Saturday morning and my birthday eve. Yes, it’s tomorrow; Gregalicious hits the big 6-2 tomorrow. It’s been a hell of a year since my birthday last rolled around, and to say that I am in a much better place today than I was a year ago on this date would be putting it mildly. I didn’t know, for example, that I’d lose both my mother and my cat before my next birthday. It does seem weird to not have a cat on my birthday; this is my first cat-free birthday since we first got Skittle all those years ago when we lived in the carriage house. At this time last year I was trying to get my shit back together after having long COVID, but other than that I really don’t remember much of what was going on last August, to be honest. I suppose I could go read last year’s entries around these dates, but maybe it’s best not to remember. Who knows?
I did manage to get over to the West Bank Office of Motor Vehicles, and after what seemed like forever, I did finally get my Louisiana Real ID/driver’s license, and the new picture is even worse than the old. (Why do they tell you to lower your chin and look down? Everyone knows that will result in a much worse picture.) But I also made groceries, grabbed Five Guys for lunch, and then came home to finish my work-at-home chores. I managed to get the bed linens laundered and did some picking up around here. I also read some more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents stories, which was fun. I dipped back into Stories to Be Read Late at Night, originally published in 1962. I read “Evening Primrose” by John Collier, which was interesting and creepy, about ghosts living in a department store, and “The Sound Machine” by Roald Dahl, which was creepy and strange and everything I would have expected from a Dahl story. I’d not read anything by him before, but I know he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as the short story one of the more famous Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes was based on–the one where the wife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, which she then cooks and serves to the investigating officers. The story was, as I expected, creepy, macabre, and one of those stories where you aren’t sure if what you’re reading is happening…or if it’s all a product of the narrator’s fevered, slowing disintegrating mind. It was interesting–but both of these stories reminded me yet again of how limited my imagination and creativity is when it comes to writing short stories; why not expand my mind and try things that are different and outside of my comfort zone, and what better place to try experimental writing and experimental creating than in a short story rather than a novel? The key here is to remember that anything is possible and to not either fear trying out new things or limit myself by saying oh you can’t write that.
Because I can write anything.
I do have to go out into the heat today–mail and a few things to pick up at the store–but I’d rather not go out into the heat. Yesterday didn’t seem that terrible–it was in the high nineties but the humidity was lessened, it seemed; although it was hot as fuck, don’t get me wrong, I handled it better yesterday than I have the rest of the summer–which leads me to believe it wasn’t as humid and the heat index not as high. That, or I am getting used to it, and that’s appalling. No one should get used to this.
I also wrote a lengthy entry about the genesis of Mississippi River Mischief, as well as one about the other book I have coming out this fall that I’ve not really talked about; I also worked on my short story revision a bit more last night before collapsing into my easy chair. We watched more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is amazingly funny–she really can do anything–and then retired for the evening. I slept really well again last night, which was wonderful as always; I love when I sleep well, and so hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot done today. I also want to spend some time reading this morning as well–either short stories or getting back into Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt, which is fantastic; I just haven’t had the bandwidth mentally lately to focus on reading a novel.
It feels very cool in the apartment this morning, which is, as always, a lovely thing. I’ll probably post the entry about the new Scotty book at some point this weekend; at some point this weekend I’ll also finish the entry about the other book I’ve been so mysterious about now for quite some time. I also have a Bible entry I want to finish writing, but I also need to go back and read some appropriate Bible passages to make sure I am remembering correctly; and of course, there’s nothing I want to do less than read some Bible passages.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably check back in with you again later.
Work at home Friday, after I run some errands and take care of some things this morning. I have to go to the OMV to get a real ID (driver’s license expires Sunday), and since I am going over there, I am going to swing by the West Bank Petco to look at kitties (the SPCA has some they’ve farmed out to Petcos). That’s an exciting morning, isn’t it? I am taking Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt with me, so I won’t be bored and since I have to sit around and wait, I might as well read. It’s been bothering me lately that my attention span just hasn’t been there for novels since the heat wave broke me several weeks ago–which is when I switched over to short stories in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies–and I’d like to get this book read before I leave for Bouchercon, primarily so I can hopelessly fanboy over her all weekend (I’ll also be fanboying over Margot Douaihy all weekend, too, among many others as I always do at Bouchercon). I’ve already picked out my books to take with me on the trip (the latest S. A. Cosby, Alison Gaylin, and Laura Lippman will be going to San Diego with me, with Donna Andrews batting clean up), and also already know I will probably get no writing done while I am there. I don’t really have anything due–there will be page proofs for Mississippi River Mischief to go over at some point–but everything else is up in the air for now.
I did manage to get the edits taken care of on Mississippi River Mischief and turned it in last night, so other than the afore-mentioned page proofing, it’s effectively finished. Since the other book–I’ll post about it this weekend, no worries–is also finished and now out of my hair, I have nothing pressing at the moment. Woo-hoo! I also picked up the mail and stopped at Fresh Market to lay in supplies for a weekend of not getting into the car at all. I wrote for a while, and came to a realization about this short story I could never get to work that I’ve been revising, so I am going to go into author mode and talk about writing, so bear with me.
This particular story, “Whim of the Wind.” was the story I wrote when I took creative writing again after switching universities after my first horrendous creative writing experience (if I haven’t said it enough, the professor told me I’d never be a published writer). This story was beloved by my class and my professor, who told me I should submit it to literary magazines. I did a few times, it was always rejected, and there was a slight flaw in the story–but no one who read it could ever give me any insight into how to fix the story. It was also my first Alabama story, my first visit to my fictional Corinth county, and so it’s always kind of been precious to me. I never could figure out how to revise it or what to do with it…but as I’ve been revising it (it’s now twice as long as it was, and I’ve not finished), it’s been changing some. I think what everyone was responding to was the voice–I’ve used it again since, and people always respond to that aspect–and really, as long as the voice is intact and preserved, that’s all that really matters. I also realized last night something else–I was having to change the climactic scene in the story, and as such had to come up with a different Civil War legend to build it around–and I realized this story, along with two other, had been written using the same trope, that I have since learned was apocryphal–the evil Yankee deserter. I wrote this story using it, I wrote “Ruins” using it, and I wrote another, “Lilacs in the Rain,” also using it (that story has morphed into a novella renamed “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain”); so yes, I wrote three short stories based on the same, apocryphal, Civil War urban (rural?) legend. Bury Me in Shadows evolved out of “Ruins,” and I blew up the trope in that book; that was the “Yankee deserter” story I was meant to write. So, the other two need different legends, and I found a good one for “Whim of the Wind”–but again, a delicate subject I’ll need to be very careful with–and now maybe I can make “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain” actually work, now that I know what I need to do with it. I am also having a lot of fun looking into Alabama history and finding these great legends and stories and folk tales that I should be able to find something to use.
