Category: short stories

Makin’ It

I’ve always felt that Tuesdays are worse than Mondays. Sure, it sucks to get up on Monday morning and go back to the office, but at least you’re coming off the weekend. Tuesday means you’re not even halfway through the week and you’ve already worked the day before. Horror of horrors! I felt this way even in high school–which is where and when I started wishing my life away, as my mom always used to say. Of course, she didn’t start saying that until she stopped working and became, for want of a better word, a housewife. Such an ugly and weird sounding word, isn’t it? But it’s better than “tradwife,” which just might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard–and the whole “tradwife values” thing just kind of turns my stomach ever so slightly.

I do want to write about one, of course. I also want to write about one of those horribly creepy “boymoms.” Straight people are so weird…

But this morning I feel rested and good. I ran some errands after work last night, which was not as painful as I might have expected, and I have to run one tonight when I leave the office. I finished revising my short story and send it in (it’s for a queer crime anthology called Crime Ink), which felt really good (the story is an excerpt from Never Kiss a Stranger called “The Rhinestone”), and I did work on the book a little around Sparky’s intense neediness. I think Paul is moving into the Monteleone tomorrow, so after tonight I’ll be home alone with a super needy cat, which will be challenging. I also need to figure out my schedule for the weekend’s Festivals. I am moderating a panel for the Pinckley Prize tenth anniversary celebration, I know, and I have to do the anthology launch Saturday night, and I am in the Dorothy Allison tribute reading. There’s also a panel on Sunday I am on, and of course both the opening and closing parties. Sigh. I get tired just thinking about it, you know?

But it’ll be fun and invigorating intellectually, and it’s always inspiring to be around wonderful people who love books and writing.

Remember the author I talked about who created a firestorm by writing and publishing that dreadful book where the man fell in love with his best friend’s three-year-old daughter but waits until she was legal before doing anything (as though the pedophilic grooming wasn’t bad enough)? She was arrested yesterday and charged (in Australia) for possession of, and intent to distribute, child pornography. The copies of her own book was the evidence they needed for the arrest! I don’t know what the laws are in Australia, but quite frankly, arguing that it’s a “slippery slope” to be arrested for “dark romance” writing? Dark romance actually requires consent, otherwise it’s rape. You’re trying to ban queer books in the US, yet people are trying to defend the principle of free speech about a book that is 100% about grooming? Yeah, miss me with that. Child rape is child rape, period; and I think the fact so many people missed the real point of Lolita and think it’s a “romance” is why no one should be writing about child rape like it’s just another style of “dark” romance.

And who would ever think to themselves, “I’m going to write a dark romance about grooming!”

Someone I wouldn’t let around kids, that’s who.

Not all speech is protected–which no one seems to understand, which isn’t surprising since they don’t understand their own protected right to free speech and what precisely that means. We really are the dumbest country. This whole “let’s share classified intelligence with a reporter in a group chat” thing would be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. IMAGINE EISENHOWER SENDING THE D-DAY PLANS TO A REPORTER, or Truman accidentally telling the Washington Post about the plans to use the atomic bomb on Japan the day before?

Americans have never appreciated our system, or they’d have learned how it works better when they were younger. (I wish I had a quarter for every time I had to explain the Electoral College to smart people–or people I’d thought were smart previously–in 2000 I’d have retired years ago.) So, we kind of have the government we deserve right now.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day. Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again at some point.

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Lotta Love

Monday morning and back to the office with me this morning. I slept well again last night and had no trouble getting up; I am neither groggy nor tired as I sip my coffee and eat my morning coffee cake slice. It was a nice, if not terribly productive weekend. The Festivals are this weekend, so Paul will most likely be moving to the Monteleone on Wednesday, leaving me home to deal with a lonely, needy kitty in the meantime. I do have a lot of work to get done this morning at the office, so pray for me. I’m taking a long weekend for the Festivals–Friday and Monday, mainly for the recovery aspect–so hopefully next week isn’t too terrible. I also managed to blow off my taxes for the entire weekend, so I need to get that done this week as well.

Sounds like a to-do list is in order to me, don’t you think?

Spring is here! It was gorgeous yesterday when I walked outside to take out the trash. Paul had to go to the Quarter for the annual Stanley/Stella shouting contest at Jackson Square. I couldn’t justify going and taking the afternoon off from chores and writing (should writing be considered one of my chores?) for the day. Maybe next year I’ll remember that I don’t need to be turning books in during the first third of the year. Meh, fall is football season so there’s always something else to take me away from it, isn’t there? We did finish watching Paradise last night, and it really is quite excellent. It’s also one of the best produced and written shows I’ve seen in a while. The acting is stellar, and the writing is very clever and everything that happens in earlier episodes matter in the later ones, so everyone really needs to be paying attention. It’s also incredibly smart, and I am sure any parallels to our current world are purely coincidence and unintentional.

