Category: New Orleans

I’ve Had It

Yesterday wasn’t the best. Oh, nothing bad happened, it was a kind of meh day. I felt mentally refreshed but physically tired when I got up, and as the day went on the tiredness of my body seeped into my brain and my creativity. By the time I got home from work, I was too tired to do much of anything creative. I put away dishes and did another load as well as finished a load of laundry, and dozed off in my easy chair for about an hour before Paul got home. The nap didn’t really help, but I did sleep super well last night and feel rested all over this morning. This is a good thing, as it’s Pay-the-Bills Wednesday again, and today I am going to try to finish my taxes and get them off to my accountant.

So, yesterday was kind of a wash for me. I didn’t try to force anything, mainly because I didn’t have the will or the need. This morning I am feeling good and awake and my mind is already bouncing all over the place. Since getting up this morning I’ve come across an interesting news story that could tie into a fun Scotty book, have had some thoughts about my next book to write, and more ideas about how to make “When I Die” better. See, this sort of thing can’t be forced; I can make myself write but if my mind isn’t feeling creative and bouncing all over the place, it’s absolute torture that needs to be completely revised from the first word to the last. The rewrite of “When I Die,” for example, is going to be an almost totally word for word revision; the concept and setting are there, but the characters need to be changed and more depth added to the new ones that wasn’t there in the first draft, and that pleases me. I am also extremely pleased with “Passenger to Franklin.” I do need to polish it some more, of course, and make it prettier and tighten up the ending a bit–it seems abrupt to me, but I could be wrong. But I feel pretty good this morning, so here’s hoping for a nice, successful day without stress and/or irritations or aggravation. I will make groceries on the way home and swing by the mail, and hopefully Paul will be home early enough for us to watch another episode of Vigil.

I was talking to another writer friend last night about the business and it provided me with some definite food for thought about my future. I was already thinking about trying something different–I feel like I’ve gotten a bit stagnant with my work, and so I need to start pushing boundaries and trying some different things. I think I definitely want to try writing a gay romance novel, something I’ve thought about for quite some time, and I may try to branch out in other ways. I still definitely want to get these books on my list to get out of the way done, but I like the idea of writing a romance and stretching that way. I was even pondering the possibility of rebooting the Chanse series, but not using the same pattern of titles. I like the idea of revisiting him and seeing where he is now–is he any wiser or happier? But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like going backwards–always a concern–and I also think it would be far more of a challenge to write a Chanse book now than it was ten years ago when I ended the series originally.

The release of the French Quarter Stabber on parole also had me going down some wormholes yesterday between clients. The French Quarter Stabber was a teenager who murdered three or four gay men in the 1970s; there was some serious homophobia and undoubtedly some self-loathing involved there. I think it would make for an interesting exploration of who he was in fiction, but it might also make an interesting true crime novel–something I’ve never really considered doing, but it could be a fun project to research and work on between other projects–particularly how these murders were handled by the local press and police in the same decade that saw the Upstairs Lounge fire/mass murder, and how that did or did not change in the few intervening years.

And again, suburbanites and North Shore racists: remind me of precisely when New Orleans was the idyllic crime free city? Because my brief researches into the past show a city that was always a hotbed of crime.

Anyway, the Stabber’s story will easily fit into a project I already have in progress that just needs a lot of revision and rework, but I love being able to pull this new research into a project where it will fit snugly and perfectly. Yay! Obviously, I am feeling a lot better about things this morning than I did yesterday. I wasn’t down or depressed or anything yesterday, but it was a low energy day which had a lot to do with my blood sugar, something I’ve been trying to be better about. When I don’t eat, my blood sugar drops and I don’t have any energy. I don’t think this means that I am pre-diabetic or anything, but just another thing about getting older I need to pay more attention to than I have before. Sigh. It never ends.

But today I feel like my life is very much the art of the possible this morning, and I am going to ride that wave like a surfer on Oahu’s north shore. So…I should probably head into the spice mines and start paying some bills. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I will most likely be back later.

Enchanted

Sunday morning! And LSU Gymnastics won the national championship yesterday! Woo-hoo! That accomplishment is worthy of its own post, so tune in later for that, okay? It was very exciting, I have to say, and the Lost Apartment was filled with excited cheers even as we held our breath as LSU clinched it all with a fantastic final rotation on balance beam. We kind of celebrated this throughout the night by watching replays and highlights before episode two of Sugar, which I am loving. Colin Ferrell, yum.

