Category: shopping

Let My Love Be Your Pillow

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!

My Way

Work at home Friday! Huzzah! Huzzah!

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.

Heaven’s Just a Sin Away

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 of his 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.

Way Down

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.

It’s a Heartache

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.

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You)

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.

Ups

Saturday morning in ye olde Lost Apartment. Yesterday was a productive one, yet I was tired. I slept better Thursday night than I had all week, and yet… tired, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I got my work done, though, managed to get laundry and dishes taken care of, and finished page proofing. I was watching (listening) to a documentary on MAX about DC Comics (which was essentially a three hour informerical about DC entertainment–comics, movies, games, graphic novels, television shows, etc.), which I kind of enjoyed besides the obvious puff piece approach. They were brutally honest about bad decisions and down-turns in popularity, as well as the insane boom of the early 1990’s with the collectors’ stuff. I had that on while I page-proofed, and it was interesting. I’ve always been a DC guy (who has nothing but respect and admiration for Marvel; I love Spider-Man), so seeing all the previous incarnations of the heroes and the stories as they evolved and changed over the years. They did, in fact, bring up the weird period where Wonder Woman gave up her powers and just became Diana Prince, which was also the same period where Supergirl was poisoned and her powers came and went; were no longer reliable, so they dreamed up some tech to help her out when her powers failed her. I was already planning on writing about DC again, thanks to the breaking news of the casting of the new Superman and because I’ve started watching the animated series My Adventures with Superman, which I am loving. We also finished The Crowded Room (a bit disappointing overall, I think) and watched the new Minx as well as some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.

It was extremely hot yesterday and I did not go outside. Even with the air conditioning on, I could tell everything outside was roasting. The air had that weird texture to it still, like it was almost scorched a bit from the heat. Today we have extreme heat advisory from eleven to seven, and I am considering not running my errands today if I can’t get it done this morning. I don’t want to be out in that if I don’t have to be, and if I do, at a time when it isn’t terrible outside. It is definitely the hottest summer I can remember in my life–and I do not just think that ever year and this year is no different. This year is VERY different, so hot it’s almost scary. The water in the Gulf is so hot, how can that be good for aquatic life? For the ecosystems of the shorelines? How hot are the rivers and lakes and creeks and streams? I have to run the cold water tap for quite a while every day before the water actually cools down to merely lukewarm. It’s very easy to get dehydrated, and it’s very easy to get heat exhaustion. Seriously, people, if you have to be out in this today, make sure you stay hydrated and out of the sun as much as possible. I also think it can’t be good for the car to be operating in this heat, either. But people in places like Palm Springs and Arizona drive and go out into the heat when it’s 114 or more outside. Maybe it’s just my natural anxiety, I don’t know. There’s always something to be anxious about.

Today I want to get some writing done. I want to finish revising that short story and I want to try to get that next chapter of the WIP revised as well. I may even try to write a story for a deadline in a few days, but even I am not arrogant as to think I can write a story that can get through an anonymous read in just three days. I also want to read a bit, and I want to work some more on the shelves in the laundry room. There’s just so many books, and I know I need to keep pruning. I need to be brutal and heartless, but so much I want to read and still think, hoping forlornly, that I will get to them…even as I buy more and more and read less and less. My mind is kind of all over the place right now, as it usually is when I don’t have something to focus on fully. Deadlines do impose some a forced focus onto me, but they also bring anxiety with them and I really don’t want to deal with any more anxiety right now, you know? Why invite chaos in, when you know damned well there will be anxiety no matter how much you convince yourself that this time it will be different? (It never is.) This love/hate relationship I have with writing is something I was actually thinking about yesterday as I put clean sheets on the bed. I was thinking that there are definitely parts of this I love–I love the creative aspects, I love working it all out in my brain, I love creating the characters and setting the mood and finding the voice. I enjoy revisions, too, but the element of despair is always added to the process when you are doing the revisions. By the time you’re doing what you hope is a final polish with almost every error excised or string tied up, you are heartily sick of the book, the characters, the story, writing in general and wondering why you ever thought you could do this, and would it really be that horrible a loss if you just walked away from it all? Then you hold your breath and click send, and then the agony of waiting starts, with all its paranoid imposter syndrome spirals and fears that this is the time you wrote something for which there is no editorial hope.

