Tuesday morning and back to work tomorrow. I had thought about canceling my sick time and going back into the office today; but I got so easily tired yesterday that I changed my mind. I’m pretty sure a lot of it has to do with the starvation–liquid and/or soft food just isn’t satisfying, and I am hungry all the time (one would think a diet that includes ice cream would be awesome, but I am so sick of it all I think I may never eat it again once this is all over). Well, not all the time, but I do feel hungry here and there before it, as usual, goes away. I think the low calorie intake is also affecting my energy levels. I’m a bit sore this morning (was hoping to not get loopy from taking pain pills today, but I’m going to have to) and I’m still a few days away from chewing noodles or anything soft like that, so it’s more baby food, oatmeal, and protein shakes for me today. Woo-hoo.
One thing I absolutely need to do before going back to work tomorrow is clean out my inbox, at least for today. There’s a couple of little things I need to definitely get done, or get started, today while I have the leisure of not being at the office. It’s going to feel weird waking up at six tomorrow morning, but…no other choice. It would be great to stay out until my mouth is healed completely and no longer aches, but I don’t have that kind of sick time left from everything that went on earlier in the year and so forth–and I have a surgery to be scheduled yet. I guess I’ll worry about that when it comes to it, and when I know when the surgery is going to be. I also need to get a grip on my finances again and make sure all my due dates are on the calendar. I also have spent money with the debit card that’s not recorded so I don’t know my bank balance for sure, either. All things that can be easily remedied, of course, but tend to be a bit tedious and so I dislike doing them.
We are currently watching Painkiller, which is yet another mini-series built around the evil corrupt Sacklers and the opioid epidemic they started in order to make billions by convincing doctors that their version of heroin wasn’t addicting. The Sacklers were undoubtedly be studied by future historians as an example of the worst kind of horror capitalism and its ethos of greed is capable of creating; the paralysis of the FDA and the corruption inherent by bribing (er donating) money to politicians to advance the gutting of what little power the FDA had to monitor and control this sort of thing, and so on (looking at you, paragon of corruption and enemy of the people Marsha Blackburn!). The suffering and destruction and death and havoc wreaked on families and communities while these monsters and their agents of addiction and death made money is incalculable…and they don’t care. Even after all the lawsuits, after losing the company, all the deaths, the Sacklers are still sitting on a mountain of money. They are pariahs, rightfully shunned, but dollars-to-donuts they’re back manufacturing medicine in twenty years when most Americans have forgotten their heinous crimes.
I seem to have let yesterday slip through my fingers in a painkiller fog–super strong ibuprofen also messes with your head the way Vicodin and oxycodone do–but it’s more of a losing track of time sort of thing. I did get the sink cleaned out and did a load of laundry (waiting to be folded) and there’s all sorts of filing and organizing to get done this morning. I want to read more of Shawn’s book today, and I’d like to get prepared for going to work tomorrow with a clear conscience. The great heat wave has finally broken. It’s still humid but not as bad, and it’s not getting as hot as it had been during the course of the summer–it actually feels pleasant when I go outside.
My tests for COVID are still coming back negative so I am going to assume I missed the Bouchercon spread. I hope everyone who did catch it at (or around) the convention are on the road to recovery and all had very mild cases. I’m seeing my new primary care doctor a week from Friday, so I am hoping to get the new booster and a flu shot when I see her. I am also hoping to get some feedback from her on the big toe on my right foot situation; you probably don’t remember but it’s been sore since Mom went into hospice and was swollen so badly I had to wear house shoes to her funeral? He gave me anti-inflammatory cream and that was it. Well, it’s eight months later, it still hurts when I bend it, and it still swells up periodically–not as bad as originally, but I can’t help but think it might be something more than what he rather pointedly dismissed? He was wrong about my arm, after all. And now the other big toe is starting to do the same thing.
But I’m sure it’s nothing.
Uh huh.
Forgive me if I don’t believe anything that hack said to me about anything.
But that’s a story for another time.
I do feel more like myself than I have since the surgery on Friday, so that’s something…but then I also just took my pain meds, so I don’t know for sure how long that feeling will last. But I have to do something about this mess around here, and maybe I can even do some writing today. I have already started working on the plan for the sequel to Death Drop, and I also need to plan out the sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder. I already know what the story is behind that one; I just don’t have a title yet but I do know what the first chapter is going to be. Maybe I should just go ahead and write that, get it under way and see how it goes? I also want to start working on the edit of Jackson Square Jazz, and maybe even revise it some. I resisted the temptation to revise and re-edit the Chanse books for their ebooks, and did the same for Bourbon Street Blues, but Jackson Square Jazz is actually the book that sets the backstory for Mississippi River Mischief, so I need to be certain everything lines up the way it’s supposed to–and I can also change some things predicated on what has happened in the series since, because I know what is coming (which I didn’t know when I wrote the book originally). This might also be a good time to finally put together the Scotty Bible (I’m only nine books in now) which should make writing the next one even easier. It’s a lot of work, but with my memory getting shittier and shittier with every passing day, it’s something that really needs to be done. If I write another Chanse (it’s possible; I never say never), I would definitely have to do the same because I really don’t remember much about any of those books.
And I have some short stories that need to be finished for anthologies.
So on that note, I am calling this entry for the day and heading into the spice mines. I may be back later; there are still unfinished blog posts in my drafts (I’ve managed to get some of them out there over this past weekend, even though I don’t count blog posts as writing, it really is and I really should), and of course, laundry to fold and dishes to put away and a refrigerator to clean out. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!
I’ve been sleeping deeply and well lately for an insomniac; I suspect it has more to do with the pain being exhausting than anything else. Any surgery is traumatic to the system and requires rest for recovery, and oral surgery is no different than any other. I’ve taken today off as well as tomorrow; I was thinking yesterday I could probably just go in today and do some paperwork or something, but (and this is not laziness) I started thinking it’s probably best to give myself enough recovery time before I head back in–and I also know the clinic is jam-packed with appointments for today and tomorrow, and I just don’t think I have the energy to deal with that today. I think one more good night’s sleep with probably do the trick.
The Saints won a nail-biter yesterday and I didn’t watch the US Open final; I just can’t with Novak Djokovic anymore. I used to like him until he became an anti-vax/COVID denier, and I can’t with that, I’m sorry. I respect his athleticism, commitment to his sport and being the best, but as a person? I can’t help but feel he’s a selfish, arrogant, borderline sociopathic asshole. Of course he’s entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to me being a fan and watching him play, either. For the record, that’s how it works. I don’t deny him the right to be an anti-vaxxer/COVID denier, but I also don’t have to be a fan or watch him play. We got caught up on Only Murders in the Building and Ahsoka last night, too. I also finished several in-progress blog entries, including the one called “Shame” about homophobia in crime fiction and how things have gotten better over the years–but we can’t forget how bad it used to be, either, which was the point of the post, really; telling the crime community that we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going any fucking where.
Get fucking used to us.
Today I am going to try to do some chores around here. I’m feeling like a slug–anxiety talking again; I always feel like I should be doing something and down-time is time wasted–so I think I should do some things today. I suppose it depends on my energy stores, and how long it holds out. I want to read some more of Shawn’s book this morning–I think my resistance to that brutal opening was more of the post-surgery exhaustion–and I also need to empty the dishwasher and do another load that is soaking in the sink. I also want to make something to take for lunch this week–I’m thinking Swedish meatballs in the slow cooker, but am not sure if my minimal chewing abilities can handle the meatballs, even if I cut them up smaller before putting them in my mouth; I don’t think I can swallow them unchewed in some fashion–and I do need to go buy more ice cream and yogurt. I think some of the soups and ramen on hand could be useful. I can’t wait till I can eat a burger again, to be honest.