I was very tired Friday from running all those errands, and so was Paul. I was still fatigued yesterday, the physical and mental kind that I’ve not felt in a while–but sadly more evidence that my stamina is not back and needs to be worked on. The heat is also back; yesterday was pleasant, but Friday was eighty-eight degrees…in April. That doesn’t bode well for the summer, especially for one that’s going to be a more active hurricane season. But while I was so tired yesterday I managed to use what little nervous energy I had to clean and organize, and the apartment actually looks better this morning. It’s still not up to par–I need to do the floors to get there–but it’s nice to walk down to a neater first floor. I do need to run the dishwasher this morning, and finish filing before I read and write for the day. I do feel a little dragged out this morning, but hopefully getting caffeinated and cleaned up will take care of that problem.

I did do some things writing-related yesterday. I found the epigraphs for the next Scotty book, for one, and also wrote the opening of The Crooked Y in my head yesterday as I cleaned and organized. I created some working folders for projects that are forming in my head, and I did write notes down in my journal occasionally. I also did some electronic file cleaning up, which is proving to be an endless, endless process that may never be finished. But as long as I can still search for everything in a finder window, it should be okay. I also thought of how to open The Summer of Lost Boys, too. I’ve been listening to the Billboard Top 100’s for the years I am considering setting the book in, and I think I am settling into 1974, which was when I originally wanted it set in the first place, the summer (in my life) between junior high and high school. It’s kind of fun, if a little painful, to go back to that time and remember it for myself, but I think it’s going to be a really strong book once it’s underway. I also started getting the current book a bit better organized. I feel better about things, if that makes any sense? Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot of writing done. I want to finish the rewrite of “Passenger to Franklin” and start the revision of “When I Die,” before diving into the book headfirst and trying to get the rest of it plotted.

I think I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately, in all honesty, and I need to get calmed down and focused again. I need to remember how to harness my brain ADHD-driven creativity and focus on one thing the way I used to be able to do so. I have been very pleased with the (sparse) writing I’ve been doing, but I also think that might be partly due to the stamina issues I’ve been having since the surgery. I am trying to rush to get back to “normal” (or what passes for it around here) and getting ahead of myself, and I need to reign in my impatience and take things slower. It’s okay because it’s temporary, and this too shall pass. Take a breath, remember you had a rough go of things last year, and you have to build everything back to the point it was before the injury.

I’ve also been remiss in not congratulating award winners lately in my field; I am very pleased to report that J. M. Redmann won the Hansen Prize for queer crime fiction for Transitory, which is now also a Lambda finalist AND a two category Goldie finalist. Yay Jean! I’ve known Jean for almost twenty-five years now, she was my boss’s boss for about eighteen years, we’ve co-edited anthologies together, and now I am her book editor. Transitory is a terrific book, and being Jean’s editor is pretty easy, actually. Ivy Pochoda recently won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best Crime Novel for Sing Her Down, and Ivy is pretty awesome, too. I am behind on her books (I’m behind on everyone’s books, really) but her Wonder Valley was fan-fucking-tastic. Way to go, Ivy! (That was a loaded category, too–other nominees were S. A. Cosby, Cheryl Head, Jordan Harper, and Lou Berney.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines, eat something and get cleaned up and ready to go for this glorious morning. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you again later.

Only You (And You Alone)

Ah, Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Awesome. Yesterday morning I once again did the old “don’t leave the house until 7:30” again, and once again I wasn’t groggy or tired by the time I left the house. Bizarre how that minor shift in how my days are structured has created such a significant change to everything. I really need to remember to pay attention to routines before they become ruts, so I can change them and avoid said rut.

I did finish the first draft of a short story Tuesday night, and I am most pleased with it. I am writing it for an open call for an anthology, and I am very pleased that I got a first draft done long before the deadline. (I’m still bitter about missing the Chessies anthology deadline, for which I was working on three stories. Note to self: never write three stories for a submissions call because you think it sounds like a great idea. It is not, nor is it ever, a good idea.) Yay, me! I also decided to work on revisions of some other stories in progress; I am still struggling working on this book, but I’ve also decided I need to really immerse myself in it for at least one day so I can get a handle on this plot and figure out where it’s going and what needs to come in and what needs to come in so that I really feel like I have a grasp on the characters and the story. Those stories in progress are the first drafts I never got a chance to revise for the Chessie anthology, and all three will fit snugly into the end of my short story collection…so technically, if I can get the three stories whipped into shape, I can also go ahead and get the collection turned in. Huzzah! All three of the stories are actually ghost stories of a sort; “Passenger to Franklin” needs some serious revision, and so does “When I Die,” which is a terrific concept and really needs some work too. I think I can get one of my oldest and most beloved stories of my own whipped into shape and added into this collection as well, which just goes to show–never discard an idea or throw out a story because you’ll eventually come back to it someday.

