PT was hard yesterday–it keeps getting harder every time–but I got through it, did very well with it, and then walked outside, my endorphins pumping through my veins and it was simply a beautiful, sunny day in New Orleans. I picked up my prescription before PT, and got the mail afterwards before driving home down Prytania Street. I did have trouble finding a place to park on the way there, so was a few minutes late–it’s close to Napoleon and people were already camping out on the parade route for the night parades–so I was certain I wouldn’t find parking when I got home. My spot was there Thursday night when I got home, so what were the odds I’d have parade parking luck two days in a row? But lo and behold, my spot was waiting for me when I got home.
Needless to say, that also dramatically picked up my spirits! And now the car won’t move again until Monday…which begs the question, will I have parking when I get home after PT Monday morning?
I spent most of my time out on the corner Thursday night just marveling at it, the way I always do at first–so many people, so many costumes, so much partying and so much joy; how dark it is here at night, so it’s like the dark is reaching down from the sky to absorb the lights from the parade and flames of the flambeaux, and everyone is a good mood. It’s so lovely to just go out and hang with friends and neighbors and strangers. You always end up talking to total strangers and having a good time, relaxed and a slightly buzzed (some people do overdo it and become Carnival tragedies) and watchings kids tossing footballs around on the street when there’s a break between parades (or a breakdown in the parade) and of course, the marching bands are fucking amazing. I am going to write about Mardi Gras again soon, so it’s good to drink it all in again and remember fun times of past seasons.
I was too fatigued from the PT yesterday to go out there last night, so we watched LSU Gymnastics beat Georgia last night and then just relaxed for the rest of the night. I did watch the first episode of Abbott Elementary, which I really enjoyed, so we’ll continue watching that, I think. Despite a great night’s sleep, I am still feeling fatigued this morning, which means I’ll be dead tired after Iris today. We’ll see how I feel about Tucks after Iris is over. Sunday is always insane down there at the corner, so we generally skip Sundays, and then it’s Orpheus Monday.
I did get some chores done yesterday, too. I worked on the laundry room and swept the living room, got all the bedding laundered, and rested after getting my work-at-home duties completed. I think since it’s Iris Saturday, all I will do today is read and watch television or some movies or something. I did finish reading Deliberate Cruelty, so I am going to try not to start another one until all the ones I am in the middle of are complete. I also need to make a series of to-do lists: one for the apartment, one for my career, and one for my every day life. I need to snap out of the lethargy, and I really need to dive headfirst into writing again. I want to get these stories finished and I want to get back to work on the book I’m in the midst of and has been stalled for quite some time.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and ready for Iris to roll. See you later, Constant Reader, and may your Saturday be everything you desire in one.
Friday morning after Muses, and I am a little tired–physically. Mentally I am alert as ever and feel great, but I am not used to standing on the sidewalk for so long anymore. Chaos last night was my first parade (the floats were hilariously inappropriate; all I will say is the theme of the parade was “balls” and leave it at that), and we came home to rest before Muses arrived. We didn’t stay out for long, I was tired and sleepy and it got here around ten; we lasted out there for about an hour before I started flagging and came back inside. However, I realized I should have gone to parades to warm up for this weekend; I forgot that it takes a parade day to warm you up and get you in the proper spirit; I should be good to go tonight if my PT this morning isn’t too vicious.
And yes, we got a really cool shoe.
I had a good day at work yesterday, got a lot of things done and caught up and feel confident not being in the office again until Ash Wednesday will not be disastrous for me or put me really behind on things. I came home early (it took me an hour), and I came inside and watched this week’s episode of Capote v. the Swans, which was done in documentary style, which was an interesting take. I’m not quite as obsessed as I was about Capote when I first started watching, but I do want to read the Gerald Clarke bio of him, and maybe even George Plimpton’s Capote. It’s taken me awhile to get interested in Capote, and while I wouldn’t say it’s an obsession anymore, I am still very much interested in this incredibly famous openly gay man in the middle of the twentieth century. I have added Deliberate Cruelty, a true crime narrative about Ann Woodward’s feud with him by Roseanne Mantillo, to the books I am reading and I finished it last night.
And yes, I am beginning to understand precisely why he wrote “La Côte Basque 1965” and why he published it, but more on that when the show is finished and I give it, and Capote, an entry of their own.
As for me and the weekend, I have taken Monday off and so I am hoping that I’ll be able to get some reading and writing done today, Sunday and Monday (I will always take Saturday off from everything to go to Iris). I want to finish editing this one short story and finish writing another, and perhaps get them submitted somewhere. I have laundry going already and a dishwasher to unload and reload. I have PT this morning, a prescription and the mail to pick up, and then the car won’t move again until Monday at the earliest, as I will need to probably make a grocery run. I also should be able to finish reading Deliberate Cruelty so I can focus on Lina Chern’s Playing the Fool, which I am greatly enjoying. I also have some blistering blog entries to write, so this weekend should be fun on that score.
And hopefully I’ll be able to get this place ship-shape and get myself caught up on everything that needs catching up on.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have yourself a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.
So, are you ready for some MORE blatant self-promotion?
During the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, the other panel I was on had to do with writing young adult fiction (the other panelists were amazing, I might add), and once again, I am answering the questions sent to us by the moderator to turn into an interview with JUST me (because it’s all about ME ME ME) but I do urge you to seek out the video of the panel. It was terrific, and I was definitely the most uninteresting person on the panel, seriously; this is NOT self-deprecation. (I bought everyone’s books during the panel, I might add; definitely check out Lauren Melissa Ellzey.)
