Category: revising

Denial

And here we are at Tuesday morning already. The weather is supposed to be shitty today–rain and thunderstorms and flash flood alerts for today and tomorrow; it already started last night–and yesterday it was in the 80’s when I got off work. It’s 72 now and the sun isn’t up yet, either–the high for today and tomorrow is in the low 80’s. I suspect this is going to be a long, hot wet summer in New Orleans.

I came home from work yesterday and worked on my book, around the cat neediness (always), watched John Oliver’s impressive takedown of Tucker Carlson (the new Bill O’Reilly) on Last Week Tonight, and then just went to the Taylor Swift World Youtube channel and let her music videos play–along with some live performances–on stream while I put corrections into the manuscript. I am now up to Chapter 5, and am hoping to get even further along with it today. The goal is to get it all finished and input this week, so I can print it out yet again and decide on a structural edit over the weekend, with new writing to be put in place while cutting down excessive wordiness and repetition throughout the entire thing. But it’s going to be a good book–whether it actually winds up doing what I originally intended for it to do when it’s finally finished remains to be seen, but I think I will be pleased with it.

Yesterday the Lambda (Lammy) nominations were released, and as always, there was a bit of controversy involved. It’s inevitable, really; every year when they announce their finalists, people get angry and old grudges come out. I generally tend to avoid these conversations; I came to a place of peace with the organization awhile ago and let go of all the turbulent feelings just the mere mention of the organization or its awards could trigger in me. I worked there twenty years ago, and while it wasn’t a great experience in some ways, I learned an awful lot–about non-profits, publishing, how to put together a magazine, management skills, etc.–while I was editor of Lambda Book Report (it was weird; someone had reminded me of that on Sunday on social media–I had done one of those ‘post a memory of me’ things on Facebook, and Richard Labonte brought up meeting me at a Lammy reading at the San Francisco Library back when I was editor of LBR…it’s been so long even I forget about that; and it’s been scrubbed from my author bio since at least 2004). I also made some great friendships that still exist today. Overall, I prefer to remember the positives from working there now rather than the negatives (there were a lot of negatives, in all honesty). There were changes that needed to be made to the organization back then; changes have been made in the years since Paul and I left their employ (I do remember, with no small amusement, being told when I quit by some people that I was “ruining my career”–over fifty books and fifty short stories later here I am still, so no, people who told me that, you weren’t channeling Nostradamus), but I don’t think some of them were the ones that were needed or even necessary. For about three or four years in the early aughts, after quitting I was still somewhat emotionally vested in the organization…but the more time passed the less vested I felt and now I can read complaining threads on social media about the organization and not have any kind of vested emotional reaction to any of it; and while I do think the history of their awards is important, I do think they’ve kind of lost their way. But it’s not my problem and it’s very easy to be an armchair quarterback and make critiques–it doesn’t cost anything, after all, even in a time investment–when working to make those changes is much harder in terms of work and time. I’ve won the award twice–Best Anthology and Best Gay Mystery–and have been nominated so many other times I’ve really lost count. It’s somewhere in the teens, and I know the most nominated authors are me, Ellen Hart, That Bitch Ford, and Lawrence Schimel, and not in that order (I believe Ellen has the most), but whenever I try to remember which books and what years and what categories was I nominated in, I inevitably forget something–as I always skip something when I am counting how many books I’ve done….just last night I was remembering that I co-edited a vampire erotica anthology with M. Christian for Alyson Books that came out in the August before Hurricane Katrina, and I can’t remember it’s name–Blood something; Lust, perhaps? I only have a few copies and whenever I come across one, it always catches me a bit off guard: “Oh, yes, the book I always forget…”

And if anyone would have told me twenty five years ago I would lose track of award nominations and how many books I’ve actually done, I would have laughed in their face. But awards aren’t as important to me as they were when I was first getting started–don’t get me wrong, they are very lovely and I appreciate making short-lists, which is always a nice pat on the back from colleagues–and so I never see short-lists I didn’t make and think maybe next time. I just don’t like getting caught up in the hoopla of them; wondering if I am going to win, wanting to win, being disappointed when I don’t. That kind of egotism isn’t healthy, frankly, and I don’t like I seem to immediately launch into a competitive mode once the pleasure and surprise of being nominated wears off and naked ambition rises inside me.

While some ambition is necessary–you’ll never finish writing anything without it–out of control ambition is not a trait I like or aspire to; but it does happen sometimes and I have to reel it back in.

I don’t like it, quite frankly.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday!

Angel Dust

Remember angel dust? At some point in my life–70’s, 80’s, 90’s–it became a thing: a dangerous new illegal drug that was addictive and occasionally ended up with those partaking in it dying. You never hear about it anymore–or at least, I don’t–but it was fairly ubiquitous there for a while. I guess crack, and possibly heroin’s comeback, have pushed it out of the public consciousness or the zeitgeist, as it were.

Yesterday was rather lovely. I slept late, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, which felt great, and then I spent some time getting caught up on things that have slid a bit over the last few weeks–always–and then finished rereading #shedeservedit, making notes and so forth. There’s a lot of work left to be done on this before April 1, and I really need to get focused so it will be finished by (extended) deadline–which means focus and not being distracted (easier said than done, of course, as always) and then I actually started working on pruning the books. I filled two boxes of books I will never get the time to either read or reread or write about, and then started condensing the shelves down again…at some point I will also start going through the boxes in the crawlspace over the laundry room–it’s going to be a process, Constant Reader, and one that will not be finished in one little spurt of activity; I see this as a probably year-long project. I also walked to Office Depot to buy another box of file folders and a package of the little notepads I have become addicted to over the past few years (I use them for grocery lists and daily to-do lists)–it was so gorgeous outside, and there was a lot of male eye candy to view on the walk there and the walk back. The bar on the corner is open again, and so are the various eateries along the Avenue. (Sadly, both the BBQ place at the corner of MLK and St. Charles is now closed, probably for good, as is the St. Charles Tavern, which has been there forever and survived Katrina but not a pandemic.) There were people at the streetcar stops, and I have also begun to realize that getting off work at five is probably not going to be ideal now that people are coming back to work and the tourists are coming back as well; heavy heaving sigh. But I will adapt, much as I did when the people started returning after Katrina.

