Category: revising

King of Wishful Thinking

Friday!

Tomorrow, though, is going to be a little on the heinous side: I have Wacky Russian in the morning, then I have to go into the office for a few hours; meeting a friend who’s moving away for lunch after that; and then I have to come home and make macaroni-and-cheese for a party I am going to in the evening. In other words, I will barely have time to breathe all day. Hardly my idea of a peaceful, relaxing Saturday, but what can you do, right? I don’t usually have crazy Saturdays like this very often, so there is that. And then I have Sunday to get groceries, etc.

Meh, it happens.

The revision proceeds apace; I got more than one chapter–one and a half, say–done yesterday; I am still behind schedule slightly–a chapter a day pretty much adds up to finished right on June 30th. Then, I can spend the 4th weekend adding a coat of polish and then….time to start sending it out to agents. Keep your fingers crossed for me, Constant Reader!

I slept really well last night, which was all kinds of awesome. I’m not groggy or tired this morning, and I also slept late–I don’t have to be at the office until later today; I had thought about going to the grocery store this morning but I think I will wait until Sunday, simply because of the parking situation out on the street is easier to deal with Sunday mornings than it is on Fridays; and I can stop on my way home from work to get the stuff I need for the mac-and-cheese, and a few other things we need to have today. I am working late on Wednesday next week, so that’s when I’ll go to Costco, probably; although I am not entirely sure I need to go for any other reason than wanting to, really.

No, I need Pellegrino, and I also need laundry pods. We’ll see how I feel on Wednesday; i could always wait until the following weekend.

I haven’t had time to read any more on Since We Fell, because what spare time I’ve had the last couple of days has been spent on the revision.

And now, methinks I had best get back to the revision.

Here’s a Friday hunk to get your weekend going:

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Voices Inside My Head

I was whining about hating to do my revisions recently to my friend Laura recently, and she gave me the best analogy: “I look at my manuscripts as a dirty house I need to clean up and organize.”

Best. Advice. Ever.

I know it’s disturbing and odd, but I love cleaning and organizing. It’s so satisfying to work on a mess and have it all be neat and tidy and sparkling when I’m done; I enjoy this so much that I even let things go for a while, rather than cleaning as I go, so that when I have time I can just go to town. Paul has decided to go visit his mom the week of the 4th of July, for example, and having already requested that Monday the 3rd off so I could have a four day weekend–when Paul told me this my immediate first thought was, oh my God, the cleaning I am going to be able to get done…

I do recognize that this is not normal.

Anyway, but approaching the revisions with this mindset had completely changed how I view doing them; my manuscript is my apartment, it’s filthy and disorganized, and I need to get it in order, cleaned up, and organized so that it reads more smoothly and makes more sense. It’s amazing to me, too, how changing the way I look at doing this has turned it into something I am actually enjoying doing–something I never thought I would say. I’m not sure when exactly I decided that I hated doing revisions–it’s probably a leftover from the old “should have gotten it right the first time” mentality that I used to have–but it’s always been something I don’t like doing, and it also plays into my laziness. Do I HAVE to? was what I always used to whine when my mother would make me do something when I was a kid–what an utterly horrible little shit I was; the more I remember my childhood the more sympathy I have for my parents–and do I HAVE to is the mentality I always seem to take into my revisions.

But looking at it as a cleaning/organizing project? Has opened a whole new world to me.

Another writer friend of mine also offered me this critique of the way I write–“you always step on the action.” She then went on to explain that I have a habit of starting a chapter after something has happened, and then have the character flashback to what happened; this kills the suspense and takes urgency out of the story. I had never really noticed this habit, but when she told me this over lunch one day last fall, I began thinking about it and thought, yes, I do that sometimes.

As I revise this manuscript, I realized I DO IT ALL THE TIME. At least, I do in this manuscript, and she’s right; it does slow the pacing, kills off some of the suspense, and cuts back on the urgency. So I am fixing that–reordering my chapters, moving scenes around and having to redirect the structure and flow; and who knew? It’s fun. I am also trying to clean up the language, focus on maintaining a mood, and so forth as I go along, but I think once I get this restructured, I am going to go through and edit for language only in the next draft. I am still hoping to get this all done by 4th of July weekend (another benefit to Paul being gone that weekend) so I can spend that weekend cleaning up the language.

