Category: movies

Stomp!

Friday, Friday, got to get down it’s Friday!

Another lovely night’s sleep was enjoyed by one Gregalicious, and my mood is pleasant as a result. It really is insane how much better I feel when I’m getting regular sleep that is good; hopefully today I’ll be able to get a lot accomplished–despite the horror of knowing that we are in an excessive heat warning, with the heat index potentially climbing up to 115 this afternoon and staying there for most of the rest of the day. Yikes! I do have to go to the gym today–which would be on foot, which will send me out into the madness of the heat–but I shall survive. New Orleans and heat kind of go hand-in-hand, after all, and while this summer seems a bit more extreme than past ones, at least we have a working a/c system in the house now (which has also made a remarkably marked difference from the last two summers around here).

I need to make a to-do list, and I have a shit ton of emails to answer. Heavy sigh. It never ends.

I also need to type up my notes from my meeting with my editor yesterday, so that I am prepared to fix what’s wrong with #shedeservedit, so I can get it finished by the end of the month, which is when it’s due. I also have to finish going over the edits for Bury Me in Shadows, so I can get that finished as well–just to ensure that everything with it that she did (this is the line/copy edit) I’m okay with; fortunately I trust her but there are a few things she wants me to check. And while I do hate putting Chlorine aside for a little while, if I can get the Bury Me in Shadows things finished on time I can go back to working on it for Sunday. I don’t know, we’ll see how the weekend goes, I suppose.

Gregalicious plans, and the gods laugh.

But this morning my coffee is wonderful, and I am basking in the glow of feeling good about a lot of things. I’ve not felt good for a while; my memory is such a joke these days that it seems as though I haven’t felt good in a while about myself and my life and my writing in general for a long time. Not sure how true that is, or if it’s really just another side effect of a nasty pandemic (on-going!); but I definitely am hopeful this lasts for a while.

I watched the Olympics yet again last night; it was terrific to see Sunisa Lee become the first Asian-American all around gymnastics gold medalist, and I think possibly the first Olympic medalist of any kind of Hmong descent. The Hmongs are an ethnic minority of southeastern Asia, spread out over Vietnam, Cambodia and China; and they were recruited and used by the American military during the Vietnam War to fight the illegal war in Laos–and then of course, once we pulled out, we pretty much left them out to dry (see also: Iraqi Kurds after the First Gulf War. Sensing a theme?), and they were finally welcomed and recognized as political refugees and allowed entry to the US (big of us, right?) in the early 1980’s. I first became aware of the Hmong people and culture when I lived in Fresno–a large number of them settled there–and my parents also lived next door to a Hmong family in Houston (my mother became rather fond of the family matriarch over their years of being neighbors). I’m not sure if there are any Hmong-Americans in New Orleans; I do know there’s a large Vietnamese community here in the East (that French colonial tie between New Orleans and Vietnam–banh mih is like the Vietnamese version of a po’boy, although I think banh mih might have, probably, existed first).

Then again, there are a lot of other cultures in New Orleans that rarely get written about–Greeks, Vietnamese, the Isleños from the Canary Islands, the Haitians and Dominicans–which is yet another indication of how I could be writing about the city for the rest of my life and never scratch the surface of all the different cultures and ethnicities and influences here.

I also watched 54: The Director’s Cut again–I rented it a few years ago on Prime, I think–and while I remembered it as a much better movie than the theatrical release (which was really sappy and terrible and borderline homophobic), I’d forgotten how completely queer the director’s cut is. I was actually thinking last night about writing an essay about Studio 54-despite never having been there–but knowing that it existed was one of the first times in my young gay life that I became aware that it was possible for people like me to live differently than what I had been raised to believe was my life path and what was the cultural norm (“Looking for Studio 54” is the title I jotted down in my journal), and watching this (much better) version of the film while I made my condom packs yesterday was interesting (I also thought about doing a compare/contrast between the two different versions of the film, “A Tale of Two Studio 54’s”, but I can probably write that into my “Looking for Studio 54” essay); I think the first time I watched the director’s cut I was still completely in the headspace that Shane, the main character (a dazzlingly beautiful Ryan Philippe in all of his youthful glory) was straight but willing to do what he needed to do to get ahead; on second watch, it’s even more clear that Shane’s sexuality is incredibly fluid and while it was possible that he might be gay and just coming to realize it, it’s also not impossible that he could be bisexual. This film is a lot more sexual than the theatrical release, and has no problem exploring the gory details of the hedonism–the drugs and sex–that were the hallmark of that period and of the club itself. There are also some parallels between this movie and Saturday Night Fever–the good looking kid going nowhere who loses himself in the joys of a disco, the only really joy in his life–and there’s also the sense of Shane, rejected by his father for being a disappointment (how many gay men can relate to that experience?) and finding and making his own family; while Shane’s sexuality definitely is fluid in the film, and it never really answers the questions it raises, so much of Shane’s journey parallels the journey of so many young men in the 1970’s drawn to the glittering lights of New York away from their drab lives wherever they were originally from…yes, there’s definitely an essay there, and one that requires watching the film again and probably the theatrical release as well.

And on that note–hello spice mines! Good to see you–and Constant Reader, I will see you tomorrow.

Let’s Have a Kiki

SATURDAY!!!!!

I’m not quite sure why I always am so excited about Saturdays rolling around; left over from childhood and not having to go to school most likely…which now has adapted into my adult life into I don’t have to work today! Of course, I do have to work today–writing and editing and revising, oh my–but I don’t have to be anywhere, nor do I have to do anything I don’t want to do. I am going to spend some time cleaning today (what else is new, it’s an on-going battle here in the Lost Apartment) and I am going to try to get slightly better organized as well (one can dream) and I am definitely spending some time with Razorblade Tears today. But I am feeling well rested this morning (hurray for better living through chemistry), and honestly think I can get everything I need to get done completed. Hope does spring eternal, does it not?