Today of course we lost an hour to Daylight Savings Time–although I guess today is the reverse; the removal of the hour gained when we went into it in the first place. I really despise losing the hour–it throws me off every year and inevitably takes a ay or two to get used to again; but of course the gain of an hour doesn’t really do much other than get me an extra hour of sleep when it happens. But this means it will be light outside when I come home from work and it will stay lighter out for longer–the days are starting to get longer again–but I slept well again last night (lots of trouble getting out of bed this morning, as again it was feeling mighty comfy under my blankets) and my coffee is really hitting the spot. I had to get up, no matter how much I wanted to stay there, because Scooter needed his shot–twelve hours apart, with an hour on either side leeway–and giving it to him at nine this morning means I have to give it at eight this evening so he can get at seven tomorrow morning when I leave for work. See how I work that hour of leeway, and almost fucked it up thanks to daylight savings going away? Timed medication is always an issue for these time changes, really.

We started watching Mr. Mercedes’ third season last night, which is based on the second book of King’s Hodges trilogy, Finders Keepers. While the switching of the story order makes sense for the television production of the show–this was a bridge book connecting the first and third books, which had the same villain, and in the course of this book the events of season 2/book 3 were set in motion. Another change is that the story of the robbery of the great reclusive American author and his murder took place long before the events of the book–several years passed in the book between the robbery and the discovery of the loot from the robbery by a young kid, who grew into a teenager and used the money–and the manuscripts–to provide for his family (another connection is that his father was injured in the Mercedes attack that opened the first book…in the show he’s already in his late teens when the car crash happens and he discovers the suitcase filled with treasure within 24 hours of it happening. This storytelling change to the book also makes sense–the first few chapters, detailing the kid’s story, takes over four or five years to play out on the page; and that is harder to do on a show or film. I’m curious to see how this is all plays out–the second season went off the rails a bit in the final episodes–but since there’s not a supernatural element to this season it may stay safely on the rails this time out.

I also spent some time pruning the books yesterday, and now have five boxes (and a paper grocery bag)filled with them to donate to the library sale; tonight after dark I will load the five boxes of condom packs I’ve made over the last few days into the car, and then tomorrow night after I get home from work I will move the books to the hatch of the car, getting the clutter and mess out of the living room. This is just the beginning of clearing out the house, for the record; Paul is going to also be spending the next few months getting rid of things in the bedroom and the closet. “Clean like we’re moving” is our motto–so, the question isn’t “do I want to keep this?” but rather “would I pack and move this?” And while the piles and stacks of books have been substantially reduced, and the clutter equally, a stranger would probably still look at the living room (or the shelves in the bathroom) and think, wow, they’ve got so many books…that’s a lot of clutter. But I’ve made significant progress, and I am most pleased with what I’ve managed thus far.

I also managed to work on my desk area, significantly reducing the amount of loose paper and other scraps and bits with things scribbled on them, filed stuff away, and over all made things roomier and less cluttered around my desk. I also need to start clearing out and cleaning out kitchen things I never use–like my muffin pans, which I don’t think have been used in years (although now I am thinking cornbread muffins with jalapeños in them would be nice; it’s been a hot minute so maybe I need to hold onto those for a bit longer…it’s also strawberry season so I could make strawberry cupcakes again…NO I HAVE LOST WEIGHT AND I AM NOT GOING TO START BAKING AGAIN) but there’s definitely things that can be thrown away that are inside my cabinets.

I was also creative yesterday, and not just with the final read through of the manuscript. Today I have to go to the gym and I also have to do some brief writing for a website, and after that I think I am going to pull all of the chapters of #shedeservedit into one document, which I will use to make all the corrections and changes I’ve indicated on the pages of the manuscript I worked on; this is antiquated of course–most people simply correct the computer document and edit it, rather than printing it out and doing it by hand–but I have found that when I do it by hand on a hard copy I am more thorough and I catch more, so that is what works for me and what I have to do. This old dog tried the new trick, but it just doesn’t work for him, sorry.

My Saints and Sinners panel, moderating four great women writers (Cheryl Head, Carrie Smith, J. M. Redmann, and Carsen Taite) is today at 3:00 central time on the Tennessee Williams Festival YouTube channel; you can either watch it as it airs (prerecorded) and then it will be permanently available there. Do check it out, if you can; I’d watch but I hate seeing myself and listening to my voice. Always have, quite frankly, and seriously doubt that is going to change now–my spots are too permanently affixed in place for me to try to change them. It’s probably some deep old scar from childhood that would take years of therapy to unpack, and I ain’t got time for that–nor am I particularly interested in spending thousands of dollars to get to the bottom of something that I can live with, frankly.

And on that note, I should get cracking on my Sunday. Have a terrific day, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Age of Consent

I slept late this morning–I didn’t even, as I inevitably do, wake up at five and fall back asleep, instead sleeping until almost eight thirty and then taking another fifteen minutes or so to acclimate myself to the idea of getting up. It wasn’t easy, as my entire body was still relaxed and the bed so accommodating and comfortable, but there was simply no way I could stay in be any longer. I have, as always, too much to do and get one today and as lovely as the thought of staying in bed for another couple of hours may have been, it was simply not to be. But the sleep felt marvelous; I don’t think I’ve slept so deeply in quite some time, to be honest, and while you may not be as fascinated as I am by my sleeping, I did feel it necessary to comment on such a good night’s sleep for a change.

