Category: goals

Young Offender

Looks like we made it to Friday again, Constant Reader, and believe you me, these small victories matter.

I kept thinking, last night, for some reason all evening long that it was Friday, and I’m not exactly sure why that was, to be honest. I was well aware all day, as I made go-bags for syringe access for three hours and then came back home for more condom packing (it’s not as dirty as that sounds) that it was Thursday. I’m really not sure at what point in the evening my mind decided it was Friday. AT some point while Paul and I binged this marvelous Belgian/Netflix scifi thriller called Into the Night (a Scandinavian show called The Rain didn’t last an entire episode) I realized that tomorrow (today) was actually Friday and it was quite a jolt.

It’s raining this morning–there’s a tropical storm out in the Gulf heading for Texas–Hannah, I believe is her name–and it’s heading for the southern coast of the state. We’ll be getting rain from the system apparently all weekend–they’re thinking it’ll be spread out over the weekend rather than all at once so there’s no chance of flooding, or very little, at least–so it’s a good weekend for camping out inside. I am working from home today–lots of condom packing to do (again, not as dirty or fun as it sounds)–and some other things I need to get done today for the day job. I slept pretty well last night–although at some point Scooter cuddled up to me and woke me up with his purring, and he never stopped the entire time he was lying curled up inside my arm. The coffee is helping, as it always does, but I always wonder what it’s like to be one of those people who wake up instantly.

I will never know, apparently.

Into the Night is quite entertaining, I have to say. The episodes are all between thirty-three and forty minutes long, and the premise is relatively simple. A flight to Moscow at Brussels Airport has started it’s boarding procedure when a crazed man grabs an automatic (or semi-automatic) weapon from a military guard and runs down the jetway and forces the pilot to take off, with about ten or so passengers on board. He has a crazy story that is hard to believe–he works for NATO, and something has happened to the sun so that when it rises, everyone dies when exposed to the sunlight. It sounds crazy, but slowly they begin to realize he is right, and they have to keep flying west to stay in the dark. They also face almost every possible crisis an airplane could face–I told Paul at one point, “This is like every Airport movie ever made”–but it’s done incredibly well, and the tension is completely dialed all the way up. There are only six episodes to this first season, and we made it through the first four–and stayed up later than we should to watch the fourth (hence my shock when I realized it wasn’t Friday night, but then didn’t care and watched the fourth anyway), and I am looking forward to finishing it tonight.

This weekend I intend to reread Bury Me in Shadows and also work on trying to sew together all the pieces of “A Holler Full of Kudzu.” I still want to finish reading Cottonmouths–and I have S. A Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland on deck as well. I was also thinking I might want to reread a Travis McGee novel this weekend; those novels were a huge inspiration to me when I was creating Chanse, after all, and I really enjoyed them when I first read them. I know there are sexism issues with the books–as there is with most everything from that time period–but I think it will be interesting to reread one and catch it this time; plus I loved the writing style and the voice of Travis McGee so much I want to see if I still feel the same way now that I am thirty-some books into my own career.

I also want to reiterate that my inability to finish reading Cottonmouths is not an indication of its quality at all; it’s amazing, but I only have a very short period of time to read every day, and I am always afraid that if I start reading it I won’t want to put it down–and that is very likely, as it is very good and I know myself–and if I do that I won’t get the things done I need to get done which will cause me stress. I used to do this thing where I would read for an hour and then write for an hour and go back and forth…well, would try anyway, because as soon as the book grabbed me it was all over.

And on that note, I’d best head into the spice mines.

Vulnerable

Today’s sexy man objectification photo certainly doesn’t seem like the right illustration for today’s title, does it?

He kind of looks like the alternate world Flash from the television show and turned out to be the villain of Season 2, Zoom, Teddy Sears, and I think he is in the second season of Netflix’s The Politician, as part of the throuple relationship Judith Light’s character is involved in. He is really pretty, even if he is not the guy in today’s picture, who is also really pretty.

But then assuming that a big muscular handsome man can’t be vulnerable as well is misandry, I suppose. Everyone, after all, can and should be–and definitely shouldn’t be afraid to be–vulnerable.

