Category: Saints

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

So yesterday was the last day of my vacation. Heavy heaving sigh. It was a bit on the weird side, though, because of the holidays and so forth I kept losing track of what day it was. Friday seemed like Saturday to me, and every day last week I had to really sit down and think about what day it actually was–or look at my Google calendar. #madness

I did finish the book yesterday, and sent it to my publisher two days late. I really thought I was going to get this one in on time–still not certain the final chapter is complete, but the manuscript currently sits at over 90,000 words and I just can’t think about the book anymore. I’m delighted to be finished with it, disappointed it took me an extra two days, and now I am going to breathe a bit as I try to get caught up with everything I let slide while I slogged through finishing this book.

As always, I overestimated how much time I can spend staring at a computer screen and underestimated how long it would take to put the copy edits/corrections into the entire document. And of course, the MacBook Air problems continued this morning as well. I fucking hate this thing, seriously.

But Bury Me in Shadows is finished; and now I can start figuring out how to finish #shedeservedit by March 1 and a short story by 1/15. And oh my God, the emails I’ve been ignoring while I tried to get this done. But I am glad to be going back to work this morning, despite having to get up at a ridiculously early hour, and I feel fairly well rested; I had issues sleeping during my vacation–of course–but now that I am going to go back to my usual schedule, hopefully that will be a thing of the past. I haven’t been to the gym since getting my inoculation (part one); my shoulder was sore and moving my left arm in an upward motion–required for the gym–hurt, so I thought it smart and prudent to skip it. I will go tonight after I get off work, of course, and try to make up for the lost time.

Since I was on deadline for a book, I never really had the opportunity to reflect on the shit-show that was 2020. It’s weird, too, because usually I am looking forward to Carnival–Twelfth Night is Wednesday, which kicks off the season, and there were King cakes already out at Rouse’s yesterday–but the parades are cancelled due to the pandemic, so Carnival is going to be weird this year. I’m kind of glad I don’t have to plan my life around parades, to be honest–but it’s still going to be different and strange…and imagine how insane parade season will be next year! I will eventually recap my 2020 for this blog at some point–favorite books and movies and television shows and so forth–but that isn’t going to happen today, as my memory is shot and I will have to go through old blogs to see what I read and what I watched this past year. I also haven’t really done a goals post for 2021 the way I usually do, either–primarily because there was one goal, and that was to get the book done. It was nice having the holidays and the little bit of vacation time to work on the book; it was one of those ah this is what life would be like if I only had to write books things, and it was quite lovely. One thing I noticed, too, while I was working on the final polish was that one of my biggest worries is that I forget things, or start something and never finish it off, leave subplots dangling without an answer, etc.–or names change for characters, that sort of thing. Partly it’s because when I write and I come to a place in the story where I have to remember something from earlier in the book, I usually don’t remember and guess–and it’s amazing how often my subconscious rises up and makes the correct guess for me. I always used to be able to remember the plot and things like that in my head; my memory is shot now, so I am generally terrified as I give the final a final polish and copy edit…there were only a couple of small minor things–a character’s last name changed once, a location’s name was the incorrect one–so I was pretty well pleased and the final step not nearly as difficult as anticipated or expected. (Thank God, as it took me three days to get through the manuscript and input those corrections and deletions; who knows how long it would have taken if the manuscript was more of a mess?) It also went from a book about a high school student to a college student–almost from the very beginning of its origins as a short story, the main character was young; going from about thirteen in the short story to seventeen in the original draft to twenty in the final. It also went from first-person/present tense to first person/past tense, and it was amazing to me how many verbs I’d missed going through and making those changes. Laziness, probably, being the correct answer to that.

As always, when I am pressed to finish a book my mind becomes very creative. I was scribbling down ideas in my journal almost all of last week, and I even came up with a new Scotty title, which might even be the next book–Twelfth Knight Knavery, which is just so fun I am going to have to do it. I had originally planned on doing a pre-pandemic book (French Quarter Flambeaux, primarily because the shitty Carnival season of 2019 deserved to be recorded for posterity), but this one….I kind of like the idea behind this one, and there’s no reason I can’t do two pre-pandemic books for Scotty before Quarter Quarantine Quadrille. My timeline for Scotty, after all, is completely under my own control. And I suspect people aren’t going to want to be reading about the pandemic for a little while at any rate. I do love the title Twelfth Knight Knavery, though.

We’ve also been watching the final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, and my God, how I love this show. I hate that it’s ending, but also get it–this final season has the gang taking on the Eldritch horrors, and where do you go after that? We only have two episodes left to watch, which will most likely occur tonight or tomorrow. The Saints also won yesterday, so football season is theoretically not over yet for Louisiana fans, but while people around here are talking Super Bowl…I dunno.

And on that note, it’s time to get back to the spice mines and try to get caught up on things. Have a lovely first Monday of the new year, Constant Reader.

