Category: short stories

Walk Like an Egyptian

And just like that, it is now Friday. I’m still not entirely certain of everything I must get done this weekend, but at some point today I am going to have to make a list. I know I have to finish my essay, get further along on that short story I have due at the end of the month, and get some work done on another that isn’t due until March, but I want to start playing with.

Last night was another bad night as far as sleep was concerned, but I do feel somewhat rested today. My friend Lisa from Atlanta is in town, and I am meeting her after work today to hang out for a bit. My schedule has changed from early morning to early afternoon, which is always my preference–I’d rather never do any early mornings, quite frankly–and I am hoping this morning’s coffee will not only fuel me through this entire day of work but get me through hanging out with Lisa with some coherence. I have a lot of work to do this weekend–one of the many things I’ve allowed to fall to the wayside whilst working on this enormous volunteer project is housework, other than the dishes and laundry–and I really need to get that under control. The weather is still pretty awful here, although it’s getting to the point where it’s cool in the morning and cool in the evenings, which is a sign the heat’s going to break relatively soon.

It’s also Friday the 13th, which I just realized, and there’s a full moon tonight, methinks.

I’ve been reading Lords of Misrule by James Gill, as I have mentioned previously, and it’s really quite eye-opening. It’s funny to me in some ways because all of my reading of New Orleans history this and last year has shown me that New Orleans has always been a rather lawless city, with high rates of brawls, murders and robberies; I am sure rape rates have always been high but never reported back in those days. The history of the city can essentially be summed up in the theme I am using for Bury Me in Shadows: “The history of this city was written in blood.” It shames me that I’ve not studied the history of my home city and state in more detail, and that it has taken me this long to start. I’m going to be writing a historical short story soon–I’ve been asked to write one for an anthology, and I am setting it in 1913-1914 era New Orleans, in Storyville, and I think it will be incredibly fun to write, and I know it will be incredibly fun to research. I really do want to, at some point, write more historical fiction set in New Orleans; the history here is fascinating, if a little frightening–the white supremacy and racism is particularly horrible for such a seemingly tolerant city; but we also have to remember the horribly homophobic reaction of most of the city when the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in the French Quarter, was set ablaze in the worst mass murder of queer people in American history until the Pulse massacre in Orlando a few years back. (I really can’t wait to read Robert Fieseler’s Edgar winning Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Upstairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.)

Anyway, I am at the chapter in Lords of Misrule called “The Battle of Liberty Place,” and I am already dreading reading it in some ways. I know a little about this; all I really need say is it involves a mob of white supremacists and it happened in 1874, during Reconstruction while the state was occupied after the Civil War and…I don’t really need to draw a picture, do I? The Battle of Liberty Place monument was one of the Confederate memorials in the city that were taken down during Mitch Landrieu’s administration, and while I believe they all had to go (I was truly tired of saying to visitors I was showing around, “and here we are at politically incorrect Lee Circle, which memorializes treason”), the Liberty Place monument in particular was a disgrace to a modern city. (I had considered doing a Scotty book around the memorials and their removal, but decided ultimately against it. I don’t like the Scotty books to be fixed in time; there are times when I’ve regretted writing about the Saints winning the Super Bowl) I don’t consider myself to be particularly “woke”, but I do recognize I’ve benefited from privilege most of my life, and while being gay has resulted in some marginalization, I’m still a cisgendered white male, which in this society and culture puts me on third base already.

I can always do better when it comes to issues of race, gender, and sexuality–and it’s something I think about every day at least once. I strive to be a better ally than I am. It really is amazing, when you think about it, how indoctrinated we all are into this shit.

And the history is absolutely horrifying–and it’s disgraceful how it’s been sanitized into mythology.

Heavy thoughts for a Friday morning, aren’t they? Sheesh. But it’s hard not to read about  angry mobs murdering people they’ve othered, and not be appalled by it. I haven’t even gotten to the xenophobic massacre of Italians in the 1890’s yet.

Yes, New Orleans is a city with a history that drips blood; a city of massive contradictions, and it’s not hard to believe that the city’s history haunts it. And yet it is still a magical place, where all that pain and blood and suffering has been somehow transmuted into gold through art and music and literature. The city will probably never stop fascinating me, and I will undoubtedly spend the rest of my life studying it.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. One of the things that is completely out of control is my inbox; I’ve got to do something about that this morning.

Heavy sigh.

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Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

It’s going to take me a while to get used to getting off work early on Wednesdays. Yesterday as I left the office, I felt like I was skipping school or something, and I also had to catch myself periodically from thinking oh tomorrow’s Friday.

