Category: goals

Too Hot

Tuesday and the world has gone mad.

Polar vortexes and wind chills around fifty below! New Orleans in a freeze warning with the possibility of snow! Madness, sheer madness.

Yesterday was a pretty good day, over all. It was so lovely, and I’m so happy, that Susanna Calkins was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Short Story for her contribution to Florida Happens, “A Postcard for the Dead.” It’s an absolutely wonderful story, too, an I couldn’t be happier for Susanna, who was an absolute delight to work with and whom I finally met at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg this past year. One of the things I love about being a part of the mystery or crime writing community is how many truly wonderful people are also a part of it, which always makes Bouchercon a wonderful experience for me. I always see old friends, meet new people and make new friends, and I always have the best time. For someone who is used to hiding out in his apartment most of the time being antisocial, Bouchercon and the Tennessee Williams Festival/Saints and Sinners weekend are seriously over-stimulating; I have a blast but when it’s all over I am drained and exhausted. Happy and still aglow, usually inspired to write, but drained and exhausted nonetheless. All of the Agatha nominees are terrific writers I admire; congrats to everyone.

I managed to proof read the first fifty pages of Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories; remember talking the other day about much I hate reading my own work? What’s interesting–let’s face it, I find myself fascinating–is that I often find myself using the same phrase, or turn of phrase, in more than one short story; which is something I wouldn’t be aware of writing them at different times over the years, and I would never sit down and reread all my short stories all at once. I know that I have a tendency to write about men with black hair, tanned olive skin, and green eyes; dimples also show up often in male characters in my work (Colin in the Scotty series hits all that criteria, and so did Paul in the first two Chanse novels). I also write about my neighborhood, the Lower Garden District, a lot in my short stories (in the novels, Chanse and Paige live in this neighborhood; Scotty lives in the Quarter); in fact, two of the first five stories are set less than three blocks apart. I also tend to use similar names a lot–David is a particular favorite of mine to call my characters; I also use Gary and Tony a lot.

I probably should pay more attention to this than I do.

I also started reading  The Klansman on Sunday night; and it’s not an easy thing to read. I only read a single chapter, and it took me a while. I kept getting memories, memories of the time period the book is set in as well as the summer I read it; a hot, damp Alabama summer with no air conditioning. It’s interesting because that is the setting for the WIP, and so I kept putting the book down so I could scribble down some memories in my journal, things to use for the WIP should I ever get to the point where I can work on it again. What the book is about you can pretty much guess given the title, and it’s hard to read. I don’t remember much of the book; I remember reading it, and I do remember it making me think about the things the book talked about; thinking about them in a different way than I had before. I’ve remembered the book my entire life, but have never gone back and reread it; the copy I read wasn’t mine and I never thought to look for a copy whenever I haunted any bookstore. I’m interested in the period, and I am interested in the pop culture of the period; a short story I am currently working on, “Burning Crosses,” made me think of this book again–and of course, the Internet makes everything easy. I got a first edition hardcover from Ebay for less than five dollars, and my decision to read it again now, as part of the Diversity Project, is because I want to know if the book will make me think as much as it did when I was nine or ten….or if my own values and morality have changed enough from then that I won’t view it in the same way.

But…it’s difficult to read. Not that it isn’t well written; it’s too well-written, if you get what I mean.

And now, back to the spice mines. Stay warm, Constant Reader!

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Longer

There are few things more excruciating than being forced to reread one’s own work.

Seriously.

 I think that’s part of my resistance to editing my own writing; I hate to reread my own work. There’s nothing that quite makes you feel like a failure than reading your own work. I think it’s another reason I have so much anxiety about doing public readings, and it’s probably why I’ve never made my Scotty or Chanse Bibles–which would require me rereading all the books. Sometimes, sure, I will reread something I’ve written  and think, damn, this is better than I remember but most of the time I cringe and wish I  had a chance to revise it again.

So, yes, if you’re wondering, this means I spent some time trying to revise things yesterday.

