Category: LSU

Someday at Christmas

Yesterday was so beautiful here that I grilled burgers outside, taking a pillow for my back to rest against as I took my Agatha Christie reread out with me and basked in the glory of the gorgeousness of the day. And it was gloriously beautiful outside yesterday; hard to believe it was December…but then, early December is often quite delightful here. I did not, alas, get everything done yesterday that I wanted to get done, but that’s also kind of par for the course. Sundays are always hard-to-get-anything-done days here in the Lost Apartment. It usually is a day for Paul and I to hang out together–he usually doesn’t work on Sundays (he went to the office, for example, Saturday and didn’t get home until around eight that evening)so I generally try to get everything finished in the time before he gets up (he also sleeps late on Sundays). I didn’t manage that yesterday, so of course there’s still things for me to get done left over from yesterday, but that’s okay. I had a lovely time hanging out with him yesterday and watching Gossip Girl–the original show is really quite addicting–with the occasional break, during which I read more of my Agatha Christie reread.

Christie’s later books are often seen as lesser than her earlier ones, primarily, I think, because the earlier ones were so groundbreaking. Trying to figure out who the killer is was always part of the fun of reading Christie (spoiler: it was often hard to figure out because it was all-too-frequently two people, working together), and one of the interesting things about revisiting this particular Christie–any Christie,really–is that over the years I’ve read a lot of criticism of Christie, primarily that her characters weren’t developed well and she was so focused on the puzzle aspect of her books that the writing wasn’t strong. I guess those critics read a different Christie than the ones I’ve read? There were several times yesterday–and I am not very far into the book–where I was struck by her insights and cleverness about human nature, behavior, and how clever and wise some of her sentences were. One, in particular, stood out: And now he was dead, buried, and nobody cared very much…a rather chilling, if honest, insight. There’s also the fact that the primary reason Miss Marple is so successful at ferreting out information and solving crime is because no one takes her seriously for the simple reason she is old; she often uses that condescending attitude of the young towards our elders (well not our, I certainly am old now) against them, even at times playing the part expected of her, prattling on and on to distract her targets from her real objective, and then they are a bit startled by just how sharp her mind is, to the point they blurt out information they didn’t intend to ever share with anyone. We never get into Marple’s mind; she sometimes will tell us what Jane is thinking, but we don’t see it from her perspective; when Christie writes in the third person, it’s from a remove. There are also other point-of-view characters, but just to give the reader a bit more insight into what else is going on around the murder and how that impacts others. It’s also–I’d quite forgotten–how often old women are referred to as “pussies”, or Marple as a “nice old pussy”; I am sure the word meant something different then than it does now; or maybe it’s another example of the difference between UK English and American English–like how fanny means something entirely different in England than it does here.

I cannot imagine writing a book now and referring to an old woman–any woman–as a pussy now. But you know how I know Christie is a good writer? Rereading this book was inspiring–I was getting ideas for new projects of my own and about the current project, which means reading Christie triggered my own imagination, and writers who trigger my own imagination are, at least in my eyes, the best writers.

Today I am up and the sun is rising as I drink my morning coffee. I don’t think I slept all that well last night; it was a bit warmer than usual, not warm enough for the air conditioner to be necessary but I did need a fan. I don’t know if the whirring of the fan was why my sleep wasn’t deep–it wasn’t restless, just light–but I also don’t feel terribly tired this morning; we’ll see how that lasts through the day. I have errands to run after work today, so no gym this evening–saving that for tomorrow–so when I get home tonight I’ll do the dishes and try to get the kitchen/office finished (something else I’d intended to get done yesterday and didn’t) and work on the book some more. I also have a lot of emails to answer between clients this morning; I did make the to-do list (perhaps not as detailed as it should be) and have already started striking things from it. But progress is progress, after all, and one should never really beat oneself up over not making enough progress. Celebrate the wins, however small, rather than treat them as defeats.

LSU is going to a bowl game this year–next, really, not sure why it’s so late on the schedule–playing Kansas State, which is a sort of split loyalty thing…not as much as one might think. LSU is my team, and while I won’t be happy should they lose the game, at the same time that loss won’t be terribly disappointing or upsetting. It’s weird, I guess the new head coach won’t be coaching the game–there’s an interim head coach–but it’s also on a weird day of the week; a Tuesday after New Year’s, which is, as I said, very strange. But that’s okay, I suppose. Not sure how many of the bowl games I am actually going to watch this year–the National Championship game is, after all, on a Monday night, and since LSU isn’t going to be in it, I am not staying up late that night since I have to get up the next morning; it was an entirely different thing LSU was playing it it that lovely season two years ago–but I might have the games on in the background while I am doing something else.

Who knows? But Happy Monday and I am heading into the spice mines. Catch you tomorrow!

When Will I Be Loved

Good morning, Tuesday.

I slept very well last night–but at the same time, wasn’t terribly tired yesterday nor did I ever run out of steam. When I got home I worked on the book for a while, then gave in to Scooter’s whining demands that I sit in my easy chair and read so he could sleep in my lap. I started reading Donna Andrews’ The Gift of the Magpie–it’s marvelous, as I expected, and before I knew it I was halfway through by the time Paul got home and we settled in for a few episodes of the original Gossip GIrl–it’s weird how vested we’ve become in this show, but it’s quite fun. I also managed to get a lot done yesterday–the Sisyphean task of email turning out to be quite Sisyphean–I managed to get a lot of it cleaned out only to have more come in once I sent out mine, but I think I simply need to accept the fact that it’s an on-going process and stop punishing myself for not ever getting the inbox emptied out.

I am, after all, trying to be less hard on myself these days.

