Category: LSU

Oil of Angels

Here we are on a lovely Thursday morning. I managed to survive a full week in the office for the first time in three weeks (I won’t be going in on next Wednesday, either, as I have doctors’ appointments all day that day, so yet another non-full week for me, oy). I wasn’t very tired yesterday; no more than just the normal wearing down of a work week. I had slept really well Tuesday night so I wasn’t very tired yesterday, and I was also trying to get some odds and ends finished. It’s very strange where I am right now; I have some commitments but not many; and I finally seem to have the email situation almost completely under control at long last. I do sometimes find myself at loose ends on occasion; no emails to answer, nothing urgent that needs to be done, finished or worked on. It kind of feels weird, but it’s also nice in some ways. Maybe that’s why I am sleeping better? Because I’ve managed to get the stress under control somehow?

Who knows?

Paul worked late the last two nights–he’s writing a grant for the National Endowment for the Arts, so glamorous–so I was kind of at loose ends. Last night I had a ZOOM thing at six; and I was already a little worn down from the day at the office (mostly from getting up at six, really). I was falling asleep in my chair by nine, so I went to bed; I tried reading a short story by H. G. Wells in that My Favorites in Suspense Hitchcock book, but I couldn’t get focused. But I also realized something when I got home from work yesterday: I am sort of caught up on everything? Oh, sure, I still have two novels in various stages of production–waiting for the edits on one while page proofing the other–but I am actually kind of caught up right now. I had no emails to answer in my inbox. The proofing is going decently, and isn’t due to be turned in for another couple of weeks, at any rate, so I am actually ahead on that one. For the first time in years, I had absolutely nothing to do and no excuses or justifications necessary to go sit in my chair and cuddle with the cat and just empty my brain and do nothing. I cannot remember the last time this has happened; it’s been at least since 2019, I think. It’s an odd feeling, but also one I could get sort of used to, if I let myself.

Someone told me yesterday–during the ZOOM call–that I’m a workaholic, which kind of took me aback. (Kind of like being called prolific used to always make do a double take and say, what?) But as I sat there in my easy chair rewatching the LSU College World Series final game at last (GEAUX TIGERS! I also realized I never really posted about that world series and how fun it was to watch–the final game was pretty fun to watch; must have been amazing to watch as it happened), I started thinking about that some more and instead of the usual kneejerk no, I’m actually really lazy defensive reaction I always have (because, believe it or not, I really AM lazy) when someone says something like that to me, I decided to think about it and she wasn’t entirely wrong. I do have a full time job in an office. I do write full time. I edit part time. This is the first year since maybe 2009 where I am not doing any kind of official volunteer service in what little time I have left after everything else, and it’s kind of nice. It’s nice to have free time I don’t have to feel guilty about, where I don’t have to say to myself “no one else has to justify taking the weekend off from everything” when they are too tired to work on the weekends. I think she was probably right: I am a workaholic.

Oh, this is just a respite and things will start cranking up a bit again, I am well aware of that, but I want to enjoy this brief time of leisurely page proofing while I wait for my other edits with no sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I’m probably going to start writing something else relatively soon, maybe next week or the week after, depending on when the edits arrive. I want to finish strong first drafts for Muscles and Chlorine by September, when I am going to spend the rest of the year working on the requested follow up book to this other one I’m currently proofing. I also have to come up with a plot for that book, so there’s so mental gymnastics ahead of me, so letting my brain have a bit of a rest will be helpful as my batteries need to thoroughly recharge; I’ve run them down dramatically over the last few years. Mom’s decline and final illness, the pandemic, being EVP of MWA, trying to continue to write books and stories–and that’s not even taking into consideration the national political shit show this country has been for years now–it’s a wonder I managed to survive the last few years, you know? Let alone continued to write and be productive while doing my day job well, managing the household–the chores were definitely allowed to slide for a very long time, I’m afraid–no wonder I was exhausted and tired and drained all the time. No wonder writing my stories and books felt like misery and like I was doing it on autopilot.

And I need to take better care of myself, period.

Today is also the launch day (in Australia) for This Fresh Hell, edited by Katya de Becerra and Narrelle M. Harris; it features my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” which is one that I am rather proud of, to be quite frankly. (While I was trying to read that H. G. Wells story–“The Inexperienced Ghost” was its title–it occurred to me that I am much prouder of my short stories than I am of my books, which is a weird thing I am going to have to unpack at some point) I’ll do another entry about the story, of course; maybe that will be the time and place for me to work through my weird neuroses about short stories and my writing.

Or I could see a therapist again. Which is probably the best thing, really.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Thursday, okay?

Know Who You Are At Every Age

Here we are on Tuesday, blearily drinking coffee and wishing I was independently wealthy. Don’t get me wrong, I do love my job, but I really love not waking up to an alarm that much more. Sleep has always been a challenge this last decade or so, and sleeping anywhere other than my own bed makes it all the more harder to get a good night’s sleep. When I am tired, I tend not to be hungry or thirsty, and I get off my schedule. Not eating results in me being hungry–something I am not familiar with, so I never know what that is–and dehydrated, which makes me even more tired and even less hungry, and you see how it all works together to escalate into something horrendous? I was off my game all last week recovering from just that same combination of moronic Greg behaviors and going off all my medications at the same time was probably not the best way to handle things. Had I not forgotten my pill dispensary at the hotel in Jasper the vacation week and the week back might have gone completely differently.

At least I’d like to believe so, at any rate.

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day. I wasn’t tired for most of the day, having slept decently on Sunday night, and diving headfirst back into work was, as always, a bit jarring after a weekend of only having to deal with either Paul or the cat. It was also busier than usual, which was nice–it’s always lovely when clients are able to access our services than when they aren’t–if a bit hectic. But I got caught up on all of my work chores, so tomorrow when I go in I’ll already be slightly ahead of the game. I got the dishes done and some laundry, and managed to do some cleaning up around the kitchen (including organizing and filing) before I called it for the night and repaired to the chair to watch television. I even made dinner, if you can believe it; I cannot recall the last time I made dinner!