I also need to answer all the emails that have been languishing in my inbox for quite some time. I owe Dad an email–I’ve not had the strength after Bouchercon and the surgery to face writing him–and my sister’s birthday is this week. I also need to mail something, so I think I’ll drive uptown to make groceries and see what else is possible for soft foods for the week (mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, that sort of thing). I need to get the things on my to-so list knocked out, too. I feel more rested and more myself this morning, but maybe that’s because the pain pills haven’t quite kicked in yet. I also need to start revising/editing Jackson Square Jazz; I’m very excited about that finally being available again, and since Scotty turns twenty-one next year, I kind of want to celebrate the series throughout the year and I don’t know, maybe give away first editions? Something, anyway.
It’s also hard to believe Chanse will be twenty-two in January. I’ve been doing this for over a third of my life now. I owe it all to my stubbornness and obliviousness. Someone smarter and more aware would have probably given up a long time ago, but here I am, still here, older and possibly wiser and certainly not much smarter than I was all these years ago when I was a wide-eyed innocent walking into the world of the published word. I always remember that first August Paul and I lived here back in 1996. We went to a fundraised for the LGBT Center, and there was a tarot card reader there. (I’ve always been fascinated by tarot; I blame the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, which also connected New Orleans and the tarot in my mind. I write about a “private eye” who’s slightly psychic and reads tarot cards and lives in New Orleans. Coincidence? Probably not. Sadly, it’s always been one of my favorite Bond movies and always has held a special place in my brain for introducing me to Bond, New Orleans, and the tarot…unfortunately, the film does NOT hold up forty or fifty years later.) Anyway, the question I thought about as I held the cards in my hand was will I ever be a published writer? The answer the cards gave her was “Yes, but it will not be anything like you think it will be.” A generic answer, yes, that could apply to any number of questions…things are generally never what you thought or imagined they would be. Being a published author is definitely not anything like I ever dreamed or fantasized about when I wasn’t one. I know I thought being published would change my life for the better (I was not wrong about that) but…yes, it’s nothing like what I thought it would be like. Publishing can be a very cold and lonely place, but all you can really control is the work itself. You can’t control whether or not you get published, you can’t control whether or not the book sells, you can’t control the way readers and reviewers will react to it, you can’t control whether you get award recognition. All you actually can control is the writing itself, and do the best you can. I always hope my work is getting better–which should make reediting and revising the original Jackson Square Jazz interesting…
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close, make another cup of coffee, and start working on the chores around the kitchen, while streaming music through my iHome speakers. I’ll probably check back in later–I have all those unfinished blog entries I need to eventually finish and post–and I also want to get some fiction writing done today as well. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader–do you think today’s photo will get my adult content flags on social media?
This marvelous interview with the amazing Margot Douaihy dropped while I was in the midst of Bouchercon or preparing for it, so I always intended to share it around on social media (what a thrill to be name-checked by such an amazing new star in the world of crime fiction). Her debut crime novel Scorched Grace was so phenomenal that I still think about it from time to time; her New Orleans was so exquisitely and artistically rendered that it gave me pause–and also made me wonder if I’ve been coasting and not working as hard as I should. (I always think that when I read a work that blows me away–I should try harder.)
Yesterday was spent in my chair watching college football and making notes in my journal on projects that are upcoming or are currently in progress. Despite all the sleep (I slept for eleven hours Friday night, and again last night) I still feel a bit out of it and drained and tired; but I am going to take a shower in a little bit and I am sure that will perk me right up. I did read some more of Shawn Cosby’s newest book but those opening few chapters hit me right in the soul and it’s going to take me a minute to process it. I also posted like three or four entries yesterday, too–I finished turning John Copenhaver’s questions for the Outwrite DC panel into a Greg interview (I plan on doing the same with the questions from the Bouchercon panels because I can, mwa-ha-ha!), also finished my entry announcing Death Drop, and another one about how The Children’s Bible was one of my first sources for images of hot muscular men (thanks again, Golden Press, for those sexy illustrations! I didn’t even mention Samson), so I am making progress on getting these drafted blogs finished and posted.
I feel a little pain in my mouth this morning, so I rinsed with salt water and took my pain pills. Pain is draining and exhausting, even if you take something for it, so that’s why I think I was so behind the eight ball with everything yesterday–it’s certainly why I am sleeping so much and so deeply, for which I am eternally grateful. There’s no more bleeding, which is great, and I am trying out hot coffee this morning (caffeine deficiency may have played a huge part in the tired thing yesterday). All I ate yesterday was protein shakes and ice cream (Haagen-Dasz strawberry; today is vanilla bean) which was weird and not very filling; I am going to have to go buy yogurt and more ice cream tomorrow, methinks, and explore some other soft food options, like oatmeal. I am going to have oatmeal for breakfast this morning–I actually like oatmeal and am not sure why I stopped having it in the mornings–and then see if I can figure out some other things. I bought some soups, so maybe I can soften crackers in the soup too. I remember moving back onto solid foods was an issue the first time around, so I have to keep that in mind as I slowly start reintroducing solids back. I know I will miss this unashamed and unabashed deep dive back into ice cream. My face also never swelled up, which is another indication of how good my dental surgeon was. Well done and bravo, sir!
The highlight of the day yesterday for me was watching Coco Gauff win the US Open. How absolutely delightful, and how delightful to have a young American star again to root for. I love tennis, but there really hasn’t been anyone on the women’s side with a larger than life personality like Serena Williams, or just flat out charismatic and likable (like Kim Clijsters) to watch and root for in a very long time. I think the guard is also gradually changing on the men’s side, with the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic triume slowly retiring as they get older, and it’s fun to see rising young stars like Carlos Alcazar play, too.
As for football, well…the Alabama-Texas game was exciting to watch, if strange; I’ve not seen Alabama play that sloppy or poorly very often in the seventeen years or so since Nick Saban came to Tuscaloosa. I also can’t remember the last time Alabama lost so early in the year–which means a second loss ends any play-off hopes they may have unless they go on to win the SEC. To see Alabama lose in Tuscaloosa by ten points to a non-SEC team early in the season? Unthinkable. The conference is not off to a great start this year; Miami roasted Jimbo and A&M yesterday; LSU’s horrific loss last weekend to Florida State; Mississippi got super-lucky to beat Tulane yesterday; and the rest of the conference isn’t exactly off to a great start either–even Georgia hasn’t looked invincible in their two wins, despite the margin of victory. The SEC is due for an off-year anyway; we’ve literally won four national championships in a row (2019 LSU, 2020 Alabama, 2021-22 Georgia) with three different teams, which is something no other conference can say this century, and also doesn’t include Florida, who won two in the aughts (as did LSU: LSU was the first team to win two titles since championship games were implemented). The only teams not from the south to win national titles this century are Oklahoma and Ohio State, and Oklahoma might as well be a Southern state as it’s not really in the Midwest either. In fact, the only two Big Twelve team to win national titles this century–Oklahoma and Texas–are joining the SEC next year. I’m still not sure how I feel about the realignments and conferences being killed off, but…the sport has changed dramatically since I was a child and ABC held the exclusive right to air games. LSU blew out Grambling State last night 72-10, and looked much better than they had the week before in that embarrassing loss to Florida State; but there’s also a big difference between FSU and GSU. I guess we’ll get a better idea of what LSU is like once we play at Mississippi State next week, and we’ll see how well Alabama bounces back from this disappointment for them. Auburn did manage to hold off California last night (I went to bed), but I also think Florida lost their opener to Utah? Yes, they did, or maybe it was Oregon? Regardless, they lost. Pity. (I despise Florida, and will only root for them when they play someone I hate even more, like Tennessee.)