I wrote out the opening paragraphs of the next Scotty, which I want to write this fall and hopefully get turned in around November or December. I am pretty pleased with the plot and story of this one, too, but I also need to spend some time brainstorming the plot and how it twists and turns around and turns out. I still haven’t dipped into my Paul Tremblay yet, and I think I may save it for Sunday morning reading over my coffee. Saturday morning I am going to reread/skim Death Drop so I can get a better feel for the current WIP and make sure I have the voice right, which I don’t think I do yet, which is also why I think I am having so much trouble writing it. It’s always a struggle for me to write a book when I don’t hear the voice of the character in my head, so I need to get it there ASAP.

I feel like I am making progress with my writing, even if working on the book is like pulling recalcitrant teeth.

I feel pretty good this morning, a little tired perhaps, which is oddly different that the past few weeks, when I was tired earlier in the week and felt more rested as the week progressed. This of course made no damned sense at all, but that’s okay. Few things in my life have ever made sense, and a lot of it probably is related to the anxiety and medications, as well as this week’s change in schedule. Last night when Paul got home we watched the first episode of The Sympathizer, which was very intense. I loved the book, and the new series is actually quite excellent–but more on that as it develops, obviously. I also managed to fold the laundry and do a load of dishes. I also picked up two new books, the new Scott Carson (aka Michael Koryta) and the new Alyssa Cole. I want to get some serious reading done this weekend as well as some cleaning and writing, and I also need to get my taxes completed this weekend and off to my accountant. An odious chore, to be sure, but a necessary one. I also have a lot of errands to do this weekend–we need to go to Costco, I need to make groceries, and of course there’s a shit ton of cleaning that needs to be done. I will need to work on reorganizing the freezer/refrigerator tonight in order to make sure there’s room for what we pick up this weekend.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday Eve, Constant Reader, and one never knows, I could be back later.

Broken Hearted Melody

Ah, Wednesday and the midpoint of the week has arrived. It’s been a good week so far; I’ve not been super-tired at all this week and I think the shifting of my arrival at work from 7:30 to 8 was a smart decision. I imagine, though, it’ll eventually start getting difficult for me to get up later as it has getting up earlier, once I am used to the change. In other words, it won’t feel like I am getting to sleep late eventually.

I saw something interesting yesterday on social media that really resonated with me: Your life should not be a museum, and that’s kind of what my mentality has been. I tend to get stuck in ruts so easily, and I like to accumulate things that have meaning to me (have I introduced you to my library yet?), but do I really need to keep these “artifacts” of my past? I never look at these things, rarely have anyone over to see them, so therefore what is the point? Everyone at the day job laughs about how, at a co-worker’s wedding last fall, someone made a joke about how I always wear Crescent Care T-shirts to work and were surprised to see me outside of the office and wearing something else–and since the joke was made, I’ve not worn one. Not once. I had started wearing them every day during the pandemic when I came to work and it was a further simplification of my life: I didn’t have to pick out something to wear to work, But when he made the joke, I wasn’t offended, but it did kind of snap me out of a rut. You have plenty of other clothes you never wear, and they aren’t doing any good hanging in the closet, I realized finally, so I started wearing my clothes instead of the work T-shirt. I generally don’t care about clothes most of the time but I eventually get to the point, periodically, where I’ll get interested in clothes again and will buy some–I had a shoe experience earlier this year, and now have two gorgeous new pairs of shoes to show for it.

So, why not buy some more Polo style shirts in colors I generally don’t wear or don’t have in the closet? Yes, that’s my way of saying that I did order some new shirts for work yesterday.

Yesterday was also the fifty-year anniversary of women being able to get their own credit cards without their husband or any kind of male co-signer. I remember when this happened, by the way, and I also remember when my mother got her very first credit card; it didn’t have her name but rather Mrs. My Dad. I remember thinking, “yeah, but it’s STILL technically his name.” People also don’t remember that about fifty years ago was when women/wives stopped being subsumed into their husband’s identity at the expense of their own: I am constantly amazed by plaques commemorating civic leaders and donors that list women as Mrs. Chanse MacLeod or Mrs. Scotty Bradley. Women had no identity beyond their husband once they were married. They couldn’t get bank loans, and I am not sure about bank accounts, either, for that matter; women were basically chained to their husband for life and if she got a divorce, she was basically screwed. Once women had financial freedom and no longer needed a husband…well, the divorce rate rose significantly, which is why men were so opposed to treating women like equals.

“What, you mean I have to convince her to marry me? Spinsterhood and divorce aren’t unpleasant fates anymore? That’s it–women need to be controlled.“

Sigh.