I was talking to a friend recently about Lolita–I can’t remember how or why the subject even came up in the first place–butthat conversation put me in mind about how we as a society have changed when it comes to the sexualization of teenagers by adults. I recently watched a terrible show called A Teacher, about a woman in her twenties who teaches high school and ends up having an affair with one of her students, and how this basically ruins their lives on both sides. There has been a lot of that in Louisiana over the past decade–there were two teachers in Destrehan having affairs with male students, occasionally have three-ways with them a while back–and it seems like these kinds of scandals break down here all the time. Teenaged boys and older women have long been looked at societally as not the same thing as the reverse–inevitably triggering responses from adult men things like I wish I’d had some older woman to teach me a few things and so forth, that whole “boys will be boys” mentality that still pervades the culture and society to some degree. This is something I may write about at some point, because it interests and intrigues me–even if it is a bit of a third rail, a dangerous path to follow with lots of potential pitfalls along the way. Teenagers often confuse hormonal responses as love–the whole conflation of sex and love that usually most grow out of it at some point–and of course, teenage boys are easy to manipulate because of their hormones. I think the primary problem I had with A Teacher was I never understood the woman’s motivations; it never made sense to me that she would be so self-destructive; they tried tacking on some back story after the affair was exposed which involved a difficult relationship with her own father, but it didn’t work for me. I also think back to all of the “coming of age” fiction I read when I was a kid, and how inevitably such romances/relationships were always seen as positive things, or depicted that way; there was always some inexperienced teenaged boy falling for some beautiful older woman who inevitably will take his virginity–going back as far as Tea and Sympathy, where the woman did it to “cure” the boy of suspected homosexuality, through Summer of ’42 (I also read the book of this, which impacted me with its tale of loss and longing, and how thirty years after that summer the now adult man still remembers her with love and longing; it would not be depicted that way now) to Class, which really does not hold up well AT ALL. There was a few of these in the early 1980’s–I remember another one called My Tutor, where a wealthy man hires a beautiful woman to tutor his son, they have sex eventually and then the boy (played by Olivia Newton-John’s then husband, Matt Lattanzi, who was stunningly beautiful) finds out his father not only hired her to tutor him but to seduce him (“make a man out of him” is how it was put, how it was always put)–but for a very long time adult/teenager relationships like this were seen as no big deal, at least in films; but I also think it’s pretty safe to say that this was also true societally as well; a father would tend to be proud of his teenaged son for fucking a teacher, rather than being horrified and pressing charges….I think A Teacher missed a beat there, frankly; by having the main male character being raised by a single mom instead of a single dad or at least both parents (or one being even a step-parent) they miss the chance to really address this aspect of toxic masculinity; naturally a mother would think of her child as being molested, whereas a father….that would have been interesting.

It is something I am considering for a Scotty story; it’s all amorphous up there in my brain right now, but it’s slowly forming.

And of course, if the teenaged son was having an affair with an adult male, the father’s reaction would be vastly different than if the affair was with an adult woman.

Yesterday I watched the film version of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger, which wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been. The film came across as very cold, and also got off to a very slow start. It was enjoyable for the acting, which was top notch–and one can never go wrong casting Charlotte Rampling–and it was a beautifully done film; a very quiet British style ghost story (I really have been enjoying British ghost stories over the past few years, and now I want to read The Little Stranger, of which I have a copy somewhere), and the film has a very dream-like sense to it that is rather marvelous…but that same sensibility also keeps the viewer at a slight distance, which results in the viewer not getting emotionally invested in the characters or the story. (At least, that’s my takeaway from it.) It also put me in mind of Sarah Waters, who is an enormously talented, award-winning British lesbian writer. I reviewed her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, years ago when I still a reviewer, and was blown away by it completely. At some point since then I stopped reading her–not sure why, and I don’t think it was a conscious choice, to be completely honest; I think she somehow just fell off my radar–but watching this film reminded me of what great writer she is, and perhaps I should go back and read her entire canon, including rereads of the first couple of books–I believe her second novel was Affinity–but…as always, time stands in my way.

I also was thinking of revisiting some Agatha Christie; Catriona McPherson posted on Facebook the other day about a talk she is giving for a public library (I believe in South Carolina?) about Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie, which put me in mind of Christie again–sending me own a rabbit hole of memories of her novels–in particular my personal favorite of hers, Endless Night–and how I came to read Agatha Christie in the first place. (I picked up a copy of Witness for the Prosecution off the wire paperback racks at Zayre’s; I knew it had been a movie and I knew who Christie was, but had never read her and was beginning to transition from kids’ mysteries to adults. I also didn’t catch the smaller font words beneath the title reading and other stories; I thought it was a novel and was most startled to discover it wasn’t. So the first adult mysteries I read were Christie short stories, which blew me away. The first actual Christie novel I read was The Clocks–after which I was hooked. Remembering this made me also remember the great mass market paperback publishers of the day: Dell, Pocket Books, and Fawcett Crest. Almost every paperback I read as a teenager was from one of them, and I do remember those publishers very fondly.) I have some Christies here in the Lost Apartment,–I was thinking of rereading either A Caribbean Mystery or Nemesis. I always, for some reason, preferred Miss Marple to Poirot; still do, to this very day. I read the first few paragraphs of Nemesis last night, and was, as always, entranced. So perhaps for this weekend I shall reread Nemesis and some short stories, around working on the book.

Because I absolutely, positively, must work on the book.

And on that note tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and don’t forget there are panel discussions for Saints and Sinners up on the Tennessee Williams Festival’s Youtube channel.