Last night we watched the final installment of the Fear Street trilogy, 1666, which was quite fun. I couldn’t help but love that a lesbian romance through the centuries was at the heart of the story; I am a sucker for those kinds of stories (I was thinking of Anya Seton’s terrific Green Darkness the entire time the movie was back in colonial times; that book has been an enormous influence on me and my writing, and one I don’t often think about)–where reincarnation and lives play themselves out in different times, with the souls going back to try again to get it right. I also remembered a wonderful old ABC Movie of the Week called Crowhaven Farm, with Hope Lange, that was also rooted in that reincarnation/different times trope–it terrified me as a child and I rewatched it a few years ago when it was up on Youtube–it doesn’t hold up as well as I might have hoped, but it’s still quite interesting…I’ve always loved both ghost stories and reincarnation stories, obviously.

Last night after we finished watching the movie (and now we have to decide what new to watch, as Happy Endings played out to its truly tragic end the other night), I transcribed “Wash Away Sins” into my desktop, making changes for the better as I went. It’s an interesting story, of course, but I also need to go back and read some of my old Alabama 1970’s stories to get a better feel for it, and to, of course, name the characters properly; I can’t remember the names of the characters from this time period in my Alabama tales, and there are getting to be enough of them now that I need to keep better track of them and keep my continuity going so there aren’t mistakes. (I really need to do an overall Scotty Bible, as well as one for Chanse; you never know when I might write another Chanse something, at any rate.)

I also remembered that I have an unpublished novella in my files somewhere; years ago I had written a lengthy sequel to Sorceress, but the small press that published Sorceress went out of business or something (the ebook of Sorceress is still up, but I don’t paid anything for sales, if there are any, and I don’t care enough to do anything about it–which is yet another reason why I always say it’s a wonder I have a career) but Spellcaster is just sitting there in my files, doing nothing….obviously Fear Street triggered my thinking about it because it was part of the linked y/a books I was doing along the lines of Stine’s series; set in Woodbridge, California (also where Sleeping Angel was set) and it wasn’t bad, I don’t think; the ending didn’t work and the characters were all straight kids, but I always thought I could go back and change the main character from a girl to a gay boy–he could be a cheerleader, just as she was–and maybe expand it out another twenty to thirty thousand words and voila–another novel finished.

I guess I’ll add that to my list of “books to get finished this year or next.”

I have to say, I really love my new phone, too. The sound quality when listening to Spotify is so much better than my old one, and the pictures are absolutely gorgeous and sharp and so forth; I may go take a walk around my neighborhood later this morning (and before I shower–no point in showering before going out into the heat and humidity of a July New Orleans Saturday; hey maybe I can get phô today!) and take some more pictures. I need to take full advantage of these last weekends before football season begins again, which is when I inevitably spend my weekends almost entirely in front of the television with games on all day–well, Saturday at any rate; I only watch the Saints on Sundays–and so the window of opportunities for working on the weekends is inevitably closing.

And on that note, I am going to close this and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–no matter how you choose to spend it.

History Has Its Eyes On You

Ah, Independence Day.

That’s really what the 4th of July commemorates–the day the Continental Congress ratified, and began signing, the Declaration of Independence, when the thirteen British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard threw off the yoke of the King of England and his Parliament and said, nah, thanks–we’re going out on our own. It was extremely radical–particularly since the British Empire was the greatest power in the world since the end of the Seven Years’ War (to the colonials, the French and Indian War) in 1763; perhaps the largest empire to date in world history.

And yet…no rights for women and there was still slavery for another ninety-odd years, give or take.

Someday I will write an essay about American mythology and how I learned it as absolute truth as a child; American history (or rather, US history) was my gateway drug to world history. I should have gone into History as my major in college; it’s entirely possible that History rather than English (or business; I switched back and forth between the two for a very long time) might have garnered an entirely different result when it came to my academic career. But I also would have had to have picked a time to specialize in, and how on earth could I have ever decided? There were so many interesting periods…although inevitably, I tend to think my metiér would have been sixteenth century Europe.

Someday–probably after I retire–I am going to write A Monstrous Regiment of Women.

Yesterday was rather lovely. I actually slept late, of all things; I cannot remember the last time that happened, and thus got a rather late start to my day. I started cleaning up around the house, and organizing things, but again–a late start kind of threw me off my game a bit, and I didn’t get near enough done that I had wanted to get done. I did read a couple of short stories for the Short Story Project, and I also read some more of Robyn Gigl’s wonderful By Way of Sorrow; that was lovely. I also listened to some Bette Midler albums on Spotify (joking on Facebook that I was doing my part to break down gay stereotypes by doing so); in particular I listened to It’s the Girls and Bette Midler, before moving on to Liza with the Cabaret soundtrack, and the little known sequel to Rocky Horror soundtrack, Shock Treatment, and then moved on to the Pet Shop Boys. I made meatballs in the slow cooker for dinner, and then we watched Fear Street 1994 (which was remarkably fun), then a few episodes of High Seas (which is really fun) and a few episodes of Happy Endings before bed.

