Category: revising

Tell Her About It

At halftime, LSU was ahead 28-3, and the score could have been even more lopsided.

A punt return for a touchdown was called back for a penalty, and the Tigers also missed two field goals. Chattanooga’s original possession–they got the ball first–was sustained by some sloppy defensive play and some penalties, but after having first-and-goal from the Tiger eight yard line, Chattanooga was forced to kick a field goal–and never led again. Four plays later LSU was ahead 7-3, and never really looked back. Outside of that sloppy play and the penalties, LSU looked very impressive last night, winning 45-10 (Chattanooga’s touchdown came in the fourth quarter when the game was pretty much over, and scored in three plays against the second-team defense.) LSU looked great; getting interceptions, recovering fumbles, completing exciting long passes, and Danny Etling looked calm and cool–sometimes running when he had no one open, sometimes throwing the ball away, never getting intercepted and never getting sacked. (He did get called one time for intentional grounding.) It was, over all, an impressive performance, and LSU could have easily scored over fifty points at the very least.

And it’s always fun to be in Tiger Stadium.

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Today, I have to go make groceries, do some more cleaning, and do some more inputting of edits and I also hope to finish Chapter Five; and maybe tonight we can watch the first episodes of The Deuce and American Horror Story: Cult. I slept really well last night, and I also am planning on making it to the gym for the first time in weeks, and the first time in years without an appointment with my trainer. We’ll see how it goes.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

Stand Back

I have to work today, so am spending this morning catching up on chores around the house. After I get off work, we are heading up to Baton Rouge for tonight’s LSU game, which I am quite naturally excited about. It’s also my first time taking the new car to an LSU game in Baton Rouge! Woo-hoo!

GEAUX TIGERS!

I also started reading Donna Andrews’ latest, Gone Gull, last night, and am enjoying it pretty thoroughly already. I’ve already laughed out loud a couple of times in the first few chapters, an excellent sign, and am looking forward to reading more of it. Since I am working today and going to the game tonight, I have to do other errands–get groceries, etc–tomorrow, but I am also hoping to be able to carve out some time tomorrow to do some writing/inputting edits. I am so far behind on the inputting of the edits–it’s such a tedious process–but maybe if I just devote myself to it tomorrow, I can power through it, and then spend next weekend making the necessary tweaks the manuscript needs to have made before I start querying agents.

Ah, the joyous sting of rejection to come. Woo-hoo. But I’m much better about that sort of thing now than I used to be. Now, as long as the rejection is handled professionally, I no longer mind. And by professionally, I mean that you are notified. There’s nothing more infuriating than writing something for a market–say, an anthology–and finding out you didn’t get into the anthology when the book is released. This has happened to me more than once, and I am really tired of it. I am also really tired of the people involved turning around and saying oh, I just don’t time to contact everyone. Um, it’s part of the fucking job. I notified every single person who submitted a story to Blood on the Bayou–in fact, for every anthology I’ve ever been involved with–to let them know I wasn’t able to use their story, and to encourage them to submit it elsewhere.

There’s no fucking excuse, otherwise.

Agents who say on their website that ‘if you don’t hear from us in two months’ or some other time period? That’s different, because they are letting you know right up front they will only contact you if interested, and are giving you a timeline. Personally, I still think you should thank someone for submitting, but I’m also old school, and maybe agencies nowadays simply don’t have the staff or the time to do that anymore. I’m not an agent, have never been one, and have never worked for an agency, so I give them the benefit of the doubt.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you, actor Caspar Van Dien.

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Allentown

I was so tired last night when I got home from work–and I worked a short day! After work yesterday, a friend and I went to lunch to a place on the corner of Tulane and Carrollton called Namese, and I had an enormous  bowl of beef pho, which was absolutely delicious. I was in the mood for noodles, and having never actually had pho before, was quite thrilled to try it, and it was amazing. I’ve been wanting to try pho since seeing a show on our local PBS channel, WYES, about the big Vietnamese community in New Orleans, and one of the things they talked about on the documentary was pho. I’d been wanting to try it ever since, and got my chance.

DAMN THAT WAS GOOD.