I slept really well last night, and feel pretty good this morning. Don’t feel so great about having to go to the West Bank, but that’s okay; it’s a routine change I can live with, and I can actually do my weekend grocery shopping over there as well–and I can get Five Guys to bring home for lunch. I think after that I will have laid in enough supplies to not have to leave the house for the rest of the weekend–I may go get the mail tomorrow–and I want to clean, organize, read, and write all weekend. Paul got home late last night (another grant) so we didn’t get a chance to watch anything last night–he walked in while I was watching a Youtube documentary about the usurpation of the English throne by the House of Lancaster that set the dangerous precedent (for kings) that incompetent ones could be overthrown and replaced…and eventually led to the Wars of the Roses. I also was watching some videos–someone did a series of the greatest plays in LSU football history, which was very fun to watch and relive (I really should do an in-depth post about my love of LSU football; not that everyone who’s paying attention doesn’t already know about it, of course, but I love football and it’s fun for me to write/talk about it. I also find the fandom interesting, too.)..and they were grouped by stretches of time, eras, if you will (2007 season got its own video)–and also guided by the scarcity of available digitized video from the far distant past. (I was also thinking “don’t the networks that originally aired the games have tape? Can’t it be digitally remastered? I know the SEC Network has done this with some classic games from the past; it’s a project the NCAA should back fully, as it’s the history of the sport.) It’s very fun to revisit past games and my memories–LSU is never boring to watch, ever–and I am very excited about the upcoming season, both for LSU and the Saints. I worry that everyone is over-hyping LSU (something I always worry about) but given the over-performance from last year, it’s kind of understandable, really. LSU came out of nowhere to win ten games, beat Alabama, and beat both Florida and Auburn on the road in the same season for the first time in program history. So, yeah, understandable. I was thinking before last season that it was going to have to be a wash–new coach, rebuilding after two down years, etc.–and that this year would be the one where the Tigers would make a run. I am excited for our new quarterback for the Saints, too–he, like me, also went to Fresno State, so I have even more reason to root for him and like him–and they seem to be doing well in the preseason. GEAUX SAINTS!
I did work on the revision of “Whim of the Wind” yesterday–it’s amazing to me that I’ve taken a story that barely over two thousand words and added another almost three thousand to it, and it still isn’t done–but I am feeling good about the story, now that I’ve recognized my attachment to it that actually was hindering me from revising it. It’ll always exist in that original version, after all, and nothing I do to it in current or future versions are ruining that precious first version that meant so much to me as an aspiring writer. Sentimentality–the very thing I am always trying to guard against when it comes to almost everything in my life–got the best of me with this story. The other story I turned it at the same time, which I’ve also never been able to correct, perhaps now I can fix it, too. I had thought about expanding the other one (which is actually incredibly problematic on many levels by modern standards) into a novel, and perhaps I still will; I’ve started slowly world-building around the panhandle of Florida the same way I have with Corinth County in Alabama, but there’s no crime or mystery or supernatural thing going on in that story; so it would be a coming-of-age romance….but I may know a way (that just came to me) and there were some other ideas about it, too. You never know, right? Why not riff for a while and see what comes up?
I’m kind of getting excited about writing again, can you tell?
And on that note, I should start getting ready for the OMV and get that hellish experience over with once and for all. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader and you never know–I may be back later.
Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I have a lot to get done over the weekend–errands and chores and things, oh my! I’ve arranged for medical appointments and examinations, have gathered everything I need for the OMV, and I even spent a little time writing yesterday. Who am I, and what have I done with Gregalicious?
I slept better on Tuesday night than the previous nights, and it felt great. I didn’t feel tired or worn out or dragged out–and of course, while it was still fucking hot here, it was normal August hot, not Satan’s taint hot. I can handle normal August hot. Sure, I’ll complain, but if this summer thus far has proven anything to me, it’s that I’ll be grateful for a regular Louisiana summer from now on. Yesterday was a good day at work as well; I feel like I helped some people and was able to be a good listener for some others who needed to get some things worked through. I love my job because I get to feel like I’ve made a difference in someone’s life, and there’s always at least one client per day who makes me feel that way. It’s a good feeling. I know I am helping everyone I see, but the ones where you have to go a bit deeper than is usually necessary are really special for me. That’s what I really needed from a job all along, and if I didn’t find that out until I was in my forties, at least I finally did find out. I’ve been at my day job longer than any job I’ve had previously, and by the time I retire at sixty-seven (roast in hell for all eternity, Ronald Reagan) I will have worked there longer than I worked at all my other jobs combined. (I’m not counting writing or editing in this, by the way; those are contract jobs, not a regular paycheck with benefits, which also includes fitness instruction. No benefits nor regular paycheck there, either.)
I also loved being a personal trainer because I enjoyed helping people feel better–so much of fitness training is mental, and reshaping mindsets and attitudes and mentalities, you have no idea. I used to actually write a syndicated queer-specific fitness column, which took a holistic approach to fitness and well-being, and so sometimes I would get into the mental health/self-image stuff. I always wanted to write a holistic health and fitness book targeted to a queer audience, but the performance aspect of promoting a health and fitness book wasn’t anything I was interested in; it would mean staying in shape constantly, watching everything that I put into my mouth and limiting myself, cutting out alcohol., and above all else, quitting smoking. Once I got myself back into shape, in 1994 and then again in 2001 (after that Horrible Year That We Never Discuss), I gradually became less obsessed about the regimen I needed to maintain to continue to work toward underwear model-type body and decided I was okay with a slight roll around the middle, and not having a six pack, or veins bulging out from under the skin everywhere. Fitness instruction, and fitness writing, weren’t my passion though; I wanted to be a fiction writer and I didn’t want to use my discipline and self-control and will to push myself into trying to compete for dollars and eyes and influence in the fitness world–I wanted to use that to write the best fiction I could and get it published so people could read it.
I was also thinking that I might want to think about doing something to mark Scotty’s turning twenty-one next year (I honestly cannot believe I’ve been writing this series this long. It was supposed to a stand alone!) I am thinking I should probably write another Scotty book, so the tenth will come out during his twenty-first year of existence, but I am not quite sure what I want to do with the boys next. I have some titles and possibilities–French Quarter Flambeaux about a Mardi Gras murderer; Quarter Quarantine Quadrille which of course takes place during the quarantine; and Bywater Bohemia Bougie, which would be a long look at real estate, gentrification, and how New Orleans has lost some of its soul since Katrina. I probably should write a Scotty every year. But I don’t want him or the series to get stale; that’s what happened with Chanse and I’d originally planned to only do seven, and I was on book seven so I said, fine, we’ll end it here. I do think there are more Chanse novellas to be written at some point; I think the shorter form will force me out of the “paint by numbers” way I was feeling with that series by the end. (For the record, I think the last two books of the series are just as strong, if not stronger, than the books that came before them. The quality wasn’t slipping, but the challenge of writing them wasn’t there anymore.)
