am taping Susan Larson’s “My Reading Life” at UNO), so I am hoping to get back to solid food in a couple of weeks–and I am definitely going to reboot my eating habits once I have teeth again. I now am down to somewhere between 205-209 pounds, depending on the day and what is in my pockets, and I’d like to get down to 200 again; but until I am able to exercise again I am going to have to do that by changing the way I eat. I’ve frankly enjoyed the ramen (and the Velveeta shells and cheddar) and may continue to eat it going forward–same with the yogurt–but the calories from Haagen-Däzs will need to be replaced by something healthy. It wouldn’t hurt me to go back to having turkey sandwiches and salads for lunch occasionally. It’s the heavy steady diet of red meat I need to dial back on, mostly; and some of the other fatty stuff I eat far more regularly than I should–and go back to looking at Five Guys as an occasional treat for good behavior.

I can but do better in the future.

And on that note, I think I am going to indulge myself in some self-care this morning and get cleaned up before taking on the rest of the day. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back soon enough, no worries–I have blog posts on “Don’t Look Now”, The Dead Zone, and Clown in a Cornfield to finish writing, too.

Gloria

Wednesday Pay the Bills day has rolled around yet again! I slept well again last night–I’ve been getting very good sleep lately, which has been lovely–and I don’t feel tired the way I generally do on Wednesdays, which is kind of nice. I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon so I have to leave work a little early, but not a big deal–this is a routine follow-up to all the tests she had ordered when I switched primary care physicians, which was a huge relief to my mind about everything–and I am going in for my next fitting for my teeth on Halloween morning. We’re having a pot luck at the office that day, so I am making a cheesecake–which I will probably do on Sunday so I don’t have to mess with it on Monday night, which I won’t want to do, guaranteed. It has been a hot minute since I’ve made a cheesecake, and I think this weekend I am going to make white bean chicken chili, too.

And no, I am not wearing a costume to work that day. I also have to go tape “My Reading Life” with Susan Larson that day, and yeah–not wearing a costume to the studio at UNO for this. I also can’t believe that it’s already almost November. LSU has a bye week this weekend, so technically there’s not any real reason to watch games this Saturday, but I will have it on in the background as always and hopefully there will be some good games on this weekend; I haven’t looked yet to see who is playing.

I also spent some time with The Dead Zone again last night, and marveling at the way the novel is constructed; I don’t think anyone today (other than perhaps King) could get away with structuring a book the way he did this one, but it actually, absolutely works 100%. One of the things I’d forgotten in the years since I’ve read the book the last time is how many point-of-view characters there are, and how King uses them to build the structure of the book. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the main character–John Smith, the most simple and basic male name of all time, no middle name, either–is in a terrible car accident and is in a coma for nearly five years, only to wake up with some psychic abilities. This is compelling and interesting enough–the concept of losing five years, how much the world and society can change in that short a period of time (even now, if you think about it, if someone went into a coma in October of 2018 and just woke up this month…think about everything that happened in that five year span, and then imagine having to get caught up on all of that after suffering a traumatic head injury and spending five years in a coma–with a psychic gift/curse of some sort on top of it. But that structure he uses–the first person point of view of the Castle Rock Strangler (Castle Rock’s first appearance in a King novel, too); the lightning rod salesman, and of course the book’s big bad, Greg Stillson (and yes, the similarities between Stillson and a real life politician struck me as far back as 2015)–all of these things are set-ups for story that comes later–the Castle Rock Strangler pov was something else–even all these years later the the words I’m so slick raise goosebumps on my skin. I’d also forgotten how sad the story actually is; Johnny’s mother’s descent into religious mania, in part triggered by his accident; his broken father, crushed by his son’s accident and losing his wife to insanity; Sarah, who was falling in love with him and would have married him but for the accident; and so on. As a teenager reading the book I marveled at how real all the characters were, how fully realized and actualized and developed; they seemed like people I would know and King’s marvelous skill at depicting the conflicting thoughts and impulses through internal monologues was something that blew me away, something I as a writer wanted to try to emulate.