I’d known we have a big Vietnamese community in New Orleans for quite some time–most of them live in New Orleans East, and were devastated by the flooding after the levees failed back in 2005. Poppy Z. Brite wrote about that community in his brilliant (and deeply disturbing) Exquisite Corpse, doing it so well I never had the nerve to try to write about it myself. (Our first, and only,  Congressman from Orleans Parish was a Vietnamese; Joseph Cao, who defeated “Dollar Bill” Jefferson in the post-Katrina scandal created by the fifty thousand dollars in cash he had stored in his home freezer. Cao was born in Ho Chi Minh City (then called Saigon), and only served one term in Congress–but I liked Congressman Cao; he put New Orleans ahead of party, and I was sorry to see him go.

I have an idea for a noir involving the Vietnamese communities of the Gulf Coast that I hope to write some day. I’ve also been toying with an old idea for a horror novel that’s been dancing in my head for the last thirty years or so–I can tell that I am writing another book; my creativity always spikes when I am writing a book.

Honestly. One would think I could get that under control.

Anyway, I also finished reading Margaret Millar’s Do Evil in Return last night. It wasn’t the below edition I read, but rather one of the volumes of The Collected Millar; this volume also contains Fire Will Freeze, Experiment in Springtime, The Cannibal Heart, and Rose’s Last Summer. But I rather like that Gothic-style cover.

millar-do-evil-in-return-lancer

The afternoon was still hot but the wind carried a threat of fog to come in the night. It slid in through the open window and with curious, insinuating fingers it pried into the corners of the reception room and lifted the skirt of Miss Schiller’s white uniform and explored the dark hair of the girl sitting by the door. The girl held a magazine in her lap but she wasn’t reading it; she was pleating the corners of the pages one by one.

“I don’t know if Dr. Keating will be able to see you,” Miss Schiller said. “It’s quite late.”

The girl coughed nervously. “I couldn’t get here any sooner. I–couldn’t find the office.”

“Oh. You’re a stranger in town?”

“Yes.”

“Were you referred to Dr. Keating by anyone?”

“Referred?”

“Did anyone send you?”

Margaret Millar is a treasure, and her work, despite now being dated because of societal and social changes, are worthy of not only being read by modern audiences but also deserving of study. She, along with Dorothy B. Hughes and Charlotte Armstrong, formed a triumvirate of strong women writing suspense novels featuring women protagonists that were the equal of anything written by male contemporaries; there were numerous other women doing the same, but these three had longer careers and are now being rediscovered, in part thanks to the diligent work of Sarah Weinman and Jeffrey Marks. Library of America has released a two-volume collection of works by great women writers of the time; Soho Crime is releasing thick volumes collecting all of Millar’s work, which I am happily acquiring. I read Armstrong when I was young, and loved her; I am in the process of working my way through the canons of both Millar and Hughes, as well as two other great women writers of the same period, the incomparable Patricia Highsmith and my personal hero, Daphne du Maurier.

Do Evil in Return, originally published in 1950, is ultimately a novel about how society and its hypocritical misogynistic treatment of women can destroy them. The main character of the novel, Dr. Charlotte Keating, is a strong, independent woman with a successful practice in a small California coastal town. She is both single and hard-working; owns her own car and her own home–no small feat for a woman in 1950–and the book opens with a young woman coming to her for help. The woman, Violet O’Gorman, is only twenty and married, but finds herself with a particular problem; estranged from her husband, she had a one-night stand with a married man which has left her pregnant, and she is desperate for an abortion, which of course was illegal in 1950. Dr. Keating–Charley to her friends–refuses to break the law and perform this service, but her heart goes out to her patient and wants to help her, but while distracted by a phone call doesn’t notice the girl slipping out of her office. With a local address her only clue as to how to find Violet, she goes looking for her…and soon finds herself wrapped up in a terrible string of events beyond control, a noose tightening around her own neck. For, like her patient, Charley herself is involved in a love affair with a married man–a platonic one, to be sure, for she refuses to become intimate with him as he is married–and the similarities she sees between herself and young Violet is part of what drives her. The following morning, Violet’s body washes ashore, an apparent suicide, according to the police but Charley herself isn’t so sure.

