Category: revising

Even the Nights Are Better

Constant Reader, I didn’t write a damned thing last night.

It rained pretty much all day, and the city was in a flash flood warning for most of it (again today as well), and I managed to make it through the work day fine. I got off work early because of PT, left and got the mail on the way to PT, and then made groceries after PT. PT amped up yesterday and was not easy the way it had been; there was even an exercise at the very end I simply could not do. As I also despise failing at something, that was a needed exercise in humility. At the same time, it was also the first time I’ve tried any exercise since the surgery that I wasn’t able to do–and the surgery was two months ago this week. So, rather than being hard on myself about it, I chose to accept it as a milestone and something I need to overcome rather than a failure. (See how the meds are working for me now? In October that would have sent me into a funk of depression and “I’m such a loser” thinking, so I am not sure if I just have a better mental attitude, if its the meds working, or a combination of two. Regardless, I am counting it as a win.) So, I got home from work, did a few things around here, and eventually fell asleep in my easy chair, which is where I was when Paul got home. He woke me up and I went to bed and slept beautifully all night–partly because of the rain–and so here we are, with me feeling rested, it’s gray and gloomy and rainy outside, and I am working at home so I do not have to leave the house unless I want to. Huzzah!

I have to say I’ve really not been tired or groggy all week–I haven’t been that way in the morning in a very long time, but I do start falling asleep around nine-ish every night. I guess my body has not only adjusted to the lovely new meds but also to my work schedule. There’s really no chance I’ll stay up later than I should on a weeknight now because I am conking out once the clock strikes nine. I hope to get a lot of things done today around the house and around work-at-home duties; I feel really good and energized this morning. Sam the handyman came in and painted the kitchen ceiling yesterday (it looks so nice this morning!) but left the giant ladder in the kitchen so he could come in and do some touching up, and needless to say, the massive ladder is a delightful playground for Sparky–who not only loves to climb but also has figured out how to climb down, too. I told you he’s a very smart boy…and so big! Not full grown yet, either. I think he is going to be bigger than Skittle, who was also a very big boy.

Yikes!

I’m hoping to get a lot done this weekend, frankly, but I am also not going to worry about holding my feet to the fire should I not. I do want to finish this story I’ve been working on this week, and I do want to do some more writing along the way. I also want to spend some quality time reading Lina Chern’s Playing the Fool and maybe finishing off some of these other posts I’ve been playing with for quite some time. I would like to finish my analysis of Saltburn (which I can also rewatch again, which is marvelously possible thanks to streaming services), as well as my analysis of the latest volume in Heartstopper, and why it made me a bit uncomfortable, just as the show’s second season was questionable in some ways. I still like and appreciate it very much, but at the same time, nothing is above criticism and critique, especially when it’s approached in a positive way. Because the bottom line is I do think Heartstopper, both book and show, are vitally important works; there’s just a couple of things I find questionable, which is also a broader question for the community as a whole, too.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and stay safe and dry, New Orleans!

Don’t You Want Me

And just like that, it is Thursday again. I have to leave the office a little early today because I have PT at five today, which means getting uptown at a peak traffic time. But it’s a nice way to end my day, really; I doubt I’ll be much in the mood to do much of anything when I get home from that. Tomorrow is another work-at-home Friday, which means I’ve somehow managed to get through another week, and January is rapidly coming to a close. The first night of parades is a week from tomorrow! But my work schedule has been all worked out, I might have to use up some vacation time here and there to make up for leaving the office early that big final weekend, but that’s also okay. It’s hard to believe it’s here already; Krewe de Vieux is this weekend, too.

I did write last night when I got home. I didn’t write as much as I did the night before, but I am very happy with the slightly less than two thousand words I added to my story “When I Die,” and I also realized last night–and double checked to be sure–that my geography in the story was wrong; I then looked at a map to see that yes, I was indeed correct about the geography in question. The story is also running a bit long–but the geography mistake will save me some words when I go back and make that correction. The story is taking shape nicely, and I think I may even be able to get it finished tonight, if I remain ambitious and stay on top of things. I was a bit tired when I got home from the office yesterday, but did manage to get some chores done and yes, I spent some time playing with Sparky, which is always a lovely and nice way to wind down from the stress and aggravations of a work day. I also took care of something that I’d been avoiding and hadn’t been terribly happy about, in all honesty, but it felt really good to get it taken care of and was one of those things I do generally avoid and put off in case of unpleasantness, but I got it taken care of and am very pleased with myself, to be perfectly honest.