So, today I am going to take it easy one more time without feeling guilty for not doing anything productive. I am going to do some chores–emptying the dishwasher, maybe some filing to clean up the mess that is currently my desk situation, and the refrigerator needs cleaning up too–and repair to the chair to read Shawn’s book for a bit. I also am going to make another cup of coffee and perhaps some oatmeal, washed down by a protein shake. I don’t know if my heart and blood pressure can take watching a Saints game, but Paul will want to watch and there’s also the men’s final for the US Open today. And maybe I will finish some other blog posts. One never knows, really.
Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader–and if I’m not back later, be sure I’ll be back in the morning.
So, Greg, you have a book coming out from a new press in October, and the main character is a drag queen? What the actual hell?
Well, therein lies a tale.
I never thought I would write about a drag queen, in all honesty. It’s not that I’m opposed to drag or anything like that; drag has always been an important part of gay culture (I really wish someone would do a history of drag that’s not academic in tone and therefore accessible to everyone without a PhD) and I’ve always appreciated it as an art form. Yes, some queens are better at it than others, and there are some who are just really tragic…but I admire and respect every single one of them who puts on the dress and wig and heels and make-up and goes out there to perform. My own anxiety manifests itself whenever I have to perform or speak in public (although I managed to successfully control it and get through Boucheron panels swimmingly; I don’t think my stage fright is a thing of the past yet but I’m getting better); I can’t imagine the courage it takes to do drag that first time.
I also never considered doing drag because of my vanity–I wouldn’t look pretty in drag and I would want to be pretty. Shallow, party of one, your table is ready. I’ve seen many performances over the year and even have friends who do it, but my primary interest in drag has always primarily been in it as an art form and political statement critiquing gender roles, masculinity, and femininity; and it holds a very important place in queer culture. I once did drag, for a Showgirls-themed birthday party–I looked like Stockard Channing, which isn’t a bad thing–but it was more of a costume than a real attempt at doing drag. My friend Mark always wanted to make me up for Halloween or Fat Tuesday as Joan Crawford–it was the shoulders, the eyebrows, the narrow hips, and the shape of my face more than any striking resemblance to Ms. Crawford, I think–and while I was interested in being transformed into Ms. Crawford, one of the things I hated the most about doing plays in high school was the make-up. I hated having that shit all over my face, and it never did what it was supposed to in the first place (I inevitably always played old men, so they had to try to age me, and it’s not like we had make-up artists who knew what they were doing in high school.). And the padding? The wig? The dress? Not to mention the lack of pockets and the difficulty in using the bathroom– yeah, not for me. Drag does show up in my work sometimes–not very often–and the most fun thing for me about that is coming up with drag names for the characters. I know I’ve used Floretta Flynn a number of times, to the point where in my New Orleans universe she’s probably one of the bigger and most successful queens in New Orleans. Two of the biggest names in drag came from New Orleans–Varla Jean Merman and Bianca del Rio are both from here. We used to go to Drag Bingo hosted by Bianca and Blanche Debris at Oz on Sundays before she left for New York after Katrina–and Bianca was just as funny and just as big of a bitch then as she is now. She always drew crowds, and of course I met her a few times out of drag (I am quite sure Roy doesn’t remember me).
And believe me, I was very careful not to attract her attention while she was holding a microphone.
I also once wrote a short story that opened with one character saying in the Clover Grill, “You sure see a lot of tragic drag in this town at four a.m.”
Paul and I also were fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race for awhile, too–but like Project Runway, we stopped watching one season when it was obvious that it wasn’t being judged fairly (it was fucking blatantly obvious) and that was it for us. Don’t serve me competition reality when the competition is obviously rigged for a particular competitor. I do love some of the queens we did watch on there–it’s been amazing watching Jinkx Monsoon’s star take flight–and I always liked Tatianna, and just to name a few–Ben de la Creme, Adore Delano, and Manila Luzon are all fabulous. Paul follows a lot of them on Youtube, and of course I do enjoy Trixie and Katya’s We Like to Watch on Netflix.
And naturally, we love Bianca because she’s a New Orleans queen.
But it never crossed my mind to write about one as a main character. It wasn’t my milieu, so to speak (and just typing that made me want to bang my head on my desk. Take risks! I should always take risks in my work!), and so while every once in a while I’d think “maybe I should write a drag queen into this story”, I never did.
Last summer, I am not exactly sure when (2022 was pretty much a blur of misery), I got an email with a request for a ZOOM meeting with two very dear friends, along with another friend of theirs I may have met once over twenty years ago, James Conrad. He wrote Making Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago back in the days when I was a reviewer/worked for Lambda Book Report, and the purpose of the call was they wanted to talk about a possible project for me. You know me, I am always up for a new project and a new possibility…so you can imagine my surprise to find out what they wanted was for me to write a cozy with a drag queen main character. James owns and operates the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock, and decided to start a publishing company through the store and wanted this to be their first venture into crime. I pointed out that I a) knew next to nothing about drag and b) I’m not really a cozy writer (the Scotty series can be classified that way except for a lot of cozy rule-breaking; and yes, I did write A Streetcar Named Murder, which wasn’t out yet and I wasn’t sure if it was even any good), they pointed out that I am a writer who can write anything (this is true, but there are some things I can’t and won’t ever write–and yes, as I typed that I was thinking there you go limiting yourself again–maybe those are the things you should be trying to take on), and then I also remembered a few things–some of my co-workers at the day job do drag, and in fact, my former supervisor had attend a “drag school” here locally, started by a queen who’d retired here from San Francisco after a lengthy and successful career in drag; Paul even knows the queen who runs it. I sent James an early electronic uncorrected proof of Streetcar, so he could get an idea of my writing style, and waited to hear back.
While waiting, I asked some of my co-workers if they’d be okay with me asking them questions–which of course they were more than happy to do–and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me to approach this in the same way I approached writing Streetcar–I knew nothing about antiques, so I made my character the same. So, if I am going to write about a drag queen, I needed to write her origin story first–and I decided to make her an accidental drag queen; forced to step in when a queen doesn’t show for a performance. But how would that work? I realized my character had to already know about hair and make-up, so I decided to make him a glam artist, hired to do make-up for women on special occasions and styling them. How did he wind up doing glam? His grandmother, who was from New Orleans, used to have her own Uptown beauty shop on Magazine Street that was frequented by upper class New Orleans women, who would also hire her for special occasions to style them. He spent his childhood summers in New Orleans; his grandmother was the only family member who had no problem with his sexuality, and she taught him all about hair and make-up (and classic Hollywood). He went to cosmetology school instead of college (his grandmother paid for it) and he worked in a high-end salon in Dallas until his grandmother died, leaving him the house and most of her money.
I also had a great idea for the opening, which I quickly wrote up and James liked it…and so we moved forward with the plans for it. I had a Scotty book under contract, and I knew I could juggle the two and get them both done on time.
Of course, I didn’t realize how much work it would be to turn MWA over to my successor, I didn’t know Mom was going to go into the final decline ending with her death during this time, and….well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?
“I don’t know, Jem,” Lauralee Dorgenois said, frowning and raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow as she looked back over her shoulder into the three-way mirror set-up in her dressing room. “You’re sure that this dress doesn’t make my butt look big?”
Okay, I’m going to take a sidebar right here to give y’all some free-of-charge advice that is more than worth its weight in gold. There is only one correct answer to be given without pause or hesitation any time a woman asks you if something she is wearing makes her butt look big: “No.”
You always, always,ALWAYSsay no.
If that is, in fact, a lie—you say “I don’t know if that cut drapes right” or “I don’t like what that color does to your skin”.
