I’ve been sleeping deeply and well lately for an insomniac; I suspect it has more to do with the pain being exhausting than anything else. Any surgery is traumatic to the system and requires rest for recovery, and oral surgery is no different than any other. I’ve taken today off as well as tomorrow; I was thinking yesterday I could probably just go in today and do some paperwork or something, but (and this is not laziness) I started thinking it’s probably best to give myself enough recovery time before I head back in–and I also know the clinic is jam-packed with appointments for today and tomorrow, and I just don’t think I have the energy to deal with that today. I think one more good night’s sleep with probably do the trick.
The Saints won a nail-biter yesterday and I didn’t watch the US Open final; I just can’t with Novak Djokovic anymore. I used to like him until he became an anti-vax/COVID denier, and I can’t with that, I’m sorry. I respect his athleticism, commitment to his sport and being the best, but as a person? I can’t help but feel he’s a selfish, arrogant, borderline sociopathic asshole. Of course he’s entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to me being a fan and watching him play, either. For the record, that’s how it works. I don’t deny him the right to be an anti-vaxxer/COVID denier, but I also don’t have to be a fan or watch him play. We got caught up on Only Murders in the Building and Ahsoka last night, too. I also finished several in-progress blog entries, including the one called “Shame” about homophobia in crime fiction and how things have gotten better over the years–but we can’t forget how bad it used to be, either, which was the point of the post, really; telling the crime community that we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going any fucking where.
Get fucking used to us.
Today I am going to try to do some chores around here. I’m feeling like a slug–anxiety talking again; I always feel like I should be doing something and down-time is time wasted–so I think I should do some things today. I suppose it depends on my energy stores, and how long it holds out. I want to read some more of Shawn’s book this morning–I think my resistance to that brutal opening was more of the post-surgery exhaustion–and I also need to empty the dishwasher and do another load that is soaking in the sink. I also want to make something to take for lunch this week–I’m thinking Swedish meatballs in the slow cooker, but am not sure if my minimal chewing abilities can handle the meatballs, even if I cut them up smaller before putting them in my mouth; I don’t think I can swallow them unchewed in some fashion–and I do need to go buy more ice cream and yogurt. I think some of the soups and ramen on hand could be useful. I can’t wait till I can eat a burger again, to be honest.
I also need to answer all the emails that have been languishing in my inbox for quite some time. I owe Dad an email–I’ve not had the strength after Bouchercon and the surgery to face writing him–and my sister’s birthday is this week. I also need to mail something, so I think I’ll drive uptown to make groceries and see what else is possible for soft foods for the week (mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, that sort of thing). I need to get the things on my to-so list knocked out, too. I feel more rested and more myself this morning, but maybe that’s because the pain pills haven’t quite kicked in yet. I also need to start revising/editing Jackson Square Jazz; I’m very excited about that finally being available again, and since Scotty turns twenty-one next year, I kind of want to celebrate the series throughout the year and I don’t know, maybe give away first editions? Something, anyway.
It’s also hard to believe Chanse will be twenty-two in January. I’ve been doing this for over a third of my life now. I owe it all to my stubbornness and obliviousness. Someone smarter and more aware would have probably given up a long time ago, but here I am, still here, older and possibly wiser and certainly not much smarter than I was all these years ago when I was a wide-eyed innocent walking into the world of the published word. I always remember that first August Paul and I lived here back in 1996. We went to a fundraised for the LGBT Center, and there was a tarot card reader there. (I’ve always been fascinated by tarot; I blame the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, which also connected New Orleans and the tarot in my mind. I write about a “private eye” who’s slightly psychic and reads tarot cards and lives in New Orleans. Coincidence? Probably not. Sadly, it’s always been one of my favorite Bond movies and always has held a special place in my brain for introducing me to Bond, New Orleans, and the tarot…unfortunately, the film does NOT hold up forty or fifty years later.) Anyway, the question I thought about as I held the cards in my hand was will I ever be a published writer? The answer the cards gave her was “Yes, but it will not be anything like you think it will be.” A generic answer, yes, that could apply to any number of questions…things are generally never what you thought or imagined they would be. Being a published author is definitely not anything like I ever dreamed or fantasized about when I wasn’t one. I know I thought being published would change my life for the better (I was not wrong about that) but…yes, it’s nothing like what I thought it would be like. Publishing can be a very cold and lonely place, but all you can really control is the work itself. You can’t control whether or not you get published, you can’t control whether or not the book sells, you can’t control the way readers and reviewers will react to it, you can’t control whether you get award recognition. All you actually can control is the writing itself, and do the best you can. I always hope my work is getting better–which should make reediting and revising the original Jackson Square Jazz interesting…
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close, make another cup of coffee, and start working on the chores around the kitchen, while streaming music through my iHome speakers. I’ll probably check back in later–I have all those unfinished blog entries I need to eventually finish and post–and I also want to get some fiction writing done today as well. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader–do you think today’s photo will get my adult content flags on social media?
So, Greg, you have a book coming out from a new press in October, and the main character is a drag queen? What the actual hell?
Well, therein lies a tale.
I never thought I would write about a drag queen, in all honesty. It’s not that I’m opposed to drag or anything like that; drag has always been an important part of gay culture (I really wish someone would do a history of drag that’s not academic in tone and therefore accessible to everyone without a PhD) and I’ve always appreciated it as an art form. Yes, some queens are better at it than others, and there are some who are just really tragic…but I admire and respect every single one of them who puts on the dress and wig and heels and make-up and goes out there to perform. My own anxiety manifests itself whenever I have to perform or speak in public (although I managed to successfully control it and get through Boucheron panels swimmingly; I don’t think my stage fright is a thing of the past yet but I’m getting better); I can’t imagine the courage it takes to do drag that first time.
I also never considered doing drag because of my vanity–I wouldn’t look pretty in drag and I would want to be pretty. Shallow, party of one, your table is ready. I’ve seen many performances over the year and even have friends who do it, but my primary interest in drag has always primarily been in it as an art form and political statement critiquing gender roles, masculinity, and femininity; and it holds a very important place in queer culture. I once did drag, for a Showgirls-themed birthday party–I looked like Stockard Channing, which isn’t a bad thing–but it was more of a costume than a real attempt at doing drag. My friend Mark always wanted to make me up for Halloween or Fat Tuesday as Joan Crawford–it was the shoulders, the eyebrows, the narrow hips, and the shape of my face more than any striking resemblance to Ms. Crawford, I think–and while I was interested in being transformed into Ms. Crawford, one of the things I hated the most about doing plays in high school was the make-up. I hated having that shit all over my face, and it never did what it was supposed to in the first place (I inevitably always played old men, so they had to try to age me, and it’s not like we had make-up artists who knew what they were doing in high school.). And the padding? The wig? The dress? Not to mention the lack of pockets and the difficulty in using the bathroom– yeah, not for me. Drag does show up in my work sometimes–not very often–and the most fun thing for me about that is coming up with drag names for the characters. I know I’ve used Floretta Flynn a number of times, to the point where in my New Orleans universe she’s probably one of the bigger and most successful queens in New Orleans. Two of the biggest names in drag came from New Orleans–Varla Jean Merman and Bianca del Rio are both from here. We used to go to Drag Bingo hosted by Bianca and Blanche Debris at Oz on Sundays before she left for New York after Katrina–and Bianca was just as funny and just as big of a bitch then as she is now. She always drew crowds, and of course I met her a few times out of drag (I am quite sure Roy doesn’t remember me).
