Category: revising

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Well, yesterday wasn’t so bad, really. The office didn’t burn down in my absence (didn’t think it would) and there was no mess for me to clean up anywhere, so that was nice. I also felt good for most of the day; I had energy and didn’t feel sleepy in the least. I managed to come home from work and get the thing done that needed to be done for today; I also revised and rewrote that short story before discovering the deadline is actually October 20th, so I have time to go over it once again before turning it in for the perusal of the editors. It’s a reach to meet their theme, but nothing ventured and all that. I won’t be disappointed too much if they turn me down. I also have another story to write by the end of the month, and I am not sure which one I have on hand to use for it. Something to look into for this weekend, methinks. And I need to get back to work on Scotty. Heavy sigh.

But I never felt any stress about the deadlines, and I managed to get both things worked on, which I am quite pleased with myself about, frankly. I am rather pleased with the new version of the story; it really does need to be revised one more time (not the least of which is that it’s too long; I always think 5k when writing a story but the CFS for this is 4k max, so some pruning and tightening is in order. I also managed to sleep really well again last night and feel great this morning. I wasn’t tired when I got home, either. After I got through with working, I happily collapsed into my easy chair and caught up on the news. I do think this approach to this year’s election–staying calm and blocking the legacy media1–is the right way to go. I have felt a lot less stressed about everything without losing my shit at the insanity of said legacy media’s insane bias. It doesn’t mean that I’m not worried about the outcome–I am, very much so–but the weight of it all doesn’t need to rest on my shoulders. Thank God for anxiety medications, and the clear-headedness those medications give me.

Today’s goal is to figure out what short story to use for this other call for submissions that is due at the end of the month. I literally have no clue, off the top of my head, and so I am going to have to go through the files and figure out which one I can either finish or revise. A tough problem to have, don’t you think? I kind of want to work on short stories at the moment, which has everything to do with revising one yesterday. Once the dam breaks, and all that stuff and nonsense. I’m just delighted to be writing again, and even more delighted that I am prioritizing my work for once (and from now on). I’ll still do the occasional volunteer thing now and again, but nothing that requires a lengthy commitment or has any urgency; I’ve sacrificed my mental health and my writing for far too long on things that ultimately had no benefit for me other than satisfaction–and sometimes I never even got that, so it’s time for someone else to do whatever it was I thought I was accomplishing. I also have little to no interest in my legacy. I am always amused a bit when I hear writers talk about things like that. For one thing, that’s not for me to decide. Did I make a contribution to American letters? The mystery genre? Queer writing? Most likely not; I am not going to be studied in future college lit courses–genre, for one; gay for the other–and once I’m gone–or stop producing work, I’ll be forgotten, and I am fine with that. The books will all float around on the Internet for years after my death so they are there for the finding. Maybe in a hundred years some scholar will stumble over my work and make a case for me as one of the unsung heroes of crime fiction, but I rather doubt it. In either case, I won’t be here to see it, so why even worry about it? Talk about a waste of energy!

We’re having a cold spell–a front for a few days–where the highs will be in the sixties and the lows in the fifties. It’s fifty-nine right now, brisk and crisp; it will definitely help me sleep and will definitely help bring the power bill down. We resist turning on the heat until it’s actually in the fifties inside, and the heat is far cheaper than air conditioning. I also need to run errands after work today, and then once I am home I need to progress on the apartment before settling into my chair for the evening. I’ve also got to figure out my doctor’s appointments and try to reschedule them all for the same day–or at least to have as many on the same day as possible. Sigh. This is what we call gumbo weather; when you spend the morning in the kitchen making a nice big pot of it–the cooking of it also keeps you warm, and it certainly does warm you up on the inside when you eat it. If the weather holds through the weekend I’ll probably make some kind of shrimp dish–shrimp creole or shrimp scampi or something like that. I also like making potato leek soup and white bean chicken chili (but that will require a Costco trip at some point). I do love the fall here in Louisiana…and it also looks like the two systems the Hurricane Center is monitoring aren’t going to develop into anything for a brief respite.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows for certain, does one?

  1. They have been committing journalistic malpractice since at least 2015, if not longer. ↩︎

Old Man from the Mountain

Tuesday morning and back to the spice mines blog. Huzzah! I feel a bit disoriented this morning, as one always does after even the shortest of trips, and was still pretty tired from the driving yesterday. I ran a few errands and cleaned up the kitchen, doing the dishes and puttering around the house for the most part. I’m still digesting Survivor Song–thinking about dystopian novels and stories–and we watched Outer Banks last night, finishing the first half of the season (all that’s available; the second half will probably drop in a month or do), which is ridiculous and campy and weird and fun, like the first two seasons were (the third was disappointing, really), so I hope that it will continue in this vein and leave the third season in the dust and past. But of course, taking a much-needed rest day has kind of put me behind the eight ball; I have work that’s due tomorrow and I don’t know how much time I will have this evening to try to get everything done as much as possible.

There are also two areas meteorologists are watching for hurricane development–one in the Atlantic, the other in the western Caribbean, off the coast of Central America–so we’re not out of the woods yet; hurricane season after all doesn’t end until December 1. We’re also getting a cold front coming in tonight, which means overnight temperatures in the fifties. Yikes! Practically the dead of winter. But I’ll be coming straight home from work, too, so hopefully the nice weather will hold out until then.