Christmases When You Were Mine

And while technically Christmas season doesn’t really end until Twelfth Night (aka the twelfth day of Christmas), for most everyone it’s ended; the shredded wrapping paper trashed, ribbons and bows perhaps stashed aside for another use; boxes either broken down and recycled, or saved for use for the next time Christmas rolls around. Taking down decorations is something everyone seems to have their own traditions for; Paul and I left ours up our first year in New Orleans until the following July. I spent yesterday morning filing and organizing–discovering all kinds of treasures and ideas I’d allowed to fall by the wayside; a few months ago I counted how many short stories I had in progress and the truth is, I’d vastly undercounted, as I found ever so much more on hand yesterday morning. I found other research (some of it necessary, some of it interesting) that will come in enormously handy in the future. Perhaps people are correct when they talk about me being prolific; discovery of these stories and research certainly gives proof to that. (I must say, it was delightful to find myself looking at the files for “The Blues Before Dawn” and “One Night at Brandy’s Lounge” and “Waking the Saints” and “Malevolence” and “Getting Rid of Roger”–stories with great openings and potential that I had set aside and forgotten about as my nimble mind continued to leap around like a child’s that is in desperate need of Adderall. I also discovered folders for book ideas like Kansas Lonesome and Where the Boys Die and The Kissing Bridge…and that’s not even scratching the surface of the research that I found.)

I also discovered folders for Scotty books to come–Congo Square Conga and River Parish Rhumba and Hollywood South Hustle…and that’s on top of the three in the front of my mind, French Quarter Flambeaux and Lake Shore Limbo and Redneck Riviera Rhumba (oops, looks like I’ve got two rhumbas, and that just won’t do, will it?). I also found an idea for a Colin book that is completely different than the one i’ve been thinking about over the last year or so, and several other ideas. My word, I really need to harness my creativity, don’t I, and I really do need to go through the files every quarter or so, just so I can remember some of these fairly decent-and workable, usable–ideas.

So, we watched Wonder Woman 1984, and no, it wasn’t as good or as enjoyable as the original. I did think, a few times, “this would look amazing on a big screen”, but about twenty minutes or so into the film, I told myself, stop expecting it to make sense and just enjoy it without thinking, which is what they apparently want all of us to do, and so by shutting off my mind, I was able to enjoy it maybe a bit more than other people did. Was there problems with it? Absolutely: “of course i can fly a 1984 era fighter jet! So what if all my experience is with circa-1917 era prop planes?” And since when has a 1984 era fighter jet had the fuel capacity to fly to Cairo and back from Washington–and didn’t they steal the plane? And flying the jet through the fireworks? I actually said out loud, “is it safe to fly a jet through things that are exploding? And wouldn’t the jet have fucked up the fireworks?” Visually, that scene was quite beautiful–one of those “on a big screen” things–but…and while I also get the desire to have Chris Pine/Steve Trevor return, the way they did it made little to no sense, and I may have literally rolled my eyes when I realized what the central plot was going to be: an ancient stone that grants wishes? Really? I mean…if they were looking for a plot to symbolize that this was a super-hero movie from the 1980’s, putting the entire world in jeopardy is the kind of thing they used to do in those rare super-hero movies from the time–I’m looking at the Christopher Reeve Superman movies–but other than that, there really was very little that made this a “1984” movie–music, costumes, etc. It was a mess of a movie–I got bored from time to time–but it was a mildly entertaining diversion….afterward, inspired by seeing Lynda Carter, we watched the original pilot for her Wonder Woman series from the 1970’s, which completely leaned into the idea that it was a comic book television show, and went the old Batman route. I was also rather surprised to see what a star-studded cast they came up with for the pilot as well–Red Buttons, Carl Reiner, Stella Stevens, and Cloris Leachman, among others–and they even went with little caption boxes, like the comic books had–“Secret Nazi base”, “top secret US base”, etc. Never once in this movie is there a moment like the No Man’s Land scene in the original, which literally brought up goosebumps and tears to my eyes when I was sitting in the theater watching….it’s like they forgot all the things that made the first film so special and that the audience connected to, and kept the stuff people had problems with and then amplified them. About the most 1984 thing about the movie was the threat of nuclear annihilation–something that was very much on our minds back in the 1980’s, not to mention the Cold War, which was only glancingly mentioned and probably should have been the driving force of the movie. The heart of the first movie was the clearly delineated line between the evil of the Germans and the “goodness” of the Allies; the key to this movie–and had it actually been made in 1984–the villains should have been Soviets. By skating around the what was truly the most important ideological divide in the world at the time the film was set, they undermined the film itself.

After the Wonder Woman double feature, we watched Let Them All Talk, the Netflix movie starring Meryl Streep as an author and Dianne Weist and Candace Bergen as her two best friends from college, reuniting on an Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2 so the Streep character can accept a distinguished literary award in England. While it had some very interesting things to say about writers and writing, it never really took off because the cast really never did anything more than sit around and talk about things, and there were no real emotional pay-offs. How can you have these three powerhouse actresses in the same film and then give them so very little to work with? They were all fine, but maybe a little flat–which has a lot to do with the direction and the script.