I worked briefly on a short story last night; I wasn’t really tired when I got home, but Tug wanted to sleep in my lap and the story was a struggle, so it wasn’t hard for me to walk away from the computer, in all honesty. Tonight I am going to let him play with the red dot; he needs to play and exercise as he is a kitten, and I have to break myself of the oh Scooter just wants to sleep and never wants to play mentality; he had the zoomies again this morning and it amazes me how he can just leap and bounce off surfaces to launch to a new spot and then flies off the counter and gallops into the living room. My arms and legs are, of course, all scratched up (I also have a long scratch next to my nose; he launched onto my face from the ledge above the bed one night last week), but he’s so cute and adorable; it’s hard to stay mad at him even as he scampers over my keyboard and fucks things on the screen up.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and sorry I am so dull this morning. My life generally tends to be not all that exciting, really. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Lost in Love

Saturday morning and we’ve at long last made it to the weekend! Huzzah! I have a lot to do this weekend, and I even have to leave the house both nights. This afternoon I am attending a co-worker’s wedding; tomorrow I am having dinner at San Lorenzo with my friend Ellen. Woo-hoo! Yesterday was a good day. I did my work-at-home chores, along with chores, and then ran some errands so I wouldn’t have to do them today–a decision I am very grateful for this morning, believe you me. I then read Angel Luis Colón’s Infested for a while, finished my reread of Death Drop, and watched an episode of Moonlighting. I also rewatched the last two episodes of Our Flag Means Death again–glad I did; I slept through most of them and they were most witty and clever and funny. When Paul got home we started the new season of Elité, but it’s more a habit and completionism to continue watching it at this point. It’s glory days are long past, I barely remember who any of the characters are, and I don’t really remember much of last season, to be honest.

Sigh. But those first three seasons are still epic television. This is kind of what I mean when I talk about shows that keep going because they’re successful when they should have stopped when they were ahead; the season three finale was an excellent stopping place–but at the same time I would have been terribly bummed had the show ended there, too. Be careful what you wish for, right?

The sun was bright and high this morning, just as it was yesterday morning, which leads me to believe the time change should have been this weekend instead of two or three weeks from now. It used to always be in October; and I don’t know why or when it was changed to November, but if we’re going to have to do this every year, can’t we at least have it happen when it always used to happen? I slept really well last night–I’ve been sleeping well all week, actually. I think the change in the weather has helped with that dramatically. I still feel a bit groggy this morning, but that’s okay. I am going to write this and read some more of Infested once it’s posted, and then I have some things to do around here. The wedding window period is from 4-9, with the actual ceremony around five. I am going to try really hard not to be that person who always arrives ahead of the scheduled time and has to sit around waiting for everyone else to show up–the story of my life–and I am quite determined not to even summon a Lyft until four o’clock.

I’m really enjoyed Infested, but I knew I would. I’ve been a long-time admirer of Angel’s work for quite some time now, and his narrative voice is absolutely perfect in this book. I’m not sure if it’s considered middle-grade or y/a–that line is always so blurry–but it’s quite engaging and I really like the main character. I’m also not entirely sure I’ve read a book before that’s set entirely in the Bronx? (And why is it “the Bronx”? It’s not “the Queens” or “the Brooklyn” or “the Manhattan”, but just saying “Bronx” without the article is weird…although I suspect that’s entirely from years of hearing it said with the article.) I am really enjoying it.

I’ve thought about writing for middle grade (I’ve literally thought about writing everything other than fantasy –I even have some science fiction, incredibly bad, in the files) but am not sure if I can do it, which is precisely the reason I should try writing it. I’ve always wanted to do my own kind of Nancy Drew-style series for kids, have wanted to ever since I was a kid reading those books, and I’d really like to at least give it a try at some point before I finally exit the planet or am unable to write anything anymore. Although can I really write for middle-graders when I don’t know any kids that age? Writing is writing, I suppose, and the best thing to do is try it and write the very best book I can with the very best characters I can; I do think two of my strengths as a writer are likable characters and a good narrative style that draws the reader in. Can that translate to middle grade mysteries? I guess I will never know unless I try–and maybe, just maybe, I could write one set in New Orleans?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines with my book to read. Have a lovely Saturday; I may be back later; you never know!

Brass in Pocket

Imagine my delight and surprise to discover that the meeting I thought I had to go into the office for later this morning had a virtual option, so I am not leaving the house today–other than to run a necessary errand later.

I may even put that off until tomorrow.

Yesterday was a lovely day at the office. Everyone was in a pleasant mood, and everything flowed well. I enjoyed all my client interactions and everything ran smoothly the way it is supposed to always run, and that was lovely. I wasn’t even terribly tired when I got off work, but knew I’d be in a mood by the time I got home. Why? Because there was a Saints game last night in the Superdome, and traffic in the CBD was going to be a nightmare. It was, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and I made an impatient decision about the route home that was a big mistake. It took me about forty-five minutes to get home from work–what usually takes at most fifteen minutes; Wednesday night, for example, I detoured up to the Carrollton corridor to go to the Rouses, and still managed to grocery shop and everything and get home less than an hour after I left the office. Saints game also meant crowd at the bar on the corner, which meant difficulty finding a place to park. No big deal, I did find a place to park and then came inside.