Speaking of games, how cool was it that Paul Skenes and Dylan Cruise went 1-2 in the pro baseball college draft? First time the top two picks in the draft were from the same team, GEAUX TIGERS! And football season is quite literally just over the horizon. Expectations are high for LSU this year–probably too high, we tend to get very enthusiastic here for very little or no reason–but last year no one thought we’d win ten games, beat Alabama, and win the Western division, either, and here we are. I don’t know if LSU will be able to pull off defeating Alabama two years in a row (only two coaches have done so–Les Miles at LSU and Hugh Freeze at Mississippi) but everyone down here is riding high after a better than expected season last year and a women’s basketball AND a baseball national championship within two months of each other this spring. Pretty fucking cool–and the first time any college has won a basketball and baseball title in the same year. (Ironically, neither team won the SEC–South Carolina won it in basketball, and Florida won in baseball.)

I slept well again last night, which was lovely. I feel rested and alert this morning. I went to bed an hour earlier last night–I had dozed off during the second episode of Hijack, and if I can asleep watching Idris Elba, I was sleepy. Paul had as well, and we both agreed that it was being tired and not the show that put us to sleep; we both are enjoying the show and I do recommend it. We had also watched Wham!, the documentary about the band that introduced George Michael to the world, the night before and also really enjoyed it; I might write more about it later as I remembered, ,while watching, that I saw Wham! in concert the summer of 1985 in Oakland. That was also one of the last concerts I ever attended (I think I saw Fleetwood Mac and Bon Jovi and Everything but the Girl after, but those were indeed the last concerts I attended–too many people, too much traffic, too much aggravation, too expensive), and it put me to thinking about George Michael, the 1980’s, and so forth; I somehow knew that George was gay almost from the very start (the same way I knew with Rock Hudson, Greg Louganis, and a number of others)–almost as though there’s some kind of genetic coding which gives gay men the ability to spot others like themselves–something primeval that goes back to the earliest times, something protective–which would make a kind of evolutionary sense, really. And that really should be talked about; it’s certainly worthy of its own entry: Gaydar, is it a thing?

I started writing something new yesterday, and it’s not really coming along that well or easily. I don’t know if that means my creativity still needs another day or so to rest and recharge or the almost constant fear that it’ll all go away has finally come true. But here’s hoping it will go better and more easily today.

ANd on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. You have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, if not later.

Blue Bell Knoll

I’m home, and exhausted.

I drove back this morning from Kentucky. The drive isn’t hideous (other than the hell that Chattanooga always is, either direction, no matter the time of day or day of the week or time of the year); it’s actually quite a lovely drive. The mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee are stunningly beautiful. There’s a brief jog into Georgia’s northwest mountains before I connect to I-59 south and cross the Alabama state line, returning to the central time zone at the same instant (being on Eastern time seriously fucks with my body clock, and it’s getting worse). Alabama is–well, Alabama is beautiful. I will always feel that tug and tie to the state of my birth, where my people are from, where my mother and ancestors are buried. It isn’t easy sometimes to love the land of my birth; it’s complicated, as so many things that don’t need to be actually are. I think I am probably going to write about Alabama again, because I find myself wrestling with that complicated, sometimes agonizing tie, trying to understand and unravel and perhaps finally find some kind of peace rather than just mournful acceptance.

It also always interests me how little traffic there is through Mississippi. Maybe a bit in Meridian, but nothing more than a slight irritation, ever. Once I pass Meridian, I am in the home stretch and start to get antsy, anxious and tired and ready to just be home. I start watching the mileage markers alongside the highway; and I always feel a bit of a little thrill the first time the milage to New Orleans is on a sign; that means soon and the countdown is in its final stages. It always surprises me a little how quickly I can get home once I reach Slidell, though I start getting antsy to get through Bayou Sauvage and start relaxing again because I am almost to the East and then the high rise; and when I reach the top of that I see the CBD and the Superdome and I release a lot of tension I didn’t even realize I was holding in my shoulders. It’s always lovely to come home–even if getting out of the car in front of the house was oppressive. My God, it was lovely in Kentucky; I’d forgotten what a heat advisory in New Orleans feels like–which always makes me laugh: how can I always forget? For fuck’s sake, I write about it all the fucking time.

It was an interesting week. I don’t think I’ve had an entire week off from work since we went to Italy (willing to freely admit that might be incorrect; my memory banks are currently fried and I am beginning to suspect they aren’t going to repair themselves). It was incredibly hot in Alabama, Lord, was it hot in Alabama. But…I also don’t spend a lot of time outside in the summer in New Orleans, to be fair, and I spent a lot of time outdoors whilst in Alabama. Monday was Mom and Dad’s anniversary, so that’s why I took the trip. I met Dad in Jasper, where we stayed, on Sunday; we went to the grave on Monday and drove around the county, visiting other graves of ancestors. We also went to the county courthouse at 2:00, which was when they were married…and then we departed for Kentucky. There was a horrific thunderstorm Sunday night in Jasper; there was an even worse one in Kentucky–a derecho–and so a lot of trees and tree limbs came down, and of course my parents’ house had lost power on Sunday night, and it hadn’t been restored by the time we got there on Monday night. It came back on Tuesday night, but my sense of days and dates and so forth was already screwed up by then, and I’d lost track of everything. I spent a lot of time with Dad, which was great and I am very happy I was able to do this with him so he didn’t have to do it alone; and it was great spending time with him up north.

I got my love of history from my dad, which is something I am forever grateful for, and so of course we talked a lot about history, not just the family stuff but the county and Alabama in general. I read a couple of history books while I was up there–more on those later–and Dad gave me some terrific ones about Alabama, which of course started triggering my fallow creativity. I did a lot of creative thinking while I was up there, and of course, as I said, I was also wrestling with my complicated heritage and complicated feelings about it. I may not agree with many of my father’s takes on history–particularly US History and the Civil War–but I enjoy listening respectfully to his (wrong) opinions, and of course, it got me to thinking about my complicated heritage and how I feel about it, which naturally made me want to write some more about it. I have an idea germinating, but I am going to do some more research and reading before I even start spitballing ideas (and titles) for the next Alabama book.