I mean, that happens every time I write a book, whether it’s on a deadline or not. The additional stress of the ticking clock a deadline adds to the entire process is what I’m getting to the point now where I can’t handle it or at least would prefer not to at the moment. I kind of just want to enjoy this moment where there’s no writing pressure and I can just work on stuff without being stressed about it at all, enjoy the process and the writing and creating itself. This is, after all, what I love about doing this. So why not do it under circumstances where I can savor the experience and enjoy myself? I mean, I do love writing, and I think I should be able to enjoy myself doing something I love all the time rather than being stressed out and anxious about it.

And I am enjoying writing again, being creative, feeling like yes I’m an author again, which is nice and frankly, a feeling I’ve missed. And it isn’t that things are so much better now than they were by any means, it’s just that now I don’t have to try to cram things into every day. Our civilization is crumbling around us and the world is on fire, but I don’t have to rush for anything other than being on time for work–and that I can live with. It seems wrong to be so calm and settled while the world is burning and our government is collapsing, but there it is.

I’ve always been selfish.

I slept well last night. I did wake up a couple of times, including the always every night five and six am wakes, which was just as annoying as it always is, but managed to go back to sleep both times and not get up until eight, which was really nice. I feel a lot more rested this morning than I have all week–naturally on a day when I don’t have to go to the office–and I am probably going to go ahead and run those errands today and get them out of the way. If I am making groceries, I don’t necessarily have to get the mail today; I can go to another grocery store rather than all the way uptown, for instance, and I do have to swing through Midcity on Monday to pick up a prescription, so I might as well do the mail that day anyway. I have other prescriptions that will also be ready in Uptown by Monday as well, so might just do a grocery run today and get that out of the way and then stay indoors as much as possible the rest of the day. It’s also kind of hard to believe Bouchercon is looming, as is my birthday. I made a to-do list this week, but I am so out of practice with using one that I never look at it anymore once it’s made and I need to stop doing that.

I am going to start reading Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt this weekend, and I’d also like to watch some more of My Adventure with Superman. I should probably also finish that blog entry on Superman and his evolution on film/television over the years, and how I will go to my grave a Superman fan. I may also finish Hi Honey I’m Homo by Matt Baume this week, giving me the opportunity to move on to another non-fiction tome, and will also need to post a review of it. And of course there are other entries I need to finish as well. Someday I will be caught up on this blog, you’ll see, Constant Reader!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for now. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and stay hydrated and be cautious in this heat because I would miss you.

Eperdu

And it’s a work-at-home Friday, which means we’ve somehow managed to survive yet another week of going into the office whilst living through more heat advisories. Hurray! Hurray! I slept much better and more restfully on Wednesday night, so I didn’t start the day off yesterday dragging and tired. I think I am finally getting used to getting up so early, as I get sleepy earlier than I ever have and even on days off, I wake up at six before going back to sleep for another hour, maybe even two if I am particularly lucky. Paul got his plane ticket to visit his mom, and so he is departing this coming Thursday for ten days. No Paul, no cat? What the hell am I going to do for ten days without Paul or a cat to entertain me? Hopefully, I’ll apply the lesson learned Wednesday night, where I come home and rest for a little while before springing into action. I want to get a lot done this weekend, if at all possible.

Paul and I had a lovely long chat the other night, which was nice. We’re often both so tired and worn out by the time he gets home we generally end up just watching television and not really talking all that much. But it was in the course of that conversation that I had a brilliant insight into the Scotty series and why I’ve been so hyper-critical and tough on myself with the most recent one, which will be coming out this fall. I’m not going to get into that here, but it was yet more evidence of how “not talking about your work in progress or how you feel about it” is bad advice; because in talking to him and saying it out loud and hearing it seemed to unlock some door in my mind where BLAM, now I know the answer, and so my questions over the last few years about whether I should keep the series going or not kind of became moot. Sometimes you really can’t see the forest for the trees, so talking it out, saying things out loud, actually is an enormous help.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about myself and my work; and it’s been invigorating, really. I was telling Paul, during the course of that conversation the other night, that the main thing I remember feeling over the last few years was defeated; I felt defeated and run down and like I was always behind, which only amplified my own stress and anxiety and made me feel even more defeated to the point where I often felt helpless and paralyzed in the face of everything. Losing Scooter was the final jolt that just kind of made something in my head snap, for want of a better way to describe and/or say it. Everything has just been so miserable for so long, and so much completely out of my control, that it’s very easy to feel defeated, beaten down, and thinking well at least I’m old and have had a good life now that the world and civilization is burning to the ground isn’t really much help in picking up my own spirits, inspiring me and motivating me to get back to work. Reading Megan Abbott’s latest was, as ever, not only an inspiration for me to work harder and do better work but her brilliance was also kind of a kick in the pants for me; the depth of thought and perception she puts into her characters is what, for me, makes her books so powerful and special (the language usage and choices are also exceptional) and made me think I need to dig more deeply into my own characters, and perhaps spend more time carefully crafting sentences. I think I do that in my short stories, but because a novel is so much longer and I am always behind, I may not do it as much in the longer form as I should. (I did, I think, succeed with that in Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit.)