But it does feel amazing to be writing again. I’m not worrying about the quality of the story or anything, just getting it out there, and it is starting to take shape nicely. I am giving my creativity free rein with the story, and so I know I am overwriting and probably contradicting myself and other things like that, but I am also really looking forward to polishing, editing, and trimming it down into shape. I really do love short stories and I really enjoy the challenge of writing them (novels are easier for me, which doesn’t make any sense), and I am really liking this story. I have another on deck that I am looking forward to finishing, too. Let’s hear it for writing again, shall we? Huzzah? HUZZAH!

I slept really well last night–it rained overnight, which always makes me sleep better, and I don’t have to leave the house tomorrow, which means I can sleep late if I so choose, and I am starting to feel better about how the apartment looks and getting it back under control. I have another load of dishes to do when I get home tonight after emptying the dishwasher, and I also have laundry in various stages that all need to be finished off this evening when I get home. I’m pretty pleased with how well this first full week of work has gone for me, at least so far; I am neither tired nor fatigued this morning, I got up easily, and my coffee tastes marvelous. I think we have a slow day at the office today so I can get things done that I need to so I can sail into my work-at-home day relatively easily. Next Friday I have a doctor’s appointment and PT on the same morning of the first day of parades, which means any and all errands for the weekend must be completed by the afternoon so I can safely park the car on the street for the weekend. I think it’s supposed to rain all day today, too, and the weather is warming up some. I could tell last night that the weather was changing; it wasn’t stuffy and warm enough to turn on the air conditioning, but it was borderline close.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and you never know–I may be back later, I may not. Stay tuned!

Abracadabra

I wrote yesterday.

I don’t know if all writers have the same fears that I do, but chief amongst them for me is that the words will stop coming one day. I know, I often will have fallow periods where I don’t feel like writing anything, or that the well needs to be replenished before I can draw from it again. Since the surgery I’ve been trying to write, and not succeeding. The brace was a problem, the loopiness of my brain was another problem, and of course the correct medications at long last also relieved me of the stress/anxiety, which naturally I worried my anxiety might be the seed and root from which my writing sprang. But last night when I got home from work I was determined, and I sat down and started writing. I had been trying to work on this short story for quite some time, and over the last few weeks the form of the story began taking shape in my head. I decided, once I got home from running errands, I was going to sit down and work on the story. The most I’ve ever been able to do at a time since the surgery is a couple of hundred words here and there, and a great day was getting more than three hundred. I had started the story last week, got about five hundred or so words in, and then….not much. But last night, I sat down and added almost twenty-five hundred words to it in one sitting. And it felt amazing. I’m sure they aren’t great words and more story and editing is definitely required on the story, but I hadn’t had a writing day like that in a very long time–so long I’d also reached a point where I was worried that the words weren’t going to come anymore.

It’s so nice to know that isn’t the case, and that the magic is still there.

And it feels even better this morning. I just needed one day of that, apparently, to get my confidence back. Hopefully, tonight I’ll finish that story and tomorrow night after work and PT I can start another.

I was a Festival widow again last night–Paul not getting home until well after I went to bed–but last night was, of course, the final episode of the three-part reunion for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which was kind of disappointing, given all that had been promised. Ironically, reality television (or at least the kind I prefer to watch) has become so scripted and produced that surprises–like the ones this show delivered–are very rare (and you also have to wonder, still, how much of it was produced and created), and so they get a lot of attention and publicity and are all over the zeitgeist (Vanderpump Rules and Scandoval, anyone?), and of course, ratings are the most important thing. Anyway, I did spend almost two hours watching that and even the Watch What Happens Live that follows, which I never watch (I loathe Andy Cohen), but that was it for me; once the credits rolled I went to bed and had another lovely night’s sleep.

It feels, in some ways, like my life is starting to come back together and fall back into what it was before 2023 again, which is kind of nice. I’ve felt like my life has been out of my control for a very long time now (and yes, I’ve accepted finally that such control is actually an illusion; we have so little control over what happens to us and in our lives, really), but I kind of feel like I’m starting to get a grasp on everything again, and that’s nice. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when I actually am writing something, isn’t it? I feel so much better and at peace with the world and centered. Life provides enough drama as it is, so why seek it out? I find myself checking Twitter less and less now; I do miss the people I used to engage with there, who are now scattered over numerous other platforms, and having to check more than one and try to be active on more than one (and let’s face it, both Twitter and Facebook were more than enough for me) is more than I have the bandwidth for, let alone any such desire to maintain all these different social media accounts. I do seem to spend most of my time on social media blocking people more than anything else, and I don’t know that that is a productive use of my time on social media? Looking for people to block rather than to interact with? Really no, and it’s just more negativity.

Because that’s what I need more of in my life: negativity. Please.