So today I have an eight hour shift ahead of me, and lots to do in the meantime. I made shrimp-n-grits last night, but rather than making the grits I made baked potatoes instead, sauteed some mushrooms, and used the shrimp-n-grits recipe to make the shrimp. Oh my God, was that ever delicious; the baked potatoes were the perfect starch to replace the grits.

I’ve simply got to get caught up on everything. The volunteer project continues to run on, but I am fairly certain today it will be finished–but I think I’ve been thinking that every morning since it started. It’s a long, detailed, immensely complicated process, but I do think that we are doing a good job on it–but details keep popping up that require changes, and like most things, when one thread gets pulled…other threads also start unraveling and you have to stanch the bleeding. But I think the work we did yesterday loans itself to being finished today, and at least I am heading into today with my fingers crossed that a good strong push today will get everything done, once and for all, which will be absolutely lovely sliding into the weekend, so I can get caught up on everything else. I am frankly so far behind on emails it’s not even funny, and I’ve barely written anything at all over the last few weeks. That essay is still due on Sunday and I still have that short story to whip into shape, but this has been so all-encompassing I haven’t been able to get anything else done in the meantime–when I call it quits for the day, I am too mentally exhausted to do much of anything else. Last night, for example, I finished the final season of the Scream television series; they’d done a third season that never aired on MTV but was instead released to Netflix. It wasn’t particularly good–entertaining enough, but the backstory that created the Ghostface character in this season didn’t really make sense, so the whole thing kind of unraveled at the end. It’s a shame; it had some very good moments, and it had a lot of potential.

So, I am hopeful that today the volunteer project will be finished, once and for all, and my life will return to some slight semblance of normalcy. I am far behind on writing goals with some deadlines looming that I should probably start panicking, but panicking is the worst thing I could do as it will bring with it that horrible paralysis which results in me never getting anything done. Which completely and totally sucks.

So, probably best not to go down that road, don’t you think?

Anyway, my friend Lisa from Atlanta will be in town this weekend, so I am going to go hang out with her when I get off work on Friday for a good little while. That’s good news, as I adore Lisa and she’s always a lot of fun to be around. I’m not even sure that LSU’s game will be on television this weekend–it’s a nobody game, I think Northwestern State, from Natchitoches (pronounced nakadish), so that frees up my Saturday almost completely. Sure, I’ll probably tune in to some other games that day, but most likely not. WHat I should do is spend the day writing, and then when I’ve burned out on that, curl up with Rob Hart’s The Warehouse. I hate that I’m getting so much further behind on my reading as well…and of course I wanted to finish the final draft of the Kansas book this month–but it’s already the twelfth and that means only eighteen more days to get it done. I probably could, with a strong push, but I don’t know. Scream did remind me, though, of some more horrible high school cliches I included in the Kansas book–the poor quarterback who wants to get a scholarship to get out of the dead-end town, the bitchy mean-girl cheerleader, and so forth. I think the primary problem I’ve had with this book all along is I never really learned who the characters were beneath their surface appearance; if I can do that (maybe I should focus on that this month, if I’m not going to be able to finish writing it this month at least maybe I can lay the groundwork for getting it finished in December) it will probably go a long way towards reclaiming the book and making it good rather than yet another cliche-ridden book filled with stereotypes. I was so concerned with the story itself, maybe I never really dug into the characters deeply enough.

Which is a recipe for disaster–and the book kind of is one at this point. I think I nailed the main character, but everyone else is simply a facade and a shell; so yeah, I should probably get that done. Always, always so much to do.

All right, I think I’m going to clean up the mess in the kitchen I left overnight from the shrimp ‘n’ baked potatoes from last night, and the get some work done this morning before I head into the office.

Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader.

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Shake You Down

And just like that, it becomes Tuesday.

Another restless night of sleep, yet I managed to get through yesterday after a similarly restless night, so I guess I’ll be okay today. Tomorrow is a short day for me (yay!) and so I just need to get through this really long day before the easy part of my week gets here.

And today is the official launch date for Royal Street Reveillon. I know some of you have already gotten and read it–thank you so very much!–and I hope my incessant reminders that the book is dropping today haven’t been overly annoying. I never know about that–it worries me somewhat to always been on self-promotion mode, and yet some authors seem to go there all the time without a problem, so maybe I’m doing this all wrong?

Then again, this is my blog, which is pretty much all about me to begin with, isn’t it? In a way, my blog is my own version of a reality TV show; a carefully curated but essentially honest version of my life. Something to ponder, at any rate.

