Category: LSU

Stir It Up

GAME DAY! GEAUX TIGERS!

I got home from Outreach last night drenched in sweat, overheated, and  generally feeling pretty awful, I’m sad to say. I felt much better all day than I had the day before–the day of rest was obviously something I had needed–but when I went out to catch the streetcar–well, the heat and humidity was a bit much. I waited nearly half an hour, without luck, for a streetcar before finally giving up and walking the three miles or so to the outreach corner.  By the time I got there, I was drastically overheated and felt terrible. I stuck it out for as long as I could, but finally realized around eight o’clock that if I didn’t start heading home, I might not make it. Once home, I rehydrated and watched some weird history videos on Youtube before finally heading up to bed and going to sleep.

This morning? I feel better, and rested, but my legs are very tired and there’s still some rehydration required. I’ve got about seven hours to get myself together before we head up to Baton Rouge for the LSU home opener tonight (GEAUX TIGERS!), but hopefully by the time the game starts the sun will be setting and the heat will ease up a bit. I survived the horrible heat during the LSU-Auburn game of 2015, when the heat index was 117 inside Tiger Stadium, and while yes, I am some four years older than that now, I think I can survive it again.

Time will, of course, tell.

Today is the day I need to buckle down and finish writing Bury Me in Shadows, and there’s definitely some straightening up around here that needs to be done. I’m also planning on spending some time curled up in my easy chair with Rob Hart’s amazing The Warehouse, which I highly recommend, even thought I am not very far into it. The characters are interesting, and the concept of the story is even more compelling and original; it’s quite an accomplishment! Bravo, Rob, bravo.

I love when writers hit the ball out of the park and their careers take off, which is what is happening here. GO ROB!

I also have a lot to get done over this holiday weekend. I must fight off the demon of procrastination–which even as I type this is trying to lure me into my easy chair with The Warehouse–else none of this will get finished. The volunteer project I’m working on–have been working on–should be finished with one last big push on Monday (yes, that’s what I’ll be doing on Labor Day; laboring) and I have some website copy to write tomorrow (it’s due tomorrow as well) but if I managed to get Bury Me in Shadows finished today, I’ll be ready to get going on the final revision of the Kansas book for the month of September, which is the plan. It won’t be easy getting it finished in a month, particularly during football season, but if I focus and stay on top of it, I should be able to get it done. I have an essay due on September 15th, and another short story due on October 1 that I also need to get written.

Heavy heaving sigh. There really is no end to any of this, is there?

And on that note, it is back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!

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Break Up to Make Up

Friday morning of a Labor Day weekend, and I slept well last night. Yesterday was plenty bad; I felt sick most of the day. I did manage to eat some things, periodically; a grilled cheese here, a banana there, a protein shake…and my stomach began to settle and my blood sugar also stabilized. I was also really dehydrated, so I drank a lot of water and Gatorade. I still feel a little dehydrated this morning, but I am not exhausted, and feel pretty decent otherwise. I do feel a bit hungry–I’ve had some toast already, and will probably have a banana or something else snacky in a moment. I have to remember to hydrate, I need to remember to eat, and I have to try to keep my blood sugar stable.

The hardest thing, for me, about getting older is the changes to my body that require me to change my habits. My eating habits have always been bad, and I’ve never in my life drank enough water on a daily basis the way one should. I eat terrible food–and I also sometimes forget to eat. I rarely am hungry–and if I don’t eat when I get hungry it will pass and I will forget to eat, which didn’t used to be an issue but now? It really is. Part of yesterday’s problem began on Tuesday, when I had a small lunch and nothing else to eat the rest of that day. I slept poorly Tuesday night, and then on Wednesday again, didn’t eat until dinner–which didn’t help with low energy and feeling tired; my blood sugar dropped to dangerous levels and then that night I didn’t sleep either, so yesterday I woke up with blood sugar so low I had no energy and everything ached; I hadn’t slept so was completely exhausted; and I was dehydrated on top of everything else…a perfect storm of conditions I need to be wary of in the future.

And of course, I was reading Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, which opens with one of the characters talking about pancreatic cancer, which he has, and thinking, oh, maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.

Not. Helpful.