There are literally a thousand other options besides making the incredibly foolish mistake of saying ‘yes’ or the seemingly safe, non-comital ‘maybe.’ Marriages, engagements, friendships, and relationships have all ended over this question being answered incorrectly—and no, it’s not a trap question. Women are bombarded from childhood with images of what they are supposed to look like and what they are supposed to wear. They are taught to fear fat cells and fatty foods, spend millions on diets and gym memberships and personal trainers. They are gaslit into thinking that being any size larger than zero and not having big firm breasts and not having a wrinkle-free face aglow with the dewiness of youth means they are doomed to grow old alone and unloved. So, they try to fight aging—and the fear of being traded in for a younger model—by having poison injected into their faces, excess skin surgically removed, and their hair constantly colored and touched up. Centuries of societal and systemic misogyny, of telling women they don’t measure up, echo in those sad, simple words: does it make my butt look big?
My heart breaks a little every time I hear them.
However, I get paid to make them look good. My opinion must be honest, but I still need to be delicate. Why be hurtful when you don’t have to be?
I tilted my head to one side and brought my eyebrows together as I looked her up and down yet again. “You’re curvy, Lauralee,” I replied finally, fluffing the peacock feathers on her shoulders to spread them out further. It was true. Lauralee was about five seven, and maybe could stand to lose a pound here and there. Her hourglass figure had thickened a slight bit once she hit forty, but it was barely noticeable. I’d picked out a green silk dress for her because the color made her green eyes sparkle like emeralds. It clung perfectly to her hips and was cut low in the front to shove off the ample bosom, highlighted by an emerald pendant handing from a gold chain just above the cleavage. I’d braided her long auburn hair into a French braid that dropped about half-way down her back. I’d woven some extra pieces of auburn into the braid to make it thicker. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know. We’d put Marilyn Monroe on a diet today.”
Several years ago, I tried writing a third series set in New Orleans with a gay male protagonist. It was a character I had already created; he showed up in a couple of Scotty books: true crime writer Jerry Channing, who’d gotten rich on a true crime novel about a child murder case in the Garden District in the 1990’s called Garden District Gothic, (which also became a Scotty title when he and the boys got sucked into that ancient cold case) and wound up solving it. I had wanted to write a fictional story based on the very real Jeff Davis Eight murders, and thought who better to center in the story than a true crime writer researching the case for an article or perhaps even a follow-up book than Jerry Channing? But as I started developing the character out from the sketchy details provided in earlier Scotty books, I suddenly realized what I was actually doing was combining Chanse and Scotty into a single person, so I shelved the story–or at least, the new series, because if all I was going to do was just merge two previous characters into one, there was no point in bothering. I had then gone on to create a new series with a straight woman as the main character (A Streetcar Named Murder), and I was determined that, with this new potential series set in New Orleans, the last thing I needed was to just rip-off previous characters.
So meet Jem Richard, twenty-something glam artist and New Orleans home owner. Jem lives in the 7th Ward (not far from my day job office, actually; over on St. Roch Avenue between Claiborne and St. Claude), and the house flooded during Katrina–Jem remembers coming down with his family to help work on the house for his grandmother, Mee Maw of sainted memory–and I gave him a pole-dancing roommate who also works at Crescent Care. (Another Easter egg is the book opens with Jem being enormously disappointed to be ghosted by someone with whom he had several dates –a Tulane grad named Tradd. Bury Me in Shadows readers may remember Tradd as the asshole who broke up with Jake and sent him into the alcohol/drug spiral that landed him in the hospital when that story opens. I also want to use Tradd again somewhere else…but that is indeed a tale for another time.) Jem does well for himself, but has no health insurance and never is guaranteed work–but he also really doesn’t want to go back to working in a salon again, either. (He also sometimes books gigs with film, theater and television companies.) He’s kind of a lost soul, not really sure what he wants or what he wants to do with the rest of his life–but he also is lucky: he owns his own home, for one, and has several marketable skills. He kind of feels like he’s been spinning his wheels and not getting anywhere since coming to live in New Orleans. Jem has considered doing drag before–he’s very into costuming, and has won the Bourbon Street Award for Best Drag Costume on Fat Tuesday the previous two Carnivals–but he (like me) is haunted by stage fright. He did a play while in high school and the stage fright was such a horrible experience he gave up his dream of being a performer and started working as the make-up and hair person for the school productions.
So, when he’s hired to be a back-up glam artist for a fashion show at Designs by Marigny, only to find out the models were drag queens. A little taken aback, he rolls with the challenge, and when one doesn’t show, Jem gets pressed into service (he can fit into the dress). The show is being managed by the same person who runs the local drag school–a sweetheart named Ellis, whose drag name is Mary Queen of THOTS. Jem has a bad history with Marigny the fashion designer–she’d hired him todo the make-up for a previous show, and her check bounced–so the friend who recruited him to do the show makes sure he gets paid in advance. Of course, since the models are drag queens, the show attracts anti-drag protestors–there’s a suspicion that the designer, Marigny, deliberately used queens hoping to attract a protest and more publicity. Throughout the course of the evening Jem overhears Marigny arguing with several different people, and the next morning wakes up to the news she’s been murdered–and somehow Jem is not only a suspect but he’s also a target.
But why?
Jem also has a black cat named Shade.
As I said, while it had never occurred to me previously to write a drag queen character, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do so. Drag queens are currently under attack by the forces of bigoted evil. Part of this comes from the right-wing demonization of transwomen, spear-headed by hateful bigoted lying trash like Libs of TikTok (if you’ve ever retweeted the Axis Sally of the Proud Boys, know that’s why I blocked you and we will never, ever be friends again) and Moms for Liberty, who are both so fucking ignorant and clouded with hate that they think drag queens and transwomen are the same thing. The idea that children need to be protected from drag queens at all costs because it’s somehow sexualizing them is disgusting and ignorant and offensive on its face; merely rephrasing Anita Bryant’s vile claim that queers need to recruit children, i.e. all queers are pedophiles. They prove they’re liars on a daily basis and that it really has nothing to do with “concern” for children and everything to do with bigotry and hatred, because they never go after religious organizations, youth pastors, Boy Scout troop leaders, and Republicans–you know, the ones who are being convicted of child rape and child porn on a regular, almost daily basis –but only the queers are their primary concern. First off, not all drag queens are transwomen and not all transwomen were drag queens. Yes, some transpeople start their transition by doing drag, to get a better idea of whether or not they are more comfortable as a woman than as a man. I work with a lot of transpeople, and have for quite some time. I’ve witnessed people transition and evolve, and I’ve also seen the change in demeanor, confidence, and emotional well-being when they do.
What better way for a writer to fight back against ignorance than writing about it? And I loved the deliciousness of fighting homophobic and transphobic bigotry by writing a cozy series.
Several weekends ago, I did an on-line panel for Outwrite DC. The moderator was John Copenhaver (whom you should already be reading), and my co-panelists were the always delightful and intelligent Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Renee James, and Robyn Gigl. The video is actually up on Youtube, if you would like to watch it. John’s questions were insightful and intelligent (as always), and the conversation was marvelous, inspiring, and fun; there’s nothing I love more than communing with other queer crime writers (or any writers, to be certain), and I always try very hard to not monopolize panels because I do have a tendency to talk too much–especially if and when I get going on a topic I am passionate about. So, I thought it might be fun to take John’s questions and turn them into a long form interview, for thoroughly selfish and totally self-promotional reasons.
The panel blurb claims that “queer characters are riveting and necessary material for crime fiction and how those stories can shape (and perhaps reshape) the landscape of contemporary crime fiction.” Do you agree with this statement—and why do the stories of queer characters have the potential to shape crime fiction?
