I always say my first identity is reader; I was a voracious reader long before I realized that loving to read and loving books predestined me to become an author, a teller of tales. Certainly author is my primary, preferred identity; sometimes I worry that my identity is entirely too wrapped up in being an author. But trying not to worry and be anxious about anything and everything in my life is my new mantra.
Anyway, I had the great pleasure of meeting S. A. (Shawn) Cosby at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg. I don’t really remember much of the weekend–I met a lot of people and I drank way too much–but I know I met and liked him enough to get a copy of his debut novel, My Darkest Prayer. I loved the book, and saw in its pages an incredible talent, for character and place and dialogue and language, and when I reviewed it on here I predicted an incredibly bright future for him as a crime writer.
I was right,
Titus woke up five minutes before his alarm went off at 7:00 A. M. and made himself a cup of coffee in the Keurig Darlene had gotten him last Christmas. At the time she’d given it he’d thought it was an expensive gift for a relationship that was barelyfour months old. These days, Titus had to admit it was a damn good gift he was grateful to have.
He’d gotten her a bottle of perfume.
He almost winced thinking back on it If knowing your lover was a competition, Darlene was a gold medalist. Titus didn’t even qualify for the bronze. Over the last ten months he’d forced himself to get exponentially better in the gift-giving department.
Titus sipped his coffee.
His last girlfriend before Darlene has said he was a great boyfriend but was awful at relationships. He didn’t dispute that assessment.
Titus took another sip.
All the Sinners Bleed is Shawn’s fourth novel (as a solo author–he also co-wrote a book with Questlove). In the wake of My Darkest Prayer, he released two novels to extraordinary success and acclaim, Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears. Both were amazing, and somehow each book is somehow better than the preceding one–which is really saying something; I’d happily retire if I ever reached anything comparable to those two with any two of my own.
But they were just warm-up acts for this incredible new novel.
Something that has always interested me over the years is the integration of American police forces on every level. How do, for example, Black and/or Latinx/Hispanic cops feel when their fellow officers commit racially driven police brutality? How does it feel to be a part of a police force–particularly in the deep South, but also in places like Los Angeles–that has always been historically racist and oppressive to non-whites? For that matter, how does it feel to be a queer police officer?
All the Sinners Bleed takes on that question with our main character, Titus Crown, the recently elected first-ever Black sheriff in a pretty racist little corner of southeastern Virginia. Titus was born and raised there; his father and brother live there, and he returns to his hometown after a stint with the FBI. He ran for sheriff not expecting to win, but to try to break the stranglehold of power always held by money and white supremacy there. (I have another essay or entry to write about small Southern counties/parishes, and how they all too frequently are run like corrupt authoritarian dictatorships with the power being passed down within a few families, sometimes only one. Exhibit A: the Murtaughs in the South Carolina low country.) As the first Black sheriff of Charon County, he has to uphold the law–which he intends to do to the best of his abilities.
The book opens with a shooting at the local high school; this was hard for me to read and part of the reason it took me so long to get into it; I thought this was going to be a school shooting novel and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read that. But I was wrong; yes, there was a shooting at the school and yes, that shooting was pivotal to the plot, but it wasn’t a mass shooting: a young Black man goes to the school and murders one of the teachers, and on his way out he is shot and killed by the cops when he won’t drop his weapon. Why would Latrell Macdonald shoot Mr. Spearman, a very popular teacher? As Titus starts looking into the strange shooting, he discovers another level of horror going on in Charon County, and once the story gets moving, it’s hard to put the book down.
Over the course of this all-too-short novel, Cosby tackles a lot of issues without either being preachy or over-the-top. Confederate monuments, the Daughters of the Confederacy, racism, white supremacy, the cruelty of poverty, police brutality, and the hard, cruel kind of Christianity practiced in poor, remote rural regions of the South. But the most powerful aspect of the book is how it handles grief; the three Crown men dealing with the loss of wife and mother, a wound that never heals–and the guilt that comes with moving on from such a loss. Cosby had a lot to say in just over three hundred pages; the fact that he said it all, and powerfully, by using character, place and story to get his messages across is testament to his great skil.
And this book is bound to piss off white supremacists. It will make a great Christmas gift for any in your family.
I”m up earlier than usual on a Friday because I have to go to the dentist’s office this morning to get fitted for my new dentures. I don’t know when they’re going to be ready, and I know it’s too much to hope for that I would get temporary ones today so I can start eating normally again, but an old gay man can dream, can’t he? I left work yesterday to go meet with the cardiologist, to be cleared for my surgery as well as to check and see if i also have the same congenital heart issue that eventually killed Mom (her father died in his sleep in his forties; there’s a concern that it’s not only congenital but genetic); good news is my heart is strong and functioning completely the way it’s supposed to; no concerns there, with a sonogram scheduled to see if my arteries are normal or I have the same issue Mom had. He also changed my cholesterol medicine (giving me something stronger), and i need to have another blood draw done. Yay? My schedule between now and the surgery looks to be filled with appointments for tests and things. Heavy heaving sigh.
I slept really well last night. Paul was late getting home–we watched Only Murders in the Building–and I did some chores. I took the evening off from writing and tried to do chores mostly. I watched a documentary on Youtube about Charles VI of France–aka Charles the Mad, the king who lost France to Henry V of England–and the “glass delusion,” which the King suffered from as did many others during the time period; the belief that he was made of glass and would shatter. I had wanted at one point to write a story about the glass delusion (because it absolutely fascinates me), but am not sure how to do it or whether Iwant to write about the king himself or come up with someone new to have the delusion. He was an interesting person, had an interesting and tumultuous reign–whichof course indirectly led to the rise of Joan of Arc, which really is fascinating. St. Joan and her voices have always struck my curiosity–more on that at another time, anyway. So, yes, I went down a wormhole on Youtube on the Hundred Years’ War, the madness of King Charles, and the fifteenth century. The fifteenth was also a calamitous century, to use the language Barbara Tuchman used to describe the fourteenth in her book A Distant Mirror (which may be my favorite history book of all time). I don’t want to write about the fifteenth the same way I want to write about the sixteenth, because it would have to cover the Hundred Years’ War but also the Wars of the Roses, and those have been written about already endlessly so I have no desire to write about either of them.
But my sixteenth century and women ruling Europe book is something I would still like to do.
Okay, so now I am home again and irritated. I stopped to make a few groceries on the way home from the dentist, and apparently left one of my bags in the shopping cart, which is super annoying–especially since that was the bag that had the stuff I specifically stopped for; all the rest was just lagniappe I picked up because I was there already. Heavy sigh. Ah well, I can go back later on–probably will, because I do need those things–but still irritating to just throw money away like that. Ah, well. I’ll be getting my new temporaries in about a week or so; which is the best news, really, and I also have to get my checkbook register caught up and all my new follow-up appointments put onto my calendar.
And of course, this afternoon we’re going to the SPCA on the west bank to get a cat. YAY! (Maybe I can pick up the stuff I need on the West Bank before we go look at the kitties.) I am not going to stress about it, nor am I going to get anxious about it, either.
So I have some work-at-home duties to take care of this morning before we head across the river to adopt a cat (I’m a little excited but trying really hard to contain myself). I also have laundry and dishes and other tedious chores around here to get done over the weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to take the books to the library sale and see if I can get my vaccinations that I need at CVS; worst case scenario I can’t get it there and will have to wait some more. I’d like to have it before I see my elderly relative next weekend in Panama City Beach, for obvious reasons; I’d feel terrible if I gave any of them COVID at their ages. (Dad is the youngest at nearly eighty-two.) It’s just a quick trip, over on Saturday and back on Sunday, but since I won’t be able to head up north for the holidays I don’t want to miss a chance of seeing Dad when he’s that close, and I can finish Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Drowning Tree in the car.
