Category: New Orleans

Do They Know It’s Christmas

I have to write today.

The temperature dropped overnight, and so it’s a bit on the chilly side this morning in the Lost Apartment; it felt rather muggy and humid last night when I retired to bed, so this morning I put on a T-shirt and am now realizing I should head back up and get a sweatshirt. Hang on, I’ll be right back.

Thanks for waiting–that’s much better. The sun in also shining, and I do think I am going to take the day off from the gym again. The shoulder is still sore, and I am worried that–even though it didn’t really bother me on any exercise other than the triceps pushdowns Thursday–doing anything weight-bearing could keep aggravating it, even if I don’t feel it while I am doing the actual exercise, so yeah, probably best to wait and let the strain or whatever the hell it is go away. I may go and do some step exercising–all cardio machines suck balls for me, and while using the step and doing my own little step aerobics routine probably isn’t good for my leg joints, it’s not hurting my shoulder and let’s face it…I need to do some cardio in addition to the weights if I ever want any of this extra weight to go away; lifting weights at this point is clearly not going to be enough to trim off the middle fat this time around…especially if I keep straining or injuring muscles.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But that’s part of getting older, isn’t it? I suppose I should consider myself lucky that my body has managed to hold it together for so long, that it took until I was fifty to injure myself enough to stay out of the gym for a long long time, and that it’s still capable of going to the gym at all. Better my shoulder than my back, after all, and it’s not structural at all; it’s muscle, not joint or cartilage or bone.

Yesterday was kind of a nice, if low energy, day. I finished watching Chapelwaite–more on that later–and did some cleaning around the Lost Apartment as well as did some deep thinking about the book; mindless chores like vacuuming and doing the dishes are really good for that sort of thing– so that was helpful; I know now what changes I need to make to this draft to make it better and I am going to spend today going through those first chapters, which should be enough of a trigger for me to get the next chapters done this week–and I am also going to spend some more time on the chores today as well. So, so close to having everything cleaned up and organized…and I want to finish rereading A Caribbean Mystery today, so I can move on to something else. I have so much to do, and the clock is ticking on the deadlines for so many things….AIEEEEE. But I slept very well last night, and I feel very well rested this morning, and so am hopeful that I will be motivated to get the things done that I need to get done.

And the first thing I need to do is look at the to-do list I made last week at the office and see if any of it got done (doubtful). But I did find some interesting research details yesterday (I looked up Valerie’s house and floor plans; I love that you can find all that stuff on-line; my copy of Lloyd Vogt’s New Orleans Houses is also an incredibly valuable resource), and that’s one of the reasons I want to reconstruct these first seven chapters; I also feel that the heart of the story isn’t well expressed there in my desperation to get as much done as I possibly could as quickly as I could, and the book never really flows–I always get stuck–when the opening isn’t as good as I think it should be. So, that’s my task for today, once I get through my coffee and finish some other chores around here.

The excitement truly never stops.

But there’s a load of laundry tumbling in the dryer; the living room is a disaster area; and of course, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded so I can empty the damned sink. There are piles of papers and folders everywhere here in the kitchen office, and trash everywhere. I hate how I let things slide this way, but yesterday, as I said, was an incredibly low energy day for me; it’s a wonder I got as much done as I did.

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

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

I woke up this morning to the news that Anne Rice died last night.

She was an enormous influence on me and my life, for any number of reasons. It was her book The Witching Hour that made me realize that I needed to come to New Orleans, that awakened my connection to the city that was maybe always there in my head yet was dormant; I cannot precisely place what it was about that book that opened the connection necessary in my head to know that New Orleans was where I belonged. There was just something about that book, the way she wrote about the city and its magic, that drew me here. The weekend of my thirty-third birthday I came to New Orleans, and it was the first time I ever felt connected to a place, that I had finally found the place where I belonged, where–if and when I were to move there–all of my dreams would come true. Her love of the city where she was born and grew up comes through so powerfully in The Witching Hour, and the book remains one of my favorites to this day. The friend I stayed with that weekend–knowing how much I loved the book–took me on a drive around the city and through the Garden District, and pulled up the house at the corner of First and Chestnut. “This,” he said with a big smile, “is where she lives. Do you recognize the house?”