We also finished The Gentlemen last night, and I was very pleasantly surprised that it did have a most excellent finale. I don’t know if there will be more seasons, or if it was merely a mini-series, but I really enjoyed it and kind of am in the place where I worry about the continuation; so many shows go on long past their expiration date (looking at you, Friends and Thirteen Reasons Why) and lose me in a later season. (I really worried about it with Ted Lasso.) But we’ve got some other shows lined up to watch, I think the national finals for college gymnastics is on this weekend, and I also would like to get some more writing done this weekend. I did write last night on revising a short story, but today I am going to get back to work on the book (and hopefully finish the short story). It’s been a good and productive week thus far, and I really like this “go in later” thing I accidentally stumbled over on Monday morning. I made it through the day yesterday without getting tired, and I felt good when I came home to His Majesty Sparky, who is now addicted to the squeeze treats I bought for him. But I only have one more day in the office this week, and suddenly it’s the weekend again. I also worked on my taxes a bit more yesterday. Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines again. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back probably a little later.

What’d I Say

Tuesday morning and I slept well again. It’s kind of amazing what a change to my day getting up a mere ten minutes later can make. Yesterday morning I had to swing by the Cat Practice to get his Royal Sparkiness food when they opened at eight. I wound up getting to the office around eight fifteen, and I felt alert and awake all day. Was it a one-time thing perhaps? Well, sleeping ten minutes later again this morning and planning on leaving the house for the office a bit later so I don’t have to rush may make a difference for today too, so we are experimenting with leaving later and staying at the office later and seeing if that also makes a difference today as well. After work, I swung by uptown to pick up the mail, which included my first foray into poetry reading, Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early, a recommendation from Carol Rosenfeld, which I am looking forward to delving into. I also got my Frances and Richard Lockridge short story collection from Crippen and Landru, and the new Scott Carson (Michael Koryta) Lost Man’s Lane, which should be quite fun.

Last night we watched more of The Gentlemen and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which is kind of fun and very well done. We should finish The Gentlemen tonight, and perhaps move on to our next show to watch.

I can’t say that I was sorry to see that the homophobic right-wing bitch Beverly LaHaye passed away. Well, I am sorry that it took so long for that horrific piece of shit to die–more proof that evil never dies, like Mitch McConnell. I really hope she suffered, and that it was incredibly painful, so she was released from the pain only to have the pearly gates slammed in her fucking face and the hell-slide opened up below her feet sending her to join her true Lord and Master Satan in the lake of eternal fire. She founded the Concerned Women for America, by the way, which was the right-wing predecessors of Moms4Liberty and the vicious hateful pieces of trash who were horrified that I dared to speak to high school students about chasing their dreams. I hope it was a slow metatastic cancer that sapped her energy, her will, and made every waking moment a misery.

She deserved worse, frankly.

Yes I am petty–and proud of it.

And no, I have no sympathy for those who might be mourning her. She was a horrible person, and when you’ve harmed that many people–when it the purpose of your life to spread hatred and bigotry using Christ’s name (the ultimate in bearing false witness) you don’t get to expect people not to celebrate your passing. In fact, you should probably rethink your life if you think people will pop open champagne when they hear you’ve finally deservedly died and gone to hell.

I did write yesterday, about three thousand or so (probably more), which felt good. The book is still sucking incredibly, I might add, so I think I need to think about it some more and where it’s going. I also started working on a short story, “The Last To See Him Alive,” which I think is a great title and it’s working….so far. We’ll see how it goes today, though, won’t we? But I think working on the book first and then moving on to work on a short story may be the way for me to balance my creativity needs while getting everything done that needs to be done, or that I want to get done.

Speaking of poetry–did I mention here that I wanted to start reading it, and understanding it? Probably, since my memory is a sieve. Anyway, I have The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe on my desk, and the other day I opened it, just for the hell of it, to any page and it opened to his poem, “Tamerlane,” and I realized I’d gotten a short story title from it:

Kind solace in a dying hour!

And that’s where the title for “Solace in a Dying Hour” came from, so thank you, Mr.Poe and your poetry. I’ve also got story titles out of Shakespeare before, too, and I am glad I am going to start reading poetry and studying it. I’ve always felt like that was definitely a missing element in my education.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, one never can be entirely sure, can one?

Drop Me Off In New Orleans

Ah, some more blatant self-promotion! I’ve done some on-line panels so far this year, which has been terrific. Here are the questions from one I did, turned into an interview so I can promote myself! I believe these questions were for a queer crime panel, and the credit for the questions goes to the one and only J. M. (Jean) Redmann; you can order her books here.

Why did you choose your characters and their professions? What drew you to them?

Hmmm. This is tough, because I have so many books and so many different main characters…I think I’ll stick to my two primary series to answer the question. I wanted to write about a gay private detective in New Orleans, and I wanted him to be a big man, a former college football player who may have been able to be a journeyman NFL player had he not been injured in his final college game. I wanted him to be uncomfortable in his gay skin, and the point of his journey throughout the series was to grow and learn until he was finally comfortable in that skin, and able to be loved and give it.