And on that note, I think I’ll go ahead and head into the spice mines. I may be back later or it may be tomorrow; who can say for sure? But whatever happens, have a lovely middle of the week Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Hold Me

There’s just something about cold weather that affects me emotionally in a negative way. I’m not sure what it is, or why precisely this happens, but it does and I really don’t like it. I’ve been in kind of a funk now for several days–health insurance issues aren’t helping either (Blue Cross/Blue Shield Louisiana is a garbage company, in case any of you were wondering; they haven’t gotten any better since I was able to stop using them for health care back in 2011; now I am stuck with them again and they are the same pieces of shit they’ve always been)–and I know that the anniversary of Mom’s death is coming up and having an effect on me. The holidays were tough, indeed, but the distraction of the surgery and the recovery helped get me through that somehow; I was already miserable, so being emotionally miserable on top of that seemed more manageable than just dealing with my first holidays without her by itself with no other distractions. I didn’t have a very good day yesterday, overall. I slept decently, got up and went to work, but felt sort of out of it all day, like I’d never completely woken up, and just wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything much yesterday. I couldn’t find my wallet before I left the house, and so that was bothering me all day (I did find it later in the day in my backpack, but the day was already wrecked by then); I had to leave the office early for PT, which was fine, but …more disruption of my normal routine, which always makes me feel out of sorts. I forgot my hearing aids, too, which wasn’t much of a help either. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least I wasn’t client facing with my sourness, and I did get caught up on all of my work duties yesterday. The schedule looks pretty easy for the rest of the week as well, so maybe I can coast into this weekend relatively safely and recuperate, or at least get some respite for my soul.

PT was hard (and getting harder with every visit), but at least now I feel like I’m doing something, if that makes sense? The dexterity stuff was pretty easy and thus felt like I wasn’t really doing anything to improve my arm. The scars are becoming even less noticeable the more time passes as well; Dr. O’Brien was clearly a miracle worker in the operating room. I also don’t feel sore from the PT yet, either, despite the struggle some of those exercises were yesterday. I was worn out when I finally got home–I also ran errands and made groceries afterwards–and essentially I wasted the evening cuddling with Sparky in my easy chair. I know I watched some things–Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed–but this morning I couldn’t tell you what any of it was. My brain was a little too fried to do any reading, and the whole day just really felt off so I just kind of sat in my chair with background noise going while I let my mind wander creatively. I got groggy/sleepy around eight thirty, but stayed up for a little while longer hoping Paul would come home…to no avail. So, Sparky and I went to bed pretty early last night, and I fell asleep almost immediately.

I slept well last night and I feel good this morning–not sleepy or groggy or tired–which is a good thing. It’s not as cold as it has been–high fifties!–this morning so there’s none of that to deal with, and hopefully it’ll be a nice day hovering around the high fifties low sixties all day. I suspect there will be rain today–there was a little yesterday slightly on my way home from the errands–and that will probably make things cold again, but that’s fine. I still can’t believe parades start a week from Friday, which is going to make life challenging again as it does every year when you live inside the box. I did do some thinking about the next Scotty last night, which was nice–it’s always nice to engage your brain a little, which is also why I don’t remember much of what I was watching last night since it was working primarily as background noise for me while my mind wandered. I did get some more ideas on how to work out these two stories (“When I Die” and “Parlor Tricks”) and get drafts finished. I really need to focus on putting words down on the page. I don’t think I’ve managed to write more than 500 words of fiction at a time since the surgery? Not good, right? But now that all feels right with the world again, I think I can get back to work again.

The funny thing is I have gotten so used to my hearing aids that forgetting them makes me feel disconnected from reality. It’s nice being able to hear properly–or at least better than I was hearing before–although I generally don’t wear them around the house on the weekends so it always feels strange when I put them back in again and have to get used to listening to how my voice actually sounds rather than how I think it sounds. (And singing along to the music in the car really makes me wince. I cannot sing. At. All. Which sucks, because I love to sing and always have.) But I am happy to be heading into this new year with some of these things finally handled. My teeth have been taken care of, I have my hearing aids, and I got the needed surgery for my arm. I’ve dropped twenty pounds or so since October, I am rediscovering my joy in exercise (even if it is just PT), I am sleeping well, and I have a darling cat who loves to sit on my shoulders. Life is pretty good, really. The only thing that I need to make me feel even better about things this morning is to get some writing done tonight, you know?

The insurance stuff will work itself out somehow; things inevitably do in one way or the other. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than not having insurance and at least now I can get the meds I need and so on. I don’t know why I let things get to me the way I did over the weekend and yesterday, but it was more of a combination of things, really. Not remembering my hearing aids and not being able to put my hands on my wallet before leaving the house (I had put it in my backpack to make sure Sparky didn’t do something with it and so I would remember it; of course I immediately forgot that I did that so…yeah) didn’t help matters any, compounding the imminent anniversary of my mom’s death as well as the insurance issues…I shouldn’t let those things get to me in the future, but it was all just a bit much yesterday morning and I also didn’t feel so rested yesterday morning either.