I got out of the car, dumbfounded. The home of the Mayfair witches was real. It was on the corner of First and Chestnut, just as she wrote in the book. There was the massive live oak in the front yard. There was Dierdre’s porch, just off to the side of the front gallery of the house. There was the pool in the side yard. There was the window from which Antha fell to her death.

I did what any number of fans and tourists did, of course; posed for a picture by the front gate. That picture–all of the pictures from that weekend–were lost over the years and many moves, from apartment to apartment in Tampa, from Tampa to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, when I finally, at long last, was able to move home to the city I loved…where, as I suspected when I read The Witching Hour, all of my dreams came true.

Eight years after we moved here, I lived through a horrible nightmare. One night on Memorial Day weekend, Paul and I had gone to the Quarter for a book launch party and then went out for a few drinks. We ran into another friend at one bar but I wanted to go dancing. Paul stayed behind with the friend, said he’d catch a cab home, and off I went. I came home and he wasn’t there. I went to bed…and woke up later that morning to a phone call that no one ever wants to get. Paul had been attacked by a group of homophobic thugs and beaten, badly. Had it not happened directly across the street from the Verti Marte, the two college students who had stopped there to get something to eat on their way home from work wouldn’t have seen it happen, and run out screaming at them. The monsters escaped, but had those girls not taken action, he most likely would have beaten far worse, perhaps (probably)killed.

I don’t remember much, really, of that day or the next few weeks. I do remember how kind people were, and how much support I received.

But what I really remember is how the crime was mishandled by the homophobic cops who were called to the scene–the girls told me all about when they called (and to this day, I regret never getting their names)–and as a result, the possibility that the attackers would be caught and punished evaporated. It didn’t make the Times-Picayune for several days–the timing is very unclear to me to this day; those days are jumbled and unclear in my mind–but I will never forget that Mrs. Rice made a public statement about what happened, and she also went on all the news channels in New Orleans to talk about what happened, and offered a reward.

And one night, after I got home from the hospital, I decided to tackle the monumental task of thanking people, who had reached out, who’d offered help, who were holding fundraisers, etc. etc. etc. I knew Mrs. Rice’s address, but figured she would probably never see a thank you card given the amount of mail she probably received; I had always heard stories that she actually had a phone number listed in the phone book (yes, I am “look it up in the phone book” years old) and sure enough, there was a number listed. I also figured, as I dialed, that it was probably just a message line, but I had also heard that she listened to all the messages, so I thought when the recorder picked up, I would talk really fast to get everything out that I wanted to say before the beep cut me off.

But a human being answered the phone, a woman.

“Hi, I was wondering if I could leave a message for Mrs. Rice?” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

“Yes, of course.”

The words started tumbling out of me. I said who I was and who Paul was, and that I wanted to say thank you to her for offering a reward, for her public statement, and how much it meant to me, to both of us, that probably the most famous person in New Orleans would do that for total strangers. My voice broke a couple of times, my eyes filled with tears a couple of times, and I had to stop to take a breath every once in a while. When I finally finished, the woman on the other end of the line said, very kindly, “Well, of course. It was the least I could do.”

I was stunned. I was talking to Anne Rice herself. I had read all the books. She was one of the reasons I had finally found home; the place where I felt I belonged–and was now, of course, questioning that; I had read all the books and enjoyed them all; she lived and wrote about one of the most beautiful houses I had ever seen and was kind of a personal touchstone for me in the city; and now, she was reminding me why New Orleans was home.

We talked for a while, actually; I know she asked about me, she asked about how he was doing, she wanted to be certain I was okay–this total stranger who had looked up her phone number and reached out just to say thank you. I don’t know how long we were on the phone, but I do know, when I finally apologized for bothering her and taking up so much of her time, she replied, “You didn’t waste my time. I’m so glad you called because I was so worried about you. And if you need anything–anything at all, please don’t hesitate to call. Hospitals and medical expenses can add up very quickly. You just let me know what hospital and I’ll take care of everything. Please take care of yourself. And please, call at any time.”