Yesterday was a good day. I ran my errands successfully in the late morning/early afternoon; came home and made potato leek soup in the slow cooker (do we no longer call them crockpots anymore?); and then did some cleaning and organizing (there’s still some more filing to do this morning–never fear, it’s an endless task) before sitting down in my easy chair to watch the figure skating championships. I have a special soft spot for the ice dancing team of Joe Johnson and Karina Marta–she recently came out, so they are the first queer team of ice dancers to skate as openly queer, and their number was spectacular.

I also watched another episode of Titans last night, and was pleased to see it end with the appearance of Jason Todd, aka new Robin. This of course means old Robin, Dick Grayson, will probably be soon transforming into Nightwing sometime in this series. This is a storyline turn I can completely endorse; Dick was dull as Robin and didn’t become interesting to me as a character until he became Nightwing, after which he was one of my favorite DC Universe characters. I am also hoping they’re going to add Wonder Girl/Donna Troy to the cast soon….but this season seems to be about the creation of the team, so my fingers are indeed crossed.

I continue to read  Last Seen Leaving, and it’s a charming book; Caleb Roehrig does an excellent job of capturing the main character’s voice; the confusion and fear of realizing you’re gay as a teenager but not wanting to tell anyone–or rather, being afraid to tell anyone, that deathly terror that someone might figure it out, that you’ll lose all your friends and your life will go down the toilet. This might be the first time I’ve read something that captures that so perfectly–taking me back forty years to when I was a terrified, closeted teen afraid to trust anyone. I hope to finish reading it today before moving on to The Klansman.

This morning I plan to clean out my email inbox at long last–I don’t know why I am so resistant lately to answering emails and so forth; it makes little to no sense to me. It’s more, I suppose, along the lines of I really don’t want to deal with this but after I clean up the mess left from making the potato leek soup last night, I am going to dive into my multiple inboxes to clear all this shit out. I also want to make a to-do list of what absolutely has to get done this week; my brake tag, for example, expires on Thursday so I need to go get a new one, and I keep forgetting that needs to be done. Heavy heaving sigh.

It feels cold again this morning, and the sun is hidden behind clouds. I get so tired of this weather here….and Facebook memories keeps reminding that in past years Carnival was going on during this time. It’s so weird to see old pictures of me in T-shirts and shorts out on the parade route in the sun when it’s cold now. But I guess, given the fact that many parts of the country are colder than Alaska and the Arctic, I shouldn’t complain because it could be so very much worse.

My streak of sleeping well continued again last night, which was lovely. I feel very rested today, just in time to have my two long days in a row. Huzzah? Ah, well, as long as I get a good night’s sleep on Tuesday night for Wednesday I can muddle through somehow.

And now, Constant Reader, I thank you, but it’s time to return to the spice mines.

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Sailing

Yesterday wasn’t pleasant. Nothing in particular, I was just in a mood for most of the day; and it was very easy to get me irritated. It rained most of the morning and afternoon–which ordinarily is something I enjoy–but it just seemed to place a damper, a gray filter of some sort, to the overall feeling of the day.

It was very strange, really. A low energy day when I’d slept well and wasn’t tired; Tuesday was the same. Being low energy for me usually means I am also very tired, and so not being tired while having low energy was unusual for me…and I didn’t like it in the least. This morning I feel better–more energy, even if still sleepy–so we’ll see how today goes. It’s much colder this morning than it was yesterday–I didn’t even take a coat yesterday with me; but it’s thirty-nine degrees in here this morning, which is pretty fucking awful.

I was also thinking about Monsters of New Orleans yesterday, my planned short story collection for which I would have to write mostly new stories (I do have a few on hand I could use), and the idea for the collection was, of course, triggered by reading Empire of Sin and realizing how many blank spots there were in my knowledge of New Orleans history, which also turned around and triggered the thought that I need to read more about the city’s history and that evolved into ideas and thoughts and plans. I also have another collection I am working on, Once a Tiger and Other Stories, which will have my second Chanse MacLeod short story in it (the title story), and a bunch of others that have been published (or were submitted to other markets) since Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories was pulled together. One of the things on my to-do list for this week was checking out the stories I have on hand, make some tweaks, and hopefully get them submitted somewhere by the end of the month.