We also watched two more episodes of Thirteen Reasons Why last night; there are only two more left to go, and it does feel like they are stretching the story in order to stick to the “each season must be thirteen episodes” mandated by the first season. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still enjoying the story and how it’s playing out lazily, but in order to play things out the way they need them to, sometimes plot twists or character behavior feels contrived; the only reason the twist or the behavior makes sense is because it’s necessary for the plot. They are dealing with heavy issues for teenagers–rape (both girls and one boy), drug addiction, suicide, murder, voyeurism–and perhaps most interesting of all: the dangers of being a self-loathing closet case. In this last case, I am kind of torn. On the one hand, I like they are showing how horrific it can be to realize you’re gay when you have an alcoholic and abusive father and are part of the jock culture; Monty’s self-loathing is the key to his villainous behavior (and make no mistake, Monty is definitely the villain of season three), but it’s also not explored. Monty is just an asshole, and it never gets any deeper than that; maybe one of these last two episodes is devoted to him and we’ll see some understanding and be able to develop some sympathy for him. On the other hand, I am not sure I like having the closeted gay kid as the clear villain of the season. As I mentioned before, the openly gay character was clearly written out of this season, and the lesbian/bisexual Asian girl who was a main character in season one basically only makes cameo appearances this season…so the only representation of a queer character is this one, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Also, this rehabilitation of the rapist story arc this season also makes me uncomfortable; but on the other hand, Bryce was such a cartoonish villain in the first two seasons that he seemed unrealistic; as I said the other day, Hitler loved his dogs. And whenever I write about character development, or teach a workshop on character development, one of the things I always emphasize is that villains are also three-dimensional characters; very few people are all good or all bad, but most everyone is a combination of the two. Seeing another side to Bryce is an interesting twist to the story, but I’m also not sure how much this “nice side of Bryce” is actually earned. On the one hand I applaud them for showing that rehabilitation is a possibility for even the worst of the worst, but there’s also a sense of “both sides”-ism to this.

But…it’s making me think, and isn’t that what these kinds of entertainments are supposed to do?

So, I am going to spend my day answering emails—I also have errands to run–and later on I’m going to try to get Chapter Twenty-four finished, before I take a streetcar named St. Charles to the Quarter so I can work condom patrol tonight for Southern Decadence. We definitely are getting the tickets for the LSU game, which is very cool (GEAUX TIGERS!), and so I also need to do some cleaning around the Lost Apartment so we can go to Baton Rouge tomorrow absolutely guilt-free.

Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

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Papa Was a Rolling Stone

Wherever he laid his hat, was his home…and when he died…..all he left us was alone….

I do love that song. It’s always fun when a song title pops up for use that’s a song I really love.

I’m not feeling particularly well this morning. I’m not sure what it is. I had another not-good night’s sleep last night–two days in a row, actually–and this morning my stomach is really bothering me. I’m not sure what it is, but yesterday was terrible. I was so tired and blood sugar was ridiculously low most of the day, which also didn’t help very much. I did manage to get the major project done, and this morning I am glumly looking at about a gazillion emails in my inbox that must be dealt with. I’d hoped that tired as I was yesterday, I’d sleep well–and was very sleepy throughout most of the evening, until, of course, I went to bed.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I was so tired yesterday I forgot it was the anniversary of the evacuation in 2005, which makes today the Katrina anniversary. Lovely, particularly as there’s a storm in the Atlantic targeting Florida–just the same way Katrina did fourteen years ago, before crossing over into the Gulf, speeding up and heading for Louisiana. My thoughts are naturally with everyone in Florida; but I am also keeping a wary eye on this storm’s progress. We may have tickets for the LSU-Georgia Southern game on Saturday night (GEAUX TIGERS!), which is another reason I don’t want to be sick for the weekend. A conundrum, really, and a quandary; should I stay home and rest today, dose myself liberally with–I don’t actually know what, to be honest. It’s my stomach, combined with exhaustion; what do you take for that? I guess one could simply lie down and read, or something. I don’t know. I also hate to use up my sick-time this way; but I need to decide sooner rather than later, don’t I? But all I have to do tomorrow is pass out condoms for four hours tomorrow night, which means I have the whole day free to sleep in and rest and all of that; and then it’s a three day weekend.

Decisions, decisions.

Okay, well, now that I’ve eaten something we’ll see what happens next. I’m personally hoping my stomach settles down, because I would rather go to work than stay home, to be perfectly honest.

Since I finished the big project again yesterday–some more work from it will show up, in dribs and drabs over the next week, I suspect–I can now focus my energies on these last two chapters of Bury Me in Shadows’ first draft, which I would like to be done with by Sunday, which is September 1st. I also want to start reading Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, and Lisa Lutz’ The Swallows.