I never called again. But I’ve never forgotten that Mrs. Rice, one of the bestselling authors of the last fifty years, one of the biggest celebrities to live in New Orleans, took a personal interest in two total strangers, and did whatever she could to try to bring attention to what happened as well as try to catch the perpetrators, and how incredibly kind and gracious and caring she was to someone she’d never met, and would never meet.

I had always wanted to attend one of her signings, to thank her in person not only for everything she did in that aftermath of what happened to Paul, but for how incredibly kind and generous she was to a shaky, barely holding it together total stranger who called her out of the blue one weeknight. But it never worked out for me to do so, and now she’s gone.

RIP, Mrs. Rice, and thank you again. You were truly a great lady.

Santa Baby

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and I am a bit tired. I went to the retirement party last night (note: it was not in the Bywater, but actually in Holy Cross, on the other side of the Industrial Canal; a neighborhood I’ve not been to in years. But then again, I’ve really not spent much time in the Bywater in forever either), and it was absolutely lovely. I enjoyed spending time away from the office with my co-workers in a relaxed environment, it’s been a hot minute (and not just because of the pandemic, either) and it was nice spending time getting to know them outside of a professional environment. I laughed a lot more than I thought I would, and stayed much later than I had planned–it was almost one in the morning when I finally rolled into the Lost Apartment, but was very delighted. I had a glass or two of champagne spread out over five hours (and they were very small), so was okay to drive, but have a bit of a headache this morning.

It feels more sinus-y then anything else as well, so I think once I take a Claritin that problem will clear itself right up.

Today I have a lot to get done; I need to get back on track with the book, I need to go to the gym (but continue to baby the left shoulder, which is still a bit sore this morning; note to self: Icy Hot), I want to finish reading A Caribbean Mystery, and I also want to finish watching Chapelwaite. I only have two episodes left, and despite that really slow burn first episode, it really picks up steam and starts going full blast, the pace picking up with every episode without losing the integrity of the story or the characters. It also has inspired me to write a sort-of sequel to Bury Me in Shadows–well, that’s not quite true; I’d always intended to return to Corinth County with another book, and but watching this show gave me the inspirational story spark I needed to come up with the story. I scribbled down a lot of notes yesterday, and while I need to focus on the current book, I am itching to get to this one sooner rather than later (a constant problem with this my writing career, which never seems to change despite my advances in age) but I definitely need to get to Chlorine next.

So, next year is going to be about Chlorine, another Scotty, and this second Corinth County book, which will start tying the threads of the county spread out over many different stories, both short, novella length, and novel, together. (Which was one of the primary reasons I was dreading writing such a book; tying these threads together was going to be difficult, but now i sort of know how to do it all; there’s one novella in particular that isn’t going to be easy to tie into the others, but I think I know how to do it now)…) And the novellas. And the short story collection. And the essays. And….yikes. Just typing all this out made me very tired.

I also had a rather scary moment this morning when I saw a headline about a fatal, catastrophic tornado (or rather, series of them) devastating Kentucky; I really wish the news would be less generic in headlines or click titles for articles about such things. The vast majority of states are actually rather large in size and scale, and while obviously I feel terrible for the residents of the state affected by this disaster, at the same time I was extremely relieved to go look at a map and see it was in western Kentucky, a significant distance from my family in eastern Kentucky. I understand the need for clicks and so forth is the on-line Internet business model, but still. Nevertheless, these tornadoes devastated a vast swath of that area, including Arkansas and Tennessee and I believe Missouri, and as someone who has lived through and dealt with natural disasters myself, I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for those who have lost loved ones as well as homes and property (the gulf parishes south of New Orleans are still struggling to recover from Ida, by the way). Please donate to the relief efforts if you can.