Yesterday was a good day–which seems to be par for the course lately, which is absolutely lovely. I got a lot of work done yesterday–granted, most of the day was spent making condom packs, which is my lot in life when it comes to working from home these days–but they are needed and necessary for the works kits we pass out during syringe access, and it’s hard to keep up with the demand. One of the nice things about making condom packs is I can watch something while I make them; the last two Wednesdays I’ve been watching The Mickey Mouse Club production of the Hardy Boys serial, The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure, which is loosely based on the first Hardy Boys adventure, The Tower Treasure. It was interesting to see the changes Disney made to the Hardy Boys to appeal more to their young audience–the Hardy Boys weren’t seventeen and eighteen, as they were in the books (I don’t recall how old they were in the original texts; Nancy Drew went from sixteen in the originals to eighteen in the revisions), and of course, Mrs. Hardy doesn’t exist in the serials. In fairness, their mother was never much of a character in the series–her name even changed from Martha in the original texts to Laura in the revisions–and their father’s sister, Aunt Gertrude, was more of an adult parental figure in their lives than even their father, and she replaces Mrs. Hardy in the Disney serials completely. The basic premise of the book is that the Tower Mansion is robbed, and suspicion falls on the father of their friend, Perry Robinson, who worked there; the burden of being fired means Perry has to drop out of school and of course, everyone in Bayport believes his father is guilty. Even in the revised texts, where a lot of the characterizations and color is dropped from the plot and the Hardys themselves become more two-dimensional, the way the Robinsons are shamed and ostracized by the town is very well-done; naturally, the Hardy boys, who want to be detectives like their famous father, go to work to clear the Robinsons.

In the serial, Perry is a juvenile delinquent from “the city” who is sent to Bayport to get away from bad influences, and works for crazy old Silas Applegate (in the book, his name was Hurd and he had a sister; both were known as “eccentrics”); soon Perry is framed for stealing tools and the Hardys, taking sympathy on him, take him on as a client. The Applegate treasure is an old pirate treasure of Jean Lafitte’s that was stolen from the mansion some ten years before; and no one really believes that it ever existed as Silas isn’t exactly mentally stable. It’s actually not a bad adaptation, and two of Disney’s biggest child stars, Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk, play the Hardys; any flaws it has are flaws of the time and the need for Disney (and pretty much all television shows) to sanitize and clean up small towns (well, life in general); what i always call the “Mayberritization” of American life. (Peyton Place, which was published during this same period, is far more accurate–which is partly why it was so scandalous.)

I started watching the second Hardy Boys serial, The Mystery of Ghost Farm–but I can also see why the Hardy Boys serials ended with this second one. It’s not as well done or as well plotted as the first; primarily because it isn’t based on one of the books and is wholly original…and while I can certainly understand why they didn’t base it on the second boo, The House on the Cliff (the plot of which centers on the boys looking for their father, whose been kidnapped by a gang of smugglers), they could have just as easily used Book Three, The Secret of the Old Mill.

These are, oddly enough, on Youtube rather than Disney Plus, as are some of the other serials, like Annette, and some of the two-part mysteries that originally aired on The Wonderful World of Disney.

And, as I’ve talked about recently, I’m thinking about reviving my middle-grade mystery series that I’ve been tinkering around with ever since I was about eight years old and started reading the kids’ series in the first place.

We also finished Dark Desire last night, and there were a lot of surprising plot twists in those final four episodes, and a great season cliffhanger at the end as well. I do recommend it, because it’s great fun and trashy yet engaging; and of course Alejandro Spietzer is gorgeous and charismatic. It’s apparently been renewed for a second season; Paul discovered this yesterday while searching for other series and/or films starring this gorgeous Mexican actor. Yes, we’re fan, and yes, we’re just that shallow.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll shout at you again tomorrow morning.

West End Girls

Well, we made it to Wednesday, did we not? It’s also Payday, aka Pay-the-Bills Day, which of course is always a popular day around here–NOT.

But I managed to write another 1300 words yesterday on something–not Bury Me in Shadows, I am putting that off until the weekend, when I will have time to sit down and reread the entire manuscript (I am already rewriting the first chapter in my head; it’s main character is transitioning from a high school student to a college student suffering from depression); instead I had a thought about a bunch of fragments, ideas and the occasional scene, of a something that needs to be stitched together and an ending tacked onto it called “A Holler Full of Kudzu,” which I’ve been fragmentally writing for several years now. It’s a Corinth County, Alabama story; set in the distant past of the mid to late (vague, will depend on the music choices) 1970’s, in the point of view of a thirteen year old. I don’t quite have the voice or tone right yet; that’s going to have to wait until I have the entire thing stitched together. It’s already well over 6000 words and I did originally think it might be the seeds of a novel, but I don’t think there’s really quite enough story to flesh out a novel but a length of somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand might just be right for it. My publisher does publish ebook novellas, and that might be the right place for it–plus it can always go into the anchor position of a collection.