I completely agree with this statement. Queer crime fiction has a very proud history that was never really recognized or appreciated by the mainstream crime writers, readers, organizations, and conferences. That is changing for the better.
New blood is always necessary for any genre–horror, romance, crime, literary fiction–because genres tend to stagnate after a certain period of time. The cultural shifts of the late 1960’s and 1970’s echoed in crime fiction, for example; you couldn’t write crime in those periods without addressing all the cultural and social shifts; Ross Macdonald’s later novels are a good example of this. The 1970’s saw a lot of anti-hero books being written. The private eye sub-genre had grown quite stale by this time, which was when the women really moved in and gave it a shot of adrenaline–Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton blazed that trail, and revitalized a sub-genre that had kind of lost its way. Queer writers and crime writers of color are currently doing the same to the entire genre. Voices and perspectives we aren’t used to seeing are now getting into print and changing how we see, not only our genre, but each other. Crime fiction has always given voice to societal outsiders and outliers; queer people and people of color are the ultimate outsiders and outliers in this country. Who better to tell stories of societal alienation?
Why did you choose your sub-genre? How do you think the sub-genre has influenced the types of characters you write?
Well, I write in several different ones. Chanse MacLeod was a straight private-eye series; Scotty Bradley was more of an amateur sleuth/humorous series, but he does have a private eye license in Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Murder was a cozy, with an amateur sleuth heroine who gets caught up in a family mystery. I’ve also done young adult and “new adult,” whatever that is (it’s been described as ages 16-25), and Gothics with a touch of the supernatural. I tend to write things that I like to read, and I have a varied reading taste. I started writing the Chanse series because I wanted to do a harder-edged private eye series with a queer twist and set it in New Orleans. I didn’t know about J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series when I started writing Chanse; would I have done something different had I known she’d already covered the hardboiled lesbian private eye in New Orleans? We’ll never know, I suppose. Scotty was meant to be a lark; a funny caper novel and a one-off. And here we are nine books later…
As for Streetcar, I had been wanting to try a traditional mystery with a straight woman main character for a long time. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in with both feet. I like trying new things and pushing myself. Having to follow the “rules” of a traditional cozy was a challenge–especially because I have such a foul mouth in real life. I love noir so am working on two different gay ones at the moment.
Why do you think amateur detectives are appealing? Do you think there’s a reason queer characters often find themselves in the role of amateur detective?
I think it’s because we all think we’re smarter than the police? We enjoy seeing a character we can identify with figuring things out faster than the cops, especially without access to all the evidence, interviews, and forensics the cops do. Murder She Wrote has been off the air for about thirty years and yet the books based on the show continue coming out every year. If we start out in mysteries reading the juvenile series–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Judy Bolton and all the rest were amateurs, so we always cut our teeth in the genre with them to begin with. Scotty is basically an amateur, even though he has a private eye license he rarely uses; he and the boys never get hired (although they kind of do in the new one, coming this November.)
Let’s talk about place. Greg, your books take place in the South. Why is place important to the crime novel—why is it especially important to the queer crime novel?
Place shapes who we are–not just as queer people, but as people in general. There are similarities between growing up in a small town in the Midwest and growing up in one in the South, but the differences are very marked. I’ve lived all over the country–pretty much everywhere but New England or the Northwest–and always felt, as a Southerner (despite no accent and not growing up there) like an outsider. Couple that with being gay in a time when it was still considered a mental illness, and you have someone always on the outside looking in. But I have that Southern pull to write about the South–although many would say that writing about New Orleans and writing about the South are not the same; like me, New Orleans both is and isn’t of the South, and I feel that very strongly. I’ve written books set in California and Kansas, even one in upstate New York, but I very much consider myself a Southern writer.
Place is even more important in a queer crime novel because place shapes the queer people so much. As a writer, I think one of my strengths is setting and place, and I think that comes from being very much a fan of Gothics growing up. Gothics are known for place and mood, and I think those are two things I do well.
All of you write wonderfully flawed characters. Sometimes, as LGBTQ+ writers, we feel the burden of representation and the urge to write only positive LGBTQ+ characters as an attempt to undo history’s (the dominant culture’s) demonization of us. Unfortunately, that can be limiting—even flattening. Clearly, you’ve all struck a beautiful balance with your characters. Talk a bit about how you approached this issue.
The flaws, to me, are what make the characters seem real. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys always annoyed me because they were so perfect; no one is that perfect, and anyone that close to perfect in real life would be irritating and insufferable. I am am quite aware that I am flawed (one of my biggest flaws is believing I am self-aware because I most definitely am not), but I am not trying to be perfect; I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. By showing queer people with all their facets and flaws and failures and blind spots, we’re showing the reader that we are human; despite what those who hate us say or claim, we are human beings just like everyone else, just trying to get through life and do the best that we can. The villain in my first book was a gay man–and the entire book was a commentary on how we, as queer people, tend to overlook flaws and red flags from members of our own community. Just because someone is queer doesn’t mean they are a good person–and queers with a criminal bent do exist, and often take advantage of that sense of camaraderie we feel with each other, especially when we don’t know the person well. I tend to trust a queer person more readily than I will a straight person, and that’s wrong–which is why I think we feel so much more hurt when queer people betray us.
Speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ+ folks … Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame said, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” What do you think about the current tactics to ban queer books from schools, libraries, and even bookstores in places like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas? Why are they targeting queer books?
This is, I hope, the last gasp of the homophobes who’ve never updated their hate speech in over fifty years. What the hate group “Moms for Liberty” are doing and saying is no different than what Anita Bryant said and did in the 1970’s, what Maggie Gallagher and her evil co-horts at the National Organization for Marriage repeated, then came the One Million Moms…all too often it’s the cisgender straight white women who are the real foes of progressive politics who fight to uphold a bigoted status quo. They always claim they’re concerned moms worried about their children–but are perfectly fine with them being shot up at school; working in a meat factory on the night shift at thirteen (have fun in hell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when you get there and French-kiss your Lord and Master Lucifer); or shouldn’t have the right to vote…they know better than a child’s actual parents, you see, about what the child needs or wants. Maybe they should spend more time with their own children than worrying about everyone else’s? Phyllis Schlafly, queen skank of the conservative right, ignored her own family while she embarked on her crusade to strip women of their rights and autonomy–all the while shrieking like a hyena into any microphone nearby that she was fighting progress to save the American family while selling some Leave it to Beaver-like nonsense as reality. I always felt sorry for her gay son. Imagine that as your mother.
As for why, it’s about control and power. I actually respected Anita Bryant more, because she truly believed all the vile, horrible, unChristian things she said and espoused. Most of the others, including the unspeakably vile and disgusting Moms for Liberty, are working a grift for money, attention and power. Hilariously, they’ve sold their souls in the worst possible way in the guise of family, religion and God; if they’ve ever actually read their Bibles, they need to work on their reading comprehension skills as they are both apostates and blasphemers who will spend eternity doing the breast stroke in the lake of eternal fire. Hope they enjoy it.
Sorry your husbands and children don’t love you, but who can really blame them?
What are you working on next? What’s coming up?
I have a short story in an anthology called School of Hard Knox from Crippen and Landru (and somehow got a co-editor credit for the book with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor); Death Drop, the first in a new series from Golden Notebook press, drops in October; and the ninth Scotty comes out in November, Mississippi River Mischief. I am writing a gay noir, and may be writing second books for the new series I started with Crooked Lane last year as well as a sequel to Death Drop, and have a couple of short stories I want to finish to submit to anthologies I’d love to be in.