What is the definition of Young Adult? How does it differ from other genres?
I think it’s primarily an age distinction, to be honest, which is something that always makes me uncomfortable. Growing up I read far above my age level; when I was in seventh grade I was reading at a college level, per the tests and so forth. I mean, I did read The Godfather when I was ten; my parents, despite their conservative religious beliefs and values, let me read whatever I wanted without having to ask permission–I think when I asked Mom if I could read something the last time she replied “Read whatever you want, I don’t care” and after that I never asked again. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as young adult; everything was either for adults or “juvenile.” The juvenile category contained multitudes, beginning with the Little Golden Books and picture books to kids’ mysteries to Judy Blume. I think sometime in the 1980’s the genre was separated into “juvenile” for kids 8-12 and “young adult” for 12-18.
But there are kids like me, who can read above their age/class level and others who can’t read at their age/class level, and I think in some ways that differential could be harmful for those who are below-average readers–reading is the most crucial aspect of education, because if you can’t read…and no matter how many ways they try to make the language around slower readers more accepting and less stigmatizing…it doesn’t really help kids to be told they’re below average or not as smart or quick as the other students. (One of my primary problems throughout my education is I would understand something the first time, while others inevitably didn’t, and as the teacher explained for a second or third or more time, my ADD would kick in and my mind would wander because I didn’t need to listen and then wouldn’t be listening when the teacher moved on.
Ah, well.
Oh, and all subgenres of fiction also have the middle grade/juvenile and young adult sub-sub-genres.
Why or how did YOU choose YA?
I don’t know that I chose y/a so much as it chose me.
I started writing when I was a child (all my childish scribblings are lost to moves and time passing), and I wrote about kids my age. My first attempts at writing were always some kind of kids’ mystery series, a la The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators (I’d still like to do this, frankly), and when I became a teenager, I started writing about teenagers. I wrote a bunch of short stories while in high school about the same group of kids going to the same high school. Those stories slowly but surely grew into a sprawling, handwritten novel about the county with plots and subplots and main characters and minor characters and all of this history; a “Peyton Place in Kansas kind of thing”. I worked on it for like five years, and eventually had this enormous sprawling mess that needed to be revised and rewritten and typed…and since I didn’t know how to type, made that part of it a problem. So I shoved it into a drawer and started pulling from it rather than revising it; taking out plots and characters and using them in other books and other stories.
After I finished that, I spent the next five years mostly working on short stories. I started another book, more horror than anything else, but never got further than the third chapter. I finally decided to write a horror novel built from my old manuscript and those short stories from high school. I was about three chapters into it when I discovered two things: there was a big market in y/a horror at the time (Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine were HUGE during this period) and so I bought some of them. When I finished, I thought, “You know, I should turn Sara into a y/a novel” (because I thought somehow that would be easier? Foolish, foolish rookie) and so… I did. I was right in that thinking of it in those terms made it possible for me to finish a draft, but I wasn’t very happy with it so I put it aside and started writing another one, Sorceress, which was also horror but also had some strong Gothic moments in it. When I finished that one, again I wasn’t pleased with it so I started another–Sleeping Angel–which was the one I thought really had potential. I never finished that draft–by this time I’d discovered that gay fiction and nonfiction existed, so I started reading that and trying to write about gay characters instead.
Those manuscripts remained in my drawer for well over a decade, until a friend of mine took a job as a young adult acquisitions editor, and she wanted to work with me. I told her I’d written three (although it was technically two and a half), and gave her a brief synopsis of them. She liked Sorceress the best, so I started revising and editing it and turning it into something publishable. Once it was all done, she’d left that publisher, but started her own small press for y/a books for underrepresented teens, and she wanted to launch the press with Sorceress. I said “okay” and we were off. I eventually realized I needed to let Bold Strokes know, and when I did, I got an email back saying you know we do y/a, too? And so I sold the other two to them, and have never looked back since then.
Are there specific rules for writing YA (things you can’t do)? Does Bold Strokes add on or impose specific or additional rules?
I don’t pay too much attention to rules, frankly. There’s no graphic sex in my books, but it’s hinted at. I also try to swear less in young adult books than I do in adult fiction, which is probably not as big of a deal as I think it is? The society I grew up in was a lot more puritanical–believe it or not–that the one we live in today. So I always default to that setting, and then have to shake it off. Swearing isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be. No one thinks they’re marrying a virgin anymore, and on and on. And having been attacked for daring to accept an invitation to speak to queer high school students, I tend to tread softly. There have been a couple of times where I’ve had to change language, or how a scene went, because my editor thought it might be problematic; and frankly, I never want to be offensive, so I have no problem with it. I don’t see it as a free speech issue the way so many intentionally offensive writers claim it is. I shouldn’t take offense to someone calling me a faggot? Grow the fuck up. The so-called free speech “crusaders” are always defending hate speech as well as trying to shut up the people who find it objectionable. You do not have a constitutional freedom from consequences or getting a negative response to things you say and do, period. It’s really not hard to understand unless you want to be passive/aggressive and childish and a moron.
