Category: revising

Tell It To My Heart

Monday morning, and I am not so certain that my weekend was nearly as productive as it needed to be. Sure, I finished going over the line/copy edits of Bury Me in Shadows, and I did manage to get caught up on some other things, but as always, as I Monday morning quarterback my weekend over my first cup of coffee–I find myself thinking I should have gotten more done, should have spent more time with some things, and am trying not to allow the inevitable desire to get down on myself take deeper hold. Part of my goals for this year is to be easier on myself, and beating myself up over not being as productive as I would like to be–which is often unattainable for even the most Type A facet of one Gregalicious–is definitely not the road or path I need to be taking this Monday morning. This is my last full week of this month–after this week is completed, next weekend (the one after this coming one) is when we have our lovely four day long weekend where the agency is closing (but still paying us), and then after that week will be Bouchercon here in New Orleans–although very little is left of what was going to be my first in-person event with my mystery peeps since I went to New York for the annual board meeting for Mystery Writers of America in January of 2020(!). People are canceling and I can’t blame them for not wanting to come to a hot spot of COVID variant strains.

This coming weekend is earmarked for the revisions/edits/clean up of #shedeservedit, which will be so lovely to finally be almost completely finished with. I wrote the first draft in July of 2015; ninety-seven thousand words in thirty-one days, and now it’s going to finally see print. It is (the town, the characters) been in progress of some sort or another since I was in high school, really, and…when it finally comes out, it’s kind of the end of an era for me. Oh, I’ll probably write more about that county and town; that region in general, for that matter–but along with Sara, it finally closes the publication door on the things I’ve been working on or thinking about for the last forty years or more.

And when you put it that way….

And here it is Monday evening already. I never finished writing this before leaving for the office this morning; I didn’t sleep well and of all mornings that needed cappuccinos, it was clearly this one, and yet I was too tired to get everything out and make one, so I just had regular coffee instead. Not ideal, perhaps, but I managed to make it through the day somehow. I even picked up the mail and made groceries on the way home, how’s about that? Shocking, I know–but I am probably going to pour myself into bed relatively early tonight. Tomorrow is a big “after work” day; I am switching to doing legs as my second workout of the week. Not a real leg day, mind you–just a focused workout with my legs with a few intense and difficult exercises.

I also finished the third chapter of Chlorine yesterday; taking it from the 1300 I had to a robust 3500 or so. Is it probably a sloppy sloppy mess? Probably. But it was also kind of fun to write once the hole in the page opened and I fell into it. This is enormously pleasing to me still–I am not as pleased as I was last night, to be clear, but am still pretty darned pleased–and when I finish writing this, I am probably going to go over to my easy chair and reread what I wrote yesterday, and probably will spend some time with The Other Black Girl, which I am also really enjoying.

And of course, we spent some time last night with the great cheesy fun that is Outer Banks’ second season. I love that they aren’t reeling any of it in this season, either; batshit nuts and over the top and WAY WAY fun.

You know, everything I love in a television show.

Man, I am tired. We had a weird day today; my program coordinator is on vacation so everything was silence back in the cubicle area, and I had no one to talk to all day. We also had a lot of clients no-show or cancel today–not sure if that was COVID-surge-related, or the thunderstorm (it’s been raining all day), or just the first Monday in a new month blues or something, I don’t know. But I would have rather had clients–I’d rather be busy than sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs waiting for something, anything, to do (I have other things to do, but it’s all tedious make-work sort of stuff, like printing forms, stocking rooms, and so forth–and yes, I did all that but it’s tedious; I’d rather be interacting with clients and getting them tested).

Ah, well, at least I have a job that I love doing and don’t mind getting out of bed for. It’s one of the many blessings I’ve been gifted with in this life–a great day job that I enjoy and where I feel like I’m accomplishing something every day I go into the office. A lot of people don’t even have that, so…would it be great if my salary were twice its size? Of course, but if that increase were to come with a decrease in working with clients face to face on risk reduction strategies for STI infections and testing them for same (as well as connecting them to treatment) I don’t know that I would take it, frankly.

And now, without further ado, I am going to read for a bit before Paul gets home. Have a lovely Monday evening, Constant Reader!