And believe me, I was very careful not to attract her attention while she was holding a microphone.
I also once wrote a short story that opened with one character saying in the Clover Grill, “You sure see a lot of tragic drag in this town at four a.m.”
Paul and I also were fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race for awhile, too–but like Project Runway, we stopped watching one season when it was obvious that it wasn’t being judged fairly (it was fucking blatantly obvious) and that was it for us. Don’t serve me competition reality when the competition is obviously rigged for a particular competitor. I do love some of the queens we did watch on there–it’s been amazing watching Jinkx Monsoon’s star take flight–and I always liked Tatianna, and just to name a few–Ben de la Creme, Adore Delano, and Manila Luzon are all fabulous. Paul follows a lot of them on Youtube, and of course I do enjoy Trixie and Katya’s We Like to Watch on Netflix.
And naturally, we love Bianca because she’s a New Orleans queen.
But it never crossed my mind to write about one as a main character. It wasn’t my milieu, so to speak (and just typing that made me want to bang my head on my desk. Take risks! I should always take risks in my work!), and so while every once in a while I’d think “maybe I should write a drag queen into this story”, I never did.
Last summer, I am not exactly sure when (2022 was pretty much a blur of misery), I got an email with a request for a ZOOM meeting with two very dear friends, along with another friend of theirs I may have met once over twenty years ago, James Conrad. He wrote Making Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago back in the days when I was a reviewer/worked for Lambda Book Report, and the purpose of the call was they wanted to talk about a possible project for me. You know me, I am always up for a new project and a new possibility…so you can imagine my surprise to find out what they wanted was for me to write a cozy with a drag queen main character. James owns and operates the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock, and decided to start a publishing company through the store and wanted this to be their first venture into crime. I pointed out that I a) knew next to nothing about drag and b) I’m not really a cozy writer (the Scotty series can be classified that way except for a lot of cozy rule-breaking; and yes, I did write A Streetcar Named Murder, which wasn’t out yet and I wasn’t sure if it was even any good), they pointed out that I am a writer who can write anything (this is true, but there are some things I can’t and won’t ever write–and yes, as I typed that I was thinking there you go limiting yourself again–maybe those are the things you should be trying to take on), and then I also remembered a few things–some of my co-workers at the day job do drag, and in fact, my former supervisor had attend a “drag school” here locally, started by a queen who’d retired here from San Francisco after a lengthy and successful career in drag; Paul even knows the queen who runs it. I sent James an early electronic uncorrected proof of Streetcar, so he could get an idea of my writing style, and waited to hear back.
While waiting, I asked some of my co-workers if they’d be okay with me asking them questions–which of course they were more than happy to do–and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me to approach this in the same way I approached writing Streetcar–I knew nothing about antiques, so I made my character the same. So, if I am going to write about a drag queen, I needed to write her origin story first–and I decided to make her an accidental drag queen; forced to step in when a queen doesn’t show for a performance. But how would that work? I realized my character had to already know about hair and make-up, so I decided to make him a glam artist, hired to do make-up for women on special occasions and styling them. How did he wind up doing glam? His grandmother, who was from New Orleans, used to have her own Uptown beauty shop on Magazine Street that was frequented by upper class New Orleans women, who would also hire her for special occasions to style them. He spent his childhood summers in New Orleans; his grandmother was the only family member who had no problem with his sexuality, and she taught him all about hair and make-up (and classic Hollywood). He went to cosmetology school instead of college (his grandmother paid for it) and he worked in a high-end salon in Dallas until his grandmother died, leaving him the house and most of her money.
I also had a great idea for the opening, which I quickly wrote up and James liked it…and so we moved forward with the plans for it. I had a Scotty book under contract, and I knew I could juggle the two and get them both done on time.
Of course, I didn’t realize how much work it would be to turn MWA over to my successor, I didn’t know Mom was going to go into the final decline ending with her death during this time, and….well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?
“I don’t know, Jem,” Lauralee Dorgenois said, frowning and raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow as she looked back over her shoulder into the three-way mirror set-up in her dressing room. “You’re sure that this dress doesn’t make my butt look big?”
Okay, I’m going to take a sidebar right here to give y’all some free-of-charge advice that is more than worth its weight in gold. There is only one correct answer to be given without pause or hesitation any time a woman asks you if something she is wearing makes her butt look big: “No.”
You always, always,ALWAYSsay no.
If that is, in fact, a lie—you say “I don’t know if that cut drapes right” or “I don’t like what that color does to your skin”.
There are literally a thousand other options besides making the incredibly foolish mistake of saying ‘yes’ or the seemingly safe, non-comital ‘maybe.’ Marriages, engagements, friendships, and relationships have all ended over this question being answered incorrectly—and no, it’s not a trap question. Women are bombarded from childhood with images of what they are supposed to look like and what they are supposed to wear. They are taught to fear fat cells and fatty foods, spend millions on diets and gym memberships and personal trainers. They are gaslit into thinking that being any size larger than zero and not having big firm breasts and not having a wrinkle-free face aglow with the dewiness of youth means they are doomed to grow old alone and unloved. So, they try to fight aging—and the fear of being traded in for a younger model—by having poison injected into their faces, excess skin surgically removed, and their hair constantly colored and touched up. Centuries of societal and systemic misogyny, of telling women they don’t measure up, echo in those sad, simple words: does it make my butt look big?
My heart breaks a little every time I hear them.
However, I get paid to make them look good. My opinion must be honest, but I still need to be delicate. Why be hurtful when you don’t have to be?
I tilted my head to one side and brought my eyebrows together as I looked her up and down yet again. “You’re curvy, Lauralee,” I replied finally, fluffing the peacock feathers on her shoulders to spread them out further. It was true. Lauralee was about five seven, and maybe could stand to lose a pound here and there. Her hourglass figure had thickened a slight bit once she hit forty, but it was barely noticeable. I’d picked out a green silk dress for her because the color made her green eyes sparkle like emeralds. It clung perfectly to her hips and was cut low in the front to shove off the ample bosom, highlighted by an emerald pendant handing from a gold chain just above the cleavage. I’d braided her long auburn hair into a French braid that dropped about half-way down her back. I’d woven some extra pieces of auburn into the braid to make it thicker. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know. We’d put Marilyn Monroe on a diet today.”