And it looks as though the coaching carousel at LSU is finally over; it looks like they will be hiring Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it at first–he has been successful everywhere he’s coached, going back to his days at Grand Valley State in Michigan–but he’s a completely different style of coach than what we are used to down here, as they endlessly say on television, “on the bayou.” (For the record, the entire state isn’t a bayou, and while there are a lot of them, most of the population doesn’t actually live on one.) But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made; he’s an odd fit, to be sure, but he’s always been a good coach and we really need that here. Our last three coaches have all won national titles, and in every instance the hire was questionable–none of them (Nick Saban, Les Miles, Ed Orgeron) had really made names for themselves before coming here, but all three were able to succeed (at varying levels) in Baton Rouge. In fact, when Nick Saban was originally hired, LSU was coming off a losing season, hadn’t won the SEC title in over a decade, and hadn’t won a national title in over forty years. (LSU has won three in the twenty-one years since he was hired; not quite Alabama level success, but I don’t think any other team has won more than two in that same time period.) So, I am willing to give him my support (for what it’s worth, and that’s practically nothing) and see how it all plays out.

I am going to try to make it to the gym again tonight. It’s been over a month since the my last time there, so I am going to have to start with the one set this week, two next, and so forth again. I’ll have another trip next month, but as long as I am consistently going before and after I won’t have to restart the training program again–and the hotel in New York has a lovely fitness facility I can use (although I tend to never work out when I travel, which is part of my problem, and working out would undoubtedly help with the sleep issue as well when I travel). I know there’s a new variant floating around out there that will eventually make it’s way over to the United States (omicron) but I am hopeful it’s not going to cause another shutdown or highly restrict gatherings in public and so forth.

And today is the last day of hurricane season, thank you baby Jesus. It’s actually been quite a year, really, now that we are about to enter the final month of it and I look back. January seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it? We had a category 5 hurricane here, a rough summer, no Carnival, a freeze on Fat Tuesday (when we didn’t have heat; I don’t ever want to be that cold again) and I actually made it up to Kentucky twice this past year. I also read a shit ton, watched a lot of movies, and finished writing two books–my short story output wasn’t what I would have liked it to have been, and I never finished the first draft of Chlorine either, but I did make some progress on the novellas I’d been developing, and once this book I am currently writing is finished I am going to go full steam on several of the projects-in-progress I have in the works; and I really do want to write a Scotty book this year. I know the plot, I know the story, and I know what I want to do with it, it’s just a matter of sitting down over the course of a weekend or something and pulling the varied thoughts and plots together into a coherent whole I can sit down and write.

I also rediscovered my love of writing this year–I mean, at least I started remembering how much I love doing it rather than viewing it as “just one more thing I have to do”, which was kind of the mentality I’d been facing it with over the last few years, which wasn’t particularly bright and definitely the wrong way to look at it.

So, as shitty as a year it may have been overall in the macro sense of life and the world in general, it wasn’t a completely bad year for me. And isn’t it better to always look at the positives?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.

Love Has No Pride

Well, that LSU game was something else. GEAUX TIGERS!

It’s also a little sad to see the end of the Orgeron era. LSU is the only top-tier college program to win three national championships this century with three different coaches (only Alabama has won more titles than LSU this century), and these past two seasons have been rough. But I always had a liking for Coach O, was happy to see him get the chance to be the head coach, and even happier–to say the least–to see that magnificent 2019 season. And who knows who the next coach will be, or what his tenure will be like? Ah, well. Never a dull moment as a football fan in the state of Louisiana.

I am feeling more rested and well on the way to recovery from my trip. I made some good progress yesterday on the to-do list, and since the Saints aren’t playing today (some could say they didn’t really play Thursday night, either) I have the entire day free to work on things and get caught up and perhaps–just perhaps–even go to the gym. I wound up having football games playing on television yesterday (some seriously great games yesterday, Rivalry Weekend) but the college season is effectively over. I’ll pay attention to the conference title games and to the bowls, of course–yet at the same time I won’t be personally vested in them and it won’t matter if I watch or not. Weekends thus have become free for me, which is a good thing as I have so much to do. This morning I am going to start working my way through the to-do some more, hope to spend some time writing this afternoon, and I want to start reading my next selection from the TBR pile–Donna Andrews’ The Gift of the Magpie. I still want to do some entries on the other books I read over the past week, and there’s still some straightening up to do around here as well. And of course, there’s always about a thousand emails I have to answer at some point. I am going to try to get the emails answered and prepared to be sent tomorrow morning–yay for draft folders–and as always, I have a shit ton of organizing and filing to do. I have some short stories I need to edit, and I have agreed to write another for an anthology that isn’t due until April or so; I know which story-in-progress I am going to use, but I also need to change it’s title, and last night I found the title–from the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Tamerlane”: “Solace in a Dying Hour.”

Great title, methinks.

No rest for a Gregalicious.