The last thing I want to feel when I’m writing something is bored. Sick of it is one thing and is perfectly acceptable to feel; by the time you’re doing the page proofs you should be so fucking sick of your book and those characters that you don’t ever want to think about them again….and the time between turning in those final corrections and the release/promotion is just long enough of a time to pass so you don’t want to slit your wrists when the subject of the book comes up. I have yet to feel boredom with writing Scotty; the fact that the stories can be insanely ridiculous and completely over-the-top helps a lot in that regard. And yet…I’ve noticed things, looking back at the older books in the series, while I was writing Mississippi River Mischief, that I need to pay more attention to in the future. A reader asked me, sometime after the release of Royal Street Reveillon, “how many car accidents has Scotty been in?” And when I started thinking about it….was like yeeesh, quite a few–to the point where I probably wouldn’t get into the same car with him. I noticed that there are books where Frank and Colin’s presence is so minimal that they aren’t even supporting characters but rather cameos; and I don’t use Scotty’s family nearly as much in the later books as I did in the earlier ones. So, when I write the next Scottys, going into them I am going to be more conscious of these things, and I am going to try to work them out organically through the manuscript. Scotty’s getting older, as are the others (my editor was very enthusiastic about how much she loved that Scotty ages in real time), and I’ve started addressing that. I do think the next case is going to have to heavily involve Scotty’s family; I’m thinking it’s about time his sister Rain took center stage in one of his cases. I love Scotty’s entire family, to be honest, and I am really glad I brought his best friend David–missing from the last four or so books–back into this one.
As you can probably tell, I was a bit concerned about my editor’s response to this one. Someone who has anxiety to the degree I do probably shouldn’t be a fiction writer, but it’s too late now, over forty novels in. But….it’s never too late to enter a new chapter of my career, either.
I slept great again last night–the slight cooling off this week has been marvelous; the air conditioning finally caught up, and I was laughing last night because I was taking some stuff out to the recycling and realized…it was chilly enough in the apartment for me to wear a sweatshirt and sweatpants (which means the temperature inside is correct), and when I was walking the stuff out I didn’t break a sweat and thought it was actually pleasant outside…and it was 94. Today I have to get through, run some errands on the way home (post office mostly–I can’t decide about the grocery store but I don’t think we need anything; I have developed the habit of making groceries whenever I get the mail since I’m already uptown) and then settle in for the night. Paul was late last night working on a grant, so when he got home we watched the first episode of Only Murders in the Building, which was a very pleasant surprise (we weren’t wild about season two, but season three got off to a great start, and of course, Meryl Streep!), and finished the evening off with an episode of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is just hysterically funny. It’s nice to feel rested before the last day of getting up early and going into the office.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
Sunday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept well again on Friday night, woke up at five, six and seven like every morning with no alarm, and then finally got up around seven thirty to get ready for the day, which was nice. I decided that it made the most sense to run my errands in the morning before the brutal heat of the afternoon; I needed to mail a letter and pick up the mail, as well as drop off Scooter’s leftover food at the Cat Practice and make groceries–and I needed cleaning supplies, so that was crucial to the day; an errand that had to be run. It was brutally hot, but I managed it all. I bought a lot of cleaning supplies, and spent most of the afternoon yesterday cleaning. I did the stairs, the floors in the bedroom, and finally emptied and cleaned out Scooter’s litter box. I was avoiding it because I was afraid doing it would make me sad, but ironically it was just a chore…but writing about it just now made me start to tear up a bit. Sigh. He was such a dear cat. (I also looked at the adoptable cats on the SPCA’s website. I really really want to get this twelve year old ginger boy that no one’s going to want because he’s old..but we’re old. Is it fair to get a baby cat that might outlive either or both of us? Well, that certainly cheered me up a bit. Christ.)
I also did the baseboards and the CD stand…which is something we’re going to have to discuss. We don’t even have a CD player anymore, and yes, it’s terrible to have paid for all that music only to lose it now all these years later but…I haven’t listened to a CD in years. My car has a CD player–maybe I can move some into the car and listen to them instead of the phone? We have all these great gay deejay dance mix CD’s–we used to buy them all the time, the little store across from the Pub used to sell them, and Tower Records–when it existed still–also sold dance remix CDs; I think I got the Debbie Harry dance mix CD single for “I Want That Man” at Tower Records. Anyway, years and years ago Paul had this wooden CD stand custom built. It’s a lovely piece of furniture, and perhaps it can be repurposed for something else–but the CDs are grimy and I cleaned them with a lick and a promise; but…do we really need to hold on to all those CDs? (The stand needs to be repainted white, too–years of nicotine have turned it precancerous–but that will have to wait until the weather calms the fuck down.
But I feel good about the apartment, really. Having the walls finally finished has awakened a nesting instinct in me that’s been dormant for quite some time. As I was finishing the stairs and looking around, I actually thought I wouldn’t mind having someone come by the house now even though it’s still not up to my standard (my work space will never stay tamed, alas), which is something I’ve not even considered in years. It felt good wiping down the walls and baseboards, picking up all that nasty dust and getting rid of it. I also bought a dust mop at the store yesterday (as one of my cleaning purchases) so I can run it over the walls more regularly to keep the dust from accumulating and turning into grime or cobwebs. It’s still very much a work in progress, of course, but I am feeling good about the homestead, and probably am about to do another brutal purge of the books.
I read some short stories yesterday as well–more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology stories, of course–and I am getting such an education in short stories, as well as having some powerful insights (well, to me anyway; remember, I go through life completely oblivious to everything) about my own stories, what I find myself afraid to do and how limiting my own fears about my abilities and my talents and my creativity have proven to be. One of the stories I read yesterday, “Getting Rid of George” by Robert Arthur, was about a movie star whose carefully hidden past suddenly comes back with a vengeance just as she is about to marry the love of her life and start her own production company with him, making herself quite rich in the process, and it hit me: one of the stories I am struggling with writing right now is about a wealthy gay man and his boy toy looking for a fabled ‘fountain of youth’ in a fictional Latin American country. I’ve had the idea for decades–since visiting the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan and thinking I should write a story about these ruins (and yes, well aware that I have to be incredibly careful and respectful of the Mayan culture and their descendants)…and this is the story set in a foreign locale I was going to try to write for the Malice anthology. I need to recognize self-destructive thinking when it presents myself; and whenever I think you can’t write this for whatever reason my reaction shouldn’t be to shy away from it but to dive into it headfirst and commit to it. (This is also one of those stories that I thought I had already written a draft of; but it is not to be found anywhere, nothing other than pieces of aborted openings–it may have been lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018….but I just realized where it probably was and THAT’S WHERE IT WAS! Victory!)
And really, one of the two main characters in my story “Don’t Look Down” was a retired former boy band star. So, that was certainly outside my expertise, was it not?
I really enjoyed the Robert Arthur story; Arthur was also the creator of, and wrote, eleven of the first twelve Three Investigators mystery series, which makes him always special to me. He worked for Hitchcock on the literary side of the brand (Hitchcock became a brand like before we thought of creatives in terms of brands and branding and brand marketing), and also “helped” (i.e. “ghost edited”) most of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Arthur was a great writer, “Getting Rid of George” certainly is evidence of his talents, and it’s a shame he isn’t better known or regarded; but the great tragedy of juvenile books is that they rarely survive the test of time–they inevitably are forgotten, as are their authors, unless they win a Newbery medal or something, like Johnny Tremain, but I suspect even that tired old war horse of American revolutionary propaganda isn’t read nearly as much today as it was when I was a kid. There are few–Lois Duncan being one–crime writers for juveniles or young adults to be named Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America; Arthur certainly deserved to at least be considered, as the creator of the Three Investigators and as a rather successful writer of crime short stories.