Several years ago, I tried writing a third series set in New Orleans with a gay male protagonist. It was a character I had already created; he showed up in a couple of Scotty books: true crime writer Jerry Channing, who’d gotten rich on a true crime novel about a child murder case in the Garden District in the 1990’s called Garden District Gothic, (which also became a Scotty title when he and the boys got sucked into that ancient cold case) and wound up solving it. I had wanted to write a fictional story based on the very real Jeff Davis Eight murders, and thought who better to center in the story than a true crime writer researching the case for an article or perhaps even a follow-up book than Jerry Channing? But as I started developing the character out from the sketchy details provided in earlier Scotty books, I suddenly realized what I was actually doing was combining Chanse and Scotty into a single person, so I shelved the story–or at least, the new series, because if all I was going to do was just merge two previous characters into one, there was no point in bothering. I had then gone on to create a new series with a straight woman as the main character (A Streetcar Named Murder), and I was determined that, with this new potential series set in New Orleans, the last thing I needed was to just rip-off previous characters.
So meet Jem Richard, twenty-something glam artist and New Orleans home owner. Jem lives in the 7th Ward (not far from my day job office, actually; over on St. Roch Avenue between Claiborne and St. Claude), and the house flooded during Katrina–Jem remembers coming down with his family to help work on the house for his grandmother, Mee Maw of sainted memory–and I gave him a pole-dancing roommate who also works at Crescent Care. (Another Easter egg is the book opens with Jem being enormously disappointed to be ghosted by someone with whom he had several dates –a Tulane grad named Tradd. Bury Me in Shadows readers may remember Tradd as the asshole who broke up with Jake and sent him into the alcohol/drug spiral that landed him in the hospital when that story opens. I also want to use Tradd again somewhere else…but that is indeed a tale for another time.) Jem does well for himself, but has no health insurance and never is guaranteed work–but he also really doesn’t want to go back to working in a salon again, either. (He also sometimes books gigs with film, theater and television companies.) He’s kind of a lost soul, not really sure what he wants or what he wants to do with the rest of his life–but he also is lucky: he owns his own home, for one, and has several marketable skills. He kind of feels like he’s been spinning his wheels and not getting anywhere since coming to live in New Orleans. Jem has considered doing drag before–he’s very into costuming, and has won the Bourbon Street Award for Best Drag Costume on Fat Tuesday the previous two Carnivals–but he (like me) is haunted by stage fright. He did a play while in high school and the stage fright was such a horrible experience he gave up his dream of being a performer and started working as the make-up and hair person for the school productions.
So, when he’s hired to be a back-up glam artist for a fashion show at Designs by Marigny, only to find out the models were drag queens. A little taken aback, he rolls with the challenge, and when one doesn’t show, Jem gets pressed into service (he can fit into the dress). The show is being managed by the same person who runs the local drag school–a sweetheart named Ellis, whose drag name is Mary Queen of THOTS. Jem has a bad history with Marigny the fashion designer–she’d hired him todo the make-up for a previous show, and her check bounced–so the friend who recruited him to do the show makes sure he gets paid in advance. Of course, since the models are drag queens, the show attracts anti-drag protestors–there’s a suspicion that the designer, Marigny, deliberately used queens hoping to attract a protest and more publicity. Throughout the course of the evening Jem overhears Marigny arguing with several different people, and the next morning wakes up to the news she’s been murdered–and somehow Jem is not only a suspect but he’s also a target.
But why?
Jem also has a black cat named Shade.
As I said, while it had never occurred to me previously to write a drag queen character, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do so. Drag queens are currently under attack by the forces of bigoted evil. Part of this comes from the right-wing demonization of transwomen, spear-headed by hateful bigoted lying trash like Libs of TikTok (if you’ve ever retweeted the Axis Sally of the Proud Boys, know that’s why I blocked you and we will never, ever be friends again) and Moms for Liberty, who are both so fucking ignorant and clouded with hate that they think drag queens and transwomen are the same thing. The idea that children need to be protected from drag queens at all costs because it’s somehow sexualizing them is disgusting and ignorant and offensive on its face; merely rephrasing Anita Bryant’s vile claim that queers need to recruit children, i.e. all queers are pedophiles. They prove they’re liars on a daily basis and that it really has nothing to do with “concern” for children and everything to do with bigotry and hatred, because they never go after religious organizations, youth pastors, Boy Scout troop leaders, and Republicans–you know, the ones who are being convicted of child rape and child porn on a regular, almost daily basis –but only the queers are their primary concern. First off, not all drag queens are transwomen and not all transwomen were drag queens. Yes, some transpeople start their transition by doing drag, to get a better idea of whether or not they are more comfortable as a woman than as a man. I work with a lot of transpeople, and have for quite some time. I’ve witnessed people transition and evolve, and I’ve also seen the change in demeanor, confidence, and emotional well-being when they do.
What better way for a writer to fight back against ignorance than writing about it? And I loved the deliciousness of fighting homophobic and transphobic bigotry by writing a cozy series.
Several weekends ago, I did an on-line panel for Outwrite DC. The moderator was John Copenhaver (whom you should already be reading), and my co-panelists were the always delightful and intelligent Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Renee James, and Robyn Gigl. The video is actually up on Youtube, if you would like to watch it. John’s questions were insightful and intelligent (as always), and the conversation was marvelous, inspiring, and fun; there’s nothing I love more than communing with other queer crime writers (or any writers, to be certain), and I always try very hard to not monopolize panels because I do have a tendency to talk too much–especially if and when I get going on a topic I am passionate about. So, I thought it might be fun to take John’s questions and turn them into a long form interview, for thoroughly selfish and totally self-promotional reasons.
The panel blurb claims that “queer characters are riveting and necessary material for crime fiction and how those stories can shape (and perhaps reshape) the landscape of contemporary crime fiction.” Do you agree with this statement—and why do the stories of queer characters have the potential to shape crime fiction?
I completely agree with this statement. Queer crime fiction has a very proud history that was never really recognized or appreciated by the mainstream crime writers, readers, organizations, and conferences. That is changing for the better.
New blood is always necessary for any genre–horror, romance, crime, literary fiction–because genres tend to stagnate after a certain period of time. The cultural shifts of the late 1960’s and 1970’s echoed in crime fiction, for example; you couldn’t write crime in those periods without addressing all the cultural and social shifts; Ross Macdonald’s later novels are a good example of this. The 1970’s saw a lot of anti-hero books being written. The private eye sub-genre had grown quite stale by this time, which was when the women really moved in and gave it a shot of adrenaline–Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton blazed that trail, and revitalized a sub-genre that had kind of lost its way. Queer writers and crime writers of color are currently doing the same to the entire genre. Voices and perspectives we aren’t used to seeing are now getting into print and changing how we see, not only our genre, but each other. Crime fiction has always given voice to societal outsiders and outliers; queer people and people of color are the ultimate outsiders and outliers in this country. Who better to tell stories of societal alienation?
Why did you choose your sub-genre? How do you think the sub-genre has influenced the types of characters you write?