Who knew?

And on that note, this chapter isn’t going to revise itself for me.

For Throwback Thursday, here’s another hunk from my youth, who helped me realize oh, yes, I like boys/men; the wonderful Christopher Reeve:

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Wrapped Around Your Finger

Good morning, Constant Reader, and welcome to Hump Day. I probably shouldn’t have been so excited about my sleep improving, as it hasn’t been that great the last two nights which has resulted in me feeling a bit tired this morning and not being quite awake. Ah, well. The revising on the WIP is going well; my goal is to do a chapter a day and before I know it, it will be finished. I’m actually starting to enjoy myself with this revision, which is also a good sign, which means I may even get on a roll and do more than one chapter a day at times.

On the other hand, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.

I’ve started reading Dennis Lehane’s latest novel, Since We Fell, after finishing Ill Will, and am curious to see where he goes with his story. It’s the first time he is writing a book solely from the point of view of a woman, which is rare with male writers. I will report back.

I started writing a new short story this week; as I said the other day I have several ideas for new stories swirling around in my head, and finally, when I finished revising Monday I decided to go ahead and get the opening of a new story down. The story is called “Closing Time” (which may change), and it was actually not my idea originally; when I was on a panel at Bouchercon in Raleigh, I was talking about how after Katrina and the flood, for several months those of us who were in New Orleans were subject to a curfew–which was unusual, and as a result the bars closed at midnight, which was eventually moved back to 2 a.m, and then, at New Year’s, they went back to being open round the clock. Some bars simply locked their doors at closing time, and anyone who hadn’t left there was stuck there until the curfew was over, at six in the morning. The moderator, the amazing Katrina Niidas Holm, said “You should write a story about a murder that takes place when everyone is locked inside the bar overnight”–and since then, I’ve never gotten that suggestion out of my head–and for some reason I started really thinking about that lately.

We’ll see how it goes.

But I need to focus on the revisions, and getting “Quiet Desperation” finished.

And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a Hump Day Hunk for you:

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Message in a Bottle

Monday morning, you gave me no warning–oh, please. I don’t have to go in to the office until around noon this morning, which gives me ample time to finish reading Dan Chaon’s Ill Will before I have to head in; I have less than a hundred pages to go, was prepared to finish it last night before watching television–but that was not to be. Instead, we watched the first episode of Season 5 (and the last) of Orphan Black, and then rented Get Out, which I absolutely loved; and was definitely one of the most original horror films I’ve seen in years. Props to everyone involved–and if you haven’t seen it, you really should–at least, if you enjoy scary/horror films.

I’m also torn as to what to read after I finish the Chaon this morning. I have so many fantastic books to get through–seriously, the TBR pile is like a pirate treasure chest–and I have to work two late nights of bar testing this week; which means going into the office later than usual four days this week, and hopefully means that I’ll be able to get some reading done. As I suspected would happen, I didn’t get nearly as much revising done this weekend as I’d hoped, so I am still behind schedule. But with a bit of focus, I am confident I can get caught up by this weekend. One can hope, at any rate.

I also, as I was reading yesterday, figured out how to write two new short stories–so I need to get writing and rewriting so I can get those two stories done as first drafts, at least.

Note to self: make some notes on both of these stories.

Done. *whew*

And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a hunk to start your week off correctly:

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Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

Good morning, Sunday! I slept extremely well last night, and am working on getting through my ‘just-woke-up’ grogginess with some coffee while Paul watches the French Open final (Go Rafa!) while figuring out what I need to get done today (besides the obvious revisions/rewriting). I was exhausted yesterday–the combo of getting up early for Wacky Russian to running errands and so forth wore me out so completely I dozed off a couple of times in my easy chair while reading the brilliant Dan Chaon’s Ill Will, which is quite exceptional and extraordinary. I am also rereading Margaret Millar’s simply brilliant The Fiend as well.

Although both are so good they make me despair. Heavy sigh.