And of course, she is right.

Millar’s particular genius lies in how casually she lays out her cards; she never tells her reader straight out what’s going on, but allows it to unfurl naturally, leaving it to her reader to figure it out. When we meet Charley’s platonic lover, there is no mention of his being married–Millar simply talks about the stifling existence he has at home with Gwen. As the story continues the reader slowly realizes that Gwen is actually his wife, and she is also one of Charley’s patients. Charley has tried to foist Gwen off on other doctors, but hypochondriac Gwen refuses to see anyone else–and is incredibly needy, ringing Charley for help at all hours of the day or night. Charley’s own feelings for Gwen’s husband also aren’t that simple; and in 1950 divorces weren’t as easy to obtain as they are today.

Perhaps the strongest part of the book is how Millar clearly depicts how claustrophobic a woman’s world was in 1950, and the delicate balance a single, independent professional woman had to maintain. Exposure of the relationship would ruin Charley, both personally and professionally; just as Violet’s unexpected pregnancy has ruined her. Society’s expectations of women, and their sexuality, are the true villains, the true evil in this novel; and the realization that this world Millar so brilliantly depicts was only sixty-seven years ago is truly chilling.

I think this book would be excellent reading for a Women’s Studies course; to let young women know how truly awful and misogynistic society was not so long ago, as a reminder to everyone today how far women have come in a short period of time, and how hard they fought to get to where they are today.

 

Stray Cat Strut

Friday!!!!

I have almost made it through this short week–I am working tomorrow before we head up to Baton Rouge for the LSU-UT Chattanooga game–and am pretty happy about it. It seemed off this week; I’m not sure what that’s about. We’ve had a chilly week here–for September, it’s been in the 70’s without humidity, which is November weather, really. I’ve slept fairly well, despite waking up a couple of times per night, and each morning have not wanted to get up. I may get up tomorrow morning so I can get the groceries and run errands prior to going to the office–get that out of the way so I can sleep late Sunday, since we’ll probably not get back from Baton Rouge until around midnight.

This week my short story “Keeper of the Flame” came out in Mystery Weekly magazine, and I am inordinately proud of this. Short stories are so hard for me to write, so each sale of one makes me feel like I’ve truly accomplished something.  I struggle so much with short stories…I have so many right now that aren’t finished, but I am trying to get the edits input and the first draft of the new Scotty written and … and…and…

I also got pretty deep into Margaret Millar’s sublime Do Evil in Return, and can’t wait to finish reading it so I can post about it. It’s so extraordinary!

Anyway, if you want to read “Keeper of the Flame”, you do have to pay for it, alas. This is the link to the preview of the story, to give you an idea of whether you want to read it or not:

http://mysteryweekly.com/issues/keeper.asp

You can buy the magazine in either print or e-form here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1549639919/

And you can also buy or subscribe here:

http://www.mysteryweekly.com/subscribe.asp

Do support markets that pay–even in a small amount–for short crime fiction!

Here’s a hunk to get your weekend rolling, former Tarzan actor Gordon Scott:

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One on One

Thursday morning, and there’re storms out there putting lots of people and property in jeopardy. Best wishes, everyone–best to batten down those hatches and get the hell out of Dodge. A New Orleans evacuation would be troubling–usually there’s the options of either going west to Houston or north. This time, obviously, the only option is to go north. I will, of course, be making certain that the car is filled with gas at all times now; I filled it up yesterday morning just to be on the safe side; New Orleans still was in the Cone of Uncertainty for Irma, but as the day went on the model shifted completely and we appear to be in the clear–for this one, at least. Jose is out there, though, behind Irma, and Katia may be forming along the Mexican Coast near the Yucatan. Oy.