I was tired when I got home yesterday in the broiling heat, but still managed to do some laundry and clear out the sink as well as put away the dishes in the dishwasher. So, I am coming into this weekend slightly ahead of the game. I tried getting to work on the laundry room shelves–which are absolutely disgraceful–but it was too much for me so I gave up on it and went back to the sink to wash everything now that the dishwasher was emptied and I could reload it (and yes, I wash my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher). I also worked on revising an old short story of mine. I hadn’t reread it in quite a while, and the last time I tried to do anything with it was a revision with severe tweaking to fit the theme of an anthology call (it was a terrible attempt I regretted submitting almost immediately after sending the email), and I realized several things. This is the story that never quite worked completely but my professor from my second attempt at taking a college level writing course praised so highly and told me was publishable, finally reawakening the dream and the goal again, made me believe, if only for a little while. I’ve thus kind of always thought of the story as sort of holy in some way; beautifully written and poignant, with a strong voice and so forth that I would always just kind of skim it and think, no, I still can’t think of any way to make this better. Yesterday evening I opened the document again and started reading…and started making changes. It seemed suddenly very bare bones and simple, which worked…but didn’t go deep enough, if that makes sense? Anyway, the story was about 2130 words when I started working on it (much shorter than I remembered as well) and am not even halfway into it and it’s at almost 3000 now, and its actually working. Yes, it’s lovely and simple in its original form, but it didn’t work because of the central core of the story–the late night visit to the graveyard to look for a supernatural occurrence that happens every year but only on that night. The legend, the ghost story if you will, was predicated on a “family history story” that I now know is apocryphal to the point of being trite (having addressed this very issue in Bury Me in Shadows), so I had to change that–and in changing that, the rest of the story started falling into place in my head. I hope to finish working on the story tonight after work. I also have page proofs to finish going over this weekend, and I want to work some more on the book I am currently writing. Hopefully, I can get the laundry shelves taken care of this weekend and the laundry room itself; Paul’s looming visit to his mother and absence for ten days frees up a lot of time for me to purge and clean and get shit done around here.

Excellent timing, too. I’d love to have the place shipshape in time for my sixty-second birthday.

I also want to spend some time reading this weekend. I know I am being overly ambitious and the weekend is only two days–which is how I always end up feeling like a failure; by setting myself up to feel that way by placing unrealistic expectations on myself that I somehow convince myself (I’m doing it right now in my head, even as I type this) that those expectations are not only realistic but feasible. It’s always a fun time inside my head, isn’t it?

I watched a documentary while waiting for Paul to get home (he had a board meeting), and it was about an app I’d never heard of that was apparently a thing but I was completely oblivious to while it was going viral. (You know me, always with my finger on the pulse.) It was interesting but weird; when it finished I wasn’t really sure what the entire point of making the documentary was since there really wasn’t a cohesive story. Some weird shit happened, sure, but nothing that made it stand out so much from the rest of the weird shit that is always happening to deserve a documentary on MAX (which I always pronounce the way Carol Burnett doing Norma Desmond would), but it held my interest for stretches of time, therefore keeping me from doom-scrolling social media. Twitter, er X (I changed my name on there to “Madame X”, just for shits and giggles) is literally burning to the ground right in front of us; I don’t precisely remember what evil thing Facebook did but it’s not much fun anymore, and while I do appreciate visuals a lot, looking at pictures will only hold my interest for so long. In a way it’s kind of good, because the more it bores or enrages or produces any kind of negative reaction from me the less time I spend there…and that time can be better utilized doing things that are productive. I understand its uses–and the continued belief that a presence there can somehow move books for you–but I don’t like how being on there for a prolonged period of time makes me start thinking and reacting. That kind of negativity and toxicity is something I’ve always, since I started recognizing it for what it was, been trying to cut out of my life, so why am I participating in something that not only envelopes me in it, but makes me want to behave or even just think in ways I’ll not be terribly proud of later? There are enough random blows in life that come at you out of nowhere that you have to deal with; so why would you invite more chaos into your life?