I got another ask for a short story last evening after I got home from work–a solicitation to submit, not a guaranteed inclusion–and it’s something that immediately struck my fancy, so I said yes immediately. Without going into many details, it’s a pastiche; an assignment to write a story using another author’s incredibly famous characters to create something new, with a slight twist–the characters can be anything other than the famous nationality that is very much a part of them. Immediately, I came up with a great title (it’s one I’ve had in my back pocket for quite some time and thought I’d never get to use), which is always the first step of the process for me, and then jotted down some notes for it in my journal, which is usually the second step in the process for me, and then I realized I can probably start even writing the beginning, which also came to me last night. I have another story to finish by the end of the month and an essay I have to finish by the end of this week, so I need to stop procrastinating and get to work, don’t I? And the last round of the volunteer project is also on deck, so I suspect I am going to be very busy this week–which is also kind of nice.

This month is also flying by a lot faster than I would like, but that’s pretty much every month these days. So, for the record, this week I need to work on two short stories, finish an essay, and write a chapter of Chlorine, all while working on the volunteer project around the day job. Heavy heaving sigh. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

But that’s my life, isn’t it? LSU doesn’t have another big game until next month, after they start SEC play–Vanderbilt, Florida, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and then Texas A&M, with a week off between Auburn and Alabama–but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to watch their games against lesser-tier opponents in the meantime, but I find myself not all that interested in watching other college games this season. I really and truly only care about LSU (and Auburn, to a lesser extent) and I do have some affection for Alabama, residual leftover from growing up watching them during the Bear Bryant years, but not so much everyone else. Maybe that’ll change as the season progresses; I don’t know. But I am very excited for LSU, and excited to see how they turn out this season.

And maybe sometime I will have the time to actually sit down and lose myself in Rob Hart’s The Warehouse. My reading time lately has been greatly diminished, and I am not happy about that, either.

And now off to the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.

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Here I Go Again

Facing down yet another Monday like a beast.

I went to bed early last night–just watching the Nadal-Medvedev final in the US Open was exhausting, in addition to the emotional rollercoaster of the LSU-Texas game the previous night, and putting finishing touches on the volunteer project (we’ll be tying up loose ends all week, I suspect), and around nine-ish last night I was just worn out, and went to bed. I slept off and on all night–not sure how that’s going to play out today–but I guess we’ll see. I have two long days in a row for the first time in a few weeks, and I fear my body is no longer used to that abuse…but I guess we’ll see. Now that I have a half-day on Wednesday instead, it might make things easier for me in the middle of the week.

Here’s hoping, at any rate.

I printed out the first four chapters of the final rewrite of the Kansas book last night, and it’s better than I thought it would be–the chapters I’ve already done need some work, and I need to seed the rest of the story a bit more. I’m trying something different with it–just as I did in Bury Me in Shadows, which is first person present tense–I am trying to do this in a remote third person point of view in the present tense. I noticed that despite my attempts to keep it in present tense, I slipped into the past tense a number of times out of force of habit, which is one of the reasons why I am writing this in the present tense; I want to not only shake things up for me as a writer, but break the habits of doing things the same way every time. I want to continually push myself as a writer and as a story-teller, and the best way to do that is to expand and try different things, different styles, different methods of storytelling, different ways of presenting the narrative and writing different kinds of crime novels. Laura Lippman is a master of this; her last few novels have all been dramatically different in style, voice, tone, and presentation–After I’m Gone, Wilde Lake, Sunburn, and Lady in the Lake–there’s definitely a Lippman sensibility to them, but the stories and storytelling and construction of the books are all dramatically different. That’s kind of what I want to do with my own stand-alone novels; I’ll probably always come back to Scotty, and as I’ve said recently, there’s another Chanse novel I’m probably going to try to write sometime next year–but the entire point of the stand alones was to do different things and experiment with style as well as story and writing.

But now that all that’s left is wrap-up on the volunteer project–thank the Lord, you have no idea what an enormous venture this was–I can start getting caught up this week on everything else that has slid while I focused all of my prodigious energy on getting it finished. I love doing volunteer work; I often take things on that I shouldn’t, as they interfere with my writing and staying on top of everything else in my life, but I like helping out. One of the primary reasons I love my day job so much is because I feel like I’m helping people make positive changes in their life, and at the very least I am helping people get STI’s cleared up, if nothing else. I need to finish an essay by this weekend, and I have to finish a first draft of a short story that’s due by the end of the month. I’d also like to get some work on the Kansas book done–it may not be finished when I want it to be finished, but that’s also life, and I am certain I can get it finished, at the latest, in December. I also remembered I have a novella a publisher is interested in that I need to get to work on; it’s a long short story but there are any number of places where it can be expanded easily, and so I should be looking at that as well.