Talking to my dad about my mother and the rest of the family also made me realize some things about myself. Mom hated conflict and avoided it at all costs and she also suffered from anxiety. I hate conflict and avoid it at (almost) all costs, and I also suffer from crippling anxiety sometimes; I am always anxious, but sometimes…it’s horrible, really. The Xanax helps somewhat, but not always. I even have anxiety about having anxiety. So of course, the perfect job for someone with anxiety is being a writer, which is almost non-stop anxiety triggers.

I listened to Carol Goodman’s The Widow’s House on the way up, and her The Seduction of Water on the way back. I haven’t finished the second–about an hour or so left–which I will probably finish listening to while I do chores. There will, of course, be more on them later. I also missed the second game of the College World Series final on my way up to Jasper, and you can imagine my horror, Constant Reader, to see that after winning the first game against Florida, my Tigers got spanked in the second 24-4. This would ordinarily have made me a bit tense about the final, winner takes all game; but was also delighted to arrive in Kentucky to see that LSU pounded Florida 18-4 to bring home LSU’s seventh national championship on baseball (GEAUX TIGERS!!!).

I started writing this last night, hoping to post it before I went to bed, but I just got overwhelmingly exhausted, so I went to bed…and was unable to fall asleep. Yay. SO I finally got tired of just laying there and got up and finished this, am doing some laundry, and have a load of dishes soaking in soapy water in the sink. I have a lot of errands to do today (well, it may only be 4:53 am, but it is Sunday), chores around the house, and so I figured I should get up and get going on the day rather than just staying in bed, hoping to get a nap or something before sunrise. Yet here I am. Sigh. But I only have to get through Monday at the office (and run errands on the way home) and then have the 4th off. It’s going to be a very somber 4th for me this year, as the Supreme Court decided, in their bigoted bought and paid for opinion, that I am a second class citizen that “Christians” can essentially spit on.

How fucking Christ-like. There will be more on that later, as well.

And on that note, I am going to go fold some clothes and get some things done. I’ll be back later, no doubt.

Multifoiled

Sunday morning and I am driving to Alabama later on. Woo-hoo!

I finished the revisions of the manuscript yesterday, and sent it off to the editor and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. I do think it’s a good book, and should there be a second one, I think it will be even better than this one, to be honest with you. I feel like I’ve been operating for a very long time under some sort of dark cloud, which makes things that should be incredibly obvious and apparent mysterious and unknowable instead. It was also an enormous relief to get it finished. I think I caught everything I needed to catch, and added what needed to be added. There might still be some tweaks and/or additions that need to be made, but I think it’s pretty solid right now and that’s a load off my mind, especially with a trip on the horizon tomorrow and not knowing how available I will be over the next week to make changes and/or get things done. I am actually departing on this trip with an actual clear conscience; there’s nothing really hanging over my head. Sure, I’ll have the edits for the Scotty at some point and the proofs/copy edits for this one, but I feel like I have finally gotten out from under everything and can breathe at long last.

Whew.

Then after that I went into my easy chair and collapsed, ready to watch the finals of the College World Series. LSU defeated Florida in eleven innings, thanks to another home run in the eleventh, and what an exciting and thrilling and nerve-wracking game it was. Props to Florida, they played some amazing defense, stranding a lot of LSU runners on base. After the pitchers’ duel with Wake Forest the other night, all the hits and men on base seemed almost weird, like I was watching a different type of game altogether. But then Cade Beloso blasted one out of the park in that eleventh inning (Tommy White, aka Tommy Tanks, heroically knocked one out to pull the Tigers back to 3-3, causing the game to go extra innings) and Paul and I were cheering and screaming. LSU fans also blasted through the Rocco’s College World Series Jello Shot Challenge, going over thirty thousand before they drank Rocco’s out of jello shots. LSU fans, notorious for traveling and drinking bars dry, has done it again! We did it in Atlanta for the college football playoffs in 2019; we may have done it in Dallas for the women’s final four in basketball this year; I know there’s another place it happened.

Never start a land war in Asia, or challenge LSU fans to a drinking contest. Period.

I am going to be listening to Carol Goodman in the car; the book is The Drowning Tree, which I am looking forward to, and I packed Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman, Eli Cranor’s Ozark Dogs, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents My Favorites in Suspense to read to take with me; I doubt that I’ll have much time to read, but you never know. Dad and I are going to a minor league baseball game on Wednesday night in Lexington, and he’s made noises in the past about taking me sight-seeing when I come up sometime–so I imagine we’ll go visit the Kentucky Derby museum and the Cassius Clay home (we tried doing this once before when I was there for Thanksgiving, but everything was closed for the holidays or for COVID). I also have to pack and I need to run by the grocery store to lay in supplies; after I finished with the edits yesterday I wasn’t really in the mood to go out into the heat. I also need to clean out the refrigerator before I go; Paul won’t make salads, and even if he did make one, he wouldn’t slice up an onion or cut up a cucumber or use cherry tomatoes, so I may as well toss all of that. When I get back, that Sunday we’re going to have to make a Costco run as well as me making a grocery run. At least that week I only have to go in on Monday before the holiday for the 4th on Tuesday, and then three more days to finish off the week before the next weekend. It felt weird yesterday to be actually caught up on everything at long last; I’ve felt like I was drowning for the last three or four years, and finally now I can come up for air. The books still need work–I am waiting for the edits on Mississippi River Mischief, and of course will have to proof the new one as well–but I am caught up and that albatross (or albatrosses) have been removed from around my neck at long last.