It doesn’t make sense. And I really don’t need to waste the time there. I’ll still use it, of course, to check in on friends and post my blogs and about events and things I am doing and books I am hawking, but I am trying to limit it. I’d rather stay in touch with people I genuinely care about in other ways that liking or replying to a post or tweet or x or whatever the fuck it is this week.

And on that note, I am getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. I’ll probably be back later on at some point; I seem to have gotten into the habit of multiple posts per day somehow lately. Not sure what that is about, either, but rolling with it.

Seekers Who Are Lovers

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment again, and I am looking forward to a lovely and productive day here. We had a rather marvelous thunderstorm last night–although there was potential street flooding, so hopefully the car is okay–which was nice. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a thorough cleansing rain like that, which is part of why the heat index has been so miserable lately. The temperature has been hot, and the humidity about what it usually is–not humid enough to rain, but so close it’s miserable. I had planned to barbecue last night, despite the heat, but when I was getting ready to start putting everything together was when I realized it was not only raining but pouring. There was also magnificent, long lasting rolling thunder claps that lasted for seconds; the kind where it sounds like the sky is splitting apart. So, I made pizza instead for dinner, and hopefully will be able to cook out this afternoon. The power also went out overnight–I slept well again last night, to wake up to blinking clocks everywhere. It was out for maybe about twenty minutes, based on the emails from Entergy letting me know an outage had occurred (how does one check one’s email without power? A mystery for the ages) and the follow up announcing the restoration of power was sent about twenty minutes later.

I ran my errands yesterday, including making groceries and dropping off boxes of books at the library sale. I cleaned and organized and filed most of the rest of the day, finally getting the office area whipped into some semblance of order that’s not only workable but close enough to being finished that it won’t take long to do so that I can finish it over my coffee this morning and while taking breaks from writing this–although these things generally tend to be fairly stream of consciousness. Today I am going to make a to-do list for the week, update the bills list and make sure everything is current, and I’d like to make some progress on the rugs in the kitchen. The living room looks much more bearable now that those boxes of books are gone, and I think I need to thin out the beads next as well as do some additional book pruning. I cleaned out some drawers yesterday, getting that project under way, and I also need to go through my last few journals to mark the places where I made notes on the things I am thinking about writing now. I’m also trying to decide what the point of whatever it is I want to write next will be. I’d like to write something for the Malice anthology, but the deadline looms and I don’t think I really have anything I can whip into shape in merely one day, which means I am going to need to write a draft and figure this story out as I go–the idea is very amorphous, and I’ve not been feeling terribly creative yesterday, which could prove to be a most frustrating writing experience. There’s another one I’d like to revise and work on–I am feeling connected to it, and to its voice, but again I am trying to figure out what I am trying to say in the story. I need to reread all of these things, of course. I need to reread lots of things so that I can get a grasp of them again so I can find my way into writing them. I actually started two books this past week, can you believe that? Like I don’t already have enough things in progress already that I need to start two more? I wrote the first sentence of each book, and stopped there. I know what I want to say in both of them, and where I want those opening chapters of each to go, but I’m not sure precisely how to say it.

I also got deeper into Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman, taking it slowly and savoring the experience as the rare treat and pleasure reading anything written by Abbott always winds up being. Each book is different in content, yet variations on a theme; I think future literary scholars will look book on her canon and study it as the incisive social commentary it is, about what it is to be a woman as well as how it is to be one, the strictures and compromises, the struggles between expectations and reality, all wrapped up in a lovely bow of beautifully constructed sentences that are complex in their very simplicity, and razor-sharp observations and insights into the strange tangle of emotions and contradictions that make us all so tenderly and sadly human.

We watched a tragic gay romance movie last night, Firebird, which was based on a true story from the days of the Soviet Union and its homophobia (still a thing in Russia to this very day, never forget). It was very well done, but it was also sad as such stories always are, with the kind of bittersweet ending where the truly conflicted one ends up dead and the one who isn’t moving on with his life stronger for the experience. So, no, not the feel-good gay movie of any year, by any means, so after that a few episodes of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens was just the ticket back from that downer.