Scotty, on the other hand, was created as a stand-alone character and I wanted him to basically be the antithesis of Chanse; in which he had few if not hang-ups, was completely comfortable being a sexually active gay man with a snarky sense of humor covering an incredibly big and kind heart. He didn’t really need to grow much–he usually is the catalyst for other characters’ growth–but as he’s aged, I’ve really enjoyed his journey.

What attracted you to writing mysteries?

I always liked them. As long as I can remember, my two biggest reading passions were history and mystery, with horror/Gothics close behind. I would check anything out of the library with mystery, haunted, ghost, phantom, secret, or clue in the title. Then I discovered the series books–The Three Investigators, Trixie Belden, et al–and after that there was no turning back.

What does being queer/gay/lesbian bring to your story?

I think queer people have the outsider point of view down to an art form because that’s how we see the world–from the margins. The easiest way to critique society, the culture, and how people interact with each other is from a remove–and queer people see all of those things from a remove through no fault of their own. I didn’t have role models when I was growing up, at least to teach me how to be a decent adult gay human being, so I had to learn it all on my own for the most part. I’ve also been confused and mystified by American culture, philosophy, and society, because it wasn’t designed for people like me. When I came out, I was just at sea in the queer world as I always had been in the straight one, and I’ve never forgotten those experiences, either, and they also inform my work.

How do we deal with how the wider world deals with queer characters? Especially in these times?

It can be depressing, which is emotionally and psychologically dangerous. It’s bad enough experiencing homophobia, but then to immerse yourself in it in order to write about it? Even more horrific. Watching Pray Away this weekend made me furious with the ex-gay movement all over again; listening to queer people hating themselves and their desires in order to be at peace with God in some twisted way? But if God is infallible…this is the doctrine Christianity gets hung up on. They think we’re mistakes, but if their God is infallible, He had to have made us perfect and its willful sin or the devil whispering in our ears. This is their incredibly harmful and dangerous rhetoric. If God tests humans, perhaps he made queer people to test the faithful–and they are failing.

But they can never admit to that.

How do you deal with diversity? No author can be everything their characters need to be, how do you handle reflecting the wider world?

I write mostly about New Orleans, and beyond that, mostly the south with occasional forays into other areas of the country–upstate New York, Kansas, California–and you cannot write about a city like New Orleans realistically without having Black characters, period. New Orleans is a majority Black city. You also can’t write about the South without touching on the issues of race and a problematic history. I’ve always included diverse characters in my books. I don’t like to describe skin color, frankly, and most white writers do it in the form of food, which I find unsettling–do you want to eat them? Cinnamon skin, cocoa, cafe au lait, eggplant, dark chocolate, etc.–I’ve seen all of those used to describe skin color and it always makes me recoil because it’s so damned lazy. I don’t think I would ever write from the perspective of a Black character–there are plenty of Black authors who can do that more authentically, and given how most diversity pledges by major publishers also inevitably end up in quotas, I don’t want to take a spot from a Black creator. I do love reading work by racialized authors, but I would never try to write from that perspective.

How do you use setting? What does it bring to the story?

Setting is one of my strengths, I think, so I always use it to enhance my story. I am also very lucky in that I live in New Orleans, where anything can happen on any given day and you can never go too far over the top about anything–if anything, you have to tone things down to be believable. I think setting is important because it tells you so much about the characters–why do they live there, how has it shaped them, did they live somewhere else, how do they deal with the challenges, what annoys them, what do they love–and is an important foundation for your story.

How do your books start—not the book beginning, but the start of the process of writing the book. Where do the ideas come from and how does that coalesce into a book?

It usually is something I find interesting and I think I should write about that. Sometimes the ideas take years to coalesce and come together, sometimes they are immediate. The Scotty books inevitably begin with three disparate things I want to address in one book, and then I have to figure out how to combine them all into a story. The next Scotty’s prompts are evacuation, statute of limitations, and obsession. It’s coming together in my head enough that I think I’ll be able to write it this fall.

Once you’re writing, what’s your process? Outline? Write from start to finish?

I used to outline, but now I kind of have it in my head and then will only go back and outline when I am stuck, so I can see where I went wrong in the manuscript. I always write from beginning to end. I don’t know how people can write backwards! I’ve thought about trying it sometime, though.

What are the hard parts of writing for you? The parts you enjoy?

Definitely the middle. The middle is soul-destroying, and always triggers Imposter Syndrome. I also hate copy edits, but recognize them as a necessary evil.

I love the actual writing and revising and all of that. There’s nothing like putting down a good word count for the day, regardless of how bad those words might be. I think revising is magic: you take garbage and turn it into something terrific.

Which writers influenced you?

All of them, in one way or another. I especially love Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier, and John D. MacDonald. Currently? Alison Gaylin, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Michael Koryta, Alex Segura, Michael Thomas Ford, S. A. Cosby, Kellye Garrett, and Alafair Burke–there really are so many. I always take something away from everything I read, whether good or bad.