Needless to say, I did no writing over the last two days, and of course now realize I have fucked up completely the working time-line I had created in my head to see me through to the end of the book. Today I have to run errands, and I should go to the gym, but I also need to focus and get back to writing the book. In fact, probably once I’m finished here, I will take the laptop with me to my easy chair, grab my lap desk, and then start revising away. I’ve been waking up early these last couple of days, and while I am most pleased with the organizing and filing I managed to get done yesterday–all those stories in progress I’d forgotten, all those ideas moldering in the back of my mind–I do regret the laziness of not writing anything yesterday. But by the time I was finished with everything it was already mid-afternoon, and there really wasn’t much choice at that time. That also needed to be done, so I shouldn’t regret the loss of writing time, but I also am not going to be berating myself over.

I also forgot the Saints played yesterday, just assuming the game would be Sunday. Oops.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines while leaving you with one last, past the actual day Christmas hunk. Have a lovely 26th, everyone.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

And here we are, the Monday morning of Christmas week, and I am looking forward to getting hrough this week so I can get back to vacation time. Woo-hoo! I also only have to work a half-day on Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd) which is even more lovely, huzzah!

I’ve come across yet another call for submissions that sounds interesting, and I may even have something on hand that works for it with a revision and a tweak. Needless to say, I always find these things terribly exciting–at least in the moment–and I’ve really been doing quite well with short stories lately, or at least in the last few years, so why the hell not? I was already planning on revising this story for my next short story collection, so the worst thing that could happen is it gets turned down and I put it in the collection anyway. Huzzah!

Apparently, it is an impossibility for the Saints and LSU to win on the same weekend during this insane 2020 football season; the Saints lost by three to the Chiefs yesterday–and pretty much played like shit for most of the game, in all honesty. That doesn’t say much for the one-loss Chiefs, honestly, and it was terribly sad to see Clyde Edwards-Hilaire, from last year’s LSU championship team, get injured during the game. (It was, as I had said before, terribly conflicting for me to watch former LSU stars playing against the Saints) Can the Saints rebound from two consecutive losses? Perhaps, but I find myself not terribly vested in this football season, and now that LSU’ s is over, I couldn’t care less about the college football play-offs or the national championship this year, and doubt that I will even watch the games, other than Alabama-Notre Dame–hoping it will be another colossal blowout. ROLL TIDE!

I am now revising the final act of Bury Me in Shadows, and its going to require an awful lot of work, methinks and fears. But that’s okay; some of these chapters can be pared down and combined into one–which is going to be the case with chapters 19 and 20, quite frankly–which is a good thing because I need to add a new chapter at the end of the book anyway, which would have made it overlong unless I start cutting. This revision is going to wind up at 100, methinks, which gives me some leeway for trimming down at least up to 20, if necessary. I don’t think it will be necessary, quite frankly, but stranger things have happened–and I have a tendency to forget I’ve already written something and will put the same thing in a later chapter. I reread Chapter 19 last night, and that is exactly the case with this book–there’s a lengthy section in Chapter 19 that was already written about in Chapter 16 or 17; but I know I’ve already written this scene and I also know that I’ve already written it better than it appears in this particular chapter. So, this could be the proper place for a lot of cutting and pasting and rewriting–and I think I know how to do it already, so tonight after the gym I will tear into it with a relish.

We continue watching The Hardy Boys, and will probably get to the season finale tonight. We are greatly enjoying the show, haters be damned, and it is so much better than the cheesy 1970’s adaptation with Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy it’s not even funny. For one thing, this cast–even the younger kids–are much better actors, and it’s much better written, whether the purists want to think so or not. All the changes that were made from the original book series work perfectly in the show, and they also manage to capture the spirit of the books much better than any direct adaptation that was slavishly devoted to the books could possibly be–not to mention how dated that would make the series. The finale is tonight, and I might give the CW reinterpretation of Nancy Drew next.

It certainly can’t be any worse than The Flight Attendant.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me…also, is it just me, or does today’s Christmas hunk bear a striking resemblance to Pete Buttigieg? Okay, maybe it’s slight, but I see it.

O Come All Ye Faithful

As Constant Reader may or may not know, the Lost Apartment–hell, the entire house–is a haven for stray cats. We feed them and take care of them, so does our landlady, and so does our neighbor on the first floor on the other side of the house—and Jeremy in the carriage house does too. I think the largest the herd has ever been is five cats, but I could be wrong. We’ve been down to two–Simba and Tiger (who has the most seniority)–for quite a while now, and there’s a tuxedo cat that pokes around sometimes, but runs whenever you try to get close to her, but this past week a new cat has shown up, and has taken up residence beneath the house: a a tiny black kitten we’ve not really named yet, but have taken to calling the Dark Lord, because he’s completely invisible once the sun goes down. He doesn’t let us get close–he’ll come out to look at us, but scampers away whenever we try to pet him or get him to come near. We’ve started feeding him, as we feed the others, and Paul will eventually make sure that he becomes friendly, so we can catch him and get him to the vet. I don’t think he’s old enough to be fixed now, anyway. He can’t be more than a month or two old.

I always wonder where these strays come from, you know? Tiger was clearly always feral, but Simba is much too friendly to not have been someone’s cat. And a kitten? Where did the kitten come from?

Ah, the mysteries of being the Crazy Cat Couple of the Lower Garden District.