R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike, who were hugely successful writers of young adult suspense/mystery/horror in the 1990’s, actually had an influence on me as a writer, surprisingly enough. I read most of their novels when I lived in Tampa back in the day (I actually preferred Pike, to be honest), and I actually wrote three novels–Sara, Sorceress, and Sleeping Angel–for young adults during that time. I had always intended to do the Fear Street thing–where the books were all connected somehow and minor characters in one would become the lead characters in another–and spread them across the country, as opposed to one town, as Stine had done; mine would be scattered between Kansas, California, Chicago, and Alabama (one of those ideas became Dark Tide and another Bury Me in Shadows). Then I discovered, through Paul, gay mysteries and all those ideas went into a drawer, along with those manuscripts, and I started creating Chanse and his world, and what eventually became Murder in the Rue Dauphine.

Fear Street 1994 is a lot of fun, as I said, both a mystery, a slasher film, and horror–the main romantic story is a lesbian love story, which was very cool–and it also slightly involved class differentials between the town of Shadyside (often called Shittyside) and it’s wealthier, preppy neighbor, Sunnyvale. It was a fun homage to Scream as well, and it was clever, witty, and quite a fun ride. I do recommend you watch it, if you like those kinds of movies. Nothing deep, but lots of fun, and now I can’t wait for the next part of the trilogy, which drops this Friday: Fear Street 1978.

I did try writing yesterday, without much luck, logging in less than a thousand words. But rather than despairing, as I am wont to do (Oh no! I knew I was breaking my momentum!), I chose to understand and recognize that the scene I was writing needed to be set up better–which was why it wasn’t working–and it needed more than just the cursory slide over I was giving it. I am going to open the document back up later this morning–probably after getting another load of laundry finished, and emptying the dishwasher–and scroll back a bit to start revising and getting into the story again. There really is such a thing as thinking too much about what you’re writing; that’s when the door to doubt starts to open a crack and Imposter Syndrome starts saying pssst through that open crack in the door.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a happy and safe 4th of July, Constant Reader!

The Only Way Is Up

I survived the tooth extraction! I am debating whether i want to take some of the painkillers this morning–they didn’t give me anything addicting; prescription strength Tylenol and ibuprofen only, but they made me sleepy and zone in and out all day after I got home, which made yesterday a productivity bust. But my word, how well I slept last night! I do feel pretty amazing this morning–even though I can’t go to the gym again until Monday at the earliest and no solid foods till then either; which means a steady diets of soups, yogurts and protein shakes, which are filling but not satisfying in the least–so I am hoping to get a lot done this morning. We’re going to go visit Pat and Michael this evening–we haven’t seen them since pre-pandemic–and I am very excited about that as well.

So, the plan for today is to write and read and clean and edit–the usual Saturday fare–and we’ll see how that goes. There are two blog entries I’ve begun and not finished; one talking about the first openly gay guy I ever met, and the other about Superman and Lois–so I am hoping to get those written this morning as well. The kitchen has totally slid since I cleaned it Thursday night after work, and so I am going to be doing dishes and organizing and vacuuming this morning around my cleaning (and answering of emails). I want to revisit “Festival of the Redeemer” this weekend, and try to get a first draft of “The Sound of Snow Falling” finished this weekend as well as trying to revise the first chapter of Chlorine. I also have some other in-progress story drafts open on the laptop–one called “Beauty Sleep,” which stalled because i had the opening idea and the title but don’t know where to take it from there, and I think I’m just going to try to write my way out of it. I also want to spend some time pulling what I have available for the next short story collection (This Town and Other Stories) together.

An ambitious plan, to be sure.

I tried watching Camelot yesterday on HBO MAX, and was soon bored of it. It’s simply not a good film–and Franco Nero’s almost unintelligible, heavily accented English would have been fine had the dubbing of his singing also been accented. I saw this movie in the theater when I was a kid–my grandmother took me and my sister to see it at the Colony in Chicago–and LOVED it, but have never seen it since. Maybe it would be better on the big screen–it was letterboxed, so it was meant to be seen that way–but on my big screen television, the magic was lost. It was from that period after movie musicals like West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music–lavish, enormous spectacles–did huge box office and won lots of Oscars; unfortunately, it also led to expensive gambles–like Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, Dr. Dolittle, and Sweet Charity–that were massive failures (Mark Harris does a great job exploring this phenomenon in his marvelous Pictures at a Revolution; he writes wonderful books about the film industry and I hope there will be a new one soon) that bankrupted studios and eventually ended the movie musical genre (with a few notable exceptions, like Cabaret) for a good long while, which changed the movie industry as well. (hey, Mark–why don’t you write about how the summer spectacle film, beginning with Jaws, also changed the industry by moving it away from the gritty realism and cynicism of the 1970’s? Just a thought).

Okay, I took some painkillers. I don’t know if it was actually pain or discomfort I was feeling, but regardless–there was no need for either when I had pills on hand to take care of it.

I am all about better living through chemistry, and they gave me quite a supply, so I have to assume the mentality is for me to use them as needed–which is what both bottles say anyway.

We watched this week’s Line of Duty–there’s only one more episode, the series finale–and enjoyed it, before switching over to the US Gymnastics Olympic trials. I was drifting in and out of sleep through both, so when they were over, I went to bed–at shortly after nine! And had a great night’s sleep, I might add. We also have this week’s episodes of Physical–which is great, if you’re not watching–and Lisey’s Story–also great–to get caught up on this evening after we get home from Pat and Michael’s. We also want to watch a movie on Disney–Freaky, a riff on Freaky Friday in which a spree killer and a teenage cheerleader switch bodies, which could be either hilarious or awful–and I will probably go to bed early this evening as well. My body is starting to adapt to getting up at six three days a week, and I am not sure if I like it or not. I woke up at 6:30 yesterday morning–imagine my shock to discover, around eleven, that it was only eleven…but I used to always get a lot of work done before noon in the olden days, so maybe this is a return to my old productivity? Maybe NOT getting up early every day was the change that shifted everything?