I finished reading that Hilda Lawrence novella yesterday too, and it was really quite good. The premise of the story is a classic from that era (Cornell Woolrich also wrote a brilliant story with a similar premise, whose name I am blanking on right now), and it was interesting how it was constructed; I’m not sure you could publish a story structured the way this one was (“Composition for Four Hands” is the name of the story), because the point of view was constantly changing, but those POV changes made the story seem even more interesting that it already was. The premise of the story is wealthy Mrs. Manson has been invalided–we never are really told what precisely is wrong with her–but she cannot speak and she cannot move….and she’s certain someone in the house is trying to kill her, and she can’t communicate with anyone. While she is certain, she also cannot entirely remember what happened to her–but she knows it wasn’t an accident, which is what everyone else believes, and while she is lying there helpless, trying to figure out who she can trust while trying to figure out a way to communicate–yes, it’s very suspenseful and terrifying and so well-written you can absolutely empathize and put yourself into Mrs. Manson’s dreadful position. It’s fun to read old crime stories of suspense and mystery, to get a feel for the old styles of writing and story construction, plus it gives me a better feel for writing. I try not to “edit” when I read–it’s not as easy to turn off editor mode as one might think–because ultimately I read for pleasure first and foremost; any other edification that comes from reading is merely lagniappe for me.

And on that note, I’d best be signing off here and heading into the spice mines and start getting ready for the trip. I need to pack still, and of course I have to do some cleaning and make groceries. I don’t know how much I am going to be able to post once I get on the road and on this trip; I’ll probably never finish the pride posts I started, but hey, one also never knows. Stranger things have happened, after all. So maybe I’ll be around, maybe I won’t. If not, have a lovely week, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk more with you later.

Sugar Hiccup

Saturday morning and lots to do before hitting the road tomorrow. The lovely thing is it isn’t that much of a drive, about five and a half hours, and there’s a Whataburger in Tuscaloosa. Yay! I have The Drowning Tree by the amazing Carol Goodman queued up on my Audible app and ready to go once I hit the road. I have to make a grocery run today for Paul, and was thinking about dropping books off at the library sale, but I don’t know. It’s hot and the grocery thing is going to be exhausting enough as it is, and I have a lot to get done today. I was exhausted yesterday after work. The escape room thing was quite fun, and then we had lunch at Olive on Carondelet, a Middle Eastern place (sobs with joy! I got to have a gyro) and then I came home to work. The walk home was exhausting in the heat, and of course, I actually drifted off to sleep in my easy chair a bit. I got some more Alfred Hitchcock Presents books in the mail as well, and I started reading this delightfully creepy story I haven’t quite figured out yet, but the suspense and the build is sensational. We also watched the International Male catalog documentary (more on that later), and then I finished doing the laundry before going to bed, exhausted and ready to sleep for an eternity.

Despite the hideous heat yesterday, it actually wasn’t terribly humid and there was also a lovely cool breeze so the walk didn’t seem that dreadful, or at least not while I was doing it. The sun was merciless, though, and it was in the mid-nineties.I also marveled as I walked home a different way than usual–I took Camp Street to Prytania, rather than St. Charles–and I again marveled that not only do I live in New Orleans, but how quickly things change. I was also puzzling out some knots and final corrections I need to make to this manuscript before turning it in tomorrow–a walk is always lovely for things like that; even in the heat, and I need to remember that more often, quite frankly. I was also thinking, as I walked, about how I am always worried about repeating myself, or writing the same book again. It’s easy enough to do when you forget what you’ve already written and published, as I am wont to do at this stage. My editor’s notes were kind of amusing, in some ways, because one thing that he was pointing out was something that I always do–and something that I’ve noticed in the other two active manuscripts on hand–which is a tendency to name the characters with alliterative names. (For example, in the pro wrestling noir everyone, it seems, has a first name that begins with T) I also have a tendency to write hangover scenes, and car crashes. Now that I have this permanent brain fog or whatever it is that’s going on in my head since last summer, it’s even harder for me to remember past books that I’ve written; so I think I am going to have to start blogging about past books I’ve published so that I can remember them. I’ve done some of these posts before in the past, because I like to try to remember what was going on while I was writing the book; what I was trying to do with the book; how long had I had the idea for the book and where did it come from; what changed from the original idea during the process of writing it and what other influences got involved after getting started; and so on. I also like to think about the voice and the tone, how did I do with the setting and scene? What was I going for with the main character, and why? Facebook reminded me yesterday that at some point in the past twelve years the box o’books for The Orion Mask arrived on this date–and I just walked past the house that inspired a part of the book recently, and I was amazed yet again at how much detail I’d gotten wrong.

So, I decided to rent the documentary All Man: The International Male Story last night, for a multitude of reasons. Now that I’m in my sixties my former indifference to nostalgia has lessened (and I do tend to worry that I look back through rose-colored glasses, making the past seem better and more idyllic than it was; I have to always remember yes, but you were also a neurotic mess then, too), and so yes, there was a bit of a curiosity involved with my wanting to watch. I think I only ever bought one thing ever from International Male–a red pirate blouse, a fluffy shirt, if you will, and I got it to go as a pirate for Halloween–but I always got the catalogue, and I often liked their clothes…but was also always very consciously aware that to wear those clothes, you also had to look like their models; the lesson that beautiful people can wear anything and look good I’d learned early in life. I also had no fashion sense because I never was able to develop one–because men’s clothes were hideous, and there weren’t many options when I was growing up. I’ve also have a very mild case of color blindness with certain shades of certain colors–I can’t tell dark blue from black, for example–and I am never entirely sure what colors go with other ones. I do know that red, black and white all work together, so usually my dressier clothes are some combination or variation of those colors. But for the most part, I don’t care about what I wear and I don’t know what’s in style or not. I’m never sure if the clothes I am wearing match and/or look good on me, and I’ve stopped worrying about it. When I was younger, I used to deplore the fact that men’s clothes were so dull and boring. I love hats, for example, but men don’t really wear any hats other than baseball or cowboy anymore. I have some lovely hats, but never have any place to wear them. I have a marvelous fedora I bought in New York many years ago, but I never go anywhere here that I could wear it; it would be perfect for something like the Anthony Awards or something, but it has it’s own special box and that’s another item to take on the plane…so it just sits in its box in the closet. But I used to love the International Male catalogue, because the clothes, to me, looked kind of fun and cool. I’ve never been a cool or fun gay, and I’ve never been a fashion gay. But the International Male catalogues allowed me to escape into a world where I could wear something off one of its pages in a place that was exotic and exciting and fun. (I’ve also always kind of wanted a pith helmet. I had one in college and I loved it) So, it was interesting to watch how the business came to be, and how it really did kind of help change the way men dress and the way we look at men in more sexualized way now than we did when I was a kid. (I’m trying to remember things that resonated with me before I came out finally; that’s my current nostalgia kick) I do recommend it; it’s very well done and it’s kind of a nice story. The catalogue impacted a lot of gay teens in rural places in the 80’s and 90’s, and it should be remembered for that reason alone.