Well, I write in several different ones. Chanse MacLeod was a straight private-eye series; Scotty Bradley was more of an amateur sleuth/humorous series, but he does have a private eye license in Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Murder was a cozy, with an amateur sleuth heroine who gets caught up in a family mystery. I’ve also done young adult and “new adult,” whatever that is (it’s been described as ages 16-25), and Gothics with a touch of the supernatural. I tend to write things that I like to read, and I have a varied reading taste. I started writing the Chanse series because I wanted to do a harder-edged private eye series with a queer twist and set it in New Orleans. I didn’t know about J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series when I started writing Chanse; would I have done something different had I known she’d already covered the hardboiled lesbian private eye in New Orleans? We’ll never know, I suppose. Scotty was meant to be a lark; a funny caper novel and a one-off. And here we are nine books later…
As for Streetcar, I had been wanting to try a traditional mystery with a straight woman main character for a long time. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in with both feet. I like trying new things and pushing myself. Having to follow the “rules” of a traditional cozy was a challenge–especially because I have such a foul mouth in real life. I love noir so am working on two different gay ones at the moment.
Why do you think amateur detectives are appealing? Do you think there’s a reason queer characters often find themselves in the role of amateur detective?
I think it’s because we all think we’re smarter than the police? We enjoy seeing a character we can identify with figuring things out faster than the cops, especially without access to all the evidence, interviews, and forensics the cops do. Murder She Wrote has been off the air for about thirty years and yet the books based on the show continue coming out every year. If we start out in mysteries reading the juvenile series–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Judy Bolton and all the rest were amateurs, so we always cut our teeth in the genre with them to begin with. Scotty is basically an amateur, even though he has a private eye license he rarely uses; he and the boys never get hired (although they kind of do in the new one, coming this November.)
Let’s talk about place. Greg, your books take place in the South. Why is place important to the crime novel—why is it especially important to the queer crime novel?
Place shapes who we are–not just as queer people, but as people in general. There are similarities between growing up in a small town in the Midwest and growing up in one in the South, but the differences are very marked. I’ve lived all over the country–pretty much everywhere but New England or the Northwest–and always felt, as a Southerner (despite no accent and not growing up there) like an outsider. Couple that with being gay in a time when it was still considered a mental illness, and you have someone always on the outside looking in. But I have that Southern pull to write about the South–although many would say that writing about New Orleans and writing about the South are not the same; like me, New Orleans both is and isn’t of the South, and I feel that very strongly. I’ve written books set in California and Kansas, even one in upstate New York, but I very much consider myself a Southern writer.
Place is even more important in a queer crime novel because place shapes the queer people so much. As a writer, I think one of my strengths is setting and place, and I think that comes from being very much a fan of Gothics growing up. Gothics are known for place and mood, and I think those are two things I do well.
All of you write wonderfully flawed characters. Sometimes, as LGBTQ+ writers, we feel the burden of representation and the urge to write only positive LGBTQ+ characters as an attempt to undo history’s (the dominant culture’s) demonization of us. Unfortunately, that can be limiting—even flattening. Clearly, you’ve all struck a beautiful balance with your characters. Talk a bit about how you approached this issue.
The flaws, to me, are what make the characters seem real. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys always annoyed me because they were so perfect; no one is that perfect, and anyone that close to perfect in real life would be irritating and insufferable. I am am quite aware that I am flawed (one of my biggest flaws is believing I am self-aware because I most definitely am not), but I am not trying to be perfect; I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. By showing queer people with all their facets and flaws and failures and blind spots, we’re showing the reader that we are human; despite what those who hate us say or claim, we are human beings just like everyone else, just trying to get through life and do the best that we can. The villain in my first book was a gay man–and the entire book was a commentary on how we, as queer people, tend to overlook flaws and red flags from members of our own community. Just because someone is queer doesn’t mean they are a good person–and queers with a criminal bent do exist, and often take advantage of that sense of camaraderie we feel with each other, especially when we don’t know the person well. I tend to trust a queer person more readily than I will a straight person, and that’s wrong–which is why I think we feel so much more hurt when queer people betray us.
Speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ+ folks … Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame said, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” What do you think about the current tactics to ban queer books from schools, libraries, and even bookstores in places like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas? Why are they targeting queer books?
This is, I hope, the last gasp of the homophobes who’ve never updated their hate speech in over fifty years. What the hate group “Moms for Liberty” are doing and saying is no different than what Anita Bryant said and did in the 1970’s, what Maggie Gallagher and her evil co-horts at the National Organization for Marriage repeated, then came the One Million Moms…all too often it’s the cisgender straight white women who are the real foes of progressive politics who fight to uphold a bigoted status quo. They always claim they’re concerned moms worried about their children–but are perfectly fine with them being shot up at school; working in a meat factory on the night shift at thirteen (have fun in hell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when you get there and French-kiss your Lord and Master Lucifer); or shouldn’t have the right to vote…they know better than a child’s actual parents, you see, about what the child needs or wants. Maybe they should spend more time with their own children than worrying about everyone else’s? Phyllis Schlafly, queen skank of the conservative right, ignored her own family while she embarked on her crusade to strip women of their rights and autonomy–all the while shrieking like a hyena into any microphone nearby that she was fighting progress to save the American family while selling some Leave it to Beaver-like nonsense as reality. I always felt sorry for her gay son. Imagine that as your mother.
As for why, it’s about control and power. I actually respected Anita Bryant more, because she truly believed all the vile, horrible, unChristian things she said and espoused. Most of the others, including the unspeakably vile and disgusting Moms for Liberty, are working a grift for money, attention and power. Hilariously, they’ve sold their souls in the worst possible way in the guise of family, religion and God; if they’ve ever actually read their Bibles, they need to work on their reading comprehension skills as they are both apostates and blasphemers who will spend eternity doing the breast stroke in the lake of eternal fire. Hope they enjoy it.
Sorry your husbands and children don’t love you, but who can really blame them?
What are you working on next? What’s coming up?
I have a short story in an anthology called School of Hard Knox from Crippen and Landru (and somehow got a co-editor credit for the book with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor); Death Drop, the first in a new series from Golden Notebook press, drops in October; and the ninth Scotty comes out in November, Mississippi River Mischief. I am writing a gay noir, and may be writing second books for the new series I started with Crooked Lane last year as well as a sequel to Death Drop, and have a couple of short stories I want to finish to submit to anthologies I’d love to be in.
And today I am having the oral surgery. Heavy heaving sigh. It will be horrible as these things inevitably are, but at least when I come out of it and start healing, I no longer will have to worry about mouth pain again, or for a while at any rate. Whew, so no big plans for my weekend other than soft and/or liquid foods and pain medication. It will be weird. It also makes a little sad, too, because the last time I had this procedure done I went to Kentucky to have it done so Mom could take care of me.
I always meant to go back up and have it done there…sigh. Oh, Mom.
But life is much better with the ability to hear. It’s really amazing, and I don’t think I ever heard this clearly in my life before, so clearly my hearing has always been a problem. And I have a new prescription for my glasses, so I’ll be ordering new pairs from Zenni relatively soon, which is great. So, soon enough I’ll be able to see clearly, I can already hear better, and the mouth pain will be finished. Yesterday was weird, because I knew I had this today, and so I am also taking off Monday and Tuesday, just in case. I also made a plan to make sure I get there and back; I am taking a Lyft there, then to the CVS for my pain prescription, and then another home. It makes more sense than trying to find someone who has the day free and is willing to give it up to cart me around.