The jury is still out, and you will, of course, be updated with regularity on this situation as it develops, Constant Reader.

And now, to the spice mines.

Gloria

Friday with a tooth extraction looming. Not really a yay, but at the same time I’ll be delighted to get that pesky tooth problem finally taken care of–and yes, I am at that age, and of that heritage, where I am counting the teeth I have left (the real “heritage, not hate” of rural Southern people).

I spent most of yesterday making condom packs–the boxes are starting to take over the living room, so I am going to have to take them all into the office relatively soon–and getting caught up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (#lockherup) and Superman and Lois (which I love; more on that to come), and then doing laundry and straightening things up around the house. There’s still a lot to do, as always, and I was reflecting this morning (as I lazed in bed until nearly eight) that I haven’t matched last week’s writing production at all this week. Part of it is depleted creative batteries–I really drained them writing nearly twenty thousand words in a week–and said depletion inevitably brings self-doubt and imposter syndrome in its wake. I’m getting better about the imposter syndrome (about time, really) and feel a lot more confident about writing in general lately; I am feeling more like my normal, balanced self again. I’d love to get “The Sound of Snow Falling” finished this weekend, as well as the revision of chapter one of Chlorine–as well as deciding which novella to try to get finished by the July 4th weekend (I am torn between “Never Kiss a Stranger” and “A Holler Full of Kudzu”); but that’s also going to be dependent on how the tooth thing goes and what kind of pain killers I am on for the weekend. I am hoping that I’ll be able to focus and get shit done regardless of what pain killers I am taking–but I also suspect that they aren’t going to be as free and easy with them as they were the last time I had teeth pulled, which was eleven years ago (thanks greedy trash Sackler family for creating the opioid crisis! May you all burn in hell for eternity!). My email inbox also needs attention, and I really need to sit down and write out who all I owe emails to as well as answer the significant amount of them that have piled up in the meantime.

And in a worst case scenario in which I am completely leveled by the painkillers, hopefully I can at least read, or watch movies or something. I really do want to finally watch The Godfather films–yes, I know–along with any number of classic American and foreign films I’ve never seen. One of the lovely things about working at home and doing the condom packs has been getting to watch films I’ve never seen and have always wanted to, as well as the occasional rewatch of something classic, like Cabaret or The Last Picture Show. I’ve been enjoying my education in film history, great performances, and terrific film making, even if some are flawed and don’t live up to the hype (I understand the importance of The French Connection in film history, but the plot is terribly flawed, and while it doesn’t really make Popeye Doyle into a hero…it depicts him realistically as a very flawed cop…its stark realistic approach to police brutality, civil rights abuse, and systemic racism embodied in Doyle is almost painful to watch; but Hackman earned his Oscar).

I also have some other blog entries I want to get finished and posted over the weekend–an in-depth discussion of Superman and Lois, as well as something deeply personal I may never post (that old ‘bleeding in public’ thing which I still struggle with from time to time) but I am trying to embrace my past more rather than simply moving on from it; which I also recognize is kind of strange. “You’re going to talk about things in your blog that you’ve never talked about with friends over the decades?” Yes, I get that it’s strange, but I also know in writing about things from my past–the way my mind remembers them, even if they aren’t precisely accurate–will help me come to terms with some things. My methodology of never looking back and just living in the present while planning for the future may have helped me get to where I am today, but it may not have been the most emotionally healthy way for me to grow and develop, and most of all, heal. Things I thought were scarred over have not actually healed beyond a scab, which comes off rather easily once I remember it’s there–and that isn’t healthy. Freeing myself from some of these burdens from the past could certainly not hurt in any way, shape or form.

It’s getting cloudy, which might mean a thunderstorm is arriving at any moment; not sure how I feel about that. We’ve been having a lot of rain lately–and while I do love a thunderstorm (there’s something comforting about being safely warm and dry inside while it pours down outside), we’ve certainly been having an excess of them lately. The ground is already saturated, so it’s harder for the rain to be absorbed into the ground so the streets flood more easily–and as the payoff on my car draws nearer and nearer, I worry about it being ruined more than I have…

And on that bright note, I am heading into the data-entry spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, everyone!

Shake it Up

Well, I wrote the timeline for Bury Me in Shadows last night–lame as it was; I am waiting for my editor to write me back and say, um, you could have made more of an effort on this. But it’s done, and I am well relieved to be out of those woods–for now, at any rate. I am kind of mentally fatigued; two books back to back like this will tend to do that to one–although I used to do it all the time; book after book after book. But I also didn’t used to have to get up at six three days a week, either, nor did I ever have the insomnia issues like I do these days. Last night was another of those nights where Morpheus chose to not visit my bed, but I feel relatively okay at the moment, as I swill my first cappuccino. I am sure I will hit a wall later today. Tonight is also supposed to be a gym night, but…we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve decided to put aside the Thomas Perry novel for now. It’s very well done, but I am not connecting with it, which is more my problem than Perry’s; I am just not in the mind space right now for a hired killer thriller. I’ll come back to it at some point, I am sure; so it goes back into the TBR pile rather than into the donation box. I’ve actually gone on a tear with buying ebooks on sale (or for free) lately, and I’ve also gotten some wonderful e-galleys stored in my iPad–including this year’s titles from Laura Lippman and Alison Gaylin, not to mention some sparkling debuts and some wonderful classics. Yesterday I finally figured out how to sort my ebooks (I am such a Luddite) in the iPad by title, so I could see how many duplicates there were–and there were quite a few, so I deleted all the duplicates to free up space as well as make it easier to find things in there. I think when I go visit my parents, I may just take my iPad instead of books with me to read–although I am taking the hard copy of From Here to Eternity with me–that way I can read through take-off and landing…although I suppose one could just put the device on airplane mode but I still think they make you power it down. It’s been so long since I’ve flown anywhere, it’s hard to remember. I just ordered some more books with points from credit cards that should be arriving this week–yes, yes, I know; I shouldn’t continue buying more books when I still have massive TBR piles–but I’ve cleaned out so many books over the past few months that I thought why not use the points and get some new titles, as well as the Laurie R. King backlist. I am still planning on reading something else before treating myself to A Letter of Mary–I just haven’t decided what just yet. I am torn between She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau (which Les Diaboliques was based on) and The Cook by Harry Kressing, which was filmed as Something for Everyone with Michael York and Angela Lansbury–a classic and bizarre queer film from the early 1970’s–it’s on Youtube.