Well, I’m still feeling terrible and it’s about time to start getting ready, so I think I’m going to stay home. I hate skipping work for sickness; I also hate being sick in general. As I’m getting older that’s one thing I’ve noticed–I’m more susceptible to being sick than I was when I was younger, to go along with all the newfound aches and pains; it seems like every morning there’s a new one. I honestly don’t mind getting older–I certainly never thought I’d make it this far–other than being betrayed by my body and my health. About the only thing I’d want back from being younger is energy and the ability to sleep deeply and well every night. I know that my body is changing–and not for the better–but every time something happens–like when my back wrenches from picking up the laundry basket wrong, or I turn my head too quickly and my neck gets sore–I think to myself, yes, you really can’t fool yourself into thinking you’re still a young man anymore, can you?

Sigh.

Well, I’m going to go lay back down. Hope you have a better day than me, Constant Reader.

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Peaceful

Hello, Wednesday!

I slept strangely last night, in that I felt like I was awake all night but my body was resting–you know, that awful feeling of awareness where you know if you just open your eyes you’ll be awake? That. So I feel rested this morning, but at the same time I don’t completely trust that I’m rested, and suspect I’ll be very tired this evening. Today is my new short day of the week, which is lovely–I’ll be leaving the office around three-thirty this afternoon, stopping at Rouse’s for a few staples, and then I’ll be home.

One of my massive volunteer projects–the one I was so proud of finishing a few weekends ago–has reared its ugly head again, so I spent a good portion of last evening working on it before I went to bed. Another solid push and this phase will be finished; with one shorter phase still to come. Ideally, this will all be done and finished by the end of the weekend, which would be absolutely lovely. But then again, you can’t always count on things finishing when they should or on time, can you? But it was also one of those things hanging horribly over my head and causing me stress, including the stress of inertia; the feeling that there’s so much to do there’s no way I will ever get it done. I sent “Moist Money” off the other day; we’ll see how it plays. It’s a very dark story, but I kind of like it, and I really love the hardboiled gay voice of the main character.

I’ve always thought the Chanse series was my outlet for darkness; my hard-boiled series, whereas the Scotty books were more along the lines of a cozy series, even though Scotty became a licensed private eye. Even though he’s a professional, he’s still really an amateur. But there are people who have told me they love the humor in the Chanse series…which I’ve always thought was rather humorless, so there you go. (It’s like how I thought my story “Annunciation Shotgun” was pure noir and dark; people found parts of it funny even though the story was noir…which was weird for me. But at least they weren’t laughing at the story, but with it, so I didn’t mind so much. I have such a dark sense of humor anyway, I guess it was inevitable that my dark stories would also be humorous in some ways, too.)

Obviously, as I’ve been working on this project I’ve not gotten back to Chapter Twenty-four of Bury Me in Shadows (oh, so close!), but I am hopeful that if I finish the project today, I can get back to the book tomorrow night, and maybe get it completely finished Friday afternoon. I only have to work Friday night, passing out condoms in the Quarter, so I am probably going to run my errands and everything Friday during the day, so I can just stick close to the Lost Apartment over the weekend. There’s college football this weekend (HUZZAH!) and an LSU game Saturday night (GEAUX TIGERS!), and of course the Saints play on Sunday. I also want to start reading Rob Hart’s The Warehouse this weekend, and then I have Lisa Lutz’ The Swallows queued up next, before I get back to the Diversity Project.

We watched another episode of Thirteen Reasons Why last night, and Episode 8 is a particularly good one. The cast is so appealing, and they have such great chemistry together, that I am glad to overlook some things in the plot that don’t make a lot of sense. I also noticed–and maybe I am just not remembering anything from the previous seasons–but there used to be two queer kids at this school; a guy and the Asian girl who is student body president. They’ve been basically erased from the story–the guy is not even mentioned, and the girl was only in a couple of episodes in her role as student body president, but she was downgraded from supporting cast to cameos with little to no explanation. I wonder why? Anyway, last night’s episode is the one where Tyler finally tells Clay the truth about what happened to him, and why he snapped and wanted to die. The kid playing Tyler is phenomenal, probably one of the best actors in the cast, and he was heartbreaking., positively heartbreaking. I’m also not comfortable with the redemptive arc being given to the rapist, even though he’s dead. I understand what they are doing–what he did was inhuman and monstrous, but he was a person, and I think by trying to show him having regrets about what he did, and doing good things for other people, trying to atone…we never saw that in the first two seasons. But yes, it is important for people to understand that monsters are also human…as an editor told me once, years ago, when I was getting started, even Hitler loved his dogs.

Probably some of the best advice about character I’ve ever gotten from an editor.

All right, back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!