We also finished watching 11/22/63 last night; it was disappointing at the end, but I kind of figured it would be; it was a great premise but at the same time, how do you change history? Time travel is also full of logical and logistical problems–I think one of the (very) few times it worked in a novel was Dean Koontz’ Lightning, which I loved; it also worked in (only) The Terminator–all the sequels, at least the ones I saw, broke all the rules of paradox; which Koontz went into great detail about explaining in Lightning, and was great about sticking to the rules. I hoped King would be able to pull it off as well–and he may have, in the book–but the show didn’t. I do look forward to reading the book…not sure when that will be, of course, I feel pretty certain about what I’ll be reading next, and I have such a massive TBR pile….well, then again one never knows, although the next King I will probably tackle will be End of Watch.

And in other exciting news, Orphan Black is back for it’s final season. Huzzah!

So, I think I am going to get some cleaning done while I wake up. And congratulations to Rafael Nadal, for his 15th Grand Slam title and ridiculous 10th French Open title! Here he is, for Armani.

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Don’t Stand So Close to Me

SATURDAY! I’ve already been to the gym–I did not want to wake up this morning and head over there, but like a good boy I did–and now am getting ready to clean the kitchen, make my post workout protein shake, and make a grocery list. I have the galleys of a pseudonymous novel to finish going over today, and I also want to get some more revisions done on the WIP. I have big plans for today, obviously, but we’ll see how it all turns out. I’m almost caught up on American Gods (one more episode to go and I’ll be current), and we also started watching 11/22/63 on Netflix this week–it auto-started after we finished this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale–and we’re enjoying it. It’s very strange to watch something based on a Stephen King novel which I haven’t read; it’s one of the few I’ve not read (including the last three volumes of The Dark Tower, Black House, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Doctor Sleep, Bronco Billy, and End of Watch) and wasn’t, honestly, feeling all that inspired to read it–I wasn’t all that inspired to watch it, either; the whole Kennedy thing doesn’t really interest me anymore–but we are really caught up in the show, which makes me tend to think the book (which is almost always better than visual adaptations) is probably fantastic; it’s just so damned long. Paul and I have been talking about taking a long weekend and going back to a tennis resort like we did a couple of years ago; if we do that, I’ll probably take 11/22/63 with me to read.

I haven’t had the time to really get further in Ill Will, which is also something I hope to get further along with this weekend. The writing is exceptionally good, and I love the entire premise of the book, too. I’ve not read Chaon’s Await Your Reply, but I do have a copy of it as well. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Chaon; Ill Will is certainly bearing those good things out. And isn’t lovely to find a new writer you enjoy?

Yes, it is. Always.

I’ve also been rereading Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground this week, which is one of my favorite books of all time–Mary Stewart was simply brilliant. I love the premise behind the opening of this novel, just as I loved the premise of The Ivy Tree, and so many other of her books; I’d love to recycle those premises as an homage to her at some point; who knows? Every time, though, I reread a Mary Stewart novel I remember my friend Sara come up to me at a Bouchercon and telling me someone had said on a panel she was watching that “Mary Stewart’s heroines were just too passive for his/her tastes.” I was as appalled as Sara; Mary Stewart’s heroines were not passive; they had agency, didn’t need to be rescued,  and went sailing forth happily into adventures. Airs Above the Ground’s Vanessa March was one of those amazing heroines; and the premise–someone saw her husband on a newsreel somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, and so naturally she heads off to find out what he’s doing, all the while suspecting he is having an affair. God, how I would love to use that same style of opening…but the premise of The Ivy Tree is even better; a young woman is hired to impersonate another young woman–missing for years–in order to manipulate a dying man into making sure his will leaves his estate to the people who hired her. So fucking brilliant, really.

And now, it’s probably best for me to return to the spice mines. Them galleys ain’t going to proof themselves.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you:

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Saving Myself

Very tired this morning, after being out late bar testing last night. Hanging on by my fingernails until this weekend, I’m afraid. Definitely more coffee is in order this morning before I can function. I’m also trying to decide if I want to take lunch or if I want to get a gyro from Mona’s. Right now I am feeling so incredibly unmotivated I don’t even think I have the energy to shower and pick out clothes to wear to the office, quite frankly. It’s not even that I didn’t sleep well–I did. I am just physically worn out, which means I really need to focus on getting back into better shape than I currently am in. Seems like I’ve been saying that since January, doesn’t it? And it’s not like I’ve been so motivated to get a lot where I need to be with my writing. ENOUGH! I must get back on schedule with the revision.