And on that note, I have an excess of emails to clean out, a kitchen office to organize and get ready, and a book to get back to writing, amongst many other things to do and they ain’t getting done the longer I sit here writing this. Have a happy healthy Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you tomorrow with a progress report.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Friday morning and I have a dear friend’s retirement party to attend in the Bywater this evening. I have to run some errands–including stopping by the office–at some point during the day, and it looks like I shall have to postpone working on the book until tomorrow as there isn’t any way to make time for it today. But these things happen; sometimes life doesn’t allow an author an opportunity to write. It’s not the best possible outcome of a day, of course, but there it is.

I also further aggravated a muscle strain in my left shoulder (usually it’s my right one that becomes an issue, from an old wrestling injury) at the gym last night. I noticed the ache the last time I went to the gym–and thought I could push through it at the gym again last night. I noticed it when I was doing the chest exercise–I had to significantly lower the weight in order to do the exercise–but ironically, the only other time it was an issue was doing tricep pushdowns, when the shoulder merely works as a stabilizer for the working of the triceps. I had to abandon that entirely, and it did make me wonder as I walked home how I strained the muscle in the first place? It’s also worrying, now that I am back into the swing of actually working out again, that I now have a ready-made excuse to talk myself out of going every other day. On the other hand, it’s just a strain of some sort–not even a pull–so it can undoubtedly be worked around. The gym was also very crowded last night, which was irritating; I really need to get used to going into businesses that are more full than I’ve gotten used to over the past year or two. And especially since it’s now Christmas time; everything and everywhere is going to be more crowded.

Sigh.

While I was making condom packs yesterday I started watching Chapelwaite on Epix. I originally started watching it with Paul, but he thought it was too slow and didn’t care to continue watching it. I knew almost from the get-go that it was most likely a slow-burn; it was very Gothic in feel, which inevitably means a slow-burn (a friend asked me if I was watching, and when I said we’d stopped, told me to go back and finish–and she was right). The show is exceptional–it did take me a while to get used to Emily Hampshire playing someone not Stevie on Schitt’s Creek–and if you’re into Gothic horror and suspense, it’s right up your alley. It also handles issues of class, race, prejudice and provincialism extremely well; and the steady sense of dread and building suspense is quite remarkably done. I am really looking forward to finishing watching, to be honest. The afternoon flew past as I watched. It’s based on the story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” by Stephen King, from his Night Shift collection, and yes, it does sort of fit into the mythology of his terrific novel ‘salem’s Lot. I’m not sure if that was his intent when he wrote the story–Chapelwaite, the house in the story, is in some ways similar to the Marsden House in ‘salem’s Lot–which is yet another reason I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

It also gave ma a good idea for another Alabama book, a sort of sequel to Bury Me in Shadows. So huzzah indeed!

But as Friday looms, there’s a lot I have to get done this weekend–I really need to get caught up on the book; I want to finish reading A Caribbean Mystery, and as always, there are endless chores to be done, and don’t even get me started on my email inbox–but I have faith that I shall persevere, and will come out on the other side of the weekend with much ado and accomplishment. (Yes, I do crack myself up from time to time, thanks for asking.) I slept really well last night–we got through the second season of OG Gossip Girl and are now into season three; it really is fun to watch, especially seeing bigger name stars of the present in early roles–Armie Hammer (although one can argue he no longer has a career of which to speak) was in the second season, for example, and yes, shame that he turned out to be what he turned out to be, as he was very good looking and reasonably talented–and our addiction to this show is allowing other shows we watch, or ones we want to watch, pile up so we’ll have plenty to watch in coming weeks and months, which is lovely.

I also think I am finished with Paul’s Christmas presents, but am not entirely sure. I’ll assess once they are in my hot little hands and wrapped (and hidden). And I do need to do my Christmas cards at some point–tick tock, said the clock.

And on that note, tis time to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will speak with you again tomorrow.

The Christmas Song

Wednesday and yet another Pay-the-Bills Day. Huzzah? HUZZAH.