What are you working on now?

Right now I am writing a sequel to Death Drop, in the Killer Queen series. I also have a ton of short stories and novellas in progress, and I already have ideas for the next three or four (or more) books.

Any advice for newer writers?

Keep writing and keep believing in yourself, and keep reading.

Last words of wisdom?

If you want to be a writer, read Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English and Stephen King’s On Writing.

Gotta Travel On

The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.

I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.

I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.

I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”

As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.

And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Lonely Teardrops

Well, good morning, Constant Reader, and I do hope everything is going well for you on this lovely Saturday. I slept deeply and well (and a little late), and feel pretty good this sunny morning. My primary priority for this weekend is to get my taxes finished and to my accountant (we’ve already filed an extension because I couldn’t get my shit together last weekend), do some writing and cleaning and run some errands, and relax as much as I can. Last night after getting everything done that needed doing, I ordered us a pizza for U Pizza (formerly Slice) on St. Charles Avenue, and we watched some more documentaries about child abuse reform schools for “troubled” teens, The Program. It’s very chilling to see how these kids were treated both in these schools and in those camps (Hell Camp), and I imagine we are also going to have to, at some point, watch the documentary about conversion therapy camps, too. Watching these has given me an idea for another Kansas book (I already had the idea, but this was excellent research for it), which made me think about some other things about my writing: what inspires it, and what issues do I take on in my work? I think part of the issues I am having with really getting back into the writing (where I’m writing three thousand words or more every day) is because I am not addressing issues I am passionate about, things I write about and learn more about and should be more concerned about.

And now that uneducated white supremacists are now in power in Louisiana, I’m going to have a lot of issues here to take up. So far, Governor Landry is unchecked in his attempts to turn Louisiana into an authoritarian state, and I doubt very seriously any Louisiana politician is going to oppose his horrific agenda for Louisiana–he’s actually worse than Jindal ever dared to be, and he was a monster who left the state in shambles. It’s kind of scary knowing our governor is someone who wouldn’t agree to be Klanmaster because the position wasn’t racist and homophobic enough for him. As much as I love New Orleans, retiring out of state is beginning to look like the best option.

Sigh. But there won’t be anywhere safe for us if we don’t win the November elections.

I did manage to finish two pending blog entries yesterday on top of the daily entry, and so that made me feel a bit better. I’ll probably spend some time this weekend cleaning out the drafts–getting rid of the duplicate ones, or trying to combine them all into one and getting rid of the others. I’d love to finish my Saltburn essay, too, but that may not be in the cards this weekend, either. I’m going to go run errands later this morning, and I also have some more cleaning and filing and organizing to do around here as well. Like always. But I really do feel like I made some great progress on all of this lately, but the floors need to be done, and the rugs need to be reorganized. I also want to spend some time with Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, which I should be able to finish reading this morning…which will lead to me having to pick out something else to read next. I do have some good choices–piles and piles of great potential reads–and I did go through them a bit last night while making some choices. I should also read some more short stories while I am at it; the Short Story Project has definitely dropped off, and I’d also like to revise one of my in-progress stories this weekend, too, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also been doing some casual research for The Summer of Lost Boys, which I am hoping to start and finish by the end of the year. All I am doing is listening to the Top 100 hits of the year for (so far) 1973 and 1974, and that in and of itself is bringing back memories. I do think this is going to be a really good book and I’m getting kind of amped to write it. I know immersing myself into the history of current events as well as popular culture in those years will trigger my memories, not all of them good, of course, but definitely its helping me to remember what it was like to be a tween in those years, going through puberty and truly realizing how different I was from everyone else I knew as well as getting ghosted, bullied and mocked for being different, which I didn’t really understand other than knowing the truth–that the horrible things they were saying was right, and that made it even more shameful and awful. The only thing that kept me going sometimes was dreaming of being a writer and reading books, escaping from an existence I neither asked for nor wanted.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later without a doubt, and so hang in there until I wind up posting again. May your Saturday be marvelous, and thanks for stopping by yet again this morning!

The All American Boy

I was a bit productive last night after work. I got off later than usual–after five–and we’d been busy all day as well, which was lovely. We’ve not seen that many people in a day in quite some time, and I’d forgotten what that felt like. I chose to take the highway home again after work, and it wasn’t terrible, to be honest. Yes, the ramp to 90/Westbank was backed up as always, and so was the twin spans over the river, but it was better than driving through the city and dealing with all the idiots and stupidity–which I was definitely not in the mood for. I came home, hung out with Sparky for a while, and then started working. I finished a load of laundry and started another. I emptied the dishwasher and refilled it. I cleaned off my desk and filed stuff (I really need to get the overall organization in this corner revamped, revised, and made more efficient and less clutter-prone). I have a meeting this morning on-line, after which I will do my work-at-home duties and do some writing. I was going to run some errands later, but I think they can keep until tomorrow, as I’d rather be around here all day and get things done. It’s a good plan, at any rate. We’ll see how well I obey those dictates.