Heavy sigh.

So, we have guys here working on the roof and the gutters. There’s also a bridge from the patio upstairs over to the carriage house gallery. It had apparently rotted; so they’ve been working on that. The patio is directly over my kitchen. I came inside, and there was debris all over the stove and that counter. “Weird,” I thought, and actually said out loud, annoyed, “well, I’m glad I cleaned in here” before looking up to see a blue sky. Yes, while they were working on the bridge yesterday, they were trying to do something and the kitchen ceiling/patio floor gave way. Unable to help myself I yelled, “Oh, fuck!” Well, the thing about a hole in the ceiling is the poor workers–who hadn’t really done anything wrong; it wasn’t their fault that portion of ceiling/floor had rotted out, of course–heard me. And then I went outside to see what they were doing and one of them sheepishly asked me how I was doing, and I replied in full candor, “well, I’m not thrilled about the hole in my kitchen ceiling” which led to apologies and explanations and they even came by several times to apologize again. They also cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and put up a piece of plywood to cover the hole, reassuring me this was a stopgap measure and they’d repair it. It was amusing–well, it is now, not so much at the time–but I then found myself reassuring them I knew they didn’t do it on purpose, thanking them for cleaning up the mess and covering the hole, etc etc etc. I had intended to work on my short story in progress, “The Blues Before Dawn,” when I got home and maybe read some of Angel Luis Colón’s Infested, but that of course disrupted the entire evening so I grabbed Tug and he slept in my lap while I watched the last episode of the first season of Moonlighting (it was a late midseason replacement and the first season was only six episodes, including the pilot). Paul came home, he went through the stages of grief about the kitchen ceiling that I already had, and then we watched The Morning Show and Our Flag Means Death before I went to bed (I actually fell asleep during OFMD so have to rewatch at some point today or tomorrow).

I slept deeply and well, not arising this morning until eight (other than the usual “Tug needs food NOW” daily five a.m. wake-up) and now am facing my day. I am going to get this done and posted, probably work on some emails before starting my work-at-home duties, which will also include chores around the house (laundry’s first load already going in the laundry room) and hopefully, I will get some work done on that short story. I had decided to write this as a Sherlock-in-New-Orleans story, but not told by Watson–which is a risk on top of a risk–and then see how it went. In talking to a friend yesterday I also realized part of the reason I am having trouble writing and/or getting started on a new project is because everything is in limbo because of my arm surgery. I don’t know how long the recovery process is going to be and I also don’t know how much writing I’ll be able to do in a cast and sling (and not the good kind of sling, either–see what I did there?) I’m afraid to commit to a deadline knowing that I can’t even self-delude myself that I’ll make that deadline (I never do, but I never agree to one knowing ahead of time I won’t make it). It’s also been an extremely rough year for me, and there’s nothing wrong with not being as productive as you would like because other things are going on in your life that you simply can’t avoid dealing with–which is usually my preference, immature and childish as it is–and recognizing patterns of behavior within yourself. I’ve done a lot of self-examination and reevaluating my past as well as who I am along with why I am who I am, if that makes sense. A lot of that had to do with Mom dying, as well as me recognizing that probably my absolute best work inevitably always winds up being set in Alabama. That Alabama tie, those roots, run so deep inside me that they’re inescapable, really.

I also started reading Death Drop last night. Reviews are starting to come in, and friends are reading it and telling me they’re enjoying it, and the truth was I couldn’t really remember a lot about the book so thought it was probably a good idea to reread it. So much was going on during the process of writing the book–it and Mississippi River Mischief, which doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that I was actually writing two books at the same time (not recommended, aspiring authors, don’t be a Greg; be smarter)–that I couldn’t really remember much of it (I may need to reread Streetcar too) and being familiar with your own work that you’re promoting is usually smart. Now that my memory isn’t what it used to be, rereading my work is like reading something new by another author because I don’t remember anything about the book itself other than the drudgery of writing, editing, and revising the damned thing. But I was very pleased with it–I wasn’t able to finish the reread, but got pretty deep into the book–and it flows well and there are parts that are seriously funny. Of course, like always I started nitpicking at it, but after about chapter three I turned off the internal editor and just read it as though I was reading it for pleasure rather than reminding myself of what I had written. The characters are likable and all of them–even the minor ones–seemed fully realized and with their own agency; by which I mean they aren’t always just dropping everything to rush to help Jem out at the expense of their own lives and aren’t there to simply feed him information or help him work through his problems. I also liked the voice, and I really like my main character Jem Richard, the glam artist just dipping his toes into the world of drag performance. I intended it to be a drag queen origin story–the answer to the question “so how did you start doing drag?”–and it absolutely works in that regard.