I also watched a documentary–a short one–that explained how the creators and writers of the Game of Thrones show didn’t stick the landing and ended up ruining one of the greatest television programs ever made. Like most everyone, I didn’t much care for the final season, and especially not the last episode…but I put everything aside for the pure pleasure of watching the spectacle–and it was a spectacle. Everyone watched Game of Thrones1, didn’t they? Everyone at my office did, and we always talked about on Monday morning, sometimes re-watching the episode in the upstairs lounge of our old office on Frenchmen Street. There were some incredible cinematic moments on the show, and of course, the acting was always topnotch. Every so often, when I think about it, I’ll go in search of clips from the show on Youtube, which is what I was doing when Paul got home yesterday afternoon with Chinese food for dinner. (I was not one of the people who had a problem with Daenarys going full-on Mad Queen and destroying Kings Landing.) I don’t know, but I can’t help but think a re-watch and a full-on binge of eight seasons could be fun. I know the weekend after the Festivals will most likely be one of those “can’t get off the couch from exhaustion” weekend, so perhaps that is the right timing for a massive binge.

I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as I would have liked, and while that is a consistent issue for one Gregalicious, it’s also one that needs to stop being an issue. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose time down a wormhole, especially when I start doing my researches on-line. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that the 1970’s were actually fifty years ago; my fiftieth high school reunion is in three years. (No, I am not going if they have one; although I am a little surprised that the majority of my classmates, I think, are still alive.) I told Paul last night that I was watching World War II videos yesterday morning, and I realized, to my horror, that the war had only been over for slightly more than sixteen years when I was born, which had never occurred to him before, either. YIKES. Certainly made me feel every second of my age, let me tell you! But it was true. My maternal grandparents were born before the Archduke was assassinated; so when they were born, Austria-Hungary was still a thing, the Germans had a kaiser and the Russians had a czar. The war was still in recent memory when I was a kid, and I grew up in a neighborhood of Chicago that was full of war refugees and post-war immigrants. A friend’s father had numbers tattooed on his inner forearm. The past was still very much the present when I was a kid, and we were also still in that post-war “America is the greatest country EVER” glow, and we were all taught white supremacy, obedience to the patriarchy, and American exceptionalism…but even when I was a small kid things seemed a bit wrong; committing genocide on the natives never sat well with me as a kid, nor did the fact the way US History was taught (and written about for kids) to justify everything we did as a country as “right” and “pure” and “moral” seem correct to me…and I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood recognizing and correcting the fallacies and bald-faced lies and justifications I was taught and groomed to believe.

We were all groomed to be good little citizens who obeyed and never questioned authority. Yeah, that worked, didn’t it?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later or tomorrow morning.

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  1. Which proves the point I am always making about history not being taught or presented properly to students. George R. R. Martin drew from European history for his story (clearly the incestuous Targaryens were based on the Ptolemies; and he pulled from both the Wars of the Roses and Maurice Druon’s series of novels about the end of the primary line of the Capetian dynasty in France, The Cursed Kings), so why can’t history be taught in a similar way? I mean, you can never go wrong with basing fantasy on actual history; so why not teach actual history the way you would a fantasy novel? ↩︎

Love You Inside Out

Remote Friday! I slept decently last night, which was a lovely thing. Sparky cuddled with me this morning when he got hungry, which was very sweet–I’d rather wake up to a cuddling, purring kitty than to an alarm any day. I’ve always believed alarms were unnatural, forcing you to wake from sleep before you’re ready or you’ve had enough. But that’s all part and parcel of the tyranny of capitalism we’re all subjected to most of our lives, and we’re all about to be (or already been) sacrificed on the altar of Ayn Rand acolytes who only read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, and not her actual philosophy. (Whenever someone mentions her admiringly, I always ask if they’ve read her essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness and the answer is always no…so I stop listening to anything they say and see no point in arguing with them from a place of better knowledge;1 and the true believers are just another branch of the MAGA family tree of cruelty and bigotry.) Must get up, must make money to spend money to keep the economy going…and round and round it goes.