Saturday morning and my first day of the rest of my toothless life. Ironically, you cannot tell I don’t have any bottom teeth by looking at me, even when I talk; it was more obvious when I was only missing some. I also uploaded my new prescription for glasses to Zenni and ordered three new pair–purple, black and clear. I like my red frames, so I will probably give in at some point and buy a pair of those, too–and even with the four pairs I’ll wind up with this year and the three I got from Zenni last year, I am barely paying more than I paid for one pair at the optometrist’s. Not too shabby. So I go back to the dentist to get fitted for the new dentures in three weeks, so I will have the new ones in about a month or so, which is fine. Eating will be probably a challenge, but I am sure I’ll be able to get used to it, and there’s all kinds of softer type food I can eat that doesn’t require teeth to chew.
So yesterday I just drank protein shakes, and today I may progress to yogurt and ice cream. I need to pick up the mail today, so I am going to stop at the Fresh Market on the way home to pick up some more soft food options (baking potatoes, too). I wound up not doing a whole lot yesterday, but I had oral surgery and nine teeth removed, which is traumatizing to the body. It’s little wonder I was really tired for the day, and of course pain killers also make you drowsy and tired. I did read some more of Shawn’s book–what a fucking opening!–and will spend some more time with it today, I think. I don’t feel any pain–I was pretty much pain free by the late afternoon. Whether that was me healing, or the pain killers, or some combination of the two, I cannot say–but I woke up this morning without pain and after rinsing my mouth out, I’m pretty sure the bleeding has stopped. By tomorrow I’m supposed to work my way back into more solid foods–albeit ones that don’t require biting or chewing much, which kind of belies the “solid food” aspect of it–but I’ll be okay. I need to shed a few pounds anyway, and as long as I am getting calories from somewhere, I should be fine. Today I can have fizzy drinks (aka sparkling water and soda) and I have to start rinsing out my mouth every three to four hours with salty water. My face never swelled, which was kind of a cool thing.
I didn’t really do much of anything yesterday; I mostly sat in my chair watching the US Open and did some laundry and dishes, but that was about it. I am going to read some more of Shawn’s book today–I also need to run some errands, as I need softer food options, as I previously mentioned which means going out into the heat. I also need to get gas. I wonder if it’s okay to have coffee this morning? The instructions don’t say anything about hot drinks after the first day–he did mention something about it but I don’t remember what precisely it was, but I remember thinking so no soup either?A quick check of Dr. Google doesn’t recommend anything hot like coffee for at least two days, if not up to five? Yikes. But okay, we have those frappuccino things from Starbucks that Paul likes, and so that should handle my caffeine needs. I do like iced coffee, it’s just that I don’t have any way to make it here at the house. Then again, it’s also not on the written instructions, which I think means it’s not as important as the other things on the list? Probably best not to risk it. I tend to heal and recover more quickly than most (Paul is practically a mutant, given how fast he recovers from things), so I think I should be okay by tomorrow for coffee?
The weather forecast seems to think that we aren’t going to be in the high nineties/over a hundred this week, which is a lovely break. Then again, it is September, and it starts to cool down a little bit after Labor Day. I am hoping that I’ll have the motivation today to get some work done, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don’t get things done the day after an oral surgery. Sorry, that’s just how it is.
So I think I’m going to finish this, my iced coffee, and get my ice cream before heading back into the living room and spending the rest of the morning reading. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
And today I am having the oral surgery. Heavy heaving sigh. It will be horrible as these things inevitably are, but at least when I come out of it and start healing, I no longer will have to worry about mouth pain again, or for a while at any rate. Whew, so no big plans for my weekend other than soft and/or liquid foods and pain medication. It will be weird. It also makes a little sad, too, because the last time I had this procedure done I went to Kentucky to have it done so Mom could take care of me.
I always meant to go back up and have it done there…sigh. Oh, Mom.
But life is much better with the ability to hear. It’s really amazing, and I don’t think I ever heard this clearly in my life before, so clearly my hearing has always been a problem. And I have a new prescription for my glasses, so I’ll be ordering new pairs from Zenni relatively soon, which is great. So, soon enough I’ll be able to see clearly, I can already hear better, and the mouth pain will be finished. Yesterday was weird, because I knew I had this today, and so I am also taking off Monday and Tuesday, just in case. I also made a plan to make sure I get there and back; I am taking a Lyft there, then to the CVS for my pain prescription, and then another home. It makes more sense than trying to find someone who has the day free and is willing to give it up to cart me around.
There was a truly marvelous thunderstorm that erupted right as I was leaving the office yesterday–and I still managed to drive home without getting irritated, annoyed and aggravated at the hapless New Orleans drivers who’ve clearly never driven in the rain before because it’s so rare here. Bitch, please–everyone learns how to drive in snow because its unavoidable in places where it snows, so why are New Orleanians such shitty drivers in the rain? That is definitely an unsolved mystery.
I finished doing the page proof corrections and sent them in yesterday, and so the two books being released this fall in back-to-back months are finally, once and for all, finished and I can move on to writing other things without guilt. (I had already started writing other things, of course, but I did have that nagging guilt about these two books not being finished and in production yet.) I”m still not entirely certain what all I am going to be doing next–I have no contracts in place, but am not letting that bother me in the least (which is an improvement; being out of contract usually puts me into a panicked frenzy in which I start pitching things everywhere–which is not the best, you know; and always gets me in trouble) and I am relatively certain I won’t be lucid for most of the weekend (then again, you never know; I have a high pain threshold and I don’t think I stayed on the pain pills the first time longer than a day or two) and my terrible memory (which used to be so pinpoint sharp it was eerie) doesn’t help.
We also watched some of the US Open last night before I went to bed–I didn’t finish watching the Madison Keys match, which she should have won in the second set–which was kind of fun. I don’t feel as excited about sports as I used to; not sure what that is about, but it’s an unfortunate reality.
And on that note, I need to start getting ready. I am not wearing the hearing aids because I don’t need to hear the procedure clearly, frankly. Hopefully I’ll be able to check in tomorrow, or even later today. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!
Yesterday was a great test for me when it comes to fighting my anxiety.
I slept incredibly well, finished reading Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, wrote three blog entries, and started doing laundry. I also spent a lot of time on social media, stealing pictures from the weekend because I never remember to take any myself, and just was kind of taking it easy for the day. We had a thunderstorm blow through right after Paul left for the gym, and therein came the test. I did all the laundry, and when the sheets were finished I took that basket upstairs (Paul hates putting on the fitted sheet and I hate shoving the pillows into their cases, so I put on the sheet and he does the pillow cases, if you were wondering) and only wearing socks–which I never do because the stairs were varnished and are insanely slippery and steep, and they make two ninety degree turns on the way up–when I stepped into a puddle after the first turn. What the hell? I thought as I stepped onto another puddled step, and still another–only to get hit on the head with several drops of water. I looked up and just before the second ninety degree turn is a light fixture–the primary one for lighting the stairs–and the water was coming from the fixture! Fortunately it was off–I don’t even want to think about if it had been on–and I put on the sheet, changed my socks, grabbed my slippers, and a handful of towels. I mopped up the mess with one towel before covering the rest of the steps that had been wet with towels, going down a few more steps with the towels just in case.
Immediately, I thought oh my God we have a leak from a big thunderstorm that caused street flooding, which means that water has probably been pooling somewhere inside the house somewhere; we haven’t had a downpour that caused flooding most of the summer (its usually a weekly occurrence in the summer time), which further led to oh no what about mold and will the wall have to be ripped out again to well at least we know where the problem is to great termites love wet wood before I was able to take a breath and recognize that I was spiraling and the anxiety was starting to spread to a physical and emotional reaction. I took a deep breath, and remembered that it’s out of my control. Getting worked up and emotional will not stop the leak or repair the wall. I was borrowing trouble and letting my mind start to control my narrative and I don’t want that. I sat down at my desk and thought, “Okay. When Paul gets home I’ll tell him to call the landlady. She’ll need to come see it, then call someone. So I have to get the living room picked up and make it look better. I still need to put away the dishes and I need to make a to-do list because I have things I need to get done this week. Will this be convenient with everything I have going on this fall? No, but when has life ever been convenient?