I did manage to get Chapter Four of the Scotty finished, and started Chapter Five.  I’ve also input another chapter or so of edits into the WIP as well. Pretty cool. I’ve also had some ideas for some new short stories over the last couple of days, but as always Labor Day weekend has sort of disrupted my life and I need to get my bearings back a bit. I did manage to get the bills paid today, and I have to head over to the West Bank to get my driver’s license renewed tomorrow–YAY–and then I have to work Saturday for a few hours, which is fine. I don’t mind working Saturdays that much, as long as I’m home in time to watch the LSU game. (yes, it’s Tennessee-Chattanooga, but what kind of fan would I be if I didn’t watch their games? Although going to see It in the theater is kind of sounding good…)

It’s also very exciting that four American women are all that are left in the draw for the US Open: four American women in the semi-finals. This hasn’t happened since 2002, I think they said–back when the US women were the juggernaut of Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, and Monica Seles. Venus’ first trip to the semi-finals was twenty years ago. Seriously, the Williams Sisters are without question two of the greatest women tennis players of all time; if not for her sister, Venus would probably have the record for most majors won. So, we are assured an American woman will win the US Open this year, which is very coo. We watched Juan Martin del Potro knock Roger Federer out of the tournament last night; his semi-final with Rafa Nadal should be a final, really.

I do love tennis.

I had a major breakthrough about the WIP this week; long overdue, but better late than never. I realized that my underlying theme wasn’t what I originally thought it was, but rather, something else. It means some more tweaking–but I was going to do some more anyway once these line edits are put in, but knowing what the theme is will  make the query letter writing ever so much easier. I also realized that the crime that’s driving the narrative isn’t necessarily what the story is about; which will make it a trickier sale. But I am very very pleased, and very very excited.

And now, off to the spice mines.

Your Throwback Thursday hunk today–ME! LOL. From a photoshoot I did back in 2004, looking rough and tough. 😉

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Time (Clock of the Heart)

Good morning! ‘Tis Sunday in the Lost Apartment, and Paul is still asleep. I’m on my second cup of coffee, and my back is a little sore. I’m also dehydrated; which means I’m going to have to guzzle down water at some point–probably when I’m finished with coffee for the day. We’re supposed to meet some friends down in the Quarter later on this afternoon; so hydration is going to be key.

We went to the LSU-BYU game last night in the Superdome, relocated from Texas because, well, in case you aren’t aware of it, there’s been a major flooding issue in Houston thanks to that rat-bastard Hurricane Harvey. It was the first time we’ve been to an LSU game outside of Tiger Stadium, which also felt kind of weird; it was also weird to go to an LSU game we could have to and from. The game wasn’t sold out; the tickets only went on sale Wednesday and of course, being Labor Day people probably already had made plans, weren’t planning on going to Houston for the game. Still, there were about 53,000 people or so in the Dome–which gets really loud–and I’d say probably about 90% of the people in attendance were LSU fans. (Reading a write-up on the game from the Salt Lake newspaper this morning, I laughed when the reporter said Apparently there’s a side split canyon to Death Valley in New Orleans.  So, while the crowd was partisan Tiger fans primarily it still wasn’t a home game and that seemed weird when you’re used to Tiger Stadium. They also had the Dome at an arctic climate so I was cold, and by the fourth quarter I had goosebumps from the cold that wouldn’t go away. All the reports I read of the game was that it was a dominating performance by LSU, and it kind of was; the defense smothered the Cougar offense which never crossed the fifty yard line, and limited them to maybe four or five, at most, first downs. They also got an amazing interception that was just beautifully played. The LSU offense was…well, it got the job done but wasn’t particularly exciting other than a long pass from Danny Etling that set up the second LSU touchdown in the second quarter after the interception. (LSU scored two touchdowns quickly; after an initial drive, they kicked off and on BYU’s first play after that came the interception.) But we also missed a field goal, and didn’t make a 4th and 1 from the one-yard line.

I’m not sure how confident I am that this is going to be a great season. But it’ll be fun to watch–it always is–and there were some terrific plays in the game last night. Afterward Paul and I walked home from the Superdome. We got home shortly after midnight, and I read for a while before going to bed.

This morning, I’m going to relax and rest and gird my loiB57D1D19-BE70-4E9F-BAC5-D5AF8D7314C6s for going down to the Quarter. I still have tomorrow off–my back is a little sore from doing Outreach last night and the walking last night–so hopefully tomorrow I can sleep in, get some good rest, let my back stop hurting, and get some writing down. I’ll probably try to get Chapter 4 finished today, and maybe even start Chapter 5. We shall see.