I was very tired when I got home from work last night and sadly, didn’t get much of anything done. I came home, fed and played with Sparky, and then collapsed into my easy chair with a tired body and worn out brain. Thursdays really are my least favorite day at the office. Paul got home later than I would have liked, but I have to say this year I’ve seen more of him than I usually do during my Festival widowhood, so in a way I’m kind of glad the building collapsed? He’s going to be gone most of today, too, once he gets up, and I am going to be doing my remote work and writing and doing chores and getting the house as in order as I can manage. That always makes me feel better; I always find a messy apartment to be kind of…unsettling and oppressive, which has everything to do with fears of being a hoarder. I’m letting go of my need to never get rid of a book under any circumstance, but that comes from the reality of limited space options. I’ve also cut back on my buying books all the time, and limiting myself to new books from friends, or their recommendations. That has definitely helped financially, too. (But I will never donate my kids’ series books, ever.)

I also want to get some reading done this weekend. I want to get further into my revisit of Moonraker, and I have already moved Christa Faust’s The Get Off to the on-deck position of the TBR list. I’ve been waiting for this book for fourteen years! I love Christa’s voice and her style of writing, as well as how fierce she is, and boy, does that ever come across in the Angel Dare trilogy. Angel is an unusual heroine, and I do think the series will become noir classics to shelve alongside James M. Cain, Patricia Highsmith, and Cornell Woolrich2. I’d love to see them filmed, to be honest, and what a great role she’d be for an ambitious actress.

I did try to write some last night to little or no avail. I really need to get back into that saddle again and get things going. Deadlines loom overhead, and the Festivals are next weekend, and I am going to be super busy during both–I have several things I have to do, and I have all kinds of friends coming into town to speak at one or both. It’s going to be so exhausting, I am already kind of dreading how tired I’ll be. Not to mention commuting to the Quarter and back so we don’t have to board Sparky…and all that walking. Yes, I am going to be completely exhausted…but at least nothing I am doing is in the morning, thank you God, so I can at least sleep in some.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you either later today or tomorrow morning. We shall see, shan’t we?

  1. I read Ayn Rand in my twenties–I read her short novel Anthem in high school–and studied her philosophy, which required reading her non-fiction. I saw the fallacy in her “objectivism”, the flaw that unspools the entire thing, almost immediately, which gave me the knowledge to know she–and everything she believed, was patently predicated on a lack of understanding of human nature and behavior, and most of her acolytes embraced only the parts that confirmed their own biases while ignoring the rest. Check out her writings on religion sometime, and ask yourself how Paul Ryan and others–anyone, really–could be a “devout Christian” and an objectivist, when she wrote and believed that religion was ignorant superstition and unworthy of an intellectual. ↩︎
  2. Note to self: revisit Cain, and read more in the Woolrich and Highsmith canons. ↩︎

I Want You to Want Me

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Huzzah!

I am a bit tired this morning, but not from the week. I woke up around three in the morning and couldn’t fall completely back asleep…so when Sparky started trying to get me up before the alarm, I was able to have some fun with him. Usually I bury my face, hands and feet under the blankets so he can’t claw or bite them (swipes and nips, designed to wake me up–but the claw in the face is a bit much); this morning instead I’d grab him and cuddle him and hold on to him until he squirmed away and tried again….so I grabbed him and made him cuddle again. He really is such a sweet boy. When I start putting on my sweats he’ll run to the stairs…and then come back wondering what is taking me so long, and then runs ahead of me down the stairs. Every morning when I leave, he walks down along the back of the couch to the living room window and watches me go…and he’s always right there at the door when I get home to greet me (and beg for food and attention). I’m so glad we got another cat.

I did some writing last night, but was very tired both physically and mentally. I did get the laundry finished, so tonight I need to empty the dishwasher and refill it. I may have to stop on the way home tonight to get some things, but I can do the Rouses in the CBD as opposed to going all the way uptown, which can wait until Saturday. I have some things that need to get done between now and Monday–short story revision, more work on the book, reading The Get Off, which I’ve moved to the top of the TBR pile–as well as cleaning up the house some. Working on the book last night was difficult, primarily because I realized how shitty the work on the current chapter was, and I also realized I have ten characters to keep track of in the Diderot House during the hurricane–not very easy, and means I need to pay a lot closer attention. I am enjoying the writing, though yesterday’s being tired meant it was more of a slog than anything else. I am physically tired this morning but not mentally fatigued, which is a lovely thing. My synapses aren’t all firing properly this morning–I got confused about something I should know like the back of my hand, which was a little alarming, but once the coffee kicks in I should be able to make it through the day.

And the SEC Gymnastics championship meet is this weekend, too, which will be fun to watch. GEAUX TIGERS!!!