I read another story in My Favorites in Suspense, “Island of Fear” by William Sambrot, which I really enjoyed and thought was quite excellent. An Englishman looking for antiques and local art in the Greek islands spots a small island with a massive wall built along its shoreline, and wants to stop there as it is remote and doesn’t, per the captain, get many outside visitors. This is a “be careful what you wish for” tale; because he convinces the captain to let him off on the island, where he spots a gorgeous sculpture through a break in the wall, so exquisite he has to have it and meet whoever the people are who live in the land inside the wall. The island natives are quiet and don’t talk much–not his usual experience with Greeks–and finally convinces a young man to row him around the island to an opening in the walls so he can go ashore, meet the owners, and buy the statue. As I said, it’s a “be careful what you wish for” story, and the ending is quite satisfying as the last few paragraphs make sense of the “mystery” of the island. It may well have been my favorite of the stories thus far in the anthology (at least of the new-to-me material; remember the book opened with “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, which quite set the tone for the rest of the stories.
I also read a story from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Two Spinsters”, which falls into the category of “the unfortunate traveler,” which several stories in both anthologies fall into. It’s not bad, the main character being a police detective who gets lost on unknown backroads and can’t find the town he’s looking for, and is eventually forced to seek refuge at a strange house with two identical, if silent, spinsters–and there’s a lot more going on in that strange house than the weary traveler suspects at first. This story was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, yet another writer I’ve never heard of or his work before. Oppenheim, however, was quite the big deal in his time; he wrote and published over a hundred novels and even more short stories; John Buchan (a Golden Age crime writer not as well known today as perhaps he should be) called him his primary inspiration when launching his own career in 1913.
Interestingly enough, the next story up in Stories That Scared Even Me is by Robert Arthur. There are only three stories left in My Favorites in Suspense, and the book closes with a short novel, The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a classic from that post-war era that I’ve always wanted to read (it was common in those days to close a short story collection by including a short novel, and most crime novels in those days were rather short). I’ll probably finish reading those short stories today, but really need to get back to reading novels–maybe I’ll read a bit more into The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford, which is fantastic; taking so long to finish should not be seen as an indictment of Ford’s work. The book is fantastic and she is one of the great new voices in queer crime fiction–and I’ll be doing a crime panel with her later today for Outwrite DC.
I slept really well last night–it’s lovely having Paul home, really–and so today I hope to get some reading and writing done. I am about to adjourn to my chair to finish this Hitchcock anthology, and then I am going to work on getting some writing done while cleaning up the kitchen and my workspace. I feel very well rested this morning–I could have easily slept much later–so hopefully it will be a great day of getting things done.
Or not. Since Paul’s home now we can finish watching Gotham Knights, Hijack, and back to other shows we’re watching, and of course Paul needs to watch Season Two of Heartstopper, which means I can finally talk about it. I may check in with you again later, Constant Reader, and if not, I certainly will do so tomorrow.
Saturday morning and Paul comes home today! Huzzah! Huzzah! I of course literally have no idea what time he will be arriving–he never tells me these things and I never think to ask–but it’s fine. Yesterday was a good work-at-home day. Sam the handyman came by in the morning to finish touching things up and clean everything up, which was marvelous, and now the apartment sort of looks like our apartment again. It’s great, and it makes me want to clean, which is something I’d forgotten that I enjoyed so much. I’ve really let the housework slide since the pandemic started (sure, let’s blame it on that, shall we?) but a lot of it had to do with the walls in the living room. tl;dr= we had some leaks, and water damage to the walls in the living room. The leaks were repaired, but the plaster and paint somehow never got finished and we’d been living with that for a while….and when you have places where the bare wall is showing…the apartment, even clean and sparkling from ceiling to floor, would look deranged and damaged and sloppy. I think I felt a little defeated, to be honest.
I’ve felt defeated a lot over the last few years, if I’m going to be honest. But I’ve been feeling oddly better lately about things lately, even optimistic at times. I know, right? It’s kind of scary. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore, but I have full faith in the universe to deliver yet another blow the way it always does when I start feeling like this again–a sense of contentment and peace. I’m sleeping better, getting better rest, and I am getting things done rather than sitting in my easy chair every night scrolling through social media while Youtube videos stream endlessly on continual play. Ironically, I remember feeling this way on another hot August Friday in New Orleans, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina. I had just finished Mardi Gras Mambo at long last and turned it in, and that Friday I had met with the Admissions office at UNO to see about finishing my degree in English and pursuing a master’s, and even potentially eventually a PhD. Yes, I had ambitions. The meeting had gone incredibly well. We scheduled a meeting with the chair of the English department, and it looked fortuitous and very good; I’d have to pay for the semester required to get the English degree, but it looked like I’d get the master’s not only without having to pay, but I’d also get an on-campus part-time job. I don’t reflect back very often, but sometimes I remember that last optimistic August before Katrina and wonder how different my life would look now had Katrina never happened…or at least had the levees held. I’ve always felt the lack of educational degree and study keenly; I was far too young when I started school and majored in English to really appreciate the in-depth examination of classic literature and other forms. None of what little I learned stuck, either. I have also always been made to feel that the books I actually did read and appreciate were lowbrow; on par for someone as uneducated and unserious like me. I’ve not read much of the classic writers, for example; I’ve never read Edith Wharton or Jane Austen or much of Henry James; I may give Hemingway another try at some point but I was unimpressed with both A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea. Fitzgerald wrote beautifully about horrible people I’m not interested in; I love Faulkner but he’s a lot of work to read (but I will go to my grave loving “A Rose for Emily” and wishing I had written one thing that perfect), so I’m not going to read Faulkner for pleasure–even though I take great pleasure in the voice and the rhythm of the words and so forth, I’m still looking for characterization and story.
Hell, there are any number of classic mystery writers I’ve never read, for that matter. I had never read Ross Macdonald until I was on a panel with Christopher Rice who sang his praises highly enough for me to get a couple of his books…and have always been delighted that I did. I think I’ve read one Rex Stout novel, but I can’t remember anything about it and I think I am thinking of a television adaptation with William Conrad and Timothy Hutton? Or did I imagine that, too? One of the things I am loving about reading the short stories in these marvelous old Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies is getting to read authors I’ve heard of that I’ve not read. Yesterday night I read “Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond” by Nugent Barker, from Stories That Scared Even Me; “Four O’Clock” by Rice Day, “Of Missing Persons” by Jack Finney, and Paul Eiden’s “Too Many Coincidences”, from My Favorites in Suspense. I enjoyed them all, but the Barker was my least favorite of the four. It’s written in Ye Olde Timey Style, and it goes on for far too long, and it’s big twist I saw coming. I also didn’t much care for Mr. Bond. The Day story was one of those macabre little tales of irony with the kind of ending that Daphne du Maurier mastered and I’ve always loved–and aspire to write. (The trick is the ending has to be earned.) The Finney story was also one of those, but a bit more melancholic than macabre.