So, here’s to a new day dawning with me in a better space emotionally and spiritually than I was yesterday, and I am going to just keep my head up and try to stay focused, happy and positive today. Wish me luck, okay?

And now I shall head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and you never know–I may be back later.

Hurts So Good

Ah, Monday morning back to work blog today. I have to leave early as I have a PT appointment at four today, but that’s okay. I also have to run errands, and I will already be uptown, which is terrific. (Mail and make a little groceries, for those who are unsure what I mean by errands.) I’m usually in a good mood when I finish PT (it’s the endorphins), so hopefully that will make running the errands in the cold a little easier. It should get up to the sixties by the time I leave the office today. Parades begin next weekend (not this coming one, but the next) and I am not even remotely in the slightest prepared to deal with all the aggravation, exhaustion and fun that comes from living inside the box1, as we call it here. While it does mean having easy access to parades and catching throws, it also makes navigating every day life incredibly difficult.

Sigh.

I feel very rested this morning, after a weekend spent feeling tired most of the time. I managed to do very little this weekend other than rest and cleaning and chores. Maybe the strength PT on Friday wore me out far more than I had originally suspected; after all, it’s the first taxing kind of exercise I’ve done in over a year. (I also have to leave work a little early today as well for a session later this afternoon.) I didn’t get much done this weekend, sadly, but I consider progress on the house to be progress of a kind at any rate. I also started reading Lina Chern’s Play the Fool, which I am enjoying; the voice is quite original and delightful. We also watched another episode of Lupin last night, which is also quite good.

I was struggling there for a moment to remember what precisely I did yesterday while Paul took calls and worked upstairs; I just remembered that I spent most of the day finishing the original BBC series of Brideshead Revisited. I can see why the show was so popular back when it originally aired and why it own so many Emmys–Americans have always thought British productions of anything to be vastly superior to anything produced here–and it did remind me a lot of Downtown Abbey, which also led me to wonder why Americans are so fascinated by the British upper class. I know I certainly used to be, but my lack of knowledge regarding Brideshead seemed like a missing cultural touchstone for me, and now that I’ve seen it–yes, I can see how influential it was. There would be no Downton without Brideshead, but the original is far less soapy than the later show….and of course, Upstairs Downstairs was truly the original Downton, a soapy show about a wealthy family’s ups and downs as well as their servants. I don’t imagine the occasional thoughts I would have while watching–deep criticisms of the class system and the disproportionate division of wealth in British society of the time; how it would have sucked to have been one of their servants–would have occurred to me had I watched when I was younger. I also felt that there was more to the relationship between Charles and Sebastian than mere friendship; which is another thing it has in common with Saltburn; an ambiguous love relationship between two men. I was also rather disappointed that Sebastian disappeared from the show about halfway through so it could focus on Charles and Julia, which I felt was giving Sebastian, whom the show really centered at first, very short shrift indeed. I will go ahead and read the book–my education in Evelyn Waugh was sorely neglected–but I feel that watching the series has given me enough grounding to explore Saltburn again through that experience.

It’s chilly again this morning but nothing terribly unbearable, thank the Lord. I do feel rather good this morning, and hope I can ride that feeling through the work day, into PT and making groceries again after work tonight. This is an actual full work week, of which there have been few for quite some time for me, so we’ll see how I feel when Friday rolls around again, shall we?

It’s been an interesting and slightly uneven January so far, bit of an up and down month, in all honesty. Life is always a rollercoaster, isn’t it? Ups and downs and never certain when the next curve or sudden drop is coming, all at great speeds that sometimes never give you a chance to catch your breath. There’s nothing life can give us that we can’t handle, as Scotty always says, it’s how you handle it that matters. I’ve always found that emotional responses or reactions are often counterproductive and exhausting, and if you can somehow switch the emotional component down or off or mute it so you can engage your logical brain and figure out how to handle it and what you need to do next to start the getting through it process might not be the absolute healthiest way to handle anything, but it has always worked for me and is why people always think I am so good in a crisis–I am very good at ignoring the macro while focusing on the micro. The problem with that, of course, is that you never go back and process the feelings and emotions; they’ve been securely buried for the moment and inevitably, that results in me thinking oh I don’t need to process that after all!

When in fact I really do need to.