Heart to Break

The first Sunday in August. I think we’re in the midst of yet another excessive heat warning today–I’d swear I’d heard that last night on a newsbreak during the Olympics, but haven’t bothered to check yet again this morning. I slept in yet again–again–and am only now getting to my morning coffee, which tastes marvelous. Yesterday wound up being one of those days; the ones where I get very little done and just kind of gave in to the mental and physical exhaustion, turning it into essentially a “rest and recover” day. Finishing Shawn’s book had a lot to do with it; I kind of just sat around for a couple of hours, thinking about it and figuring out what I wanted to say about it when I sat down to write my blog piece about it. I’m still thinking about the book a bit this morning, to be honest; it’s really thought-provoking and very well done. I also spent some time reading the first few chapters of The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, which is also quite remarkable–definitely off to a good start, and made me feel much better about selecting it as my next read after finishing Shawn’s–and I think I’m going to have a lot of really great reading ahead of me, which is, as always, incredibly exciting. There’s also a new Stephen King and a new Megan Abbott dropping this week, too–life simply doesn’t get better than that, methinks.

All I know is yesterday I overslept, read for a while, wrote a second blog entry and before I knew it was already after four–shocking, to say the least–with the end result that yesterday wound up being an off-day, and you know what else? I think I must have needed an off-day, which is the only proper response. I am trying not to beat myself up over having a lot to do and yet still taking a day off–because most people get to occasionally take a day off, and it’s not the end of the world when and if I myself chose to take one. Today I have things to do to get caught up on, of course–my email inbox is completely out of control, as always, and the Lost Apartment could stand another cleaning, and there’s always writing to do, and I also have to go to the gym this afternoon–but all of those things will inevitably get done, as they always inevitably do. I shall have to consult the to-do list, of course; and perhaps make another one with additional things, like I want to get my various state “bibles” made eventually, starting with Alabama (in this instance, a ‘bible’ means recording names, places, geography, etc. so it’s all in one place and easily consulted when writing something new set there; I want to do one for Alabama, Louisiana, Kansas, and California, as well as one for both the Chanse and Scotty series; it’s way overdue in each instance, which is why there are so many continuity errors–but mostly in the state stories more than anything else). I guess this is what one calls “world-building”? All of my books are inevitably, in some roundabout way, connected; even the main character in Chlorine is from Kahola County (he’s from the tiny, population 63, town of Furlong, a whistle stop on the Missouri Pacific railroad line) and thus it is connected with the others, too. (I really need to finish Chapter Three today if it kills me; it’s a transitional chapter and as we know, I always have trouble with transitional chapters). I also need to type up my notes from my editorial call as a guideline to the final polish on #shedeservedit; which I need to focus on this month–which will not be easy to do with an unfinished Chapter 3 hanging over my head, you know?

But I think I am going to try to keep the burner on beneath Chlorine; it’s just on a slow cook rather than being brought to a boil at the moment. It would be great to be able to get these revisions done and then be able to get the first draft of Chlorine finished this month as well; almost too much to hope for, really. I also need to get some other things further under control, and much as I would like to take yet another day off from everything and just spend the day reading, I don’t think that’s either wise or in the cards. I am going to try to get this finished, spend an hour with The Other Black Girl, and then get to work on other things that need to be worked on before heading to the gym. I generally am exhausted when I get home from the gym–inevitable, particularly with us in a excess heat warning–and while drinking my protein shake I’ll probably spend some more time with The Other Black Girl. This is the last full week of work I have for a while; the following two weeks we are being given a long holiday type weekend with the agency closing on the 13th and the 16th; and then the following week after that second short week Im on vacation for most of it because of Bouchercon–and no matter what happens (or doesn’t, for that matter) with Bouchercon I am still going to take that time off, and then it’s Labor Day, and you know…it’s August, and August, from all indicators, is going to be miserably hot this year anyway, so I need to take what I can get from all of this.

And once the Olympics are over, and our moratorium on watching outside television ends, we are going to have a lot to watch–Ted Lasso, Outer Banks, and several others as well, which is quite interesting and exciting, methinks.

I also saw a wonderful looking Spanish series, set in the 1720’s, on Netflix that looks like it could be quite entertaining, The Cook of Castamar–and you know Paul and I are crazy about some Spanish language shows.

I am also kind of pleased to have Bury Me in Shadows all finished except for the proofing. That’s always a lovely feeling, really.

So–let’s tally everything, shall we? I am in the midst of writing a new novel, the midst of revisions of another, and planning yet a third; I am pulling together a short story collection AND an essay collection; and a collection of novellas. That’s six books right there that are in some sort of progress for me; and of course I am also co-editing the Bouchercon anthology for Minneapolis. So, seven books in some sort of progress–no wonder I am so fucking scattered and on edge all the time, always certain I am forgetting something!

And on that note, I should probably get another cup of coffee and take a look around and see what I need to get to first–after an hour of reading the Harris novel, of course.

Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

I Am What I Am

Saturday!!