The weather looks a bit gray out there this morning, and we are getting ready to swing into what passes for winter in southeastern Louisiana. Yes, I know winter doesn’t officially start until December 21st or so, but that uncertain period down here where it can be 80 degrees one day and 40 the next is beginning. Sometimes the weather shift happens over the course of the day, which makes it even more fun, as you have no clue how to dress for the day. It can be bitterly cold when I leave for work in the morning, and then incredibly warm when I get off work and I’ll have to run the air in the car on the way home from the office. Yay? I also need to start getting my Christmas cards together–I am determined this year to actually mail them out, which also means getting my address book together (no small feat) and then deciding who gets one and who doesn’t. I’m sure there is some kind of etiquette involving Christmas cards that I don’t know, as always I have no clue how to behave in a socially appropriate and acceptable way, but I don’t care. I don’t keep track of who sends me cards and who doesn’t, just as I don’t pay attention to who wishes me happy birthday on social media and who doesn’t–doesn’t life deliver enough blows as is without having to resort to that sort of pettiness? I am also trying to be better about being petty about stuff, too–I’ll let you know how that goes, since petty is my default–and tracking that sort of thing seems a bit much even to me (although I will admit I have done so in the past), and why make yourself crazy or upset or be hurt by such things? There’s a touch of narcissism in that, really–other people really don’t give you that much thought or energy, which actually seems worse to me; when someone hurts your feelings the truth usually it’s usually more thoughtlessness than anything else–most people would never intentionally hurt anyone else’s feelings unless they are an absolute monster–but also trying to figure out other people’s motivations and/or reasons is a fool’s game because you will never really know one way or another and why waste the time, energy, or effort trying to figure it out?

And it’s Christmas season, which is the antithesis of pettiness. Christmas is about forgiving and peace and love and harmony–although humans always have this remarkable ability to forget the true meaning of the season. (Nothing says peace and love and harmony than claiming there’s a “war on Christmas,” for example) Sure, there’s a religious aspect to Christmas, but it’s far more outweighed by the secularization of the holiday, which gets more and more secularized with every passing year.

Heavy thoughts for a Sunday morning, really.

And Christmas is of course followed by Carnival here in New Orleans, and I guess we are having parades this coming year. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that, but at least parade season is later in the year than usual–Fat Tuesday itself falls on March 1, I believe–and last year’s cancellation meant that Zulu and Rex and the truck parade didn’t roll on a day where the temperature was 20 degrees and the entire city was freezing; I can’t imagine there would have been hordes out there on the parade route in that kind of miserable weather…but then again, one never knows. People do like to catch beads.

I know I wouldn’t have walked out there, or if I did, stayed long. As it was, we had no heat in the Lost Apartment that fateful freezing Mardi Gras day, and I was huddled under layers of clothing and piles of blankets with a space heater blasting hot air at me…and was still cold.

Sigh. And on that note, I am off to the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and may all your dreams come true.

Long Way Around

Home.

And exhausted.

I drove up to Kentucky on Monday; it took me twelve hours to get there. I drove back yesterday; it took eleven hours to get home. I may have been doing 80 most of the way home–hey, the speed limit is 70 and the rule was always ten miles over the limit was cool (except for speed traps)–but every once in a while I would look down and see the needle creeping closer to ninety and would chill out for a while. I listed to Isaac Azimov’s Foundation on the way up, and Donna Andrews’ The Falcon Always Wings Twice on the way home (I had to sit in the car for another few minutes when I pulled up to the house to finish listening to Falcon, which was a delight as are all Donna Andrews novels). I wish I’d know about the magic that is audiobooks before; what a lovely way to while away lengthy drives. I am now almost caught up on the Meg Langslow series; I think there are three more to go. I also managed to read some others this week as well–more on those later–and it was a bit of a whirlwind of a trip. My father and I did some sight-seeing–Civil War battlefields, mostly, as everything else we tried was closed–and I had never known much about Kentucky in the Civil War period, other than the commonwealth didn’t secede despite being a slave state (we learn very little about the Civil War in school, really–mostly Lee and Grant and Virginia, very little about anything else, maybe Sherman’s march to the sea if your teacher was a bit more thorough) and the Kentucky battlefields we visited–Perryville and Richmond–were interesting. My father also told me some more family history; there are relatives who are researching the family history, tracing the family line back to Revolutionary times. I have ancestors who fought in the Revolution, and I am descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence; Richard Stockton of New Jersey’s daughter married a Herren, and I am descended directly from them. That was interesting to find out–but I imagine if most of us trace our lineage back pretty far we’d find interesting ancestors. (My father made copies of all the records for me; there’s also an ancestor’s will in which he divided up the enslaved people he “owned” amongst his wife and children; which is not a point of pride for me. He enslaved eleven people, per the will, considered “property” to be divided up in his will…he also told me some of the Civil War history of the part of Alabama where we come from; my uncle’s wife had an ancestor who fought on the Union side. There were Unionists and the Alabama Home Guard who fought and committed atrocities against each other–my uncle’s wife’s ancestor had leave from the Union army and come home to visit his wife and children. The Home Guard captured him and skinned him alive…apparently his screams could be heard echoing through the hills. I apparently didn’t go far enough in Bury Me in Shadows…)

But…material for another book, I suppose; and therefore the history of my fictional county (the history of this county is written in blood) can be much more violent and bloody than I originally imagined; which means more secrets, more mysteries, and more spirits trapped on this plane and unable to move on.

There’s also an extremely rare book, long out of print, fiction based in that divided, divisive history, that I am going to try to see if I can get a copy of–I did find it on-line at the University of Alabama Library (eight other libraries, all universities in Alabama have copies); not entirely sure how I would get to borrow it from them, or if I would have to go to Tuscaloosa and read it there. But now that I know about it, I am dying to get my hands on it–I’ve searched for it on-line from used booksellers and eBay and so forth, to no avail.

It was a nice trip, overall. I slept decently every night–the last night was my best night of sleep, which was a good thing because the drive yesterday (it’s eleven hours or so in the car in both directions) is exhausting. The South is so incredibly beautiful–oh, those Smoky Mountains in Tennessee!–and I know people who’ve never been will find this hard to believe, but Birmingham and north Alabama is also breathtakingly beautiful. Those mountains. I do love the mountains, but I don’t think I could ever live in a mountainous area because of that cold weather/snow thing.