That’s been happening a lot for me since the concurrent COVID pandemic/shutdown coupled with me turning sixty and eventually losing my mom. I’ve been thinking about things from my past a lot more than I ever allowed myself to, identifying the lessons I’ve taken from bad experiences and how I turned that into I don’t ever want to feel like this again s so I will never do that again which may not have been exactly healthy. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over that sense of not belonging anywhere when I was a kid, which was partly being a gay kid (I didn’t know that specifically, but I also knew I was different from the other kids) as well as having some chemical issues in my brain (ADHD, anxiety, etc.), added to the sense of not belonging because I was from Alabama and living in Chicago. New Orleans was, in fact, the first place I’ve ever felt like I belonged, and that’s part of the reason I love it here so much. There wasn’t any single one thing to blame; I always thought it was this or that or the other, but rather the combination of everything that made my childhood so incredibly difficult for me (and pretty much my life until about thirty-three or so).

I think the real reason–I was asked this on the young adult panel this weekend–I write about teenagers is I am still trying to make sense of my own experiences. I also think that my past is also filled with very rich material for my writing. I learned that with both Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit–writing about things that I have had trouble understanding in my own life fictionally has not only made my work better but also has helped me process things in a healthier way than I ever have before.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

  1. “The box” means inside the parade route for Carnival; the box being formed by Canal, Napoleon, St. Charles and Tchoupitoulas. Once parades have started you cannot cross any of those streets, and yes, I live just inside the box on the St. Charles side of the rectangle. ↩︎

What’s Forever For

It’s cold again this morning in New Orleans, with it around thirty-one this morning as I swill my coffee and shiver a bit here in the workspace. There’s always cold air coming in from somewhere–the windows, the frames, somewhere–so it’s always a bit colder when I’m at my desk than it is elsewhere inside the apartment. I slept really well again last night–still don’t know where the sleeping pill bottle got to, thanks again, Sparky–but I do have a stopgap until I can get that prescription refilled again at the end of the month, and it worked last night. Fingers crossed that it continues to do so until I either find the original bottle or get the refill at the end of the month…

Yesterday was a good day around here. I had my strength PT yesterday morning, which is getting more difficult by the appointment. It really kicked up into gear yesterday, and while I was very happy to make it through the workout without begging for mercy or having to take too many breaks–it was harder than I imagined, but I also refused to get concerned, anxious or worried about the fact I was using only four pound dumbbells for some and a six pounder for others. But the burning of lactic acid in my muscles, while startling at first, eventually reminded me of how good it feels when you do work out, and the rest of my body was screaming to be stretched, exercised and used. I ran a couple of errands afterwards before returning home to my work-at-home chores. I finished watching the first episode of the 1982 BBC Brideshead Revisited, which I’d never seen before and am now watching (and eventually reading the original source material), inspired by Saltburn, and that’s partly so I can write more intelligently about the film, which still haunts me. I cannot remember the last time I was so interested and intrigued by and with a film, which means it’s a good one. It even has me thinking about revisiting The Talented Mr. Ripley, and reading more of the Ripley novels, which I have steadfastly ignored for the most part despite my abiding love for Highsmith’s work (the woman herself not so much…although it is interesting that two of my favorite women authors of all time, Highsmith and du Maurier, were lesbians or had lesbian tendencies).

We also watch Friday Night Heights, as ESPN calls the Friday night SEC gymnastics meets, to see LSU take down Kentucky and become the first team this season to break the overall 198 score mark, which is incredibly impressive. LSU has everything they need to win their first national title this year, but they’re going to have to be mentally tough and keep improving, which they already seem to be doing quite well.

After that, we watched the season finale of Reacher, which was fun if inexplicable; the ability to do all kinds of crazy stunts and so forth thanks to CGI does tend the make things a bit ridiculous as crews are always trying to outdo everything that came before. The helicopter scene was a bit preposterous, but no more preposterous than some of the aerial feats performed in whatever that Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg treasure hunt movie was last year. (Those scenes always remind me that I wouldn’t survive as I would be so absolutely terrified I would either have a heart attack or a stroke on the spot, if not both simultaneously–you don’t see Scotty ever getting into a plane or a helicopter or anything; the biggest heights thing I ever did with Scotty was in Jackson Square Jazz and there’s been nothing since.)

I also think I am getting to the point where I am going to be ready to really start writing again. There was a lot of inspiration and creative thinking done yesterday while doing some tedious work-at-home chores; which really felt good. I think I may even be able to sit down tomorrow morning after i get up and actually go to town with writing. I am in the process of starting a new Scotty, so the opening is playing in my head; I know the boys will be living in the Garden District while Cooper Construction1 turns the townhouse on Decatur Street into a single family home again with a personal gym on the first floor. I had been thinking it needs to be set in either July or August (Mississippi River Mischief was set in May) and I definitely think it should be Hurricane Party Hustle, the accursed title and story I had to abandon in the wake of Katrina. It’s still a good story, and it could work, even with the difference in time (2005 was a different world than 2019, which is when this will be), then I can do the Mardi Gras book, and then the quarantine book….which will bring Scotty to twelve adventures and then maybe–just maybe–I can think about retiring the character and the series. I am not saying I am going to, but that’s as far out as I have him planned and when I run out of plans is usually when I reevaluate.