There was a truly marvelous thunderstorm that erupted right as I was leaving the office yesterday–and I still managed to drive home without getting irritated, annoyed and aggravated at the hapless New Orleans drivers who’ve clearly never driven in the rain before because it’s so rare here. Bitch, please–everyone learns how to drive in snow because its unavoidable in places where it snows, so why are New Orleanians such shitty drivers in the rain? That is definitely an unsolved mystery.
I finished doing the page proof corrections and sent them in yesterday, and so the two books being released this fall in back-to-back months are finally, once and for all, finished and I can move on to writing other things without guilt. (I had already started writing other things, of course, but I did have that nagging guilt about these two books not being finished and in production yet.) I”m still not entirely certain what all I am going to be doing next–I have no contracts in place, but am not letting that bother me in the least (which is an improvement; being out of contract usually puts me into a panicked frenzy in which I start pitching things everywhere–which is not the best, you know; and always gets me in trouble) and I am relatively certain I won’t be lucid for most of the weekend (then again, you never know; I have a high pain threshold and I don’t think I stayed on the pain pills the first time longer than a day or two) and my terrible memory (which used to be so pinpoint sharp it was eerie) doesn’t help.
We also watched some of the US Open last night before I went to bed–I didn’t finish watching the Madison Keys match, which she should have won in the second set–which was kind of fun. I don’t feel as excited about sports as I used to; not sure what that is about, but it’s an unfortunate reality.
And on that note, I need to start getting ready. I am not wearing the hearing aids because I don’t need to hear the procedure clearly, frankly. Hopefully I’ll be able to check in tomorrow, or even later today. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!
Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I slept super-great last night–the first time this week that has happened–and only woke up once. I feel rested and good this morning. Tomorrow, of course, I have to get my oral surgery done in the morning (yay? Well, the end result will be a lot of pain to end the almost constant pain I’ve been living with for years, so that’s better, right?) and then it will be a soft food/mostly liquid (not alcoholic) for I don’t know how long. I weighed myself yesterday, and with even my shoes and belt on and my keys attached to my belt and my wallet in my pocket, I’d lost three pounds since the last time I weighed myself (I would imagine all the eating I did in San Diego made me weight go up dramatically). It would be great if I could get back down to 200 at some point (I remember the days vividly when I would never admit to weighing that much publicly; then again, weighing that much would have completely freaked me out).
I managed to get the page proofing for Mississippi River Mischief done last night after work, and the book’s not bad at all. The writing is strong and the plot makes sense, which is always a plus, and it does move along nicely. I also had forgotten that I had set up the next one in the afterward; or at least had gotten the premise begun–this next one is going to take place while the boys are living in the dower house on Papa Diderot’s Garden District property, and maybe, just maybe, this next one will be the long-awaited and never-written (thanks to Katrina) Hurricane Party Hustle. Then again I am getting ahead of myself, am I not? Let me get all this other stuff done first and then I can worry about the tenth Scotty. But next year Scotty turns twenty-one at last (legal at last! legal at last!) and so I think I may spend a lot of time next year celebrating twenty-one years of Scotty. I think the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz might finally get launched, making the book available for the first time since 2010, and then I can rest easy at long last. I’m not sure how much work I am going to be able to do this weekend–will I be on painkillers the entire time? Will I be too zonked out on painkillers to get anything done this weekend? I guess we shall just have to wait and see. I also don’t know if and when I’ll be blogging again, either. But hopefully I can be lucid enough to read S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed or if I can’t read, lucid enough to watch movies.
We watched some of the US Open last night, which was nice. I keep forgetting that it’s happening; we stream now rather than have cable, so I no longer have any idea when anything actually airs or what is actually airing, which is a significant shift in how I watch television. It was nice that so many Americans made it to the quarter-finals–it’s been a long time since the US made such a great showing at the US Open–and sadly, I have to admit that I’ve just not been as interested in tennis since Serena Williams retired. But I do love to watch tennis, as I remembered last night as I proofed, occasionally looking up to watch the action. We watched Madison Keys win, and then watched Carlos Alcazar until I went to bed (Paul of course stayed up watching).
The cover proof also landed in my inbox this morning so that’s what I’ll be doing tonight: filling out the page proof form and proofing the cover. I’m starting to feel creative again, too, which is super-great. I want to get some more writing done, and of course I need to start plotting out the next two books I am going to write while trying to finish a draft of Muscles, which is the plan for this fall (I probably will have to put Muscles aside to work on something else, but might as well get as much done as I can before the arm surgery, whenever that might wind up being).
More and more people who’d been at Bouchercon are testing positive for COVID, which believe me is the worst possible outcome I could have when I swab myself every morning. Sure, it means I’d have to reschedule the oral surgery, but there are definitely worse things that could happen to me then testing positive for it. I would definitely need to be past it when I consult with the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine. It’s weird because everything is so up in the air until I know what’s going on with my arm, and how long the recovery process is going to be. I don’t know that I want to be doing a lot of traveling with my arm in a soft cast and a sling (and not the good kind, wink wink nudge nudge) because how would i handle the carry-on luggage? Heavy sigh. Again–not going to worry about it because that’s just borrowing trouble.
And on that note, my test is negative and I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader.
Labor Day Monday, and time to readjust from “Greg Herren Author” back to my everyday life here in New Orleans. There’s really nothing like your own bed–but the bed I had at the Marriott Marquis in San Diego was probably the most comfortable bed I’ve had in a hotel to date. I had trouble sleeping the whole time I was there, but the bed was so comfortable that I always slept some and always managed to feel, if not completely rested, but at least recharged. But oh what a lovely time it was!
I flew home yesterday from San Diego, where I’ve been since Wednesday. My apologies for being lax in posting while I was away, and I hope you didn’t miss me too much, Constant Reader. But it was also nice being in a bubble for several days practically cut off from the outside world. I didn’t write a single email since Wednesday morning; I only deleted junk. I didn’t write anything, nor did I read anything once I’d checked into the hotel. But what a marvelous time it turned out to be. I love going to Bouchercon–it’s a marvelous escape from the everyday and being around writers (so many writers!) and readers (so many readers!) and it’s just so much fun. There are so many marvelous people in this business that I so rarely get to see in person, and I never have the opportunity to spend time with everyone that I would like to.
There’s also this weird thing about Bouchercons. You can go the entire time without seeing some of your friends who are there; and you never seem to bump into them. Last year in Minneapolis I hardly ever saw Christa Faust, and even then only in passing or from across a very crowded room. This year I bumped into her almost every time I turned around, and it was an absolute delight because I adore Christa. You also get to make new acquaintances and discover new writers, too. I love debut authors! It’s always amazing to find new authors and make new friends, see old friends–and yet there were so many people I only saw fleetingly in passing, or didn’t see at all. But it was incredibly lovely, really. I resisted temptation in the book room (some of the collectible booksellers had some old editions of the kids’ series–including the super-rare ones no one’s heard of–but I knew if I bought any books I’d have to pay to have them shipped home, and so that extra step was enough to trigger my laziness (and miserliness–I can be extravagant to a fault when I really shouldn’t be) to step in and say, no, you don’t need more copies for your collection even if you can replace some damaged ones with ones that look pretty new for a reasonable price. And I don’t regret not buying those books, either. (I will probably get the ones by new acquaintances, though.) I also had four tickets to get free books in the book room, so I picked up Death by Bubble Tea by Jennifer J. Chow; Her Last Affair by John Searles (who I interviewed for Lambda Book Report back when his first novel came out, and that leads to a great story I will save for another time); The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey (whom I adore); and one other that I can’t remember, and I can’t seem to find it this morning. Oh, well. Mindy Carlson, who was on the panel I moderated, gave me a copy of her debut, Her Dying Day (which has the best ever opening!) when I ran into her in the lobby on my way to the airport. I can’t wait to read it!