And on that note, I should probably head into the spice mines and take care of my work-at-home duties before Paul gets up. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I am sure there will be a picture of my new kitty to post later on.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how we don’t really have a Louisiana crime writer who explores and illuminates the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and environmentalism of the state the way John D. Macdonald infused many of his Florida novels with so frequently. Condominium, published in the 1980’s, is a stinging indictment of crooked developers and corrupt politicians putting up massive condominium buildings along the coastline of Florida, despite the damage they do to the environment, all in the name of a quick buck. I have been thinking about this because I spent a lot of time in the panhandle in the 1970s, back before Panama City Beach developed into what it is now. I’ve not been back there since 1980, at the latest; but just looking at Google Earth images it’s horrifying how different and over-developed that whole area has become. (I was looking at the images because I was thinking about setting a book along the Redneck Riviera/Baja Alabama/Emerald Coast/Miracle Strip, whichever name you use for the region.) Louisiana, nicknamed “Sportsmen’s Paradise” because of the abundant fish and game and the stunning natural beauty of the state, has pretty much spent the last hundred or so years (at least) destroying and despoiling the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, killing off wildlife species while introducing new invasive ones–and don’t even get me started on Cancer Alley, that stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with petrochemical plants parked next to poor, mostly Black communities that have, surprisingly enough, large instances of cancers in the residents. Now the level of the river is so low that it can’t keep the Gulf water pushed down, and the salty water is making its way up the river and intruding into our drinking water supply here in southeastern Louisiana. I’m sure the loss of so much of the wetlands to ensure oil company profits hasn’t affected this in any way, shape or form. There’s a really good environmental thriller to be written about Louisiana (if not more), and I think maybe part of the problem in writing about the destruction of Louisiana in the name of unfettered greed is that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to tackle it, nor do I have the time to spend on the research necessary.
It’s really disappointing to me that James Michener never wrote one of his two thousand page plus books about Louisiana. Louisiana history, no offense, is a lot more interesting than Texas’.
And Sportsmen’s Paradise is a great title for a book about Louisiana’s environmental disasters.
I suppose I should just go ahead and do it, regardless of how difficult and long and tedious the process may be. I also think part of the reason I’ve resisted this aspect of writing about Louisiana is because no matter how dark my books may get, I always want justice to be done in some way and to end the book with some sort of hope; there literally is no hope for the future of Louisiana because our politicians are all too greedy and corrupt and only focused on the now rather than the future, no matter how much they beat the “but the children!” drum publicly to fool those incapable of deeper thought. There have been so many environmental disasters in Louisiana over the nearly three decades I’ve lived here I can’t remember them all; and yes, I definitely count boil water advisories in that, too. There was the sinkhole at Bayou Corne (anyone remember that?) and of course Deepwater Horizon, whose true impact and the damage it wrought on the Gulf and the coastline will not be fully known for generations.
The one consistent thing throughout Louisiana’s history has been the entrenched systemic political corruption. I have written about that.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about Jackson Square Jazz, as I get into this revision, and remembering why I wrote it and what I was trying to say within the book; there was a thread in it that ties directly into the new one, and there are also some thematic commonalities with S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am really enjoying reading. Shawn is such an extraordinary writer, with a gift not only for language but character, dialogue, setting and story; the complete deal, as it were, and definitely is going to be considered one of the definitive crime writers of this new generation of exceptional talent that has risen over the last few years. I am going to spend some more time with Shawn’s book this morning, too; I am really enjoying it and wanting to see where it goes and how it all ends. I also have the new Lou Berney on deck, and Lou’s books are always high-quality, clever, and engaging.
College football was interesting yesterday. My Tigers prevailed in a three-point nail-biter against Arkansas in Tiger Stadium 34-31, running the clock out and kicking the winning field goal on the last play of the game. Paul and I were stunned, as was the crowd in the stadium..,and then I laughed. “LSU fans aren’t used to smart clock management in tight games,” I observed, and Paul started laughing with me because the crowd in the stadium didn’t know how to react to the end of the game either. It almost seemed ant-climactic rather than exciting…how many games have we lost this century because of poor clock management skills displayed by the coaching staff? So it was lovely, for once, to see the Tigers play smart at the end of a game for a change. Alabama finally looked like Alabama for the first time this season–but only in the second half as they iced Mississippi. LSU now has to play Mississippi in Oxford next weekend; it’ll be interesting to see how LSU stacks up against our old Magnolia Bowl foe. Colorado finally lost, which brought out all the racist college football fans on social media. The Texas A&M-Auburn game was just sloppy, ugly and unimpressive, while Mississippi State fell to South Carolina. But the big game of the day lived up to its billing–Ohio State v. Notre Dame in South Bend, with the Buckeyes scoring the winning touchdown on the literal last play of the game, 17-14. I literally only saw the closing minutes of the game, switching over once the LSU game concluded. The Saints play at noon today at Green Bay, so the grocery run I need to make will happen around that time–no fool me; everyone knows the best time to make groceries is during a Saints game here.
Yesterday was pretty relaxing, over all; a lovely day for the weekend and a restful and nice one, despite the stress of the LSU game. I’ll probably have the Saints game on in the background because it’s too anxiety-making to watch the games. (I have yet to learn how to control the anxiety during a game; it was certainly there last night and while I tried very hard not to get negative during the game, I could feel the adrenaline spiking and my heart rate going up, but I managed to keep my mind from spiraling and going super-dark as well not getting overly emotional It is, after all, just a football game and LSU football success isn’t necessary for my mental well-being.)
My goals for today are to read Shawn’s book for a few hours, get cleaned up and make a grocery run; while finishing the first chapters of the new Valerie and Jem books (tentatively titled, thus far, The House of the Seven Grables and You Gone, Girl) and also wanting to do some short story work as well, which is always fun. This Friday I am getting fitted for my new teeth (hurray!) and I have also reached the point where I can eat and enjoy noodles, so yesterday I made box mac’n’cheese (not Kraft, but one that came from the refrigerated section and simply needed microwaving and stirring; it wasn’t bad, either). Tonight I am going to make ravioli for dinner; we’ll see how that goes, although I am sure I won’t be able to eat any garlic bread. (I am able to eat Cheese Puffs, though.) I really want a burger, more than anything else. We are also making a trip to the SPCA to adopt a cat this coming Friday, which is perhaps the most exciting thing of all! I’ve really missed having a cat; they are such darling animals, and of course we want to get another ginger boy.
And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back–if not later, than tomorrow.
I’ve been toying with an idea for an essay for a while. It began as a blog post, but as I worked on it I realized it might be too long for a blog entry, were I to cover the entire scope of the issue even in abstract form. I moved it from here into a Word document yesterday, which may or may not mean something bigger in store for it than simply a blog entry. I don’t know. It will probably wind up here at some point as one of those long rambling things I do from time to time when I feel passionately about something. Consider that your warning. I’ve been thinking about masculinity a lot lately–it’s been an albatross hung around my neck since I was a child (“Boys don’t play with dolls! Boys don’t read Nancy Drew!”) and after reading so many bad takes about how “men are in crisis”–which basically boil down to an inability to adapt to cultural and societal change that is so intense that they resist such adaptation violently–I started thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man; if it means anything, really. It’s probably too important an issue for me to take on in a personal essay, but personal essays are supposed to be revealing, and no one expects me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything ever written about American masculinity, and to discuss it; thinking I can’t write something for whatever reason is self-sabotage of the worst kind, and something I am guilty of, over and over, throughout my life and career.