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Hocus Pocus

Tuesday morning, and I somehow managed to survive yesterday. Sunday night’s sleep wasn’t terrific, and by the late afternoon I was plenty exhausted and tired. I had to persevere, and what’s more, I was interviewed for a podcast last night when I got home from the office. Somehow I managed to get through that, and within half an hour of disconnecting from Skype, I was in bed and asleep within moments. Last night’s sleep was quite lovely–I feel amazingly rested this morning–and so this day might not be as terrible as the previous.

Today is going to be a good day.

I started writing two new short stories yesterday, “The Spirit Tree” and “Moist Money.” “Moist Money” is for an anthology I was asked to write a story for; it finally came to me sometime either Sunday evening or sometime during the day yesterday, and I scribbled down the first two paragraphs in my journal, which I transcribed yesterday, and then added another couple of hundred words. “The Spirit Tree” was inspired by moving books around on Sunday, and one of them–a nonfiction book about snake-handling churches in southern Appalachia–I opened the cover and looked over the first page–which was about “spirit trees”; trees that rural Appalachian folk, superstitious and religious as they are, create to keep bad spirits away. What they do is put glass bottles on tree branches, so the bottles clink together in the wind (“warriors, come out and play”) and the sound the glass tinkling against other glass makes supposedly scares away evil spirits and keeps them from infesting the house. I hadn’t thought about spirit trees since I was a child, and I thought, not only is that a great title, I can actually think of a rural noir story to write that matches it. Yesterday I got down about five to six hundred words of the opening; this is a story, I think, I might try to sell to Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock when finished. I was too tired to do much more than write the openings of both stories last night; but I am hoping to get more written on them this week. I also need to get those three chapters of Bury Me in Shadows written, so it can sit and percolate for the next couple of months until I can get back to it.

It’s also weird to think Royal Street Reveillon will be out into the world next month. It seemed like it took me forever to write that book, and I guess it kind of did? But it’s nice; I’m glad to be putting another Scotty out there into the world, and I’m also not sure when I’m going to write the next one. I already know what it’s going to be–Hollywood South Hustle–but I’m just not sure when I’m going to get to it. I want to, as I have said in previous blogs, get all these books about teenagers I’m in some stage of writing cleared off my plate and out into the world before I start writing anything else–a cleansed palate, as it were–and keep writing my short stories and essays along with writing those. I’d love to get my second short story collection out into the world by 2021–that would be the one I’m calling Once a Tiger and Other Stories–and I also want to get “Never Kiss a Stranger,” a novella, finished sometime before the end of the year, as well as “Fireflies,” my horror novella, as well.

So much to do, right? And I really need to proof Jackson Square Jazz so the ebook can finally go up for sale again. Maybe I can make that a goal of my long weekend for my birthday? Stranger things have happened. I really need to get all these things that are hanging over my head finished and out of the way, so I can focus more easily on writing Chlorine next year.

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

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Superfly

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Thursday.

I slept rather well last night, which was lovely, and today is one of my short days, which is equally lovely. I made some terrific progress yesterday on Major Project, not so much on the WIP but it’s okay. I’ve made peace with the fact I can’t work as hard in as short a period of time as I used to, and I feel confident that once Major Project is out of the way, I can make some more progress on everything else I need to get done.

I still have short stories I need to write, as well as an essay, and am hopeful that between today and tomorrow and this weekend–plus the long birthday weekend i am treating myself to next week–will give me the time to get all the things done that I want to get done. I haven’t had time to do much reading this week, but I need to get moving on S. A. Cosby’s My Darkest Prayer so I can dive into Laura Lippman’s new Lady in the Lake, which is getting raves everywhere. Again, hopefully, that will come to pass this weekend, and what a lovely birthday gift for myself to spend my birthday long weekend curled up with the new Lippman?

Life rarely gets better than that, seriously.

We finished watching Years and Years last night, and it remained interesting all the way until the end–even if the death of my favorite character kind of cost me some of my emotional investment in the show. I was quite critical of this character death yesterday, yet still held out some hope that the death wasn’t really exploitative and would make sense in the over-all story, once it was finished; you know, the sense that it wasn’t done simply to advance the story and motivate characters to the actions that would move the story to its inevitable end. I think it could have gotten to that inevitable end without this character’s death, frankly, and so it remains another sad example of show business’ favorite gay trope, bury your gays.

Overall, despite this disappointment, I did enjoy the show…although not as much as I did before bury your gays reared its ugly head.