My, I’m exciting this morning. I do feel rested, and I do feel like I can get everything done I need to get done by tomorrow, but it’s still a bit daunting to think ahead and hope I won’t have to work through being tired. I also need to get some work done on the book, and I also need to finish the Scotty Bible; I only have three books left to get the notes from, and then I need to go through the whole thing one last time, and voila! It will be finished. I also need to fix some things in the chapters I’ve already written. I think I shall plan to get everything now finished by the end of the month, so I can spend November getting the rest of the first draft done. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, actually, and so I think that’s going to be the plan going forward. I need to get this story revised, and I need to revise another for the Bouchercon anthology; I’m thinking I should submit something to it. It’ll depend on any number of other factors, of course; but a reasonable writing schedule should be easy to follow, methinks.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about that wretched professor who told me at seventeen I would never be published as a writer. In my utter obliviousness (part of never looking back, I’m afraid) I never made the connection in my head that it was that experience that derailed my college career and my twenties. I always assumed that it was the entire duality of living two completely separate lives as well as the HIV/AIDS pandemic that sent me spiraling down into a pit from which I didn’t think I’d ever emerge. I never wanted to be anything other than a writer, and being told by a person in authority (I was also always taught to respect authority, and I was only seventeen, so he was a PROFESSOR who KNEW what he was talking about, so if he said it–well, I had to believe it. I had been groomed my entire life to take the voice of authority as gospel and never to question it; so when he said that to me I saw my future yawning open as a life of quiet desperation and misery. I didn’t think I could ever truly be myself, and the only thing that had gotten me through my childhood–the dream of being an author–was ripped away from me. Is it any wonder that what I started basically doing was putting off adulthood? My development was so derailed, which is why I always write off my twenties as the lost decade (although it really carried over for another three years), and just don’t think about it much. But my resentment for that fucking asshole college professor is far deeper and much more powerful now, and I may need to revisit that essay I wrote about his skank ass.

Of course, I am over forty novels and fifty short stories into my professional writing career…and he never published anything. In fact, he was a bitter failed author; the definition of “those who can’t, teach” (which is a horrible phrase, really, that I hate and usually refuse to use, but I have no problem using it on that bottom-feeder) in bright three dimensional living color.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I hope you have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll chat at you later, okay?

Is It Wrong (For Loving You)

Well, that was a fun, if tiring, weekend..

I got to the hotel after dark Friday and felt very tired. Dad had gone to his alma mater’s football game with two of his teammates (I started to say old in the generic sense and then realized Dad IS old and so are they so best not to, or at least write a caveat so here we are). It was a peaceful, lovely drive and I was listening to my audiobook (Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song and I HAVE THOUGHTS), and there wasn’t much traffic, if any. It was a beautiful drive, and I never cease marveling at how beautiful Mississippi and Alabama are. I had planned on stopping to eat at the Whataburger in Tuscaloosa, but for some reason the map app did not take me that way this time; it seems like I never come up here or leave the same way twice in a row. It always takes the same amount of time, though it’s been interesting seeing parts of both states I am not familiar with. I almost stopped at a Jack’s in some small town I passed through after leaving 20/591; but I thought there would be somewhere else before getting here.

NARRATOR VOICE: There was, in fact, nowhere else.

I always forget how little there is between Meridian and Tuscaloosa, or between Birmingham and Chattanooga. It’s best to eat when you get hungry, and get gas before you get down to a quarter tank else you could be fucked. I know I’ve been ravenous sometimes when I’ve had to wait till past Chattanooga to eat, and same for going up from Mobile to Montgomery. It’s weird to feel so anchored to Alabama, isn’t it? I don’t remember living here; I was two when we moved north. We came down to visit a lot, and I know for Mom and Dad (and my grandmother who also lived in Chicago) they always referred to these trips as “going home” and so I, too, have always thought of Alabama as home in a corner of my mind. I never felt like I belonged almost everywhere I lived once I became more aware of just how different I was from everyone else. I felt displaced, like my life was supposed to have happened in Alabama but it didn’t, so in addition to feeling different I felt almost like a transient everywhere. New Orleans is home now, was always meant to be my home, and I have never felt more like I belonged than I do there. I think my life would have been very different had I grown up here, maybe even harder or more difficult; I don’t know. New Orleans and Alabama are, oddly enough, the only places where I don’t feel like a tourist.

I’ve always written about Alabama, and I do sometimes think that somehow my Alabama stories are my best work, as far as the writing is concerned. The story I’m revising right now was the first work I turned into a college writing class (after the first course I took was such a horrific, unmitigated disaster that basically pulled the rug out from under me and derailed my life for years) that not only the professor was incredibly enthusiastic about, but the entire class was as well. This was the story that made me start believing in myself a bit more after the asshole professor derailed my life2 when I was seventeen. Anyway, I digress. Driving through the countryside after getting off the interstate up there always is weird to me in many ways, because it’s so different than I remember. When I was a kid, most houses in the county were old and made of wood, and there were still tin roofs around, although mostly on barns and out buildings on the farms. Now the houses are mostly brick, there are a lot of McMansions, but there are still a lot of blighted buildings rotting and falling to pieces where they stand. There are abandoned country stores and dead gas stations, the store built from cinder blocks and the rusting pumps still out on a crumbling concrete island. It’s also funny because I wrote Bury Me in Shadows from memory, having not been up there in over twenty years, and seeing the differences now…I guess I never had to worry overmuch about basing that book in a county based on where we’re from, and the differences are so striking no one would recognize it as the same.