My GOD, it was hot yesterday. I walked to the gym after work and by the time I got there was drenched in sweat and felt exhausted. I wound up cutting my workout short–I didn’t have the energy to make it through the whole workout; just the partial I was so tired and sweaty and hot that the walk home was absolute misery. I’m glad I went; I just wish the heat hadn’t been so damned extreme. The heat and humidity just suck your energy right out of your body sometimes–and it absolutely felt like 115 degrees as I walked. The ground felt hot, even when I cut through Coliseum Square. Yesterday morning it was cool in the house but I could tell it was hot outside, and as the day passed I had to turn on the ceiling fans and at one point considered getting out the portable air conditioners–but finally decided I was being ridiculous on that score and left them alone. I took a long hot shower once I got home and had my protein shake, and just then luxuriated in that clean, not hot and not sweaty (or that sticky feeling when sweat has dried on your skin–yuck) feeling the shower left me feeling rejuvenated and relaxed. I sat down and read through the edits on the next two parts of Bury Me in Shadows–there’s only one small 30 page section left to get through–and I am feeling content with the book. It’s good work. I like my main character and his instabilities; the weird mystery of what is going on there at the old Donelson place in the country is interesting and intriguing, and it’s also kind of nice to see that some of the points I wanted to make worked and didn’t sound overly preachy (which worried me).

So, yay! I feel much better about the book now, and am kind of interested in getting back to #shedeservedit this weekend. I think I am going to probably do some filing when I am finished here–it never hurts to get better organized–and spend some time with Shawn’s Razorblade Tears this morning, and then do some writing on Chlorine and possibly, just possibly, start rereading #shedeservedit–but I also need to type up the notes from our call the other day.

Huzzah!

I overslept again this morning, but fully intended to when I went to bed last night so I don’t feel any guilt this morning about being a lag-a-bed until nine. I do have things to do today but right now I am enjoying feeling rested and my coffee tastes remarkably delicious this morning. I am feeling good–particularly about not having to go outside today as we move into yet another excessive heat warning day. Paul is working out with his trainer this morning (later this morning, I should clarify) and then will probably head to the office, so I have the Lost Apartment to myself for most of the day–so i should be able to finish reading Shawn’s book, get some writing and cleaning and so forth taken care of, before heading back into the Olympics tonight. The second season of Outer Banks also dropped on Netflix yesterday, which is terribly exciting; Paul and i had kind of made up our minds to not watch anything other than the Olympics until they were over, so we’d have a vast variety of things to watch for the rest of the month of August…but damn me, if Outer Banks isn’t tempting. (Paul even mentioned it was dropping yesterday last night as we watched the swimming –Caeleb Dressel is incredibly pretty)

I was also, of all things (because I don’t have enough writing to do on my plate already) about my next Scotty book, Mississippi River Mischief–this was a direct result of finishing going over the copy edits/line edits of Bury Me in Shadows, I should add–and how complicated that story is going to be; I think maybe part of the reason I’ve been avoiding it for so long is because I know how hard plotting that story is going to be; I left the Boys in an incredible personal dilemma or two that needs to be resolved, and I don’t really know how to resolve those issues quite yet. I know what the case is going to be, and it, too, is going to be complex and difficult to plot out and make work. Don’t get me wrong–I know I can do it, but that’s when the lazies kick in.

And on that note, I am going to go finish my coffee with Shawn. Talk to you later, Constant Reader!

Stomp!

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

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

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

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

Gregalicious plans, and the gods laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

Who Do You Think You Are

Wednesday and hump day; it’s the Wednesday between bi-weekly Pay the Bills Days and all the bills are paid and thus all is right in a Gregalicious world. Huzzah? HUZZAH!

I didn’t want to get up this morning–definitely didn’t want to get out of bed–which is a lovely contrast to a few weeks ago when I was getting up earlier than usual because I couldn’t sleep. The caffeine experiment also seems to continue to work–I wasn’t tired from less caffeine yesterday, didn’t crash from caffeine drop in the middle of the afternoon, and felt fine when I got home from work (other than exhaustion from being out in a heat advisory, which convinced me to skip the gym last night and try again tonight). I worked on Chlorine a little before being sucked into the Olympic vortex last night, but tonight I am going to try to get more work on Chlorine done and maybe do some editing etc. rather than staring at the television for most of the evening. I am really enjoying working on Chlorine–it hit me yesterday that I am having a lot of fun with the character voice, and another key to his character, who he is, came to me last night–more than anything, he’s a survivor, a queer man in a horribly homophobic society doing what he has to do in order to survive and work and keep going without being destroyed in the process–and as such, he has to make some moral compromises…but he truly sees those compromises as endemic to Hollywood and the system; everyone has to make compromises in Hollywood.