And here’s a nice shot of the Tiger band from last night.

 

You Are

It’s raining this morning here in New Orleans, and very dark outside my windows. We’re in a flash flood warning through Thursday, but from everything I’ve seen on-line this morning the eye of Harvey is going to pass far to the west of New Orleans; but a lot of Louisiana is going to be impacted. Not to the extent Houston and Texas were, of course. Just thinking about what’s happened to Houston (still happening, actually) here is terrifying. I saw on Weather.com that three times the water pumped out of New Orleans after the Katrina levee-failure has dropped on Houston…although it’s a much bigger area. Houston is going to need us all, everyone. It’s the fourth largest city in the United States; a major port and contributor to the economy, and a major cog in the oil/gas industry. Most everyone I know and love and care about in Houston has surfaced somewhere on social media, so I know they’re all okay, but the images are absolutely horrific.

It’s odd that today is the anniversary of Katrina and it’s raining, with a hurricane heading for the western part of the state. I’ve thought a lot about the post-Katrina flood these past few days as Houston has been ravaged, and my heart breaks for all the lives that are going through what so many here experienced. So many New Orleanians evacuated to Houston and stayed there, and now are going through the same experience all over again. It makes my heart hurt. I don’t doubt that Houston will rebuild; I lived in Houston for two years and have spent a lot of time there. Houstonians and Texans are, no matter what else you may think about them, are a hardy, tough lot who can’t be kept down.

HOU DAT.

The LSU-BYU game, which was scheduled to be played originally in Houston this Saturday, has been moved to the Superdome; I think we may try to get tickets. It’s going to be interesting trying to drive to work today, and even more interesting trying to get home later this evening after a day of incessant rain. Heavy sigh.

Oh, the wonderful Paul D. Marks did a blog piece about us Macavity Award finalists; you can find it here:

http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2017/08/2017-macavity-award-short-story.html

I started inputting the edits on the WIP yesterday–I stand corrected; that is more tedious than doing a line edit–and have decided my next read will be The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith, a writer I love and admire and haven’t read enough work by; I’ve read some of her short stories (wonderful) but I think the only novels I’ve read (and loved) are The Talented Mr. Ripley (which I need to reread) and Strangers on a Train.

And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines with me. Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you, Constant Reader:

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Mr. Roboto

I finished the line edit yesterday, thanks be to the baby Jesus. Now I have to input it into the document, but the worst part–the actual line by line edit–is done done done. Huzzah! Huzzah!

I lived in Houston for two years, and of course, my parents lived there over ten. So, I feel connected to that city as well–not to mention all the friends I have there, and my favorite specialty bookstore, Murder by the Book, so my heart breaks every time I see the flooding pictures, videos, and the posts. Keep Houston in your hearts, everyone, and know they are going to need help. Twelve years ago it was New Orleans, and Houston opened its heart to us. Never forget. Rebuilding Houston is going to be a long and incredibly challenging process. We need to be there for our fellow Americans.

I spent the rest of Sunday–pre-Game of Thrones epic season finale, reading Jeff Abbott’s extraordinary Blame.

blame

What she would never remember: their broken screams starting with I love…and I hate…, the sudden wrenching pull, the oh-no-this-is happening-this-can’t be-happening feeling of falling as the SUV rocketed off the road, the horrifying downward slope of the hillside in the headlights, his hand tight over hers on the steering wheel, the smashing thunder of impact, the driver’s-side airbag exploding in her face, the rolling, the lights dying, the unforgiving rock, and then the blow to her head that undid her and wiped her clean and made her new.

The old Jane died; every version of David died. The new Jane, product of a dark night’s fury and tragedy, knew nothing more until she woke up four days later, remembering nothing, not her name, not her mother’s face, the crash, what had happened to her in that hospital bed, or any of her past seventeen years. Slowly the memories began to seep back: her birthdays when she was a child, cake sweet and soft on her lips; the smoky, rich aroma of her grandfather’s pipe matched with the woolly smell of his tweed jacket with leather elbow patches; her mother’s favorite lavender soap; the notebook she’d filled with short, dark adventure stories one summer and proudly read to her dad; the faces of her teachers; the smile of the librarian who’d give her stickers during the summer reading program; the feel of her hand in her father’s palm; the faces and the laughter of her friends when they were kids.