Saturday I went with Dad to his high school reunion lunch, which was at a nice restaurant where we always eat every time I’m up there (they have the most amazing chicken fajitas), and that was nice. We headed back to the hotel after and spent the rest of the day watching college football games. The LSU game was amazing, but they sent me into despair a lot during the night. They won the game without ever having the lead! A bitterly disappointing loss for Mississippi (how many times have their dreams died in Tiger Stadium? It’s really no wonder why they hate us so much), but a very exciting game. The Tigers are now ranked in the top ten–which is great, but a big win does not a season make, if you know what I mean–and the rest of the schedule isn’t easy, either. Two road games in a row, then Alabama before one more road game at Florida before finishing out the season with two home games in a row. There has been a lot of great football games this season already, which has made it a lot more fun to watch than it has been in years. Saturday alone, there was the LSU game; Alabama-South Carolina (Alabama eked out a two point win); Tennessee beating Florida in overtime; Penn State-USC went to overtime; Oregon beat Ohio State by one point; and Vanderbilt kept up its winning ways by beating Kentucky. I ain’t going to lie, I am rooting for Vanderbilt to have a great season.

Yesterday I drove home, finished listening to Survivor Song, and then listened to the “My Dad Wrote a Porno”. I was very tired when I got home, very tired, so I spent the day in my chair getting caught up on the news from the weekend before we started getting caught up on our shows. I went to bed early and slept well–I was tired all weekend, but had slept well both nights, but not long enough. I did sleep a little later this morning (I took the day off) than I was expecting (but I also woke up at 5:30 the first time), and feel good. There’s still some residual trip hangover today, but I don’t mind that in the least. The apartment is a mess–I left it one when I left Friday afternoon, and so that needs to be handled today and I am also going to have to run some errands and get reoriented back into normality before heading back into the office tomorrow morning bright and early. I also have some things that I need to get done today–probably will be able to get all that done this afternoon–and then probably will settle into a relaxing evening. We started watching season four of Outer Banks last night, so we’ll watch some of that I am sure.

I didn’t have time to do much reading or writing this weekend, either, but I feel like today I can get to some of that. I do want to finish Gabino’s book this week, so I can move on to another as well.

And on that note, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never knows.

  1. The two highways run together from Meridian to almost Georgia–somewhere in northeast Alabama at any rate; it really is always mostly a blur. ↩︎
  2. I also realized this weekend that horrible professor fucked up my life for a very long time, and I’ve never given him enough credit for unmooring me and setting me adrift. I’ve always hated him, but now I hate him even more, and what an abuse of power and control! He shouldn’t have been allowed near students under any circumstance. ↩︎

That Song Is Driving Me Crazy

Friday, and after I get my work at home duties finished, it’s time to head up to Alabama. It’ll be nice seeing Dad again, and I will be listening to Paul Tremblay on my way to and fro; Survivor Song, in case you were wondering. I’ve almost finished all of his canon, which means the last book will be saved until his next new one drops, so I won’t be out of his work to read (I know, it’s silly to do this, and maybe I’ll finally stop holding books in reserve because I don’t want to be out of that author’s work to look forward to *coughs* Daphne du Maurier *cough* Mary Stewart *cough* Shirley Jackson *cough*)1. I think I am going to have some down time while up there, so I can possibly get some reading of the new Gabino done as well. (Dad is doing some things with the other survivors from his graduating class2.) I did wind up sleeping in a little later than I intended, but I was very worn out by the time I ran my errands and got home from everything. I relaxed last night once I was home–Paul was at an event and didn’t get home until later (we watched this week’s Agatha All Along and the season debut of Abbott Elementary)–with Sparky (who was a demon cat for a lot longer than usual) and got caught up on the news while resting and waiting for Paul to get home. I feel a bit more rested this morning, but I have to drive for between five and six hours tonight, so I worry that I’ll be super tired when I get there tonight. We’re having a cold spell (for us) and the temperatures are very fall for us. Next week it’s going to be in the fifties at night, with highs in the seventies during the day. Woo-hoo! The season of sweat appears to be behind us at long last.

I saw hints and rumors that the same area in the western Caribbean that spawned both Helene and Milton might be looking to hatch up another one of these accelerated storms that will follow the same approximate path, which is horrifying; Nadine will be the name3. What a horrible season–and I also can’t help but remember former patterns, in which New Orleans and Louisiana got slammed pretty hard the year after Florida got hit four times in one year. (I always look for patterns, because on a deep level I find patterns very soothing)

I did do some work on writing last night; I started looking through the new Scotty to see where I was already wrong on things (I have always based his grandparents’ home in the Garden District on one specific house; I was writing it from memory, but in reviewing a lot of the photos I took of the house at one point, I saw my memory had been faulty and incorrect. I need to have some things wrong, of course, so people won’t know the actual house (or so the owners can’t sue me for having people murdered on their property), but it cleared up some confusion in my brain about what I was writing, and so I will need to go in and fix that. I think that’s my project for the next week; revising and correcting the chapters I already have finished, while also preparing a cast list and an outline as I go. I also have to come up with a synopsis and cover text and marketing copy for it; so those are all things I can work on over the next week. I also have to finish revising that short story for the anthology whose deadline is the 15th; I think I know how to really make the story finally work after all these years…and if they don’t take it, I can put the revised version in my new collection. I love that for me, and I also figured out what story I am going to write for another anthology I’ve been asked to contribute something to; and I also want to write something for another anthology whose due date is November 1–so I’d best get cracking on that, don’t you think?