LSU defeated Mississippi yesterday 53-48 in what wound up being a completely insane game in Tiger Stadium; one in which they managed to go up early in the third quarter 37-21, only to fall behind 48-40 with about eight minutes left in the game. True freshman quarterback Max Johnson (who is 2-0 as a starter) managed to connect up with true freshman Kayshon Boutte (you cannot get a more Louisiana name than that, seriously) on two impressive scoring drives, sandwiched around an impressive defensive stand, to pull ahead with less than two minutes left in the game to go up 53-48; the defense held again, forcing a fumble to end the game with less than a minute to go to escape having the first losing season since 1999 and give Tiger fans–so beleaguered this season–a lot of hope for the future. That team that finished strong after the pasting by Alabama was mostly freshmen and sophomores….and in these last two games there were guys playing I’d never heard of before. Our back-ups pulled off an upset of Florida (which gave Alabama all they could handle in the SEC title game) and then Mississippi (the LSU-Mississippi games are always exciting; for some reason Ole Miss–it is an old rivalry game–always seems to play their best against LSU and the Tigers inevitably have to rally to win the game in the end. Paul’s and my first game ever in Tiger Stadium was the Mississippi game in 2010, which the Tigers needed a last minute score in to win); so pardon us for thinking perhaps next year will be a good one and the year after that a great one–which is the LSU way, really. It was very exciting, and I’ll be honest, I thought we were done for when the Rebels went up 48-40 and our defense looked very tired–very very tired–but in a downpour the Tigers pulled it off and thus made my day.

I also managed to unlock the puzzle of Chapter Eighteen and got it finished, and by doing so I realized I perfectly set up the final act of the book–which will make these other chapters more challenging, but that’s okay because I still have plenty of time to get this all finished and ready to go on schedule, which is very exciting.

I also read very far into The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and I have to say, gay Hollywood history is very interesting, and that particular period, post-war into the 1950’s, is also extremely interesting. I actually kind of wish I was more knowledgeable about the period, or had studied it in greater detail. I’ve already written a short story based in that dangerous era for gay men, “The Weight of a Feather”, which is included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, and of course, Chlorine is set in that time period. I actually have several historical gay noirs planned–Obscenity, Indecency, and Muscles–that will take place during different periods of twentieth century gay history–the 1970’s, the 1990’s, and the early aughts–which will reflect the changing moods and dangers of being gay during various decades, and how different life was for gay men in each decade. It’s an interesting concept, and one I hope readers will embrace.

Plus, the research will be endlessly fascinating.

The Saints play the Chiefs today, and apparently Drew Brees will be playing again. This presents a dilemma for me, clearly; I love the Saints, but the Chiefs have several of my favorite former LSU players on their roster (Tyrann Mathieu and Clyde Edwards-Helaire, to name two) and it’s hard for me not to want to see them do well. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to not watch at all. I don’t know. I have to write Chapter Nineteen today, and am trying to decide if I should go to the gym today, or wait until tomorrow. I overslept this morning–an hour, didn’t get up till nine–and I also only have to get through the next three days at the office before the holidays AND my brief between Christmas and New Year’s vacation–I hope to not only get this book finished by then but have the time to work on my MWA anthology submission and reread and plan the final version of #shedeservedit.

Then again, I’ll also probably be horrifically lazy a lot during that time–it happens.

And on that note, more coffee for me before the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Silver Bells

Still aglow from the big LSU win Saturday night.

Sadly, the Tigers clearly used up all of Louisiana’s football juju, because the Saints played terribly against the Eagles and lost yesterday afternoon. It did occur to me that one of the reasons I dislike the NFL–at least in comparison to college–is because players I rooted against can wind up on the Saints, and LSU players are drafted to other teams and play against the Saints. It’s hard for me to root against LSU players. And while Jalen Hurts wasn’t a Tiger–he played against us several times and I rooted for him to lose each time–I was a fan of his; I could recognize ability and talent on the field, and I also thought how he handled the whole Tua situation at Alabama was pretty damned classy. So, while I wanted the Eagles to lose, I also wanted to see him play well, and he did, and then I felt like a traitor and I do not have these kinds of conflicts watching college football damn it.

Well, at least not so much anymore. The LSU-Auburn game was a tough one for me until Katrina. After that, I was all in for LSU.

It’s back in the fifties today, and we are in a “high wind alert”–gusts up to 35 miles per hour until around seven, which is fortunately around when I have to get in the shower before heading to the office. It doesn’t feel all that cold this morning in the Lost Apartment, which is interesting; usually when it’s that cold outside it’s even more cold inside, but while I did have to put a ski cap on this morning because my head was cold, other than that it’s not so bad this morning. I slept pretty well (obviously, didn’t want to get out of bed at any point once the alarm started going off) and so feel pretty good this morning. I wound up not going to the gym yesterday, which means having to go this evening (which is fine; I’ll be reluctant and tired, undoubtedly, when I do go) but that’s all right, I can deal.

Yesterday I fully intended to work on Chapter 18, but realized that it probably needs to be mostly tossed and completely rewritten from the start, which is something I was really afraid of having to do–and tossing and starting over means I have to redo the ending of Chapter 17–which I actually realized on Saturday night, while I was thinking about it during the LSU game; the ending of that chapter doesn’t make sense, rendering the eighteenth chapter was completely off the rails, which is going to delay my completion of the revision more than just a little bit. I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out how to redo the chapter, and I think I have it down now–we shall see when I get home from the gym this evening, won’t we?