And yes, self-sabotage is 100% a by-product of my anxiety.
I also have Justin Baldoni’s book about masculinity, Man Enough, which is also an exploration of masculinity. Baldoni played the incredibly hot and sexy father of Jane the Virgin’s baby, and so as a gorgeous male actor/sex symbol, he has some gravitas to speak on the subject. I’m looking forward to cycling around to his book, once I finish my reread of a Charlemagne biography I really enjoy. I also spent some more time with Shawn’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am liking and savoring as I go–and can’t wait to spend some more time with it today. When I finish, Lou Berney’s Dark Ride has preempted everyone and been moved to the top of the TBR pile. It’s so lovely having so many great options of what to read next. I also think once October rolls around I am going to read only horror that month, in honor of the season–so I need to finish Shawn and Lou’s books before the month turns.
It also occurs to me that many of my books–unbeknownst to me–have explored the topic of masculinity in great detail already.
I slept really well last night, and only got up once. Ironically once I did wake up, I thought wow you really slept late and then saw it was quarter past seven on my alarm. I guess how it feels matters more than how long it actually was, and what truly matters is that I woke up feeling rested and relaxed and ready for my coffee this morning. I am debating right now whether I want to take the books to the library sale and the beads to the donor bins as well s make a slight grocery run–but am leaning towards not making the trip outside the house. I don’t really need anything from the store until Monday at the earliest, and the boxes of books and beads are out of the way and not bothering anyone, let alone my need for order and open space in the living room. I also want to work on some writing today before the games, so maybe leaving the house today isn’t in the cards–or am I just being lazy? It’s definitely possible that laziness and procrastination and my tendency to self-sabotage is what is really going on here. It’s possible. I do tend to put things off I consider unpleasant (and by unpleasant, I mean have to put some effort into it)…
LSU plays Arkansas tonight in Death Valley, and tonight we’ll find out two things: basically, how good either time is. It’s hard to say this early in the season how much quality your wins and losses have; the Florida State-Clemson game today will impact how good the LSU loss to the Seminoles was, and of course we aren’t sure how good Mississippi State is, so we don’t know if that was a quality win yet or not. Arkansas lost to BYU last weekend, so there’s also no telling how good they may or may not be, either. The whole conference seems to be down this year, but a tight win for Georgia can be shaken off as meaningless this early, and Alabama may bounce back; a Nick Saban coached Alabama team has never lost more than three games in a season since 2010 and only twice overall; sure, they looked unimpressive against USF and lost badly to Texas in Tuscaloosa, but does that mean Alabama isn’t going to rebound and is destined for a bad season? No, I don’t think so. Love them or hate them, Alabama consistently wins, and an early season loss means nothing to their program. Sure, LSU could run the table, win the West and potentially even the conference title game and make it to the play-offs; but they have to run the table on a schedule filled with landmines, including both Alabama and a rebuilding Auburn as well as the always hated Florida Gators. There are some great games today, which is why I want to spend some time reading Shawn’s book this morning before the games start, and I plan on rereading and revising Jackson Square Jazz during the games today.
And of course, there’s always filing and organizing to be done. I have seriously messed up my filing system so thoroughly and completely that it’s going to require a major overhaul to begin with, but I also have to think about putting together a new and workable system that will be easier to maintain than this haphazard way I’ve been doing things–and of course the computer files are an utter disaster as well. Heavy sigh.
I’ve been doing a lot more research (or rather, falling into research black holes on the web) about New Orleans during the decade of the 1910’s. I am definitely going to write a Sherlock pastiche for the Bouchercon anthology–which of course means I will most likely be rejected. Perhaps a Sherlockian-type character, and if they turn it down I can simply turn him into Sherlock and toss the story into my short story collection? I need to finish the revisions of “Whim of the Wind” and finish a draft of “Parlor Tricks,” which will probably go into that collection as well. What particularly interests me now is “Manila Village,” a settlement of Filipinos on Barataria Bay, settled by native Filipinos who were forced to serve in the Spanish navy and escaped to Louisiana. There’s still a strong Filipino-American community here (which I actually didn’t know before falling into this wormhole of research), and I do feel that Holmes, living in New Orleans in that decade, would probably embrace them and their culture. (I also need to research the Isleños; descendants of the Canary Islanders who settled here.) New Orleans was also dramatically different geographically back then; the New Basin Canal was still there, for one thing, and I am not entirely sure when the Carondelet Canal (also called the Old Basin Canal) was filled in, but it came right up next to Congo Square; the streets in the Quarter were either dirt or cobblestone, and the lower part of the neighborhood had been almost entirely taken over by Italian immigrants.
I’ve also got strong starts of first chapters for another Jem book (sequel to Death Drop) and another Valerie (sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder); so there’s plenty of writing to be done this weekend as well. I’m not feeling overwhelmed by any or all of this writing that must be worked on and done; this morning I literally feel like all I need to do is roll up my sleeves and dive into the word documents head first, which is a great way to feel.
And on that note, it’s spice mine time this morning. Have a great Saturday and I’ll probably check in with you again later.
There’s really nothing like a country adultery song, is there?
The stitches in my gums are starting to dissolve, which means healing is happening. I don’t know if and when I can eat something a little more solid–like bananas and watermelon–but trust me when I say I cannot wait to eat something I can gum a bit. That really doesn’t sound appealing, does it? But much as I love protein shakes and ice cream (please note the lack of mentioning baby food), I really want something else. I really want Five Guys, to the point where I’d buy one and puree it if I wasn’t aware enough to know that it would be disgusting and still inedible for me.
In a little bit I’ll be heading to the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine where I am finally meeting with the kind of specialist who can potentially work on my left arm injury. It’s a very long and tragic story, how I got here at any rate, and I’ll probably go into more at another time, but it’s not something I feel like talking about at the moment. The primary problem is I don’t remember if I’ve talked about it here already or not? The joys of getting older and having a much more slippery memory than I used to have, I suppose. I slept really well last night–certainly could have slept longer, so I think this weekend will entail a lot of sleeping in, quite frankly. I don’t feel tired and worn out the way that I remember feeling before on Friday mornings, so I guess that’s a good sign. I’ll run some errands on the way home and hopefully won’t have to go out much this weekend. I also need to get back to writing something other than emails and blogs, to be honest. I was thinking about this last night, and since I’ll take Shawn’s book with me this morning to read in the waiting room, hopefully that will crack the trouble I am having reading since coming home and I think the answer to cracking the writing issue is to start the actual editing of Jackson Square Jazz. Why not? It needs to be done and it’s just been sitting there waiting for me to do it for years now. I also think I’m going to pull that short story collection I’ve been wanting to get into print, and see how close it is to being finished and what unpublished stories there are on hand that need more work on them. I think those are both valid projects for me to make some progress on this weekend around cleaning and watching football games, I think.
We got caught up on both Ahsoka and Only Murders in the Building last night, which was nice. I was tired when I got home from work last night–very tired–and was actually able to come straight home from work for once. I finished a load of laundry–still sitting in the dryer, actually–and a load of dishes that need to be unloaded once I get the kitchen back into some kind of decent shape.