It’s weird to feel so good about so many things.

I was hesitant to write the story, because I’ve already gone to that well twice already–“Smalltown Boy” and “Son of a Preacher Man”–but I have also realized all of my stories don’t necessarily need to be connected, but there’s also a way at some point to connect all of these stories together. I’m not certain why I am always so determined to connect my stories together; my young adults–Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, Sara, Lake Thirteen and others–are all loosely connected; I’d wanted to do an entire series of young adult horror/suspense that were connected together by threads; Laura in Sorceress was from the same place in Kansas where Sara took place; one of the characters in Sara was from the Chicago suburb the main character of Lake Thirteen was from; and of course, both Sleeping Angel and Sorceress took place in the same California mountain town. There’s another I’ve written that’s been languishing forever in a drawer that is also set in Woodbridge, and I keep forgetting about it, to tell you the truth. This is why I had that OCD moment a few weeks back and counted how many things I had in progress, in a vain attempt to get a handle on it all.

I suppose I could create a spreadsheet. But Lord, another thing to do? Then again, it could keep me from writing–that weird dichotomy of hating to do something I actually love to do. I am sure my great mood lately has everything to do with having written, and doing good work recently; I actually am looking forward to getting all my work done today so I can dive back into the story. I’d love to have it finished by the weekend, but I don’t necessarily have to have it finished in order to start the reread of Bury Me in Shadows; with the sweeping changes I am going to making to it, it will be mostly to see what I can actually keep and still works with the age changes for the main character.

We are almost finished with Dark Desire, and I have to say I am quite impressed with the writers of this show; it has so many twists and turns! Every time we start to think we know what the truth is we get shocked by an out-of-nowhere twist, and the personal stories are so complicated and messy! We had started to get a little bored with it around the sixth or seventh episode (maybe?) because it seemed relatively predictable; boy, were we ever wrong! Tonight we’ll polish off the last four episodes–they are only about thirty-three minutes long–and then we’ll have to decide what to watch next. There are so many choices!

It seems like it was just yesterday we were complaining about the trouble finding something we wanted to watch–but realitically, I was just thinking last night how we’ve watched so much stuff we can’t even remember it all.

And on that note tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely morning, Constant Reader.

Up and Down

Tuesday morning and here we are. Life continues to move forward, the world keeps turning, the sun rises and sets, and I continue to wake up every morning…which, let’s be fair, some mornings is a victory in and of itself.

I managed to get the Secret Project sent off yesterday, so we now we play the waiting game to see if it’s actually wanted. It was, quite actually, a lot of fun to do (I say now that it’s done) and I actually wound up taking 8000 words, polishing and revising, and wound up with 16,000. That was a lot of work to get done in one weekend, if I do say so myself, and I am feeling rather smug about it right now, thank you very much; it’s been awhile since I’ve felt smug about writing, so bear with me and let me have this for today, thank you very much.

And now, of course, I am free to get back to work on those pesky unfinished manuscripts that are just lying around, thank you very much, Baby Jesus.

I was exhausted yesterday and so slept really well last night; so I think today will be a better day than yesterday was. Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, per se, but I was tired all day and when I’m tired I’m more prone to being emotionally on edge, which means I am constantly biting my tongue because I don’t want to snap at people for something that I wouldn’t ordinarily snap at someone for when I am not tired, which is a rather long run-on sentence. When I got home from work I retired into my easy chair to relax, which is what I pretty much did the entire evening (other than some filing, which I did when I got home). Dark Desire took a sudden turn in the episodes we watched last night, which was cool as I was beginning to get bored with its Fatal Attraction-type plot; these turns made it into something entirely different, which was very cool, and sparked my interest in watching again.

So, now it’s back to Bury Me in Shadows this coming weekend; this week I’m going to rest up my creative novel energies while messing around with some of the many short stories I’ve been thinking about but haven’t finished writing. It’s actually been a lovely year or so (not calendar, twelve months) of short story writing for me; even since I started the Short Story Project several years ago, where I decided to seriously focus on my short story writing while reading as many as I could, I’ve been doing fairly well with my short story writing–so much so that when I start thinking about the stories I’ve sold and published since turning in my last collection to my publisher, I inevitably forget some; I know when I was listing them the other day I forget a couple that were published last year–which puts me even closer to another collection than I thought I was. Maybe I’ll start making a more comprehensive list of those stories this week; and then go through the unfinished ones to determine which to include, so I’ll have a starting place and a plan–and you know, Constant Reader, I am all about having a plan.