The world is continuing to burn to the ground as I type, and every day it seems to be a bit worse. That slippery slope they always warned us about when it came to the Second Amendment? Turns out the entire Constitution and all of the institutions and systems put into place to preserve liberty and freedom was also a slippery slope, and now we’re at the bottom of the slope, having slid all the way down into authoritarianism. It has always amazed me that racists would rather lose all their freedoms and liberties instead of sharing that with everyone else.

And the rebranding of the new party from the left that will rise from the ashes of the once great Democratic party? It should be called the Liberty Party. Go ahead and call us libs, racist garbage, just know that from now on I will be hearing that as “pro-liberty” instead of “liberal.” Fuck off all the way, Cons. I’ve never understood why we never called them cons, in all honesty. They are the party of con artists and convicts, after all–and in the instance of “pros and cons”, again, a negative connotation for those three letters. At some point I will write about the decline of the American Right–but did it really decline? Weren’t they always the pro-Fascist party? And moderates can also go fuck all the way off. They’ve been surrendering to the Fascist Right for so long it’s their second nature.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

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We Are Family

I got all my sisters with me!

“We Are Family” is one of those songs from the disco era–the ones that still get played on oldies nights in queer bars and continues to live on. Obviously, it’s an iconic gay anthem–about our found families rather than the blood ones that so often want nothing to do with us–and it’s also really popular with sororities…at least it was back then. It’s a very joyful and uplifting song, lyrically, so it’s also fun to belt out at the top of your lungs. Disco was a really fun time for a gay boy in sparsely populated Kansas…it’s where my love of dancing really took off. The dance floor was, for many years, the only place where I felt free.

Yesterday was a decent day. We were very fortunate to not have any of that bad weather that was forecast, at least not here in the Lost Apartment. I’ve not checked on the storm toll throughout the rest of the South yet, primarily because I’ve not even finished my first cup of coffee yet. But I did see yesterday some horrific weather was happening throughout the South as the result of that storm cell yesterday, so I hope everyone got through it okay and is doing well this morning. Weather events are both terrible and terrifying. It’s kind of ironic that my current book I am writing is set during a weather event. But I feel rested this morning and I got up early (Sparky wasn’t quite as kind about letting me sleep later), and am about to start my second cup. I did okay yesterday. I was still mentally fatigued yesterday so wasn’t able to get a lot of creative work done, but managed some. I also did some chores and picked up around here, and walked to Walgreens in the morning to get butter, which I’d forgotten at the store on Friday (and I need a stick of butter for today’s dinner). Aside–Walgreens actually had stock. The one-two punch of Hurricane Ida and the pandemic dealt it a blow I didn’t think it was going to ever recover from; there were empty shelves everywhere, empty refrigeration cases, and you could never be sure they’d the one thing you needed–which happened more than once over the years since then. But I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had finally restocked, and they had things….not just the butter I needed but some other things I also needed and didn’t think they would have. NARRATOR VOICE: They did have those things, which was most pleasing to mine eyes.

This is delightful news–not quite “oh they opened a new Rouse’s in the CBD that’s actually on my way home” delightful, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to get in the car to go get things necessarily anymore. I love when my life becomes more convenient.

I spent some more time with Moonraker yesterday, and it’s…something. There’s an unemotional distance in Fleming’s voice (he also uses the distant third person omniscient narrator style of writing, which I was trained so long ago not to use–I always use first or close third person, and it always surprises me when I read a legendary author’s work to find they use it), and there’s no sentimentality to it, either. The casual misogyny of the time is an eyeful, as well as the way Bond (and by extension, the secret service and the culture/society as whole) doesn’t really view women as people, but rather as almost ignorant children who need the guiding of a man). It’s also a good reminder that the Bond novels weren’t as over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek as the films1. The original novels definitely have a completely different feel from the movies, that is for damned sure. Fleming died around the time the first film was being made, so he never saw what Hollywood did to his characters and stories. I suspect he wouldn’t have cared much for them; the books are very cold. But it’s interesting to revisit it, and the similarities/prescience of Hugo Drax to Elmo Dusk are definitely eerie and make the book more compelling to read than it would have been a year ago.

Three out of four of the Lefty Awards last night went to friends–James L’etoile won Best Novel; Rob Osler won Best Humorous; and John Copenhaver won Best Historical–and two were openly queer writers writing about openly queer characters! Woo-hoo! The times, they are a-changing! There were also a number of other friends also nominated, so shout out to one and all the nominees and winners! Huzzah!