Or…maybe something else.

We watched another episode of The Innocent last night; this show is so damned good and full of didn’t-see-that-coming plot twists! Of all the Harlan Coben shows on Netflix, this is my favorite so far–not really surprising, since Paul and I have fallen in love with Spanish-language crime shows (cannot WAIT for season 4 of Elite to drop)–we talked about this last night, and Paul said–and I agree–this particular show wouldn’t be as good in English, or if it was set in the US or England or France.

Of course, hot Spanish and/or Mexican actors might play a part in our thought process. Just sayin’.

I also have a story in yet another anthology that is dropping in June and can be preordered now: Unburied, edited by Rebecca Rowland, from Dark Ink Press. My story is “Night Follows Night”; which I wrote an original draft of years ago for an MWA anthology–I think–that didn’t get accepted. I revised and rewrote it a number of times, and when this call for submissions was forwarded to me by Felice Picano (thanks, Felice!) I thought, well, “Night Follows Night” loosely fits this call, and sent it off–and was very delighted to hear back from Rebecca that she loved it and wanted it. Yay! This was the same period last year where I sent off five stories in one day and sold three of them within 24 hours–which was exactly what I needed to have happen at the time, as I was going through one of my malaise periods…nothing like selling three stories in less than twenty-four hours to get you past that hump (the other two were rejected, but that was expected; they were long-shots to begin with).

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. I hope I have enough energy to make it through this day–I was planning on going to the gym tonight, but the lack of sleep for two days running means that probably won’t happen….

Plastic

Sunday and a gray morning here in New Orleans. We’re supposed to have thunderstorms (some severe) throughout the day; of course I have to make groceries and go to the gym at some point–which means watching the weather to see when I can make a break for it. But other than that, I have the entire day relatively free; I finished the revisions of Bury Me in Shadows and turned them in yesterday to my editor. I think I caught everything; it’s a tricky manuscript. But as I revised and edited yesterday, I was pretty pleased with it, overall; which is a switch from the usual. I also realized one of my problems with reading my work once it’s finished is that I am rarely, if ever, able to turn off editor-mode; because I generally read my work with an eye to editing and fixing and making it stronger–and I use that mindset when I go back and read things after they’ve been published. I don’t know if there’s a switch in my head I can flip to make that change, but here’s hoping.

Paul went to a party last night–I could have gone, but was a little worn down from finishing the edits, so I stayed home and watched a documentary series on the Smithsonian Channel called Apocalypse: The Second World War, which was quite interesting to watch. Almost all of the footage used in the series was shot either by professional documentarians or journalists covering the war, or amateurs…I never cease to be amazed when I see how young the American military were during this conflict. World War II is endlessly fascinating to me, because it was such an enormous turning point for the world and civilization; the world was a vastly different place after the Axis surrender than it was before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. It’s been a while since I read any fiction about the war–when I was a teenager I read a lot of it, as well as a lot of post-war fiction–and I realized I’d rarely read any fiction from the point of view of soldiers actually fighting on the ground or in the air (other than The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, for the most part I read things like Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War/War and Remembrance, etc.). I’ve never read Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, for example, or any of the post-war novels that sort of glutted the market in the decades following. I got down James Jones’ From Here to Eternity–I bought a copy of the unabridged version, which was released by the estate sometime in the last decade, with all the parts the publisher originally removed restored–and I think I am going to take that with me to read when I go visit my parents later this month. It’s one of my father’s favorite books and movies–it’s also been a hot minute since I’ve seen the movie–and since my main character in Chlorine served, it’s probably not a bad idea for me to read it. I read the first couple of pages yesterday evening before I went to bed, and it’s actually quite good…so I am looking forward to reading it. After I finish the things I need to get done today, I am going to curl up and read The Butcher’s Boy with an eye to finishing it today, so I can dive into A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King.

One of the more interesting things about having all these streaming services and apps is the ability to find treasures like the Smithsonian Channel buried inside of them. As Constant Reader has undoubtedly noticed, I love documentaries, and now that we have such a glut of streaming services we pay for, I am now searching through them for documentary channels and so forth, and have been enormously pleased with what I have found thus far. (I also took advantage of a special deal for Shudder yesterday–two months at 99 cents each, before reversion to regular pricing, so am going to up my horror game for a while) There’s really never a reason to be bored, is there, with the wealth of streaming services out there? I can certainly always find something, no matter how obscure–which is also why I refuse to “rent” something to stream–although I am thinking about biting the bullet and paying to stream The Last Picture Show, which I really do want to see again.