But I am now in the short part of my work week, the two half-days that help me ease my way into my weekend. When I get home from the office late this afternoon, I can do some straightening and cleaning and I can also get back to work on Major Project, or the WIP. Tomorrow I also get off relatively early–one in the afternoon–and it has occurred to me that I could just run to make groceries then and get the mail, negating the need to leave the house over the weekend (running those errands always seems to throw me off every weekend but I need to be more disciplined anyway; soon enough Saturdays will be all about college football and Sunday will be Saints games, so my weekend productivity is about to go into a severe decline (I often read and/or edit while I am watching football games that are neither LSU nor the Saints, so there’s that), so it’s crucial that I start getting things done throughout the rest of this month. I’d like to get all these little things done this month so I can focus in September more clearly on JUST ONE THING for a change.

I’ve slowly been coming to a conclusion about my career, and I actually said it out loud to my friend Laura at lunch on Tuesday, which made it more real, and having said it out loud, it resonated inside my head and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Simply put, I don’t think I’m going to write much more young adult fiction, or novels that could be classified that way. Watching y/a Twitter has been horrifying, and that entire world just–yeah, no thank you. I had always wanted to write books for teenagers, going back to discovering Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine and Jay Bennett back in the early 1990’s (Jay Bennett was amazing, absolutely amazing), and it was never about trying to make a lot of money or anything (despite being accused of that any number of times), but simply stories about teens that I wanted to tell. Currently, I have three novels in some sort of progress centering teenagers; I am going to get them finished and then I am going to leave y/a behind (I still have two good ideas for y/a books; I may eventually write them, or I may not).

I’ve been reassessing my career a lot lately–I wish I had a dollar for every time someone told me I should write something more mainstream, so I could make more money….because I would then have so much money I wouldn’t need to write anything at all. There are stories I want to tell–I have ideas coming to me all the time–but I am never going to stop writing stories centering gay men. I’m just not wired that way. I may write things that are more mainstream–a lot of my short fiction isn’t about gay men–but i am never going to stop writing gay stories. I’m just not going to, nor should I have to, and while I understand the good intentions behind people telling me to write something more commercial, I can’t help but wonder if people say that to other minority writers?

I kind of doubt it.

But now I need to get ready to face my day, so it’s off to the spice mines with me. Have an absolutely lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll chat with you again tomorrow.

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The Cover of the Rolling Stone

Wednesday! Huzzah!

Another lovely night of sleep last night; I was really tired. The two back-to-back twelve hours days have been wearing me out lately; combination of stress with all I  need to get done no doubt, and of course the heat of a New Orleans summer. The kitchen this morning is a bit of a mess, and I hope I have time this morning to get it straightened up a bit. The two short days begin tomorrow–huzzah!–and I need to get so much done it’s not even funny.

I finished Chapter Twenty last night; another 1400 words or so. I am hopeful to get back to my old 3000 per day total soon, but even if they are coming slower than I would like, I am getting them done–slowly but surely. I started to say that the words are terrible but I’ll take them; and then I remembered–Gregalicious, that is self-deprecation and haven’t we decided we aren’t doing that anymore? So, while Chapter Twenty is certainly not ready for the printers, it does what it’s supposed to do–move the story along, show us more about our main character and his burgeoning relationship with his love interest–and therefore, it needs some work but I am quite pleased with how it’s all turned out thus far. The next chapter is going to be trickier still than twenty was; there’s still a lot I need to have happen and revelations to come. But the end zone is in sight; if this were a college football game I’d be in the red zone, which is joyous.

Seriously, there were times when I thought I was never going to finish this draft.

As always, I am behind on everything; I am beginning to think that this is something I do to myself subconsciously to create the pressure which some part of my being thinks is necessary to get things done. I used to think I had a tendency to be self-defeating; that I was so afraid of succeeding that I deliberately set up road blocks to keep myself in a constant state of failure. I no longer think that I am self-defeating, although I do think I have a fear of success somewhat; why else do I keep doing things that apparently, according to all conventional wisdom, are the exact opposite of the things I am traditionally supposed to do in order to succeed?

We watched another episode of The Boys last night, and I have to say we are really enjoying this show. It’s getting progressively darker, and there’s also some scathing political commentary on the modern world as well. The parallels between the show’s United States and our current country’s recent history that are undeniably there, and frankly, we don’t come out of it looking too good–nor should we.

I’m hoping to read more of Steph Cha’s book today, and maybe even later when I get home tonight, if I don’t write for a while when I get off work this evening. There’s a new episode of Animal Kingdom available as well.

And football season is drawing ever closer. Tomorrow is August 1!

Where has this year gone already?