And having the proposal finished has felt enormously freeing; I certainly feel as though a burden has been lifted from me this morning (I was too tired to really feel the relief yesterday) and I am excited to get back to my other writings again. I want to finish reading Cottonmouths so I can move on to the new book on the very top of my TBR pile: S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland, which I’ve been dying to read since its publication was first announced. I loved his novel My Darkest Prayer, which I read last year and thought was quite marvelous; and this new one has been getting raves everywhere, which is most exciting.

There are tropical things out there forming; one off the Texas coast, one deep south in the Caribbean Sea, and one out in the Atlantic. We’re going to feel their effects here in New Orleans undoubtedly; we always get something from them if they enter the Gulf of Mexico. One of the things I always dislike intensely about hurricane season is how it exposes our innate selfishness; we always want the hurricanes to go somewhere else–which means we are wishing death and destruction on faceless others. I’ve never been comfortable completely with that, nor with the relief that comes when a storm turns into a direction that means we’re out of danger.

But that’s all a part and parcel of life in the storm zone; the hurricane belt or whatever you want to call it (I don’t recall at the moment if they’ve ever given those of us on the Gulf Coast who are always in danger during the season a name, like Tornado Alley) and God knows I certainly am not in the mood or have any desire to deal with an evacuation of any kind this season–although it’s always a possibility. This year is the fifteen year anniversary of Katrina.

And yesterday was Paul’s and my twenty-fifth anniversary, which we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing other than bingeing episodes of Dark Desire.

And on that cheery note, tis back to the spice mines with me.

To Speak Is a Sin

And here it is Monday again, with another two days of STI clinic work staring me in the face and then the usual weird, off ending to the week as the weekend draws nearer. Working at home at a job that used to require me to come into the office always, for some reason, makes me feel really guilty. I am also aware that makes little to no sense; but it’s just how my insane brain is wired and I have to do work arounds, I suppose.

I finished the heavy lifting on the Secret Project yesterday; they want four chapters and I finally have four that I am not only proud of but not ashamed to show to someone. I now have to write the series proposal and the synopsis–not as much fun as it sounds, and frankly the worst part of the entire process, if I am going to be honest about it–but with the chapters done and a sense of the character’s voice at long last and who she is as a person and character, I feel like I can do the proposal some justice now, I’ve written over four thousand new words and edited all weekend, which is probably the most productive weekend I’ve had since I wrote the Sherlock story, to be honest.

And now, once the proposal is finished, I can get back to Bury Me in Shadows.

I also had the chance to have a properly socially distanced dinner with a friend in from out of town last night; it was quite delightful. I had a margarita, and when I got home I realized I hadn’t been either inside a restaurant since New Year’s at Commander’s, not had I had an alcoholic beverage of any kind out in public since then, either. It actually felt strange to be out in public, in a public place; no one was seated anywhere near us–the tables were all set very far apart and no one was within ten feet of us, and that’s an underestimation–but it was also very weird with the whole masking thing, too; obviously, you couldn’t wear your masks while you were drinking or eating, which seemed to defeat the entire purpose, especially when our waiter would come to check on us; I wouldn’t think to put the mask back on, which always made me feel guilty about the waiter’s safety; and I also, as I feared I would, had trouble understanding him through his mask.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume I won’t be going to any more restaurants anytime soon, even though I know they could use the business. I couldn’t stop thinking about the poor waiter. I know I’ve tested negative every time I’ve been tested, but at the same time…who knows if I may be an asymptomatic carrier? There’s just still too much that isn’t known, and with Louisiana blowing up again with our case numbers, I worry that the minimal services we are open for at the day job might be suspended again at any time.

I’m already sick of making condom packs; I can’t imagine having to spend more time making them.

But outside the worry about the waiter, dinner was quite fun last night. It’s been so long since I’ve been around another writer in person to talk about the business, and writing, and even New Orleans history–my friend was Ellen Byron, who writes the wonderful Cajun Country series; she went to Tulane back in the seventies and her daughter goes there now (which is why she and her husband were in town this weekend), and God, it was fun to talk about books and writing and how New Orleans used to be and how much fun researching and writing about the city is…I was also on a bit of a writing high having finished those damned chapters yesterday afternoon as well.

The rejiggering of my schedule has really worked well for me to write, and focus on writing, on the weekends now. I’m a little tired and groggy this morning, undoubtedly from having to wake up to an alarm this morning, but I am very satisfied with all the things I’ve managed to get accomplished over the last few weekends. Hopefully, that productivity is a harbinger of future weekends of productivity and steps forward.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me.