John Le Carre died yesterday–or rather, his death was made public, at any rate–which came as a surprise to me because I had figured he had already died. It was strange that he died around the time I finally got to read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but deepest sympathies for his family, friends, and professional colleagues. Truly a great writer, the book won an Edgar for Best Novel and Le Carre himself was named a Grand Master in 1984; deservedly so. He was nominated three other times–The Little Drummer Girl was nominated for Best Novel; he was nominated for Best Short Story for “Dare I Weep? Dare I Mourn?” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968; and for Best TV Feature or Miniseries for A Murder of Quality. I am really looking forward to exploring more of his work in the years to come; I am still reeling a bit from the brilliance of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–and have been assured by others whose opinions I respect that the other novels are just as brilliant and well written. I’m only sorry it took me this long to get to his canon.

And so another week dawns; another week of seeing clients and getting writing done and going to the gym and hoping against hope that I will stay rested and motivated and fresh all week to get everything done.

Have a happy Monday, Constant Reader.

Christmas Must Be Something More

Christmas came a little early last night for LSU fans and Louisiana.

23 point underdogs. Only 54 scholarship athletes–one more than required to field a team–and then lost four more players in the first half to injury. Starting true freshmen all over the place on both sides of the ball, including a quarterback starting his first time ever. Playing the team ranked sixth in the country , arguing they deserve a spot in the play-offs, and scheduled to play Alabama next week in the SEC title game. An LSU team that had just lost to Alabama 55-17 last week, and has had offensive records broken against it all year long. Probably the worst LSU team in twenty years, a possible losing season for the first time since 1999, and all of this coming one year after having one of the best teams and seasons in college football. No one, including me and Paul, gave LSU a chance last night.

And in true LSU fashion, they somehow managed to pull off one of the biggest upsets in LSU football history, one of the biggest ones of the season nationwide, and destroyed any hopes Florida had of backing their way into the play-offs. You’re very welcome, Ohio State. It was one of the craziest, wackiest, most insane games I’ve ever seen–and as an LSU fan, I’ve seen some pretty fucking wacky, insane games over the years.

GEAUX TIGERS!

The game started looking like it would be the same as every other game all season, and while I held out desperate, long-time fan hope that LSU would somehow rise to the occasion–I couldn’t believe my delighted eyes as I watched the game unfold. LSU’s defense–beleaguered all season, beaten up and bloodied–somehow managed a goal line stand to open the game. Exciting, but probably not going to happen again, I thought. Sure enough, LSU had to punt and Florida marched right back down the field to go up 7-0. Then–LSU’s true freshman quarterback Max Johnson took the Tigers right down the field to tie it up, 7-7….and on Florida’s next possession, an LSU true freshmen defensive back managed a Pick 6 to put the Tigers up 14-7. Another completely insane interception on the next Florida possession–and thanks to another defensive stand, Florida was later held to a field goal, 14-10. The Gators scored next to make it 17-14–and then more insanity. LSU scored to take the lead back 21-14, forced a fumble in the closing seconds of the first half and kicked another field goal, LSU 24-14. LSU got the ball first in the second half; another field goal: 27-14. And then Florida took control…three possessions, three scores: 31-27. LSU scored another touchdown, and Florida kicked another field goal: 34-34, with time running out. LSU’s drive stalled on third down–and I thought, ah, well, we gave it a good shot, they’ll get a field goal for sure…but wait. In a moment of complete insanity that will go down in college football history, the LSU tight end’s shoe came off, and a Florida player (I won’t name him, since his name will go down in infamy and this moment will be replayed, over and over and over again, for years to come) threw that shoe twenty five yards down the field….for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. 15 yards and an automatic first down. Some questionable play calling put the game on the foot of kicker Cade York: 57 yards, longest of his career and an LSU record. He nailed it, 37-34. Florida tried desperately to get their own in the closing seconds–but missed a 51 yarder and LSU escaped the Swamp with a major upset.

In the fog.

And stunned an entire nation of college football fans.

And when it was all over, all I could do was shake my head. This is why I love LSU football so much; even in mediocre seasons, they will always manage to pull off a signature win and a major upset (10-7 over number 4 Mississippi in 2014; 26-21 over top ten Auburn in 2017 after losing to Troy, the 28-21 upset of Number One Florida in 1997, and there are so many others), and not only knocked Florida out of any shot at the play-offs, but also probably cost Kyle Trask his shot at a Heisman trophy–and going into the game, I thought it was for sure between either him or Mac Jones at Alabama.

As someone said on Twitter last night, “Florida just lost to a the worst LSU team in twenty years’ BACK-UPS.”

LSU still has to play Mississippi this coming weekend; Florida is off to the SEC title game to face the Alabama juggernaut–which could go one of two ways: Alabama will either blow them out, or Florida–playing with nothing to lose–could rise up and smite the Tide. The East has only won the SEC once since 2008 (!), so who knows? I didn’t have much interest in watching the game, frankly, but I might now.