And that’s the name of THAT tune.

I’m still reading and enjoying Dan Chaon’s Ill Will, although I’m still not very far into it. I want to finish reading that this weekend; I think after I finish him I’m either going to read either something from Lisa Unger, or maybe something horror; I’m not entirely sure. I did notice yesterday that I’ve been reading a lot of men lately; which is unusual for me. I generally tend to read more women–not to disparage male writers, of course, there are a lot of them I enjoy (Bracken MacLeod, Christopher Golden, Owen Laukkanen, Chris Holm, Michael Koryta, etc etc etc; it’s just there’s so little time and so MANY books!) But Project Purge continues apace; I have another bag full of books that need to go out for donation, and I am very pleased about that. I am taking a four day weekend for 4th of July, and am hoping to be able to get over to the storage unit on that Monday to start making inroads on THAT mess (if they’re open; I shall be highly annoyed if they are not, but that Wednesday is also a bar testing night, so I won’t have to be at work until later in the afternoon so in a worst case scenario I can get over there on that Wednesday morning). I do need to get in there because I have no copies of Bourbon Street Blues, Jackson Square Jazz, and Mardi Gras Mambo available here in the house; but have cases of them in there. I also fear they are in the back; but there are also boxes of books in there that can be donated. It’s definitely going to be a more than one-day purge, I fear.

Heavy heaving sigh. But hey–you don’t become a hoarder over night, you know. And if I can get that mess cleaned out, I can clean out the storage attic over the laundry room, which would be freaking awesome.

A boy can dream.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines. Here’s your Throwback Thursday hunk, Matt Lattanzi, who was in Rich and Famous and later married Olivia Newton-John.

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The Sunshine After The Rain

It’s actually sunny this morning in New Orleans; mayhap we can get through the day without any rain; although I am not counting on it, of course. I have a late night tonight–bar testing–and as such don’t have to go into the office until later. I am going to get some things done this morning, run to the post office and get groceries, and try to get some revising done before I head to work later this afternoon. I’ve been awake for a little over an hour now and am still shaking off the lethargy; it’s very defeating to get up and have little energy or motivation. I think the energy is there, but the brain fog is the problem.

I think tonight I might try something different when it comes to sleeping.

Anyway.

The kitchen is also a  mess this morning, so I need to empty the dishwasher and refill it. This weekend I need to definitely spend a day cleaning the downstairs and try not to get distracted from doing it (the way I have been the last month or so). I am still reading Dan Chaon’s Ill Will and deeply enjoying it–the writing is so sublime–and it’s triggering (as really well written books always do) some ideas for a book I’ve wanted to write for about thirty years now; I am making notes, just having some trouble coming up with the basic premise for the book–how do I get my main character where he needs to be for the summer? (Of course, the last thing I need is another book idea nagging at me while I am trying to get this one revised and I know I have another to write immediately after–and June is slipping through my fingers. I seriously need to buckle down and get this revision done, so I can move on to the next so I can stay on schedule.) Sigh. All I do is whine, whine, whine. So tiresome.

And on that note, I should probably get moving. I am going to the grocery store today so I need to make a list (already started) as well as go through the fridge to make sure everything in there is organized and whatever needs to be tossed has been tossed. I really hate going to the grocery store, but it’s simply got to be done this morning. (I’ll have to go again on Saturday, which is enormously frustrating, but there you go. I also have two late nights next week, so I’ll wait until then to make the Costco run.)

Life as a famous author is rather thrilling, isn’t it?

Here’s today’s hunk:

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(I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long

Saturday morning. After my morning coffee,  I’m going to run some errands, and then I am going to figure out what time to drive out to Elmwood to see Wonder Woman–shooting for late afternoon/early evening; that way I can get some cleaning and revising done. I’ve not done much revising this week–which is shameful (there is some harsh and ugly truths there about the need for actual contractual deadlines, isn’t there?), and so my goal is to get back on track with all of that for this weekend. I want to get another three or four chapters revised, as well as the second draft of “Quiet Desperation” finished this weekend, so I can move on to revising another short story. I’ve also started a new draft of the eighth Scotty novel, Crescent City Charade, which I am hoping to get finished by the end of the summer (Labor Day is the goal). I absolutely HAVE to get these revisions finished by the end of June, because I want to spend the summer querying agents. I honestly believe this WIP is my best work, and could be an important book.