Yesterday I was tired. I slept better on Monday night than I had on Sunday night, yet somehow by the afternoon I was far more tired than I had been the afternoon before. I really didn’t want to go to the gym after I got home from work, but I did, and I also wrote a (shitty) chapter of the book before Paul got home. I felt really great after the gym, and I slept amazingly well last night. (The first time I woke up in the night–I did so twice–was to find a purring Scooter curled up next to me, which he never does; he always sleeps on the other side of Paul rather than in between us…and never underestimate the power of a purring cat to help you sleep.) It’s taking me a hot minute to wake up completely this morning–it’s also raining, which also makes me feel drowsy and is not helpful to the waking up process–but I feel very well rested, which bodes well for the rest of the day. I do have some bills to pay today, and lots and lots of emails to answer.

Ah, the sisyphean task of answering all the emails.

It’s funny, but the other day I was cleaning out/organizing electronic files and came across an essay I started writing several years ago as the introduction to an essay collection I was thinking about putting together (which I promptly forgot about; and didn’t remember when the idea occurred again earlier this year–so this year’s idea of an essay collection wasn’t even original!) and I opened it and started reading…hilariously, as mentioned parenthetically above, it was a reflection on getting older. Apparently, there’s no such thing with me as an original idea during this pandemic, because I had these ideas already and before. I keep saying that aging has never really bothered me but sixty kind of shook me up to my core, but there it was, an essay at age fifty-seven, triggered by me noticing (for the first time) that the skin under my chin/jawline was loose. (Yes, yes, it’s probably been loose for years, but I really don’t spend much time looking in mirrors; usually when I am shaving and I have to take my glasses off and so can’t really see anything but blur.) But it was interesting to revisit how I felt about confronting my age (in my head I am forever stuck at 35–even though my eldest niece is now in her forties, which makes it harder to keep that delusion going. Although I think I have finally pushed that deception out of my subconscious and have embraced being sixty…at least can say it without shuddering.)

So tonight when I get off work I am going to head directly home, methinks; home to clean the kitchen/office, perhaps the living room; do some laundry; write another chapter of the book; and hopefully spend some more time with A Caribbean Mystery. I was reading an article about Christie’s enduring popularity last night, and this book was mentioned (along with two others) as one whose title had to be changed because of racist implications in the title; which I didn’t remember (And Then There Were None had the most notorious original title; which was corrected to something considered less offensive but then became offensive, and hopefully its latest title in the UK–Ten Little Soldiers–will stick for the rest of its history), and so I looked it up. It did always have the same title, although its entirely possible that the offensive content was inside the book–I’d already marked some questionable content regarding the locals on St. Honoré–and will have to do some more research into the book and its history to see if it was, indeed, the content and if the edition I am reading is one where the content had been cleaned up.

It was foggy last night when I walked to the gym, and since I now generally go after dark, I’ve been taking pictures of Christmas decorations. The foggy night gave some of the pictures a more eerie feel, which was pretty cool, and so I think tomorrow night after the gym I might detour through the Garden District on my walk home–fabulous decorations on the houses there, of course–and I would like to head down to the Quarter at some point to see how it’s decked out for the holidays; it’s really such a lovely time of the year to do this sort of thing. It’s also helping me feel reconnected to the city in a way I’ve not really felt since our office moved, since I no longer work one block outside the Quarter anymore. I do miss that, and now that I am writing another book about New Orleans I really need to feel more of a connection to the city than I have in a while. I’ve really felt disconnected from everything, really, since this pandemic began, but am starting to feel much better about everything the more time passes and the more things slowly start coming back to some sort of what passed as normal in the before time.

I guess we’ll see how everything goes, won’t we?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!

Winter Wonderland

And now it’s Tuesday! Hope your Monday was lovely.

Yesterday I was tired; I didn’t sleep well on Sunday night but managed to still get quite a bit finished over the course of the day. There were tornadoes (YIKES!) on the North Shore, but I ran some errands on the way home in the rain and then wrote another chapter of the book–another shitty-ass chapter, but a chapter nonetheless–and also caught up on logging entries for the Bouchercon anthology ( as well as sending acknowledgement emails), and made progress on the email inbox, which was delightful. It’s always nice to feel like you’re getting somewhere rather than just spinning your wheels, isn’t it?