I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed and stretched pretty far this past week–lots of things to do, more pressure at the day job (and it’s temporary, Mary, so get over yourself), a messy home, a trip to take and another to plan, and of course my own pressures from deadlines and writing. That’s not even taking into consideration the existential crisis facing us in this upcoming election–blocking and avoiding all legacy media has been wonderful; their corrupt betrayal of the American public since 2015 (if not sooner; I am pretty sure they didn’t report on Obama fairly, either) has rendered them forever meaningless in my eyes. I am not nearly as stressed about any of this as I usually am. I am sure that’s partly the generalized anxiety disorder being medicated properly, and the other was a conscious decision. The deletion of Twitter has been probably the best thing I’ve done for my mental health since deciding last year to get the right medications for that (properly diagnosed at sixty-two at long last). It has freed up so much time–I thought of myself as a casual Twitter user, but now that I no longer have that wretched app, I am seeing that I used it a lot more than I ever thought, so breaking that wretched addiction and walking away from it for good was incredibly wise. Paul isn’t on social media at all, and he is much happier without it than I was with it all this time.

But now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep and got some extra, I am feeling good and like I can handle everything. I am not going into the office on Monday–I have some appointments so took the day off–so I am going to be able to get the house worked on some and run some necessary errands on that day to prep for the week. I’m going back to Kentucky later this month for a longer visit, but I’ve not really figured that out just yet, either.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines so I can get my work done and head north. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow–and if not, definitely Sunday after I get back to New Orleans.

  1. There are also a couple of Agatha Christies I’ve not read–Death in the Air and Murder in Three Acts. ↩︎
  2. Yes, I can hear how grim that sounds once I started typing it out, but it’s accurate. How else to say it simply? They all graduated sixty-three years ago (and yes, I was born three months after my parents graduated), so they are all at least eighty-one–and much as modern medicine has extended longevity, they are also the last generation that was encouraged to smoke, along with all the other unhealthy ways they loved. Imagine cooking with lard, for one. ↩︎
  3. IMPORTANT CORRECTION: It was fake news. There’s nothing there right now, but it’s possible and any potential path of something that doesn’t exist is obviously incorrect. Sorry for including this, but I did say it was a rumor. ↩︎

Love is Like a Butterfly

Tuesday morning and I feel good again. I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday (my supervisor being in Europe is just as stressful as I suspected it would be), and just kind of chilled out last night. I did start outlining what I’ve already written on the Scotty, and I did start looking at stories for this anthology I am going to try to submit something for–I think I can finally change and edit a certain story that’s been in my files for decades. We started watching the new Menendez Brothers documentary on Netflix last night, and will probably finish it tonight. And despite the stress of yesterday morning, I did manage to get all my work done at the office, so I am pretty caught up.

I am going to Alabama this weekend; I heard from Dad and so I am going to drive up there after work on Friday, and come back home on Sunday; a short visit with Dad and then back home. I am going to go up to Kentucky later this month; I need to reschedule some things, but that’s all do-able.

I just looked at the Hurricane Milton updates and am very worried about all my friends who live in Florida. I lived in Tampa for five years in the nineties, when I worked for Continental Airlines; yes, the Tampa airport is the airport where I worked, with the white shirt with epaulets and the navy blue pants and the name tag. (The opening scene of The Orion Mask is set at Tampa Airport; my main character was an airline employee.) We never had anything really major happen there of a tropical nature when I lived there, so it was never anything I worried about before moving to New Orleans. I think about the barrier islands in Tampa Bay, and how narrow the peninsula that St. Petersburg sits on actually is; it’s not impossible that this monster storm could wipe a lot of that area clean. I remain hopeful that somehow this won’t be the coming disaster it appears to be; I can’t even imagine how bad the best case scenario could be. There was significant wind damage to New Orleans with Katrina, which people tend to forget about because of the catastrophic flood that ensued when the levees failed. Roofs will come off, trees will be uprooted and flung about with great force; if it’s as strong as they are saying it could be when it comes ashore, the wind could move cars. I hope everyone gets out that is able. It turns my stomach to think about what could happen there. I hope none of it comes to pass–but I am also realistic. I hope everyone I care about who lives in Florida was able to get out and is okay, and worst case scenarios do not come to pass.

I think I’m going to take Gabino with me to Alabama, and I was looking for a horror novel to listen to in the car, and I am leaning towards listening to Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song or The Pallbearer’s Club. I do love his writing, though, so it’s fun to read Tremblay; but I do love his work and he’s probably one of my favorite horror writers of this current epoch of horror fiction. I’ll have to pick out some more later for the trip up to Kentucky.1 It seems a bit surreal to be thinking about trips and such things–the minutiae of life–while destruction looms for Florida, doesn’t it? (And what does this mean for the Florida football team? They are on the road at Tennessee this weekend, but supposed to be playing at home the following weekend; I suspect that game will be moved to Lexington.) It’ll be hot without power, but at least October is cooler than August or September. Small favors, indeed.