I am really, really liking the character, and really really liking writing it. I mean, yesterday I got to write the line “I’ve never cared much about dames.” That inordinately pleased me to no end, and is emblematic of the voice and the tone I am striving for in this book. And I’m actually believing this will be a really good one–which is a feeling I rarely get when I am in the midst of writing something, if ever.

So, I am just kind of basking in the glow of writing something I am enjoying and am proud of at the same time, since it’s such a unique experience for me.

I’m also speaking to my editor tomorrow about #shedeservedit, which she apparently thinks, in her own words, is “amazing”, which nevertheless means I’ll be taking a break from other writing relatively soon in order to do the revisions and edits on it for its January release. At long last, “the Kansas book” will be out there for people to read. I’ve kind of worked on this book, in one form or another, since 1977, really; it’s been a long time a-bornin’, as they used to say in the olden days in the rural midwest. There are some other Kansas book ideas in my head, but unless something really jumps out and grabs me by the throat, this may very well be my last Kansas book. Alabama, on the other hand…one of the things I need to do (which I forgot to add to the to-do list I created yesterday) is go through the Alabama stuff I’ve already written and clear up discrepancies and so forth, as well as make a list of who’s who in the county and the county’s history and so forth. I will be revisiting Corinth County again–for some reason, I’m thinking that one of the supporting characters from Bury Me in Shadows (namely, Beau Hackworth) may even get his own book at some point, and there are numerous other Corinth County stories I want to tell. I may even do some more California books, for that matter…and there’s definitely a book with a Houston tie-in I want to write eventually.

I guess we’ll see how it all turns out.

But I am pretty jazzed I’ve somehow made it to Wednesday relatively unscathed.

This bodes well for the future, methinks. And in a few more weeks I get a four day weekend; they are closing the agency on the 13th and the 16th as a thank you to the staff for working through the pandemic (which isn’t over yet, but I appreciate the long weekend) and we also all got a raise for the year, which was also rather nice. Bouchercon in New Orleans is also happening in a few weeks–at least, so far it is still happening–and while it’s going to involve social distancing and masking, I am still looking forward to seeing my friends whom I’ve not seen in years now. Years.

But if Louisiana’s numbers keep worsening…sigh.

And on that note, I am going to get my day started. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!

I’m Your Baby Tonight

Tuesday morning and the week is passing gradually; not that I want things to hurry up by any means (God forbid, this final countdown to sixty is horrible), but I do kind of wish it were the weekend again. What can I say? I loves me a weekend.

Yesterday’s caffeine experiment went pretty well. I wasn’t wired all morning, true, but at the same time I felt fine and I also didn’t have the usual caffeine crash that usually happened around three o’clock; in fact, I felt fine when I got off work rather than tired. Had last night been a gym night, I would have gone. Instead, I cleaned the kitchen and did some things around the house and watched the Olympics. Sure, I could have spent some time writing last night, and probably should have, but it was also kind of nice to just have a relaxed evening where I wasn’t completely exhausted and was able to just kind of chill out and relax. It was also nice not to have to deal with cappuccino mess when I got home from work last night, and it’s kind of nice to relegate them from necessities to occasional treat from now on–most likely for days when I have to get up and be somewhere early–or when I am just completely groggy, and one is more than enough.

Yesterday was also kind of a good day. I managed to get quite a bit done, despite a serious lack of motivation or desire to do so, and kind of just relished a Monday where I wasn’t tired and felt pretty good overall. Even this morning, I feel rested and alert and alive rather than dragging my ass as usual–the absence of insomnia has been quite marvelous, really–and I am not dreading my day, which is usually the case on Tuesday mornings. Tonight after work is a gym night–which usually means an abbreviated workout because the gym will be crowded–but I am going to try to do my best to get in as good a workout as the one I had on Sunday, which felt wonderful. I am undoubtedly going to have to get a new computer by the end of the year–we’ll see how the chips fall for me financially–because this one just isn’t fast anymore and doesn’t function that great with more than two programs open; or that great with even just two. And if I have any social media open on my browser–well, kiss that all goodbye for sure…and now that I have my laptop working at top speed…I am trying to train myself to work in my easy chair.

Why not? Why not indeed?

Might as well be comfortable while I write and work on-line, right?

Makes sense to me, at any rate.

So, here I am on a Tuesday morning feeling relatively awake, alive, and fairly decently, if I do say so myself. I just need to now get my energies focused; the goal for today is to make a thorough to-do list; get as caught up on emails as I conceivably can; go to the gym tonight; and possibly start writing Chapter Three of Chlorine–I will probably end up cleaning up the first two chapters to remind myself of my character’s voice…I do like the voice I am creating; I like the character even though he’s kind of unlikable and does things that are perhaps morally questionable. But I’m having fun with him, and that’s the most important thing, methinks.