So, yes, it was a lovely Saturday in the Lost Apartment. I finished reading The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–loved it–and also wrote; I didn’t do a lot of cleaning or anything else, but I got some work done on the book which was lovely, finished reading a book, and got to watch LSU beat Florida. The Saints play today–I think at three?–which will give me some time this morning to get some emails answered, some work on the book done, and even a trip to the gym out of the way.

And I slept deeply and well, which was also quite marvelous.

And on that note, tis time to go back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

White Horse

Monday and another week has begun.

Christmas draws ever closer; but it doesn’t seem quite real. No holidays have actually seemed real this year, and this is going to continue, methinks, deep into 2021. No Carnival parades, no in-person literary events all spring (Saints and Sinners, Tennessee Williams Festival, Edgars, probably no Malice Domestic or Left Coast Crime) and even summer is questionable. Heavy heaving sigh.

Yesterday was lovely. The Saints hung on to beat the hated Falcons in Atlanta, which was nice, and I spent some time with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I’m not as in to it as I would have hoped, but I suspect once the story kicks into gear that will change. It’s exceptionally well written–I can see why it won so many awards, and LeCarre is held in such high esteem–and of course, there’s that whole disconnect with the Cold War. Can you believe there are people in their early thirties now who have no memory of the Cold War? The USSR officially collapsed and began breaking up, and the Berlin Wall came done, about thirty years ago. There are, for that matter, kids in high school who weren’t born yet when 9/11 happened; tweens are too young to remember Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans directly after. That’s kind of staggering, in many ways, to imagine that seminal life-changing paradigm shifting events occurred so long ago that the young of today aren’t old enough to remember. I, of course, don’t remember the JFK assassination–I was only two when it happened–so I myself was too young for some seminal, life-changing, paradigm shifting moments myself.

We finished the new season of Big Mouth last night–it’s so funny and filthy and brutally honest about the awful age when you go through puberty (it’s a wonder more people aren’t horribly scarred)–and we also caught the finale of Murder on Middle Beach, which ended without a resolution. I looked at Paul–the episode pretty much closed with the documentarian winning his Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain access to the ten year old police files about his mother’s murder–and said, “Um, I think they finished the documentary too soon–what did they find out?” This was annoying in some ways–but I also didn’t expect the series to solve the murder, either. It was like an incredibly unsatisfying crime novel–a murder divides a family, the kids grow up and try to solve their mother’s murder which has aversely affected their lives, only to have the book close without resolution?

Not nearly as disappointing an end as The Undoing, frankly–we’ll go a long time before we see another series that ends so badly and disappointingly as that.

But now we have to find something new to watch, heavy sigh.

I didn’t write this weekend nearly as much as I should have, but I reread all my notes from the entire writing process, and reread the final fourteen chapters, so I have an idea where I need to go and what I need to do from now on, so that’s a win, methinks. I also went over the copy edits on an essay, and got that finished. I also went to the gym yesterday, which was lovely. My body seems to be adjusting to exercising again–and it’s starting to respond to it. My muscles are getting firm again, and starting to get bigger again. I suspect this is going to wind up being yet another repeat of every other time I’ve gotten into the swing of working out my entire life–I am never going to feel sufficiently lean, will always think I’m carrying too much fat weight, etc etc etc ad nauseum ad finitum, and I am preparing myself for that particular neuroses. Plus, I am sixty–time to let go of the extreme vanity and the need for reassurance from other people.

I’ve also had some second thoughts about Bury Me in Shadows, but they are quite literally the same ones I’ve had almost this entire time since I started writing the damned thing. I spent most of the weekend in the weeds on this book–rereading chapters, rereading notes, looking at things I’ve deleted, trying to figure out if I am doing a good job telling this story or if I’m being too lecturing in places…I don’t think I can remember the last time I’s second guessed and doubted myself as much on a book as I have with this one. But that’s, I hope, a good thing? We shall see. I can’t wait to see the final cover.

And on that note, it is back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Monday.

Invisible

Sunday morning and a lot to get done today. I was horribly lazy yesterday; I wound up doing very little other than reading–I finished The Bad Seed and then moved on to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (I’ve never read John LeCarre, and am trying to get better read in my. genre’s classics, both titles and authors) and got some chores done, but other than that–not a goddamned thing. So today I I have to play catch up as well as go to the gym and somehow pay some attention to the Saints game, which is at noon. (I’ll most likely do some things around here, go to the gym around elevenish, and then come home and do things while the game is on.) The LSU game went about the way I expected it to last night–55-17 final score–so congratulations to Alabama’s players and coaching staff; I can’t imagine there’s a better team in the country this season, so it’ll be fun watching y’all go all the way again. LSU has to play Florida next weekend, which will most likely be another horror show like yesterday’s, but at least at that point the season will be over.

This football season is yet another gift the year 2020 has given me. Thanks, 2020, thank you.

It feels cold again this morning in the Lost Apartment–I have my space heater on and a cap on my bald scalp–but it doesn’t look so bad outside, really. Lots of clouds hiding the sky and the sun, but this week is supposed to be warmer than last, so I think I’ll be able to hang this week after last week’s cold spell.