And of course now I am very behind on everything. I tried to keep up with deleting junk/sales emails with my phone while I was gone–hundreds per day, thank you Black Friday capitalism–and yet the inbox is still incredibly full with ones I have to answer. The Lost Apartment is a mess, I have errands to run and a grocery list to prepare, bills to pay and a checkbook to balance, filing and cleaning and organizing and of course, writing–I wrote absolutely nothing while I was away, and I have a tight deadline hanging over my head–and a massive to-do list I need to prepare. There’s a lot going on in my life right now, personally and professionally, and I really need to make sure that it’s incredibly thorough, else things will get missed and things will not get covered and that inevitably leads to stress and disaster.

But…my own bed felt lovely last night. I don’t think I slept all that well last night–but I feel a little tired and drained this morning, but I think that’s also due to being exhausted from the drive and feeling disconnected from my own life again. Getting everything together and figuring out everything I need to get done will be an enormous help in that regard. I simply cannot spend today watching college football–it will be okay to have it on in the background, but I can’t sit in my chair all day and waste another day. Fortunately this is the last day of regular season games–conference championship games coming next weekend, with the play-offs later in December, but LSU isn’t really involved in anything after today so I can pretty much follow as a slightly disinterested fan of college football and not care about who wins or who loses or who does what.

And on that note, I am going to start doing some filing and organizing. I gave some blog entries about books I’ve read to do, and I will be here every morning from now on, Constant Reader….and I am also looking forward to the second half of the reboot of Gossip Girl, which dropped on HBO MAX while I was gone. Huzzah!

Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I hope your holiday was lovely.

Sunday Girl

Sunday morning and feeling somewhat fine. I need to pack today–I can even go ahead and load up the car once I finish, so tomorrow I can just walk out there, put the keys in the ignition, start playing Foundation on my phone, and hit the road–and I also need to get a lot done today so I can not worry so much about being out of pocket for most of the day tomorrow. I downloaded Donna Andrews’ The Falcon Always Wings Twice for the drive home, and have created a shorter playlist for Spotify to listen to once the books have finished–I should have about an hour or two left on the road once both books are finished each way.

Yesterday was a very strange day in college football. LSU–after almost pulling off upsets of Alabama and Arkansas in back to back weeks–struggled against UL-Monroe; Auburn lost to South Carolina; Florida lost to Missouri; Ohio State humiliated Michigan State; Utah not only handed Oregon a loss but a decisive, embarrassing one; and on and on. This has been a truly weird season (I ain’t going to lie, watching Florida circle the drain helps take some of the sting out of LSU’s terrible season), and it’s not over yet. I’ve kind of dissociated myself from this season–I did watch the Alabama-Arkansas game for a while yesterday, and bits and pieces of the Florida-South Carolina–but man, what a fucking weird season. Two of the better teams in the conference are Mississippi and Mississippi State? When was the last time that happened? (2014, to be pedantic.)

Yeesh.

Paul went to the office yesterday and didn’t get home until late, so I spent the day editing what I’ve written on A Streetcar Named Murder and took voluminous notes on the story, where it’s going, who the suspects are going to be, why they are suspects, and so forth. I also started playing around with future titles for the series (should it take off) and came up with some that I think are funny and clever–but then, I thought the original title for the book was funny and clever, and wound up changing it at publisher request–so we’ll see. (I also can’t wait for the cover design to be finished so I can share it with everyone.) Today I am going to input those changes, write another chapter or two, and try to puzzle out the rest of the cast and a skimpy outline that I can follow to try to keep myself on course with the book. I am excited to be writing a new book for the first time in a long time–the last two have been in the works for years–and was thinking about what I am going to write next year. Hopefully Chlorine and Mississippi River Mischief, and maybe another book in this series–should they want one; I also have two others simmering on the back burner: Voices in an Empty Room and Where the Boys Die (going to need to change that title, though–it’s a working title for something I really want to write, but it fits another book idea I have much better and I just don’t have a better title for this one yet), and of course the novellas and other short stories and…sigh. You see why I feel like I never get anything done? Because I always have so much to do!

When Paul got home we finally watching Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. We had wanted to go see it in the theater, but then Ida happened and there was a paradigm shift and we never got around to getting to the cinema. I’ve been a fan of Simu Liu since his days as Jung on Kim’s Convenience (a very sweet Canadian television comedy that’s a comfort watch), and of course, I love Awkwafina, Michelle Yeoh, and Tony Leung; all of whom were terrific in this, as was Meng’er Zhang as Shang’s younger sister Xialing. The action was incredible, the film was epic in scope, and we both frankly loved it a lot more than some of the other, more cookie cutter variety MCU films.

And Florian Munteanu as Razorfist was an excellent lesser villain. If you haven’t see it, you really should–if you like these types of movies. Then again, I may have been swayed by his impressive physique.

We had talked about watching HBO MAX’s reboot of Gossip Girl (we’d never watched the original), so with some time to kill after Shang Chi and bedtime, I flipped us over there and started watching, and we were almost immediately sucked in. It’s a glossy soap about rich kids at a private school–Elité in English–and it’s actually highly entertaining. I’m looking forward to watching more of it, and we may even go back and watch the seven(!) seasons of the original. We (well, I’m not, I don’t know about Paul) aren’t enjoying the second season of The Great, and I wasn’t really in the mood to watch another episode of it last night, hence the switch to Gossip Girl. Wasn’t it also a popular series of books, like Pretty Little Liars? I doubt that I’ll ever go back and seek out the books, but one never knows.