We did finish watching Running Point, which was a lot of fun and we greatly enjoyed it. We then watched the first three episodes of Adolescence on Netflix, which is disturbingly real. It opens with a 13 year old boy being arrested for the murder of a classmate, and the child is very definitely disturbed. We’ll finish that today probably, but I also have a lot of writing to do. We’ll see how everything goes.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, all, and I’ll be back at some point.

  1. Ayn Rand, in writing about “heroes” in film and novels, wrote about the early Bond films in an essay about art. I remember how much she loved Dr. No–really one of the only Bonds to be done as a serious film–and how much she hated Goldfinger. ↩︎

I’ll Never Love This Way Again

Remote Friday, which used to be Work-from-Home Friday–they call them “remote days” at the office now, so I had to rename the blog entry to be correct, because I am nothing if not a stickler (as if). I was correct in assuming I would be brain frazzled when I got home from work (it was a good day, if busy, and I got a lot done. Even wilder, there wasn’t much back-up of traffic on the highway), so I recharged for a bit in my easy chair with Sparky, and reacquainted myself with what happened in the advancing collapse of the Weimar Republic while I turned my attention away, and wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the most recent Neville Chamberlain-like statesmanship from Democratic leadership. The party just needs to die at this point before it gets too ugly…for them. I believe when MAGA turns on the people they voted for it will be incredibly violent and deadly–which is going to be a true Reign of Terror, since the betrayal runs so deep. The failure, and potential death of the Democratic Party–thanks, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, for your utter failure of leadership–will be less ugly, but ugly just the same. It’ll save me some money, since I will no longer be donating to any politician or party going forward…and I certainly will not be doing any campaign work of any kind ever again, either. Right now, the list of donations for 2026 is looking like it will be entirely to primary opponents. Why on earth would I ever support people who aren’t going to fight for the country and the Constitution?

I managed to get chores done last night, as I wasn’t physically tired at all, but had no bandwidth for reading or writing–but instead of sitting in my chair all night, I got my ass up and started doing chores. I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and washed everything in the sink and reloaded and ran it again. I picked stuff up and worked on the kitchen, too. I hate that my mind is so fried by Thursday, but this was also a busy-ass week and I was in clinic every day. I also slept very well last night, and Sparky wasn’t as insistent that I get up at six as he usually is. I also managed to pay my car registration on line, got the bills all paid, and now get to do some work-at-home duties before running some errands before settling in to read and write for the rest of the afternoon. LSU’s final gymnastics meet is tonight, at Auburn, so we’ll be watching that tonight, and we need to find something new to stream–but we also have this week’s Reacher and Abbott Elementary to watch, too. That’s tonight sorted, any way.

Tomorrow the weather is going to be ugly with some sort of super storm cell capable of producing powerful tornados. We don’t really have basements or interior rooms here, and the houses all have enormous windows, so yeah, tornados here are quite unpleasant. Yet another reason for me to get everything done outside of the house that needs to be done today, you know? I just need to get the mail and some groceries, nothing too terrible and relatively easy to get taken care of, which will be very nice. It also appears that the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade is cancelled, possibly postponed.

By checking the news for the weather, I also saw that today is the anniversary of one of the city’s darkest days in history–the lynching of eleven Italian-American immigrants in the city jail. The police chief had been murdered, and the (bigoted) view of New Orleanians that it was a Mafia or a local Italian crime gang, so when some of them were acquitted…the good white men of New Orleans (sarcasm) stormed the jail and lynched the prisoners. It created an international incident and almost led to war with Italy; to appease the Italian government, one of the things the US did (besides paying an enormous indemnity) was create Columbus Day–which is how that happened….funny that a holiday created to honor a genocidal maniac came about because of bigotry, racism, and murder. I wonder…is this the time period racists mean when they talk about how New Orleans “used to be safer”? Because that doesn’t sound too safe to me…maybe it was when Storyville was open? When the Axeman was killing people? I do want to write about the lynchings some time, but I don’t know how to turn that into a story or a book. Perhaps someday….

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back either later or not till tomorrow morning. I will see you then!

Shake Your Groove Thing

What precisely is a “groove thing,” anyway? I’ve always wondered. And yesterday’s picture–of a dancer wearing a dance belt only in profile, showing the curve of both bulge and ass–did not trigger an adult content warning or removal from Meta. Weird, isn’t it? Go figure. Less revealing photos always seem to set off the puritan bat signal, but this one didn’t. I’m done trying to figure out what stick they currently have up their ass, since it’s different every day. Meta is dying, anyway, such a pity. (I was highly amused that some stupid rag of a newspaper claimed that Zuckerberg was a “gay icon.” Um, no. As I said on Threads, we still have our sight and sense of smell. You just know he smells like urine.)