And on that sad note, I am heading into the spice mines. Keep everyone in the path of the storm in your thoughts, and send some positivity their way–and hope they won’t need it.

  1. It also just occurred to me that I am being counter-intuitive with the trip up there; there’s certainly no reason for me to go from weekend to weekend; I can also go during the week and come back the following week. I hate being so obtuse as to think that ‘trip for a week’ means Sunday to Sunday. ↩︎

I’m A Ramblin’ Man

And here we are, heading back into a Monday and a brand new work week. My supervisor is currently enjoying herself in London for the next two weeks, which makes me the go-to guy for all things testing related and for my program. It may be stressful and exhausting, or it could be totally smooth sailing. I’m also meeting Dad this weekend in Alabama. I’ll have to pick out a horror novel to listen to in the car….I suppose I could continue listening to the podcast I’m thoroughly enjoying, My Dad Wrote a Porno, but probably will go with a book. I’m going to take a week off later in the month and go up to Kentucky–which means more books to listen to.

It was, in some ways, a rejuvenating kind of weekend; I rested a lot Friday evening and Saturday, and as such, felt good yesterday. It was also a lovely day in New Orleans; I walked around the neighborhood to take pictures of the aftermath of a fire the other night just past the corner of Magazine and Hastings1 (she was renting one of the places for Mardi Gras, and had to find another place, obviously), then walked back home, got in the car because I needed gas, and after fueling her up I went to the Fresh Market. Paul was working with his trainer, and once he got back from the gym we watched two movies–The Fall Guy, which we really enjoyed and was a rather fun, charming movie (you can never go wrong with Emily Blunt, and Ryan Gosling was goofily adorable the way he always is) that had a truly terrific supporting cast as well, including Hannah Waddingham, and a true crime documentary that wasn’t good. I slept really well last night, too, and feel pretty good already this morning. I didn’t do much work on the book this weekend, but I did finish marking up the Scotty books, so that’s done. I also had another idea about structure with this book, which is going to be tricky from hereon out to pull off, but I think I can do it, and that’s a very good thing. I also managed to finally finish my blog entry review of Alison Gaylin’s We Are Watching, but you should have know that already if you stop by regularly. I also didn’t read much this weekend, either; it was more about recovery and rest this past weekend than anything else.

I am, by the way, loving the weather. It’s been so beautiful lately, other than the soggy mess that was Friday, which kicked my sinuses into gear, which was partly why I didn’t get anything done. I need to be more careful of my time, though. I’ve gotten so used to spending the weekend recovering from the week and losing track of time (because I feel like I have so much of it every week when Friday rolls around), so should probably start trying to structure the weekends more so I can get things done. I’d forgotten that when you have more free time you need to structure it a little better–but it’s kind of fun just doing what I want when I want to, I must say. I have to get used to this free time thing, and what a horrible problem for me to have, right? There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious, after all–as long as you don’t let your failure to meet goals (from being lazy and having too much free time) affect your self-worth and stop belittling/demeaning myself. I’ve done pretty well for myself as a writer, overall, and considering I did it all mostly on my own–that’s saying something.

I think one of the most important things for me going forward is to cure myself of Imposter Syndrome; I know I’ve talked about how I was raised and how I was taught to be about work–keep your ego out of it2 and let others see the work you do and let them appreciate it. The problem is people never like to let a writer know they enjoyed something–but they do know how to register an outraged opinion. I do the best I can with everything I write, and if I am a better writer than I was twenty-five years ago, good. (I must confess, revisiting Scotty to do the Bible was a pleasant surprise, as the books are actually good.) I also know that there’s nothing I can’t do or achieve if I set my mind to it and plan and stick to it. I did think a lot about writing this weekend–and what are the things I want to write and do over the next few years. It’s so lovely being clear-headed, seriously–you have no idea. The fog is clearing! I feel like GREG again for the first time in nearly a decade. And I’m kind of excited about it, if that makes sense? For example, I saw a news story the other day that gave me not only an insight but a clue to how to fix “Festival of the Redeemer”; that will be fun to rewrite and fix. I also had some thoughts and ideas for Never Kiss a Stranger, Muscles, Chlorine, and the next Scotty–French Quarter Flambeaux, another Mardi Gras novel. I had hoped to revise a short story for a submission call that’s due on the 15th, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to get something ready for it. I do have a story that might fit and needs resolution in a revision, though. There’s still time, of course, but I am not writing as fast as I used to be able to do. Maybe once the muscles get more warmed up? One never knows, does one?

I just saw the Milton forecast, which has me worried and concerned for my central Florida peeps. Take care and be safe, everyone!

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day–may be back later!