Brutal

Wednesday morning and feeling a bit raggedy. Part of this is due to the Lost Apartment not having water–you can only imagine my great delight in getting a text from my neighbor yesterday afternoon at work asking if we had water, and then getting home to find out that we don’t. The story I got from the Sewage and Water Board was that a pipe had burst, but “it should be back on this evening.” She knew it was a lie, I knew it was a lie, but it was one of those situations where there’s really nothing to do but pretend she wasn’t lying and saying thank you and hanging up. Needless to say, this morning there still is no water. I brushed my teeth with bottled water and the water tank of the Keurig is full so at least I have coffee, but I can’t even wash my face, let alone flush a toilet or take a shower. Suspecting this would be the case this morning (any New Orleanian knows you cannot believe a word anyone from the S&WB says) I got my shift at the office covered and am going to work from home today.

It’s truly amazing what an effect a lack of running water can have on you. I couldn’t wash dishes, run the dishwasher, do any laundry; I cannot shave or wash my face, let alone shower; cannot flush a toilet because I don’t have enough water on hand to fill the tank–and I’d rather preserve what drinking water we have, frankly. As I was thinking about this last night–the thin veneer of civilization we have stretched over our lives–I decided that being without water was worse than being without power–certainly at this time of year, at any rate; if we lose power during the summer my position on the matter will most definitely change. This also put me in mind of the freeze in Texas and other states that don’t usually get a hard freeze or snow, and how so many people lost not only water but power as well. We don’t really hear much about that any more–the news has moved on–but from my own experience it takes a while to recover from such natural disasters, and everyone couldn’t get their water restored immediately, either–especially those whose pipes had burst. But no one is talking about that anymore, and so far as one can tell, you’d think the issue was in the past and normalcy has returned.

It also amazes me to think that I am quite literally one generation removed from, well, not having much in the line of running water. My mom grew up with a well with a pump that sent water to the kitchen sink; but there was no bathroom in her childhood home. I have hazy memories of visiting my grandmother before she had a bathroom put in and a septic tank…

So, as you can certainly imagine, last night was an “out of sorts” night for me; I was exhausted–I didn’t forget my coffee in the car, and yet completely ran out of steam yesterday afternoon while I was at the office–and being out of sorts this morning isn’t helping matters much. I did read a bit last night–nothing exciting, just my own manuscript; I’d sent the Bury Me in Shadows manuscript to the Kindle app on my iPad precisely so I could read it like it’s a finished book–and when I opened it, apparently I had been reading it already there some time in the past because it was open to Chapter Eight. So I read a few more chapters of that, watched some history videos on YouTube as well as the final quarter of the Saints win in the Super Bowl all those years ago; I’d forgotten we were trailing going into the 4th Quarter by one point, for example, but watching the interception by Tracy Porter run back for the clinching touchdown brought back all those joyous memories of how amazing it was to watch it live and hear the city cheering from inside the house. Paul got home relatively early as well–and what I mean by that is I was still awake when he got home; two nights in a row!–but he had work to do and repaired upstairs to do it while I continued watching history and sports videos on Youtube.

Really, such a fascinating life I lead.

So, at some point this morning I am probably going to go to the gym and shower there after working out–I am assuming they are far enough away from us to not be affected by this broken water main issue–and will spend the day making condom packs and doing data entry for work, all the while hoping that the water comes back sometime, adjusting my work hour appropriately to provide for that. Heavy sigh. Such is my life these days; trying to get things done, not being able to stay on top of things as more, newer things demand my attention all the time. Sometimes I despair that it will all get done, and then I have a mini-breakdown of sorts, after which I just buckle down and start pushing the boulder up the hill again. I need to get back to work on the current manuscript; I need to get caught up on so many other things; and so these setbacks–like not having water–inevitably seem much more defeating than they should. As Paul says, all too frequently, why does everything have to be so hard? He’s not wrong. I wonder this myself all the time…

And on that note, I am heading into the waterless spice mines. Wish me luck, Constant Reader!

The Beach

Tuesday!

Yesterday was not nearly as productive as it could have been. Generally, on mornings when I have to get up at six, will invariably have a cappuccino at home while I wake up, and then make another to take with me, which I sip at all morning. This gets me through the day pretty well, and through into my evening when I go home and write or edit or read or do chores. So, Constant Reader, you can only imagine my horror when I got to the office and my travel mug was not in its side holder on my back pack. (It turned out to be in the in the car–it fell out of its pocket when I got my backpack out of the car yesterday morning when I arrived at the office…) So yes, I ran out of steam yesterday afternoon, and was very tired by the time I got home from work. In other words, last night all I managed to do was a load of dishes, and quite frankly, this morning I’m not even sure what I watched last night, other than the final episode of It’s a Sin with Paul; turned out he did want to finish watching. Oh yes, now I remember; I watched this week’s episodes of Allen v. Farrow and John Oliver’s show. Allen V. Farrow continues to be a harrowing watch; this week’s episode was about the custody battle–which ended with Allen getting a massive bitchslap by both the court and the judge; in other words, the judge believed Mia to be a fit mother and Dylan a credible witness, and Allen didn’t prove himself to be a fit parent–in fact, his visitation rights with the two other children he shared with Farrow were limited by the court and had to be supervised. If the goal was to punish Farrow, it failed massively–other than making her miserable for a period of time. Interestingly enough, one of the main takeaways from the show is being blown away by how beautiful Mia still is, today. I never understood the desire to have so many children–not, of course, that my understanding was ever needed or necessary or required; my mentality was always “I don’t get the need for so many kids, but if it makes her happy, more power to her and she is adopting kids, which is terrific.” I don’t think Farrow has worked much since the break-up with Allen; her career was mostly starring in his movies after they became a couple…the real shame is I’d like to watch some of those films now (I’ve never seen many Allen films, not being a fan) but I’m not sure if I should. It’s another one of those Roman Polanski things–ironically, one of my favorite Polanski films also stars Farrow, Rosemary’s Baby–I think, but some of those Allen/Farrow films are considered classics.