Yesterday turned out to be a good day. We were busy in the clinic all day, but we managed just fine. No one was seen late; in fact, almost everyone was seen early. I was kept on my toes for most of the day, but it was a mellow day and everything flowed really well. I had very little time to think or so anything else, but that’s fine. My primary concern was that, as team lead and my supervisor was out for the day, I was going to be buried in problems and questions (which usually happens and by the end of the day I’m so exhausted I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep in the car on the drive home), but that didn’t happen and the day went by pretty quickly and easily. I wasn’t even tired when I got home from work! I was able to get some things done when I got home–got some things crossed off the list, and was able to get chores done. Paul didn’t get home from the office until late (and yes, Sparky was a bundle of need when I got home). I slept very well last night, too, and still feel rested today, which is a good thing. I need to get a lot done…and need to get a lot done pretty much every day until the end of the month. Heavy sigh.

And now it’s Tuesday and I feel pretty good today–clear headed and physically rested, which is really nice. I’m not sure precisely which night this week will be when I hit the wall; usually Wednesday isn’t a good day for me, for real. That’s when I generally start feeling tired in the afternoons and even more tired when I get home from work. Sparky of course loves those nights because he gets to cuddle in my lap and gets a lot of attention. He’s such a sweet boy, really. Now in the mornings he jumps into the bed before my alarm goes off (his body clock has already adjusted to the time change), and lays down on the pillow above my head and curls up. Once the alarm goes off the first time, he moved down and curls up inside the crook of my knees, and stays there until I actually go ahead and get up. He also likes to ride my shoulders downstairs. He’s our first cat who’s a shoulder cat, and I sometimes forget he’s asking to be lifted up on my shoulders….which is where he really goes to town on purring as he wraps himself around my neck, like a mink stole.

But I need to get my short stories finished and back to work on the book. Deadlines loom, and next weekend is Saints and Sinners. YIKES. So yeah, definitely need to get working. I don’t think I have much to do this weekend outside of the house, so I should be able to get some good work done on the book. I need to do some more revising, and I also need to reread everything so I know where everything is at with the story (and remind myself where it’s going…I hate not having a memory anymore) and so I can get back to it. But…am feeling better about writing, and my place in the mystery world, so we’ll see how everything goes from now on.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Tuesday, and I’ll check back in with you again later.

New York Groove

Sunday morning where we’ve sprung forward (I hate Daylight Savings Time) and I feel off, like always when this happens. I’ve never cared for the spring part of it, but must admit I do enjoy the “extra” hour in the fall. I did go to bed early last night, and slept well–it apparently rained overnight, which undoubtedly helped with that. Of course, Sparky’s body clock didn’t change, so he wasn’t hungry enough to bother me until it was actually time for me to go ahead and get up, which was nice. (It’s this fall when he’ll annoy me early, isn’t it?) I have some things I need to get done today, which should be easy enough to do. I finished reading The Bell in the Fog yesterday (my thoughts are posted here) and really enjoyed it; and I am going to revisit an old Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Moonraker1 next I think. I may read something new alongside of it, but I haven’t decided which yet. Revisiting the original Fleming Bond novels will also give me something to think and write about on the subject of toxic masculinity and sociopathy. (So many post-war “heroes” defined masculinity so narrowly–and dangerously; Mike Hammer, James Bond…and yes, reading The Bell in the Fog put me in mind of post-war crime fiction.)

I am kind of working on a long essay–I have been since last spring, actually–about gay men and masculinity, and how societal norms and mores about them impact/twist our lives and makes it harder for us to just, I don’t know, be. I just read a great piece on the taboo of the male body that also plays into the paradigm I’m writing about. The societal reticence about the male body, and male nudity, is almost always centered on the groin area; you could depict a male completely nude as long as there was a fig leaf over the genitals. A lot of Renaissance paintings and sculptures at one point had “modesty leaves” placed over make genitals–and why is that? (Don’t even get me started on women…I’d be here for the rest of the year) Because whenever someone sees a limp penis resting on a pair of testicles they go mad with desire and sexual lust? (Although the way websites for gays drool and get “parched” over revealing pictures of influencers, actors, musicians, and other celebrities has always turned my stomach a little bit. I know, I know, but at the same time there’s something a little ‘junior high locker room” about that I find personally distasteful and almost cringe-y. Your mileage might vary and I am only speaking for myself. I enjoy looking at gorgeous men as much as the next gay man or cishet woman; I post one on here with every entry that isn’t about a book, movie or TV show. I like eye candy! There’s nothing wrong with it! I just feel the way the links and emails and so forth are shared, and the language used, is kind of juvenile and pandering and Tiger Beat-esque.)