Never. And that’s what Paul and I discussed last night: getting frustrated, irritated, and upset by things you have no control over is a waste of time and energy. Dealing with the anxiety is a big part of this with me; I can’t control the physical reaction, but I can the emotional and mental, and as long as I keep that under control and don’t spiral, I will be okay. Things have to be taken care of, and that includes what I always call “odious chores,” or what other people might call “adulting” (I hate the turning nouns into verbs that don’t need to be verbs, and so I try not to ever use that word–it’s always grated on me. When you’re not adulting, are you childing? Of course not. That’s why it grates.). I don’t like conflict, and this is also a part of my anxiety–the fear of conflict creates anxiety and keeps me from doing things that might cause conflict, even though they rarely do. At one point last night as we caught up on our shows, I said, “I wish today was Saturday because I don’t want to get up in the morning” and Paul replied, “let it go”–we’d had a conversation about all of this and stopping being negative about things we can’t control and etc.–and I said, “you’re right. I have to get up early and moaning about it won’t change it, so why bother? It just is.” So I came back downstairs and watched this week’s My Adventures with Superman (it really is a. great show) and then Paul joined me for Only Murders in the Building, Ahsoka, and then we started a MAX (that is weird to me, just like saying X instead of Twitter–but fuck Elon, that I will never do) documentary called Telemarketers which is incredibly fascinating. There will be more on that later, once we’ve finished it (and I remember getting calls from these people back in the day; I always felt sorry for the callers as I always do with any kind of telemarketer–but after watching the first episode I don’t feel as sorry for them as I used to).
Ironically, my body clock is also all screwed up somehow. I was exhausted last night and was falling asleep in my chair by nine; so I went to bed early and am up and awake at five am this morning. It was a very good night’s sleep, too. So here I am last night whining about getting up early briefly–and this morning I voluntarily got out of bed an hour earlier than normal because I was awake and clearly wasn’t going to fall back asleep at any time. So here I am at my desk, swilling coffee and blearily thinking about all the things I need to get done before Friday. Tonight I am picking up my hearing aids after work, getting the mail, and running by the grocery store. I have to finish paying the bills. I have a million emails to respond to as well as numerous to generate.
It’s also funny that, after years of not thinking about the past or revisit it, I’ve started doing that more and more, especially since Dad is now telling me things I didn’t know before. Since I turned sixty, I started looking back over the years, which I had always seen as pointless before. You can’t do anything about the past, after all, and we also have a tendency to view the past as better and rosier than it actually was the further in the past it becomes. Sure, Mom dying earlier this year and talking to Dad about the past certainly has something to do with it all–but I had already started down that path. What is it, I wonder, about that particular milestone that resonated with me so deeply that I turned philosophical and decided to start unpacking my past? I don’t know. But I saw something on Facebook the other day about someone’s first words, and that made me remember that my parents always said I didn’t start talking until I was almost three years old (Mom would always add “and you haven’t shut up since”), but I was walking at nine months; they also always said that ruefully and with regret, because they believed the issues with my leg joints–the rolling ankles, the ease with which my hips will pop out of joint–is because I started walking too young. I never really thought anything about it, really, other than well thanks a lot for those issues…but this time I thought, “that must have really been weird and scary for them as parents barely out of their teens,” and you know every other adult and parent they knew privately judged them while offering all kinds of unsound advice and old wives’ tales from the country that made no sense and had no basis in any kind of science. Such a shame about their boy, you think he’s retarded? (Yes, that word–preferably not used anymore–was in common usage when I was a child, and yes, I heard adults talking about when they thought I was out of earshot. I think that was about the time my “selective hearing” started; being able to hear clearly for the first time in my adulthood tonight after getting the hearing aids did make me wonder do I really want to be able to hear everything?)
And yes, my primary takeaway from Bouchercon this weekend was feeling something I’ve not felt in a long time, and definitely not since the pandemic: ambitious. I told Paul last night (and someone over the weekend, probably my poor friend Teresa, aka Carsen Taite) “I kind of feel like life is happening to me, rather than me living my life, and I don’t like that feeling.” So, it’s time for me to start planning and mapping things out and deciding what I want and setting goals and figuring out how to get what I want again. I also realize I have to be very careful with what I agree to do this fall–not knowing how long some of these recoveries from procedures will take, for one thing–and I need to stop having anxiety about not having books under contract and then throwing out a bunch of proposals and getting deadlines. No, I need to plan. I need to strategize. I need to get my shit together and set some goddamned goals.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines so I can make this week’s to-do list and start tackling the email inbox. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later without doubt.
No matter the fact that civilization is crumbling and the world is on fire, the one bright spot of these interesting times in which we find ourselves is that this is the Platinum Age of Crime Fiction. There are so many incredibly gifted and talented and amazing writers publishing in this time that I’ll never catch up. There are, however, a few writers that I will always move to the top of the stack once it arrives and I’ve finished the current book I am reading.
For over twenty years, one of those authors has been Laura Lippman.
And this new one? Chef’s kiss.
The lights were off in the bathroom, but the door was ajar and light had begun seeping into the room. The day came at Amber in a series of unpleasant sensations. Hard–she was lying on the floor. Cold–she had on only her strapless bra, the floor was tile, the air conditioning had been set low.
Sticky. That was the blood. So much blood. She didn’t know a body could lose this amount of blood without going into shock. Maybe she was in shock? She had taken a first aid course at the Y and remembered what to do for someone else in shock–get them to lie down, elevate the legs–but no one ever told you how to know if you yourself were in shock. Besides, she was already lying down.
“Joe? Joe?”
No answer. He wasn’t here, of course. Why hadn’t he tried to check on her? Was he so busy mooning over his ex-girlfriend that he couldn’t be bothered to see if Amber was going to rally and make it to the after-party? He must have gone without her–fair enough, given how she had demanded the only room key and bolted from the prom, never to return, but couldn’t he at least pretended concern?
He doesn’t really like you, her mother had said when Amber had told her about the invitation. Not in that way. That’s okay, Amber had replied, and it had been okay, because she believed it was only a matter of time before he realized that he did like her. She had thought it would happen last night.
Thematically, Laura Lippman’s incredible new novel explores the Bryan Stevenson quote, “we are more than the worst thing we have ever done”, and what does it mean and how does it feel to be defined and always characterized by the worst thing you’ve ever done. The “prom mom” of the title is Amber Glass, a lonely but intelligent teenager who is a non-entity at her high school. Amber was a volunteer student tutor, and she worked with golden boy Joe Simpson, whose grades have slipped since his long-time first love girlfriend dumped him for a college guy. Amber is of dazzled by him and falls for him (the book cleverly makes a She’s All That reference here). Her exit from the prom is because she is experiencing cramping and feels sick…and gives birth prematurely in the bathroom. She didn’t know she was pregnant because she was ignorant about her body and its functions, and just thought she was gaining weight. The baby is dead, and Amber becomes known as “prom mom,” and is sentenced for matricide as a juvenile; sealed records and release at eighteen. Joe becomes “cad dad” (not checking on his sick date, and the real reason why is even worse than the tabloids print). Both Joe and Amber are damaged by the events of their prom night, and spend the next twenty-two years trying to get past their past and move on, always terrified that it’s going to come back into the news sometime and wreck their now comfortable existences.