Once I finish this I am going to make a to-do list for this week–I really need to make a point of doing that every Sunday, so I have a roadmap for my week–and also so that things won’t slip through the cracks and be forgotten. This has been a really bad year for me to try to remember everything I have to get done–I keep forgetting things, which isn’t good–so I am trying to be ever so much better about this. The whole year I’ve felt like I’ve been in this weird state of limbo, just drifting and trying to get by, keep dog-paddling and keeping my head above water, and it’s not been easy. (It’s not really been an easy year for most people, I suspect.)

Last night as we binged Big Mouth after the LSU game, I was trying to remember the highlights of the year–the good things that happened that I am grateful for, and realized that, sadly, most of the things I was thinking of was television or movies I’d watched, or books I’d read and greatly enjoyed. I had a pretty good year at the beginning of the year in selling short stories–I sold quite a few this year, continuing a trend from last year, to the point where I keep forgetting story sales I made, which is so weird–but also means that in 2021 I am going to have some stories appear in anthologies or publications, which is terribly cool. I know I stretched myself as a writer–hell, I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story this year, and created a Sherlockian world in 1916 New Orleans–and while there were anthologies and things I tried (and failed) to submit to, I have some terrific stories now that are in some state of writing that could turn out to be something interesting. I am looking forward to spending some more time with both “The Sound of Snow Falling” and “The Rosary of Broken Promises”–and there are any number of others I’d love to dive back into. The problem being, of course, that I have limited writing time, and for the rest of this month I have to focus on finishing the one book and then the first two months of 2021 finishing the other. I’m not really sure what I want to spend the rest of 2021 doing; I know I am co-editing the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology and that’s going to take a chunk of time to read all those submissions and make decisions and then edit them all, but let’s face it, it’s also not my first time at the anthology rodeo. I want to try to write another Scotty at some point in 2021, and I know I also have Chlorine to work on, but…I guess we’ll just have to see how the year pans out.

I know I want to pull another short story collection together, too, and of course there’s the novellas…

I also polished off a journal last night, so I get to start a new one this morning, which is kind of fun. I’ve been blasting through journals at a pretty good pace since I started using them again, and while I cannot say that they’ve been enormously helpful in keeping my act together and keeping me on track with any of the writing I’ve been doing, they’ve been wonderful for me to jot notes and ideas in, and I’ve been doing much better about going back into them and rereading them and getting the unpolished jewels out of them. I have a really nice one that has a magnetic clasp that I got at Garden District Books, and then got a pack of three the last time I went to Costco, so I am certainly set for journals for the year.

I’ve also got to get the copy edits on my essay finished.

I also spent some time yesterday slowly but surely pruning the books. I’ve done a great job of pruning them already, so much so that there’s slim pickings for getting rid of things I will most likely never read–I always stop myself and have to think, long and hard, about whether I should get rid of an unread book–but I also need to keep making room for more–because at some point I’ll start buying books again. Not sure when that will be financially feasible–right now, books are filed in the “luxury item” column, especially when I already have so many on hand that I’ve not read–but I have quite a list of books that I want to get when I can.

There are never enough books, frankly.

And on that note, I need some more coffee as well as fold some laundry. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader!

…Ready for It

And here we are, the last day of my vacation. As much as I hate to see the time off come to a bitter end, I am also kind of ready to get back to the office and get back to work.

It’s rained off and on all weekend, which has wreaked havoc with my sinuses, and it’s rather dreary outside my windows this morning. I slept fairly decently last night–waking up every now and then–but overall, it was a good sleep. I feel a bit sore and tired this morning–I got a blister on my left heel walking to the gym Friday, which is really and truly annoying, particularly since I’ve had the shoes I was wearing for several months and have worn them every day without incident; so why all of a sudden did the damned shoe rub a blister onto my foot? I really don’t need more irritation, and now I am worried about whether walking to the gym today will exacerbate the problem. My back is also sore and my legs feel tired, but skipping today would mean having to go after work tomorrow and Wednesday, and really, neither of those is a really likely option. I prefer my Sunday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, thank you very much. Maybe if I bandage it up well….

The LSU game was terrible, just terrible, on both sides of the ball. Texas A&M didn’t look much better than LSU, frankly, and the announcers kept talking about how A&M could get into the play-offs…and I was all, really? The game just seemed like a lot of offensive ineptitude from both sides. And while both freshman quarterbacks got into the game, neither really accomplished much–and that’s on the offensive line. Nobody was blocking anyone, and when you don’t block anyone, your quarterback ends up getting sacked. The play calling was also a little suspect to me; this has been such a weird football season thus far–the Denver Broncos are coming to play the Saints today without any quarterbacks–the more I think it should have just been cancelled and all players given an extra year of eligibility. I really don’t see how they can legitimately have a play-off and crown a champion when some schools haven’t even played all the limited schedule games they had scheduled. Ah, well. The Saints game should be interesting today, at any rate.

I worked on the book some yesterday and feel a lot better about the whole thing overall. If I can get through this draft relatively quickly–one or two chapters per day–I can then let it sit for a week or so and then go back in with my red pencil and build up the subplot threads running through it as well as come up with the perfect ending to the book; it came to me last night, and I think it is the right ending. We shall see, I suppose.