My first exposure to crime fiction short stories came in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. My grandmother used to get the Dell paperbacks, and the stories always had a delightful little twist of some sort, always macabre. I’ve always remembered those anthologies, and recently went on an eBay binge of buying copies. Two more arrived yesterday, Alfred Hitchcock Presents My Favorites in Suspense and Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories That Go Bump in the Night. I started reading a long story in My Favorites in Suspense, “Composition for Four Hands” by Hilda Lawrence, and it’s really quite good; the suspense and tension builds with every paragraph, and I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on in the story–but we have a bedridden woman who cannot speak, and she suspects some of the other people in the story might be wanting to kill her, but we don’t know who and we don’t know why; nor do we know yet how she ended up in this condition. The writing style is quite Gothic in tone, which of course I love, and I am hoping to finish reading the story this morning. I have quite a lot to get done today, but I did sleep marvelously and I feel very alive, rested and alert this morning. Good thing as I do have so much to do. I want to also watch the LSU game this evening (GEAUX TIGERS!) but will be on the road during the game tomorrow, alas.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning, if not later.

In Our Angelhood

LSU is in the finals of the College World Series! Woo-hoo! GEAUX TIGERS! And what a great game that was last night, for real. A pitcher’s duel with no runs until the bottom of the 11th; when Dylan Crews hit a base hit and Wake Forest brought in a relief pitcher—whose only pitch was a home run! Tigers win, 2-0! Apparently that pitcher had also said in a press conference “who can beat us?” Well, there’s your irony, bud–your answer was LSU! And yes, the Tiger fans are on track to double the old Rocco’s Bar jello shot challenge record. (It amazes me that this has made the news all over the country; the fact Louisianans love to drink is one of the reasons I’ve always loved it here, even though I really don’t drink much anymore myself. )

Today is a work-at-home Friday, but we have a team building exercise today and our team’s supervisor is taking us out to lunch afterwards. I have some errands to run at some point today, and am really looking forward to getting back home into the cool. Yesterday when I got off work and walked out to the car I thought, hey it’s still kind of unseasonably cool, I would have thought it would be miserable again already and when I started the car and looked at the dashboard, it was ninety-seven degrees! Amazing what a difference lower humidity can make to how hot it feels around here. I slept marvelously last night–I think I was emotionally worn out after the rollercoaster ride that was the LSU game last night (there was also one of the most amazing defensive plays I’ve ever see in baseball, when Tre Morgan saved the game by making a play to home base that tagged the runner at home with seconds to spare; it was as big a play as the home run that won it) and so had an easy time of falling asleep. I have to make a list of what all I need to get done before I leave on Sunday morning for Alabama.

But I feel rested this morning, and I am very glad. I’ll probably take a Lyft to the escape room (that’s what we’re doing for team building; I’ve never done one before so I am intrigued to experience something new) and then another one home; ordinarily I would just walk or take the streetcar, but it’s sooooo miserably hot that I don’t want the heat to leech all my energy and will out of me because I have things to do today. I got some more good work done on the book yesterday, and I am hoping to be able to get it finished either tonight or tomorrow. Once it’s done and I am back from Kentucky, I’ll probably go ahead and share the cover and post about the book, how it came to be and all of that. I’m going to need to get the apartment cleaned up some, the refrigerator cleaned out, and I need to make a grocery list for the week so I can get supplies put in for Paul before I leave–although he’ll probably just get salads from Rouse’s or Subway–and I also have some books to drop off at the library sale on Saturday.

Mmmm, my coffee tastes marvelous this morning. It always seems to taste better when I’ve slept well. I also think I am over whatever that bug is that I was dealing with earlier in the week. I took some DayQuil yesterday which alleviated the symptoms and once it wore off, the symptoms didn’t come back. I still am a bit congested so I’m not completely over it, but I feel a thousand times better than I did, which is a relief. There’s nothing worse than a long drive when you don’t feel well, you know. I also watched the American Pain documentary, about the horrible twin brothers who ran the country biggest pill mills and helped create the current opioid crisis (it’s also lovely that the one who has done his time and been released takes absolutely no responsibility for what he did–because their addiction is their own fault since he didn’t make them take the Oxy; they chose to do that themselves. Sure, bud, their doctors got them hooked and you made profits off their suffering, but you do you, sociopath. What a monster–both brothers are just utter and complete pieces of shit. Their case is also an example of how different justice is for white boys from an upper middle class family than it is for non-whites or whites from a lower social strata–they’d been getting in trouble with the law since they were kids and never got more than a slap on the wrist; there were never any consequences for their behavior so they turned into sociopaths. You just know if they were Black or from a trailer park they would have been sent to jail in their late teens and the key thrown away. But because they were rich white boys…no one wanted to ruin their futures.

Look how that turned out. Disgusting.

And on that note, I am going to make more coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.