I finished reading Kelly J. Ford’s marvelous The Hunt on the flight home to Dallas yesterday, and then moved on to Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, both of which are superb. I am almost finished with the Lippman, and when I am finished with this I am going to my chair so I can finish it.
I am pretty much taking the day off from everything and resting. I had planned on going to the grocery store–I still might; it depends on how I feel later–but I am going to relax today. I did get home last night in time to watch LSU embarrass itself on national television last night, but it’s okay. It’s nice to have any expectations for the season gone after the first game, and now I can watch the national title race with idle curiosity while watching LSU get through it’s season with no expectations from them. I was very concerned that they were being over-hyped (everyone seemed to forget that after the big win over Alabama last year, we barely beat Arkansas and lost to Texas A&M before being embarrassed in the SEC title game by Georgia), but this is yet another example of when being right isn’t what you want and brings absolutely no satisfaction–Cassandra was hardly smug as Troy burned around her, after all. I am exhausted, despite the fantastic night’s sleep I got last night, so I think resting up is indeed the way to go for today. We have shows to catch up on, after all, and maybe I’ll even splurge on a movie.
It was a wonderful time. I love my friends in the crime fiction community, and I love that I am sort of known in it now more than I was? I had several people come up and ask about my books, or tell me how fun I am to watch on panels, but I am also beginning to think that I need to be maybe a bit more professional when talking about my own work on panels. Something to ponder as I move into the adulthood of my career (it turned twenty-one this year, after all, which is staggering). I am inspired, reinvigorated, and ready to prove myself worthy to be a part of the community again. I want to get back to my writing and dig into it and keep going and do really good work. Reading Kelly and Laura’s books are inspiring because they remind me to work harder, do better, dig deeper, and aspire for greatness more. I have broken down the barrier that was keeping me from reading novels, or at least was making me unable to focus, and now I hunger to read more. Once I finish Laura’s book I am moving on to S. A. Cosby’s new one, with Alison Gaylin’s marvelous new take on Robert Parker’s Sunny Randall series. (I will never stop marveling that I am friends with, or at least know, my writing heroes.)
And definite shout-outs to all the people who won Anthonys this year, and were nominated. It’s surreal to me to see how many nominees are friends; and it’s absolutely lovely to see that. Only a few winners weren’t friends–and how can you not be happy for friends to get recognition? I adore Catriona McPherson and S. J. Rozan; how delighted was I to lose to writers whose work I’ve admired for years and how thrilling to be in the same category with them? I don’t know Nancy Springer, the other to whom I lost, but I love Enola Holmes. And Kellye Garrett and Wanda Morris are not only incredible writers but wonderful women I am very proud to know. I love Barb Goffman, who has always been so kind and lovely to me ever since the first time I met her. I don’t know Martin Edwards, but from all accounts he is a very kind and lovely and generous person, and I share the TOC of School of Hard Knox with him. The Debut winner, Nita Prose, wasn’t there and I don’t know her, but I do have her book The Maid, and I hope to read it before the end of the year.
So no, I didn’t win any of the Anthonys I was nominated for. What a fucking honor for a gay man to be nominated for three (mainstream, MAINSTREAM not queer-specific) Anthony Awards in the same year for three different books, for anyone, really. I think the only other person to ever be up for three in the same year is S. A. Cosby (and what amazing company to be in, right?); others have been up for two in the same year before (as I was last year; this year Catriona McPherson was a double nominee). I have been nominated for seven Anthonys in total now, and so what if I have lost six times in a row? Awards are lovely, but I honestly don’t mind losing. I love to act like a bitter loser because, well, it’s funny to me. I did start realizing sometime during the pandemic that my “bitter loser” shtick might be insensitive–some people would kill to lose six times; some are never nominated once–and maybe the “bitter loser” shtick doesn’t play as well now as it used to? I don’t know, but it’s such a thrill for me to be nominated, and retrospectively, I’ve had a pretty amazing run: fifteen nominations from Lambda Literary nominations, seven-time Anthony nominee, and once each for the Lefty, the Agatha, the Macavity, and the Shirley Jackson. That’s pretty fucking amazing, and maybe I should finally recognize that maybe, just maybe, I’m pretty damned good at this writing thing? I do need to be better about the other aspects of the business–marketing and promotion and so forth–and since my brain doesn’t juggle as well as it used to, I need to start getting focused and figuring some things out. The rest of this year is going to be taken up mostly with dealing with medical issues (I get my new hearing aids tomorrow!) and I don’t know how much I am going to be able to do or what I can and can’t do; and everything is kind of up in the air now for the rest of the year.
That would have triggered my anxiety before, but I am at peace with it. My decision to override the anxiety and remain calm while traveling worked in both directions, and it was lovely to not get worked up or upset or irritated about anything. I managed to even get my bag from baggage claim, the shuttle to the parking lot, and then drive home without losing my cool–I didn’t even swear at a single driver–and I kind of want to keep that level of calm and cool going forward. I did experience some anxiety before I moderated the Humor and Homicide panel yesterday; I was brought in–not at the last minute, but far too late for me to get copies of the panelists’ books and read them to prepare–late but my word! What a group of amazing professionals I was blessed to moderate! You need to read their books; they are talented and funny and marvelous and I was totally blown away by them–and three of them were debut authors! There was J. D. O’Brien, whose debut novelZig Zag, about a marijuana dispensary employee who plans to rob her employer, only for Westlake-like hijinks to ensue; the delightful Mindy Carlson, whose debut novel I already mentioned; the always wonderful Wendall Thomas, a seasoned pro whose latest, Cheap Trills, sounds incredible and I can’t wait to read; the witty and charming Jo Perry, who has a marvelous series from the point of view of a dead man and whose latest, Cure, sounds great; and Lina Chern, whose debut novel Play the Fool is about a tarot card reader trying to solve her best friend’s murder and sounds amazing. I had them read their book’s opening few sentences, and once I heard them, I knew it was going to be a breeze. It was wonderful! What a great break for me to get to moderate this panel and find even more great books to read. I could have talked to them about their books for hours. Afterwards, I realized I hadn’t even used half of the questions I had–always the sign of a great panel!