How do you remember back to these days, specifically how it felt or feels? (this is coming from your moderator who is much older than you are)
Well, for one thing, I’ve always kept a journal and I still have them all. (I was insufferable when I was younger, seriously.)
My sister has a theory that we forget a lot of the pleasant memories from our childhoods, but remember the traumas in great detail. I believe the truth of that, because school was a nightmare for me from the day we moved to the suburbs until I was done with it. I remember how it felt to read Greg Herren sucks cock on a desk at school. I remember how it felt to be mocked, laughed at, and bullied by assholes. I do remember the good things, though I tend to always focus on the bad.
The first thing I always do is abandon whatever “wisdom” about life I’ve theoretically learned since leaving high school, and put myself into the teenager mindset: they think they are the main characters in everyone they know’s story, and everything is the end of the world or their life is ruined and you are the most horrible parent ever! I’m not entirely sure I’ve escaped thinking that way, to be brutally honest: I am horribly selfish.
How do you come up with your characters? Your stories?
I am weird in that I inevitably always start with a title. I hear something or read something and think, that would make a good title. The next question is what story would fit that title? And it kind of goes from there. The title may change, the character names and story might change and evolve, but I can’t write anything that doesn’t have a title. Bizarre, I know. Usually with my young adult stuff it’s an idea I’ve had for a number of years and finally decide to explore whether it’s a novel or a short story, and go from there.
Dark Tide was originally called Mermaid Inn, Bury Me in Shadows was originally Ruins, but the others pretty much stayed the same from beginning to end.
I wrote #shedeservedit because I was angry about the Steubenville/Maryville rape cases, and remembered stories and gossip from when I was in high school and college…and rethinking them through a more evolved brain about women and misogyny… well, it made me angrier. I had already planned on writing a story set in the same town with the same characters and opening with the same murder (I always referred to it as “the Kansas book” for years), but the motive was something I always had trouble grounding in reality. After those cases…it clicked in my head. You need to write this story about small town misogyny, protecting the star jocks from the girls at all cost, and make that the plot. It was easy to write because I was angry. Making it a compelling read was harder, because the subject matter was sickening to me.
I needed to write that book, and I don’t regret doing it, either…but it’s not exactly a feel good story people can escape into, either.
Why do you think YA is so popular?
It’s more accessible, I think. I mentioned reading ability before, and I do think that most readers aren’t into the Great Literary Tomes, hundreds of pages of beautiful writing with no real point or story. People kind of want to escape their cares and worries, and y/a books tend to be really entertaining. We’re competing with phones and tablets and streaming, so we need to write entertaining and engaging books.
Any specific must do-s or must-haves to get your writing each day?
I’m not nearly as anal about that as I used to be, before I returned to work full-time. I am very aware that I have little time to waste when I write, and thus must seize whatever opportunities to write show up. But if pressed, coffee. I can’t write unless I’ve had coffee when I got up.
I think this is all of them, but I could be wrong.
Wednesday and the parades are rolling again tonight. I don’t think I’m ready to deal with this, to be honest. I can’t believe it’s the final weekend of Mardi Gras madness already, can you? I have to run a couple of errands today after leaving work, trying to get it all accomplished and get my ass home while it’s still possible to find a place to park. Much as I don’t want to deal with the errands tonight, tomorrow would be even more difficult as it’s Muses Thursday, and going straight home from work is no guarantee I can park within a mile of the house. Sigh. The pleasure of living inside the box, right?
I was super tired when I got home yesterday, and I never did feel like I was fully awake all day, to be honest. I was finally able to get my night time prescription refilled again, after the first pill bottle mysteriously disappeared (all fingers point at Sparky, and it’s probably under the dishwasher or the couch), and so I had to adjust back from one medication (I still had my old night time medication) to the right one again, which would explain why yesterday I never felt like my brain escaped the fog. Today is, in fact, the first day in a long time where I’ve felt mentally alert again, which is great. It’s terrible when you’re not on your game, and you aren’t sure why; now that I am in my sixties mental things are much more alarming than they used to be–and some memories I’ve forgotten are so forgotten even when I am reminded, in great detail, I don’t remember anything about it. That’s disturbing on a very deep level; my mental acuity is something I do worry about as I get older. We don’t have any mental deterioration diseases in the family as far as I can remember–I need to ask Dad about that, along with any other genetic conditions he and Mom might have or know about within the family (we aren’t a family that talks about that sort of thing much; I think it’s mostly because we have so much genetic tendency to faulty wiring in our brains to begin with)–but I think I’d know about it if it was in the immediate family.
Anyway, tonight when I get home from work I need to do some laundry and the dishes. I don’t know if I’ll go out to the corner tonight or not, but all signs point to not. Nyx is the final parade tonight, and as far as I know, Nyx is still a horrific white supremacy krewe (last year my mind was not on Carnival), so I don’t know if I’d want to go to that even if I didn’t have to get up so early in the morning tomorrow. I do need to write about that at some point, don’t I? The great thing about being a crime writer is you never run out of prejudice, bigotry and hate to write about.