This has been, all in all, a pretty good year for me–I had a short story collection come out in the spring and a novel this month–and while I’d like to get both of these novels that are in progress finished and out by next year as well, I don’t think that’s going to happen, which is perfectly okay. Bury Me in Shadows took me a lot longer than I intended to get finished, and that’s perfectly okay; it happens. But I also think I can get a strong revision of it finished this December, and then I can get it turned in for January; a strong push and the Kansas book can be turned in at the end of January, and hopefully by then, doing a chapter a week,  I can also have a strong first draft of Chlorine finished as well. I also want to get more short stories written, as I would love nothing more than to have another collection out sooner rather than later. I’m also nominated for an Anthony Award for my short story “Cold Beer No Flies” from Florida Happens, which is pretty awesome; I sold my short story “This Town” to Murder-a-Go-Go’s (and the story was received pretty well by most reviewers; probably the most, and best, feedback after publication I’ve ever had on a short story) and I also sold my story “Moist Money” to Dark Yonder, which I’m pretty pleased about.

I’m still reading both Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, which I hope to have more time to read now that the volunteer project is under some sort of control, and  James Gill’s Lords of Misrule, which is giving me a rather pointed history of racism in New Orleans, and it’s not pretty. We New Orleanians know there’s still systemic racism here in the city, as well as individual racism, but the history of slavery and racism in New Orleans is unique to this place and different than everywhere else; we had an entire middle-class of free people of color before the war, who weren’t obviously slaves but had to show deference to white people and were segregated out of places frequented by whites; Barbara Hambly’s brilliant Benjamin January series, beginning with A Free Man of Color, and Anne Rice’s The Feast of All Saints, are excellent fictional representations of that weird second-class citizenship the free people of color of New Orleans and Louisiana experienced. It’s still appalling, though, to read about lynch mobs and murderers never brought to proper justice for their crimes. Stained in blood as it is, New Orleans has a fascinating history, and has always been one of the more interesting places in this country.

And tomorrow is officially my new book’s birthday! Huzzah!

And now back to the spice mines.

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The Way It Is

Good morning, Sunday, hope everyone is well today. I’m a mixed bag; disappointed that Serena lost in the US Open final yesterday but quite happy that LSU managed to beat Texas last night, 45-38, with an insane second half that basically turned into a high-scoring shoot-out. And you know what’s weird? Every time Texas would pull themselves back into the game, I’d think, Okay, offense, get out there and score again. 

Even weirder? They would. LSU has never, in all the years I’ve watched them, had this kind of offense–at least since JaMarcus Russell went pro after the 2006 season. They scored a touchdown in the closing minutes of the first half to go up 20-7–they never fell behind again after retaking the lead 10-7 in the second quarter–and those two goal line stands in the first half? My God–how do you keep a team from scoring on two consecutive drives inside the five yard line? Eight plays inside the ten, and no points. That was really the turning point of the game for me–that, and that LSU came back and scored again immediately after the second goal line stand. I wondered how good LSU was after the Georgia Southern game–and yes, it’s still early in the season and there’s still a Murderer’s Row of a schedule to get through (including Auburn, Florida, Alabama, and Texas A&M), but wow. LSU is looking championship quality, at least early in the season–and that’s incredibly exciting…although teams we’ll be playing later in the season will be trying to come up with defenses to stop our offense. The defense bailed out the offense in the first half, and the offense bailed out the defense in the second half.

Nevertheless, there was a lot of tension in the Lost Apartment last night until we scored our final touchdown and made a two point conversion to go up 45-31 with less than two minutes to go in the game. Even then, I couldn’t relax until the on-side kick call went in our favor. But it was a big, landmark win for LSU–like Georgia last season–and suddenly, there we are, actually being considered amongst the national elite again.

Wow. GEAUX TIGERS.

Yesterday was one of those days, really–tired, unmotivated, incredibly frustrated with electronics (and increasingly so as the day progressed). My back is getting better but it still tender and slightly sore; I don’t understand what’s going on with the muscles of my lower back, but it really needs to stop. I need to work on a short story and an essay today=–the essay is due this week–and I also agreed to write some website copy at the last minute for a friend’s business. That’s going to take up my morning, mostly, and then there’s some more volunteer work to be done–and my kitchen is a mess and I need to get the filing under control. I’m going to print out the first chapters of the final revision I started on the Kansas book that I wrote earlier this year before having to put them aside–so as to get an idea how to get it going again, and I think I’m simply going to have to figure out how to make the necessary changes it needs before I start trying to write any of it. I am excited about this book, frankly–I’m glad after all the work I’ve put into it I’ve finally figured out how to solve the problems with it and make the story click–but I still have to revise and rewrite it, to get it done and out of my hands.

I am also going to try–try is the operative word here–to write a chapter of Chlorine every week. Last night as I watched the LSU game I figured out how to write the second chapter–and the research I need to do in order to get it right–and I figure if I write a chapter a week, in five months the first draft will be finished, and if I can’t carve out enough time to write a chapter a week I should be ashamed of myself. Obviously, there are going to be weeks I’m not able to get to it–but even if I get a chapter started and not finished, that’s better than not writing anything.