I also have some things to do today for the Bold Strokes Book-a-Thon today. At eleven am eastern I am moderating a panel on strong finishes; then I have a young adult panel and a “you’ve written an insane amount of books” panel. That’s probably going to take most of my brain bandwidth today, and when that’s all done I can probably do some chores and maybe do some reading–or watch more Brideshead Revisited.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines for the rest of the day. Have a lovely Saturday, stay warm, and who knows? I might be back later.

  1. Yes, this is a shout out to A Streetcar Named Murder, in case you missed it. ↩︎

I Need You

Friday morning and I am up way early for PT this morning. It feels warmer this morning–it’s in the fifties–but it’s not cold in the Lost Apartment, which is nice. I haven’t slept well now for about two nights running. My sleeping pills are missing–I couldn’t find them last night–which means they were probably left out on a counter and Sparky the Demon thought “toy!” and now I have to really spend some time trying to find them. I’ll make it through today relatively okay, I suppose, since it’s a work at home day, but after PT I have a couple of errands and after that I’ll be home for the day. I did chores last night when I got home, so the kitchen isn’t messy this morning and once I get back. here, it’ll be relatively easy to get the downstairs back under control and launch into the weekend. I have events all day tomorrow on ZOOM for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, too. Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed last night, so I spent most of the evening (after doing some cleaning, which was wise and I am very grateful that I didn’t blow it off) playing with Sparky and watching some television. I watched the new episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which I enjoyed, and then watched some documentaries on Youtube about history–mostly Byzantine, with some French and Austrian thrown in for good measure before going to bed relatively early. I did rest–my body feels very relaxed–but my mind never really shut off completely or for long.

The Lefty and Edgar nominations came out this week, and I have so many friends nominated on either or both lists! It’s always such a pleasure to see friends nominated for awards. It’s also a great opportunity to pick out some more great books to add to the list. I am also delighted to see Rob Osler nominated for Best Short Story (a queer nominee with a queer story!) and there’s another queer story nominated for the Lillian Jackson Braun Award, a book I actually blurbed: The Body in the Back Garden by Mark Waddell from Crooked Lane, so yay for a gay cozy being nominated! It always does my heart good to see queer writers being recognized by the mainstream, which is the kind of progress we’ve been wanting to see for decades. The categories for both the Leftys and the Edgars are stacked this year, which just goes to show how deep the bench actually is in crime fiction–and so many great books that weren’t nominated for either.

I blurbed several books this past year that are coming out now, so I want to go back and reread those so I can blog about them–not only Mark’s book but the new Rob Osler, Cirque du Slay and the new Margot Douaihy, Blessed Water. I also haven’t started reading another book quite yet–I was dragging too hard every night when I got home, really, to do any reading or engage my brain as much as I would like.

I think I may need to read out of my genre next, perhaps some horror? Paul Tremblay? Elizabeth Hand? I have so many great books in my pile, which is a delightful problem to complain about, but the struggle is real. How do I decide what to read when there are so many great books waiting for me to escape into? Maybe I should try to read just the books currently nominated for awards? Heavy sigh. Decisions, decisions.

It looks like we are having yet another hard freeze this evening, so hurray for not leaving the house for the rest of the day once I get home this morning. Sheesh.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head to PT. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!

The Only Way Out

Tuesday and back to the office. It’s only twenty-nine degrees outside, which of course means it feels abominably cold at my desk between the windows–but the apartment is bearable overall. The shower is going to be difficult this morning, as will getting outside to walk to the car and then into the building once I get to work, which means walking very fast. The bed felt incredibly comfy and warm and snug this morning, too. Ah, well, it’s a short work week and we should be out of this insane cold snap (for New Orleans) by the weekend.

Yesterday I started the strength PT, which was tiring and exhausting but felt good at the same time, in the way that using your muscles feels good after a long period of inertia. I thought I might be a bit sore this morning, but I’m not. It is amazing also how tiring the light weights I am now using are, but it’s done and it’s not something I need to fear. I didn’t have anxiety about it, either, which is a lovely outcome. I did spend a lot more time yesterday thinking about this year and what I want to get done, writing-wise, so yesterday was also productive in that way. I also mapped out some other projects that are in progress, and then treated Paul to pizza from the new place that has replaced Slice, U Pizza. It was good, but not as good as Midway on Freret–but much more convenient, since I can just walk there to pick it up. It’s lovely being able to eat pizza again.