I also spent some more time with Superman last night. First I watched a documentary called Look Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman, which I followed with this week’s episode of My Adventures with Superman. I was very pleased to see Jimmy Olsen talked about in the documentary, and the actor from the television series, Jack Larson, was openly gay and was in a very long term relationship that lasted until he died in 2015, as someone very kindly reminded me on Twitter the other day in response to my talking about Jimmy on here. I am really intrigued at the idea of writing a Jimmy Olsen story…although I’m not exactly sure what I would do with such a thing, and I’m equally sure publishing it would be a trademark/copyright violation of some sort. I’ll make a note and keep chewing on it, though.
I also worked on the book some last night (at last) which felt marvelous and overdue. It was so hot yesterday–even with the air conditioner on full blast and desperately trying to keep up, you could tell inside that everything outside was roasting. I am quite pleased to have gotten past the revision of Chapter Five at long last and I have to say, I am most happy with what I did. Of course, Chapter Six is from scratch, which is going to be an enormous pain in my ass, naturally; writing anything where nothing other than a thought exists at the moment is always harder than revising. Revising can be either tedious or a lot of fun; it’s when your making the book better written and deepening characters and cleaning up shit and building on the ideas you’ve already gotten down but didn’t express particularly well as you were just madly trying to get words on the page and the story advanced and all of that.
Whew. Breathe.
I also woke up to a marvelous email–I just checked–from my editor on Mississippi River Mischief letting me know when the edits would come and included…”This book is fabulous, btw.”
Whew,
And on that marvelous note, off to the spice mines with me!
I received an invitation code the other day from a friend for Blue Sky, one of the new upstarts looking to replace the dumpster fire hellhole that is Twitter, and so yesterday I set up the account. I am also on Threads. On Blue Sky I am @scottynola, just like I am on Twitter, but on Threads I am @gregh121. I probably should have been consistent across the three platforms, but why would I start making things easier for people to find me now, twenty years into my career? But I posted on both Facebook and Twitter that I was there–and Twitter locked my account. Yes, the Muskrat is all about free speech, isn’t he?
Honestly. But Twitter becomes more and more of a shit-show with every passing day, and it’s not like it was ever a great place to be for long, anyway. I’d go on there, scroll through, have some fun and/or funny interactions with friends and acquaintances…and then inevitably it would turn horrific and I could feel the bile rising within myself as I read more and started to reply angrily…before deleting and closing the app. I wonder what future historians (if there are any future historians) will write and think about this era? What will they debate about, what will they think the truth was and how will it all wind up being reported? How harshly will we all be judged?
That’s a rather chilling thought on Morning 4, 432, 172 of an excessive heat advisory day here in New Orleans. I had thought and planned to go to the OMV today and get my real ID at long last, but I cannot find one item that I need…which Paul keeps so I won’t lose it and yet I was able to put my hands rather easily on all of the other things I need. The irony of this is not lost on me. I also am kind of glad of an excuse to not go outside today, in all honesty. It’s going to “feel like” up to 120 every day over the weekend, and I’d really rather not. It was miserable coming home from work yesterday, and I had to run a couple of errands as well. Dreadful. Just leaving my backpack in the car during those brief intervals at the stops I made was enough for my laptop to be hot to the touch when I got it inside. I think I have to make at least one grocery run this weekend, but I don’t know when I want to attempt it and go out into that. Paul’s coming home sometime on Saturday, and it would probably make the most sense to wait until he’s home, maybe? I don’t know, really. My brain is sort of on the fritz these days from the heat (yes, Greg, it’s recent and it’s the heat, whatever helps you get through it) but I had a great breakthrough last night on the WIP, and realized what absolutely is missing from the manuscript. So, hopefully after completing today’s homework duties (seriously, why haven’t I been calling it that all along instead of work-at-home? Embarrassment because it sounds like being a kid again? It’s work I do at home that’s more easily and efficiently done here than at the office, so homework), I’ll be able to dig into the book and get this important piece of the voice into the book. I also know where it’s heading in this first act, and I kind of have an idea for the middle for a change. That’s always satisfying; those a-ha moments are always so satisfying that it’s almost like having an orgasm; I want a cigarette immediately after, LOL.
But the finishing touches on the apartment are being done today, and I have to say having the walls back together on the first floor is amazing. I always forget how lovely this apartment is when, well, things are the way they are supposed to be. It’s an old house, and things go wrong and leaks occur and so on, and we generally tend to not complain about things…so they tend to not get the attention they need when we would prefer that to occur. But with the walls taken care of, with new plaster where it had damaged and then being painted over to match at last, it looks lovely in the living room and kitchen (I’d forgotten about that patch of white paint up in the corner by the ceiling; but it now matches) and now I no longer have any excuse for not cleaning and keeping the apartment up, which primarily was the defeat of “oh because of the damaged walls it will always look slovenly in here no matter what else I do” which turned into a multi-year slide. Had the walls been redone just before the shut down, I could have really used that time at home to clean the fuck out of this place. But the shutdown came with a malaise–depression, undoubtedly–and so nothing ever really got done.
I slept really well last night–woke up at five, again at six, and stayed in bed until seven–and now am enjoying my coffee and finishing this up. Sam the handyman has already come by to check in; I told him I’d be moving upstairs with my laptop and he has free rein on the downstairs. I need to start the cleaning upstairs anyway, and so if I am up there working when I take a break I can go clean something. There’s a television with Apple TV as well, so there’s literally no reason why I can’t get things done with music playing through the television. I’ve already started redoing the upstairs in bits and pieces. Tonight when I am finished with everything I think I will start watching this new reboot of The Real Housewives of New York. I’m kind of burning out on reality television, which has fascinated me for almost two solid decades now, so it would be nice to see a new, interesting take on these shows. (Hell, I even wrote a book around them.) I still have to get caught up on this season of Superman and Lois, but I am experiencing quite a bit of super-hero burnout lately, which is why I am enjoying the animated My Adventures with Superman so much–it’s optimistic and the doom and gloom and darkness so endlessly in supply for the DC Universe movies (thanks to The Dark Knight series) isn’t fun to watch.
And on that note, I am going to get a cup of coffee and head upstairs. Happy Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow. Or later–one never can be sure.
Monday morning and back to the office with me. I had a lovely weekend, and hope you did as well, Constant Reader. Yesterday morning was enormously productive–perhaps not with writing, but at least with the chores, and yes, I am aware I’ve gone full Joan Crawford since Paul left. I worked on my blog yesterday morning, and then made Greg’s Famous Meatballs in the slow cooker–which takes a while for the prep work slicing the onions and celery and bell pepper for the roux and then making the roux itself; making the meatballs–which involves bread crumbs, egg, and diced onion and various spices–and then preparing the sauce. I was also trying to clean as I went–easier said than done–but I don’t want to let the kitchen slide to the embarrassing mess it was in before Paul left. Maintenance is always easier than the deep clean. Then once the meatballs were safely deposited into the slow cooker along with the sauce (I changed it again), I went to work on cleaning up the mess–as well as cutting up a salad for taking to work this week and then the clean-up for that before I showered and moved on to the living room.