As I sat in my chair last night waiting for Paul to come home while watching a documentary on Youtube about the final collapse of the Hapsburg dynasty, I wondered if my ability to now recognize anxiety for what it actually is as it starts (I just always thought everyone’s brain worked that way before) and fend it off had anything to do with with my not writing? I think I may have burned myself out a little bit with all the writing work I’ve done this year; juggling two new novels at the same time wasn’t the smartest move I’ve made in my career–but I had no way of knowing what my life situation was going to be like last fall, winter and spring either. I also think if I can get over the reading hump, the writing hump will melt away like nothing before my very eyes. It’s a lovely thing to believe (we tell ourselves lies in order to live), and it may very well be true–reading always inspires me and makes me want to get back into my chair at the keyboard and working away at something. I also just checked and my new glasses are scheduled to arrive on Monday, which is great, as my prescription has grown stronger but I am still wearing my old ones. This is, if you will recall, the year of getting things done–hence the hearing aids, the mouth surgery, and following up on getting my arm taken care of. I am looking forward to being able to see properly again, and chew again, to go along with my new ability to hear, which is lovely and something to which I’m still adapting.
So my big plans for this weekend involve cleaning the house (as always), revising and reediting Jackson Square Jazz, and reading All the Sinners Bleed, which has a very strong and powerful opening. I may do other things–I do have a hefty to-do list to take care of this weekend, but nothing I can’t really handle–and of course I’ll be watching the LSU game tomorrow morning as well; using the nervous energy LSU games always give me to clean the living room. If it weren’t for the early start time of that game, I’d take some boxes of books to donate to the library sale, but that will have to wait until next weekend, alas. (They’ve been in the living room since Labor Day, and I’ve not pruned the books again since because, well, there’s already too many boxes in the living room.)
And on that note, I’m going to get another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines to start getting ready to head uptown for the doctor’s office. Wish me luck, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you some more probably later on. Have a great Friday!
Wednesday morning and back up at an ungodly hour to make it back to work. But I was also kind of tired of lolling around the apartment on pain meds, doing very little to nothing, including not much thinking. It’s nice sometimes to not have to think, but I always worry that not using my mind is making it lazy, if that makes sense? Probably not, but I know what I meant. I always worry that my brain will atrophy if I don’t use it. Well, that made more sense. See what I mean? You see why I am concerned?
I didn’t sleep well last night–not bad, just not great. I’ve gotten used to ten to twelve hours of sleep per night since the surgery, so I wasn’t sure how getting up this morning would go. Not bad, to be honest; I don’t think I had a good night of sleep because of anxiety about not waking up, but I feel okay so far. I’m just so tired of soft food. Today I’ll be taking baby food with me to the office, and I am not really looking forward to that, in all honesty. I think I’ll take ice cream for lunch–I will miss eating ice cream every day when my mouth finally heals, but I am so ready for solid food you have no idea. I am so going to Five Guys when this is all over!
I didn’t get much accomplished yesterday. The pain pills don’t make me loopy the way the ones they used to prescribe (the highly addictive oxy family of opiates), but they do something to the wiring in my brain that doesn’t quite make sense to me. I did get a load of laundry done, another load of dishes, and I filed and straightened up the workspace–which looks a lot more bearable this morning than it did yesterday morning–but I didn’t get as much accomplished as I would have liked because my mind was spacy and I kept losing track of time. Paul got home late last night and we watched another episode of Painkiller, which is such evidence of how broken our entire system is (I still get angry at the Sacklers just thinking about it) that I don’t know how anyone could watch it and not fall into despair.
I did find myself–I blame the pain meds–falling into a pit of anxiety yesterday afternoon, spiraling and everything, but once I realized what was happening I thought use this nervous energy and that’s when I started cleaning. I put the kitchen rugs in order and swept, put away dishes and started filing and organizing. My computer files are a disaster that will take days, if not weeks, to sort out; I did make some attempt at it yesterday to no avail. I also went into another research wormhole about the Filipino community of southeastern Louisiana–I love that there’s always something new and startling to learn about this region–and I really would like to write about Manila Village, or St. Malô; it was known by both names. It could be another Sherlock story, I think, since I so strongly established him in 1916 New Orleans; Manila Village/St. Malô was destroyed in the hurricane of 1915 (which also wiped Freniere off the map, and I want to write about Freniere as well; the witch’s curse and all)–a lot was going on in the New Orleans era during the twentieth century teens decade (there was also an outbreak of bubonic plague and the last really bad yellow fever epidemic during that decade, and then of course there’s the banana wars, which is also endlessly interesting) and of course, I would love to write about it all.
I want to write about everything.
It’s also Pay-the-Bills day; time slipped past me while I was recovering from this oral surgery mess–and of course Friday is my appointment with the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine about my arm (I’ll talk more about that later)–and I do think that I am going to need to work on the filing system this weekend. The LSU-Mississippi State game is at the ungodly hour of eleven a.m., so I can probably get some work on the filing done during that. I have duplicate files and the problem–the primary problem–is I allowed the files to get out of control during the pandemic and the system I’d been using completely broke down. The file cabinet itself has been a mess for years, and what I really need to do is decide on a new system or figure out if the old one can still be used, despite how much work it’s going to take. I also need to take stock and figure out what needs to be worked on and what needs to be done, and where I am at with everything. I don’t have any contracts currently in place (which is usually a very scary place for me to be, frankly, but I am not letting the anxiety about that make me do what it usually does; throw out a bunch of proposals only to end up with too many deadlines and more stress than any writer needs.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Here’s hoping my energy doesn’t flag and I make it through the day safely. I hope you also have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again probably tomorrow.
I’ve been sleeping deeply and well lately for an insomniac; I suspect it has more to do with the pain being exhausting than anything else. Any surgery is traumatic to the system and requires rest for recovery, and oral surgery is no different than any other. I’ve taken today off as well as tomorrow; I was thinking yesterday I could probably just go in today and do some paperwork or something, but (and this is not laziness) I started thinking it’s probably best to give myself enough recovery time before I head back in–and I also know the clinic is jam-packed with appointments for today and tomorrow, and I just don’t think I have the energy to deal with that today. I think one more good night’s sleep with probably do the trick.
The Saints won a nail-biter yesterday and I didn’t watch the US Open final; I just can’t with Novak Djokovic anymore. I used to like him until he became an anti-vax/COVID denier, and I can’t with that, I’m sorry. I respect his athleticism, commitment to his sport and being the best, but as a person? I can’t help but feel he’s a selfish, arrogant, borderline sociopathic asshole. Of course he’s entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to me being a fan and watching him play, either. For the record, that’s how it works. I don’t deny him the right to be an anti-vaxxer/COVID denier, but I also don’t have to be a fan or watch him play. We got caught up on Only Murders in the Building and Ahsoka last night, too. I also finished several in-progress blog entries, including the one called “Shame” about homophobia in crime fiction and how things have gotten better over the years–but we can’t forget how bad it used to be, either, which was the point of the post, really; telling the crime community that we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going any fucking where.
Get fucking used to us.
Today I am going to try to do some chores around here. I’m feeling like a slug–anxiety talking again; I always feel like I should be doing something and down-time is time wasted–so I think I should do some things today. I suppose it depends on my energy stores, and how long it holds out. I want to read some more of Shawn’s book this morning–I think my resistance to that brutal opening was more of the post-surgery exhaustion–and I also need to empty the dishwasher and do another load that is soaking in the sink. I also want to make something to take for lunch this week–I’m thinking Swedish meatballs in the slow cooker, but am not sure if my minimal chewing abilities can handle the meatballs, even if I cut them up smaller before putting them in my mouth; I don’t think I can swallow them unchewed in some fashion–and I do need to go buy more ice cream and yogurt. I think some of the soups and ramen on hand could be useful. I can’t wait till I can eat a burger again, to be honest.