Sometimes the memories felt immediate; sometimes they felt like something she’d seen in a film, present but distant, nothing to do with the person she was now.

Except for the past three years.

Jane was seventeen, but as the memories surged back, she was stuck at fourteen. Those last three years were gone, all the joy and drama of her high school life, lost in the damage and the trauma. Including those mysterious, unexplained last few hours, when she was with a boy she wasn’t supposed to be with, when she was out doing God knows what. The girl lived and eventually limped back into the bright sunshine, and the boy died and went into the cold ground, a secret sleeping with him.

And so the world she knew turned against her.

Except someone watched, and waited, and wondered how much of that night Jane Norton really remembered.

Amnesia. While not nearly as common as soap operas make it seem, it’s an actual thing. I did a lot of research on amnesia when I was writing Sleeping Angel–most of which I’ve actually forgotten–but if done right, amnesia is an excellent foundation for a crime novel/thriller.

Jeff Abbott has done it right with Blame.

Two years have passed since the terrible accident that took Jane’s memory and killed her neighbor, David–one of the most popular boys in their high school in an affluent section of Houston. Jane’s early memories have come back, but she doesn’t remember high school before the accident, or the tragic accident that killed her father when she was a freshman. Hated and resented by many of her classmates, she’s now homeless, sometimes crashing in one of her few friend’s dorm rooms in a local college. Her mother is too much for her to handle–think Mildred Pierce on steroids–and of course, David’s parents also still live next door; his mother hates her and makes no bones about hating her. Her mother refuses to sell the house, and David’s parents are splitting up. On the anniversary of the accident Jane unfortunately encounters David’s mother Perri at David’s grave, which turns into an incredibly ugly altercation when Perri attacks her; Jane’s Uber driver records it all–and it goes viral.

At the same time, someone named “Liv Danger” is going after Perri on social media–Jane as well–and soon other people involved somehow, even peripherally, the night of the accident are under attack. Slowly but surely, Jane has to slowly start piecing together what happened that day as the Liv Danger’s behavior becomes more and more menacing and dangerous…and other dangerous characters are getting involved.

This book was, quite simply, an extraordinary read. The tension begins on Page One, and not only does it not let up, it builds. I literally took the book into the kitchen with me, reading while I was making dinner because I couldn’t stop, didn’t even want to take twenty minutes away from it because I had to know what happened that night! 

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, but along with that recommendation comes this warning: set aside a weekend to read it because you won’t want to put it down.

Easily one of my top reads of this year.

 

Back on the Chain Gang

Saturday morning, with Fleetwood Mac blaring through the stereo, a load of laundry going in the washer, another in the dishwasher, and I’m about to do the floors. This week was so insane–both personally and at work–that I’m glad that it’s the weekend; last week just needed to end. I woke up with a lot of energy this morning; hopefully it will see me through the cleaning and the errand I need to do today. Last night I was glued to the Weather Channel until I couldn’t watch anymore; I alternated between that and reading Star Island by Carl Hiaasen before retiring to bed relatively early. Paul’s going to spend the day doing errands and running around with a friend; I hope to get the line edit finished as well as Chapter Four (I hate transitional chapters); tomorrow I intend to edit some short stories and possibly get started on Chapter Five. Crescent City Charade isn’t coming along as quickly as I might have hoped; I think I’ll brainstorm the next few chapters this evening, as that should help.

Next weekend is Southern Decadence. Wow, this summer has just flown by, hasn’t it? The humidity should break in the weeks after Labor Day and then it’s the fall. Football season also starts (for LSU) this Saturday; the Tigers are supposed to play BYU in Houston; not sure how that’s going to work given Harvey and what it’s doing to southeastern Texas. Best as I can tell, Houston is getting hammered this morning, but at least it’s down to a Category 1–which, while not ideal, with it’s heavy rains and so forth–is better than the Category 4 that came ashore last night. Hurricane season sucks, y’all. As a friend said last night, hurricane season makes you into a bad person, as you’re always hoping and praying it will go somewhere else, which means wishing it on other people.