It looks like I’ll be going to Alabama to see family and visit Mom’s grave next weekend; Dad is going down for the anniversary of losing her, and I’ll go up and meet him up there for the weekend. It’s just easier, really, for me to go instead of my sister, and I don’t think Dad should do these grave visits without one of us there for him. It’s also kind of for me; it’s just easier mentally and emotionally to focus on Dad’s loss rather than my own. It’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with it, but this is how I generally deal with any kind of personal loss or tragedy in my life: focus on the grief of others. I also suppose that the impending anniversary (today, I think, is the anniversary of her final stroke? It’s all murky to me other than knowing she died on Valentine’s Day) has probably also been working on me subconsciously (subconscious BASTARDS!!!) and could have something to do with the foggy funk I’ve been in lately, in addition to the unfortunate medication change of the last couple of weeks.
I didn’t watch the Grammys the other night, but I did watch the Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs “Fast Car” performance on Youtube, which brought back a lot of memories. “Fast Car” was a very important song in the development of my life and my adulthood; the lyrics of feeling trapped and needing to escape a toxic life situation resonated very deeply with Double Life Gregalicious, and helped start the process of finally merging those two very separate mentally unhealthy existences, which is something else I should blog about–but it was amazing seeing the audience reaction to a middle-aged out Black lesbian, and I’m going to have to listen to her album again; it’s been a hot minute. But thanks again, for your voice and your music and your soul, Ms. Chapman.
I did edit a short story–or started editing, at any rate–last night, and it really is amazing what you don’t see when you’re in the midst of writing it and when you come back to it again after a lengthy period of time. “How the hell did I not see how clunky that sentence is?” was constantly running through my mind, and I also realized what the point of the story was–he’s reached his breaking point, and I need to communicate that to the reader more clearly than in the original draft. It felt good, you know, to work on something, and feel like I was doing some good polishing work on it. I really do love writing.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely check in again with some more blatant self-promotion later.
Okay, that’s technically not true. I don’t write fiction every day, and I don’t work on a book every day. I generally don’t count the blog as actual writing, but it is writing, I suppose, so I do write that pretty much every day. But I’ve never included the blog in daily word counts or anything; just as I wouldn’t (and didn’t) consider emails, text messages, and social media posts as being part of the daily production output (although I suppose I should; I estimated how many words of blog I’ve done since starting this nineteen years ago–twenty in December–and it was a staggering amount, especially since it was probably dramatically under-counted), and never will.
I do think about writing fiction every day, even the days when I am so exhausted and brain dead I don’t think I’m capable of much of anything creative. I am always thinking, and it’s very rare that the brain turns off, unless I go to sleep (thank you, sleeping pills!); as long as part of my mind is awake and alert my mind will eventually wander into creative thinking. It’s just how my mind works.
During the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon last month, I was on a couple of panels, and as usual have decided to turn the questions sent by the moderators as the basis for self-promotional posts. It has been a hot minute–I’ve not done a hell of a lot of promotion since the surgery knocked me off my tracks for a few months–and while I know many other books have come out since and the Greg has a new book excitement amongst my readers has already died down long since, but what the hell, right? I’m nothing if not a narcissist (or have, at best, some narcissistic traits at any rate), and let’s face it, one of my favorite subjects is ME, so why not? No one has to read these self-promotional posts, either. Just scroll on by, if that’s how you feel; my feelings will not be hurt in the slightest, and I no longer have the anxiety of oh my god no one likes me how can I make everyone like me?
How do you ensure that your latest work is not similar to something you have written before? Can you even remember everything you have written before?
After the eighth (?) Scotty book, someone on social media commented on one of my posts asking how many car accidents has Scotty been in? I’d never really thought much about it, but in that moment I realized quite a fucking lot, and that doesn’t include my other, non-Scotty books, either. I realized that I had been in a car accident in 2008 (the first in decades, and I wasn’t at fault) and my car was totaled. It was so weird, and so different from anything I’d ever imagined being in a serious accident like that would be; it took me days to get the taste of chemicals from the airbag out of my throat and my voice was scratchy and husky for about a week or so after. So, of course, I wrote about it in my next book…and then I think I started having a car accident in a lot more of my books. There was also a car accident in one of the earlier Scotty books–Jackson Square Jazz–and so…I didn’t put one in Mississippi River Mischief.
I had never truly worried about repeating myself until that moment of oh my God do I have a car accident in every book? And so now, I try to be really careful. Am I just rewriting a scene I’ve written before? Scotty is on book nine now; I don’t think it’s feasible for me to sit down and reread the entire series every time I am about to write another one. I have always intended to make a Scotty Bible–what all the regular characters look like, their relationships to each other, where they live, little tidbits I’ve dropped over the years that are clues to their personalities–so that I could verify the information in the series and not have to go looking for it (because I am nothing if not lazy, so I’d put it off and forget it and then realize it’s too late to change that now! FUCK!). I also should go back and outline the books, too–just to have something easy to reference when writing another one.
Since I write more than one series and I also write stand-alone novels, I just realized I should probably do this with all of my books…but I am way too lazy to ever get that done. So I will go on trusting my brain and my memory…which is clearly a mistake!
When naming your characters, do you completely avoid names which you have used in the past or do you feel that the characterization alone is enough to differentiate?
I have names I always fall back on–I also tend to like names that start with L’s and J’s for some reason–so I have to be careful with that. I don’t keep track of all character names I’ve used, and I suppose it’s possible that I could “recreate” a character with a name I’ve used before, and even make them the same…but I also re-use characters; they cross over from series to series and back and then to the stand alones. When I was writing Death Drop, I was originally going to have Blaine and Venus be the cops; they were the cops in both of my previous series with a gay male protagonist, so why not keep expanding my New Orleans universe? I eventually changed my mind–I don’t know why, really, or remember, which is probably a more accurate statement–and changed the names; I think I wanted to differentiate the Killer Queen series and make it more distinct from Chanse and Scotty.