Sigh. Plans, plans, plans. And yet I never can seem to want to get any of this stuff actually done.

Why work when you can procrastinate? Which is my motto, and needs to be cross-stitched onto a sampler I can hang in my kitchen.

But I am making a project list, so I can be more aware of what I need to do and when it needs to be done and all of that; lists are my thing and so there you have it.

I read some more of Caleb Roehrig’s Last Seen Leaving last night, which I am enjoying; it’s a very different kind of y/a voice than anything I’ve read before, which is both refreshing and fun.

And now back to the spice mines this morning. Have a lovely Thursday, everyone.

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Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer

Wednesday morning. I was very tired last night, and after watching the Australian Open (Greg: well, 2019 is starting off as a really shitty sports year, isn’t it?), I read for a little while before going to bed. I slept well last night, but this morning am feeling a little bit less lively than I should, all things considered. I also don’t have a short day tomorrow–eight hours, hurray–but that’s fine. Friday is back to normal and next week is a normal work week, for what that’s worth. Routine? Back into the groove? Let’s hope it’s all of those things.

I still feel slightly discombobulated. Adjusting to a new routine is difficult, particularly when that routine is regularly disrupted again once you start to settle into it. Ironically, I think once I get used to it again and get into a groove it’ll be Carnival parade time and it’ll get disrupted all over again. I guess that’s the trouble with being someone who likes routine and yet lives in New Orleans, where routine is routinely disrupted.

It’s kind of gray and misty outside the windows and everything is dripping. It’s rained over night and is still raining a bit this morning; which will make the drive uptown to get the mail and then to work all the more fun. It is a source of constant amazement to me that people in New Orleans can’t drive in the rain–you’d think, by the way they drive, that it never rained here.

And you’d be incorrect in that assumption.

Heavy sigh.

I tried to work on the Scotty a bit yesterday to no avail; I think I added an entire sentence to the revision/reboot of Chapter One. My mind was scrambled and tired last night when I got home, and of course watching Serena lose wasn’t uplifting or motivating. This weekend is the US National Figure Skating Championships, so a lot of time will be spent this weekend watching that event, which will be kind of nice–I do love to watch figure skating–and that leads me back to my story “Moves in the Field,” which I’d like to get revised and edited and rewritten this month–it and “The Snow Globe” and “And the Walls Came Down” and “The Problem with Autofill.” The last one needs a serious rethink; I like the basic idea of it, but as written the story doesn’t work. The conceit of the story is something I also like, but again is problematic because there’s no way anyone would ever be that stupid, I think; that’s the hole in the story that needs to be fixed. I have a better idea, a glimmer of a thought, on how to fix this problem (the problem with “The Problem with Autofill”, ha ha ha ha), and I am hoping to get that attempt out of the way this weekend. I know I am biting off more than I’m going to want to chew this weekend, but if I don’t make a massive to-do list I always feel like I am doing nothing.

Which of course is part of the insanity.

I’ve also been toying with an idea I like, for a novel–something to write after I finish the WIP. I do like the idea, but it’s very malformed and ethereal at the moment; it would need to be more solid before I start actually doing any writing on it. I think maybe if I spend an hour on it, just brainstorming and figuring out the plot and characters and how to structure the book, I’d be able and be more ready to sit down and write it when the time comes.

Ideas aren’t my problem; my problem is too many ideas.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

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Steal Away

Perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve noticed while proofing the galley pages for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories is how often I use the same names over and over again: Phillip, Billy, Joey, etc. That is definitely something I need to watch out for in the future.

Also, while I was printing out the page proofs, much to my surprise I discovered that my printer actually has a way of catching the pages as they spit out from the printer…in the three years I’ve had my printer I’ve always hated that it just spits the paper out and they go flying for me to pick up and organize. So you can imagine my surprise and embarrassment on noticing that the little pull out thing that catches the paper has a piece that flips up–so the paper doesn’t go flying into the air. Heavy sigh. Yes, I have had my printer for just over three years, why do you ask?