I also finished reading Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! by Stephen Rebello last night, which is the behind-the-scenes, gossipy look at how the movie version of Valley of the Dolls came to be. I love both book and movie, so I’ll have a separate entry about that book. I read some more of Night of Camp David as well, which is an interesting animal as far as political thrillers are concerned. (Granted, I’ve not read many political thrillers.) I’m over halfway finished with it, which will then lead to the dilemma of what to read next. Heavy heaving sigh.

I fell into an Internet wormhole last night on my iPad during the Iron Bowl (which was just as disappointing than the LSU game; I watch the Iron Bowl because it usually is a good–if bizarre–game full of crazy plays, freakish scores, and the feeling that anything can happen at any time; a trouncing by Alabama isn’t particularly interesting to watch, frankly), and it started with someone posting a picture of a really hot guy on one of the Facebook “hot guy” groups I belong to–I did a little bit of research into the guy, and it turned out he was an actor, did some porn in the 1970’s, and then became a private investigator in Hollywood–someone else had already claimed the title “private eye to the stars” but this is basically what this guy also does. Yes, you can hear the wheels turning in my head, can’t you? As I daydreamed and explored this concept in my head–the games, as I have previously mentioned, weren’t really holding much of my attention–I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether this would be a better series to write about in the 1970’s or in the present. But I really love the concept of the porn-star-turned-private-eye, and even came up with a title for the first story: Slow Burn.

It’s kind of fun feeling creative again, I have to say, and to have finally picked back up the reins of the book at last. I think it’s a good book, too; the story is involving and evolving as I revise this most recent draft. (I’m also amazed and more than a little saddened, at how bad some of the writing is; but that’s what drafts are for, aren’t they?)

As my vacation slowly winds down, I am surprisingly not disappointed by how little I have gotten done over this week. I got some things done; started two new short stories, got the book back in progress, did some absolutely necessary tidying of kitchen cabinets and so forth, and I did get some reading done. I think I can face the office tomorrow without an issue, either–other than getting up early, which is going to take some serious readjusting again–and over all, feel pretty good about everything.

And now back the spice mines.

Tell Me Why

Monday on a vacation week isn’t nearly as brutal or as unpleasant as it is on a normal work week. Ordinarily I am up and out of bed at six in the morning every Monday; today I was able to be a slug-a-bed until around eight, which is when I generally begin the waking process when I do not have to go into the office. One week from today when I am getting up at six again I shall look back on the glory of this halcyon morning and will, as I shut off my alarm and blearily open my eyes, undoubtedly will wish I were still on vacation.

The Saints won yesterday–Taysom Hill played really well for his first start and first full game as quarterback—which was quite delightful. It was more delightful that they were playing the Falcons. The Saints have now won like seven straight games, which is great, but many of them were squeakers, so while I think it’s great, I’m not so gung-ho about the play-offs as one might expect. But 8-2 is much better than I was expecting for them at this point in the season, so I am going to happily take it.

I did manage to reread the first ten chapters of Bury Me In Shadows yesterday; it was necessary because it’s been so long since I’ve worked on it I couldn’t remember where I was at or what was going on. I found a lot of errors (and even more egregious examples of terrible writing), and I am going to spend some time today on fixing those. I also did an outline as I went, which I am going to continue to update as I work my way through the book, and I am feeling a lot more confident about making that due date than I was just yesterday. I just need to focus and keep writing and keep fixing. I need to thoroughly immerse myself in the book, and I think I can do that this week. (As I started making the outline and listing the character names at the beginning, I literally could not remember the main character’s name. That’s how long it has been since I’ve even looked at this; which is rather disgraceful, but also telling about my mental state, my brain, and my memory.)

I also managed to work on “The Rosary of Broken Promises” yesterday morning before diving back into the book. I have no idea where this story is going or what’s going to be about, but it’s in my head and it’s worrying me, like how you always worry a loose tooth with your tongue. I keep thinking about the story, even when I’m not writing it. It’s shaping up to be vastly different than anything I’ve ever done before, and while I am not entirely sure it will be publishable anywhere–the problem with short stories: at some point, you have to think about reshaping them to fit markets, or they sit dormant in your files until the proper submission call rolls around. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how self-destructive my creativity can be? I mean, I have two submissions calls I want to write a short story for, the timelines and deadlines for both are tight, so what do I write? A story that doesn’t fit either call.

We watched the new episodes of both The Undoing and Murder on Middle Beach last night, and another episode of Le Manti. All three are quite good, and we’re enjoying them tremendously. There’s only one more episode left of The Undoing, in which we will find the answers; I don’t see how they could stretch this into a second season, but I also thought the same with Big Little Lies, and they did a second season of that, so anything is possible these days–which is kind of cool but at the same time, sad.

I have a lot of work and other things to get done today. My back is still aching–not sure what it is, quite frankly, and am getting rather tired of it–but I am also going to the gym later this morning and hopefully that won’t affect it too negatively. It’s very weird; I should probably get it looked at, but if it’s just muscle strain I’d feel like an idiot, and rightly so. So at some point today I need to use my back massage roller thingee, and while it will inevitably tighten back up later, I should probably start thinking about stretching it/using the massage roller every day.

And on that note, the spice isn’t going to mine itself. Have a lovely Monday before the holidays, Constant Reader.