I am really happy I’m enjoying writing again. I am not really certain that saying that is completely fair–and probably a journey through past blog entries when I was writing something would probably quickly prove that to be a lie; I think I’ve probably always enjoyed the act of creation and writing. That isn’t to say that some of it isn’t drudgery–trust me, copy edits and line edits are nearly as tedious as watching paint dry–and editing becomes problematic because I become so familiar with the story and so tired of it at the same time that I am not entirely sure I can trust myself to edit–and God knows I am never the fairest judge of my own work! I am often much too hard on myself with this kind of stuff, and I probably need–despite the rare possibility of change at my advanced age–to work on getting past that. But I think the primary difference I am experiencing with writing Chlorine–as well as the things I’ve written lately–is I feel a confidence in my writing that I’ve not felt in a long time, and I have really enjoyed creating these things.

Of course, I have lots of editing to do on short stories and novellas, but hey–it’s all a part of the process.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Day Two of less caffeination; will report back tomorrow.

How Will I Know

Monday morning and another week of work staring me in the face.

Yesterday was rather pleasant, as Sundays generally tend to be more so than any other day of the week. I slept in, as I have been doing a lot lately on the weekends (thank you medication!) and then I spent about two hours with Razorblade Tears, S. A. Cosby’s thought-provoking and interesting thriller–a very worthy follow-up to last year’s terrific Blacktop Wasteland. After that, I started moving computer files around in an attempt to get better organized, which was a rather dreadful and tedious chore, but listening to the Per Shop Boys’ Pop Art (aka their greatest hits) made it somewhat more bearable, quite frankly. I also went to the gym and had a terrific workout that felt great; I am always amazed at how much better my Sunday workouts are compared to those on days that have work-responsibilities, and I felt and looked so pumped when I left the gym–something I never feel on the weeknight workouts. I also had a great stretching session (I also stretched at home on Saturday; I think I am going to start going on Saturdays to do some cardio…we’ll see. Football season is also looming…), and felt really good when I got home. I also registered for New England Crime Bake in November, which means a visit to Boston and (hopefully) New York as well. YAY!

I’m also trying something new this morning–no cappuccinos, just regular coffee. This could very easily turn out to be a huge mistake–huge–but it’s something I wanted to try. I slept okay last night–woke up a few times, but was able to fall back asleep–and I am pretty sure I can function with a lot less caffeine than I usually have on these early mornings. I guess I am about to find out one way or the other, right? I’m also going to make a to-do list for this week once I get a little bit more awake this morning; and I am going to try to actually follow it. It’s very easy for me to get off track–shiny object! Look!–but it is definitely something I need to try to get back into the habit of working on. I want to get several more chapters of Chlorine written, and I also want to get some things revised/reworked this week–I want to get a few more stories out for submission by the end of July; you can’t sell anything if it’s just sitting in your computer–and getting organized is crucial for me getting things done, period.

I’ve been feeling fairly decently about my writing lately; not sure what’s changed (the chemicals in my body? Thank you, medication) but I’ve been feeling pretty confident. Maybe it’s because I’ve done so much work in this last month? Maybe it’s because the work has gone really well? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Who knows?

I am enjoying watching the Olympics, but it feels weird not watching the way we have in the past. NBC’s coverage is, as always, horrible and cheesy (really makes me miss the days when ABC did the Olympics and treated sports reporting like, you know, actual journalism), but it’s always fun seeing the athletes competing and being emotional and so forth, and there are always lovely Olympic stories. I was also very delighted to wake up to see that our swim team once again won the gold in the mens’ 4 x 100 swim relay–I also loved when they show the one from Beijing with the amazing finish when Jason Lezak pulled out that amazing final leg and stunned France at the wall; that was one of the most exciting moments in Olympic history that Paul and I can recall–I know we both leaped up and were screaming and jumping up and down (also because we wanted to see Michael Phelps break the record for most gold medals at a single Olympics, and this race was crucial for that)–and even rewatching it is almost as exciting as witnessing it as it happened.

This is why I love sports, you know? I am still floating from the 2019 LSU season, to be honest.

And on that note, I should probably head into the spice mines and get my act together for today.

Blow

Good morning, Sunday, how are YOU doing?