The View from Your Balcony

And here we go, Sunday and a new week. Huzzah, I suppose.

Yesterday was actually a very good day. Not only did I manage to get some work done on the Secret Project, I got some excellent work done on the Secret Project. It was quite a relief, actually; I’ve tried this first fucking chapter I don’t know how many times and could never get it right; plus I could never get the voice right, it seemed. I despaired, in fact, that I would ever get this under control. But yesterday I opened the most recent draft of the first chapter, started reading it, and thought oh no this will NOT do at all and started fixing it; reordering things, and finding the character’s voice in the process. Before I knew it several hours had passed and not only had I gotten the first chapter under control and whipped into shape, I’d managed to do the same with the second.

This was, as you can imagine, an enormous relief. I can’t speak for other authors, but I always fear it’s going to go away–the ability to construct decent stories and realistic characters and how to write something good, quite frankly. It’s why lovely feedback, like I got recently with the two short stories I sold, is so beneficial and helpful; it also always seems to come around when I need it the most.

It also helps that I wasn’t distracted, and could absolutely focus on what I was doing. Focus is so crucially important, and I have so little time where I can actually sit at my computer, ignore the cat’s whines for attention, and focus on what I’m doing; whenever I can I see everything so clearly and the work is so much better. The times, alas, this year when I have that ability, that clarity of focus, to write, seem to be few and far between.

I did also realize this morning as I lay in bed lazily waiting for the mood to get up to strike, that I am well on my way to having another collection of previous published short stories ready. Granted, some of them haven’t seen print yet–and might not until next year–but some of them have: “The Silky Veils of Ardor”, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”,”This Town”, “The Carriage House”, “Night Follows Night”, “The Dreadful Scott Decision”–and there are three more still out on submission, although one has already been accepted, but I have no idea when that will ever see print–“A Whisper from the Graveyard”–and the other two–“Moves in the Field” and “This Thing of Darkness” will inevitably and undoubtedly be rejected; those two were submitted to literary fiction markets and we’ve already ascertained , numerous times throughout my life, that I am not a literary writer. There may even be more that I am not even thinking about right now–I’m still on my first cappuccino, don’t you dare judge me–but that’s nearly ten stories, and I generally think of a collection being somewhere between sixteen to twenty; unless there’s a novella included. (I’ve decided that “Once a Tiger,” the Chanse short story, is really a novella, and if I ever do finish writing it–and the other novellas–I’ll probably just bind them all into one volume.)

Last night we finished watching Dark, which is superb (it’s so good it deserves its own entry) and then we watch Andy Samberg’s Palm Springs on Hulu, which was a cute little piece of fluff with some truly funny moments, and then moved onto another Mexican crime show, Dark Desire, which also stars Alejandro Spietzer, the gorgeous actor (pictured below) who was also the star of The Club–and is also dating Ester Exposito, who played Carla so superbly in Elite. It’s quite interesting so far–we’re two episodes in–and will continue with it. It’s so weird how we pay more attention to foreign language shows because of having to read the subtitles, while if whatever we are watching is in English, I’ll periodically reach for the iPad.

I’m also having dinner with a writer friend tonight who is in from out of town; so I need to make sure I get all the chores finished and get the rest of these chapters done on the Secret Project, so I can start writing the proposal and then it’s out of my damned hair.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Receta-HOT-Ensalada-de-manzana-al-estilo-Alejandro-.jpg

Yesterday, When I Was Mad

Saturday! S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, night!

Ah, the Bay City Rollers.

Anyway, my shoulder is still sore this morning and in a little while I am going to close my browser–I like going dark on the weekends from social media and email; it makes my weekends ever so much more relaxing and I am able to get so much more done than if I have everything open on my computer. My goal is to get the Secret Project finished this weekend–there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be able to, other than laziness–as long as I don’t allow distractions to rear their ugly heads. My new milk frother–I know you’ve all been wondering about it since I mentioned it yesterday–got its first trial run this morning and it is quite marvelous. The first one was a low-cost no brand and very inexpensive; I decided to go with a more expensive one this time around and so far, it’s earning its keep.

I slept well again last night, although my shoulder is still sore from the vaccination on Thursday, but the icky feeling I experienced the rest of that day is long gone, thank the heavens. We also watched almost all of the final season of Dark last night; we only have the series finale left, and its really very good; riveting, hard to tear your eyes away from (and not just because of the subtitles; I am learning that shows with subtitles require your full attention, since listening doesn’t do any good) and I’ve also started picking up phrases and words that I recognize from studying German as a teenager. It would actually, if I have any desire to become bilingual, make sense to study German again; since I have a background in it….although I still would prefer to learn Italian.