Speaking in public has always been difficult for me and always ramps up the anxiety (which I always thought was just stage fright). But now that I know what it is, I can sort of control it. I can’t control the adrenaline spike and what comes with it–the shaking hands, the talking too fast, the shakiness of my brain, the upset of my stomach–but I can control the mental part and not allow the anxiety to take over. It was very strange knowing I can’t control the physical response to the chemical imbalance but I can control the mental/emotional response, so instead of freaking the way I usually do before going on–I focused on making sure pre-panel that they were all comfortable, that I wanted them to talk themselves up with the goal of selling a book to everyone in the room, and basically, asked questions and got out of the way and let them shine like the stars they are–and did they ever! Especially when you remember I hadn’t sent them questions in advance to prepare; they each were speaking extemporaneously, which is impressive as hell. The nervous energy I handled by walking around briskly before the panel and talking to each of my panelists individually and staying hydrated. Yes, I drank water, limited myself to one cappuccino per day, drank iced tea for lunch instead of Coke, and tried very hard to remember to slow down and get over the FOMO I always feel. I did have some cocktails every night, but never enough to get more than a bit tipsy and paced myself more.
And now, I am going to head back to my chair and finish reading the new Lippman and maybe start reading the new Cosby. I have laundry to do, a dishwasher to empty, and basically, I am just going to relax as much as humanly possible today. I should probably make at least a minor grocery run; maybe not. But what a marvelous, marvelous time I had.
Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.
I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.
But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.
But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.
I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.
I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)
I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.
And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!
Monday morning of Bouchercon week and so much to do before I leave on Wednesday it’s not even the least bit amusing. I somehow managed to get very little done over the weekend–I did get some things done, I always do–but I’ve really got to stop taking the weekends off and do some work other than chores. I did manage to get a shit load of books pruned off the shelves, with even more work to be done on those once I get back (and I am going to try to resist buying any books while I’m in San Diego as well).
I did make it to Costco yesterday to get fitted for my hearing aids, which I will be picking up when I get back from San Diego. When I had them in, the difference was so amazing I couldn’t believe it. The hearing tech stood in the doorway to the room with the door open to the main floor, and she spoke to me–in a soft voice–and I could hear her every word clearly and concisely, and the noise from the store didn’t muffle or down her out at all. She even said, “I can tell you can hear better because you’re speaking more softly than you did without them in–so you were even having trouble hearing yourself speak.” I came home from that, making groceries at the Carrollton Rouse’s (and just let me say, getting to the I-10 on-ramp from Carrollton heading uptown might possibly be the worst interchange/on-ramp I’ve ever experienced in my life–seriously, who the fuck designed our highway system through the city of New Orleans?) and collapsing into the cool of the apartment after being out in the “feels like 114” for far too long. I also paid for said hearing aids, which was significantly cheaper than getting them from the doctor’s office (at least almost fifty percent cheaper; always get your hearing aids at Costco, people, otherwise you’re being robbed). I need to make a packing list and perhaps start packing for the trip tonight. I have an eye appointment on my way to the airport on Wednesday morning, and when I get back from the trip I can get my hearing aids, and then that following Friday I have my dental surgery.
I also watched the latest episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is amazing, quite frankly, and then we watched The Flash, which debuted this weekend on streaming. I know we’re aren’t supposed to watch the movie because it’s star, Ezra Miller, has become extremely problematic in their (I believe they identify as non-binary and use they/them) personal life, with some arrests for deeply troubling crimes; I know there was a big push to cancel both him and the film before its release, and yes, the accusations are troubling. But…I already pay for the streaming service; I didn’t spend anything additional to watch, and yes, I gave them a view to count…and more the shame, really. It’s actually one of the better DC movies, far better than expected, and the plot was actually clever and easily understood and made sense. Miller, whose casting I questioned originally, is really good as Barry Allen. Barry Allen/The Flash has always been one of my favorite DC characters, plus it was superfun to see Michael Keaton put on the cape and cowl again as Batman. Warner Brothers has made some troubling decisions about their DC movies over the past couple of years due to the most recent conglomerate merger–cancelling the Batwoman movie and just shelving it, among others–so they put all their eggs into the basket of The Flash being big box office, and held onto that plan even after Miller’s behavior became an issue. I enjoyed the film, but cannot recommend anyone else watch it, either. I felt guilty even watching it, thinking about Miller’s victims, so all I kept thinking during the movie wasn’t just this is good but what a shame this is good. There will inevitably be a documentary and/or true crime book about Miller’s conduct and how it damaged this film and the studio–but I do think, by releasing the film, Warner Brothers sent a very dangerous message about what they will and won’t tolerate from a star they’ve put a major investment into…and I wouldn’t be surprised if the studio didn’t use money and leverage to get Miller the slap on the wrist he got.
It’s very old-school Hollywood, isn’t it?
It’s really a shame, too. I love Barry Allen, I love the Flash, and Miller is great in the role. But with them rebooting the DCUniverse and recasting everyone, it’s a done deal anyway. I hope Miller gets the help they need, and don’t hurt anyone else.
I am also really looking forward to The Blue Beetle. I’m hearing great things about it, and I am very excited to see a Latino/Hispanic cast.
Bouchercon looms, and I am leaving Wednesday. I have an eye appointment on my way to the airport–the kind of thing I would have never done in the past because of the anxiety (what if something happens? What if I get delayed there? On and on and on), so I think I am making progress now that I’ve been able to identify what the problem is. I have to make a packing list of what to take, need to be realistic about what I will and won’t be able to work on and/or get done while I am gone (nothing; I’ll be lucky to blog at all whilst I am there, let alone stay on top of emails). I did do a little writing yesterday on my story “Temple of the Soothsayer,” which I am leaving in Central America for this draft and I’ll see how offensive it turns out, all the while watching for Mayan/indigenous peoples tropes, stereotypes, and cliches. If it doesn’t work without any of that, I’ll move it to the Aegean–the Pythia makes more sense than inventing a Mayan priestess/legend, given how little I (or anyone, really) knows about Mayan mythology. But…jaguars. I’d have to give up on jaguars if I move it to the Aegean.
And I love me some cats.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. I have a lot to do before I leave Wednesday, very little time in which to do it, and I am going to need to really get organized over these next two days. Wish me luck as I head into the spice mines!
Sunday morning, and this afternoon I am getting fitted for hearing aids. I’ve always had trouble hearing, even as a child–ambient noise was the perpetrator the majority of the time–but somehow always managed to come in with just enough hearing to not require assistance, which I’ve always thought rather odd. The older I get the worse it gets. I can’t hear the oven timer if the television is on; Paul always has to tell me it’s beeping and if he’s not home, I just stay in the kitchen or watch the clock. The hearing aids are expensive, but they are very much cheaper at Costco (which is where I am getting them) than from the doctor’s office where my test failed. I have things to get done today, and after the hearing aid adventure I am going to make groceries at the Rouse’s on Carrollton (since I’m right there already) before returning home. An adventure in the heat!