I’m worried more about creating characters that are similar to others I’ve written about more so than the name. I was thinking about starting another series–one with a true crime writer as the main character, and he’s already appeared in both the Scotty and Chanse series; I even had an idea for the story. But when I started creating him, I began to realize he was like a mash-up of Chanse and Scotty, so I abandoned the idea. Now that I am thinking about it again, so what if their backgrounds are similar? He’s nothing like either one of them, and it was a good story idea, so…you never know. I try not to ever conclusively rule anything out. I even think about bringing Chanse back every once in a while.
A question I’m sure most of you have received—do you ever worry that you will run out of ideas?
That’s the least of my concerns. I am more worried I won’t live long enough to write everything I want to.
After all these books, do you still enjoy the writing process?
The primary goal of my life has always been to try to surgically remove anything I don’t enjoy from my existence. I am very blessed in that not only do I get to write and tell my stories and people want to read them but I also have a day job that I enjoy and can feel good about the work I do there. So, the only way I would ever stop writing if I stopped enjoying it, and I can’t ever see that happening. Sure, I’ve had times where I had to step away because of burn out or exhaustion, but I always knew it was a break and I would come back to it again. It’s been difficult for me since my surgery in November to get back into it, but I am making progress. I love writing, and am so grateful this childhood dream came true.
I used to bristle a bit when people called me prolific; I just love to write. But I finally stopped that nonsense and accepted the descriptor when I hit my tenth book…which was over thirty books ago. If that’s not prolific, I don’t know what is. ↩︎
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and the sun is shining. It actually looks like a stunningly gorgeous day out there for parades, and of course King Arthur, the last of the day, is one of my favorites (a lot of gays ride in King Arthur). Yesterday was a slow day. I woke up after sleeping for ten hours feeling a little inside out, and the weather wasn’t a help. It rained off and on all day; the parades were all moved up because of the threat of weather (which was accurate; we had a flash flooding thunderstorm later on in the day), and since I was so tired and wrung out, I didn’t feel like attending any of them. I’ll probably go out for King Arthur, maybe for some of the earlier ones, and we’ll see how it goes.
As I said, I was extremely tired all day yesterday and decided to let my body and brain rest for most of it. I did do the dishes and I did get some things done early on, but I soon repaired to my easy chair, where I spent the rest of the afternoon reading–more on that later–but one of the things I wanted to reread was “La Cote Basque” by Truman Capote. I knew it was the story that turned his “swans” against him; I read it many years ago when I went through a Capote phase, when I was able to get past my distaste1 for him personally to start reading his work–which I quickly became a fan of; I love his writing, especially In Cold Blood, and I’ve always preferred the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the film. I always thought he wasted his incredible talents, like so many did, and I am starting to appreciate him more as a person than I ever did before2 and now am curious about reading biographies of him. I never watched any of the films made about him, but now…now I am thinking I should watch them. Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Gore Vidal all knew each other and were contemporaries; openly gay men who didn’t give a fuck about morés and ignored the rule of “don’t ask don’t tell” that pretty much was the only way gay men or other queers could really survive the reality of the deeply homophobic world they existed in. I cannot imagine, but that was also the reality of the world I was also born into, creating internal conflicts that I am still trying to unravel to this day–like why I held Capote in so much distaste, which was really internalized homophobia, which I’ve been confronting since I first watched Capote v. The Swans, and trying to process my way through it.3
Ironically, I wound up rewatching those first two episodes again, because Paul wanted to watch–he also feels the same as me about Capote, which is partly why we never saw any of the earlier films about him–and it’s well done enough for me to easily sit through it again, and it surprised me because I never became bored, even though I’d already seen those episodes. We watched two more episodes of Lupin yesterday, despite my falling asleep during the second, after which we retired to bed.
And here I am this morning, feeling rested and not at all as tired and drug out as I was yesterday, which is a very good thing. I don’t know how much of anything I am going to get done today–I do know I want to spend some time reading and editing, if not writing–and of course there’s always picking up to do around here, and maybe I could vacuum.
I also spent some time yesterday finishing reading the novelization of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last of Sheila, which I really enjoyed almost as much as I did the film,4 which will be covered in its own entry. I’ve been entranced by this film since I first saw it as a child one Sunday after church, and it still holds up; I’ve never once rewatched, knowing the surprise ending, and been bored or not entertained. (It’s also weird because there are scenes in Capote v the Swans showing Capote shooting Murder by Death, which was one of my earliest memories of seeing Capote, written by Neil Simon, one of the most popular playwrights of the middle part of the century that no one talks about anymore either but he was everywhere back then; I doubt Murder by Death holds up–and I didn’t really like it that much when I saw it in the theater back then, either.)
I’m also thinking it might be fun to revisit In Cold Blood and some other Capote works while I watch the show. I’ve always liked his short stories and his writing style…
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely King Arthur Sunday, everyone, and I’ll catch you maybe later.