We also started watching Lupin last night, which we both are really enjoying. I know the character is basing what he does and how he does it on the book adventures of Arsene Lupin, but it also reminds me a lot of an old Sidney Sheldon book in which a young woman was framed for something, her father was ruined, and she went to jail–only to get out and become a master international criminal after getting revenge on the people who killed her dad and framed her–I want to say it was If Tomorrow Comes and my spotty memory is telling me her name was Tracy Whitney; and if you know anything about me you know how much I love a good get-even revenge story, so that was one of my favorite Sheldon books (revenge was always a motivating factor in Sheldon novels, although remembering some things about The Other Side of Midnight has me questioning my love and appreciation of Sheldon; and yes, I do remember reading that as a teenager and not liking the way it turned out, although I recognized that final act of the book was necessary and really subscribed to Sheldon’s overarching theme that life sucks for women, even if he showed it in a misogynist way). I don’t have the time or the bandwidth to revisit any Sidney Sheldon novels and I would imagine they wouldn’t hold up to modern scrutiny, and probably shouldn’t have back in the day, either.

So, today I am going to make some to-do lists; one for the week, one for the month, and one for the first quarter of the year, bearing in mind for me that things are always subject to change. After work tonight I am going to swing by uptown to get the mail, dependent on how insane driving in the city is during this cold snap and hard freeze warning. People here are the shittiest drivers bar none of anywhere I’ve ever lived, primarily because driving here isn’t like driving anywhere else, and so you can imagine what they are like in cold weather, when there may be ice on the road or if it’s, God forbid, snowing outside. New Orleans comes to a screeching halt when it snows here, and it’s been a while since the last time we had cold weather. I had the Honda the last time; I remember because I had to give a co-worker a ride to work and I took pictures of my car in the snow, maybe even video? So it was either the winter of 2017 or 2018; but we’d just moved into the new building in December 2018 so it must have been 2017. I’ve not seen any snow forecast for this hard freeze warning, which won’t be lifted until ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Le sigh.

But it means I will sleep really well tonight.

So I am dressing in layers to go outside to get to the car–T-shirt, sweater, jacket, but no tights under my pants since the problem with layers is you still have to spend a lot of time inside, so you eventually get too hot and have to remove some of the layers, which would be a pain at work with removing tights, so I am skipping that. I am about to brave the cold, Constant Reader, so wish me luck and I will maybe see you later. Have a lovely warm Tuesday, wherever you are.

Shakin’

Holiday Monday, and I slept deeply and well again last night. I’d set the alarm, thinking it was probably better to start getting up early again, since it’s back to the office with me tomorrow but Sparky was being super cuddly and sweet in the bed this morning, and it was cold, and so I stayed in bed for another hour or so. I finished reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat, which I greatly enjoyed (more on that later). I made jambalaya, and did some dishes and started a load of laundry. I also reread some of my own unfinished work, trying to decide what to focus on next. I have to say I am regularly pleased with my work now when I go back and reread it; what can I say? I don’t know if that means I am getting rid of the self-deprecation and “not good enough” mentality I’ve struggled with my entire life, but it’s a welcome change to read some of my work and think this is pretty good.

I also worked on the house some more and it’s starting to look like it did before the acquisition of High Energy Kitten and my surgery–cluttered but at least neat. It’s almost there, you know, and maybe putting some finishing touches on it today before I go to my first STRENGTH PT appointment this afternoon. (I’ll be making groceries after that, I might add.) I’ve also decided that my next read with be R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface; I do enjoy a writer-behaving-badly story. I’ve written my own, too–“Quiet Desperation”, which was included in my collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, as well as a Kindle single–but I don’t think I ever want to write an entire novel about a writer behaving badly. I may write an entire novel with a writer as the main character–I keep circling back to my true crime writer, who’s now appeared in several of the Scotty books, as well as The Orion Mask–but I don’t think I’m quite there yet.

It is interesting to revisit unfinished projects and decide which of them to focus on and finish. I know that my next short story collection will be finished if I finish a novella and throw it in; but I’d kind of wanted to do a novella collection. One of the novellas–the longest one–will be rather easily turned into a novel, which I think is what I may do with it; there are three or four more that I can finish and turn in as a solitary book. “Festival of the Redeemer” is completed in first draft form, and rereading it yesterday made me realize that it’s next draft can be longer, of course, but I don’t think there’s enough story there to turn it into a novel; same with “Fireflies” and “Never Kiss a Stranger,” so maybe those three can be the novella collection (Festival of the Redeemer and Two More Tales–which I am choosing to call it so I can have a Venetian cover, a la du Maurier). “A Holler Full of Kudzu” might be the one I finish to complete the short story collection. There are also a lot of short stories I’d like to rework and/or finish for some calls that I’ve seen, which could always be fun. But the exciting thing here is I am feeling excited about writing again for the first time in I don’t know how long.