My toothache has almost completely gone away now; the tooth is still a little tender so I am aware of it, but as far soul-destroying pain, that’s no longer an issue. Huzzah indeed! I do need to go see the dentist though. Heavy sigh. I really loathe going to the dentist, but I suppose that’s fairly obvious given my teeth situation.

I am excited for football season; for the cooler weather and for both LSU and the Saints this year. LSU recently unveiled their new football training center, which is absolutely insane, and not without controversy; the battle between athletics and education is never-ending. Frankly, I’m deeply sympathetic to those on the side of education; LSU’s academic budget has been cut to the bone, majors have been decimated, and the campus library is in terrible condition. A brand new, $28 million state-of-the-art training facility for the football team at this time is kind of slap in the face to those worried about the state of higher education in this state. But the money wasn’t taken away from academics; the $28 million raised for this wasn’t taken away from academics but raised from donors who probably wouldn’t have given the money–or as much money–for a new library or to save a major that was being cut. LSU football, whether people like it or not, is big business now; and in fact some of the profits from the football team have been fed back into the University general funds since about 2012. Now, arguing about whether college football has become too big, too big time, and too much like professional sports–yep, college football has seen some enormous changes since I was a kid; it’s certainly not the same sport in 2019 that is was back in 1979, and those questions are valid and perhaps a debate we should be having.

But college football in 1979 was also vastly different from college football in 1959, or even 1969–when it was populated by mostly white players. I also agree that LSU desperately needs more money than the legislature is providing for it; maybe less tax cuts for the rich and for oil companies in Louisiana? Investments, not just in LSU but also in the University of Louisiana system, will pay off in the future for the state, and I’ve never understood why education has never been a priority for any politicians in Louisiana since Huey Long.

Of course, the argument could also be made that the political class isn’t interested in an educated populace; the more critically a person can think, the less likely they are to be swayed by emotional appeals based in nothing when they vote. One could also make this argument a national issue instead of just a state one; the decline of funding for education across the board on a national level over the last few decades is frankly scandalous.

But college sports didn’t create the education crisis, but it’s an incredibly easy target.

Or maybe as a lifelong college football fan (I only care about the Saints in the NFL) I am too hopelessly biased to opine on the matter.

But I will, nevertheless, continue to look forward to football season.

I also watched the third part of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion, which wasn’t particularly interesting. The reunions aren’t my favorites, although if you don’t want to waste your time watching an entire season, you can pretty much catch up on everything by watching the reunions (I used to do this with the ones I didn’t watch much, like New Jersey and Orange County.) But once you’ve watched an entire season, the reunions aren’t as “explosive” as the promos promise.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Could It Be I’m Falling in Love

Monday morning, and I slept relatively well, despite not getting everything done this weekend that wanted doing  and getting done. C’est la vie. I refuse to beat myself up for not getting things done anymore. I needed some down time to relax and refresh my brain, so there is also that. I did manage to finish reading Jay B. Laws’ The Unfinished, and I’ll get started writing that introduction this week. I took some notes about themes for the essay, and I’m not certain what kind of direction I’ll take with it–but I know it’s going to have something to do with the loss to the sub-genre of queer horror, and how important Laws is to the development of said sub-genre; more queer horror writers should read Laws, methinks. This last book of his was published after his death from HIV/AIDS in 1993; I’m sure his death, and the fact that he only published two books, has something to do with that.

I weep when I think of the books we’ve lost because he died so young.

It’s also kind of hard to believe July is almost over. Where did this month go? Between the 4th and my staycation, city flooding (heavy rains in the forecast for today, too, hurray), and the weirdness that was Hurricane Barry, this month has been off-balance and definitely a hard to focus one. I have eight days with which to finish this draft of Bury Me in Shadows, and somehow, I doubt very seriously I am going to get there–but I intend to go it the old college try.

Stranger things have happened, after all.

August, of course, is my birthday month, which means another staycation built around my birthday, and shortly after that is Labor Day, which means another lovely three day weekend. And Labor Day brings with it the return of college football, and of course that means the Saints are back, too. Will the Saints have another great season? LSU is predicted to be really good this year, as well; getting over the Alabama hurdle will be difficult (the game’s in Tuscaloosa), but it’s entirely possible.