The Tinderbox of a Heart

Yesterday I was very tired. I’ve not been sleeping well this week, but at least on Tuesday I felt rested; yesterday I just felt tired, physically and intellectually. I did get some work done last night on the book, and today I feel very rested; I slept wonderfully last night, which was absolutely marvelous, quite frankly, and am very glad for it. Today is the last day in the office for me until a week from Monday–this is the weekend I’m going north to see Dad (I may not be around on here at all once I leave on Sunday) which is yet another reason why I need to get this revision finished. I feel confident that I can get it done before I go on this trip; I keep thinking that I’m almost done…

I haven’t started reading the new Megan Abbott; I’d hoped to spend some time with her new book last night but I was fried when I finished working on the book and just collapsed into my chair to provide a cat bed for Scooter. It was very cool yesterday morning when I left for the office, but the inferno had returned by the time I got off work. A small but welcome respite from the summer’s heat (Facebook memories reminded me that we’d been in a heat advisory at this time of year several times over the past few years–proving yet again the long COVID of last year did affect my memory. I saw an article I meant to read yesterday that said even mild cases of COVID caused a type of brain damage, or brain rewiring of a sort, which needs to be studied. I know my memory changed during the pandemic, but I also turned sixty during it, too. Was it the long COVID experience I had that rewired/altered my brain, or was that an after-effect of the trauma imposed by the shutdown and everything that followed in its wake? I can’t remember if I was having memory issues before I got sick last summer; but if that was indeed the case, it got much worse after I recovered…and was really bad while I was sick. It’s so hard to tell, so hard to remember, you know?

A case in point about my memory has been these last two manuscripts I’ve been working on since last fall. For one thing, it took me a lot longer than usual to write and revise both of them (I must also provide the caveat that the end of the last year and the beginning of this one was a very difficult time, all things considered) but as I am revising this manuscript I am continually amazed at how little I remember of it, let alone remember writing it. Again, this is very alarming, but at the same time I can also honestly say I’ve never stacked books like this before while writing them; going from one to another and then back and forth again repeatedly; I don’t remember much of the Scotty book, to be honest, either–but I remember more of it than I do this one. It’s a good manuscript, though; I like the characters and I like the story, and it seems like they want me to write a sequel to it, which is also kind of cool; I already have a title for the next one and an idea, amorphous yet still an idea, for what the story would be. After I get back from Kentucky, I’ll tell you a bit more about this project; I realize I’ve been very mysterious about it, but there’s not any reason for it other than my own superstition and fear of jinxing things by talking about them–which is just another symptom of my own neuroses, of course.

There are two tropical systems trying to form in the Atlantic right now. One looks like it’s going to head up the Atlantic coast, or will never come near land and just head north before dissipating; the other looks like it’s heading for the Caribbean Sea and the Yucatan. Yay for hurricane season, he typed sarcastically. I was also thinking last night about future Scotty books; I think I am going to cap that series at ten. I think Mississippi River Mischief is the ninth Scotty, which would only give me one more title for the series. No, scratch that; I will make no promises or any commitments regarding the future of that series, and will leave it the way I always have in the past: if I get an idea for one, I will write another one.

What I have been thinking about lately is that I want to write books I feel passionate about; I want to tell stories and write books that will have some kind of impact, or require a lot of emotional and intellectual work on my part, if that makes any sense. Last night Scott Heim tweeted an excerpt from the opening of Jim Grimsley’s beautiful novel Winter Birds, and I remembered again how much I love Jim Grimsley’s writing and his authorial voice (I inevitably default, when it comes to Jim, to Comfort and Joy, which is one of my favorite Christmas stories of all time; but his other work is also lyrical and poetic and beautiful, too). It also made me think about my own writing and my own authorial voice. Do I have a distinctive authorial voice? Can someone read my work without knowing its mine and be able to tell that it’s mine? I know that I can write beautifully and poetically when it suits the story; I know I can do a voice that can sound haunting and sad. I try to always do different things when I write out of series; I want to write different types of stories and use different kinds of authorial voices and write in different styles. I think my best work inevitably tends to be Gothic in voice and style; those are certainly the favorites of my own works that I’ve written (Timothy, Bury Me in Shadows, Lake Thirteen, Sorceress, The Orion Mask), and whenever I write about Alabama, I seem to lapse into this very lovely, literate-sounding voice. I’m not quite sure why that is, but it’s been mostly in short stories; I do want to write more about Alabama and my complicated relationship with my home state. I am passionate about writing both Chlorine and Muscles, which are on deck for me; I am wavering about whether to leave “Never Kiss a Stranger” as a novella or whether to expand it out into a novel; I can see it working either way. I don’t want any of the novellas to turn into novels, frankly; I don’t have the time necessary left to me to write everything that I want to write in the first place. But am I trying to force novels into novellas because that’s how I decided to write them, or are they better off as novellas? These are the things that make you want to load your pockets with heavy stones and walk into the river.

And LSU did beat Wake Forest yesterday, forcing a third game to determine who plays Florida in the finals of the College World Series. GEAUX TIGERS!

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Five Ten Fiftyfold

Tuesday and back to the office with me today blog.

Yesterday was a bit of an off day for me; I didn’t feel good for most of the day. Paul’s been sick since Thursday–coughing, lots of congestion and post nasal drip–to how crappy I felt yesterday was at least not as bad as he was at his worst; and this morning I feel fine. Not sure if it was some twenty-four hour thing, but hope that feeling better lasts through the rest of the day. We had some amazing thunderstorms last night while I was sleeping; it’s kind of gray and icky looking outside right now. The forecast is the usual–hot, humid, chance of thunderstorm–so I’m hoping my sinuses remain under control for the rest of the day as well.

Yesterday morning I finished reading Chris Clarkson’s delightful That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which I really enjoyed, and have selected Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman as my next read. I’m not sure when I’m going to have the time to actually spend reading it thoroughly and enjoying it–probably will go with me to Kentucky as my “before I go to sleep” read. LSU lost a heartbreaker to Wake Forest yesterday 3-2, so now have to fight their way back out of the losers’ bracket if they want to win the College World Series. Hope springs eternal for an LSU fan–we did break the Jello Shot Record at Rocco’s yesterday–but I’m just delighted they made it to the World Series this year. GEAUX TIGERS!