I also need to answer all the emails that have been languishing in my inbox for quite some time. I owe Dad an email–I’ve not had the strength after Bouchercon and the surgery to face writing him–and my sister’s birthday is this week. I also need to mail something, so I think I’ll drive uptown to make groceries and see what else is possible for soft foods for the week (mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, that sort of thing). I need to get the things on my to-so list knocked out, too. I feel more rested and more myself this morning, but maybe that’s because the pain pills haven’t quite kicked in yet. I also need to start revising/editing Jackson Square Jazz; I’m very excited about that finally being available again, and since Scotty turns twenty-one next year, I kind of want to celebrate the series throughout the year and I don’t know, maybe give away first editions? Something, anyway.
It’s also hard to believe Chanse will be twenty-two in January. I’ve been doing this for over a third of my life now. I owe it all to my stubbornness and obliviousness. Someone smarter and more aware would have probably given up a long time ago, but here I am, still here, older and possibly wiser and certainly not much smarter than I was all these years ago when I was a wide-eyed innocent walking into the world of the published word. I always remember that first August Paul and I lived here back in 1996. We went to a fundraised for the LGBT Center, and there was a tarot card reader there. (I’ve always been fascinated by tarot; I blame the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, which also connected New Orleans and the tarot in my mind. I write about a “private eye” who’s slightly psychic and reads tarot cards and lives in New Orleans. Coincidence? Probably not. Sadly, it’s always been one of my favorite Bond movies and always has held a special place in my brain for introducing me to Bond, New Orleans, and the tarot…unfortunately, the film does NOT hold up forty or fifty years later.) Anyway, the question I thought about as I held the cards in my hand was will I ever be a published writer? The answer the cards gave her was “Yes, but it will not be anything like you think it will be.” A generic answer, yes, that could apply to any number of questions…things are generally never what you thought or imagined they would be. Being a published author is definitely not anything like I ever dreamed or fantasized about when I wasn’t one. I know I thought being published would change my life for the better (I was not wrong about that) but…yes, it’s nothing like what I thought it would be like. Publishing can be a very cold and lonely place, but all you can really control is the work itself. You can’t control whether or not you get published, you can’t control whether or not the book sells, you can’t control the way readers and reviewers will react to it, you can’t control whether you get award recognition. All you actually can control is the writing itself, and do the best you can. I always hope my work is getting better–which should make reediting and revising the original Jackson Square Jazz interesting…
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close, make another cup of coffee, and start working on the chores around the kitchen, while streaming music through my iHome speakers. I’ll probably check back in later–I have all those unfinished blog entries I need to eventually finish and post–and I also want to get some fiction writing done today as well. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader–do you think today’s photo will get my adult content flags on social media?
I have really come to love Bouchercon, and it’s always a highlight of my year.
Things have seriously changed for the better.
Queer Crime Writers after a dinner out in San Diego, with Marco’s lovely husband Mark Gutkowski
Bouchercon last week was a marvelous, marvelous experience. I had such an amazing time, saw some people I’ve not seen in quite some time (and quickly remembered why I love them so much), and stayed up way later every night than I should have–one of my many neuroses is FOMO, of course; I still regret not going to Dallas in 2019–but I laughed a lot, had some great panels, and made some new friends, too. I ate great meals, had some marvelous cocktails, and I really liked the hotel (once I figured out the shortcuts to the meeting spaces). It also made me think about my own history with the event, how things have changed for the better, and how I hope it keeps changing for the better. There were so few of us queer writers who used to go back in the day; now we have enough of us to have a happy hour where we get together and drink and chat about writing and the business and oh, how we all laugh. It’s wonderful.
When I first got started in this business, publishing was different. I had to explain this recently to someone I am hiring to do the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz for me; why I didn’t have a pdf file, because back then there were no ebooks and you got your page proofs in the mail, as well as your marked up manuscript for the editing process. So all I have on hand is the unedited version of the book I turned in. But what also was nice back then was there was a support system for queer writers that we no longer have–there were queer newspapers, queer magazines, and queer bookstores. We had a queer book of the month club–Insightoutbooks–and their influence in shaping and developing my career cannot be underestimated. After Hurricane Katrina and the six months spent touring for Mardi Gras Mambo, I kind of withdrew back into myself. I don’t remember much of 2006-2008, to be perfectly honest; I just know that I went back to work full time in 2008 and after adjusting my writing/editing schedule to that, it was around 2009 or 2010 that I resurfaced and started thinking about promotion and marketing again.
And what I found was that during those lost years (I call it the Hibernation) everything had changed. The queer newspapers and bookstores were mostly gone. ISO shut down. And I realized, with a sinking heart, that I was going to have to start going to mainstream conferences to promote myself. After working so hard in the mid to late 1990’s ensuring I could exist in almost entirely queer or queer-friendly places, I found myself having to essentially start over. Queer writers never mattered to the mainstream crime organizations and conferences, and I braced myself, knowing I was going to encounter homophobia yet again.
It didn’t take very long–although in retrospect, I’m actually surprised it took as long as it did.
I joined Mystery Writers of America, and later, Sisters in Crime. I also went to Bouchercon in Indianapolis and San Francisco. I didn’t know more than a handful of people and tended to glom onto the people I did know (sorry about that, guys; social interactions at events where I don’t know anyone ramps up my anxiety, so I glom onto the people I know). Indianapolis I wasn’t in the host hotel, I was across the street–and it was cold. It was the weekend of the Ohio State-Purdue game, I can remember that because my hotel was full of OSU fans, so I found myself mostly hanging out in my hotel room and reading, while braving the cold to go across the street for my panels and events. It was nice, and decided to go to San Francisco for it the next year. There I was in the host hotel and realized oh you really need to stay in the host hotel in the future, because it made everything easier. I was starstruck most of that weekend–I rode in the elevator with S. J. Rozan once and another time with Laurie R. King, which was incredible. I only had one panel, at 4 pm on Friday afternoon that no one came to, but I had a really good time—and even decided to put together a bid to host it in New Orleans (and that is a whole other story), before yet another person decided that it was time for a Bouchercon programmer to put the fag back in his place, letting me know that I and my books weren’t important enough (the exact wording was “surely you have to understand that someone who’s edited a couple of anthologies doesn’t really deserve to be on panels”–despite the fact that my tenth novel had just been released…and of course, the greatest irony of this was that I went on to edit three of their anthologies) to grace any panel, and that any panel I’d been given in the previous two years should be considered a gift.
Should be considered a gift.
A fucking GIFT.
(For the record, Paul is an event planner by trade. He is executive director of both the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival as well as Saints & Sinner, a queer litfest. Just to be certain I wasn’t overreacting and being a diva-bitch, I let him read the email. His response? “If one of my staff, interns or volunteers wrote an email like that to an attending author I would fire them on the spot.” And before anyone starts up with the “programming a Bouchercon is hard” I will remind you that Margery Flax and I wrote over one half of the program for Dallas in three fucking days and contacted everyone with their assignments and then reorganized and redid the program to accommodate schedules and wrong panel assignments for about two weeks before it was done–with the local chair constantly throwing things at us that made us start pulling threads and weaving it back together again….nothing like “oh, sorry, I forgot that I promised these people a panel for this” after you’ve redone it for the fourth time. That happened a lot. And the entire time, we were incredibly polite and friendly and did whatever we could to accommodate people; apologizing and fixing it repeatedly. NOT ONE PERSON RECEIVED A FUCKING EMAIL TELLING THEM TO CONSIDER ANY PANEL THEY GOT AS A GIFT.