In other welcome news, I discovered yesterday that I now weigh 203 pounds; the lowest since around 2011/2012, and just three pounds away from my goal weight. I managed to get down to around 212 last year or the year before, as a process, from the 225 I had ballooned up to about a decade or so ago; I set 200 as my goal weight for the year, but I’d be stuck at 212 for so long I didn’t think I was ever going to break through. A few weeks ago I was delighted to see I’d managed to break through that plateau and had dropped to 208; someone gave me a compliment yesterday which drove me to the scale in the (unused) nurse’s office and to my delight, I discovered that I had somehow dropped another five pounds–whether it’s the working out, the change in diet (which was neither extreme nor dramatic), or the walking to the gym and back and always using the stairs at the office, I am not sure–but it has happened, and it is most pleasing to our eyes. I also made some progress on my emails yesterday, which was a very pleasant development.

This weekend is the virtual Saints and Sinners Festival; I taped a panel about mystery and romance with four amazing writers (Carrie Smith, Carsen Taite, J. M. Redmann, and Cheryl Head), which I think is scheduled to air on Sunday, March 14th, at 3 pm CDT; I am not really sure where, so I will have to find out and post it later. I know that after its original air date it will be available for viewing on the Tennessee Williams Festival’s Youtube channel. I was woefully unprepared, but I also had a group of very smart, savvy, and talented women to give me great answers to simple questions and it was a lovely experience for me–I’m not so sure it was for them, but I didn’t see any eye-rolling on screen to my inane questions so they are also incredibly professional as well.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here either, but I also have an essay in the upcoming book from Mystery Writers of America Presents, How to Write a Mystery, edited by Lee Child and Laurie R. King. I know, right? I still have to pinch myself whenever I think about it. I got an ARC recently, and the book looks simply beautiful. And how awesome to be in a collection with some of the top writers in the field? I can now cross “be in an MWA anthology” off my bucket list–but “get selected for an MWA anthology through the blind read process” remains on the list. My essay is called “Writing the Talk” and is about dialogue, and it owes a heavy debt to editor Laurie R. King, who whipped it (and me) into publishable shape after a couple of rewrites and revisions.

And yes, there will be more about that later. 🙂

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Tuesday be bright and fun and wonderful.

Avalanche

Monday; the dawn of a new week with endless possibilities as well as the potential for endless irritations, aggravations, and anything else negative you might be able to dream up.

Yesterday I started making my way through the most recent iteration of #shedeservedit–which isn’t, or may not, require as much work as I ha originally thought–and I also had my editorial call about Bury Me in Shadows, which wasn’t the terror I feared it would be; it was most pleasant, some great suggestions for smoothing the flow of the book an making it read better than it does in its current iteration. Enormous sigh of relief in both instances. I know, I know, I shouldn’t always be so nervous about my writing, but there is a very real fear in my brain that the day will come when I will lose the ability to do this, to create and write stories an characters for people to engage with, get to know, and spend time with.

And no, I don’t know why I still have this anxiety. I have to date published over thirty novels (I don’t know how many total, really, and I don’t feel like going back and counting again) and have two more in the pipeline to get published and yet….I still suffer anxiety about being a writer, about being any good at it, and then, as if that isn’t enough, I also have anxiety about it all going away and not being able to do it anymore–and this happens any time I get stuck, or as a deadline looms, or whenever I just don’t want to do it, which is pretty much all of the time. I never cease to be amazed at how often I have to force myself to do things I actually enjoy and love to do. It makes literally no sense whatsoever.

Take going to the gym, as another example. Every single time I go to the gym, I have to make myself do it. Once I am in the gym, it’s a constant mental struggle to remain and do the entire workout without skipping anything. The great irony is that these “get back into it” workouts are actually having an effect on my body. I am down to 203 pounds–it’s been at least since 2011 since I weighed less than 205, and there were times when I thought I would never see 210 ever again–and my goal weight for this year was 200…and I am almost there by mid-March already. I can’t see myself going down much further than 200, to be honest; already my clothes are getting far too big for me and with my weird body-shape, at this point weighing less than 200 would make me look pretty strange. I need to really focus on building up my leg muscles, because that’s the real issue, but I also worry that the way they are shaped won’t make a difference if they get bigger; I need to them to get wider across when looked at from front or back–from front to back they are fairly thick already. I don’t think I can make them wider simply because of the way my leg muscles are shaped, if that makes any sense. Anyway, that’s really a long way of saying how happy I am that my body is reacting to the exercise and that I’ve lost some more weight. Perhaps that will motivate me to go and next time I won’t have to make myself.

Good one. It almost sounded convincing.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me! See you tomorrow, Constant Reader!

Bizarre Love Triangle

Recently I got a very lovely private message on social media from a reader; it doesn’t happen near as much as it used to (not sure what that says about me or my career, but I prefer to believe that I am so public with my social media and blog that people don’t feel they need to reach out to me…don’t judge me; it works for me. I often prefer the little fantasy world and life I make up in my head rather than reality. It keeps me sane) so now it’s a surprise on the rare occasions it happens, and that’s very pleasant.

And with this one, it just goes to show what you can do without meaning to, and how the inability to make a decision is sometimes a good thing.