As you will notice, there’s no blatant self-promotion about Royal Street Reveillon contained in this  post. Instead, I will leave you with the opening of Chapter One. Enjoy.

I fished the last olive out of my almost empty glass and popped it into my mouth. I glanced at my watch as I chewed it, and moaned after swallowing. “There’s nothing like a good martini,” I said, glancing around the bar and getting our server’s attention.

 “Do we have time for another?” My nephew Taylor finished the rest of his sazerac and looked at me hopefully.

“I take it you liked it.” I replied, not even trying to hide my smile. “But no time for another unless we want to be late.”

This was Taylor’s first time at the Sazerac Bar. He’d turned twenty-one just a few weeks before Thanksgiving, and since we were going to a party at the Joy Theater, I thought I’d treat him to a sazerac in the bar where they were invented. I personally don’t care for the drink—give me gin or vodka any day of the week—but everyone in New Orleans is required to try a sazerac at least once.

And now I could rest easy, having done not only my civic duty but treated Taylor to a New Orleans rite of passage.

I’d also wanted him to see the Roosevelt Hotel’s Christmas decorations. The Roosevelt was one of the grand old hotels of the city, and their lobby decorations are truly spectacular. Since we were going to a party at the Joy Theater—a mere block or so from the hotel, I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? This was Taylor’s second Christmas with us, and I wanted to do it right. We’d already done Celebration in the Oaks at City Park, and I’d loved seeing the beautifully decorated ancient live oak trees through a newbie’s eyes.

I know it’s corny, but I love Christmas.

Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

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Money

So, my next Scotty book drops on September 10th, and I’ve been so incredibly, mind-numbingly busy lately that I’ve done very, very little to either acknowledge, or promote, that fact.

This is the eighth book in the Scotty series, which makes it my longest series to date thus far (although the next Chanse book will be the eighth in that series), and I am thinking about starting a new, different series….but I’m digressing, as I am wont to do. After I proofed the galleys and sent the corrections in, I decided that this time–as opposed to what usually happens; i.e. I am so busy and have so much to do that I forget the book is coming out–I was actually going to try to get the word out and do a better job of it than I usually do. But the official release isn’t until September 10th, but if you want it faster, if you order it (paperback or ebook for any reader) through the Bold Strokes website, you can get it now.

It really is a wonder that I have a career, isn’t it? And yet, here we are.

I did manage to finish the first draft of Bury Me in Shadows yesterday, and while it is a considerable mess in need of lots of work, now i have something to actually work with, and I know what the story is, how I want it to play out, and where I have to go back and put things. The ending also needs more work, but it’s done, it’s finished, and now it needs to sit and marinate while I work on revising the final draft of the Kansas book, preparatory to a two-month project that will take up most of my time for October and November. So, I’ll probably get back to Bury Me in Shadows in December, and hope to have it ready for submission by the end of January.

I also signed a contract for a short story yesterday; the anthology I was asked to submit a story to sent me a contract for “Moist Money” and I signed it and sent it back to them. Huzzah! It doesn’t pay much, but it definitely counts as a sale, and I’d have never written the story had they not asked me to write one. It’s a delightfully dark little story, and I like the voice of the main character that I found. The funny thing is, as you well know by now Constant Reader, that I often start with a title, and the genesis of this story is kind of funny.

I’d been asked to submit something to this anthology–I’m not sure I’m allowed to name it or share any details yet–and I agreed, but couldn’t think of anything to write. I don’t ever try to force these things–it happens when it happens–but it was there, in the back of my mind, and I knew I had a very short turnaround on the story. One day on Twitter someone talked about–and I don’t remember exactly how it went–how no one ever wants to take money that someone pulls out of their bra or underwear “because it’s damp.” I replied, “When I was in college I worked at a bank that was near several strip clubs and we always accepted the moist money.” Bill Loefhelm than replied, “MOIST MONEY needs to be the follow up to CHLORINE” which made me laugh out loud, and I replied, agreeing it’s a great title…and then it hit me. The story had to be set in a bar….moist money from stripper tips…why not have a male stripper, who happens to be gay, hired to perform at a bachelorette party at the bar, and have the bride–and her fiance–turn out to be people who bullied and tortured him in high school?

Now there’s the set-up for a deliciously dark tale of revenge, and noir to the core. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

I also got the web copy I needed to write yesterday done, so over all, the entire day turned out to be a win, which is lovely–and seemingly, increasingly rare these days. And once I’d printed out the final chapter, three-hole punched it and put it into the binder with the rest of the book, like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Even when I’m not consciously thinking about it, it’s there in my subconscious; the stress and worry about it not being finished, and it weighs on everything else I do, and creates even more stress. Last night–and even this morning–I feel lighter and more free. I’ve also been sleeping better, and last night got a terrific night’s sleep. I was also still kind of worn out from going to the game Saturday night, as well as condom patrol in the heat Friday night, so feeling rested, not sore, and not stressed today has been lovely. I have one more volunteer project to wrap up today, and then some other stuff to take care of in my free time tomorrow, and then on Wednesday I’m going to start working on the final revision of the Kansas book.