  1. If you’re a local and don’t know where Hastings is, you’re not alone. I didn’t, either, until she stayed there on a visit sometime in the last few years. It’s one of those little streets in the lower Garden District that only exist for a block or so. It also joins into the intersection at Magazine and Felicity; there are two lanes that veer off to the right to stay on Magazine, and if you veer left you can go down the one block of Hastings. It creates a pie-shaped block that comes to a point at the intersection, and there’s a small park there, and Gris-Gris restaurant is on both Hastings on one side and Magazine on the other. ↩︎
  2. I have a very strong and powerful ego, don’t ever be fooled into thinking I don’t. Knowing how bad it can be is why I go to such an opposite extreme; I don’t like egomaniacal authors who think everything they write is deathless prose that will live for a thousand years–um, you ain’t Homer, dude. ↩︎

She Called Me Baby

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, with a trip to Metairie looming for an eye appointment. Yesterday was a bit more hectic than I would have liked, beginning with having to go in to the office on what is usually my remote day (meetings, mostly, and some catch up on work I didn’t get to on Thursday), and then I had errands to run all afternoon. It was a gloomy, off and on raining kind of day, so when I got home I was very happy to be safely back into the Lost Apartment so I could do my chores and do some work. I was very tired last night when I was finished with everything, so just kind of zonked out in my chair. We spent the last few nights getting caught up on our shows (we’re now watching Agatha All Along, Bad Monkey, Only Murders in the Building, Grotesquerie, English Teacher, and American Sports Story), and I am hoping to get to watch the new ‘salem’s Lot movie aat some point this weekend, and I’d like to watch Fall Guy, too.

And I need to write this weekend, big time.

Thursday night, when I was working on the Scotty Bible and was marking pages in Mississippi River Mischief, I realized the murder victim in the book was a corrupt politician who goes by JD; prescience, perhaps? It also reminded me of something from a book I had read a very long time ago–Sarah Schulman’s Stagestruck. The thesis of the book was about the similarities between a very popular Broadway musical (Rent) and her nove, People in Trouble. Sarah had actually attended and reviewed Rent, and while it seemed familiar to her, she just dismissed it as being inspired by the struggling artist scene in lower Manhattan in the 1980s and thought it played very false, given her own experience; it wasn’t until later when a friend told her “you must be so mad about Rent”–and she went back and reread her book. (In all honesty, I went on to read People in Trouble and also watched the film of Rent and I also saw the similarities; she wasn’t inventing anything.) But the point of this particular story is that at the time, as an unpublished aspiring novelist, I found it a bit of a reach that she didn’t remember her own book…but doing the Scotty Bible–and talking with other authors–I realized that not remembering your own book isn’t that much of a stretch, and it does get harder the more book you have; the exponential possibility that you won’t remember your own books grows with each new book you write. that the piece of art basically ripped off her piece of art–and she couldn’t remember much I have been routinely shocked about how much of the Scotty series had slipped from my memory banks as I enter the information from each book into the master document; the huge plot points that are the most memorable things about them…but gone completely. I’d forgotten my villainous politician JD, and I only wrote that book last year. I’d forgotten a lot of the stuff in most of the books. I thought the one I’d really be able to temember was Bourbon Street Blues, and nope. I’d forgotten about the entire sequence in the swamp, the fire, and who the first victim was…and I also was able to remember, while going through it, what I was trying to do with him as a character as more time passed and he gained more experience with criminality and human behavior.

And given all those experiences, it was very important to me to ensure he remained a positive person who prefers to expect the best of people, not the worst, and never become cynical. Cynicism was one of the most powerful traits I wrote into Chanse, and I didn’t want to do that over again.

It was also rainy and dreary all day yesterday, and much as I love rain, it can damper your spirits a little especially when you’re already a bit fatigued. But I am feeling good today (I slept really late this morning) and like I can get a lot accomplished. I am going to make groceries on the way home from my eye appointment. I am going to run an errand in my neighborhood on foot when I get back from that, and I am going to try to get the house cleaned up and do some writing this afternoon while football games play in the living room. I also want to read some more of Gabino’s book and get more into it. Tomorrow morning I will run another errand that I don’t want to do much today–Fresh Market is close so it’s an easy thing to do…maybe I can run it later today and get it over with, but I suspect after getting home from the errands today I won’t want to leave the house so much.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up so I can get moving on the errands and the other things to get done around the house. Have a lovely Saturday, best of luck to your favorite team, and I am heading into the spice mines. I might be back later; I am itching to finish my review of Monsters, and the Menendez Brothers in general.

I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore

And now it’s Thursday.

Despite waking up multiple times during the night and never falling into a deep sleep, I wasn’t as tired when I got home last night. I’d picked up some packages at the post office (coffee…lots of coffee, and the new Lev AC Rosen novel, Rough Pages. It’s a gorgeous cover, too. Once I got home I just glared at the new but not completely assembled desk chair and decide not to ruin a decent mood on it, unpacked the boxes, took out the trash, did the dishes and the laundry (!!!!) and wrote over a thousand words on the book. I also managed to mark up Mississippi River Mischief, and copy the highlighted information from Jackson Square Jazz into a notebook. Not too shabby for a Wednesday night, wouldn’t you say? Tonight I am having dinner with a friend, and I got a message from another writer who’s in town, who I am definitely hoping to see. Look at me, being sociable and not even thinking twice about either. Who am I? This is actually kind of nice. And yesterday at work was a nice day, as well. I hope to get Chapter Seven finished tomorrow evening, and maybe even get Chapter Eight going over the weekend, too. I want to go to the gym this weekend, and start trying to be more regular with that; I can go on nights when I don’t plan to write.