We watched Shazam! last night; my Apple credit card sends me the periodic iTunes gift card whenever I “earn a reward” with them (I’m not entirely sure how that works, but using the card and paying the bill has something to do with it) and I still have, even after renting Shazam!, a decent amount of credit left on the gift card. Shazam! was fine; a superhero movie more for kids than adults–which makes sense, since Billy Batson is only a fourteen year old; obviously the film isn’t quite as grim or dark as, say, Man of Steel or any Batman movie, but it was entertaining enough and Zachary Levi did a really nice job of playing an adult super-hero who is actually a fourteen year old on the inside. We then switched over and continued watching the CNN docuseries The 2000’s; and frankly, the ones on politics and world affairs will show, quite clearly, how we wound up in the mess we are in now–suffice it to say the right has been playing a very long game that has been paying dividends, and we’ll leave it at that.

I intend to start reading my ARC of Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay this week, as well; I am excited about this and simply cannot wait to get into it.

Tonight we will watch the finale of Big Little Lies, and of course I need to get through my two long days this week. I’ve been sleeping well again, and am hopeful this will continue so I can keep getting things done over the course of the week. It isn’t always easy motivating yourself to write (or to clean) when I get home from work after a lengthy twelve hour day.

So, before I head back into the spice mines, I am going to make a to-do list, and this time I swear I am going to stick to it.

Later, Constant Reader!

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Say Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose

Paul and I both stayed up way past our bedtimes last night, finishing the third season of Stranger Things. I had spent the afternoon finishing The Pacific on HBO streaming service (it’s really quite brilliant and moving and heartbreaking and horrifying; probably one of the best things about the horror of war I’ve ever seen, and how it wrecks the young men who fight them–if not physically, than psychologically). As such I slept later than I usually do this morning–much later than usual, which is obviously a problem as I have to go back to work tomorrow morning which means getting up extremely early. I’m not terribly concerned, however; it is what it is.

We never lost cable or power yesterday; and it didn’t even rain in our neighborhood until later in the evening; I think it was around eight-thirty that I got a tornado warning alert on my phone. I checked it out on my computer–it wasn’t for our area, but further downtown and in the lower river parishes, who also had overtopped levees and flooding. That was when I noticed it was raining outside. There wasn’t thunder or lightning, just rain. We’re still in a flash flood alert, but I think I’m going to go take a long walk in the rain and retrieve my car from the Touro parking lot, where I took it Friday afternoon just to be on the safe side. I need to stop at the grocery store, but I suppose it will also depend on if one’s open. I suspect the city is fairly operating normally again today, but I’ve also just woken up and am still on my first cup of coffee, so I could be wrong.

I managed to get absolutely nothing done over the course of the last four or five days; the city flooding and that aftermath, while trying to prepare for the arrival of a tropical storm/hurricane kind of drains you of most energy and your ability to focus. The waiting is also horrible, I might add, the wondering endlessly if you made the right decision or not, whether you should have fled when you had the chance, and so on. This is how it ever was, and how it ever will be. Paul and I were talking about this very thing on Friday, as we adopted our usual wait-and-see mentality. We have actually only evacuated twice; once for Katrina, and for Isaac (or was it called Ike?) in 2008. The other I storm left us without power for the week leading up to Labor Day in 2013, I think it was–I just remember we had tickets for the LSU game that Saturday, and the irony of sitting in the heat all day that Saturday after complaining all week that we didn’t have a/c or power, only to have it come on the night before was kind of the most Louisianan thing we’ve ever done.

I also feel that all of my friends and family deserve an apology for the horror that was the storm coverage all week, culminating in emails, texts, and posts/PM on social media. And admittedly, the arrival of hurricane sex symbol Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel here on Friday was not a good sign. New Orleans and tropical weather has been major news, alas, ever since the levees failed, and nothing gets clicks and views like apocalyptic headlines and news coverage. I’m sorry all the 24 hour channels and even some reputable news organizations decided to go down the terror route for everyone; I’m sorry you all had to be put through that kind of stress and worry on our behalf.  Don’t get me wrong, it makes my heart feel full that so many people nationwide care, not only about New Orleans, but about Paul and me and our friends and our lives here. Thank you for that. I just wish the media wouldn’t put you all through it…as we always say down here, this kind of coverage is what makes the really dangerous storms get not taken as seriously as they should be.

Paul and I are also very prudent, and cautious. In our twenty-odd years here, we’ve learned what to listen for and who to listen to; which local stations are dependable, which models of storm tracking to pay attention to, and we also aren’t ever locked into a decision–we make a decision based on the information available at the time, continue to check, and adjust decisions accordingly based on new information. We’re not meteorologists by any means, of course, and there’s always the possibility we’ll make a wrong decision–and your concerns and worries mean so much to us. Don’t ever think that’s not the case.