Also, when I was dropping off books at the library sale, since I had cash on me (which is a rare thing) I checked the children’s section for series books I collect (I do this periodically, but only when I have cash on me) and I scored today with four books at two dollars apiece, and I had exactly eight dollars on me. I got three yellow-spined revised text (important) Nancy Drews (The Secret of Read Gate Farm, The Sign of the Twisted Candles, The Clue in the Crossword Cipher) which was the style when I started reading them so those are the ones I want. I already had copies, but the ones I already had on hand have been damaged over the years, and these were in excellent condition. I also got a tweed original text Hardy Boys The Mark on the Door, which I’ve never had a copy of (I only ever had the blue spine revised text) and have never actually read. There was no dust jacket, but it’s in really good condition. It’ll be fun to read it; per the fan groups, this was one of the books written during the time the original writer had left and the new ghost writers weren’t as good; and the plots tended to be a bit on the insane side sometimes. I am rather intrigued to read it–since they were all revised to get rid of offensive ethnic and racist stereotypes and language, it could be eye-opening.

I’ve also been reading Matt Baume’s marvelous Hi Honey I’m Homo, and am now up to the chapter on Dinosaurs, which I never watched. It’s really a fun book about how queer representation began and evolved over the years, as well as documenting the pushback against that representation (newsflash shocker: evangelicals have been coming for us every step of the way), and it’s written in an easy and accessible style that flows well. I’ve enjoyed his Youtube content, and I’m delighted to see that the book is in the same vein and just as well done. Highly recommended, and definitely more to come on that when I’ve finished reading the entire thing.

And now to my easy chair, to spend more time with Megan Abbott. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you again tomorrow.

Essence

And here we are, on a very hot Saturday July morning in New Orleans, feeling rested and relaxed, which is becoming the norm and I have to say I really quite like it. I think some of it has to do with the lessening of stress and anxiety with the lightening of my over-all schedule; it’s nice not being constantly busy and always feeling guilty (anxious, stressed) about the things undone when I had to call it quits for the day from sheer exhaustion…and then of course that stress/anxiety/guilt made it impossible for me to sleep. I even cut back drastically on my caffeine intake during this period–cutting back to only three cups of coffee (which is probably still too much, really) and only one 16 ounce bottle of Coke per day. It’s helped my sleep some–and I am not willing to up my caffeine intake to find out, either–but I’ve been sleeping so well the last few weeks since I recovered from the trip that I am almost not afraid talking about it will jinx it…but the streak continued again last night. I’m not sure what the difference is–probably the reduction in stress and anxiety.

Finding out that my mother suffered from anxiety was also incredibly helpful. Finally, at age sixty-one, nearly sixty-two (less than a month away), I realize that I, too, suffer from almost crippling anxiety, but never realized it because it’s just my reality, if that makes sense? Everything stems from anxiety: the self-deprecation, the not taking my work as seriously as I should as well as being dismissive of it rather than proud, the issues with public speaking–all of it stems from anxiety. But that’s because it’s always been for me, I just figured, as one would, that it was normal and everything else has the same issues because that’s all I know. The Xanax has helped somewhat with reducing my anxiety or lessening it enough for me to be functional, and now recognizing that it is an actual chemical brain condition that I’ve had most of my life has opened my eyes in many ways, and I am trying to rewire my brain to accept and understand that anxiety causes me to want to self-destruct at times. I wish I had known this about twenty years ago, even forty, but would it have made a difference?

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, really. I woke up later than usual (same this morning, staying in bed until just past seven thirty like a lazy slattern) and feel very rested. I spent most of the day going over forms doing Quality Assurance as well as did some on-line trainings. Once the work day was over, I repaired to my easy chair with my journal and scribbled notes in it for awhile until Paul got home from the gym. We watched this week’s episodes of Minx (smart adding Elizabeth Perkins to the cast for the second season), The Crowded Room, and Hijack, and moved on to some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite half-hour comedies of all time (the queefing episode is a non-stop laugh riot, seriously).