I slept late this morning, primarily because we stayed up later than usual. Paul stayed home, which was unusual for a Saturday to begin with, so when he got up I gave up on getting much of anything done and repaired to my easy chair, where I peacefully reclined and watched things. We got caught up on Only Murders in the Building, which is becoming more guilty pleasure than actually fun; we watched the Gal Gadot action/adventure movie Heart of Stone (highly entertaining, but action sequences in movies are getting more and more ridiculous, especially when it comes to airplanes and aerial maneuvering), and then moved on to a crime show on Hulu, Saint X, which is about a pretty white girl that disappears from a Caribbean island vacation and turns up dead.
I also pruned a shitload of books out of the bookcases. As I mentioned yesterday, its very hard for me to donate books written by friends because it feels like I’m donating the friendship, which makes sense in my twisted and confused brain. But I am trying to break down those neuroses and idiotic superstitions that always seem to govern my life; coping mechanisms are enormously helpful. I don’t expect my friends to keep my books in their collections, after all–and I have limited space and know a lot of writers. But I cleared off a shelf in the laundry room for cleaning supplies and so forth, which is nice, and I also cleared out space in the bookcases in the living room, so the top two laundry room shelves won’t look so crammed in with books. I also really need to start cleaning out the storage attic, and I need to get most of that done before my arm surgery–whenever that will be–because that will make it incredibly difficult to maneuver boxes down from up there. Right now, I have about five boxes of books to donate stacked in the living room. (God only knows when they’ll get taken to the library sale, but the process has begun.) I will probably prune some more while I am working on the laundry room shelves as well.
The page proofs for Mississippi River Mischief dropped into my inbox on Thursday night, and yesterday I spent some time rereading the book–catching some things, but I wasn’t proofing, I was reading–and the book isn’t terrible at all. It shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it always does when I reread something in proof form–which is the first time it looks like a book to me, and so it seems more real at last–and it’s good. I am pretty good at this, but I’ve been doing it for a very long time so I should be by now, right? I’ll probably keep reading–I always like to read it through before proofing–it today, and will proof it after I come back from Bouchercon. I’m not planning on trying to even write anything while I’m in San Diego. I never end up writing anything–it’s a struggle to even blog on a daily basis while I’m conferencing–let alone keep up with my email, or try to write anything. I generally don’t even have time to read while I’m at a conference, unless I get peopled out and have to go hide in my room. There are panels that I want to go see and people I want to connect with–Minneapolis was lovely but too short a time to catch up with people I’ve not seen in years, so hopefully San Diego will work out better for me. I do have four panels, after all; that’s a lot of being in front of an audience and speaking. I am not having anxiety about it, though, which is always a plus. Of course, there’s still time for that to kick in, but I am not going to worry about having anxiety–which is an endless loop of stress.
So I am going to finish this, get cleaned up and get some stuff done. My appointment is at 1:45, so I have all morning to get things done as well as do some writing and perhaps even some editing, who knows? The whole day stretches before me, filled with endless possibility.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.
Saturday morning and I slept in. I stayed in bed until eight thirty (perish the thought! What a lazy lagabed!) with the end result that I will not, in fact, be driving over to the West Bank this morning to get my oil changed and fluids checked. It’s not due, but (anxiety) the heat has been so intense, I want to make sure the engine is being looked after properly and of course, the fluids. Now it will have to wait until I get back as the dealership isn’t open on Sundays and I leave Wednesday for San Diego Bouchercon. I am starting to get some anxiety about the trip, but I am trying to ride herd on that. Whereas before it was gnaw away at me and build, now I just dismiss those thoughts as “anxiety” and move on from it. I doubt this methodology will be a long term solution–I probably should see a therapist again–but I already take an anti-anxiety medication to control my mood swings; do I need something else on top of that? Probably not. I am leery of medications to begin with–the opioid disaster always is there in the back of my head, plus the fear of addiction.
But since I didn’t get up, I will be staying in for the rest of the day and working on the apartment and writing and so forth. Tomorrow I am going to get fitted for hearing aids, so anything I might need to get by going out into the world today (I was thinking about doing a minor grocery run to get a few things) I can get tomorrow at the Rouse’s on Carrollton. I am kind of excited about being able to hear properly; I don’t think I’ve ever been able to my entire life, although I always passed hearing tests. My problem is low voices and ambient noise. I can’t hear anything in a crowded bar or restaurant. And I have my appointment about my arm in a few weeks, and of course, I am getting my teeth taken care of once I get home from San Diego. I will be a completely different person by the end of the year than I was when I started the year, won’t I? Maybe not The Six Million Dollar Man, but the surgery isn’t going to be very cheap.
We finished watching Swamp Kings last night, and I was right–it was really a puff piece, focused on making Urban Meyer as good as possible and not focusing on any of the criminal charges or how the University covered it all up because at that time, Florida football was the face of college football and everyone was watching and they were making the University a shit-ton of money. (Not to single out the Gators–although this documentary was about them, so it does raise these questions organically–these kinds of abuses and corruption happen all too often at far too many programs. LSU has had its own history of cover-ups and looking the other way to protect star players in the past, for example, and I’ve always been disappointed at how those situations were handled by my own favorite team. Hiring Joe Alleva as Athletic Director at LSU was a huge mistake, as he repeatedly showed Tiger Nation, over and over again. His replacement has done a fantastic job rebuilding LSU athletics from the ashes left by Alleva’s miserable tenure.) But I love college football, and I remember that time period particularly well. I have always stuck to the SEC mantra of “hate them in the conference, root for them in the post season” (which everyone does except Alabama fans for the most part–which I just now realized is probably a leftover remnant from the Civil War “us against them” mentality and my stomach turned a bit; but that’s also a good focus for the essay I want to write about LSU and football in the south in general, “Saturday Night In Death Valley.”) I am very excited and happy college football season is nigh. Woo-hoo!
I spent some time with Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt, which is actually quite marvelous. I haven’t had the bandwidth lately to read novels–mostly sticking to my Alfred Hitchcock Presents project–but I was enjoying her book when I started reading it a few weeks ago and had been wanting to get back to it. But anxiety and stress and the fucking heat have sapped so much out of me every day that it was hard to focus on reading a novel. Kelly is a marvelous writer, which is terrific–there’s really nothing like a queer writer with a working class background writing about the South they grew up in, is there? Kelly is kind of a lesbian cross between Tom Franklin, Carson McCullers, and Dorothy Allison, with some Faulkner and Ace Atkins thrown in for good measure. Her debut novel Cottonmouths was a revelation (I can’t tell you how thrilling it is for this old man to see so much amazing crime writing coming from new queer writers), and her second, Real Bad Things, is nominated for an Anthony Award next week–so she joins the few queer crime writers of queer crime novels who’ve been nominated for an Anthony Award! We’re a small but growing club, which is also very exciting. GO QUEERS!
So, yes, a lovely day of preparation for going away next weekend. Today I should go ahead and make my packing list–I could even go ahead and pack the rolling briefcase, couldn’t I?–and clean and do things around the house and read and maybe even do some writing. It feels cool today in the house–but of course it’s still morning–and just checked my emails and yes–there it is; today’s heat advisory with temperatures feeling like up to 114 until eight pm tonight. It’s really going to feel like winter to me in San Diego, isn’t it?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later or tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 