Paul is also going into the office today to work on a grant, so I also have the house to myself today–yet another reason to turn off the Internet. I still have some cleaning to do around the house as well–and there’s always filing that needs to be done–but I am hopeful that I won’t spend the day falling into an organizational wormhole. (It happens, trust me.) And while I would like to spend some time at some point with the top drawer of my filing cabinet (having already taken on the bottom drawer last weekend) I am going to use that as the carrot for getting work done on the Secret Project this weekend–as well as reading some more of Cottonmouths. I also have to run to the post office today–some things I ordered arrived yesterday–and I also need to get gas and air up one of my car tires (it has had a slow leak ever since I bought the car, and of course my lazy ass has never done anything about it other than airing it up again); which means going out into the heat and humidity, which is so draining and soul-destroying. I’m having dinner tomorrow night with a friend in from out of town–socially distancing ourselves from each other, of course–but this will also be my first experience eating out at a restaurant since, well, since I went to New York in January for the MWA board meeting (Paul and I rarely go out to eat–generally we just get it to go on those rare occasions when I don’t cook). I know how bizarre that must seem, given we live in a city stuffed to bursting with terrific places to eat, but I genuinely like to cook and have no problem with doing so.

It really is amazing, now that I am actually thinking about it, how far off course I’ve gotten this year with everything I wanted to get done. Sure, I’ve sold some short stories (always a pleasure!) but I’ve also not gotten a lot of things done that I had wanted to get done. Bury Me in Shadows is still languishing, waiting to be completely overhauled; the Kansas book is doing much the same; and while I did make some progress on Chlorine, I am nowhere near as far along this year as I would have hoped. Granted, MWA business has taken a lot more time than I thought it would, and of course, the pandemic and all those months of being ill didn’t help matters much. We haven’t found a new gym, because we aren’t sure how long whatever gym we might join would remain open after joining; COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Louisiana and have started rising again here in Orleans Parish. I also know I shouldn’t beat myself up over this stuff because there is no right way to handle a pandemic, or any of the PTSD it brought along with it. Now that I am feeling healthy and myself again, of course, I have to play catch up with everything, but I can’t help but bemoan somewhat all the lost time from this year. I’m not getting any younger–next month I will be fifty-nine, with sixty just one short year away–and if I want to accomplish as much as I want to accomplish in what time i have left, I really need to stop wasting time.

On the other hand, there’s also the point that I should try to at the very least enjoy the time I have left on this planet. Who knows? I could get killed in a car accident today on the way to and from the postal service. Man plans, after all, and the gods laugh.

I’ve also been wondering lately about the next Scotty book–should there be another Scotty book–and have actually been thinking about going back in time and writing a book that would fit between Mardi Gras Mambo and Vieux Carre Voodoo. I’ve never done a Scotty post-Katrina book, and have only vaguely referenced that period in his life–but then I think, well, you don’t really have much memory of that time any more left in your brain anymore and you did a Chanse book set in the post-Katrina city, so why bother revisiting that with Scotty? Wasn’t the whole reason you never did one in the first place because you couldn’t figure out how to do a light, funny book set in that time period?

So, yeah, there’s that. It’s more likely that I’ll do a pandemic murder mystery with Scotty–Quarter Quarantine Quadrille has a lovely ring to it–but of course, it’s kind of hard to do such a book without knowing how the pandemic is going to end–how and when. But I did leave the Scotty personal story on a cliff-hanger, and I have to do something about that. My original, pre-pandemic thought, was to do a book based around the Hard Rock Hotel collapse (remember that? No one else seems to); after all, one of the husbands of the Grande Dames from the last book was a shyster developer, and Canal Street Canard also has a nice ring to it–and then I could always do the pandemic book right after it.

It’s a thought, anyway. I also have titles for numerous Scotty books for the years to come…but perhaps at some point it will be time to let him and the boys retire.

And on that note, I am going back into the spice mines. I’m going to read Cottonmouths until it’s time to run my errand, and then I’ll come home, shower and dive into the Secret Project. May you have a lovely, restful, peaceful Saturday, Constant Reader.

To Face the Truth

Friday afternoon and I am taking a bit of a break. Non-stop emails, it seems, today, along with laundering the linens and doing some cleaning and about five minutes ago I realized dude, you’ve not had anything to eat today, so maybe take a break and eat something.