But then, I’m not an unprofessional piece of shit whose pathetic ego sees programming as power to abuse, either.
I wasn’t saying (and was very respectful) oh I am such a big deal how could you not give me an assignment, all I asked was hey, I know how hard your job is, but I don’t understand how you get on a panel and what can I do differently in the future to get one? What am I doing wrong? I approached them with kindness and respect for the work they were doing and got bitch-slapped, demeaned, and insulted in response. No author who is paying their own way to a conference and essentially providing the event with free entertainment for its audience should ever be treated so contemptuously by event organizers, period. The fact that when I expressed these concerns to the national board all I got back was mealy-mouthed excuses and “we’re sorry you’re offended” told me everything I needed to know about the organization and its board; the way they were treating me about the New Orleans bid (I had planned on having Susan Larsen–former chair of the National Books Critic Circle, chair of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, long time programmer for the TW Fest and a nationally respected book reviewer–help out along with Pat Brady, long time publications chair of the Historic New Orleans Collection, huge mystery fan, and also a long time programmer for TWFest only to be told their vast knowledge and experience wasn’t “good enough” and I needed to get the homophobic trash who told me I was nothing to program New Orleans–yeah, like that was ever going to happen) was also egregiously horrible, condescending, insulting, and unprofessional.
Needless to say I cancelled my trip to St. Louis and never considered attending Cleveland; I tend to not go where I am not welcome. I am not taking my hard-earned money from my “nothing career” and giving it to a homophobic organization, where I then get to beg for scraps and get treated like shit. I have better ways to spend my money, thank you. (And yes, I know who the programmers were and yes, I will carry that grudge to the grave.)
I withdrew my bid to host for New Orleans, and I washed my hands of the mainstream mystery community. Who needs it? They were never going to accept me or my work, they were never going to read my work, they didn’t give a shit about me, and it was pretty clear they never would. I was kind of at sea for a few years, there. There were no more queer newspapers, no more queer bookstores, no more gay Insightoutbooks.com book club, nothing. Outside of the TWFest and Saints & Sinners, I had no conference outlets to promote myself and my work. The mainstream mystery world clearly wanted no part of me, so what was I supposed to do? So, I just kept writing. I operated my social media pages as a promotional outlet for my work, and I kept writing this blog. I did finally return to Bouchercon when it went to Albany; friends convinced me to go, and one powerful friend requested me for a panel she assembled–and it came through. Having friends made a huge difference, really, and through my friends I met and made more friends, and Bouchercon slowly became a must-go event for me every year…eventually reaching the point where I never had to be concerned about getting on a panel, while at the same time no longer caring whether I did or not. It became more about seeing my friends and being around other writers than a work/promotional thing for me. Ironically, once I no longer cared or worried so much about being on things…I started getting put on more and more things, with bigger and increasingly more important co-panelists (I still can’t get over the fact that I was on a panel with ATTICA LOCKE in Minneapolis. I was too nervous to say anything to her; I spent that entire panel looking at my co-panelists and listening to them speak and wondering why the fuck I was on that panel).
And now, of course, we have a group: the Queer Crime Writers, and a core group of us have been showing up together at conferences ever since we bonded at Left Coast last year (and bonded even more with more of us at Bouchercon Minneapolis last year): John Copenhaver, Marco Carocari, Kelly J. Ford, and Robyn Gigl–who’ve all become very dear to me over the last year or so. Teresa Cain/Carsen Taite joined us in San Diego, and became my con-wife; what a great time we had!
And somehow, I am getting nominated for mainstream awards, an outcome I could have never predicted. I won the Anthony for Best Anthology for editing Blood on the Bayou, and was nominated for Best Short Story at the Dallas event for “Cold Beer No Flies” (I lost to S. A. Cosby, no disgrace there). Last year Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for Best Paperback Original (losing to Jess Lourey) and Best Children’s/Young Adult (losing to Alan Orloff); neither of those losses were devastating because Jess and Alan are also friends of mine, and I couldn’t have been happier for them both. This year I had three nominations in three categories for three different books–Best Anthology for Land of 10000 Thrills (losing to S. J. Rozan for MWA’s Crime Hits Home); Best Children’s/Young Adult (losing to Nancy Springer for the latest Enola Holmes, hello, no disgrace there); and Best Humorous for A Streetcar Named Murder (losing to Catriona McPherson for Scot in a Trap)–again, with the exception of Springer, I lost to very talented friends I like very much (I’ve not met Springer). That’s seven Anthony nominations in total, to go along with the Macavity, the Agatha, the Lefty, and the Shirley Jackson nominations. Not bad for a queer writer, wouldn’t you say? Ten mainstream award nominations? I certainly never would have dreamed all those years ago when I was told “any panel you get should be considered a gift” by Bouchercon programming.
That doesn’t mean the community is free from homophobia; it’s still there. I have mentioned before the mainstream cisgender male author who is clearly afraid to acknowledge my existence and always beats a hasty retreat whenever I walk up; I find his homophobia amusing. You’re not hurting me, bro, because I don’t want to know you, either. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be sitting in a booth in the hotel bar with a bunch of friends only to have a straight man look at me, smirk and say “faggy” in a sentence, as though daring me to call his ass out because he’s so much more important than I am; no worries, asshole, I don’t even have to repeat the story to anyone because since then you’ve shown all the big names you’re buddies with that you’re actually a piece of shit, and yes, I’ve watched it all with the same fucking smirk you had on your face when you thought you’d pull out your micro-penis and slap it down on the booth table in Toronto, and when I hear stories about you, I am delighted to pull out “Well, I’ve known he was trash since he said faggy in front of me, looking me in the face and smirking as he said it”.
Assholes will always out themselves, at least in my experience–and I’m very patient. I store the receipts and pull them out to corroborate horrific behavior when the timing is right.
I’ll save the racism, sexual harassment, and homophobia I faced in Albuquerque at Left Coast for another time.
I’m very pleased with the progress that has been made in our community over the last five or six years–I mean, the Rainbow Diversity panel about queer crime writing in Toronto was packed, when such panels in the past only drew maybe four or five audience members. Codes of conduct have been implemented to protect attendees from sexual harassment and pervy conduct, as well as racism and homophobia.
Progress is often slow, and it is easy to get impatient. I don’t know if my involvement with Bouchercon has made things better for queer writers there, but I do know the award nominations show other queer writers that such things are possible for them. Nothing says you’re welcome here than seeing members of your community nominated for the awards. The more of us that attend also means that more of us will get nominated, be on panels, and be able to talk about our work to readers who might open their minds and read our books. Being visible at these events is crucial and important.
And like water wearing down a stone, we have to keep relentlessly pushing.
(John, Marco, Kelly, and Rob Osler have all been nominated for mainstream awards over the last year, along with me. Edwin Hill and PJ Vernon have also been recognized for their brilliant work, too. This is so wonderful to see–I’d be delighted even if I weren’t with them in this grouping. And if you’ve not read any of us, there’s not a single person I’ve mentioned by name you can go wrong with. It’s also exciting seeing the new queer talent rising in writers like Margot Douaihy.)