I didn’t get a lot done yesterday, mainly because 1) I was feeling lazy 2) it was still cold and 3) I was still bitter about the corrupt abomination that was the Saints game. I also found out that a project was pushed back a few months; my page proofs aren’t due until February 5th; and my tentative pub date for the Scotty is this coming September which means the revision isn’t due for a while yet–part of my stress was not knowing precisely when that was due so I was forcing myself to get it done. Knowing when it’s due means I can take my time with it and not rush and make sure that it’s as good as it possibly can be; if I feel like it’s not I have no one to blame but myself. So, I am going to distance myself both from it and the WIP this week and focus on some short stories before returning to both projects this coming weekend. I am also thinking–too soon, I know–about what I am going to write next. I had a really good idea Sunday night while watching Dirty John that I’m seriously contemplating, but it’s going to need some research first.

We’ll see, I suppose.

A short work week this week because of the three day weekend, so that’s also quite nice. I am hoping to make some progress on my reading this week as well. It’s really about staying rested–which means good sleep, and enough of it every night–and the mantra for this year: self-care. And this also means this weekend I need to go to the gym and get back into that routine. Stretching, cardio, weights, the occasional massage to work the kinks in my back out.

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

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Sexy Eyes

And it’s Monday, a holiday.

Which apparently my computer felt like it, too, deserved a holiday this morning. It only took forty-five minutes for it to successfully boot up; and while that was incredibly frustrating, it now is working just fine. Maybe it was the cold spell last night. Who knows? All I know is that before the latest iOS update (Mojave sucks) my computer worked fine. Go figure.

I am not discussing the abomination that was the Saints game yesterday. All I will say is certain officiating teams shouldn’t be allowed to officiate flag football for an elementary school. You can’t tell me that they all missed that call. Bullshit, and fuck off.

My page proofs for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories arrived in my inbox overnight, so I guess I’ll be spending some time proofing those tonight. I am going to work on Scotty some today–Paul is going into the office, no holiday for him, alas–so I have the whole day to myself here at home. I do have some cleaning and organizing left to do, but I am certain I can get everything on the agenda finished today. Huzzah!

We also finished watching Sex Education last night, and I do recommend it. It’s very cute and sweet, if extremely graphic, show about the sex lives of teenagers. After we finished that, we started watching Dirty John, which started slow but began to pick up in the second episode. We’ll keep watching Dirty John, I think…at least for another episode. It’s also terrific to see the young actress from Ozark, who deserves an Emmy for her role as Ruthie. And you can really never go wrong with Eric Bana or Connie Britten.

I also started reading Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig, and am enjoying it thus far. Hope to carve out some time from my to-do list in order to finish it today.

And now I suppose I should read the page proofs. So tis back to the spice mines with me.

Have a great day!

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Biggest Part of Me

WHO DAT! GEAUX SAINTS!

The temperature took a dramatic nosedive last night. It’s about forty degrees and gray in New Orleans this morning…but the city is full of nervous energy. The NFC Championship game is today, with our Saints taking on the Los Angeles Rams for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

WHO DAT!

I slept well last night, which was absolutely lovely. I also allowed myself to go back to sleep after I woke up at just before seven; the bed felt comfortable and warm, and I managed to fall back to sleep for a bit before I finally got up.

I am glad I took the time to reread Pet Sematary, a book of Stephen King’s I didn’t care for on the first read, and had never reread. I understand the book a lot better, as I said, as a fifty-eight year old than I did when I was twenty-two. Mortality and death are difficult things to deal with, particularly when you’re younger; despite reading a lot of crime novels and horror I was clearly not emotionally equipped at that age to deal with these kinds of questions; this was one of those books where, almost every step along the way, I was pleading with Louis, the main character, don’t do this don’t do this are you crazy don’t do this you know this won’t end well. And Louis continued making those bad, wrong decisions…the book is an epic masterpiece, almost a Greek tragedy, about hubris, life, death, and loss. Incredibly well-constructed, and the characters are so perfectly delineated with so many little truths imbedded in them that you can’t help but care about them and what happens to them.