I also took the time to read two more stories from Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me, namely, John Burke’s “Party Games” and Fritz Leiber’s “X Marks the Pedspot”, both of which were decidedly creepy and disturbing; the first about an unpopular child who crashes a birthday party he wasn’t invited to and things take a macabre turn; Leiber’s story reminded me of a Harlan Ellison story about duels on the highway between cars; the ultimate expression of road rage. The primary difference between Ellison’s story and Leiber’s was that in the Leiber, it’s a seemingly endless war between drivers and pedestrians, highlighted by the dislike and contempt felt between the suburbanites (the drivers) and the urbanites (the pedestrian city dwellers), and focuses on an incident that leads to another treaty and changes to the rules of engagement. It’s quite macabre and dystopian; I’ve not read Leiber before, but he was an award winning writer of horror, science fiction and fantasy; I have a copy ofhis novel Conjure Wife (which Bell Book and Candle, and later Bewitched, took some inspiration from) which I’ve always wanted to get around to read. Both stories were well done and unsettling; I don’t know that I would call them “scary,” but I enjoyed both very much. Burke primarily wrote novelizations of films, and a series about Dr. Caspian, and also used numerous pseudonyms. He was an award-winning short story writer, too–and I have to say “Party Games” was creepy as fuck.
It is fun finding these old gems, and seeing how they hold up.
I managed to get quite a bit done yesterday for cleaning, at any rate; no writing to claim for the weekend. But it’s okay to not write every day. It’s okay to not be productive all the time, and I really need to get past the feeling that taking time off is not only wasted (I only have so much time left) but me being lazy. I think my edits for Mississippi River Mischief will be dropping soon, and I kind of needed this weekend. I feel better about the apartment than I have in a long time, and am regretful that I allowed it to lapse into such a disgraceful condition. I’m going to blame depression for letting my standards slip so badly, and it should be relatively easy to maintain now. I feel better, more rested and relaxed, and hopefully that will carry me through the rest of this week. I have a live streaming thing this coming Sunday–Outwrite in DC, I think? I’ll have to find the link to register. John Copenhaver is moderating, and the panelists are me, Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Robyn Gigl, and Renee James. John sent us questions yesterday, which I’ll think about at some point over the course of the week.
I slept well, didn’t want to get up this morning (nothing new there), and feel pretty good this morning. I feel rested and relaxed; the question is how will I feel at the end of today and how will I feel when Friday rolls around again? I watched some more episodes of My Adventures with Superman, which is a super-sweet show that manages to capture the essence of who Superman is far more so than any of the recent films. I also finished watching The History of Sitcoms while I was cleaning the living room yesterday–even the floors and ceiling fans, so you can see that I went all out on the deep cleaning. Now all I have left is the staircase and the upstairs, which is probably what I’ll end up doing on Saturday.
Such an exciting life I lead, no?
I’ll probably try to get back on the writing horse tonight when I get home from work. I am still kind of in shock that I had already written Chapter Five and simply forgotten that I had, which usually happens the other way–“I could have sworn I wrote this already; I swear I remember writing it”–which is a problem mainly because I sometimes convince myself that I did actually write it already. This happens with far greater frequency than the pleasant surprise that “Oh, look, I actually had written this already” is a much more marvelous feeling than “oh, I guess I only thought I’d written this”–there’s really nothing quite like gaslighting yourself, really.
Oh, yay, the heat index today and tomorrow may go as high as 120 degrees. That should feel lovely. I was thinking about picking up the mail today after work–but on the other hand, waiting till tomorrow will hardly be any better, will it? Heavy heaving sigh. I feel like we’ve been running a gauntlet here in New Orleans this summer, and we’re not anywhere near the end yet. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least I feel good this morning, right? No groggy Greggy anywhere near in sight.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again lter.
Saturday in the Lost Apartment, and I am feeling relaxed and good. I had a nice day yesterday, the apartment got more work done on it, and I managed to get everything done that needed doing yesterday. I didn’t really write much last night, but I did read some marvelously macabre short stories, which was lovely, and then watched a few episodes of a CNN documentary series, The History of Sitcoms, which is interesting enough, and feeds into that nostalgia thing we are so prone to as a society. I’ve witnessed any number of nostalgia booms throughout the course of my many years on this speck of dust under the fingernails of God we call earth, and while I am not entirely immune to the appeal of nostalgia, I also recognize that we inevitably remember those past times fondly and perhaps not as accurately as we may think. The 1950’s nostalgia boom of the 1970s, for example, spawned American Graffiti and Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and eventually Grease; reignited interest in the music of the time (anyone remember Sha Na Na?); as well as sock hops and poodle skirts and “Ch**ese fire drills”* (which is probably racist, isn’t it?) and all that stuff; like Archie comics were documentaries rather than fictions. But the 1950s weren’t this idyllic time of peace and quiet and prosperity people seem to think it was, brainwashed by decades of sitcom reruns of shows that presented the United States back to itself as a fantasy, a fiction, and created an unrealistic vision and interpretation of what perfection and success were in a land of opportunity–an unrealistic vision that has somehow come to be taken as a reality when it was never anything more than a fantasy. That’s the danger of nostalgia.
It’s not that I oppose nostalgia, or don’t understand it–we always tend to idealize our childhoods, and the time period when we were children. It isn’t that it was actually an easier, simpler time, it’s just that when you’re a child you aren’t worried about or concerned with the things adults are contending with–so you don’t remember those parts. I do remember being a child, with rioting going on and protests and police violence; I remember the murders of RFK, Dr. King, and Malcolm X. I remember the struggle over the Vietnam War. I remember Watergate, and all the scandals of the Reagan administration modern Republicans have completely forgotten about (or if they do remember them, they remember them as “evil liberals conspiring to bring down St. Ronald–who they would calla RINO today. I can’t imagine Reagan being fond of DeSantis, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio; but who knows? They remember the 1980s as their ‘golden age,’ so who knows what Reagan would be like today–although I can’t imagine him sucking up to Putin). For me, the 1980’s was about HIV/AIDS and the struggle to come to terms with myself and who I am. The 1980’s also showed me that homophobes literally wanted all queer people to die…and I do not believe the modern day iteration of them is any different than they were thirty or forty years ago. Their messaging is the same, after all–we must save our children from groomers and pedophiles while actually ignoring who the actual grooming pedophiles are–youth ministers, priests, and pastors of their religious faith.
Nostalgia can be incredibly dangerous. Here’s the question I’d like to ask everyone who longs to go back to that “simpler” time of the 1950’s/1960’s: where were all the black people in Mayberry, NORTH CAROLINA? Are we supposed to believe that a small town in the South was entirely white?
Bitch, please.