You see how reading can influence my work? Lev’s got me thinking about writing queer historicals again–not that I was ever not going to write Chlorine, and I am hoping to get that done this summer or fall, finally–but the next book I am writing is Never Kiss a Stranger, which is also kind of a historical, since it is set in New Orleans in the summer of 1994. (An excerpt from it will be published in an upcoming anthology, which is very exciting for me. I also sold an excerpt from Chlorine recently also as a short story, so guess what, Constant Reader? You’ll be able to get a preview of both books soon! How fucking fun is that?) I often think of all the things I want to write–books, essays, short stories–and get overwhelmed because I know I’ll never get to them all before I expire. It doesn’t look like I will ever be able to retire now (fuck you again, MAGA, now and forever and ever, amen), so it really is going to be about managing my energy, being selfish, and being able to continue to write in my free time. It’s also going to make doing research no easier. Sigh. I am starting to resent all the volunteer time I’ve done over the last twenty years or so–not for Saints and Sinners, but pretty much everything else. I used to think I was making a difference, not only in the world but in various writing communities, but the truth is I wasn’t.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world, and the reality is I should have realized that difference I could make would be best served from my writing, not from anything else. I think that comes from a lifetime of never taking myself seriously because no one else ever did. I did learn things about myself, the community, and other people from the volunteering; so that was something gained, and while I hardly consider myself to be a “sage” or even a “community elder” 2, I have been around a long time. I always thought I got started in publishing way too late, but the number of people who published their first novel before forty isn’t that long, actually. But that also means I’ve been doing this now for almost thirty years (I started writing for a queer paper in Minneapolis in 1996, and my how things have changed over the years. I also never really had any desire to be famous; sure, when I was a kid I fantasized about being a movie star or a singer (alas, couldn’t act or sing), but writing was what I always wanted to do, hungered to do, and basically that desire subsumed every other ambition or fantasy. I also never wanted to be a celebrity author, or have the kind of success others have. All I ever wanted was to just write and make a living from that. I don’t need to be rich; I’ve never needed that. I’d prefer to be comfortable, and never have to worry about bills and things.

But the thing with money and success is most people never think they have enough, isn’t it?

Look at Space Nazi, for example. Isn’t he about the right age to be a boy from Brazil?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you again soon, most likely tomorrow morning.

  1. I saw a meme on-line that pointed out how dated Moonraker was–since it’s about a billionaire who moves to England and gets involved in the government with an ulterior motive… ↩︎
  2. I can’t deny I am old, so therefore it stands to reason I am, in fact, an elder. But I don’t think I’m a sage at all. ↩︎

He’s the Greatest Dancer

Thursday and my second–and last–day in the office this week. It always feels like the entire city is hungover after Mardi Gras ends, and we’re all just kind of going through the motions the entire week until it’s the weekend again, and we go back to what passes for normal down here–which is not the same as it is anywhere else. Don’t be a hater, dear, it’s what makes New Orleans special and why we all love it here so much. It was so different yesterday, you know? Hardly any traffic on the way to work, no traffic on the way home, there was lots of parking so I could park in front of the house, the slalom course on St. Charles was taken down…and reality again is intruding on New Orleans. I had a good day at the office, overall; got caught up on a lot of things, and kind of seamlessly slid back into the day job and reality.

I was pretty tired when I got home from work, but…I finished the draft of my story yesterday! Huzzah! I wrote almost three thousand new words! It’s been a hot minute since I was able to do that in one sitting, let alone when I was physically and mentally fatigued, but I did it, I pushed through and did it. I am going to let it rest for a day or two before I go over it one more time, make corrections and necessary edits, so I can get it delivered this weekend and cross that off my to-do list. The words were painful, like extracting a wisdom tooth without gas or painkillers, but I got them done and what I said yesterday was correct: when I finish writing, no matter how long what I’ve done is, always makes me feel fantastic and like I can conquer the world and do anything. I do love that feeling, and I don’t know why I don’t remember that and push myself to get that high every day.

Because you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, and you have a bad habit of self-sabotage. You do this to yourself ALL THE TIME.

And you never learn, do you?