Definitely will be more on this later, probably once I’ve finished watching. Capote v. the Swans.↩︎
Thursday and the last day in the office for the week. I am very tired this morning. I slept well but could easily sleep for another few hours or so (interesting that I went from almost non-stop anxiety about insomnia to anxiety about sleeping too much, isn’t it?), but as I slowly and groggily get going this morning, the coffee is definitely hitting the way it is supposed to. Tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment and PT, as well as whatever errands I can get run before the parades start tomorrow night. Gah. I can’t believe it is already parade season, and I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked in the meantime. I did work some more on the story yesterday night after I got home from work and the errands (I picked up the mail) and settled in for a relaxing evening.
For some reason I watched the season premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which is now picking up with the fallout from last season’s “Scandoval,” and I don’t know about continuing to watch. I had stopped watching the show years ago–years before Stassi and Kristen were fired for being racists, and long before Jax met and married that bizarre woman. I came back briefly for the scandal, and watching the aftermath I am just not feeling it, and probably won’t watch more. I do sometimes question my fandom of these reality shows, which generally feature terrible people being terrible, all for the sake of entertainment. I had never really watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before–I had intended to, but then Jen Shah was arrested for massive scale fraud and remained on the show, and that was a bit too much for me (likewise, I stopped watching New Jersey when the Giudices went to jail, and I remain conflicted about Beverly Hills with fraud-adjacent Erica Girardi unapologetically remaing as a member of the cast and even getting, apparently, a redemption arc this season; which I vehemently oppose); I did start watching this most recent season at the urging of friends and yes, I was missing reality drama by not watching; I doubt that I will go back and watch the old seasons, which is something I never really do; why go back and watch old drama that doesn’t matter anymore? Reality shows like these are really like the old prime-time soaps; you can start watching at any time and just jump into the show without having to go back and watch the back stories–which you could never do with the daytime soaps but you could with the night-time.
Well, what do you know? I never finished this before leaving the house this morning so I find myself trying to finish this over my lunch break–and even my lunch is later today than usual, so yeah–been a day. But I feel good, tomorrow morning I have appointments and PT and so forth; before coming home to do work-at-home duties for the rest of the day. I’ve also kind of lost the train of thought I was riffing on before leaving the house this morning, and checking out what I’ve already written here didn’t return me to that particular mindset, so who knows where this is going to wind up going? I hope I have the energy after making groceries on the way home from work today to finish working on my story so I don’t have to worry about that over the weekend. I don’t know how my parade attendance will go this weekend; Paul’s got a lot of work to do and going out there by myself–which I can handle, and have done before–just isn’t as much fun as when I am with Paul, even if we barely speak while we’re out there. And I am not sure how much my stamina is going to hold up, either. We shall see, I suppose.
It’s also supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, which will put a damper on the weekend anyway.
I did also watch the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians last night, and I have to say I really do enjoy the series much more than I did the films. I did read the books a very long time ago–Rick Riordan’s series are the best fantasy novels for kids bar none, fuck all the way off, TERF Queen–so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I thought the series really adapted the books well, and I also appreciated that the cast went with kids rather than teens (or actors in their twenties acting as teens); which made the story make a lot more sense than it would with them in their mid-to-late teens. It’s also such a great concept; I really envy Riordan that idea, seriously. I used to want to do something similar–I still want to write a young adult novel set during the Trojan War–and I’ve had other ideas involving mythology and gods and goddesses, but nothing has ever come to fruition. The best idea I had I am not sure is usable, honestly, but every so often I remember it and think oh, if only…
Ah, well. As it is, I won’t have time to write everything I want to before I die anyway, so there are some things I will never get around to–and as long as it’s taking me to write this damned short story, I may not even wind up writing the things I do think I’ll have the time to get to, of course.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. You never know, and sorry for being so late today.
Wednesday pay-the-bills day, and I am a bit groggy this morning, but that’s okay, really. I slept well and didn’t want to get up, and there’s nothing wrong with that (why I’ve always felt like not wanting to get out of bed in the morning makes me a lazy slug is something else I clearly need to work on). But the weekend draws nigh, which is always a lovely thing, and of course…parades. Yes, the parades start this weekend, with three on Friday night, six (!!!) on Saturday, and another three on Sunday. It’s also supposed to rain all weekend, so I don’t know how much time I will actually spend out at the corner this weekend risking getting sick and/or tired. I was also very tired last night, to the point that I really didn’t do much of anything once I got home from work yesterday afternoon. I didn’t do any chores, I didn’t run any errands, and I didn’t get the mail.
I did work on the story more and it’s starting to take a better shape than the mess that it originally was. I’m not certain why it’s taking me so long to get this draft finished, but I am instead going to think of it in terms of your writing muscles are as rusty as your actual muscles and so yes, they need to be used a bit more so I can get back into the swing of using those muscles every day. I really should think about writing now as writing therapy; the same mindset as my physical therapy. I am slowly but surely getting back into the spirit of writing after a deeply traumatic year, and the more I do it, the stronger and more lithe those muscles will get–and the less warm-up they will need. Having so many of the conflicting voices in my head stilled at long last also helps me with the focus and stuff; the problem is the lack of use and working out the kinks and the doubts. I think the story is going to make better sense and be much stronger than it was going to originally be in this draft version, and I did think about it a lot last night, too. I have always had a powerful imagination, and so last night I was using it to imagine what it would feel like out in the Manchac Swamp on a night in early October–and the kinds of risks college students will take that older people probably wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the parades–and maybe after the season is over I can do this–I should drive out to the swamp and check it out; there are a lot of places around New Orleans and in Louisiana in general that I really should go visit and experience.