Now I’m wondering if I should reread other Kings I didn’t like on first read, like The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher. I still have others of his I haven’t read yet, like The Outsider, 11/22/63, Bronco Billy, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Black House, and Doctor Sleep, so maybe I should just go on and finish reading the other Kings I have on hand.

But next up for my reading is something for The Diversity Project–a queer y/a by Caleb Roehrig–and after that, I think I’m going to move on to either Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress or Kellye Garrett’s Hollywood Homicide or something by Chester Himes. I am also moderating a panel at the Tennessee Williams Festival and so will have some reading homework for that as well.

Before the game today I am going to do some straightening up around here and I am going to try to do some writing–put this nervous energy to good use. And of course, tomorrow I have the holiday off (yay for three day weekends!) and am hoping I’ll be able to get a lot of writing done then as well.

One can hope, at any rate.

We also started watching a new show last night on Netflix, Sex Education, which is actually quite charming. I think it’s a British show, and Gillian Anderson plays the main character’s mother, a sex and relationship therapist, which is rather challenging for her son, a sixteen year old virgin with his own sexual issues. But he makes a new friend, Maeve, the class bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and they start a business–where he gives relationship and sex advice to other students with issues. The relationships between the characters are refreshingly real and honest, the show also dabbles a bit in class and gender issues, and over all, it’s quite charming and funny. I do recommend it–we watched almost all of it last night, and will probably polish off the final two episodes tonight after the game.

And now back to the spice mines.

GEAUX SAINTS!

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This Is It

I slept rather late this morning, did I not? It was a very good night’s sleep and I feel terrifically rested now. Which is a good thing, as I am braving the wilds of Costco later this morning (AIEEEE!). The objective is to get as many errands as possible done today, and to remain focused on my goals. The house is pretty well cleaned and organized; I just need to do the floors today and it’ll be good to go. The weather is also supposed to be peculiar today; from a high of seventy around noon to be followed by a nasty storm with high winds, after which the temperature is going to take a severe forty degree drop. #madness

You have to love the bipolar weather of January in New Orleans.

I watched another episode of Titans last night, the one in which we meet the Doom Patrol, and I have to say the show is really well done. The pacing is excellent; the hour (or forty-two minutes, or however long it is) flies past and the credits roll before you know it. The cast is young and attractive, and has the charisma or acting skills or a combination of the two to pull off their roles convincingly. As I said the other day, introducing a show about a team is never easy, as you have so many characters with back story that has to be told and/or explained. It’s incredibly easy to get bogged down in back story, but the writing of the show integrates the character back stories into the current story seamlessly. I am very impressed. I also watched another episode of Riverdale, and apparently missed one along the way somehow–or just didn’t remember it, but how would I not remember the appearance of Gina Gershon?–but it was fine. The show is kind of a train wreck, to be honest, and yet I find myself being pulled back to it like a moth to a flame.

I also read a bit more of Pet Sematary last night; and now that the reader knows where the story is going–yes, Louis is crazed with grief and anger, not in his right mind, surely he isn’t going to dig up Gage and take him to the Micmac Burying Ground, is he? Oh yes he certainly is!–it seems as though the train wreck of the Creed family tragedy King is writing is well on its way down the tracks. The book’s pacing also picks up dramatically along the way; the more I reread the more I am convinced that the book is actually an under-appreciated masterpiece (at least one that I didn’t fully appreciate), and I am glad I am rereading it. As much as the book disturbs me, I cannot imagine what it would be like to read as a parent. I hope to finish reading it today, and move on to the first book of the Diversity Project.

I also spent some time reorganizing and cleaning out some of my kitchen cupboards yesterday; throwing away things that have been stored in there uselessly for years; there was even a bottle of salad dressing with a 2017 sell-by date on it, and now there’s more room in the cupboards. I also need to go through the cupboards with the dishes and so forth; I’ve just been cramming stuff in there when taking them out of the dishwasher and not really trying to organize the mess very much. I am also going to do another round of purging with the book cases.

A very ambitious plan for the first day of this three-day weekend, is it not?

I also need to run by Office Depot at some point this weekend, too.