At long last, a book that’s taken me about three years, give or take, to finish will finally come to an end, and that’s also an incredibly lovely feeling.

It’s so nice to be able to check things off on my to-do list. It really makes me happy.

Alas, I have to run to the grocery store for a moment before I get anything else done today, so it’s necessary for me to get going now. Have a lovely Labor Day, Constant Reader!

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Daisy a Day

Good morning, Sunday, how are you doing?

I slept late this morning; we got home rather late last night from the LSU game (GEAUX TIGERS!) and then I watched the first half of the game again, to catch things I missed in the live atmosphere of the stadium, as well as to see how the team looked on television. I am still kind of physically worn out this morning, despite the good long sleep, and as I slept later this morning I’m feeling like oh no you’re so behind already today you may never get everything done you need to–but I am fighting that feeling.

It’s always fun to be at a game in Tiger Stadium; it’s always fun to kick off the season by going to the home opener in Baton Rouge. It was, I have to say, the first and one of the only times I’ve ever been to, or watched, an LSU football game where I didn’t experience stress or anxiety of some kind at some point during the game. Sure, LSU was playing Georgia Southern, but in the past, whenever LSU has played a lower-tier team (UL-Lafayette, Southeastern Louisiana, Troy, Alabama-Birmingham–hell, they even LOST to Troy two years ago) they’ve always seemed to play down to their opponent, rather than operating the way a top-tier team should against a lesser foe. LSU scored last night on their first five possessions, and the score was 35-0 with ten minutes left in the first half.  Yes, you read that correctly: LSU was up 35-0 in with ten minutes left to play in the game. Georgia Southern didn’t even have a hundred yards of offense the entire game, and Joe Burrow threw more touchdown passes than he did incompletions. It was weird, it was exciting, and it was so wonderful to see LSU with a power offense churning up yards and scoring points for a change.

But the first real test is next week against Texas. They are also ranked in the top ten and the game is in Austin. How will the new offense and new attitude of the Tigers perform against a quality opponent? I feel confident I will feel stress during next weeks game. GEAUX TIGERS!

So, today is September 1st, and I am still not finished with Bury Me in Shadows. I did finish Chapter 24 yesterday, and I started Chapter 25 yesterday. Today I need to get that chapter and manuscript finished, and I also have to write that web copy and get it turned in. Fortunately, there’s no Saints game today, and Paul is going to a Southern Decadence party late this afternoon so I’ll be home alone and able to focus. Once I’m fully awake and completely caffeinated, I’m going to dig into Chapter 25 and be done, once and for all, with this draft of the book. Monday I have to work on the volunteer project, and then Tuesday is going to be a bit of a day for me, but I am hoping Tuesday night to be able to start revising the Kansas book for its final draft before submission. I also have to finish writing an essay that’s due on September 15th, and I have a short story due on October 1….so my September looks like it’s going to be really full. A lot of work for one Gregalicious, but I do enjoy me some challenges.

Although….it would be nice sometime to not always have a million things to do. And I really need some time to finish reading Rob Hart’s The Warehouse. Maybe sometime this week…I also really want to start reading Lisa Lutz’ The Swallows. I’m also (finally) reading Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans by James Gill, and it’s absolutely fascinating. Then again, I find almost anything and everything about New Orleans fascinating. I’m still kind of surprised with myself that I haven’t read this book before. I know I’m probably going to have to write another Mardi Gras book; it’s been thirteen years since Mardi Gras Mambo was published; maybe not the next Scotty book, but the one after; I don’t know. But I also found, in reading Lords of Misrule for a few moments this morning, a fabulous quote to start the book off with…and let’s be honest, up until I read the quote this morning I didn’t think I would ever write about Mardi Gras again. But…here we are, right?

I also didn’t think I’d ever write another Chanse book, and now there’s one in the hopper.

I have so many books to write, Constant Reader! So I suppose I should probably stop procrastinating and get on with today’s writing, right?

 

Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

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Stir It Up

GAME DAY! GEAUX TIGERS!

I got home from Outreach last night drenched in sweat, overheated, and  generally feeling pretty awful, I’m sad to say. I felt much better all day than I had the day before–the day of rest was obviously something I had needed–but when I went out to catch the streetcar–well, the heat and humidity was a bit much. I waited nearly half an hour, without luck, for a streetcar before finally giving up and walking the three miles or so to the outreach corner.  By the time I got there, I was drastically overheated and felt terrible. I stuck it out for as long as I could, but finally realized around eight o’clock that if I didn’t start heading home, I might not make it. Once home, I rehydrated and watched some weird history videos on Youtube before finally heading up to bed and going to sleep.