Time, and exhaustion, is always such an issue. I do remember driving somewhere–I’m not sure where or why–that required me to cross the lake to Slidell on my way; I was writing something that required me to take a look at that far reach of New Orleans east that heads out to the bridge over the Rigolets, and so I detoured on my way to get a good look. (I also used that visit to base a scene in Royal Street Reveillon on as well; two for the price of one!) I’ve also noticed that, now that I have take up my proverbial quill again, my process of writing is a little different than it used to be; again, rusty out of use muscles might have something to do with it, but it could also be a change, who knows? My process has evolved and changed so much since Ye Olden Days when I first starting treating writing as a job and a vocation as opposed to a dream. (It’s also why I hate process questions, mine is rarely ever the same, especially when it comes to writing short stories.) I do like this story and like where it’s going; I really like the idea of my four unsuspecting, slightly drunk and high college students out visiting a supposedly haunted location in the Manchac Swamp (putting some of those New Orleans-area history wormholes I’ve gone down since the pandemic started) and I think it could be a terrific (if macabre) little story. And it’s something I am actually writing, not something I’m just thinking about. The story will probably always be special to me for being the first thing I wrote and finished after the surgery.
I’ve also been watching, with no small amount of amusement, as the right wing anger cancellation machine (you know, the thing they bitch about from the left while doing themselves because they are nothing if not the biggest hypocritical pieces of shit in recent American and world history) has decided to come for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I have enjoyed so many cruel laughs at their expense over the last few months! Why stop there? Why not come for Beyonce, too? They never learn, do they? Their refusal to look at factual history–even factual recent history–showed itself when Ron DeSantis chose to follow the Southern Baptist playbook and come for Disney to bolster his dead-before-it-started presidential campaign? The Mouse isundefeated, and remains undefeated. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop culture star in the world right now whose fans absolutely worship her–and her fans are of all ages, and they protect her from scavenging low-life scum whenever and wherever someone tries to come for her. The irony that this romance is actually the culmination of every Taylor Swift longing teenaged love songs–she’s dating the star football player AT LAST–does not Fox or Newsmax in their quest to humble Taylor Swift, who is laughing at them as she sits on her piles of gold and the love and admiration of millions around the globe. I wouldn’t call myself a Swiftie1–I do like her music, and listen to it occasionally, but it’s not my go-to–but I do admire her as an artist, a businesswoman, and a person. She stands up for the underprivileged, she supports queer people and queer rights, and above all else she fights misogyny (which a lot of the right-wing hate is predicated upon) whenever she encounters it, calls it out, and is not afraid to go to court to fight it, either. The way she outsmarted the douche who bought her original masters deserves a five minute standing ovation.
I may not know a lot about Ms. Swift, but I do know better than to fuck with her or activate her fans. And frankly, the profas (if the the left is antifa, then it stands to reason that their position makes the right profa, right?) are soooo stupid and blindly wrapped up in their cult of Golden Calf worship that their rage makes me like her all the more. I listened to her Red album in the car on my way home from the office yesterday and it’s still a banger (“Red” is my favorite Swift song, don’t @ me), and I’ll probably be listening to more of her music in the coming days as well. I also love that the derangement extends to rooting against the Kansas City Chiefs in the upcoming Super Bowl–which means they have to root for San Francisco.
(laughs evilly in gay.)
And on that note, I need to head into the spice mines and start paying the bills. Have a lovely Wednesday and you never know–I may pop in again later.
Although I did start writing an essay during the pandemic that I called “A Sixty-Year Old Swiftie.” ↩︎
Tuesday, and we survived Monday again! I believe in celebrating even the smallest of achievements, so here we are. I left work early yesterday for PT–I beat the kettlebell this time, and some of the exercises that were dreadful last time were much better this time; still dreadful, but more easily borne than before. I easily could have slept longer this morning, but alas, it was not to be. I also worked on the story some more last night and I was correct; the missing piece of the puzzle I’d worked out over the weekend was exactly what was wrong with the story and why it wasn’t gelling, but the revision is working quite well, which is very pleasing to our eyes. I am slowly waking up–the coffee is quite marvelous this morning and most definitely hitting the spot for sure–and while I didn’t want to get up, I think it’s going to be a terrific day.
The other day I came across something while wandering around on-line which caught me off guard and yet was kind of cool at the same time–Ann Patchett doing a tiktok or a Facebook reel or something like that, in which she was talking about how she’d recently read So Big by Edna Ferber and really enjoyed it. Edna Ferber! I’d had a Ferber phase the last two years of high school, when I read everything I could get my hands on that she’d written–So Big, Come and Get It, Cimarron, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Show Boat–and I really enjoyed her work. Ferber was a very successful and very well known writer of the early to mid-twentieth century; many of her books were made into Oscar winning films; and they were mostly Americana, books set in some region of the US during its history and shining a light on the time. She was very well-regarded also as a playwright and short story writer. She was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table. So I thought, “I should reread Saratoga Trunk, which is partly set in New Orleans and I barely remember it” (although I also remember enjoying the film, with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman) so I went on ebay and found a decent old copy.
Because I don’t already have enough to read on my plate, right?