I was torn about going to Nashville next year; their anti-trans and anti-queer laws have me not really wanting to spend my queer money there. But the point was made that going and being very present was an act of defiance…and Lord knows I love defying homophobes, so I guess I am probably going to go. I can visit Dad either before or after, so it actually makes sense for me to go. I’ve decided to write a very gay story to submit to their anthology (which means I need to get back to work on it), and so yeah…I think defiance is the way to go.
Plus….I love my Queer Crime Writers. I can’t imagine not being around them next year, and I would absolutely go nuts from FOMO.
So, in closing, thank you, Queer Crime Writers. I love you all, and thank you for letting me into your group. Let’s keep making a difference, shall we?
As an adult, it has always amused me that historically gay men (or men who were attracted to other men) inevitably became/were artists, and just as inevitably were commissioned to sculpt and paint and create religious art to adorn Catholic cathedrals and the palaces of the church hierarchy. I loved that they used their art and their patron’s money to create images of beautiful men in various stages of undress or nudity, but since it was within the context of a religious scene, it was okay. Even the crucifix inevitably shows Jesus in nothing more than a modesty loincloth, with his lean muscular frame carved lovingly to look beautiful and sexy. The eroticism of classic religious art, that competing duality of religious fervor and sexual ecstasy (look at depictions of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa sometime, if you want to see some straight up erotic imagery; I’ve always wanted to use “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa” as a title sometime), confused me as a child–it wasn’t until much later that I realized most classic and Renaissance religious art could be easily be categorized as “Revenge of the Homosexuals on a Repressive Institution”–but it also interested me. When I was a kid hungering for erotic masculine images, I could never go wrong with religious art.
I mean, this is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel:
And don’t even get me started on depictions of St. Sebastian.
I love that they sculpted his pubic hair onto that last statue. Nice authenticity!
Someday I may write about St. Sebastian…or a boarding school named after him, which would be nice imagery for a queer crime/horror y/a set at such a place.
There was also a lot of homoerotic art in depictions of Greek and Roman mythology–the Laöcoön statue is one; and any depictions of Hercules/Heracles, Achilles, Apollo, etc.
And we’ll talk about Ganymede another time.
I was raised as a Christian, of the Church of Christ brand of Protestantism–and a hard, cruel, you’re-going-to-burn-in-hell-for-believing-anything-else faith it is indeed. I can’t speak to what that denomination is like outside of the South, or even Alabama for that matter–I did notice that the version in Kansas wasn’t nearly as hard or unforgiving; but still pretty unforgiving, in comparison to other sects–but I do know that where I am from, the Church of Christ is hard, rough, and sees a lot of stuff as sin. (Southern Churches of Christ are also very argumentative–which hardly seems Christian, does it? Members are always getting up in arms about something and wind up going to another congregation, sometimes having to move churches more than once.
And when I was about eight or nine, my grandmother bought me a copy of The Children’s Bible, which was filled with illustrations (amazing how all those Middle Eastern Israelites were white, and even some had blond hair and blue eyes)…and maybe (probably) it wasn’t the intent of the publisher, but there was some seriously homoerotic imagery in the book. About ten years ago I was thinking about The Children’s Bible and wondering whatever happened to my copy…and remembering some of the illustrations in it, I thought no, you can’t be remembering that correctly and so I went on eBay and bought a used copy.
And when it arrived, my memories were actually correct.
I mean, look at the muscles on Goliath. That image was burned indelibly into my brain, and it’s entirely possible my appreciation of muscles comes from….The Children’s Bible.
Perish the thought!
Grooming!
Indoctrination!
And of course, my favorite story in the book was David and Jonathan.
I mean, look at how they drew David!
I mean, it may not be Michelangelo, but damn.
(I also love that a Bronze Age Middle Eastern Jew somehow had pearly white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.)
Though David has awesome legs in both depictions, seriously.
When I was a kid, I’d always reread the David and Jonathan story (can’t imagine why it was my favorite…). I wanted a best friend like David–I always saw myself as Jonathan, the supporting player, the way I always did–gorgeous and charismatic and beautiful and beloved of God. I would think about the story and while I was too young and innocent to conceive of it as anything other than friendship–the same way I thought of the “friendship” between Achilles and Patroclus in tales of the Trojan War–when I got older, whenever I thought about the story I wondered about how deep that friendship between Prince Jonathan and David son of Jesse was. Why include the story at all? It really doesn’t add a whole lot to the tale of David’s life, and did it really matter for King Saul to have a son who was David’s friend and great love? Jonathan dies–not even the Bible was immune from bury your gays–and David mourned him with a great grief that seemed a bit more than “my best bro died.” I wanted to write the story myself, despite my lack of historical knowledge of the period or even when it was actually set, but I wanted to write about their love, their falling in love–and let’s face it, God didn’t really seem to have a lot of problems with their relationship, did he? He didn’t come to David and tell him to stop giving it to Jonathan; God didn’t curse the two of them or punish Israel for it; and yes, Jonathan is eventually killed…but even then God doesn’t come to David and say, did you not read Leviticus? I could hardly let you go on fucking him forever, you know.
So, I guess I am supposed to read it literally and just think they were best friends and loved each other as brothers. Yeah, no. There’s absolutely no reason for this story to be included in the David story in the Bible; none, unless of course there’s a kernal of truth in the story (don’t come for me, I’ve never bothered to find out if the Bible’s Old Testament kings of Israel were real people; I do know that real people turned up in the Old Testament that existed in history–Babylonians and Assyrians, for example, as well as Egyptians)but the mystery for me of why this story was included, why it was included if its merely legend or why was it included if they were real is the real question. There’s no moral lesson to be learned from the story of their friendship; their love and loyalty to each other was an issue for Jonathan because his friend’s greatest enemy was Jonathan’s own father, a king anointed by God–despite God capriciously turning His back on Saul for really such an insignificant reason that it really just boiled down to God just liked David better; I always felt sorry for Saul–how much would it suck to lose God’s favor for no good reason? Just because God found someone He liked better? (And considering the things God forgave David for, or just overlooked, really makes the hard turn away from Saul that much more petty and bitchy.)
God’s kind of an asshole in the Old Testament, frankly.
But yes, I’d love to write this story sometime. (Because I don’t have enough else to do, right?) I’d also want to write it from Jonathan’s perspective, although the death would be hard to do (Madeline Miller managed it with Song of Achilles quite beautifully) story-wise; but is the kind of challenge I love. Maybe someday, and maybe writing it will help me in my constant and never-ending life quest to come to terms with the religious grooming drilled into my brain as a child. I even have a great title for it, too.
I also have a novel in mind revolving around Michelangelo’s statue of David, too; maybe I could combine research and do them at the same time. THAT would be a challenge, would it not?
Several weekends ago, I did an on-line panel for Outwrite DC. The moderator was John Copenhaver (whom you should already be reading), and my co-panelists were the always delightful and intelligent Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Renee James, and Robyn Gigl. The video is actually up on Youtube, if you would like to watch it. John’s questions were insightful and intelligent (as always), and the conversation was marvelous, inspiring, and fun; there’s nothing I love more than communing with other queer crime writers (or any writers, to be certain), and I always try very hard to not monopolize panels because I do have a tendency to talk too much–especially if and when I get going on a topic I am passionate about. So, I thought it might be fun to take John’s questions and turn them into a long form interview, for thoroughly selfish and totally self-promotional reasons.
The panel blurb claims that “queer characters are riveting and necessary material for crime fiction and how those stories can shape (and perhaps reshape) the landscape of contemporary crime fiction.” Do you agree with this statement—and why do the stories of queer characters have the potential to shape crime fiction?