I cleaned and organized and filed yesterday as well, which has left the kitchen looking–well, if not tidy, certainly in much better shape than it had been in–and I also started another donation box of books. I also want to start clearing out the storage attic here in the Lost Apartment, which isn’t going to be easy, and will certainly make a mess in the living room–which still looks like a storm struck it–but I really do want to start getting rid of things we don’t really need anymore, and there are a shit ton of boxes up there of unnecessary things. Progress may be incremental, but progress is progress.

And I should probably, at some point, start revising and editing the Kansas book, but I think I am going to take this week off from novels.

I started writing a short story this past week–really, just the opening sentence and a second paragraph–which also came from a novel idea. The book idea arose from a joke with some writer friends about noir fiction and noir covers, with their scantily clad sex bomb femme fatales; I joked that someone should write a noir about a strip club in the French Quarter and call it Girls! Girls! Girls! so the cover could have poll dancers and so forth on it; which then of course started the wheels in my creative brain turning and meshing the gears. A character I introduced in the later Chanse books–who eventually got her private eye license and he took her on as a partner–had worked as a stripper in the Quarter to put herself through UNO; I liked her a lot (even though her name is escaping me at the moment) and had even thought about making her the main character in a series, with Chanse as part of her supporting cast. But this was different, and called for a different character–for a while, when thinking about this, I toyed with the notion of an undercover cop or FBI agent; but then thought, in this time, could a woman be assigned to go undercover as a stripper? Maybe, but it could prove problematic. And then I remembered an intern from years ago, when I worked at the Community Center, who worked part time at the Hustler Club as a “shot girl”–her job was walking around with a tray with shots in test tubes. When someone bought one, she’d place the test tube in her cleavage and have to lean forward to dump the shot in his mouth. She hated it–she was a lesbian–but the money was so damned good she only had to work two nights a week and made enough to pay the rent and the bills and so forth. Someone could easily go undercover a shot girl–which, while still demeaning, wasn’t as demeaning as stripping. But the other day for some reason I was thinking about this again, and the thing that made the most sense was that one of the shot girls gets picked up by Vice and is forced to become an informer….which would make her walk the line between the cops and her crooked, organized crime employers, as well as with her co-workers. So, when the opening occurred to me the other day, I wrote it down and saved the file as a short story called “Shot Girl” (thereby adding yet another file to the “unfinished short story” list). I think maybe this week I’ll work on one of the unfinished stories in the drawer.

And on that note, it’s time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

Mr. Disco

Ah, Friday, and the weekend looms on the horizon.

Last night was odd; there was some sort of power problem in our neighborhood–a problem I’ve never experienced anything like before. The living room had power; everything in there worked fine. The upstairs lights? Flickering, and out most of the time. Same with the kitchen and the laundry room; the refrigerator was barely on, and the HVAC wasn’t working at all; and this was only affecting our block. So, so weird–and then around eleven thirty we got all the voltage we could possibly want. I’ve never experienced “low” power before; didn’t even know it was a thing, to be honest. But at least nothing in the refrigerator spoiled–always a plus.

The Edgars went smoothly yesterday, and there were some lovely surprises. All the nominees were deserving–they always are–and it’s always fun to see the excitement of those who get the statue. Obviously, it’s way more fun in person–fingers crossed for next year–and yesterday morning as I made condom packs and broke down expired test kits for biohazard disposal (seriously, my life is just a non-stop thrill ride) I remembered past Edgar ceremonies I attended and deeply enjoyed. I inevitably drink too much–it’s the free wine, always a danger for one Gregalicious–but my favorite ceremony remains the very first one I attended, when I wore a kilt and then took the train with friends the following morning to Washington for Malice Domestic. As I have mentioned before, my memory–once sterling and dependable–is now in tatters, so am trying to remember that first ceremony and evening and am finding it difficult, to be completely honest. I think that was the year Charlaine Harris was MWA president, and Carolyn Hart and Robert Crais were named grand masters, but I could be wrong. I also don’t remember which year Stephen King won for best novel–but it was the year Sara Paretsky was president of MWA, because I have a great picture of the two of them together from the cocktail reception before the ceremony. The third and final time I went–I think I’ve only attended three times–was the year my friend William J. Mann won for Best Fact Crime for Tinseltown. I always enjoy the Edgars and Edgar week activities; missing out on a ceremony the last two years was disappointing. I am hopeful next year we will be able to have it in person again.

Fingers crossed!

I also managed to get deeper into the revision of the book last evening before Paul got home and we settled in for three episodes of season 4 of Line of Duty–and Acorn loaded the fifth season yesterday as well.So, that’s the weekend pretty sorted. I also want to spend some time with The Butcher’s Boy, perhaps even finishing it–so I can dive into my next Mary Russell adventure. I am also currently reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmerman Telegram–and it occurs to me that all the espionage and so forth that went on before the American entry into the first World War between the Germans and Mexico (trying to keep the US occupied and distracted from what was going on in Europe, as well as disrupting the supplying of the Allies) could make for a wonderful “Holmes in New Orleans” story. New Orleans was a major port (still is, actually) and fairly close to Mexico…hmmm. I was also thinking about the banana intrigues–seriously, that is one of the most fascinating times in New Orleans history!