And on that note, it’s time for me to dive back into the spice mines. Keep your fingers crossed for me, Constant Reader, that I’ll have the energy and motivation to get everything done that I need to get done today.

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With You I’m Born Again

Thursday night of one of my half-days, and I am waiting for Paul to get home. I am in the process of making dinner. I have already done a load of laundry, there’s another in the dryer right now with another in the washer just waiting its turn to tumble dry. There’s a clean load of dishes in the dishwasher. I am also preparing a lot of things I need to mail out when I go to the post office on Saturday. I’ve cleaned the kitchen counters off and done some things in the living room.

I reread the first five chapters of the Scotty today, and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about them–and by further extension, the rest of the manuscript as I’ve read it this week. I really hate these five opening chapters, hate them. They drag, they don’t make sense, and while there are certainly other moments later in the manuscript where my tendency to have the characters sit around and talk through what’s going on (or have Scotty walking/driving/doing something and trying to think things through), which quite naturally brings the story, pacing and narrative to a complete and utter screeching halt, there are a lot more of those things in the first five chapters (and the prologue) than there are in the entire rest of the manuscript.  SO much explaining.  A lot of trimming and revision; and I was absolutely correct that the opening scene of Chapter One had to be trashed and completely redone. But at the same time, I am feeling quite up to this task, and am kind of excited about it, to be honest.

I also had an epiphany about my reread of Pet Sematary today. I realized that the reason the book was so hard for me when I read it that first time when I was twenty three was because I didn’t really understand grief at the time; I was well acquainted with misery and despair and hopelessness at that age, but I didn’t even have a passing acquaintance with grief yet. At almost fifty-eight, my perspective is a lot different. Being confronted with such an incredibly powerful depiction of almost unknowable grief made me deeply uncomfortable, made me squirm. The Creed grief is so profound, so powerful, so overwhelming–what pain could be greater than the death of your child, particularly as toddler?–that I recoiled away from it, turned my back on it as if to say no, I don’t want to know this and will never know this. 

But that’s absurd, of course.

Rereading the book now, I can see that it’s actually a masterpiece, a tour-de-force. King makes us take a long, hard look at death itself, the greatest fear we all collectively share. Death, as he says in the pages of this exceptional book, is the one thing we never talk about, that we don’t learn how to react to, that we can’t learn how to react to, how to behave, what is the right thing to say to someone who is  grieving so deeply, so strongly, so powerfully? We shake our heads and click our tongues to each other and murmur sympathetic things that are just trite words in the face of the monumental grief. There are few books–at least that I’ve read–that deal so starkly with death and what it means, how we all feel about it, what we think about it, and how we deal with it.

The section of the book called “The Micmac Burial Ground” opens with one of the most astonishing emotional gut-punches I’ve ever read in a book; so horrific and shocking is the death of two-year-old Gage Creed that King foreshadowed it in the closing pages of the previous section, openly telling us that Gage is going to die in six weeks…but he doesn’t tell us how.

How Gage dies, how it happens, is so terrible that not knowing going into this section that Gage is going to die would make it too awful. I would have probably stopped reading the book thirty-five years ago had that been the case. That his entire family saw it happen, tried to stop it from happening, and all failed…my God in heaven. The guilt and the grief!

Crippling.

I mean, wow.

It’s now Friday morning, and I am up early to head over to the West Bank to my car dealer for some routine maintenance on the car. I slept pretty well last night, all things considered, and now am on the cusp of a three day weekend, during which I want to get a lot of writing and editing done; and possibly put the finishing touches on some other projects I am working on in the meantime. It would be lovely going into next week with all of these things completed; we shall see how it goes, shan’t we?

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, I should get back to the spice mines.

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Shining Star

Well, good morning, Thursday, how do you do? I’m a bit giddy, as I always am after working thirty-two hours in three days. I am in the home stretch of the week with my short days, and a three day weekend! Huzzah! Huzzah!