And the book itself is gorgeous, simply gorgeous. I couldn’t be more pleased.

It’s also weird having two new books drop in such a short period of time. It certainly wasn’t planned that way, and entirely happened because my life blew up and I didn’t make deadlines for either. But I promised myself I would be better about promotion and so forth, so here we go.

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

Steal Away

Thursday morning and the week is almost over.

I withdrew a short story I had submitted to a magazine in September of 2022; thirteen months is more than enough time to decide whether or not you want a story or not, and if you haven’t gotten to it by now, well, how long do you need? There’s a serious conversation about short story publishing that needs to be had at some point–but I think that aspect of the business isn’t taken as seriously as “book” publishing, and there aren’t many people who primarily focus on the short form for the abuses of writers that occur in that small part of the business to really be brought to public attention because, let’s face it, nobody really cares. I know that one of the big name prestigious crime short story publishers always takes twelve to fourteen months to respond to submissions…and when you know that going in, that’s one thing. This market I’ve published in before and it’s never taken even a fraction of this long to get a response to a submission; it had been pending on Submittable since the day after I clicked “submit.” It may be right for another market I am looking at right now–and I had wanted to include it in my next short story collection as a republished story. Heavy heaving sigh.

Maybe someday I will do a blog post about the slog publishing short stories can often prove to be. I was in one anthology that sat on my story (and everyone else’s) for at least three years (more like four, if not five); finally released the book but never sent me a print copy (I did get the electronic one) and I never did get the really nice check they offered me to get me to write the story. There were rarely any updates, either–and certainly none since it finally saw “print.”

Sigh. The glamorous life of a writer is mostly spent tracking down payments and author copies, seriously. Well, maybe not mostly, but it takes up a lot more time and energy than a non-writer might think.

I slept really well last night, with Tug making his usual five a.m. supplication, and I’ve already discovered a quirk: if I give him food, he will squeak at me until I dump out his water bowl and refill it–every single time. He won’t even start eating until he hears the water running in the sink. Granted, I always change out the water every time I feed him–but it’s part of his routine and he won’t eat until he knows he’s getting fresh water to go with the food. I think he’s completely settled into our lives as our house cat, too. He certainly believes he’s Lord of the Manor, and when he’s full grown he’s going to be a terror–because even pint-sized as he is now, he can get up to places you wouldn’t think; he’s a climber, so any possibility of a Christmas tree again is completely gone; which is fine, really. I do love Christmas, but it’s really for kids, and the older I get the more I care about the time off than holiday joy and gifts and things like that.

I made groceries on the way home last night at the Carrollton Rouse’s, which is becoming my favorite Rouse’s; the ones on the CBD and on Tchoupitoulas are convenient, but the one on Carrollton has more selection; which means going there I can get everything in one stop, whereas at either of the others I need to go to another vendor to get the rest of the things I need, which is very frustrating; and so even the extra time it takes to get up there and back is actually made up by the times savings of only going to one store. I was also very tired when I got home–we’d had a rather busy day at the office–so I didn’t read or do anything much other than put the groceries away; Paul had a board meeting so he didn’t get home until late, either. I did work on my story “The Blues Before Dawn”, and made some decent headway on it; the question is whether I want to make it another “Sherlock-in-New-Orleans” story, which I kind of want to do; I think I’ll do that for a draft and then do a second where the detective isn’t Sherlock, but I like the idea of writing a Sherlock story from someone else’s perspective, as well. I really like the idea of writing a bunch of Sherlock short stories in 1916 New Orleans, with Storyville (cliché, I know) and the Italian immigrants in the Quarter and the little Chinatown district on either side of Canal and illicit queer bars servicing sailors and so forth; how fun is that? And of course the Opera House was still there in the Quarter too–and people still spoke French in New Orleans, or at least the bastardized Louisiana version of it. I think my goal for the weekend is to finish a draft of the story and do some more work on the second Valerie novel.

And I have to go into the office tomorrow for my work-at-home day; which I may switch over to Monday; I’m not sure and I haven’t really decided yet, to be honest. I have to go in for a benefits meeting, and was thinking that maybe the thing to do would be to work in the office since I have to go there anyway; but….now I am thinking I should just go for the meeting and maybe work at home around it; I am not sure, and I suppose I will decide tomorrow morning when I get up–depending on when I get up, that is. Frankly, I am leaning towards just going in for the meeting and being done with it and coming back home. I like not having to get up on Friday mornings–even if I rarely sleep past seven as it is–but the lack of alarm going off is actually quite lovely.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a great one, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.