I have some more work to do on this manuscript before I turn it in. This is the revising/fixing phase of the edits; where I have to do the more macro things. I had hoped to get this done yesterday but I wasn’t feeling well, and as such couldn’t really focus the way I needed to–I did try, of course–so tonight after I run my errands on the way home from work (there’s always something, really) I hope to sit down and bang out the rest of this to get it finished and out of my hair and out of my way. We started watching a documentary series about the history of Warner Brothers last night, which is always fun; I always like learning more about Hollywood history. The documentary didn’t really provide me with anything new or insightful about the history of the studio, other than further confirmation that Jack Warner was an asshole. There are two more parts, so that takes care of our television watching needs for this evening, at the very least. I figure with show episodes dropping this week and me being gone next week will help our shows build up back episodes to watch.

It’s also weird that it’s Tuesday already. I feel like I am going to be off this entire week because of it, then I’m out of the office for a week, and then I come back to the abbreviated 4th of July holiday week. As much as I love having extra time off, it’s always a weird week when the work week is truncated this way; I always feel kind of somehow off my game no matter what. But it’s a short week, I’m off next, and I need to get organized. I need a to-do list, most importantly, and to figure out where I’m at with everything. I always have this tendency to be as laser-focused as someone with (undiagnosed) ADHD can be; which means the book is the biggest priority and everything else is an incredible inconvenience that I don’t pay much attention to other than the occasional yeah yeah I know I need to work on you, but give me a minute.

Despite not feeling well yesterday–I also was feverish most of the day–I was able to get chores done around the house so it looks a little neater and a little less fraternity dorm room. I do want to drop books off for the library sale this coming weekend before leaving town, and I also want to get the car washed and cleaned out–chores for Saturday! Huzzah! I think we’re doing an escape room team bonding thing on Friday morning and then having lunch, then I can go home and do data entry–woo-hoo! It doesn’t get much more exciting than that, does it? And then of course Sunday it’s up to Alabama to meet Dad. I had a bad day one day last week about Mom; when the grief came back and I wasn’t able to reason or breathe or mind-clear my way out of it, so I just gave in and had a nice, good cry for a few minutes, and then I was able to get moving again. It’s been four months since we lost Mom, and I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to but rather something I will gradually just be able to live with. I don’t think any of us can expect more than that, really.

And on that note I am heading out in the thick heavy air of a hot summer day in June. I’ll catch you later, Constant Reader; hope you have a lovely day.

Glass Candle Grenades

Monday and a holiday; it’s lovely to have another day at home to work on these edits, which I am hoping against hope to complete today. Yesterday was lovely and relaxing; I worked on the micro edits–the lines/copy edit–which is always a long and tedious process. The macro edit, to me, is more fun if more creatively taxing. I’ll be digging into that a little later, when my mind is more awake and I have more caffeine in my system. It’ll be a weird and short work week for me, and then of course next week I am on vacation. I’ll be taking lots of books with me on that trip, although I’m not sure I’ll have much time to read. I’m not really sure what Dad and I will be doing in Kentucky. I know when I’ve been up there before he’s mentioned going sight-seeing; like to Cassius Clay’s home (the original, the one Muhammed Ali was named for at birth; he was Henry Clay’s brother and one of Kentucky’s leading abolitionists) or to the Kentucky Derby museum. Which is fine, I love history and while horse racing history isn’t something I’ve ever looked into much before, but you never know. I had thought about writing a mystery around the horse racing at the Fairgrounds…I knew a horse trainer back in the day–but never got around to it. I mean, Dick Francis kind of cornered the horse racing mystery market, did he not?

Of course, I’ll come home to another short week because of the 4th holiday, too–so it’s going to be three weeks before i do another full five day work-week. I slept decently last night–not great, but not bad, either–and so this morning feel a little bit dragging around, but that’s fine; coffee, a shower, and some time reading should get me over the hump. We abandoned City on Fire last night; we just had no enthusiasm for watching, and so moved on to The House of Hammer, which is about, of course, the twisted history of the Hammers through the lens of Armie Hammer, the actor, getting canceled for his abusive sexual preferences. It was interesting–I am always fascinated by twisted rich families that hate each other so passionately–but we need to find something meaty, like a good crime series, to dig into. It’s amazing how we can hve so many options yet can never find anything to watch, isn’t it?

I spent some time yesterday with Chris Clarkson’s adorable That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which is charming and fun and delightful to read, and may even be able to finish reading it today, with any luck and some strong motivation, at any rate. I think from that I will move on to either Megan Abbott or Eli Cranor; I can’t decide which of the plethora of great 2023 new releases to select from, to be honest. I know I’ll be listening to Carol Goodman in the car next weekend on the way up and I’m not sure who I’ll listen to on the way home.

A quick glance at Twitter has shown me that LSU fans have now surpassed eleven thousand shots in the Rocco’s College World Series Shot Competition, and are well on pace to break the record (just over eighteen thousand) set by Mississippi last year. Oh, how the bars and restaurants in Eauxmaha must love LSU fans! I mean, even if the shots are only a dollar, that’s over eleven grand in receipts on those shots alone, not counting everything else being sold there. LSU is playing Wake Forest tonight, and it will take a strong effort for the Tigers to pull off the win. If they do pull out a win, I’m thinking the shots record will fall tonight.

I also read an old short story yesterday that I remember from when I was a kid. Periodically, Mom let me join a book club. The first one I joined was the Mystery Guild, and those selections i received from the Mystery Guild really kind of shaped my future both as a reader and writer. I still remember the books–still have some of the original copies–and over the years, I’ve tried to replace the ones lost over time to cross-country moves. Recently I repurchased a copy of Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Month of Mystery on eBay, and there was a story in it I read as a kid that I never forgot; and I wanted to reread it. It was called “The Queen’s Jewel” and was written by Robert Golding (I’d forgotten the name of the author). I took the book down yesterday afternoon to reread the story, and it was amazing to me how much of it I still remembered, the details. The main character, Jane Farquhar, owns a small hotel of sorts with guest cabins in the brush in Africa. One of her ancestors was a server for the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, and before her execution she gave him the pendant of a ruby set in a heavy gold chain with four carat blue-white diamonds surrounding it. It is very valuable, and Jane’s father raised her to be prepared, always be prepared, because someone will eventually come to try to steal it from her in some way…and thus the story is about her defending herself against a criminal pretending to be an American cousin. The story holds up and works, but it opens with Jane discovering the body of her poisoned guard dog–which did make me wonder, would this story be published today? Opening with a dead dog?