This morning? I feel better, and rested, but my legs are very tired and there’s still some rehydration required. I’ve got about seven hours to get myself together before we head up to Baton Rouge for the LSU home opener tonight (GEAUX TIGERS!), but hopefully by the time the game starts the sun will be setting and the heat will ease up a bit. I survived the horrible heat during the LSU-Auburn game of 2015, when the heat index was 117 inside Tiger Stadium, and while yes, I am some four years older than that now, I think I can survive it again.

Time will, of course, tell.

Today is the day I need to buckle down and finish writing Bury Me in Shadows, and there’s definitely some straightening up around here that needs to be done. I’m also planning on spending some time curled up in my easy chair with Rob Hart’s amazing The Warehouse, which I highly recommend, even thought I am not very far into it. The characters are interesting, and the concept of the story is even more compelling and original; it’s quite an accomplishment! Bravo, Rob, bravo.

I love when writers hit the ball out of the park and their careers take off, which is what is happening here. GO ROB!

I also have a lot to get done over this holiday weekend. I must fight off the demon of procrastination–which even as I type this is trying to lure me into my easy chair with The Warehouse–else none of this will get finished. The volunteer project I’m working on–have been working on–should be finished with one last big push on Monday (yes, that’s what I’ll be doing on Labor Day; laboring) and I have some website copy to write tomorrow (it’s due tomorrow as well) but if I managed to get Bury Me in Shadows finished today, I’ll be ready to get going on the final revision of the Kansas book for the month of September, which is the plan. It won’t be easy getting it finished in a month, particularly during football season, but if I focus and stay on top of it, I should be able to get it done. I have an essay due on September 15th, and another short story due on October 1 that I also need to get written.

Heavy heaving sigh. There really is no end to any of this, is there?

And on that note, it is back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!

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Peaceful

Hello, Wednesday!

I slept strangely last night, in that I felt like I was awake all night but my body was resting–you know, that awful feeling of awareness where you know if you just open your eyes you’ll be awake? That. So I feel rested this morning, but at the same time I don’t completely trust that I’m rested, and suspect I’ll be very tired this evening. Today is my new short day of the week, which is lovely–I’ll be leaving the office around three-thirty this afternoon, stopping at Rouse’s for a few staples, and then I’ll be home.

One of my massive volunteer projects–the one I was so proud of finishing a few weekends ago–has reared its ugly head again, so I spent a good portion of last evening working on it before I went to bed. Another solid push and this phase will be finished; with one shorter phase still to come. Ideally, this will all be done and finished by the end of the weekend, which would be absolutely lovely. But then again, you can’t always count on things finishing when they should or on time, can you? But it was also one of those things hanging horribly over my head and causing me stress, including the stress of inertia; the feeling that there’s so much to do there’s no way I will ever get it done. I sent “Moist Money” off the other day; we’ll see how it plays. It’s a very dark story, but I kind of like it, and I really love the hardboiled gay voice of the main character.

I’ve always thought the Chanse series was my outlet for darkness; my hard-boiled series, whereas the Scotty books were more along the lines of a cozy series, even though Scotty became a licensed private eye. Even though he’s a professional, he’s still really an amateur. But there are people who have told me they love the humor in the Chanse series…which I’ve always thought was rather humorless, so there you go. (It’s like how I thought my story “Annunciation Shotgun” was pure noir and dark; people found parts of it funny even though the story was noir…which was weird for me. But at least they weren’t laughing at the story, but with it, so I didn’t mind so much. I have such a dark sense of humor anyway, I guess it was inevitable that my dark stories would also be humorous in some ways, too.)

Obviously, as I’ve been working on this project I’ve not gotten back to Chapter Twenty-four of Bury Me in Shadows (oh, so close!), but I am hopeful that if I finish the project today, I can get back to the book tomorrow night, and maybe get it completely finished Friday afternoon. I only have to work Friday night, passing out condoms in the Quarter, so I am probably going to run my errands and everything Friday during the day, so I can just stick close to the Lost Apartment over the weekend. There’s college football this weekend (HUZZAH!) and an LSU game Saturday night (GEAUX TIGERS!), and of course the Saints play on Sunday. I also want to start reading Rob Hart’s The Warehouse this weekend, and then I have Lisa Lutz’ The Swallows queued up next, before I get back to the Diversity Project.