Flash forward twenty-two years to 2019, and Joe is a successful realtor (thanks to some handy nepotism) married to a brilliant plastic surgeon (originally from New Orleans) and they live in a huge beautiful old home–they have no children, by choice (both have their own reasons, and this character building here is incredible) and has a perfect life on the surface. Meredith is very Type-A and rational, she and Joe are each other’s entire world–but Joe is also having a sordid little affair with another, younger realtor, and he is also taking an enormous business risk with their financial security without consulting or even telling her. Both Joe and Meredith are point of view characters in the present; there are occasional flashbacks to how the Joe/Amber dynamic began, how they came to go to the prom together, and how both were very similar beneath the enormous surface differences.
But Amber, our title character, is perhaps one of the most intriguing and interesting characters Lippman has created in her best-selling, critically acclaimed and award-winning career, which is saying something. Lippman has no flaws as an author, only strengths, but one of the things she is capable of that I truly envy is her consummate skill at character, all the incredible little details and touches she gives them that provide so much insight into who they are as people and, no matter how bad the decisions they make or whatever horrible things they may do (or are capable of doing), those little incisively precise details make them relatable and understandable, if unlikable. Meredith seems very cold, for example, yet her own tragic backstory explains who she is and how she became who she is so brilliantly that you can’t help worrying about what may happen when she finds out the things her beloved (and always forgiven husband) is hiding from her.
Yet Amber….Amber is the unabashed center and beating heart of the book. Her backstory, putting her life back together and keeping her past hidden, takes her many places before she lands in New Orleans (oh, my heart); and her New Orleans world is just as beautifully crafted as I knew it would be if and when she ever wrote about New Orleans. The little touches of local tribalism (chess pie, anyone?) were simply perfect without the slightest hint of cliché. A perfect example of this is her incorporation of the Muses shoe. The shoes are always beautiful and deeply coveted; adding in one would be a trope in the hands of a less skilled author. But Lippman adds that little unique touch that takes it from trope to brilliant detail–the dust. The shoes are fricking dust magnets that are impossible to clean because of the glitter, and that’s the kind of touch only a local might know to add, so much so that I thought why the fuck have I never talked about how goddamned dusty those gorgeously decorated shoes get?
It made me, with at least seventeen New Orleans novels to my credit and countless short stories, feel like an amateur New Orleans novelist.
She also managed to work the pandemic into it so that it becomes pivotal to the plot, which I was beginning to think wasn’t possible and something I’ve wanted to do, but have been afraid to try.
This book is an exceptional, compulsive read–and an excellent addition to the Lippman canon. Every book is different–which is amazing–so it’s impossible to say one is better than the other, but her continual growth as a writer and the risks she is willing to take is just another one of the reasons she will be known as one of the greatest writers, let alone crime writers, of our time.
…on a flight to Dallas this afternoon. However, in delightful news, I am sharing the Dallas-San Diego legs of the trip in both directions with none other than the Lady H, aka Lady Hermione, aka Carsen Taite. That is always fun. I don’t have enough time changing planes in Dallas on the way out to get Whataburger on the way (I’ll get Shake Shack at New Orleans airport before I leave) but here’s hoping I can get it on the way home, because I know I will be starving by the time I get to Dallas. (I just checked; I have two hours in Dallas on the way back so Whataburger fer shur! The departure flight is at eleven something California time, so I probably won’t eat anything before boarding….unless there’s donuts or something at the San Diego airport, which I am sure there is.) It’s truly sad how excited I can get about food options that I don’t normally have access to, isn’t it?
But I am all packed and ready to head to Metairie for my eye appointment on the way to the airport. It would probably be more accurate to say I overpacked–I really don’t know why every time I go to something like this I have to take so much with me, including books–what if I run out of something to read!?!?!? Um, bitch, you’re going to a convention for mystery readers. There will be free books in my conference book bag. Books will be given away at various times over the weekend. There’s a book room and several book sellers.
But yes, by all means, Greg, weight yourself down bringing coal to Newcastle.
My supervisor and I were looking around yesterday for pictures of our old office on Frenchmen Street for a presentation she is doing at the US Conference on AIDS (she’ll leave the day I return to work), and we couldn’t find any, anywhere. I knew I probably had some in my archive of photographs on the back-up hard drive (which is horribly horribly disorganized), and so I went digging around in those files after I finished packing last night. Oh, the memories–and oh, the fucking receipts! Apparently–not really a surprise to anyone who knows me–I’ve been keeping receipts for decades. Old assholish behavior from people who should know better that I’d completely forgotten about–both the person and the behavior. Also, some people have been assholes for a very long time. Stick with what you’re good at, I guess? But yes, at some point I am going to have to organize those picture files–and there are tons of duplicates.
So.
Many.
Duplicates.
Nevertheless it was a fun way to pass an hour or so while the laundry laundered and the dishes washed in their respective machines. There are so many things I need to be better about–the picture files, for example, could be incredibly useful for inspirations and/or putting me into the mood to write a particular kind of story. I found the photo file of the pictures I used to help me visualize and write Timothy; I did do this for Mississippi River Mischief, but never took the time to look at the photos before diving into writing or trying to get the work done. It probably would have helped some, and therefore I need to remember the value of visual aids for my writing going forward. I am taking stuff with me to edit over coffee, or to muse over and/or think about; I always take my journal with me when I go to panels because people say things I want to remember later, or make me think about something I am working on, sometimes solving a puzzle I’d be trying to untangle. I love being around other writers, I really do. It’s always fun, and I get to hang around smart people and listen to them tell funny stories and laugh and be amazed that I get to know all these amazingly brilliant and smart and witty people and get to call them friends? The teenaged kid in Kansas whose house had a corn field across the street and dreamed big dreams in that bedroom with the ugly beige walls and brown shag carpeting would have slept well and gotten through life a little easier had he known his life would turn out even better than he’d ever dared to dream. I complain a lot. I whine a lot. I get irritated easily and my temper frays and flares a little more lately than I’d prefer, frankly. It’s also so, so easy to go down the dark path to depression and who cares and why bother and all that morose self-pitying nonsense that doesn’t make anything any better but certainly can make everything seem worse. But I do know how incredibly lucky and blessed I am. People also seem to think I’ve led an interesting life. I don’t think so, but it’s also all I know so it just seems normal to me. I get to write books and stories and get them published. People read them, seem to like them, and want me to write more of them. I even get nominated for awards here and there and now and again…quite a lot of times, actually.
And while it may not seem like it most of the time when I’m complaining, I’m pretty happy with my life and how it’s all turned out. I’ve also realized that I’m incredibly lucky and blessed with my writing career. I’ve been nominated for the Anthony Award seven times now–twice for Best Anthology, once for Best Short Story, once for Best Paperback/Ebook Original, twice for Best Children’s/Young Adult, and once for Best Humorous. That’s really not a bad haul, you know. I’ve also been nominated for a Lefty and an Agatha and a Shirley Jackson and a Macavity–not bad for a big old queer writer of queer books, you know? It’s also lovely seeing these mainstream awards starting to slowly recognize queer writers and our books. I also found, you see, a lot of pictures of conferences and signings and readings and book events and conferences from throughout the length of my varied and odd career. It’s been a lovely ride so far, and I really wish I would allow myself the luxury of enjoying myself and enjoying my career.
My goal for this weekend is to have as much fun as possible, hug as many people as I can, and relax and enjoy the ride as a three-time Anthony nominee. That’s pretty amazing, and something that queer teenager back in Kansas couldn’t have dared to dream.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to do one more load of dishes before i depart and the kitchen will be thus clean. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and as always I will probably be updating social media with today’s travel shenanigans. Don’t know if or when I will be back here, but will do my best.
Queer and Loathing in America 