So fucking true, and so fucking sad.

I read the first two digital issues of Starman this week; it’s not quite as good as I remembered, but on the other hand, I originally started reading it about seven or eight issues in. The first issues of a new superhero comic are always, like a television show, a bit wobbly as they try to find their legs and get on firm footing–notable exceptions being Ozark and Game of Thrones, but usually I’ll try to give a TV show a couple of episodes to find its way and gel. This iteration of Starman is about Will Payton, a recent college graduate, raised by a single mother with a younger sister. The mom sacrificed a lot to help put Will through college; he got a degree in Advertising and landed a great job with a major firm in Phoenix. But he hated the job, hated what he was doing, and much to his mother’s dismay and anger, he quit and tried to find something else. He went on a camping/hiking trip, and while on it, something happened that he doesn’t quite understand. He wakes up after thirty-two days in the morgue; he’s confused the authorities who found his dead body in the woods, and basically scares the crap out of them when he sits up and starts talking. He also has powers he doesn’t understand, and so he comes back home, confides in his sister…and has to face the wrath of his mother who demands that he find a job…all the while he’s trying to figure out what’s happened to him. He can fly, generate heat, withstand bullets…and can change his appearance by just thinking about it. His sister convinces him that he’s a superhero, and he needs to start fighting crime and helping people.

What Will doesn’t know is the proverbial mad scientist was conducting experiments in a lab, trying to create super-powered beings. But when he was ready to tap into power from a satellite, it was pushed off course by space debris—and rather than beaming back into his lab and into the bodies of his human volunteers–the energy was beamed into Will, where he was sleeping in the woods. The first two issues set this up, and set the stage for a coming conflict with the mad scientist and his creations.

That’s a lot to cram into two issues, so there’s that.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Little Red Corvette

Finally, it’s Friday and this bizarre, crazy, insane week comes to an end. I am really looking forward to the weekend; although this hurricane heading for Texas has me concerned for friends there. We’ll get some heavy rain here at some point, most likely Monday, but since it’s pretty much rained here every day since May…nothing new there, right?

I finished the second quarter of the line edit yesterday; I have one quarter, the first, of the manuscript left to do. I really am pleased with the work I am doing with this line edit; I am very curious to see how much, when it’s finally all input, has been removed from the manuscript. Again, I am absolutely amazed at how repetitive I can be when I write; I am even further amazed that in various, previous edits I didn’t catch any of this stuff. This is precisely why one needs to–or at least, I need to–deconstruct my manuscripts and take it apart, editing it line by line, sentence by sentence, and not in order. Had I started this from Chapter One on, I’m betting I wouldn’t have caught all of this yet again.

Food for thought, at any rate.

Chapter Four still is stagnant, alas; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here: I hate transitional chapters. But I intend to plug my way forward through it, as it must be done before I can move on to the rest of the story. It is, alas, what it is. But this weekend–given the scary weather reports for Texas and the possibility of torrential downpours for us–I am planning on leaving the house as little as possible. I’ll have to get groceries, of course, at some point–always, it’s never ending–but other than that, I don’t think so. I intend to curl up inside my little nest, my oasis of Gregworld here in the Lost Apartment, and clean and edit and read, and maybe watch Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2.

 I love me some Groot.

And the Lost Apartment is definitely in need of some cleaning.

Bouchercon also released the schedule; I have two panels this year–the Anthony nominees for Best Anthology panel, and Reading the Rainbow; LGBTQ Crime Fiction. I will be sharing the stage with Jessie Chandler, Owen Laukkanen, Stephanie Gayle, John Copenhaver, and our moderator, Kristopher Zgorski, of BOLO Books blog. It should be an interesting discussion, methinks. I’ve never paneled with any of these folks before, so they might want to beware.  Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Here’s the poster that was made for our panel:

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Pretty cool, eh?

And now I’d best get back to the spice mines.