Whether that proves to be the case or not remains to be seen, of course, but here’s hoping.

The Lost Apartment is a mess, and has been for quite some time. I can’t remember the last time I did the floors, quite frankly, and it’s getting kind of ugly down there, honestly. I mean, our kitchen floor needs to be redone–tiles have come up–which kind of makes it hard to make it look nice anyway, but that’s no excuse for not cleaning, you know? My mother would be so ashamed.

So ashamed.

So, I am going to, as soon as I finish this cup of coffee, start straightening and cleaning up down here. It looks like it’s going to rain all weekend, so I am not going to bother with the windows (which are also long overdue for a cleaning; although I could do the inside. Hmmmm, that could be a plan, actually) and definitely work on these floors. There’s some filing to do–isn’t there always–and some other organizing I need to do, but if I buckle down and stay focused (and make a fucking list) I should be able to get through everything before it’s time to go see Wonder Woman.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie. Wonder Woman was always one of my favorite comic book superheroes (although when I started reading DC Comics, she’d given up her powers somehow and was running a clothing boutique and dealing with social issues and was a modern feminist; in retrospect, it was one of the stupidest reboots in DC’s long history of rebooting their characters); I loved the historic Amazon character, and the rebooted non-powered Wonder Woman/Diana Prince character was more of a detective, solving crimes and trained in martial arts. Around the time the television series starring Lynda Carter started, the DC rebooted her again and made her an Amazon princess with her powers again. And the TV show was amazing. Rewatching it now shows it up for its low-budget special effects and bad writing, but Lynda Carter embodied the part so beautifully that she became iconic–and I’ve been a lifelong fan of Ms. Carter. Paul and I stopped watching Supergirl during its first season, before Lynda Carter joined the cast as the president, so I’m sure at some point I’ll go back and binge the series. (I’ve also always been a fan of Supergirl–who also went through an incredibly stupid reboot in the 1970’s; complete with new costumes and a loss of some of her powers–sometimes she had them, sometimes she didn’t; they came and went because of some kind of Kryptonite poisoned drink she was tricked into imbibing; then was killed off during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and then was brought back as something completely different after Superman was killed off in the early 1990’s. It’s really hard to keep track of all these shifts and changes in DC continuity/universes.)

Interestingly enough, now as I reflect on my fandom of both Wonder Woman and Supergirl, I realize how I’ve always been drawn to fictional depictions of strong women–from Nancy Drew to Trixie Belden to the Dana Girls to Cherry Ames to Vicki Barr to Wonder Woman to Supergirl to Lois Lane (who used to have her own comic book, detailing her adventures as an investigative reporter, which I also loved), to real life women who defied the traditional role of women in our society, like Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. I’ve certainly always enjoyed reading fiction by and about women; from Charlotte Armstrong to Phyllis Whitney to Victoria Holt to Mary Stewart to Judith Krantz and so on and so forth. Do people still read Rona Jaffe? She was another favorite of mine from the 1970’s. Taylor Caldwell, Evelyn Anthony, Jean Plaidy, Helen MacInnes, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson–I’ve always read and enjoyed books written by women. (This is not to say I don’t enjoy books by men; I always have, but at the same time there is a certain style of testosterone driven male novel, complete with angst, that I simply cannot abide, and the crime genre is riddled with them. I recently joked that I wanted to write a noir set in the strip clubs in the Quarter and call it Girls Girls Girls…you get the idea.)

And there are so many wonderful women writers publishing today: Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman, Sue Grafton, Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Alafair Burke, Alex Marwood, Lisa Unger, Jamie Mason, Wendy Corsi Staub, J. M. Redmann, Kristi Belcamino, Carrie Smith, Sara Henry, Ellen Hart, Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Toni Kelner (Leigh Perry), Carolyn Haines, Catriona McPherson, Lori Rader-Day, and Rebecca Chance–just off the top of my head; my TBR pile is filled with books by women, and there are so many wonderful women writers I’ve not gotten to yet, like Lisa Lutz and Shannon Baker and Jennifer MacMahon and Karin Slaughter–the list goes on and on forever and ever, amen. And this is just crime fiction/thrillers…I’ve not even touched on horror or scifi or fantasy or so-called ‘chick-lit.’ (Which reminds me, I really want to read some more Liane Moriarty, and I’ve not read any Jennifer Weiner…sigh.)