The message was simply that he had recently discovered my books, and was reading and enjoying them. What drove him to reach out and send me a message wasn’t simply because he was enjoying my work but because it was the first time he’d seen anything that mirrored his real life relationship in fiction; in other words, he is in what is now referred to as a “long-time throuple” and it meant a lot to him to read a book series centered around a main character who is also in a ‘long-time throuple.’ This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten such a message–I’ve heard from other readers in throuples, or readers enthralled by the very idea of such a thing, but like I said, it’s been a while. It always catches me a little off-guard, because it never occurred to me that I was doing something revolutionary, or something that had never been done before in crime fiction or not done much outside of erotica; the truth was I couldn’t make up my mind who Scotty should wind up with finally, so I had him wind up with both of them. It never occurred to me that I was doing something never really done before–or that some nearly twenty years later, I’d still be one of the only ones writing about a throuple–there wasn’t even a term for it when Bourbon Street Blues came out all those years ago; I always had to call it a “three-way relationship”–I don’t even think I’d even heard the term polyamorous then, either. I had no idea how such a thing would work, either; but Scotty was unconventional and so it stood to reason his romantic relationship would also be such. I also wanted to make the relationship seem as normal as possible and like it wasn’t unconventional; no one ever comments on it, says that’s odd or unusual, has ever questioned Scotty about having two partners rather than one. I also never wanted to write about jealousy or any of the usual romantic melodramatic devices–they all love each other; there’s never any jealousy; and while Colin sometimes, in the course of his job, does things that seem criminal or dangerous or even endanger them, there’s never any question about expelling him from the relationship–and there’s always a sense of sadness from Scotty and Frank until everything gets cleared up.

I also like to believe that Scotty and Frank and Scotty’s family are Colin’s rock, his tether to the normal world outside of espionage and international spying. New Orleans is his safe place, where he can relax and let down his guard and just be a normal, if extremely hot and sexy, guy. Sometimes I write myself into a corner–which I kind of did with Royal Street Reveillon, and figuring out where the boys go from where I left them isn’t always easy–Twelfth Night Knavery is going to be an incredibly difficult book to write, from that perspective–but that’s part of the challenge of writing the series, and part of the reason I enjoy writing it so much. I stopped writing Chanse because the stories and the series and the character were beginning to feel stale to me…but I greatly enjoyed writing my Chanse short story “My Brother’s Keeper” for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, and there’s a Change novella I am tinkering around with that may wind up being a novel–I doubt it, so don’t get your hopes up–but again, I am enjoying writing shorter pieces about Chanse; I can’t imagine doing a Scotty short story if for no other reason that backstory alone would take up the length of the short story.

Yesterday I ran errands, paid some more bills, and went to the gym. When I got back from the gym I indulged in some cleaning and organizing, and then discovered that old episodes of Moonlighting are on Youtube, so I watched the pilot yesterday around watching other Youtube videos, mostly those Queer Cruise videos about queer representation and how queers were presented in old twentieth century television shows, and how that changed over the decades. But Moonlighting–I absolutely loved that show back when it was airing, despite it being a deeply troubled show, often behind schedule with all kinds of behind the scenes drama and clashes, between producers and actors, between the actors, and with the network. It was a highly bizarre show, occasionally indulging in incredible creative choices (the black-and-white episode called “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice”, the Shakespeare episode, and probably one of the best Christmas episodes of any show ever produced), and watching young Bruce Willis in the role that made him a star–he later became a surprise movie star, which no one saw coming, with Die Hard–and of course, the chemistry between him and co-star Cybill Shepherd literally burned up the screen with their “will they/won’t they” dynamic. It was always clever, sometimes meta (often meta, before anyone even knew what meta was) and there was nothing like it on television before–or since, really. Witty and clever and uniquely self-aware, the quality was difficult to maintain in the face of all the production problems, and finally the show finally went off the rails and was eventually canceled. But I still remember it fondly, and it was actually lovely to rewatch and see that the pilot still works. One of the things I loved most about the show was that almost every episode began with David and Maddie arguing, both certain they are right–and then the case would bring them around to seeing the other’s point of view, so that by the end of the episode they understood each other better. It was inspired writing, and something I always wanted to do with my work (I’ve never done it)–but while I couldn’t mimic that with either series of my own, I always wanted my main character to learn something from the case he is working on, about himself, and grow a little bit.

At least that was the plan. Whether I’ve managed to do so or not remains to be seen–as well as it not really being up to me to decide these things…

Today I am diving back into the book headlong; yesterday’s grocery-making and gym visit sufficiently drained me of excess energy so writing/editing/etc wasn’t really in yesterday’s cards, alas. But that’s okay. The gym was marvelous and necessary, as was the cleaning and organizing I did–I need to do more, really–and while I know I need to get better organized (I really need to make a to-do list) I am not going to do anything like that before I work on the book. I know I’ll wind up not wanting to if I put it off until later, and while the organizing is terribly important, as is the to-do-list, I really need to work on the book more than anything else.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines.

Academic

And just like that, it’s Saturday again, and huzzah to everyone for making it through another week. It’s another beautiful morning here in New Orleans; the sun already high and shining bright, the sky bright blue. I have errands to run and the gym to get to, and then I am planning on spending the rest of the day reading the manuscript and editing it. It will be a full day here in the Lost Apartment, and I relish getting back to work on my book. I hate being behind–this was the month I was supposed to spend getting caught up on everything else and finishing short stories so next month I could focus on Chlorine–but delays and things happen, as always, and sure, I am in that time of life where one is acutely aware of how quickly the sand is slipping through the hourglass–but I have also learned to not beat myself up over things I have little control over. I have no control over whether I sleep well, for example, and I have no control over my energy levels. I can do the best that I can, but I exert only so much control over any of those things.

Not allowing myself to get upset or stressed over things I cannot control is a lesson I am still learning, alas.