Today I want to spend some more time on a kitchen cleaning project, in which I am cleaning out the drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen. Things tend to accumulate around here, and there are things that get tossed in drawers that I’ll never need, have never needed, and just held on to for some reason unknown to my conscious brain. I also want to work on the kitchen rugs (which never stay in place, ever) and the floors a bit more. I need to purge more books, too, and work on the kitchen. There’s a mess now because I cleaned out some things already and now that stuff is scattered all over the kitchen and I need to either find a place for it all or toss it, I also am going to spend some more time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman over my coffee and perhaps a few more Alfred Hitchcock Presents short stories before I run today’s errands: groceries, mail, library sale to drop off books, and maybe a car wash. The tire pressure light has been on in my car since I drove home from Kentucky, but the heat has been so intense I’m not sure I’ve been able to get an accurate gauge reading of the tire pressure; I’ll probably swing by the gas station before doing any errands to try equalizing the pressure again. I also want to spend some time trying to write today–whether it’s a new book project, a revision of a short story, or even a brand new short story entirely (that Malice anthology deadline is approaching), but I want to get back into writing again, flex and stretch those creative muscles that have been so dormant for so long.

I got the table of contents for another anthology that I am appearing in, School of Hard Knox, edited by the amazing Jeffrey Marks and coming from Crippen & Landau. The author of the Father Knox crime series, back from the Golden Age, had come up with a list of ten rules that should never be broken by a crime/mystery writer; we each chose a rule and wrote a story breaking it. Mine was “no supernatural events or beings”; which was kind of perfect for me. I dug out an old Alabama/Corinth County story that had been moldering in the archives for decades called “The Ditch,” which I revised and rewrote and made much stronger. I was pleased when the story was accepted, and I was even more pleased to be told that the copy editor thought my story was “powerful.” (I’ll write more about the story, and the anthology, when its release date is imminent.) I also got paid for my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” and cannot wait to get my contributor copies of This Fresh Hell. I don’t know why I get so much satisfaction out of selling and publishing short stories; but subconsciously I think of each sale/publication as another knife into the corpse of that wretched college writing professor who told me I’d never publish. Given how revenge and “I’ll show you” will always drive me to prove someone wrong about me, I’m starting to think that professor may have been a blessing? I’ve certainly proven him wrong with over forty novels, fifty short stories, and over twenty anthologies edited, not to mention countless articles, interviews, book reviews, and essays I’ve published over the years.

Anyway, here is the TOC for School of Hard Knox:

Introduction – Jeffrey Marks
Not Another Secret Passage Story – Donna Andrews
A Matter of Trust – Frankie Y Bailey
THe Dinner Partty – Nikki Dolson
The Intruder – Martin Edwards
The Ditch – Greg Herren
Dichondra – Naomi Hirahara
Baby Trap – Toni LP Kelner
The Stolen Tent – Richie Narvaez
The Rose City Vampire: An Accidental Alchemist Short Story – Gigi Pandian
Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church – SJ Rozan
The Forlorn Penguin – Daniel Stashower
The Island Boy Detective Agency – Marcia Talley
Ordeals – Art Taylor
Knox Vomica – Peter Lovesey

Look at those names. I am so honored and thrilled to be in an anthology enabling me to share the interior with these amazing, glittering names. More on this anthology as things develop–release date, cover reveal, etc. I’m very excited to be in this book, which will be a strong contender for Best Anthology short lists next year, as well as the stories making Best Short Story shortlists. I’m particularly proud of my story, to be honest. I think my metier in writing is writing about Alabama, to be completely honest. I know I am known as a “New Orleans writer,” and to be sure, my greatest success has come from writing about New Orleans, but I feel more drawn to writing about Alabama now that I am in my sixties. I am sure some of it has to do with losing Mom–somehow, it’s like writing about Alabama keeps me connected to her in some weird, complicated and twisted logic only my brain is capable of making, but it’s true.

I’ve also decided that I am going to submit to the Nashville Bouchercon anthology, even though I am not going. The theme, being Nashville, has to do with music, and its being edited by the incomparable Brendan DuBois, who is a fantastic short story writer and has found enormous success as a co-writer with James Patterson (I also like Brendan; we served on the MWA board together and he’s really a great guy). I would love to be edited and work with Brendan, and I think the story I’m going to write for it is “The Blues Before Dawn,” a period New Orleans story from before the first world war, which I’d been thinking about turning into a Sherlock Holmes in New Orleans story. That might make it stand out from the rest, one never knows. It also could get selected out by the anonymous readers who could be homophobic–it happens, and one can never be sure if your story isn’t good enough or if its homophobia–another joy of being a gay writer of gay stories.

And on that note, I am making another cup of coffee and going to read Megan Abbott for awhile. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I am sure to be back again later.