There’s just never enough time….and speaking of which, it’s time for me to head back into the spice mines.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you:

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Holding Out for a Hero

I finished reading The Sympathizer last night, and really enjoyed it. Calling it a crime novel is a bit of a stretch, but an argument can be made for it, and I can see either side of the argument, frankly. As I said before, it was interesting to read about the Vietnam War from the perspective of an actual Vietnamese-American, and I feel like Viet Thanh Nguyen did a really excellent job of showing how one could become a Communist back in the days when the small country was torn to shreds by war; and wind up playing a double–sometimes triple–game. I have Nguyen’s short story collection The Refugees; I am looking forward to reading some of his short fiction. And I have landed on James M. Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress as my next read. I am rather excited about it, as I love Cain.

I was in a mood yesterday; not really sure what triggered it, but am more than willing to blame it on heavy weather. It’s pretty much been raining every day and night this week; today I can see sunshine outside my windows through the condensation, and as such the humidity has been unbearable and that does affect me, even when I take a Claritin, as I did yesterday. I got home last night and we watched this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, which gets more and more viscerally disturbing from week to week. It’s very hard to watch–I can’t imagine how women watch it, frankly–and sometimes so much so that I pick up my phone and scroll through Twitter and Facebook until I can look at the television again. I’ve not read a lot of dystopian fiction, nor seen a lot of dystopian films (I’ve never read nor watched The Hunger Games, or any of the really popular young adult dystopian novels, outside of Chuck Wendig’s Under the Empyrean Sky, and I never read the other two books in that trilogy), pretty much limiting myself to Stephen King’s The Stand, and the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome film (I’ve not watched any of the other Mad Max movies), and Harlan Ellison’s story “A Boy and His Dog”, along with the film. I’ve had, over the years, ideas for dystopian fiction novels of my own–I am often influenced by books, movies, and television programs that I enjoy; so after watching Thunderdome and reading “A Boy and His Dog” in a short period of time, my mind naturally moved to an idea for a book/story about a dystopian future where a young woman is competing in a cross country car race, across the blighted wreckage of the Great Plains (which sounds kind of Hunger Games-ish, doesn’t it?), which I called “Fox on the Run”–the drivers are called ‘foxes’ and the people trying to catch and wreck them, take them out of the race, are called “hounds”–which I’ve toyed with over the years but never did anything with. In the early 1990’s, I came up with another dystopian idea, in which fundamentalists have taken over the US government, the country had splintered into pieces, some of them at war with each other, and how the fundamentalists have started rounding up ‘indesirables’–gays, lesbians, transgender, mixed race, etc.–and putting them in ‘work camps,’ but there’s an ‘underground railroad’ of sorts to help the undesirables get out. That one was called There Comes a Tide, which was a direct result of the horror of the AIDS epidemic and the callous federal response to it. When hysterics–and this was actually happening, for those of you who don’t remember or weren’t there–were calling for quarantining gay men (and just how and when and where? Yup, concentration camps), it wasn’t hard to imagine that such a thing could actually happen. (That time was so scary, and so incredibly frustrating.) I also have yet another idea, one I’ve actually started writing, but haven’t gotten far with, and over time I’ve come to realize there’s a way to link all these stories together into a trilogy…but not sure I am the right person to write such a trilogy.

But it’s something I think about, from time to time–usually when I am trying not to work on whatever I am currently working on, which is when I usually get my best ideas for other projects, natch. Isn’t that always the way? So, of course, as I work on the revisions, all I can think about is the next Scotty book–and once I actually start writing THAT, I’ll start thinking about something else. I would love to get Crescent City Charade finished by the end of the summer, so I could go on to write Muscles this fall…but we’ll see how everything shakes out.

I’m absolutely delighted that today is Friday, of course. I am hoping to get to see Wonder Woman this weekend; if Paul doesn’t want to go I may just go by myself. On the other hand, maybe I should use that as a reward: if I get as far as I would like to in my revisions, I can go see Wonder Woman.

Hmmm.

Okay, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Friday hunk to get your weekend started:

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