It’s also weird to think that the Scotty series is turning twenty-one this year; on May 1st, to be exact. I definitely should write another Scotty this year, and it does look like Hurricane Party Hustle is the one to do–it’ll also give me the opportunity to write about what it’s like to ride out a big storm and live without power, all the while having Katrina flashbacks. I also have the story for that already fleshed out, and yesterday I even figured out how the book opens, and how the mystery comes to Scotty’s attention in the first place, which is more than I usually have when I start, LOL. That one will be followed by the cursed Mardi Gras of 2019, French Quarter Flambeaux, which will be another fun story to write, and then Quarter Quarantine Quadrille, which will cover the shutdown and COVID madness. So, there are at least three more Scotty books for me to write, which will take the series to twelve books, and then I’ll think about it some more. Scotty’s family–parents and grandparents–are getting older, and will soon have to start dying off, which I really don’t want to deal with.

But it’s nice to feel excited about everything again, isn’t it? And normal, after so many years of abnormality?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely holiday, everyone, and I’ll probably be back later.

Get Up and Go

Sunday morning and the temperature is falling in New Orleans. It’s forty-one right now, which is nothing compared to what people up north are dealing with today, but we are getting down into water-freezing temperatures later this week. I slept for eleven hours last night, which is insane, but…my guess is I needed the rest. I didn’t get up until nine this morning, which is almost as insane as the weather. It’s amazing what a difference the right medications make, isn’t it? Yesterday was actually pleasant. I did some things, ran some errands, and then settled in to watch the LSU Gymnastics meet, which was a quad competition against three of the best teams in the country–UCLA, Oklahoma, and Utah–and the LSU team actually had to count a fall and still managed to come in second. They also had a subpar vault and beam rotation, which makes it even more amazing. GEAUX TIGERS! I also spent some time reading–which I am going to go do some more of once I finish this–and even wrote a little bit yesterday (a very little bit). But tomorrow is a holiday, and I have more chores and things to do today, without anything really to watch on deck.

It’s very nice to get up and feel rested, which happens more frequently these days.

I did a reading for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon yesterday, with some other mystery writers from Bold Strokes, which was kind of nice. Mary Burns, who moderated the reading, also asked us all how we plan our books–essentially the plotter/pantser question–and it did make me think a bit about my process, how I do things. I write Scotty books differently than I write other books, fo one thing. I always think up three or four things that I want to address in a Scotty book, and from there I try to figure out how to weave them together into a story. This started with Baton Rouge Bingo–prior to it, I pretty much just pantsed the whole thing and figured it out as I went. I was asked on a panel at Saints and Sinners after Who Dat Whodunnit if I planned on writing another Scotty book, and I flippantly replied “if I can figure out a way to make the book about Huey Long’s deduct box, Mike the Tiger (the live LSU animal mascot), and the state’s ban on gay marriage, I will”, figuring as I said it there was no way anyone could write a book with all three elements in it. Three days later it all came to me how to make that actually work, and so I started writing it. For Mississippi River Mischief, there were several separate things; I wanted a family values politician hypocrite who had a thing for teenager boys, a tie in to The Haunted Showboat, and something from Scotty’s own past that he’s never really reexamined before, but has to because of the events in the book. It took me a while to figure out how to deal with the characters’ response to the events of Royal Street Reveillon–I could hardly pretend those things didn’t happen, after all–but eventually it all began to fall into place. I ended up with a book I was very pleased with, and probably one of the best books in the series. I’m not sure what Scotty is next, but I know it’s going to take place while the building on Decatur is renovated and redone as a single family residence, the boys will be living in the dower house–Taylor will be living in the Diderot mansion because there’s not enough space in the old dower house for all four of them. I think this is going to be the hurricane party book, which I am kind of reluctant to write because the last time I decided to write that story was right before Katrina. But I am going to start figuring that one out a bit, see where we can go with it. I do think a crime story set during an evacuation, with the city emptied, is an interesting idea, so I’ll probably write some free form brainstorming the way I always do. I’m kind of excited about writing another Scotty book this year.

There are also some short stories I want to get under control and finished and submitted.

But once I finish this, I am going to my chair with my journal and Tara’s book, so I can hopefully get that done today. I also have chores to get done–the kitchen is sliding again–and here’s hoping for a productive Sunday, okay? Have a great one–I may be back later.