I completely agree with this statement. Queer crime fiction has a very proud history that was never really recognized or appreciated by the mainstream crime writers, readers, organizations, and conferences. That is changing for the better.
New blood is always necessary for any genre–horror, romance, crime, literary fiction–because genres tend to stagnate after a certain period of time. The cultural shifts of the late 1960’s and 1970’s echoed in crime fiction, for example; you couldn’t write crime in those periods without addressing all the cultural and social shifts; Ross Macdonald’s later novels are a good example of this. The 1970’s saw a lot of anti-hero books being written. The private eye sub-genre had grown quite stale by this time, which was when the women really moved in and gave it a shot of adrenaline–Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton blazed that trail, and revitalized a sub-genre that had kind of lost its way. Queer writers and crime writers of color are currently doing the same to the entire genre. Voices and perspectives we aren’t used to seeing are now getting into print and changing how we see, not only our genre, but each other. Crime fiction has always given voice to societal outsiders and outliers; queer people and people of color are the ultimate outsiders and outliers in this country. Who better to tell stories of societal alienation?
Why did you choose your sub-genre? How do you think the sub-genre has influenced the types of characters you write?
Well, I write in several different ones. Chanse MacLeod was a straight private-eye series; Scotty Bradley was more of an amateur sleuth/humorous series, but he does have a private eye license in Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Murder was a cozy, with an amateur sleuth heroine who gets caught up in a family mystery. I’ve also done young adult and “new adult,” whatever that is (it’s been described as ages 16-25), and Gothics with a touch of the supernatural. I tend to write things that I like to read, and I have a varied reading taste. I started writing the Chanse series because I wanted to do a harder-edged private eye series with a queer twist and set it in New Orleans. I didn’t know about J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series when I started writing Chanse; would I have done something different had I known she’d already covered the hardboiled lesbian private eye in New Orleans? We’ll never know, I suppose. Scotty was meant to be a lark; a funny caper novel and a one-off. And here we are nine books later…
As for Streetcar, I had been wanting to try a traditional mystery with a straight woman main character for a long time. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in with both feet. I like trying new things and pushing myself. Having to follow the “rules” of a traditional cozy was a challenge–especially because I have such a foul mouth in real life. I love noir so am working on two different gay ones at the moment.
Why do you think amateur detectives are appealing? Do you think there’s a reason queer characters often find themselves in the role of amateur detective?
I think it’s because we all think we’re smarter than the police? We enjoy seeing a character we can identify with figuring things out faster than the cops, especially without access to all the evidence, interviews, and forensics the cops do. Murder She Wrote has been off the air for about thirty years and yet the books based on the show continue coming out every year. If we start out in mysteries reading the juvenile series–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Judy Bolton and all the rest were amateurs, so we always cut our teeth in the genre with them to begin with. Scotty is basically an amateur, even though he has a private eye license he rarely uses; he and the boys never get hired (although they kind of do in the new one, coming this November.)
Let’s talk about place. Greg, your books take place in the South. Why is place important to the crime novel—why is it especially important to the queer crime novel?
Place shapes who we are–not just as queer people, but as people in general. There are similarities between growing up in a small town in the Midwest and growing up in one in the South, but the differences are very marked. I’ve lived all over the country–pretty much everywhere but New England or the Northwest–and always felt, as a Southerner (despite no accent and not growing up there) like an outsider. Couple that with being gay in a time when it was still considered a mental illness, and you have someone always on the outside looking in. But I have that Southern pull to write about the South–although many would say that writing about New Orleans and writing about the South are not the same; like me, New Orleans both is and isn’t of the South, and I feel that very strongly. I’ve written books set in California and Kansas, even one in upstate New York, but I very much consider myself a Southern writer.
Place is even more important in a queer crime novel because place shapes the queer people so much. As a writer, I think one of my strengths is setting and place, and I think that comes from being very much a fan of Gothics growing up. Gothics are known for place and mood, and I think those are two things I do well.
All of you write wonderfully flawed characters. Sometimes, as LGBTQ+ writers, we feel the burden of representation and the urge to write only positive LGBTQ+ characters as an attempt to undo history’s (the dominant culture’s) demonization of us. Unfortunately, that can be limiting—even flattening. Clearly, you’ve all struck a beautiful balance with your characters. Talk a bit about how you approached this issue.
The flaws, to me, are what make the characters seem real. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys always annoyed me because they were so perfect; no one is that perfect, and anyone that close to perfect in real life would be irritating and insufferable. I am am quite aware that I am flawed (one of my biggest flaws is believing I am self-aware because I most definitely am not), but I am not trying to be perfect; I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. By showing queer people with all their facets and flaws and failures and blind spots, we’re showing the reader that we are human; despite what those who hate us say or claim, we are human beings just like everyone else, just trying to get through life and do the best that we can. The villain in my first book was a gay man–and the entire book was a commentary on how we, as queer people, tend to overlook flaws and red flags from members of our own community. Just because someone is queer doesn’t mean they are a good person–and queers with a criminal bent do exist, and often take advantage of that sense of camaraderie we feel with each other, especially when we don’t know the person well. I tend to trust a queer person more readily than I will a straight person, and that’s wrong–which is why I think we feel so much more hurt when queer people betray us.
Speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ+ folks … Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame said, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” What do you think about the current tactics to ban queer books from schools, libraries, and even bookstores in places like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas? Why are they targeting queer books?
This is, I hope, the last gasp of the homophobes who’ve never updated their hate speech in over fifty years. What the hate group “Moms for Liberty” are doing and saying is no different than what Anita Bryant said and did in the 1970’s, what Maggie Gallagher and her evil co-horts at the National Organization for Marriage repeated, then came the One Million Moms…all too often it’s the cisgender straight white women who are the real foes of progressive politics who fight to uphold a bigoted status quo. They always claim they’re concerned moms worried about their children–but are perfectly fine with them being shot up at school; working in a meat factory on the night shift at thirteen (have fun in hell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when you get there and French-kiss your Lord and Master Lucifer); or shouldn’t have the right to vote…they know better than a child’s actual parents, you see, about what the child needs or wants. Maybe they should spend more time with their own children than worrying about everyone else’s? Phyllis Schlafly, queen skank of the conservative right, ignored her own family while she embarked on her crusade to strip women of their rights and autonomy–all the while shrieking like a hyena into any microphone nearby that she was fighting progress to save the American family while selling some Leave it to Beaver-like nonsense as reality. I always felt sorry for her gay son. Imagine that as your mother.
As for why, it’s about control and power. I actually respected Anita Bryant more, because she truly believed all the vile, horrible, unChristian things she said and espoused. Most of the others, including the unspeakably vile and disgusting Moms for Liberty, are working a grift for money, attention and power. Hilariously, they’ve sold their souls in the worst possible way in the guise of family, religion and God; if they’ve ever actually read their Bibles, they need to work on their reading comprehension skills as they are both apostates and blasphemers who will spend eternity doing the breast stroke in the lake of eternal fire. Hope they enjoy it.
Sorry your husbands and children don’t love you, but who can really blame them?
What are you working on next? What’s coming up?
I have a short story in an anthology called School of Hard Knox from Crippen and Landru (and somehow got a co-editor credit for the book with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor); Death Drop, the first in a new series from Golden Notebook press, drops in October; and the ninth Scotty comes out in November, Mississippi River Mischief. I am writing a gay noir, and may be writing second books for the new series I started with Crooked Lane last year as well as a sequel to Death Drop, and have a couple of short stories I want to finish to submit to anthologies I’d love to be in.
Queer and Loathing in America 