I also met Ann Patchett a very long time ago, before she published Bel Canto and became ANN PATCHETT. She was very kind, very nice, and I liked her an awful lot. I think her only book at the time was The Patron Saint of Liars, which I read and enjoyed. I doubt very seriously she remembers me, of course; she’s become a huge literary star since I met her and I was just another face among many others that she’s met over the year, but I can say that I met and liked Ann Patchett very early in her career. Watching her success explode has also been a pleasure because it’s always lovely when someone super-nice actually finds enormous success. It restores my faith in humanity and the world.
I also started reading something over the past couple of days–exhausted brain, really–that I am enjoying for its bitchy wit but am not quite ready to talk about just yet, but it’s not anything I’ve been talking about reading on here lately. It’s also not that I am not enjoying the book I was reading–which I was, and look forward to diving back into when I can get it my full and not tired attention–but this is an easier read, if that makes sense? I already know the characters and the story because it’s one of my favorite films, and that’s all I will say about it at this time.
I also made the Saltburn connection that I’d been trying to make since seeing the film the first time–everyone keeps talking about it in reference to either The Talented Mr. Ripley or Brideshead Revisited, and while I could see that, there was always a nagging sense that there was another, more obscure film that it was more like than either of its regular comparisons/influences, and then this weekend it hit me between the eyes what film it was–because in rearranging the books, I discovered the book the film was based on, and the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head. Yes, yes, this film is more Saltburn than the others, and I did wonder if Emerald Fennell had seen the bizarre little film I watched during the pandemic while making condom packs and revisiting (or watching for the first time) /classic films from the Cynical 70’s–and now I have the hook for my essay/blog entry on Saltburn, so watch this space because I’ll eventually get around to writing it; I inevitably do, and I do think this conversation about the film is actually timeless, so there you go.
But it’s time to start getting cleaned up, pack my lunch box, and head out on the highway to the office to start my work day. I get to come straight home from work tonight, which is lovely, and maybe can get some chores done as well as some writing before Sparky bonding time. Until my next appearance, have a lovely one, Constant Reader!
Monday morning and back to the office, with parades starting this weekend and how did it get to be parade season so damned fast? I slept decently last night, but it’s cold (not as cold as it’s been though) again this morning and the heater ran all night so downstairs doesn’t feel chippy the way it was when it was ultra cold. I have PT tonight after I get off work, too, which is going to be challenging again as I suspect my weights will go up. I don’t know about the kettlebell exercise; how well will I do with it today? Balance has never been one of my strengths. after all, and that was the primary problem I had with the kettlebell thing the other day. I am not client-facing today, either, which is nice. I didn’t get nearly enough done this weekend as I would have liked–what else is new, really–and so I am facing down yet another week of work in the office with parades on the horizon and next weekend being even a wilder weekend of parades and so forth.
We did watch the figure skating yesterday to see Ilia Malinin take his second US title; Paul mentioned this was probably the first time he could remember all four winners in all four disciplines not skating a clean final program. He may be right–its unusual for ice dancers to make major and noticeable mistakes–but I can’t remember who has won national titles over the years anymore. I used to remember, but I don’t anymore. I am comforting myself with this particular lack of memory being explained away as “well, you’re older and thus have more to remember than you used to”, which is a bit of a comfort. I also kept track of the football games without watching; happy for Taylor and the Chiefs as well as a little disappointed that the Lions didn’t make their first ever super bowl; remembering that magic year when the Saints went to and won their first always makes me hope that some other city and fan-base gets to experience that magical delirium the way we did all those years ago. (I inevitably always will root for the underdog; it’s just how I’ve always been.) But congratulations to both the Chiefs and the 49ers for making the Super Bowl. One fanbase is going to be really happy in a couple of weeks. So does that mean the Super Bowl is also on Bacchus Sunday? Guess I won’t be watching–not that I would have in the first place, not being a fan of either team…but it is fun watching Taylor Swift trigger the MAGAts.
I didn’t read much this weekend either. I didn’t write or read much, but I did put a lot of thought into writing–you know, the writing-in-your-head thing that we all do and absolutely it counts as writing, thank you very much. I had kind of gotten lost in the story currently under construction, and then of course while watching something this weekend it occurred to me that I needed a different opening and then it hit me how to finish the story, and how the end needed to be threaded throughout the story…so I decided that I am, indeed, going to start rewriting it from the beginning and hopefully that will give me the impetus to get the story’s first draft finished so I can move on to the next one whose ending I’ve also solved in my head already before moving on to one that I already know the ending of but don’t know the middle. Heavy heaving sigh–it’s always something, isn’t it?
(I did start reading the novelization of The Last of Sheila, which will be discussed at greater length once I finish it.)
And now January is almost finished. I cannot believe this Thursday is the 1st–yay, all the bills are coming due again–but that’s cool. I think I am going to just take Lundi Gras off so I can have a four day weekend and won’t have to mess with trying to get to work or dealing with getting home that day. PT is also going to be a major bitch to try to figure out along the way as well. This week isn’t so bad, I have it scheduled for Friday morning and I have another appointment that morning as well, but next week? Monday should be fine, and if I can schedule it for Friday morning that should be perfect. I can also go on Lundi Gras in the morning, and then we will have made it through parade season. I also have an appointment with my surgeon later in February, so I can find out how much more PT I have to endure before I am considered healed again.
It’s kind of weird that I’ve been dealing with this for over a year now, isn’t it?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines to get my day going. Have a lovely Monday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