I do have to come into the office tomorrow, not my usual Friday; we have a department meeting and then my team meeting and a benefits seminar (meeting). I also have an eye appointment on Saturday in Metairie (better make sure my shots are up to date, just kidding), so I have a lot of stuff to navigate over the next few days and the weekend, don’t I? I should be able to squeeze some writing in, too, as well as all my errands. It’s crazy for me to have all this going on; I can go months without going out of the house to be sociable. My natural tendency is always to stay home; I’ve always said that it’s a good thing I have a day job so I have to leave the house at least four days a week now, otherwise I never would other than make groceries and so on. Good thing LSU is off this weekend and the Saints play Monday night.

We’re supposed to get rain this weekend, and that system down by the Yucatan (same place Helene started) still isn’t doing much, but could form but will most likely head over to Florida. I am still stunned by the destruction wrought by Helene, as pictures and news and updates come from the communities up in the Appalachians along and near the Tennessee-North Carolina border. It sounds like the estimate to get running water again in Asheville is not until next year. That’s way worse than Katrina; and while more people were killed by Katrina than Helene, I think the devastation is on par with Katrina, if not worse. It’s horrifying to think this could happen more often, which is sadly more likely, and imagine the same scenario with rain and wind and so forth heading to Birmingham or Nashville (or both, really), or up the river to Memphis. 20-30 inches of rain on the Mississippi River would be catastrophic; 1927 level flooding. My heart is with everyone affected by Helene, and I wish there was more that I could do to help.

I woke up several times during the night again, but woke up feeling fine again this morning. Today is going to be a slower day at the office, but I’m pretty much all caught up on everything. I do have something new to do while my boss is in England for the next two weeks, but I’m sure it’s something I can handle. I also made a to-do list for the weekend last night, and hopefully I can stick to it and keep that momentum going forward. Lists are very necessary for me because I don’t remember anything anymore, but I’m not going to pretend like I had a great memory. I did used to have one, but I started making lists when I was in my thirties because…I was forgetting things. I also used to have a great memory for trivia (I always killed at both Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy), but even that’s iffy anymore. (I also don’t know much trivia from this century because I gradually stopped paying attention to things like pop culture.) There’s nothing wrong with that, either. Compiling the Scotty Bible has been very illuminating–I’d forgotten a lot about the plots of the books over the years; hell, I had trouble remembering things from Mississippi River Mischief and it just came out last year.

Overall, I am rather pleased with myself. The ship seems to have finally righted itself after many years of disorganized chaos. Of course that probably means more chaos is on its way; that’s just the way things go. Life is just a long list of chaos, anyway. Trying to make sense of the chaos or trying to control it is a fool’s errand; when you’re in the midst of bad chaos, you’re just trying to survive and get through it, but it never really ends. Chaos can change you–you may not even know how you’ve changed. I’ve also come to accept that my biggest delusion is thinking I’m self-aware…I so am not.

I Overlooked an Orchid

Wednesday and we’ve almost made it over the hump preparatory to sliding into the weekend. I was fatigued last night after I got home from work, so didn’t do a whole lot of anything. I picked up my new desk chair from Office Depot, than got really irritated trying to assemble it and gave up for the night. (I also realized I didn’t take my medications yesterday morning when I found them in my backpack, because of course I forgot to take them.) It’s also really amazing that I can tell that I haven’t taken anxiety medication. I didn’t want to watch the debate last night because I despise the Couchfucker so much I can’t even stand the sound of his voice. It’s been nice shielding myself from the election and all the insanity, dabbling in whenever I feel I can stand it (and I never can, for very long; can we sue the legacy media for malpractice?). How anxious and stressed about the election would I be were I not on these marvelous new medications? I don’t even want to think about it, honestly. Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed–board meeting–and so I didn’t do a lot of anything last night other than play with Sparky and fall asleep in my easy chair–which was interesting, because I woke up several times during the night but feel strangely rested this morning? My new shoes will arrive tomorrow, and some other things I ordered will be arriving over the next few days (including the new Lev Rosen!!!) Such an exciting life, isn’t it?

But tonight when I get home from work I hope to get going on the next chapter of the Scotty, and maybe start marking up those last two Scotty books for the Bible. I’m almost done with it; three more books to add to it, and then I just need to do the synopses of each book and it’ll be finished. I want to release a Scotty every year until the series runs out of steam; I know there are going to be at least two more beyond this one.

The dockworkers in New Orleans are part of the bigger strike. When I was driving home from work the other night and stopped at the grocery store, on my way home I had to drive past their headquarters (corner of Louisiana and Tchoupitoulas) and they were out in force; the street was clogged with parked cars and dockworkers walking to the building. Sigh. Prepare for the cost of bananas and coffee to skyrocket. New Orleans used to be the country’s biggest port; 60% of imports and exports came through the port of New Orleans. It’s not that huge of a port in the overall scheme of things now, but it’s still an important one, which is why New Orleans has to exist. Losing New Orleans to a hurricane and not rebuilding would close the entire Mississippi River waterways to shipping. New Orleans is the city that has to be. I don’t know why that’s so hard for people to understand, but I for one will never forget nor forgive the Republican Party for trying so hard to not help the city rebuild after Katrina–or some of the things the trash had to say, including the only Speaker of the House to go to jail for raping children, Dennis Hastert.1

I do feel pretty good this morning; surprisingly, given the off-and-on sleep I had last night. The one nice thing about it was I did discover that Sparky does indeed sleep at the foot of the bed, down near our feet and in between mine and Paul’s. That’s also the spot on the bed where he sleeps if he gets in the bed during the daytime, so I have to assume that, in his kitty brain, is his spot. He does have his own peculiarities, as do all cats, and he certainly loves to ride on my shoulders. Just mine–not Paul’s.