I also didn’t know much about Robert Golding, so after reading the story I used the google to find out he was one of the many Ellery Queen ghostwriters (I only recently found out that many Ellery Queen novels were ghostwritten) and it turned out Golding wrote two of my favorite Ellery Queen novels, The Player on the Other Side and Calamity Town, which is one of my all-time favorite mystery novels; little wonder his short story connected so well with me. I don’t remember The Player on the Other Side other than that it was one of my favorites; but Calamity Town? I remember a lot of that novel, and it was primarily about the Wrights, the first family of Wrightsville–a location so popular that Queen kept returning there for more murder mysteries (The Murderer is a Fox was another great Wrightsville mystery). He also apparently wrote a lot of the juvenile Ellery Queen mysteries–published as Ellery Queen Jr.–which I also enjoyed as a kid; Ellery Queen Jr. and the Jim Hutton 1970’s television series Ellery Queen (which I loved) were what originally brought me to reading the adult Ellery Queens; the first I read was the one they actually filmed for the pilot, The Fourth Side of the Triangle, which was marvelous, and then I started buying his books or checking them out from the library. So thank you, Robert Golding, for being an influence on me and my writing without my knowing it. I’m really looking forward to reading some more of these old short stories. I got another Hitchcock (Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked) and an old MWA one, edited by Robert L. Fish, With Malice Toward All, which also looks rather fun.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a bit while my brain continues to wake up before tackling the manuscript. Have a lovely holiday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you later.

The Hollow Men

Sunday and the midpoint of the holiday weekend, as New Orleans swelters in what is, even for here, an unusually potent June heat wave. I stayed inside as much as I could yesterday, in the marvelous cool of the Lost Apartment. I slept well Friday night, which was great, and while I wasn’t feeling especially motivated yesterday morning, I did get my daily blog entry done as well as a Pride post. I read more of That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which is just absolutely charming (you should get a copy, Constant Reader), and then I did some more cleaning chores around the house before digging into the edits of this manuscript. I got the macro edit along with the copy edit, so I can get it all worked through, hopefully this weekend; I would love to be able to get this to the editor on Monday. We shall see how it goes. I did get some progress made yesterday; we’ll see how things go today. Yesterday was kind of nice, actually. I got some rest, too–today I feel really rested–and we finished watching Butchers of the Bayou, got caught up on The Crowded Room, and started watching City on Fire, which…is interesting, but I guess we’re supposed to believe Manhattan is an incredibly small town? It’s based on an “it” book from a couple of years ago that I never read; I had a copy but eventually donated it in one of my many purges. I’m not sure we’ll continue watching, to be honest; it’s okay but not riveting. There was no disappointment last night when I called the evening after a couple of episodes.

LSU won their game yesterday at the College World Series (GEAUX TIGERS!). We watched part of the game before switching over to The Crowded Room once I was sure the Tigers had the game under control. I have to say, it’s very fun living in Louisiana and being a sports fan. I of course always will root for any team based in Louisiana, with the Saints and LSU having my deepest loyalties, but part of the fun is how different Louisiana sports fans are from fans in other parts of the country. Tiger Stadium and the Superdome can get loud enough that it hurts your ears, but the thing I love the most about Louisiana sports fans is that they are also fans when it’s not easy, if that makes sense? It’s why Saints players become so attached to New Orleans; we’ll turn out to welcome them home from away games at the airport even when they lose. When the Saints were in the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans decided to have a Saints parade that Tuesday night before the second weekend of Carnival, where they won or lost; a celebration if they won and a thank you for a great season and making it to the Super Bowl if they lost. Maybe the turn out for that parade might not have been quite the mob scene it was had they not won, but I like to think that it would have been pretty close to the same thing. I also love all the stories about how Omaha (which we’re calling Eauxmaha the way we always Louisiana-ize everything) loves our fans and hope we make it to the College World Series every year. There’s a bar in Omaha that has a shots contest for all the fans of the teams there–LSU is of course way out in front of second place, and at one point you could combine the other seven schools and LSU still won. It also reminds me of how when LSU played Oklahoma in the 2019 college football play-offs in Atlanta, a lot of the bars around the hotels and stadium ran out of beer and bourbon the first night (this was NOT a problem when LSU played in New Orleans for the national championship; New Orleans never runs out because we’re Louisiana too). I also imagine that the servers and bartenders must make a ton of money in tips from LSU fans, who are also as generous as they are friendly. (I was also thinking the other day as I rewatched highlights of this past year’s LSU-Alabama game, what a night for recruiting that must have been! As a high school football player, visiting Tiger Stadium on a night like that, when the entire stadium was rocking (the stadium’s reactions to the over time touchdown and the two point conversion both registered on the campus Richter machine), how could you not sign with LSU? I’m trying not to get overly optimistic for football season, but LSU and the Saints (and Tulane, even) are poised to have great seasons.

Fingers crossed!

It looks kind of hazy outside the windows this morning. The heat advisory/heat wave is supposed to last until Tuesday; I’ve not checked the weather yet this morning to see how bad today is going to be. AH, yes, heat advisory, partly cloudy, and the potential for a severe thunderstorm later this afternoon. I was hoping to barbecue today, so here’s hoping the thunderstorm either holds off until I do or is over before I want to. I’m not going to run errands until after work on Tuesday, on my way home from the office. We have plenty of stuff on hand to eat without me having to go to the store, and I’m not going to be getting a lot when I do make a grocery run because I will be out of the house all next week. The reason I am coming back on the following Saturday is so that I can do a grocery run before heading to work on Monday.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday of your holiday weekend, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back before you know it.