And once New Orleans is out of danger, it’s truly awful and sad to see how quickly the story dies…despite the damage that actually was wrought, and continues to be, from this storm system. New Orleans isn’t the only part of Louisiana that is below sea level, and protected from flooding by an at best iffy levee structure system. This system is going to continue to dump lots of water everywhere on its path, and it has the upper Mississippi valley, already in flood stage, square in its sights. Even as I type, the north shore is in tornado warnings, and there are also flood warnings for rivers on the north shore. The North Shore and the I-10 corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge were horribly, unexpectedly flooded several years ago–places that generally never flood, or at least, not often–and they are still recovering from that horror. (I think that was August 2016?) So, do keep those areas in your thoughts.

Storm days, as we call them down here–the free days off from work because of weather, the tropical version of Snow Days–aren’t conducive for getting anything done, at least not for me. Even though I ignore the doom-and-gloom news, and pay attention to the reports I’ve found reliable over the years (I still miss Nash Roberts!), there’s always that nagging sense in the back of your head, that horrible little voice whispering are you so sure? Are you so sure that not leaving is the right thing to do? That is, as you can imagine, emotionally draining and exhausting, and also makes it hard to focus on anything. I can never write or edit during these times; reading is often difficult as well. So I wind up watching a lot of television: this time, Band of Brothers (still unfinished), The Pacific, and Stranger Things. I did enjoy this third season of Stranger Things, even if there are enormous holes in the plot and things that didn’t make a lot of sense; but as entertainment it really did a great job–and it also introduced new characters to the cast seamlessly; not an easy task.

But I do think this enforced period of inactivity–in addition to my vacation the week prior–may have done some wonders are far as kicking my creativity back into gear, which is lovely. I think today–after getting the car and doing a minor grocery gathering–I may sit down with the first seventeen chapters of the WIP and reread them, making notes and figuring out the final act of the book so maybe, just maybe, I can get a strong, workable first draft finished by the end of this month. That puts me behind schedule, of course, but I think I should be able to work on my next project alongside a revision of the Kansas book for the next two months. Maybe that’s an overestimation of what I can do, and get done–it is, after all, going to be the dog days here–but we’ll see.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines and getting back on track. The house is a mess and needs straightening–and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that we could still lose power.

Thanks for all the good thoughts, y’all. Greatly appreciated.

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My Love

Monday morning gave me no warning, of what was to be.

Heavy sigh.

I’m still reeling from a highly productive day yesterday that, ultimately, achieved nothing. Writing the first chapter of a new Chanse novel–when I had thought I was finished with the character, outside of short stories–was probably not the smartest way to go with my work, but at the same time I’m not terribly upset by it or see the day as wasted. I did managed to write over three thousand words in less than two hours, and they were actually good words, ones that I probably won’t be discarding if I decide I want to work on this more–I can always keep it there in my back pocket, and if I get stuck on something else I’m working on, I can work on it, and therefore never lose a day to not being able to figure out what’s going to happen next with anything.

Sigh. I told you I have creative ADD. The struggle is real, yo.

I’ve not worked on the WIP now for two solid weeks, which is completely insane. I’d hoped to have the first draft finished by the end of June–which now is not very bloody likely–so I could move back to the Kansas book and get it revised by the end of July. I’d like to keep to that schedule somewhat; if I can somehow manage a chapter a day on the WIP I’d be awfully close to finished by the end of the month, and the revisions on the Kansas book might actually allow me to go back and forth between the two throughout July. It would be awesome to have both finished by the end of July, although not very probable; the heat here is going to start picking back up again (it’s already in the nineties every day) and the heat and humidity are such energy drains. My preference for a New Orleans summer would be to never go outside unless absolutely necessary; that unfortunately isn’t possible, so I try to deal with it the best I can…which is changing my socks regularly, washing my face every few hours, and praying for October to arrive.

Football season is also just around the corner, and experts are predicting terrific seasons for both LSU and the Saints; we’ll see how that goes.

I started reading Howard Zinn’s The Twentieth Century over the course of the weekend; while I still want to keep up with the Diversity Project–which has been amazing so far–I think I might spend the summer reading mostly non-fiction. I have all these books about New Orleans history, as well as Louisiana history, and I really should start making my way through those as well. The primary problem, of course, being that reading nonfiction often kickstarts my creativity genes into gear and I start coming up with other ideas for stories and novels–as it is, if I spent the rest of my life writing the ideas I’ve already had, I’d never be able to finish writing them all, so having new ideas all the time is hardly the best thing for me…although don’t get me wrong, I don’t ever want my creativity to ever just completely shut down on me, either.

I can’t imagine ever having my creativity just completely shut down.

I hope it never happens–although I always worry it will.

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

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