As I said earlier, I did spend some time last evening reading short stories from my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. “A Death in the Family” by Miriam Allen deFord was quite macabre and interesting, about a lonely mortician who grew up as a foster child with no family who creates his own, only to be tripped up in his macabre game when a dead kidnapping victim is dumped on the front steps of his mortuary. Very tightly written and composed, I also like the clever way deFord set the story up to deceive the reader until there’s a big reveal. This story was in Stories That Scared Even Me, and I enjoyed it. I also read some more stories in My Favorites in Suspense: “My Unfair Lady” by Guy Cullingford; “New Murders for Old” by Carter Dickson; and “Terrified” by C. B. Gilford. Carter Dickson was a pseudonym for John Dickson Carr, a very prolific and popular crime writer of the mid-twentieth century; I’d seen books by either name on the racks when I was a kid but I’d never read any of his work. I really liked “New Murders for Old,” a clever story about murder for gain with a complicated twist that I greatly enjoyed–but wouldn’t work in the modern day because it was dependent on someone traveling being out of touch with the rest of his world back home. “Terrified” is a chilling tale of the aftermath of a car accident, where the survivors in one car can’t decide whether or not to kill the dying victim who can counter their testimony about who was at fault, and “My Unfair Lady” is a chilling tale of a sociopathic child who witnesses a murder, and whether she will clear the name of the innocent man who found the body and is the leading suspect, a bit reminiscent of The Bad Seed, which of course is a suspense classic.
I didn’t do as much cleaning and organizing as I had hoped to do, but I did launder all the bed linens and finished the dishes. The kitchen still needs some work done on it, which I think I’ll most likely do this morning once I get this finished and posted. I plan on writing and reading and cleaning for most of the day, but I do have to run an errand later this morning–my copy of Angel Luis Colon’s new juvenile horror novel, Infested, was delivered yesterday, and I also need to determine whether or not I need to stop and make groceries as well. I am low on a couple of things, but I don’t think I actually need a whole lot of anything. I have been enjoying yellow-meat watermelons lately; a relic of my childhood summers in rural Alabama that I’ve never really seen out of that context or anywhere else. Rouse’s sells them now–personal sized and seedless–but it’s been my experience that the personal-sized seedless watermelons don’t taste as good as regular watermelons and have very little flavor of any kind. The last time we went to Costco (we need to go again once Paul gets home) we’d bought two of the personal-sized seedless red ones; they come in a net bag in pairs. Those watermelons were two of the best I’d had in I don’t know how long, so this week I took the plunge and bought one of the yellow ones this week. Constant Reader, it was delicious, if not the best watermelon I’ve had in years. I finished it off last night, but had bought another the other day. So, I think one of my chores for this morning is to clean out the kitchen cupboards, and throwing shit away so I can determine what exactly I need and if I do, in fact, need to stop at the grocery store when I go get the mail.
I also binged the second season of Heartstopper, which was absolutely delightful and charming, as I expected, even as it entered the darker territory the books dealt with. It’s still incredibly sweet, and it handles the darker turns much better than I could have hoped; the books certainly did, even as the darker material made you love and root for the characters more, it’s still a bit heartbreaking because I love those kids so much (Nick, Charlie, Tara, Darcy, Elle, Tao, and Isaac) that I want to wrap them up and protect them from the world. As I watch, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to see a show like Heartstopper when I was a teenager…at what an incredible difference something like this could have made in my life, which is why shows like this are so fucking important. I just hate that they only give us eight short episodes per season–and yes, Olivia Colman is back as Nick’s mom. (One change from the books to the show I don’t like–while I understand it–was the elimination of Charlie and Tori’s younger brother. Sure, he’s not necessary, as the show proves, but I think the way he reacts to Charlie and Nick, and how much he loves them, would be kind of lovely, if not needed.)
I also thought about the book some, as well as reading all those short stories have helped give me some ideas about my own short stories in progress, and how to fix and finish some of them. I would love to get two chapters of the book written this weekend and to finish two short stories, but I don’t know. I’ll probably wind up feeling lazy and spending more time reading than I should, and of course, I have the new iteration of Real Housewives of New York to finish, as well as the third season of Superman and Lois, and My Adventures with Superman, but I am going to try to put off watching television until weeknights, when I am tired from being at work.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need another cup of coffee, and I should put the clean dishes away. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point!
**It is racist: I checked on wikipedia: “Public use of the phrase has been considered to be offensive and racist. In 2017 a candidate for office in Nova Scotia, Matt Whitman, apologized for using the term in a video and subsequently removed the video.[10] In 2020, Washington state Senator Patty Kuderer made an apology for using the term in a hearing; Linda Yang of Washington Asians for Equality stated that the term was racist and filed a complaint with the state.[11] Kuderer apologized before any formal complaint was filed.” There’s an entire history of how the term began and how it was used, but I have found if a term or a phrase that’s a part of the popular culture references a group of people or an ethnicity or a race, it’s usually not a good thing; in this case, it means something useless–and let’s face it, everyone getting out of the car and running around it while stopped at a red light is pretty stupid and useless.
Thursday morning, and my first night spent alone here has passed. It’s so eerie and quiet around here without Paul and Scooter. It’s also weird having that big old bed to myself–Paul is rarely, if ever, not home; I’m the one who’s always traveling–and of course, the apartment always grows exponentially in size somehow when it’s just me in the house. Go figure, right? But I hope to get some things done around the house–I can, for example, spend an entire day upstairs on the weekend cleaning, using Paul’s computer to work on and I can stream stuff through the television upstairs while I clean and organize and try to get it into some semblance of order. I can also work on the downstairs every night and over the weekend, etc. I always plan to get a lot done and I inevitably end up not getting a lot done, which is part of my perpetuation of me being incompetent and lazy and so on; make so many plans there’s no way in hell you can complete them all even if you’re super motivated and driven, and thus can castigate myself once again as a lazy loser.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So, I am planning on making the best of being a temporary widow. I am not going to be a slug, and I don’t have Scooter’s demands for a lap to sleep in to blame it on, either. SO THERE ARE NO EXCUSES. I doubt very seriously that Paul will come home to an apartment so sparkling clean and organized he’ll think he’s in the wrong house, but I can certainly make it all look better at any rate. I may even move furniture. I know, madness, right?
Stranger things have happened. And will again!
I was mostly productive last night; I decided to not really do a whole lot of anything much more than chores. I did several loads of laundry and several loads of dishes, picked things up, reorganized a bit and wiped things down–one would almost think I was on a very strict and tight deadline or something. I had a few pleasant down moments, because when doing laundry and loads of dishes sometimes you have to wait–and there’s not the time to start watching something or writing something, so it’s short little videos on Youtube time, and avoiding wormholes there is sometimes difficult, but it wasn’t last night. I spent some time moving and organizing computer files, and frankly, it was a nice and easy relaxing evening. I got things done, didn’t get sidetracked, and made a great start on the thorough cleaning the apartment needs. I am probably going to spend the weekend mostly working on the upstairs, because we are having work done on the downstairs; when I got home last night there was an enormous ladder and some other tools and things in the living room; and the work on repairing the walls had begun. I have no idea how long that is going to take, but obviously, there isn’t much point to doing a lot of work in the living room while that is happening. And…being forced to focus on the kitchen, laundry room, attic, and upstairs isn’t a bad thing at all. I can always take plug a flash drive into Paul’s computer and write while I am up there working, too.