I overslept (for me) again this morning; which felt nice; I’ll take oversleeping over insomnia any day of the week, frankly, and this morning I am going to swill coffee, read some more of S. A. Cosby marvelous Razorblade Tears, and then will write for a while before going to the gym later on in the early afternoon. I still haven’t gotten phô yet–maybe next weekend I can make to the Lilly Cafe and finally get some.

Yesterday saw me relaxing and organizing and cleaning for most of the day, at an incredibly casual pace–so casual, of course, that I didn’t get everything finished that I wanted to get finished (natch); but progress was made and I will always take some progress over not making any. I finished writing Chapter 2 of Chlorine yesterday, also setting up Chapter 3 to be written for today (after some reviewing of Chapters 1 and 2 before getting started on that today). I like that I am starting to feel connected to this manuscript; it’s finally taken root in my head and all the other considerations about it no longer matter to me other than the two most important: that I finish writing it, and that i write the best book I possibly can.

The whole Chlorine thing is remarkably improbable about how it came to be in the first place. I’ve always wanted to write about 1950’s Hollywood and the gay closet/underground that existed there; it was an incredibly turbulent time, with television stealing film audiences, HUAC investigating Communists, and J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI going after gay men and lesbians. It was also during this time that the biggest closeted movie star perhaps in Hollywood history, Rock Hudson, came to success–and there were plenty of other closet cases on the headlining pictures with their names above the title: Montgomery Clift and Tab Hunter–and plenty who may have been bisexual but definitely had experiences with men, like Marlon Brando, Anthony Perkins, James Dean, and so on. I idly wrote about this notion I had for a noir set during that time, with the main character a hustler with no talent but a lot of good looks and charm, that opens with another closeted actor’s nude, dead body being found in the morning on Santa Monica beach–only the drowning victim also had chlorine in his lungs, so he clearly drowned in a swimming pool and his body was moved. I riffed on this concept here on the blog for a little bit, and then thought nothing of it.

Yet Chlorine landed with my peers in the crime writing community for some reason–I got a lot of tweets and DM’s about what a great idea it was, and that I needed to write it. Some people continued pestering me about it, enough time and enough people, for me to go ahead and slot it into my writing schedule….but even then I kept putting it off and not taking it or myself seriously; was I the right person to write such a book? Is this interest in such a book even something that could turn into sales or whatever? You know, the usual self-doubt that plagues me on a daily basis. I sat down and wrote a very rough first chapter several years ago, just to see if I could get the tone right, and the voice properly done; I was rather pleasantly surprised with how it turned out, and so I put aside any thought of imposter syndrome and figured, okay, I CAN do this.

But the syndrome came again when the calendar time to write the book rolled around; I spent the last month or so writing anything but this manuscript…and finally sat down to revise and reshape that first chapter so that it set up the second even better, and I also had an idea of how to do the second as I worked on the first. It took me a few days, but I now have a very nice 3700 word second chapter written; and today I am going to work on writing the third. I wanted to wait until August and spend that entire month writing it, but finally decided that I was being decidedly un-confident, so while I still want to have the first draft finished by the end of August, I decided to go ahead and get started on it in the meantime. I still want to work on Scotty for the rest of the year, from September on, but there’s also a lot of other things I need to get done, so I need to stop being lazy and get my ass into my chair and writing.

We watched the Olympics some yesterday–I am amazed at the sports I couldn’t care less about most of the time but will watch avidly during an Olympics–but it again seems weird that there’s no audience or crowd…and this whole weird vibe these Olympics are giving off–no you smoked weed so you’re banned; you’re a serial sexual assaulter so we’ll make accommodations for you–has kind of tarnished the whole thing for me in some ways. There has always been cheating and stupidity at the Olympics (another example of how media has brainwashed us all into the mythology of the Olympics), but for some reason this year it seems more intolerable than usual. But I love watching the US swimmers–it’s weird without Michael Phelps in the pool–and I will undoubtedly watch more, especially the gymnastics.

But…..still.

I also figured out last night how to change a story I started writing at some point during the last decade and make it actually work–“The Brady Kid”–and while the new idea I have for it may not work after all, it’s an interesting idea for a story and something I definitely want to try writing.

And on that note, Razorblade Tears is calling me, and so it’s off to the spice mines for a bit to read, swill coffee, and prepare to start writing.

If I Can’t Have You

Friday!

I feel very rested this morning; I’ve been sleeping well (thank you, medication) ever since last week, and am probably jinxing myself this morning for tonight’s sleep, but it is astonishing what not having insomnia feels like, and how literally marvelous that actually is. Yesterday was nice and relaxing; I made condom packs and other day-job related things around here all day, while doing the laundry and cleaning the kitchen (sort of); today I will be making more condom packs as well as doing various other day-job related things while watching some thing on television. I am now caught up on Superman and Lois (seriously, the best Superman adaptation since Christopher Reeve; if you’re a Superman fan, you really need to watch this show) and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–which isn’t quite as absorbing as it has been before; it’s difficult to watch the Erica Girardi performances as “victim” without wanting to slap the smug smirk off her criminal face–and am not entirely sure what to watch today–I forgot to check with Paul about Loki–but I am sure I can find something.