I also got very deep into Leslie Budewitz’ Guilty as Cinnamon, which I am also enjoying; Pepper is a terrific heroine and I enjoy her supporting cast of characters. I’ve only been to Seattle once, many years ago, but I really liked the city a lot, and I visited Pike’s Market, which is where Pepper’s spice shop is located. But since it’s very likely I will finish reading the book today, I had to select another book for the trip, and I have chosen Mary Feliz’ Address to Die For.

I also have to pack and get ready for the trip today. AIEEEE.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Breathe

Good morning, Friday. How are you today? I am feeling good, thank you for asking.

I got a very good night’ sleep last night, and I have, as always, a lot to get done over the weekend (and today) before I head to Kentucky for the holiday on Monday. I want to drop off more books for the library sale tomorrow, have tons of writing to do (as always), and I would like to be able to finish reading Leslie Budewitz’ Guilty as Cinnamon, which I am deeply enjoying. I have a stack of cozy mysteries to take with me on this trip–Owl Be Home for Christmas by Donna Andrews; Pruning the Dead by Julia Henry; Better off Wed by Laura Durham, and A Disguise to Die For by Diana Vallere, plus any number of them on my iPad as ebooks (I’m taking the iPad with me on the chance that I run out of books, which is a horrible fate to contemplate)–and I also need to figure out how to work the check out audiobooks from the library for the phone thing so I can listen to a book both coming and going. (Eleven hours in the car both directions)

And now that some things have settled and been settled, I can now go ahead and officially announce that I have signed a one-book contract for a potential new series set here in New Orleans with Crooked Lane Books; that is the book I am currently working on, having had to put Chlorine aside yet again to make room to write a new book. This is a series with a straight woman main character–a widow with twin sons who’ve just left for LSU, leaving her with a bit of empty nest syndrome and a beautiful old Victorian house in the Irish Channel that now is much too big for her, who gets an unexpected inheritance from a great-uncle of her late husband’s whom she didn’t know even existed. The book will be published under the name T. G. Herren, to differentiate it from my queer books and series. I just got the sketch art for the book cover, and I love it. The book is called A Streetcar Named Murder, and will be released in the fall of 2022. I will be talking about this book a lot over the course of the next year, so prepare thyself, Constant Reader. (T. G. for those who may be wondering, are my initials only reversed; longtime reader know that I reversed my names for my erotica pseudonym Todd Gregory, hence the initials T. G.) My editor is the exceptional Terri Bischoff, whom I have always wanted to work with, and now I am not only working with her on this but also on the Bouchercon anthology for Minneapolis 2022 (we are co-editors), Land of 10000 Crimes.

Life is pretty good for one Gregalicious at the moment, seriously. And I am really looking forward to my January release, #shedeservedit, while being incredibly nervous at the same time. I also got an invitation to contribute to another anthology that pays well in my inbox this morning, so I am feeling kind of good about myself…I give it a day or two. (Bury Me in Shadows has a great review in the next issue of Mystery Scene magazine, which thrilled me to no end when I saw it last night. More on that later.)

I also booked another trip to New York for January yesterday, which is exciting as well. I also made my hotel arrangements for a return engagement to Murder in the Magic City/Murder on the Menu–the Birmingham/Wetumpka one-two punch I did in consecutive years a while back, so you can see why I feel like my career no longer feels stagnant or in stasis at the moment. And yes, the goal for 2022 is to finally land an agent once and for all. I think Chlorine is the book that will do that for me; we shall see.

I got caught up on Foundation yesterday, and I am really impressed with how well the show turned out, considering how much it has veered away from the books. I’d like to read the books again, frankly–oooh, audiobooks for the car!–and I also watched another episode of The Lost Symbol, which frankly I don’t pay as much attention to as I perhaps should while I am watching. It’s very well done, but the plot is far-fetched (which is about the only thing I do remember from reading the book), but watching the show has made me curious about seeing the Tom Hanks films based on the other Dan Brown novels, which I didn’t really care about before. That’s something, I suppose.

And on that note it’s back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow.

Here I Go Impossible Again

Later today I am leaving on a jet plane. My bags aren’t packed and I’m not ready to go–but eventually this morning I will get to that place. I have already made my packing list, have checked in for the flight on-line, have ground transfers negotiated and hotels booked; appropriate credit cards are in my wallet and I will get cash at the airport ATM. I have some errands to run this morning as well–prescriptions to retrieve from the pharmacy, treating myself to Five Guys because it has been far far too long–and I don’t have to leave for the airport until the mid-afternoon. So I decided to let myself sleep a bit late, futz around the Lost Apartment for a bit, and try to get things together that need to be gotten together before I depart, abandoning Paul and Scooter for far longer than I would prefer.

But I am taking a trip!

It’s almost like the before times.

Almost.

But when I think about how marvelous it felt to be in Tiger Stadium earlier this year, how normal it all felt to be there on Game Day (despite seeing my Tigers lose in person for the very first time in eleven years, but it was going to happen sooner or later and hey, the streak lasted an entire decade), and how that “normal” experience actually translated into feeling better about this world in which we live in general. Airports (and airplanes) generally aren’t pleasant experiences for me in the best of times and circumstances; I have so many horrible memories of nightmarish experiences working for that airline that literally going through the automatic doors of an airport concourse makes my entire body seize up with tension–I can feel the knots forming in my neck, shoulders, and back. But…I am thinking today I may be too happy and excited to feel that tension–not to mention grateful to actually be able to travel again.