We really are enjoying Line of Duty, which is an interesting take on your typical crime show. The heroes of the stories–each season is relatively self-contained, although there was an over-all arc that tied all the first three seasons together–are an anti-corruption division; so the good guys are cops, but so are the bad guys. It is chilling to see how easy it is for the cops (at least in the show; I don’t know enough to comment on reality) to corrupt and divert an investigation; falsify evidence and so forth; with no concept of how deep and how high up the corruption actually runs. Thandie Newton is the dirty cop in season four, and like the previous villains/guest stars of previous seasons, she is terrific in the role. Can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

Yesterday afternoon as I made condom packs, I watched North Dallas Forty. This is a 1979 film starring Nick Note and Mac Davis (!), and was adapted from Peter Gent’s novel. I had read the novel, but had never seen the movie; it came up on Twitter a week or so ago when someone asked people for the best sports movie (I said Brian’s Song, and stand by my answer). Laura Lippman brought up North Dallas Forty, which made me think of Semi-Tough, another pro football novel and movie from the same period (remember? I tried to reread it and the blatant racism was so horrific I put it in the donate box after rereading the first page?). I’d like to reread the Gent novel–it was very dark; painkillers and drugs and alcohol and rapes and sexual assaults and racism and all kinds of horrible behavior–but unlike Semi-Tough, the Gent took those issues seriously and didn’t try to play them for laughs. The movie takes the same tone as the book–dark–and Nolte is really good as the wide receiver whose years playing have battered and broken his body and left him needing painkilling shots to play and swallowing pain killers to get through the day, and the alcohol and drug abuse. Mac Davis is surprisingly good as his best friend, the quarterback–who eventually betrays him in the end to keep his own contract alive. The game scenes are particularly funny; even in the 1970’s professional football stadiums were better than where these scenes were filmed; the “stadiums” they play in look like high school football fields–and not even the better ones. It definitely fits into the Cynical 70’s Film Festival–it exposes the “team as a family” mentality as the crock that it is, and that the players are all just cogs in a money-making machine for the owners, and the coaches don’t give two shits about their players, either.

I still stick with Brian’s Song as the best sports movie, though.

And on that note, this data isn’t going to enter itself nor are these condoms going pack themselves, so it’s off to the spice mines with me.

Get Out

Saturday morning and feeling…maybe not fine, but not bad.

Edits are on my horizon today, lots and lots of edits. That’s fine; I need to get this done and I’ve been turning the manuscript and story and so forth over and over in my head all week, and think I am finally ready to get this accomplished. Huzzah? Huzzah!

We were supposed to get a thunderstorm last night, but I don’t know if it ever came through; the sidewalk is wet outside so obviously at some point it rained; but I apparently slept through it. I slept pretty decently last night; I woke up around 4 this morning, and then did that in-and-out-of-a-half-sleep thing until I got up around seven thirty. I am a bit foggy this morning, which the coffee should help with, and I intend to spend some time this morning with my Laurie R. King novel, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, which I am enjoying the hell out of; it will be hard to tear myself away from it to go to work, but that is indeed what I must do today, and I am sure when the time to go to work rolls around I will have to force myself to tear myself away from Sherlock and Mary; but I can also spend some time with them again tomorrow.

My April plans seem to have swirled around the drain, haven’t they? Perhaps I was feeling a bit ambitious as we headed into this month, and yes, this month there were a lot of outside distractions–issues with the apartment, the flooding of the laundry room/kitchen, etc.–plus issues with sleeping; it’s no wonder I didn’t get a whole hell of a lot done this past month. I did get some good research done on Chlorine, and even get some background preparatory work done that was necessary before I start writing it, so that’s something, at any rate; I’ve not had as much luck with writing and/or creating new short stories this month–or even revising/finishing ones I’ve already started.

I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

While making condom packs yesterday I watched Taylor Swift’s Reputation concert film on Netflix, and after it dove directly into Miss Americana, also on Netflix (I told you, I’m turning into a Swiftie). I enjoyed both tremendously, in all honesty; I’m not quite sure why she appeals so much to an almost-sixty year old gay man, but there you have it. Last night we also finished off the first season of Line of Duty, which was quite good, and are now going to move onto the second season; there are at least four that I am aware of, and we’re really looking forward to this second season. It’s quite good–I’m not sure if the second season is going to continue examining the corruption within the police department the first season focused on, or if it’s going to jump around to different stations; and the end of the first season wasn’t exactly a great example of justice being meted out…but it was a lot more realistic than most shows with the ending they chose–it’s easy to see and understand how that would be exactly how “justice” would play out when it comes to corruption within the police department.

Sad, but true.

And on that note, I am heading to my easy chair to read and swill coffee for a bit–Scooter is whining, which means he needs a warm lap to nap in–and I hope you all have a simply marvelous and productive (or relaxing) Saturday; whichever you choose, Constant Reader.

Evil Dust

The sun is actually out today and there aren’t many–if any–clouds in our beautiful blue sky this morning, which is lovely. It’s rained pretty constantly ever since Tuesday afternoon, and everything outside is still wet from nearly a week of rain. I love rain–especially thunderstorms–but even I thought five straight days of them was a bit extreme. I wound up running my errands in the rain yesterday–I dropped off another five boxes of books to the Ladder Library sale yesterday (you actually can tell now that I’ve gotten rid of books)–and made groceries and got the mail. It was pouring while I did all of this, so my plans to go to the gym yesterday were finally scrapped. I also wound up taking the day off from almost everything yesterday–I think I needed a brain-free day, frankly–and so we watched a lot of television–we binged all the way through a delightful comedy called The Other Two, watched the Tom Holland movie Cherry on Apple Plus, and then switched over to Acorn for a riveting crime show called The Cry.

Yes, I was a slug all day and I am not a bit ashamed of it.