I also neither read nor wrote yesterday; the desktop computer isn’t working as great as it could/should and I suspect I am going to eventually need to replace this bitch once and for all, which is galling, but it’s also, now that I think about it, fairly old. It was at least two or three at the time of the Great Data Disaster of 2018, and that’s almost three years ago as is. I hate spending the money–would actually prefer not to, in all honesty–but it is something I really need for my work and it is a complete tax write-off. I ordered a wireless mouse to use for the laptop–I lost the old one, and have looked for it everywhere–which should also arrive today, so working in my easy chair should be a lot easier as far as that is concerned going forward as well. I am also looking forward to paying off the car and some of these outstanding bills–which has also helped with my sleep, quite honestly–and so maybe, just maybe, I should get a new computer as a birthday gift to myself. I can’t really decide, to be honest. I mean, I could take this one back in and have them install more memory into it, but I am also not entirely certain that is the wisest course to take. Heavy heaving sigh.

But as my coffee continues to warm and wake up my brain from the deepest recesses of sleep, I see all kinds of things I really need to get done around here–I am going to bag up some more beads to donate, for example–and maybe I can start working on clearing things out of the attic. That’s a great, if problematic, project–I hate that little ladder that folds down and it attached to the trap door to the attic, and when I’m standing on it that creates an issue getting things up and down from there–but I can handle getting over my ladder phobia for a little while, and of course there’s no need for me to be going up and down; it can be done bit by bit.

And let’s be completely honest here–I’m not going to read anything that’s stored in the attic, am I?

So that can all go. And while I have been saving my papers almost from the very first–I don’t know, maybe I should try to see if there’s an archive still interested in them. I don’t think there will be much interest in them, or me, once I’ve left this mortal coil–I can’t imagine MFA or PhD candidates ever needing or wanting access to them, nor can I imagine I would be the subject of future biographies and/or scholarly research. And that isn’t me being self-deprecating, either–I am trying to watch out for that stuff, to be honest–and I have to wonder if I am, in fact, hoarding the paper. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Heavy sigh.

But it’s a lovely morning, and I need to make a to-do list for the weekend. One thing for sure I need to do is take boxes of condom packs back to the office (thus clearing out the living room) and pick up the mail; I also need to pick up a prescription. This should all be relatively easy to accomplish; the question is how do I want to do this all, and in what order to maximize my efficiency as I am out and about in the world. I feel pretty good, and that bodes well for my visit to the gym after I get my work done. I want to focus mostly on reading and writing this weekend–often a challenge–and trying to get caught up on everything.

Some day, methinks–or me-dreams–I will be finally caught up on everything. Ha ha ha ha, I still can crack myself up when I put my mind to it, can’t I?

I was also thinking, yesterday, as I made my condom packs and listened to the accessory-after-the-fact nonsense on Real Housewives, about my twisted view on gay relationships when it comes to writing about them; one of the things I’ve always been interested in is relationships gone bad, turned sour, and how to adapt common criminality tropes used for heterosexual couples for gay ones. One of the things I found so interesting about PJ Vernon’s Bath Haus was the power imbalance between Nathan and Oliver, and how that dynamic deeply affected not only how they saw each other but how they interacted with each other. The tired cliché love is blind isn’t really quite so tired when your couple is no longer opposite-sex; those dynamics really haven’t been as explored in queer relationships in crime novels so much as its been done to death for straight ones. When I wrote Timothy, I wasn’t playing with the romantic suspense trope (as Rebecca is so frequently and commonly mistaken considered) as I was writing a gay noir with a completely untrustworthy narrator–how innocent is Mrs. deWinter, after all? I have other ideas, of course (as always) for other explorations of noir and gay characters who aren’t on the up-and-up; there used to be a sense that gay characters in gay fiction had to be heroic in some one–no matter how flawed they were in service to the story they might be–because we needed to create them since history and most literature erased our existence. But things have changed, and I don’t feel that tiresome burden anymore–which I didn’t take terribly seriously in the first place if we’re being completely honest; the villain in Murder in the Rue Dauphine was a gay man, after all–but I no longer feel, when I am creating a character or starting to write something that I need my characters to be role models; that is a subconscious thought I am not sorry to have to consider anymore. Certainly my short story characters are not heroic people; they are damaged and flawed and often driven to their breaking point by circumstances beyond their control. My main character in “Festival of the Redeemer” is certainly incredibly flawed and more than a little unreliable; his mental instability and horrific, almost emotionally crippling insecurities are fun to write if emotionally exhausting.