I can’t wait to sleep in. I also love days when I don’t have to go outside at all, other than perhaps walking to the gym or Walgreens or taking out the garbage. And as the Scotty work is going so well–I have only chapters one through five left to go over again, and then I can start inputting the changes and making the necessary corrections, and I need to finish rewriting the opening and I need to write the afterward–it also serves as a boon to my mood. I am really itching to be done with this, and I am so glad I took my time with this manuscript. I think it’s going to be one of the better Scottys, if I pull off everything I’m trying to do, and I have to say, it’s lovely to feel ambitious with a Scotty book. I think that was why the Chanse series felt like it was running down to me; I didn’t really feel particularly ambitious for the series and the character anymore. It’s been nice writing short stories about Chanse; “My Brother’s Keeper” in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories is my first Chanse short story and it’s also my first-ever private eye short story. I’m feeling kind of excited about writing private eye stories–I wrote one for another anthology (not a Chanse, alas) and I really want to get back to the other Chanse story I started, “Once a Tiger.” I never thought I’d be able to write private eye stories, and now I feel confident enough to try writing them. I am feeling ambitious with my short story writing, and that’s also a really good feeling. I think I am getting better at it, and am starting to understand them better, if that makes any sense. I also spent some time over the last few days rereading some of my stories critically–“The Problem with Autofill” and “The Snow Globe”–and I think I know how to fix them. I am going to do the same with “Moves in the Field” and “Burning Crosses” over the next couple of days.

I’ve reached the point in my reread of Pet Sematary where the book starts to take off with its story; Louis is home alone at Thanksgiving while the family visits Rachel’s wealthy parents in Chicago (some back story of the bad blood between Louis and her parents is also established here), and of course, Ellie’s beloved cat Church is killed by a passing car on the road. Naturally, Louis doesn’t know how he’s going to deal with both Rachel (who has a very well-established death phobia) and his daughter, who is sure to be devastated and heartbroken. Father figure from across the road Jud, however, comes to his rescue, and later that evening, takes Louis and Church beyond the deadfall (which the ghost of Victor Pascow already warned him against crossing) and the pet sematary and into the woods and the swamp beyond, to the Micmac burying ground…and of course, Church comes back. Different, but back.

As I read this section of the book (of course, Ellie comes home and knows Church is different–so different she really doesn’t want anything to do with him; echoing Jud’s comment “sometimes dead is better”) I began to remember some of the issues I had with the book on first read. Namely, almost every step of the way the book and story has the problem that is probably best encapsulated as why would you do this? Like in horror movies, the group being hunted by the killer always splits up, or the girls always wear heels before running in the forest, etc. Louis is incredibly passive when it comes to the Micmac burying ground visit with the cat’s corpse; never once does he ever stop to question what he’s doing or to ask Jud why they are going so deep in the forest, or why he isn’t simply burying the cat in the regular pet cemetery. And when Church comes back…I don’t know; he seems to take the resurrection of the cat much easier than you’d think a doctor would. And of course when he asks Jud, after Church returns, if anyone’s ever buried a human up there…well, you just know at that point that someone is inevitably going to be buried up there; it’s simply a matter of who, and what’s going to happen when that person returns. I know if, for example, my own cat returned from the dead I’d freak out a whole lot more than he did.

But I am enjoying the book a lot more this time around; it reads very quickly and easily, and the Creed family are immensely likable.

I didn’t watch another episode of Titans last night, instead getting sucked into the Australian Open, which will undoubtedly happen more and more as the tournament goes on. (But I am looking forward to watching one when I get home; it’s an early day for me and I do have some cleaning to do, but I am definitely penciling in both more reading time and time to watch another episode.)

Tomorrow morning i have to get up early to take my car in for routine servicing, and then in to work. It’s also another early day for me–only four hours–and hopefully tomorrow evening when I get home I can finish the cleaning for the weekend so I can work on writing and editing all weekend as well as finishing my reread of Pet Sematary. My next read is going to be a Diversity Project read; I’m going to read my library book, Caleb Roerig’s Last Seen Leaving,  a queer y/a title, and after that, probably something by an author of color. I’m also going to work on rereading Stephen King novels this year, methinks–that’s a lot of reading projects, isn’t it–and I also have some Stephen Kings on hand that I’ve not read…which is something I intend to take care of this year as well.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines for the rest of the morning. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader.

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