Paul had a meeting on Sunday afternoon (!) and so I was left to my own devices after the Saints game ended; I caught up on The Lost Symbol (better than I remember the book) and Foundation, which really picked up steam (I also realized they aren’t following the exact timeline from the book series, either–for example, the existence of the second Foundation isn’t revealed until Book Three, not during the first Seldon Crisis–so much is coming back to me as I watch!) after a slow first two episodes–the Emperor thing is also different than in the books, but I am enjoying this entire idea of a clone threesome who run the empire, in fact embodying it to the point they are simply addressed as Empire, and also loving Lee Pace in the rule of Day, the adult yet not old Emperor (Dawn, Day, Dusk are the three cloned emperors; Dusk eventually dies and is replaced by Day, who is replaced by the no longer a child or teen Dawn, and a new cloned baby because the new Dawn. It’s interesting, and they’ve added a lot of creative flourishes filling in the missing brushstrokes; as though the Azimov novels were merely an outline needing to be expanded.

But when I was finished with Foundation, I still had some time left before Paul would get home and I didn’t really want to start something entirely new-to-me (having to stop when he got home) and my headspace after the Saints game wasn’t really in a place where it should be for reading, so one of the suggestions on my streaming app was The Rocky Horror Picture Show…and yes, I have literally seen it well over two, if not three, hundred times already. I’ve never watched it on television because talking back to the television by yourself is kind of…not sane? Certainly not as fun as being in a movie theater full of people with props and people in costume and so forth. It was interesting to watch it by myself and completely sober…it’s really a crazy movie that makes little to no sense, really, but it’s message resonates very strongly still with me today…I suspect there’s an essay there. I also think there’s a short story or a scene from a book I need to write about viewing The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time; I remember being quite taken aback–if completely enamored–by it. I do know that I bought the soundtrack album the day after and still know it all by heart even now, all these years later…

And yes, I did find myself answering the movie back. There are some problematic things in it, of course–what movie from that period doesn’t have something problematic in it?–but at the time…and for quite some time afterward, the movie meant a lot to all of us misfits out here, the square pegs that couldn’t be pounded into a round hole no matter how hard society–or we–tried. In that theater that first night–and all the other theaters on so many other nights–for about an hour and a half I was able to escape the strictures and stresses of a world in which I–and people like me–didn’t belong. As years passed props and toys were slowly but surely banned–who would want to clean up that mess, seriously?–but the loss of water pistols to simulate rain, flying rolls of toilet paper, etc. always seemed to lessen the experience.

Then again, I would have hated to have been the one cleaning the theater at two in the morning for minimum wage, too. Definitely an essay there, for sure–which would have to include the problematic parts that haven’t aged well. But man, did Tim Curry ever commit to that part, and he definitely understood what the movie was.

Last night we watched some more Big Mouth, which is hilarious, although I am never entirely sure if it is actually funny, or if the laughs come from wow I can’t believe they went there shocks. (I’m actually surprised there’s not more right-wing outrage at the show, honestly; maybe there is and I am unaware, but this is precisely the kind of show they would go for–a comedy about junior high students going through puberty that is completely frank about sex and sexuality and masturbation and so forth? You’d think the American Family Association would be eating the outrage with a fucking spoon in both hands.)

And on that note, I should probably start getting it together around here this morning. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow morning from New York!

Moon & The Sky

The first Monday morning after Daylight Savings Time kicks in–or kicks out? I never can remember if we borrow an hour or return it–and it’s an exciting day ahead for one Gregalicious. (Isn’t every day an exciting day for one Gregalicious, really?) It is rather nice that it isn’t dark outside this morning for once, but at the same time it means it will be full dark when I leave the office every day now, which always feels oppressive for me. I think I am not a fan of the winter primarily because of the shortened days (the colder weather isn’t, despite my frequent harsh reactions to it, the worst thing; as long as there is no snow and ice I can live with it, frankly). I don’t like the darkness, never have; still feel uncomfortable in the dark, if I am not entirely afraid of the dark still.

The terrors of childhood are never truly outgrown, are they?

The Saints game was eminently disappointing–never fun to lose to Atlanta, especially the way the Saints did yesterday–but I did get the sense the team is getting there, starting to gel after losing the starting quarterback, Jameis Winston–so I don’t think the rest of the season is going to be a total wash. We may not make the play-offs this year (!!!) but you know, it’s the beginning of a new era for the Saints, the post-Drew Brees era, and there’s no telling what that’s going to be like. LSU is also going to be getting a new coaching staff for next season…and again, no telling where LSU is going to end up next year either.

I wound up getting a lot more organized yesterday than I was before this weekend, which is lovely. I got folders put away, counter surfaces and inboxes are emptied for the most part, and I am traveling tomorrow. I am going to New York for a few days and then Boston for the weekend; as I have already mentioned, this is my first non-family related travel since the pandemic started, and after everything I’ve seen on-line about airports and flights being disrupted by people who think rules don’t apply to them (a personal pet peeve of mine; the rules apply to everyone else why have rules in the first place?), but at least I have a non-stop flight so the chances of misconnections and lost luggage and all of those other things that make traveling an utter nightmare have been lowered substantially.

We started watching the new season of Big Mouth last night on Netflix–this show is so funny and honest and out-and-out blunt about puberty (clearly, it couldn’t be live action) and burgeoning sexuality (and masturbation) that it still amazes me that it gets made; it would have never aired on basic cable or the original networks. I feel rested after this weekend–perhaps it’s the extra hour and my body hasn’t adjusted yet–more rested than I’ve felt in a very long time. I didn’t get as much accomplished this weekend as I would have ultimately preferred, but that’s life and beyond my control. It’s not easy to either write or edit when traveling, but I am going to give it the old college try and see what I can done while on the road. Obviously, that is something I need to get better about going forward.