The theory here is staying busy will keep me from feeling lonely or missing Paul and Scooter. (We really need to get a cat as soon as he gets back, seriously.) Hopefully tonight when I get home from work (and running errands) I can work on the book and do some more cleaning and/or organizing. I may even try to repair that wobbly drawer myself. The file cabinet itself needs a serious purge, as do some of the file boxes I have accumulated around the apartment in my tragic paper hoarding need. As I was looking around at the books last night and thinking about the next serious pruning, I kept coming across books where I would think at first oh, that can go, I’ll never read that again but as I reached for it remembered, oh yes, you wanted to read that because its hardboiled crime fiction set in Los Angeles in the same period as Chlorine is set, and there was a really horrific scene where a gay man is abused by the cops, and that could be helpful in getting into the mindset of how MY queer characters would view the LAPD in that period and so I moved on to the next book on the shelf. It was literally funny how almost every book in my apartment, on my shelves or yes, in the stacks on the floor, I could remember a distinct reason for wanting to read the book and in many cases, it involved writing something; whether a short story, a novel, or an essay about themes or characters or whatever within the book, there was some writing-related reason I wanted to read that book for the first time, or in some cases, like The Lords of Discipline or The Last Picture Show, for maybe the fiftieth time because I wanted to revisit it and see how I felt about it now, at this point in my life as a reader.
I’ve been trying to remember my influences, the cultural moments that resonated or impacted me in some way that changed the way I write because my perspectives had also changed. I recently acquired a copy of a juvenile mystery I remember reading, either from the library or from buying a copy at the Scholastic Book Fair, which I lived for when I was a kid, because I wanted to read it again–and already, just from seeing the image of the original cover and reading the description, I can still remember details from a book I read over fifty years ago; and those were the mysteries I read before I found the series mystery books for kids; once I started with the series, that was all I read…before moving onto novels for adults, which I read voraciously. I’ve talked about and written about books that I loved reading when I was a kid or a teenager, books that made an impression on me in some way and that I remember very fondly, like The Thorn Birds or Green Darkness or The Other Side of Midnight, and sometimes I wish I had the time to go back and revisit those books–but there is so little time and those books are all so long. Everything back then seemed to be incredibly long–The Winds of War, everything by James Michener, Captains and the Kings, Rich Man Poor Man, and even Dress Gray, the West Point murder mystery I always wanted to reread back to back with The Lords of Discipline. Genre fiction–mysteries, romance, scifi–were shorter books as a general rule. Even Harold Robbins wrote some door-stoppers of novels, like The Carpetbaggers and A Stone for Danny Fisher. Irving Wallace churned out incredibly lengthy books that ultimately really were thrillers at their beating heart; Irving Stone mastered the historical biography; and Irwin Shaw also wrote novels the size of leviathans.
And somehow I managed to read them all.
I am not the voracious reader I was when I was younger and had more energy and somehow more time (no cell phone or Internet, more like), and I also read a lot faster than I do now. Heavy sigh. But today is the last day in the office of the week for me, and the last time this week I have to get up this early–I did wake up several times during the night, but I feel rested this morning, if a little spacy–and that’s very nice.
And on that final note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, everyone, and I’ll check in with you again later.
And here we are on yet another Pay-the-Bills Wednesday. Paul is leaving today, and won’t be back until a week from Saturday. I also don’t have Scooter for cuddles and company. Will I go mad living under conditions of absolute reality? Even larks and katydids are believed by some to dream.
Yesterday was a much better day than I’ve had in quite some time, all things considered. I slept incredibly well, so didn’t start off my day either sleepy or groggy or tired, which is always a plus. The work day was relatively low-key; we were slow in the morning but busy in the afternoon, and frankly, I prefer it that way; busy in the morning inevitably means tired in the afternoon, and if we’re so it’s agony. But over all, a good day at the office and an auspicious beginning to the month of August. (I also didn’t note that it was the anniversary of both of our moves to New Orleans; first in 1996, then again on August 1 2001 when we moved back home from That Horrible Year Away.)
I ran errands on my way home–mail, prescriptions, groceries–and then came home to a sink full of dirty dishes which needed attention, so I took care of that as well as another load of laundry, and then sat my ample buttocks into my desk chair and banged out the revision of Chapter 3 I’d been stuck on for a little less than a week (not so much stuck as tired and didn’t want to bother with it, in brutal honesty) and got it finished and under control before moving onto Chapter Four. I also worked on “Whim of the Wind” for a little while, and also did some more research into the history of the city I am fictionalizing for the WIP, which I continue to fail to discuss. Perhaps this weekend? Perhaps. I kind of want to see if I can get past Chapter 4 before I talk about the book publicly, but that’s nothing more than my own superstitions, which is pretty stupid. As a general rule I don’t believe in things like jinxes and curses and so forth, but I do believe you can actually speak things into existence sometimes. The only takeaway I got from Psych 101 in college was the concept of visualization; that picturing something in your mind can make it happen–but not like winning the powerball or anything like that, but more along the lines of why you always spill something full when you’re carrying it no matter how careful you are…because your mind cannot picture a negative–you can’t see yourself not spilling it; so when you think about not spilling it, you will because you see yourself in your mind actually spilling it. (It’s like how you cannot prove a negative–you can rarely prove you aren’t something; but it is incredibly easy to prove you are. I use this example: someone drinks a lot. They don’t think they have a problem, they don’t wake up in the morning feeling like death warmed over twice and wanting another drink. But once someone says, “You have a drinking problem”, you can’t prove that you don’t. You can say you aren’t, but that’s denial. You can stop drinking for a time period—but if you start drinking again, well, there, you see, you were in recovery and then relapsed! You cannot win, so why bother trying?) It is much harder to prove something isn’t true than it is proving something is. Guilt is the same way–how do you convince the cops, who are convinced you are, that you aren’t?
I will say this about the WIP–it’s more hardboiled and noir than what I usually write, I am having a lot of fun with it, and it’s been a long time since I wrote anything set in Florida, if I ever have? Dark Tide started as a Florida panhandle novel, but I moved it to the Alabama coast; “Cold Beer No Flies” was a panhandle story, too. But this is me fictionalizing Tampa–come to think of it, my main character in The Orion Mask lived in a fictional Tampa I am using again for this one–and I’ve not set foot in Tampa, other than flying in and out for Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, since I moved away in December 1995 to once again reboot and restart my life.
I was tired after all my errands yesterday–the thermostat in my car let me know it was 101 when I left the office yesterday; it is insane for it to be that hot, even in New Orleans. It’s exhausting dealing with this insane summer heat this year. But I did get some writing done yesterday, which was a good thing, and of course Paul finished packing. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well, I have Superman and Lois to catch up on, and My Adventures with Superman, and so many old classic films to watch, so I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping myself entertained so I don’t feel lonely or bored. And of course I could be writing, which is always difficult in August…I also think about how about eighteen years ago I was finishing (finally) Mardi Gras Mambo at long last in that last, fateful August before Katrina. It really was a completely different world all those years ago; maybe I ‘ll go back and read those old Livejournal entries from August of 2005, so I can remember the world before once again. I also have a lot of reading to get caught up on, as well. I have some errands to run this evening on the way home from work, and then I am going to be inside for the night. We did watch another episode of Gotham Knights last night–very intense, as the season finale moves closer–but now I have to wait for Paul to come home to finish. Heavy heaving sigh.
But perhaps I’ll use all this solitude productively. One never knows, and on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 