We watched another episode of Thirteen Reasons Why last night, and Episode 8 is a particularly good one. The cast is so appealing, and they have such great chemistry together, that I am glad to overlook some things in the plot that don’t make a lot of sense. I also noticed–and maybe I am just not remembering anything from the previous seasons–but there used to be two queer kids at this school; a guy and the Asian girl who is student body president. They’ve been basically erased from the story–the guy is not even mentioned, and the girl was only in a couple of episodes in her role as student body president, but she was downgraded from supporting cast to cameos with little to no explanation. I wonder why? Anyway, last night’s episode is the one where Tyler finally tells Clay the truth about what happened to him, and why he snapped and wanted to die. The kid playing Tyler is phenomenal, probably one of the best actors in the cast, and he was heartbreaking., positively heartbreaking. I’m also not comfortable with the redemptive arc being given to the rapist, even though he’s dead. I understand what they are doing–what he did was inhuman and monstrous, but he was a person, and I think by trying to show him having regrets about what he did, and doing good things for other people, trying to atone…we never saw that in the first two seasons. But yes, it is important for people to understand that monsters are also human…as an editor told me once, years ago, when I was getting started, even Hitler loved his dogs.

Probably some of the best advice about character I’ve ever gotten from an editor.

All right, back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!

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One of a Kind (Love Affair)

Tuesday rolling around like a punch in the mouth.

I managed to get chapter twenty-three finished last night; two more to go and the first draft is finished. It’s going to get trickier in these final two chapters, methinks, but it’s also going to be interesting. A lot is going to happen in these last two chapters, which also kind of makes it fun to write.

I also turned in “Moist Money” to the anthology I was asked to write a story for; whether they like it or not remains to be seen–and I don’t mind if they don’t, really, because I’m actually glad I got the opportunity to write the story, if I’m being honest, and if I hadn’t been asked I would have never written the story. And while I’m not a fan of the word “moist”–it’s one of the more cringeworthy non-slur words in the English language, I’, not sure why–it really works for the story’s title. I also think it’s a great title. Bill Loefhelm told me me on Twitter–I responded to a tweet about stripper money being damp, and he told me I should write a book with the title; when I was in college I worked at Bank of America for a year as a teller, and our branch was near strip clubs…so the strippers used to come in with moist money to make deposits. (And now that I think about it, the fact that we weren’t given rubber or plastic gloves to wear while handling money seems kind of…unsanitary. Money is dirty to begin with…let alone handling it all day.) It’s a revenge story (because of course it is; I wouldn’t be Gregalicious if I didn’t write revenge stories all the time), and was most satisfying to write.

We’ll see how it goes.

I’m going to probably give “This Thing of Darkness” another going over before I submit it to the MWA anthology; I’m not really certain I’m happy with how I end the story.  I’m not entirely certain the story works in the first place, to be honest; isn’t that always the problem I have with short stories? I wish I had more confidence in my short story writing! I like to think I’m a good writer–you can’t write without some sort of sense that your compulsion to create characters and stories is good enough to be read and enjoyed by others–but ugh, that hideous inner voice, always undermining me and making me doubt myself! How I hate it!

I also started reading Lords of Misrule, a look at the politics of race in New Orleans through the lens of Carnival, and it’s kind of fascinating to see how recent the ordinance to desegregate the krewes was–the early 1990’s, in fact–and we moved here shortly after that went into effect. It’s also kind of handy to read about political things that were going on in New Orleans during that time, since I’m writing a novella set in New Orleans in 1994 (maybe 1995; I may change the date a bit as I work on it some more).

We continue to watch Thirteen Reasons Why’s third season, although I’m no longer sure why. The story seems…I don’t know; kind of forced? In some ways, though, it’s terrific; I do like how they are using all the backstory of the first two seasons to complicate this central murder mystery–although I suspect the reveal of the killer’s identity in the final episode is going to be a cheat. I’m also not terribly pleased that the murder victim/sociopathic rapist is getting kind of a backstory redemption arc…but then again, the kid who was almost a school shooter (stopped before his rampage in the season two finale) is also getting a redemptive arc…I kind of have mixed feelings about this. For one thing, I always felt kind of sorry for the kid, and they did such an amazing job of setting up his decline into depression and victimization–what happened to him in Season 2 was horrific, absolutely horrific–and the kids who perpetrated that have all seemed to have gotten away with it, and will continue to get away with it. On the one hand, realistically nothing would have happened to those kids, most likely; but on the other hand, it’s fiction, and it kind of feels like they just plastered a bandage on the kid’s hurts and sexual assault–yes, in season two a boy was victim of a particularly brutal and horrific sexual assault–and that seems, I don’t know, maybe it’s not compelling, story-wise, but I just feel  like they’ve made it seem easy to get over something like that–and it’s not.

Well, it’s time for me to get back to the spice mines, methinks. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.

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