I often feel pulled in many directions (and am fully aware that this is probably the case for everyone; it seems as though everyone is having a rough time since the pandemic shut down the world last year–almost a full year ago; we closed down services at my day job on March 16th) with an inevitable amount of endless tasks for everything I am involved in, and usually every day I have an idea of what I want and/or need to get done with every day; and yet I never achieve those goals because inevitably something new pops in and/or pops up that requires attention of some sort from me, and this inevitably results in me not getting to everything that needs getting to, which then makes the to-do list seem even more endless, and on and on. Part of the problem I’ve been having since the pandemic altered everything is my inability to sit down and make an actual to-do list–because the to-do list would inevitably require me to get through all of my emails, and I sometimes have neither the strength nor the patience to work my way through them all. Right now in my primary in-box I have 56 unread emails–I’ve already deleted the trek–and there’s about another 100 or so in there I’ve already read that probably need a response, or an addition to my to-do list.

I also remembered last night, as Paul and I watched the LSU gymnastics team defeat Missouri, that I’ve never finished watching two shows I really liked and was enjoying that he didn’t–Perry Mason on HBO Max and Penny Dreadful: City of Angels on Showtime. So those, along with a rewatch binge of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, should go on my list of things to watch while I am making condom packs–or when I am done with work for the day and Paul’s not home. I was quite delighted that he came home from the office so we could watch the gymnastics; I am not really seeing a lot of him these days and so those moments when he is home are more to be cherished and enjoyed because of their rarity. I am a Festival widow every March, really; but this year more so than any other I am really looking forward to the Festival being over.

I also would like to get back into reading some more…I’m not sure what in my brain is broken, but for some reason I can’t read anything other than the chapter of so of Gore Vidal’s Lincoln that I get through every morning. I think it’s a combination of all the things I have hanging over my head, quite frankly, that keeps me from reading–and as I’ve also said, watching television or a movie or even just Youtube videos is much more passive than active and requires little to no brain power. I did come up with a couple of great titles yesterday for short stories as I made my condom packs and continued watching videos about queer representation in films and television from the 1960’s through the 1990’s; there was a lovely little video yesterday of how the Queer Cruise videos guy was helped to come out by viewing The Rocky Horror Picture Show when he was in high school; and that got me thinking about my own history with Rocky Horror, and what it meant to me; perhaps yet another essay someday. Is that still shown as a midnight movie? I would imagine not, given the pandemic and the fact that’s been on television and available to purchase on tape or download now for decades; I remember thinking the first time it aired on television well, that’s the end of that and it honestly did feel like the end of an era. I imagine many freaks and weirdos and queer kids no longer need something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a gateway to their own worlds and the possibilities that life holds for them…there’s more and more queer rep all the time, in books, movies, plays, and television; although I would imagine in more repressive parts of the country Rocky Horror would still be a revelation.

And now I am thinking about writing a short story or a book about a murder built around a midnight showing of the movie. Oy, it really never ends…

I also like this other idea for a story I came up with yesterday: “The Rites of False Spring.” I scribbled down a lot of notes about that one.

And on that note, the spice won’t mine itself, so I should probably head on into the mines.

Ceremony

Friday! Friday! Gotta get down it’s Friday!

I slept very well last night, thanks for asking, and woke up early somehow without a pesky alarm (not as early as the 6 am mornings, but early) and feel positive and rested this morning. I am swilling my first cup of coffee–always the best one, really–and looking forward to a day of data entry and condom packing, preparatory to a weekend of working on my book. Yesterday was such a day; I made it to the gym, which was lovely, and watched a true crime documentary while making condom packs.

It was a Netflix series called Murder Among the Mormons, which does grab your attention as a title, but doesn’t really tell you anything. I suspected, as I clicked on it, that it was probably about the bombings in Salt Lake City in the 1980’s, and I was correct. I had read about the case once before, perhaps had also seen a news report about it on 20/20 or Nightline or A&E’s deeply appreciated City Confidential series back in the day (Paul and I were addicted to this show)…and while I remembered it involved forged documents from the history of the Latter-Day-Saints church (Mormon isn’t what they prefer to be called) and the so-called Salamander Letter (I never knew, or couldn’t remember, what the letter itself was actually about, but it was described in the shorter single episode as “explosive to the LDS church as it contradicted accepted church history and lore”). I was correct; it was about the bombings, but with the luxury of more time to tell the story, the series was able to delve more deeply and explain more about everything, so now I know the (forged) Salamander Letter challenged the accepted history that the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and led him to the gold plates which became The Book of Mormon, by stating that a white salamander appeared to Smith and led him to the plates rather than an angel–rooting the church in magic and the supernatural, rather than in Christian theology. (I will refrain from voicing my own opinions about that accepted history) Basically, Mark Hofmann had essentially perfected the art of forging old documents to the point where experts could not prove they were fakes. His entire business was based on this, but as always, hubris set in and because of his own greed and ambition he’d backed himself into a corner and resorted to murder to get himself out–even blowing himself up (he survived) to divert suspicion from himself. It’s an interesting story–I’ve always been interested in treasure hunts, and this kind of is that in a way, even if the “treasures” were actually forgeries, and again, the most interesting part of this story isn’t so much Hofmann’s, or even those whom he murdered, but rather the innocents he deceived or made a party to his crimes–imagine being his wife, having no idea what he was doing and then having your entire life blow up in your face? I’m finding myself more and more interested in the effects of horrific crimes on people who had nothing to do with them, if that makes sense–the criminal’s spouse and children, the loved ones of the dead–than the actual crime itself.

God, my coffee is wonderful this morning. You have to love that, don’t you? And to think, I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was thirty; I cannot imagine living life without it now. I think my next New Orleans research will be about the history of the coffee trade in New Orleans–when did coffee shops start opening? How long has Cafe du Monde been there? I know there used to be a coffee warehouse in the Warehouse District that roasted beans…imagine how marvelous that must have smelled…because I think it would be fun to do a Sherlock story about coffee. (It still amazes me how much I enjoyed writing that story.)