I also spent some time thinking about my short story, “Solace in a Dying Hour,” which is what I’ve renamed “The Rites of False Spring” (which is a great title and I will recycle, it’s just not right for this particular story); I really like the new title, it’s from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Tamerlane”; I was paging through a collection of his poetry and that line jumped out at me, and I thought, you know what, that title fits the story you need to write better than the one it currently has and so decided to swap them out.

I woke up before the alarm this morning, and I do feel rested–the upcoming shower will undoubtedly shake off the cobwebs, at least one would hope so–but once I had finished writing and cleaning the kitchen last evening, I was a little too tired to actually do any reading, so I just sat in my chair waiting for Paul to come home while watching Youtube videos about ancient Egypt; the 18th dynasty to be exact, and primarily about the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten, who is just absolutely fascinating to me, and someone I would love to write about sometime–alas, it would require ever so much more research than I have time to do while working, of course, but someday I will make the young adult book ideas I have based in Egyptian history to fruition. (I love when I think about the books I will someday write–the ones that require more research than I have the time to do while juggling everything I must juggle now; as though retirement will eventually provide me suddenly with a lot of free time…which I have already become aware is nonsensical dreaming, since even taking time off from work inevitably involves time being lost to unforeseeable yet easily predictable distractions. Hell, just trying to carve time out of the day to go to the gym is a process of if I go what will I not be able to get done?)

We continue to wind our way through the original Gossip Girl, which is quite fun. I cannot imagine why we never indulged in it the first time around–probably the same reason we never indulged in either The Vampire Diaries or The Originals, assuming we weren’t the right audience for them–but I have no desire to read the books at all, and we’ve also noted continuity errors that are just sloppy writing; “oh, we need to completely forget about this in order to make this episode happen”, which often is annoying–like how i never forgave the Dynasty writers for the massive cheat out of the Moldavian Massacre season finale. I am also highly amused by the Dan Humphrey talented writer who wants to be a writer story–why is it that movie and television writers never understand how writing actually works? I love how he can, in one night, write a brilliant short story–without revision or rewrite at all; no one ever gets anything right in the first fucking draft–as well as the fact that as a seventeen-year-old he got a story published in the New Yorker, yet is worried about getting into Yale and his future as a writer. Um, if a seventeen-year-old got a story into the New Yorker, agents would be lining up for him and he probably wouldn’t have to worry too much about getting into Yale; every university with a strong writing program would be lining up with scholarship offers–faculty wouldn’t have stories in the New Yorker. None of the writing classes I ever took in college ever emphasized the importance of revisions, editing, and rewrites; that’s the one thing I wish I would have learned myself while I was in college.

I am also at the stage in writing a book where I am absolutely certain it’s horrible and I’ve lost my ability to write and this is the book that will decimate my career once and for all, so I guess what I am saying is things are back to normal in the Lost Apartment.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Happy Tuesday, Constant Reader.

Some of Shelly’s Blues

Thursday, and Gregalicious is working at home today. Huzzah? Huzzah! I do like working at home; it always has been best for me to work in isolation; my attention span is such that being around co-workers inevitably means distraction and lower productivity than I would prefer. This is especially true when I am doing data entry; it’s much easier to make mistakes and get distracted when others are around and talking, even if they aren’t talking to me. The printer/copier/scanner (business sized) is right behind where I sit at my cubicle, so every time someone prints something or needs to copy something I see them approaching out of the corner of my eye and they are right behind me as they go about their business. It’s a bit awkward to not acknowledge them or for them not to say anything to me, so when we used to operate at full capacity with everyone in the office I generally had a short conversation with everyone who was printing or scanning or copying…which, as I mentioned, is distracting when you are doing data entry and trying not to lose your place and be accurate. I’ve also gotten really used to there not being anyone else in the office since I myself went back to working a few days in the office every week in July 2020. Even now, we are still not at full capacity and not everyone has returned to the office yet–certainly not all at the same time, the way it used to be–and it’s going to be incredibly weird when we get to the point where we are all back in the office again.

Incredibly weird.