Oh, sure, I had my journal with me and scribbled notes freeform all day–my favorite is that I came up with a short story title I now HAVE to use, “To Live and Die in La.”, while having absolutely no idea what the story would actually be, but I laughed at the title and now want to. use it–so I did do something. But today I have to start revising/copy editing/making notes on Bury Me in Shadows–due to be returned to my editor no later than the first of May–and so, if I do go to the gym today (leaning towards it, since it’s sunny out) I can curl up in my easy chair to do it, so that’s a start. I really need to work on my story–the deadline for that submission call is May 15, I believe–and so I need to kick everything up a notch this week. I am getting caught up on a lot of other things as well–it’s never-ending, and have also accepted that I only have so much bandwidth for things. The emails, for example…I’ll never get caught up on those, ever…so I need to prioritize and so forth in order to get through everything that absolutely needs to be responded to immediately.

I also need to spend some time getting organized and cleaning a bit this morning. There’s filing to be done, of course–always–and somehow the kitchen looks like a tornado ripped through here (not completely an exaggeration, to be honest) and I need to get that taken care of this morning. I have a load of laundry to do, and there’s always dishes–always. I also want to organize the refrigerator a bit more this morning. Since the sun is out, I’ll probably grill hamburgers later on this afternoon, which is always an absolute treat (I really prefer all meat to be cooked over hot charcoal, frankly–or at least, most). I am also a bit excited that the next step of book decluttering (and yes, I am aware I am completely Marie Kondo-ing my apartment) is to go up into the storage attic and start clearing the boxes up there. This will, of course, be more complicated than the bookcases and the hidden boxes in the living room, since I’ll have to bring them down and go through them, combining the ones to keep (I can’t imagine there will be many of those) while putting aside the ones to donate. The goal is to clear out enough space in the storage attic so I can clean out my storage rental and close that account; most of the books in the storage are copies of my own books (and my kids’ series collection) along with some other things–mostly papers–and it would be nice to either no longer have that bill every month, or to use that space for other things…but at the moment I can’t think of anything that we’d need to keep it for.

But it would be great to lose that bill by the end of the summer.

Not as great as paying off the car, but still pretty good.

I think I’m going to add Semi-Tough to the donate pile. The first three pages are nothing but racial slurs as well as justifications for using them, and how the main character–it’s a first person narrative–isn’t really racist and the slurs are just words that don’t mean offense and so on–and yeah, I really don’t feel like spending any of my time with that kind of character. I certainly wouldn’t in real life–imagine being at dinner or a cocktail party and the person you are talking to says, and this is a direct quote from page one: Just because I may happen to say (the n-word) doesn’t mean I’m a racist.

Um, actually it does. It says a lot about you, who you are, and how you were raised, as well as how you see people and the world.

And I really have no desire to read a book filled with racial slurs…because you KNOW its also full of gay slurs, too–and most likely without the caveat justifying the racial slurs: Now listen, just because I say “faggot” doesn’t mean I’m homophobic.

Sure, Jan.

There are so many other good books to read, why reread something I originally read as a teen that plays on racism and homophobia and misogyny for humor? I stopped rereading The Last Picture Show, a book I absolutely loved, a few years ago when it got to the part about bestiality, and how it was perfectly normal for the teen boys to fuck animals…I closed the book and put it away. I may go back and reread the entire thing at some point–the reason I was rereading it in the first place was to examine how it handles homosexuality–which I distinctly remembered it doing–but I don’t think I was able to get far enough into it to get to that part. I know that Coach Popper–long-suffering Ruth’s awful husband–was a deeply repressed one, who favored one of the more athletic boys primarily because of his attraction to him; that the preacher’s son Billy Bob Blanton was often mocked and teased and bullied and humiliated for being a “four-eyed queer” (before he molests a little girl, after which he’s taken away as a pervert); and that the heterosexual English teacher, who was cultured and sensitive and kind, was accused by the coach of impure thoughts and fired (everyone, of course, would never suspect the manly football coach of anything, or question him); and I remembered a particular poignant scene between the fired English teacher–who’s been fired, whose wife has left him and taken their daughters and filed for divorce–and Ruth, where he’s just so beaten down and defeated that it’s heartbreaking. But yeah–that whole “boys will be boys” attitude towards bestiality was too much for me to get through again.

The Last Two is a terrific show, and quite funny. Paul and I really enjoyed it; the premise of the show is the two older children are in their late twenties–one is a struggling actor whose most recent audition was for a commercial in which he would play “Party-goer who smells a fart”; the daughter had wanted to become a dancer until she broke her ankle and dropped out of dance school and cannot figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life–when suddenly, their thirteen year old brother puts up a video of him singing a ridiculous song (“Marry Me at Recess”) and becomes an overnight viral sensation with a record deal and a manager under the name “Chase Dreams”; which makes them feel even more like losers. The older brother, Cary, is also gay and in a weird relationship with his straight roommate; the daughter has broken up with her boyfriend and is now homeless at the beginning of the show. I thought it was terrific, frankly, and look forward to season two.

My primary takeaway from Cherry is that Tom Holland is an amazingly talented actor–he really gives a stunning performance as a poor young man who falls in love, gets his heart broken and joins the military, serves as a medic in Iraq and comes home to nothing but PTSD and drug addiction, which leads him to a life of crime. It’s a very dark story–but also weirdly a love story at the same time–and I don’t think the film, worked overall; the Russo Brothers, who directed, turned it into this big grand opera style thing in the way they shot it; to the point where the beautiful imagery is almost intrusive. It’s a very real story–based on a true story–and it highlights, very powerfully, how we abandon our troops completely after their service is over (since they’re no longer the troops….”support the troops” makes me angry because it is used primarily as a political prop and the actual soldiers themselves suffer in silence and neglect while we give billionaires and corporations every break in the world), but it’s worth watching for Tom Holland’s performance–he was also fantastic in The Devil All The Time–and it’s really nice to see him pushing himself in his non-superhero roles (he’s also the best, in my opinion, Spider-Man).

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