But I feel good, am excited about the trip, and just have to get through today. My flight tomorrow is later in the day, so I don’t have to deal with any of the crazed “last minute” packing and so forth; I can leisurely check the weather in both places, figure out what I need to pack, make a list (the crazed list-maker never stops, apparently), and then carefully pack so as to be certain that nothing is left behind (a bigger and bigger fear the older I get, sadly) and then get up tomorrow and slowly get ready for the departure. I have an errand I must run tomorrow before heading for the airport, and there are some things around the house I need to get done before finally heading on my way out. It’s going to be weird traveling again–I did fly up to Kentucky earlier this year, but that now seems like it was an eternity ago–but I will have my phone and a book; I am taking These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall, Invisible City by Julia Dahl, Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier, and a Donna Andrews with me (not sure which Andrews; I am several books behind and desperately need to get caught up on them), which definitely should take care of my reading at the airport, on the trains, and on the planes. It will also help me fall asleep at night as well in strange hotels–I never sleep well in hotels, not sure what that’s about, but it has everything to do with it not being my own bed because I experience this everywhere–and I am looking forward to engaging with these books; it’s been a while since I’ve read a book through.

I reread Stephen King’s short story “One for the Road” from Night Shift yesterday, which, like “Jerusalem’s Lot,” is about the town from ‘salem’s Lot; this story clearly takes place after the events of the novel, so the two stories are book-ends for it–the former story being set over a hundred years in the past and explains how the town became basically cursed; the other being here we are a few years later when the town has become abandoned again. I’ve always wanted King to write a sequel to this book–it’s actually one of the few that kind of cries out for a sequel, as opposed to The Talisman and The Shining, which are the books he wrote sequels to; I know I read somewhere that he had the idea already of how to open such a sequel, and in all honesty it really whetted my appetite to read it. (‘salem’s Lot will always be one of my favorite Kings, if not my absolute favorite)

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check with you later.

Rain

Daylight Savings Time is one of those things, you know? I enjoy the gift of another hour’s sleep when it comes in the fall, but I deeply resent giving it up in the spring. But this morning it was lovely to wake up, look at the clock, and know I could continue to relax in bed for a little while longer; it was most comfortable and my body was completely relaxed, so it felt simply marvelous to stay there for a bit more.

Yesterday was kind of a lovely day. I finished my page proofs for #shedeservedit, and of course, reading through it again made me incredibly nervous, anxious, and insecure about its looming publication. This is nothing new, of course, and I often go through this with every book I write and publish–there’s nothing like page proofs to reawaken the imposter syndrome firmly implanted into my brain–and while I know it’s coming and I know it’s possible and I know it’s going to happen, it hits me like a 2 x 4 between the eyes every. Single. Time. I hate that for me. I also revised a short story for an anthology I was asked to contribute to–incredibly short turn around time, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to write something new; so I looked for something I had on hand I could adapt for it. The editor seemed to like it, with some notes to come–but I will probably revise the story again myself; I mean, I just grafted the concept of the anthology onto an existing story to see if it would work, and I guess it did since he liked it, but I really should go over it again myself with my editorial pen uncapped and my editorial eyes wide open. But it was, overall, a very productive day, and I was most pleased with how it all turned out. I had football games on while I was looking over the proofs–Auburn-Texas A&M, to be specific–which was nice; all the real pressure has been taken off watching games this season because I don’t really care that much if LSU is out of the running, so I can just watch and appreciate. Yesterday was a wacky day of upsets and near-upsets; and in all honesty, I assumed I would stop watching the LSU-Alabama bloodbath at the end of the first quarter.

Instead, plucky third team players on defense rose up and almost successfully smote the mighty Tide in their home stadium, 20-14; and a play here, a play there, and Alabama would have lost to a 4-4 29 point underdog team that all week long sports journalists (and I have to admit, I bought into it myself) didn’t have a chance. Coming within a whisker of an upset win, that really came down to the last play? Never saw it coming, and it was, frankly, one of the best LSU-Alabama games I’ve ever seen. I don’t think the way Alabama played last night–or the way they played in their loss to Texas A&M–is indicative that they are going to get trounced by Georgia in the SEC title game, or that they won’t do well in the play-offs should they make it that far; it’s Alabama, and they always seem to play better when something is on the line for them. Let’s face it, nothing was really on the line for them last night, but with no disrespect intended, you generally don’t see Alabama play that badly against a team they are supposed to run all over. Did they play badly, or did LSU play above their own level? Perhaps both? I hope LSU uses this to motivate them for the rest of the season, but who knows? They could easily lose to both Arkansas and Texas A&M to close out the first losing season since 1999. But I will always give the 2021 team props for giving us fans an unexpected great game against one of the greatest programs in the history of college football.

I honestly believed this year’s game would be a repeat of last year’s rout, and for that, I owe the program an apology. Sorry, guys, for not believing in you.

Today I have to make groceries. I am going on a trip this week–New York during the week, Boston over the weekend–which I’ve not really talked about much because I wasn’t sure the trip would happen. I mean, sure–I have the air and hotels booked, even the Acela Express from New York to Boston–but with pandemic times and so forth, let’s be serious; any trip can be canceled at any time because everything can change overnight. I am flying up on Tuesday, returning to New Orleans on Sunday; it’s my first trip anywhere other than to visit family since the world shut down, and I am actually very excited about it–despite all the nightmarish posts I see from other people experiencing horrors when they travel, primarily from the anti-mask morons for whom I have absolutely no patience whatsoever anymore. I’m also driving up to visit my family later this month–now you see where the stress and pressure about getting to work on the book is coming from, don’t you? Hopefully I’ll be able to get some writing done on these trips–and some reading, too; I definitely am going to check out an audiobook or two to listen to on the drive. Maybe one of my lengthier Stephen Kings?