So, tonight I hope to have energy when I get home. I am going to run by the post office on the way home tonight–and once I get home, I need to do a load of laundry and another sink full of dishes, and hopefully write for a bit and/or read; we also have some shows to catch up on, and I believe a new Agatha All Along drops today? I also should do some picking up and cleaning around the house, too–the old “let it go until the weekend” mentality needs to be broken once and for all. I’m usually not tired when I get home from work–yesterday was an outlier–and so I need to play with Sparky a little bit but he needs to wait for cuddle time until I have gotten some things done. Heavy sigh. I also have to go out to Metairie Saturday morning for an eye appointment; wish me luck, and I’ll probably hit a fast food drive thru on my way home.

Yikes, what a bore I am today! And that’s a lovely segue into heading into the spice mines for the rest of the day. May your day be special and bright, Constant Reader., and I’ll be back with another exciting dose of Gregalicious at some point!

  1. Never forget, they were garbage LONG before Trump. He’s simply the end result of their rotted souls and desire for power at any cost–and with our short attention span as a country, it’s easy to bemoan Trump and MAGA as the “decline” of the GOP, but the rise of a “populist” Fascist was the inevitable result of everything they started with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. They were the people who laughed about AIDS killing the right people, so why should we fund research or a cure or a preventative? Let them die, let them die, let them die! If the only candidates to vote for were Republicans, I wouldn’t vote. ↩︎

Pure Love

Monday has rolled around again, and it’s super dark outside. Fall is here, of course, and the weather has changed here to more of a cooler clime outside that it’s been in quite a while. The Saints lost yesterday, but it was a great game and came down to the wire; I don’t mind losing if it’s a good game, and it was. It was a nice weekend around the Lost Apartment, and nice and relaxing. We started watching American Sports Story, watched a gay horror film (Swallowed, starring Cooper Koch and his body from Monsters; he spends a great deal of time either naked or in his underwear), and then called it an evening and went to bed for a very restful night’s sleep. I decided to go make groceries after work today, and so when I leave the office I’ll be heading uptown.

I didn’t do much writing this weekend, which is a pity, but I’m not hanging my head in shame about that anymore. I did get a Substack post done (it had been three weeks!), and got some others started, too. I also started reading House of Rain and Bone, which really takes flight almost immediately. It’s an excellent choice for starting Halloween Horror Month–even if that doesn’t really begin until tomorrow. I started writing another post about The Stepford Wives, which I also spent some time with yesterday. I also got all the filing and organizing done around my work space, and I feel like I’m getting someplace with the book; yesterday also included, while filing, the combination of other files together was an upgrade in organizing research. I just created a situation in the book to deal with, and I am thinking about options for the rest of the story, which is starting to come together in my head. That, by the way, is a very good thing. Yay me!

I have an eye appointment next Saturday and there’s no LSU game, which makes the weekend a little freer for me; no LSU game to take up all my mind-space on game day. The Saints even play on Monday next weekend, so…yes, that’s an entirely free weekend around here for football season, which is very unusual. But it means I have no excuse for not getting things done around the house. I’ll watch games on Saturday, of course–love me some college football, even if it’s not my team playing–but most likely will just have it on in the background while I read or write or clean. So, Saturday morning I can go have my eye appointment, drive back into the city from Metairie, and then be on my own for the rest of the day. There are worse things. I’ll also have to come into the office on Friday for a department meeting, so I’ll probably stick around after, too. There’s another system to watch in the Gulf, in the same place Helene formed–and who knew a hurricane system could cause so much damage and destruction so far inland, in the Appalachian Mountains1? Now imagine had Helene gone up the Mississippi River. My sympathies, of course, are with everyone up there in North Carolina and Tennessee. They aren’t used to this sort of thing the way we are on the Gulf Coast, and I do have a lot of friends who live in the mountains of North Carolina, so it’s been a bit worrying on that concern. I’ve not heard from family in Kentucky, either–so I should probably find out how they all are. The last I heard, Dad only lost power for about an hour and a half, and my sister hadn’t. It seems as though Lexington was worse off for power loss than where they live, which is a very good thing. Whew, something else to not have to worry about is always a lovely thing.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am going to get ready and head into the spice mines. May your Monday be as marvelous as you can, try to donate items or money to flood/hurricane relief, and I may shout out at you again later, okay?

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  1. Needless to say, people who live in the mountains aren’t experienced in this sort of hurricane disaster, nor should they be–but I fear they are going to have to get used to it. Climate change, for the record, doesn’t mean “more beachfront property” (which would come at the expense of the current beachfront property, you fucking morons); it means disasters like this more frequently. Woo-hoo! ↩︎