There’s been a watermelon sitting on the kitchen counter for a few days now, and it sounded like the right thing, so I went ahead and cut that sucker open and am currently in the process of eating an enormous slice. I’ve always loved watermelon, and one of the (few) things I miss about spending the summers in the back country of Alabama was watermelon right off the vine. There’s just nothing better on a hot, sticky summer afternoon in the Alabama countryside, really. I was also remembering the other day about how we used to go into the woods behind my grandmother’s house to pick wild blackberries.

Ah, for simpler times, when I didn’t have to worry about cleaning the house or paying the bills or cooking.

You know what, though? I prefer my life now. I’ve never really understood nostalgia for the past, really.

But I’ve gotten a lot done today, although I kind of feel like I’ve run out of steam. I took out the recycling; cleaned my new milk frother (now I can’t wait to use it; my old one wasn’t working right, in other first world problem news); I am laundering the linens; I shaved and showered; and like I said, I got a lot accomplished via email. I’m also feeling fairly rested–my shoulder is still sore from the vaccination, but that too shall pass. I also have a massive bruise from where they drew blood from me yesterday; but hey, I’m happy to settle for a bruise. My veins always used to roll; maybe that’s changed as I’ve grown older and the veins have gotten too lazy–and just lay there now with a “fuck it, go ahead and pierce me” attitude. But seriously, they used to have to dig around trying to get the needle in the vein, and trust me, I can live with them going right in and just leaving a bruise.

Such as the ways my mind meanders on a restful vacation day at home.

But I signed the contract for my Sherlock story and emailed it off (I just love my title: “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”) and I am now working on the filing, trying to resist the siren song of my easy chair.

But the watermelon and memories of summers in Alabama also put me in mind of Bury Me in Shadows, which has been languishing while I should be working on the Secret Project; which must be finished this weekend so I can get back to work on that book, else I may not have a book out again next year. THE HORROR! And I know how to fix it now, which makes all the difference in the world.

And now I am heading to the easy chair and taking an email/social media break other than blogging all weekend.

Se a vida é (That’s the Way Life Is)

And we made it to Friday once again, hopefully healthy and in one piece and mentally stable–that last one is always a bit, shall we say, questionable, for me as a rule? I am taking a vacation day from work today–it was a work at home day (why would one Gregalicious, you might well ask, take a vacation day when I would be working from home? Pay close attention and I shall tell you) anyway and there are all sorts of reasons for this. For one, yesterday was an incredibly low energy day for me. I got up early to have my bloodwork done, then picked up prescriptions and got my shingles vaccine shot. I spent the morning doing what i usually do from home in the mornings–reading articles, checking my work email, doing my timesheet, etc.–then went into the office to make “works’ bags for the syringe access program. As we have ascertained plenty of times before, standing for long periods of time isn’t the best for me, nor is standing while bending over, and my shoulder began to hurt from the vaccine shot. By the time I was finished I was very tired, did a few more things around the office, and headed home. They had warned me that the vaccine might give me mild flu-like symptoms, and that wasn’t a lie. Last night I felt like I had a mild flu, and so my mind couldn’t focus, so I stayed in my easy chair and watched television for most of the night before going to be relatively early. The insomnia has also come back over the last two nights, but I am hoping that this morning I’ll be okay. I don’t feel tired this morning, despite waking up in fits and starts since about two thirty, and the house is a disaster area.

And because of yesterday, I have about a gazillion emails to answer. YIKES. Once I finish this, I am heading into my emails. Pray for me, Constant Reader, pray for me.

But it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day outside–hellishly hot, of course–but I can see through all the trees up to a clear blue sky. We’ve had torrential thunderstorms every day this week–which I love–but it might be nice to have a day where poor Paul doesn’t get soaked on his way to and/or from work, the poor thing. I also have to launder the bed linens today–which is my every Friday chore–and I am determined that this is the weekend where I get the Secret Project finished if it kills me. I don’t have any errands that I have to run this weekend–I do have to get the mail Saturday and get gas and air up a tire–but that’s not a terrible, exhausting, put-me-out-of-the-mood-to-do-anything else chore, like making groceries, and even if it is, well, Paul will be out of the house on Saturday anyway; he has a grant to finish and he told me last night he’d probably have to go in on Saturday anyway. So, I should be able to finish reading Cottonmouths this weekend at last, and then I can move on to another book in my TBR pile. I may focus on short stories for a while, since those are more easily gulped down–and I do have Sara Paretsky’s short story collection on hand, as well as Lawrence Block’s latest (well, not the latest; there’s been a new one since I got this one) anthology, and those are always a lovely read.