Project Organize is working pretty well, too–I can’t complain about it (although I always can complain about something, it’s my super-power); the area around my desk is looking pretty good this morning, if I do say so myself. I still need to buy a day planner for next year–I definitely want one, I think it may help in some ways to have things actually written down as well as the digital calendar–and I am also going to try to figure out a writing schedule for next year. I think I may spend next year finishing things that are already started; Chlorine for one, and I have actually started another Scotty, even if it’s only one page–but I really want to get these novellas finished as well as getting some more short stories out there.

The Saints play the hated Falcons today at noon; which of course cuts right into the heart of the day but that’s also fine; my plan for today was to finish editing and correcting the first four chapters of A Streetcar Named Murder as well as map out the next four chapters, and delve into my characters a bit more. I generally don’t watch the Saints games anyway because it’s too emotionally stressful for me; and when they are over I am emotionally depleted and exhausted and unable to get anything done anyway. I only have to work one day this week–tomorrow–since I am leaving on Tuesday; and so I do have quite a bit to get under control today.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader–and GEAUX SAINTS!

Am I Right?

Saturday and LSU’s bye week.

That means I get to write today!

And try to get caught up on everything.

My booster shot threw me for a loop. My arm is still sore this morning, but at least today I feel good. Yesterday I had a reaction of sorts–I felt slightly feverish and low energy all day. I also had a lot of day job stuff to get done, so I basically shut off the Internet and spent the day doing my day job stuff while watching The Lost Symbol on Peacock. As the show reaches its inevitable conclusion, it is kind of going off the rails a little bit, but it’s entertaining enough to see through.

Unlike this past season of American Horror Story, which we have not finished. All that’s left is the season finale, but I honestly don’t care one way or the other how it ends; neither does Paul, which means we will inevitably only end up watching if there is literally nothing else for us to watch. (There are several past seasons we never finished, either.) We got caught up on The Morning Show last night before bed; I’m not really sure how I felt about this past week’s episode other than, well, distaste? I mean, I think I get what they were trying to do with it, but it really didn’t come across the way they intended. Or maybe it did come across the way they wanted to, but I have to ask, why would you want to do this?

I don’t even know if I am going to bother turning on the television today. Sure, there are some good games today–and maybe, just maybe, I can take a break after meeting my word quota this morning/afternoon and turn it on to see what’s going on in the world of college football; I can also just google college football scores today and be done with it, not risking the comfort of my chair and the ease of watching suck me in and end my productivity for the day. But even if that is the case and it does happen, at least none of today’s games will involve LSU–which means they won’t be stressful in the least and I won’t get worked up. The Saints play tomorrow afternoon–Tom Brady and Tampa Bay–which is late enough in the day that even if I do end up watching it, it won’t wreck my day; I should be able to get a lot done before the 3:25 kick-off time.

I wanted to go to the gym last night and again today, but the soreness of my arm has taken that off the table. I’m not really sure when I became such a delicate flower, but yeesh. I bruise deeply whenever I have blood drawn; my arm is still sore two days after a shot; and it took me a couple of days to recover from last week’s anesthesia. Maybe this is a part of getting older I wasn’t warned about (there was an awful lot I wasn’t warned about, frankly, and am starting to get a bit bitter about it all), but it’s unpleasant and it’s not something I really want to get used to or have to plan around, but I am obviously going to have to change that mindset and accept it as yet another unpleasant surprise side effect of aging.

The weather has finally turned cooler here, what other parts of the country might not see necessarily as cooler but compared to the summers, oh yes, it’s much cooler here now. It was absolutely gorgeous outside the last two days; I suspect today is going to be equally lovely. I may even take my laptop outside and work out there (the power washing of the house and concrete walk still catches me off-guard whenever I go outside; the disappearance of those layers of grime accumulated over years has completely changed how it looks out there on the side of the house), which would be crazy but kind of fun. Might as well take advantage of the weather, right? And it never hurts to get fresh air, be out of doors…

And I cannot believe tomorrow is Halloween, which makes Monday November. The earlier part of this year seems like it was a million years ago; I can barely remember what 2019 and pre-pandemic life was like. (The Morning Show’s current season takes place as the pandemic is beginning; the shutdown hasn’t yet happened but it’s weird watching it all play out again; gutsy call by the show to deal with it, I think; there has been a lot of discussion–I don’t remember when, frankly–about whether we as creative artists should address the pandemic in a book. If I do, it will definitely be through Scotty’s eyes.)

But this morning dawns bright and hopeful, as always. I slept decently (despite being up much earlier than I would have hoped) and feel rested this morning. I am going to clean the kitchen and do some organizing once I’ve finished this and posted it; I need to clean out my inbox of email; and there’s some other business I have to address this morning. It makes for a busy Gregalicious, but I feel like I can handle anything and everything this morning (which is something I shouldn’t put out into the universe, really; it rather seems like tempting fate, doesn’t it?).

OH! We watched The Way Down last night, a three part documentary on HBO about Gwen Shamblin Lara, the controversial evangelical minister who tied weight loss to Christianity (“bow down to God, not your refrigerator!). It was incredibly fascinating to watch; you cannot make this shit up in a novel, seriously. It was of interest to me because Gwen was raised in the southern version of the Church of Christ, (‘churchachrist’ is how it’s said) as was I, and after I said, “Oh, my family is Church of Christ” in the first episode when it first was mentioned…and as they went on to talk about how conservative and restrictive that sect is, with me nodding and saying “yep” over and over again, Paul finally said, “wow, you said it was bad but I had no idea HOW bad it was” which just made me laugh. We all carry scars, don’t we, from our pasts and our childhoods?

And on that heavy and somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. The dishes ain’t going to wash themselves, after all. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you all tomorrow.