So for now I will continue to enjoy my working at home days, doing data entry and then when my eyes get bleary or start crossing, moving back to my easy chair so I can watch a movie or a television show Paul doesn’t watch while I make condom packs (seriously, if I got paid by the pack I’d probably make a lot more money than I actually do).

I felt great all day yesterday; a holdover from going to the gym Tuesday night, no doubt, and I was in a really good mood as well. I got a lot done yesterday–I realized, yesterday when writing my blog (and discussed it here) that I hadn’t really gotten a feel yet for my main character’s voice, and that was part of the reason why I’ve been struggling with the manuscript. So last night I started writing a biography of her, trying to get inside her head, to understand her point of view and how she feels about the world and how she sees it; I was making her a little more namby-pamby, I think, than I wanted her to be. I want her to be strong and capable, but also a bit unsure of herself; I want her to be feeling a bit of dissatisfaction with her life, not so much because she’s made bad choices but because in a lot of cases in her life she didn’t really get to choose her own path. She fell in love and married very young, had twin sons, and then she was raising her sons while working on renovating the old house she and her husband had bought, so the house was her job outside of wife and mother; her husband died suddenly and she went on raising the twins by herself. Now they are off at college and she has reached a point in her life where she isn’t quite forty yet, but doesn’t know what she wants to do with the rest of her life; she kind of thinks she made the easiest choices along the way. It probably also doesn’t help that her two best friends are successful professional women. I want this to be a good mystery series, of course, but I also want to show her journey from a place of what do I do with the rest of my life to having a clear purpose with goals and ambitions and dreams.

And writing her biography helped me with developing the character, so here’s hoping writing the book will become a bit easier now? One can always dream…

And you know what? After I finished the biography, and sat down to revise Chapter 4–I started to feel like I knew her, and what she would say, and how she would react. I feel like she really came to life, both on the page and in my head, in this chapter, and I powered all the way through it, which felt really great. Maybe it was a holdover of the endorphins from going to the gym Tuesday night; I don’t know. But I feel much better about the book and everything else this morning–tonight I will get going on Chapter 5–and I think I can make a very strong push now to get it finished on time.

I also finished reading Donna Andrews’ The Gift of the Magpie last night, which was terrific and fun and the perfect thing to read during Christmas season; she really is masterful at writing about Christmas, and her community of Caerphilly, Virginia, is always delightful to revisit. I enjoyed the visit so much that I started reading the next in the series, Murder Most Fowl, within minutes of finishing the earlier volume–I have others to read, of course, but this wonderful binge-read of Andrews in an attempt to get caught up on the series (only two left, inclusive of Murder Most Fowl), and the next one is another Christmas one…so, yeah. I’ll probably keep going with Andrews until I am all caught up.

We also finished the first season of the original Gossip Girl last night, staying up later than we’d intended to once we realized how close we were to the end of that first season–and the season finale was interesting; they pretty much had gotten everyone to a happy place, so naturally they had to dynamite everything to set up the next season, but I was more than a little disappointed with how they did it. I am not as intrigued to continue watching as I might have been–but it has been a really fun ride, and even the “villain” characters have wound up being a lot of fun to watch–with the exception of psycho Georgina, and Paul and I kept saying (spoiler) “oh for fuck’s sake, Serena, sic Blair on her. What’s the point of having an evil bitch best friend if you don’t take advantage of her skills?”–which she finally did, and it was ever so satisfying.

I just felt like they could have done a better job with the season one cliffhanger situation.

I guess the Saints are playing again tonight–they also played last Thursday–which means this weekend is another major-Louisiana-football-team-free weekend, which should amp up my own productivity. Today I am going to be working here at home, obviously, and then I am going to the gym, and then I want to get some more work on the book done. I made a new to-do list yesterday, and have to say I am very pleased with how well I’ve been doing lately, getting things done; one can never underestimate the motivating power of a to-do list.

And on that note, it’s time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you later.

Love Has No Pride

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

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

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

Great title, methinks.

No rest for a Gregalicious.

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

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

Heavy thoughts for a Sunday morning, really.

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

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

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

Long Way Around

Home.

And exhausted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breathe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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