I’ve also decided to put any and all short stories I am working on to the back burner until I get the Secret Project finished.

Over all, it was a pretty good week. I am very pleased that I am stepping up to take control of my health; the doctor visit was terrific; and as I mentioned earlier I am getting the two-step shingles vaccine–and since Paul had shingles about nine years or so ago, that’s something I definitely don’t ever want to suffer through. We’ll see how long this I can conquer the world mood I am feeling this morning lasts. I am hopeful it will last all day, myself–I am going to spend the morning dealing with emails and organizing and cleaning; as I mentioned the kitchen is a disaster area.

And on that note, I am going to head back into the spice mines.

We Came from Outer Space

Tuesday morning, and I am feeling human still–which is such a vast improvement over how I felt most of this year, quite frankly. I cannot believe how shitty I felt, and for how long, and somehow managed to operate and continue my life somehow. It’s so wonderful to feel like a human being again. I was telling a co-worker yesterday that part of it was the worry of it was just from getting older and it had happened so gradually I hadn’t noticed until it was so impossible to miss; and quite frankly the thought that the rest of my life was going to be just that low energy level of exhaustion where my muscles were so tired they were listless and all of my joints ached was almost enough to make me sob about the future and the rest of my life.

I worked on the Secret Project last night some more, although I am beginning to suspect that I will never be completely satisfied and will continue to fiddle with it ad nauseum ad finitum. It’s a lovely method of self-destruction I’ve managed to work into my brain that feels creative and like I’m working, when what I am actually doing is perpetually doubting myself and second-guessing everything I am doing with it.

But at least now that I’ve realized I’m self-sabotaging again, perhaps I can move on?

One would hope, at any rate.

Dark continues to be quite marvelous. It is absolutely riveting to watch, and it’s such a German show, with how it intertwines philosophy and science and grafts it onto an incredibly compelling (and tragic) human drama on quite a scale–which seems to grow even larger with every episode, particularly as all the secrets, long held and terrible, of the personal lives of the residents of the small town–secrets and lies and resentments–going back in some cases generations and decades, are slowly exposed. It’s quite good, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

As Paul said last night, “leave it to the Germans to come up with a show based in philosophy and science that is compelling.”

I have a doctor’s appointment, long postponed due to the virus, this afternoon; it’s a regular check-up thing and it is also tied to rescheduling my colonoscopy, which was supposed to take place in early April but again, was postponed. I need my prescriptions refilled, of course, and so that is an important part of my visit, and I am meeting with a nurse practitioner in the practice (my doctor is no longer there) who will also help me get reassigned to another doctor there. I was supposedly notified of all these changes by letter–I was not–and it took a while to get this all figured out and straightened out, but today I have an appointment that is another step in the right direction and I am quite pleased about it, frankly.

I am taking Cottonmouths with me to the doctor’s office to read during the interminable waits one must always endure when at the doctor’s office–which is one of the reasons I am so anal and resistant to making my clients wait at the day-job, frankly; it always feels like time wasted, and I hate wasting time when it’s not my personal choice to waste said time. At least having the book with me will help make me feel like the time is being spent productively, as reading is never a waste of time. I am disappointed in myself for taking so long to read this book–my TBR pile is far too large, and continuing to grow–which I want to emphasize has nothing to do with the quality of the book but everything to do with my inability to focus and concentrate (which is also why I am not being productive with my writing, either). S. A Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is on its way to me now, and I want to be able to read it as soon as I can–I read his first novel and greatly enjoyed it; this new one is getting a lot of buzz this summer, which indicates to me that it’s even better than the first, which was phenomenally good for a first novel–and of course, there are any number of other books in my TBR pile that are calling my name every day, begging to be read.

There’s also a part of me (that I am resisting) that keeps telling me I should sign contracts for the two in-progress manuscripts I have on hand, otherwise I shall never finish writing them. I have been thus far successful in resisting this urge, which would inevitably become the cause of great stress for me; but not having them finished and hanging over my head is also a stressor for me as well, so I suppose the question becomes, which stress would be greater? Inevitably, I am self-aware enough that each would be equally stressful, but whichever stress I choose I will eventually come to decide is greater than the other, unchosen one, would be.

Sometimes, self-awareness isn’t that terrific, quite frankly.

And now off to the spice mines. Enjoy your Tuesday, Constant Reader.