I’m rather looking forward to this weekend and really digging into fixing this manuscript. I have an editorial call scheduled on Sunday about Bury Me in Shadows, which has me rather nervous (Constant Reader may remember I was periodically nervous about the subject matter of the book while I was writing it; I am also concerned about the current one I am working on as well; I don’t ever remember feeling nervous about anything I was writing before in this way). But ultimately I trust my editor implicitly–every book I’ve worked on with her she’s made much better, plus she actually gets what I am trying to do with my books, which is lovely.

I need to get back to reading, too. Maybe I’ll pull some short stories out of Alabama Noir today when I finish with the condom packing.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely and fulfilling Friday, Constant Reader!

Gorgeous

So, as Constant Reader is aware, I’ve been working, off and on, since 2015 on something that I referred to for years as “the Kansas book”, whose actual title is #shedeservedit.

It will be released on 1/11/22 officially; if you pre-order it from the Bold Strokes website, it will ship actually on January 1 (well, probably the 2nd since the 1st is a holiday).

Here’s the cover copy:

Liberty Center High School’s football team has a long history of success, and the dying small town has nothing else to cling to. But when Lance, the star quarterback, is found dead, Alex Wheeler becomes the prime suspect in his best friend’s murder. Alex thought he knew Lance’s secrets–but Lance was keeping his sexuality private and someone else found out. How well did Alex really know Lance, and what else did he keep hidden? 

To prove his innocence and figure out what really happened to Lance that last night, Alex starts connecting the dots and finds that everything leads back to the recent suicide of a cheerleader who may have been sexually assaulted at a team party. Did online bullying and photos of her from the party drive her to suicide? Or was she murdered? Alex and his girlfriend India soon find their own lives are in danger as they get closer and closer to the horrifying truth about how far Liberty Center will go to protect their own.

I’ve been writing what I had taken to calling “the Kansas book” since I was in high school, really. While I was in high school I wrote several stories about a group of kids at a fictional high school, completely based on my own, and while it was certainly melodrama…we also didn’t have shows for teens like Beverly Hills 90210 and movies for teens like Sixteen Candles, Fast Times at Ridgement High, or Risky Business yet; all “teen fare” at the time was mostly from Disney, G-rated, and farcical; likewise, television programs targeted toward younger viewers were mostly for really young kids or what we now call “tweens.” And while I had crushes on both Kurt Russell and Jan-Michael Vincent (who didn’t?), those Disney films were little better than The Brady Bunch. I think it was in 1980 when I decided to take those stories and extrapolate them into a longer story, thinking it would be my first novel–and it expanded from the kids to include their older siblings and parents and teachers as well. I moved the story from the rural county to the county seat, and over the course of three years I painstakingly wrote about three thousand notebook pages. It was a sloppy mess, to be honest; I was thinking in terms of writing something along the lines of Peyton Place–the story of a town over the course of five years–but as I wrote I dropped characters and storylines; changed character names when a better name occurred to me; as I said, it was a total mess…and when I completed it, in the days before computers, I realized that I needed to type the entire thing up, and alas, I didn’t know how to touch type and whenever I typed anything I consistently made errors. So, I simply set it aside and went back to writing short stories before starting, in 1991, to try my hand at novels again.

In the years since, I cheerfully pulled elements from that ancient manuscript out to use for other books and other stories–there was a murder mystery at the heart of the book, and I actually used that as the basis for the plot of Murder in the Garden District; apparently I have always had crime in mind when it came to my writing–and I also pulled character names and other stories from it to use elsewhere. I reverted back to the rural county aspect of the original short stories to write Sara; one of the things I had to do recently was go through Sara and anything else I’ve written and published already having to do with Kansas to record the character names to make sure I wasn’t using them again in this book. I also originally began the basics of this book sometime before Katrina–the star quarterback’s dead body being found on the fifty yard line of the football field, and originally the primary POV character was the only detective on the small town’s police force. What I wrote was really good–I believe I got up to about five chapters–and it was also a flashback story with parallel time-lines; one in 1977, when the quarterback was murdered, and the present day, with someone who was in high school at the time becoming convinced that the person convicted of the crime was actually innocent and railroaded as a cover-up. I could never get the whole plot worked out, and it went through several changes and stages as I worked on it, still being called “the Kansas book.”

Two real life crimes–the rapes in Steubenville, Ohio and the other in Marysville, Missouri, in which girls were either drugged or pressured into over drinking and then when too wasted to even speak were sexually assaulted by athletes–inspired me to drag the framework of this story out and use it to tell a similar style story. I was, like anyone with a conscience or a soul, horrified by these rapes, and even more horrified by the aftermath; the way the girls were humiliated and shamed publicly and on social media, and I couldn’t get a hashtag that the kids in one of the towns used while shaming the victim: #shedeservedit.

That, I felt, was my title, and I could build the story from there. I could still have the dead quarterback; I could still have the town reeling from the one-two punch of the rape and the murder, only now I could layer in the victim-blaming and shaming. (I will never forget female newscasters talking about how sad it was that the boys convicted for the Steubenville case’s lives were ruined; I saved my sympathy for the poor girl they victimized; how on earth would she get past this?) I wrote the entire first draft in one month in the summer of 2015, and have tinkered with it, off and on, ever since. It was early last year, I think, pre-pandemic, when. I finally decided that two books I’d been working on between others over the last few years needed to be done and out of my hair; and the best way to force myself to finish them both once and for all was to offer them to my publisher. I did that, was given deadlines, and now, as I am finishing the final version of #shedeservedit, I also have a release date (1/11/22) and a cover to share with you all, so here it is (obviously, see above).

Writing this has been a journey, as writing any book can be; the Imposter Syndrome reared its ugly head numerous times during the writing of this book–should a man be writing a book about this subject? Is telling such a story from the point of view of a young man, friend to both the rape victim and the rapists, the right way to tell it? Am I centering a young man in a story about sexual assault and the toxic rape culture that has grown up around a small town’s athletic success?

I guess time will tell.