And on that note, I am starting my day. May yours be a fabulous and amazing Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you later.

My My My

Thursday and just got home from the hideous experience of having bloodwork done. I am not exactly sure when precisely I turned into such a delicate goddamned flower, but every time now I have blood drawn I get a gnarly-looking bruise on the spot where the needle went into my arm. Back in the day when my veins used to roll and they had to dig to get the needle in (always a most unpleasant experience) it made sense that afterwards I looked like I’d been hooked up to a dialysis machine. Now the needle goes straight in, without any pain, and yet I still develop a particularly nasty bruise.

Sigh. The bruise from last week’s blood draw just finally went away, and now I am going to have a new one. Heavy heaving sigh.

Ah, well, and so it goes.

But at least NOW I can have coffee. I had to fast for this, especially since my quarterly bloodwork (for my PrEP prescription) had shown high glucose levels (I always have them done after I’ve had lunch as fasting is not required SURPRISE–blood glucose is high after I eat. IMAGINE THAT) so I definitely need to have a diabetes test run (better safe than sorry, right)… and I have to confess rather shame-facedly that the last time I had fasting bloodwork done I had coffee before having it done. Yes, Bad Greg, bad Greg, bad Greg indeed.

Today is yet another exciting day of condom packing and doing some quality assurance reviews of paperwork from work. I will naturally get caught up on Superman and Lois today as well as the two franchises of Real Housewives I am still watching (New York and Beverly Hills, although it’s more of a habit to watch these than anything else, really) and maybe–just maybe–there will be time for a movie as well. Not sure what that might be, but there are so many options anymore! I am also hopeful that there will be time for me to work on Chlorine and get some time in with Razorblade Tears. Paul is going to bring home dinner with him tonight–anniversary meal, from Hoshun (I’ve been wanting lo mein lately)–and then I guess we’ll either figure out what we’re going to watch next (note to self: find out if he wants to keep watching Loki, because if not, I can watch it alone) or he’ll do some work. I also need to bag up some more beads to drop off for ARC (honestly, we literally have beads every fucking where) and I’d like to get some more books culled so I can take them to the library sale on Saturday.

I wrote about 1500 words on Chapter Two of Chlorine yesterday; it wasn’t easy and rather like pulling teeth, actually, so I kind of would like to revisit (not reread; I can just page through it at random to get a feel for tone and voice) James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, which is one of my favorite books of all time; I feel like in this chapter I am being too wordy, which is always a problem for me with my writing–I over-explain, I tend to have long long sentences connected by and, I often fuck up the rhythm of the words, which greatly affects and impacts the voice and tone of the story. The problem with Chlorine is there’s a lot of backstory–and since it’s Hollywood during the dying days of the studio system–what is artifice? What is real? What is rumor? I also have the ability to mention actual stars of the period–even if they aren’t in the book itself, but can be mentioned in passing, which is a lot of fun–I wrote something yesterday about a female star claiming she was “up there with Hepburn, Crawford, Davis, Garbo; you can say Karla and everyone knows who you mean.” (And yes, I just realized that the Garbo-based character in The Love Machine by Jacqueline Susann was also named Karla; although it did not even subconsciously affect my naming of this character–Karla Weiss the half-American, half-German Jewish actress who emigrated to the US to become a star immediately was someone I created way back in 1996, inspired entirely by a black-and-white photograph of a friend; I looked at the picture and invented Karla Weiss and her backstory and it’s been in the back of my mind for the last twenty-five years; she fits in here–and while I originally had her winding up in New Orleans and becoming a recluse for a Chanse or Scotty story, it could still work, I suppose; but she would be WAY too old unless I went back and set that case years ago in the past, which could also work….see how these wormholes form for me?)

Then again, who knows? I could open up the document and next thing you know words are flowing from my fingers like water from a spigot.

This, by the way, is why writers drink.

That said, I did pick up some mixers at the grocery store on the way home–grapefruit juice and margarita mix, as well as a salt thing for the rim of the glass–and am really looking forward to getting some Patrón on the next Costco run. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to continue trying to perfect the dirty vodka martini–but the last one turned out so terribly that I am quite literally afraid to try again. Perhaps I should get some gin as well? Hmmmm. Oh, Costco and your inexpensive liquor.

And on that note, it’s about time for me to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll chat with you again tomorrow!

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