I really don’t. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing something over and over while hoping for a different result each time? And yet…here we are. But I slept really well last night, and had no problem getting up this morning. I feel good, you know? Rested and emotionally even, not dreading the day or anything. I have some things I need to get done today–some bills to pay, some plans to make, pick up the mail uptown after I get off work–and then tonight I am hoping to get back to work on my book. I’ve also been asked to to some writing about Scotty and queer sex workers in crime fiction; I know there have been some (I’ve certainly written some over the years) but in all honesty, I’d never really thought of Scotty himself as being a sex worker (or a former one), but…go-go boys might not actually be having sex with people for money, but they are definitely displaying their bodies for erotic effect to make money, so…yes, he is a sex worker. After I finished working on my story last night, I was thinking about this new way of actually looking at Scotty and it didn’t bother me in the least. I’ve never really been good about recognizing my own work as anything other than my own work that I am proud of, but Scotty…there’s really no other character like him in crime fiction, is there? Are there any other male protagonists of a mystery series with that kind of history? I’m not even aware of any other crime novels whose main character is a sex worker of any kind. So, maybe my little Scotty humorous series actually is unique and groundbreaking after all. Something to ponder, at any rate.

And if you’d like a really good belly laugh, some cybertrucks rolled in the Orpheus parade Monday night. Needless to say, it did not go well for them in a city that gave 82% of its vote to Kamala Harris. But then MAGA asswipes are nothing if they are not completely delusional.

And on that note, it’s time for me to get going on my day. Have a lovely Thursday, all, and let’s remain focused on our own joy and how to resist fascism, shall we?

Let’s shall.

Nathan York Nebraska Men’s Gymnastics vs Penn State

Hold the Line

Ash Wednesday and the city is somber. We did have that horrible weather that was predicted, that messed with the parade schedule, but we stayed inside and rested and relaxed. I mean, that was a hell of a storm last night, and the wind was wild too. We even had a tornado warning! But we made it through it all, all that rain and wind made for a good night of sleep (and super-easy to fall asleep, too), and I feel pretty good this morning. I don’t feel like I am still sick, but I am also barely awake and my body hasn’t completely clocked in yet, either. Will there be a ticklish throat and a post-nasal drip this morning, or is that finally a thing of the past? Ah, there it is. I knew it was just a matter of time. Back to the DayQuil bottle. Sigh. Not feeling well over the past week or so certainly hasn’t helped matters much, has it? But we must endure and persevere, mustn’t we? And we can’t let the outside world burning to the ground interrupt our lives, no matter how pointless it all can seem from time to time. Staying positive isn’t easy when the forces of evil and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Trump, Musk, RFK Jr, and Putin) burn the world to the ground around us. But positivity in the face of evil is important. It is far too easy to give into despair in times like these.

It’s incredibly hard to get motivated to do anything, really, when reality becomes the latest uncertainty and you never know what you are going to wake up to. I’ve given into it a lot more than I should–the greatest trick about depression is it fools you into not realizing that’s what’s going on until it’s over. I fucking hate that, and it happens to me a lot more than I am even aware of, which is frightening. (My biggest self-delusion is that I am intensely self-aware; when the reality is I am intensely self-critical. They are NOT the same thing.) Depression always goes hand-in-glove with not writing for me; that’s why I never say I have writer’s block–because it’s actually depression. (I do not speak for all writers on this; this is how it works on/for me. But it’s also easier to say “writer’s block” than admit to “depression”–which turns it into a creative issue non-writers don’t understand or can experience, rather than a mental one everyone can relate to. Stigma about depression, I guess.) Not writing also makes me depressed, so it’s a very vicious cycle. It’s either “I can’t write so I get depressed so I get even more depressed” or “I’m too depressed to write which will make me more depressed” and I’m never aware of the cycle until it’s over or almost over–and why I always tell myself to write some fiction every day, even if it’s very little or even if it’s garbage; garbage can always be fixed, and even writing a few hundred words is an accomplishment, not matter how small it seems to my fevered, depressed mind.

I do sometimes wonder why people like me want to be writers, since we often create our own hells.

But I did work on my short story yesterday and it’s really taking shape. I started revising the words I already had written, so there was a lot of deletion, so I cannot even tell you how many words I actually did write yesterday, but the opening of the story is now shorter and also better, more involving, and works better. I am looking forward to working on it some more tonight. The mood and voice are coming together, and so is the setting–and my main character. I am excited, and want to get back to work on it again tonight when i get home from work. I also want to do some work on the book, which is falling behind again. I also have some emails to answer, bills to pay, finances to get under control, and numerous other things that I need to do–so yes, I am making a to-do list once I finish this and post it–and separate ones for personal and day job.

I also read some more of The Bell in the Fog, which I am loving, and we started watching The Madness on Netflix–more on both to come relatively soon.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Ash Wednesday, everyone, and I will talk to you relatively soon, I am sure.