I also slept well before Sparky decided it was time for me to get up and feed him. I went back to bed, and then of course that started his passive/aggressive ways of getting me up. I do like having a cat alarm–I’d missed that in our cat-free months last year. Sparky still has a lot of extra energy, but I like that about him, and I like that he has his own way of being affectionate. Such a completely different kind of cat personality than Scooter, but all cats are different and getting to know them is part of the joy of having one.

Mmmm, my coffee is quite marvelous tasting this morning.

I was checking my blog drafts page and was stunned to see how many drafts of entries I’ve started and not completed; several books, movies, and topics I wanted to write about, and of course, I need to either finish them or abandon and delete them. Some were kind of similar and started months (years) apart, so I need to get that figured out, and I really should finish writing about the things I started writing about. It was also startling to see that now my blog has become like everything else I write about–drafts and ideas and notes that aren’t completed. Heavy heaving sigh. In the olden days of live journal, I never did this; I always finished every entry I started (probably because I didn’t know whether you could save unfinished drafts there; I discovered the feature when I moved it over here). As a completionist, you can imagine how much this gets under my skin. I’m trying not to let it bother me, but it’s not working so far.

Sigh.

It’s been a weird week, really. I lost my respect for some people–looking at you, Dwayne Johnson, but I always preferred John Cena anyway, and turns out he’s an actual ally–and my concerns and worries about the decline in freedom for everyone (except straight white cisgender men) and the establishment of the 4th Reich in this country, depending on how the election turns out this fall. All of us who tried to warn you back in 2016 (and earlier, in my case) were 100% right about everything, so by all means don’t listen to us again now. I don’t understand the nihilistic mentality of voting third party to “teach us a lesson about progressive purity”–but it’s usually people too young to understand (and they don’t want to understand) how everything works. The irony that they think the Constitution and the system will protect them from a right-wing autocracy is so misinformed to the point of willful ignorance shows me, at any rate, why they shouldn’t be taken seriously or listened to. Back in 2016 I worked with two young cisgender white girls who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary because “she didn’t leave her husband for cheating on her” and “she’s corrupt and gross.” How does your loss of reproductive freedom feel, you willfully ignorant bitches? Thank God you proved your feminist and progressive purity! I, for one, will never forgive anyone who refused to see the danger we were facing in 2016, and I especially will never forgive people who mocked me for my concerns. Hope you need an abortion this year, bitches.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade or so about the art v. the artist; the first time I think I heard about this was the issue of H. P. Lovecraft’s deeply rooted racism in the speculative fiction community. I’ve not read much Lovecraft, if any, and that was something I felt I was missing in my education in speculative fiction, and probably why I never really have thought of myself as a specfic writer–I’d never read Lovecraft, and hadn’t reread or revisited Poe since high school. I still intend to at some point–thank you, Project Gutenberg, so I didn’t have to pay for them–but that will certainly effect my opinions whenever I can bring myself to read some of the stories. I used to read things all the time when I was growing up and throughout my adult life that don’t hold up now on rereads that went right past me on the first read because that was how things were in society and the culture at the time. I loved Gone with the Wind, both book and film, for decades before I began to realize how incredibly problematic both were. I keep meaning to go back and read it again now, but I don’t know that I can handle the idyllic portrait it paints of the old South, the war, and Reconstruction. (By the way, you know those white lady Trumpers? They are in this book as the ladies of Atlanta, and saintly Melanie was the worst of them…although a retelling as a Real Housewives of Reconstruction would be interesting. I know a Black writer retold the story from the perspective of a biracial half-sister of Scarlett’s, which I’ve always wanted to read.) Even Margaret Mitchell herself has some issues with the movie’s depiction of Tara because, in her words, it was a “working farm.”

The reason I am bringing this up is because the Chatelaine of Castle TERF showed her flat ass again this week. I did read the Harry Potter series and I did see all the movies, and I did enjoy them, even if I never had any desire to revisit them. The longer the series went on, the worse the books got, in my opinion, longer and more convoluted the stories got and she often never wrapped up anything; there were a lot of subplot false starts that looked promising that she abandoned. There was veiled anti-Semitism and fatphobia in the books that I marked as I read them as well as in the movies–straight from her hard drive. There were no queer people in her books until she retconned Dumbledore long after the fact–something all queer people should have been so fucking grateful for that we (in her mind) should have fallen on our knees in front of her and kissed the hems of her skirts for all eternity. She is the perfect example of how money corrupts weak minds. This week her TERFdom showed itself in announcing she would never accept apologies from Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe for daring not to agree with her hateful stance against transpeople, that she veils in worries about bathroom/changing room rapes…which basically comes from her assumption that all men want to do is rape women, to the point they’ll pretend they have gender dysmorphia merely to gain access to women only spaces for ease of rape/sexual assault. That’s kind of anti-male misogyny on top of the transphobia. All men are rapists, transwomen are actually men, and therefore all transwomen are rapists…and her wealth, like Elon Musk’s, have convinced her somehow that she is special and therefore her opinions have more value and weight than anyone else’s. Seriously TERF Queen, I am so sorry you had the entire world at your feet and your dark and twisted soul made you Housemaster of Slytherin and Voldermort’s mistress. I take a lot of pleasure in knowing how miserable your money and success have made you…and that you’ve decided the message of your Harry Potter series–everyone is equal, no one is better than anyone else and love is the key–was as phony as she is.

So, yes, it’s hard for me to enjoy art when I know the artist is a horrible person. And I don’t have to consume or pay for their art, just as I wouldn’t expect people who don’t like my values and beliefs to buy and consume mine.

Whew! I think I better get going on my day–this turned out longer than intended! Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. Stranger things have happened on a Friday!

Lonely Street

It’s been interesting watching the right backpedal as hard as they are currently doing in order to convince voters that they aren’t that kind of Pro-Lifer, when we know damned well exactly what they will do about abortion if given the chance. The way the right managed to convince everyone in the decades after Roe was decided that pro-choice was actually an unpopular position, and that the American people wanted either an outright ban or severe limitations. It has always infuriated me because I knew it wasn’t true; most Americans would never say it out loud–the true success of the right-wing noise machine right there; be loud and scream a lot and you’ll convince people (particularly the media, which is not only disgusting, but was also decades of journalistic malpractice visited upon the public, who trusted them) that you are a majority position. (NARRATOR VOICE: If you have to outscream and outshout people about a position, your position is probably not popular). South Dakota had a ballot initiative three times to ban abortion outright in order to let the voters decide. These initiatives weren’t covered much by the media, and you can be forgiven for not knowing this happened…but in 2004 when Turdblossom and W made gay marriage a scare tactic to drive conservative voters, that ballot initiative was trounced in South Dakota soundly. It was once again trounced in 2006, but the big story that year was Republicans losing Congress and our first female speaker. I kept pointing this out to people, and have long said that Democratic candidates and politicians should work to put abortion on every ballot so the people could decide, instead of these lunatics that keep getting put in state legislatures and governor’s mansions.

And pro-life is a very toxic and unpopular political position, as politicians and judges in Virginia, Kansas, Alabama, and other red states have since discovered. NONE of their policies are popular and liked by the general population; and I love that the Democrats are finally fighting as hard and as dirty as the Lying Evangelicals. They need to be exposed as traitors, charlatans, and cosplay Christians. This latest ruling in Arizona? The justices need to be taken out and horsewhipped if they like 1860 laws so fucking much.

And don’t think they won’t come for birth control and divorce. You can never believe they are ever finished with their grasp for power and control–as long as they are the ones in control. If they aren’t. they’ll scream about how their “freedoms” are being oppressed.

They. Will. Never. Stop.

Yesterday was a wild day here in New Orleans. I knew we were going to have terrible weather, and it was pretty bad. We were under a tornado watch until one or two, and of course we were having flooding rain all day, and the streets were flooded all over the city (on the other hand, it gave me the opening line for the next Scotty: It was August and the streets were flooding.). We didn’t have a lot of clients come in for testing (obviously); when I got to work, I got out of my car just as the rain started, and I was pretty much soaked through by the time I got into the building (my socks were damp all day, which was super-annoying). But I got caught up on my work stuff, our site visit was cancelled but I am glad I got everything caught up–and I am hoping now to be able to stay on top of everything instead of being lazy and letting things slide. I was very tired when I got home–the city had pretty much shut down, to the point that I could actually take the highway home at 4:30, and got home in five minutes–and managed to finish a load of laundry and do some dishes. We watched the Hell Camp documentary about how the kids sent there were tortured and abused, some being seriously injured and some even died, and parents are still sending their kids to these places! We then watched a German documentary series about a gay serial killer in Berlin (a German serial killer? Who’d have thunk it?), which was interesting and creepy and more than a little scary (I’ve always held that gay men are the perfect victims for serial killers, because they are used to going home with strangers or bringing one home), but it was fun to watch while wrapped in a blanket and listening to the rain. Not quite the enormous pleasure it is to read in that situation (I am really looking forward to getting back to The Cypress House this weekend.)

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will probably be back here possibly later.