Category: short stories

A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You

Well, yesterday was one of those days at the office–the kind when you’re really grateful that you get to go home at the end of and shut your mind off completely. It wasn’t a terrible day, by any means; my job is never like that, but it was one of a lot of frustrations and small problems that usually are nothing but…the day went off the rails early in the morning and everything seemed to pile up on top of that, so the solutions, usually so easy and effortless, required thought and a moment to think it through…so yeah, not really a lot of fun there for anyone. But I got some writing done last night, and that third chapter I was really struggling with has managed to work itself out. I also am going to try, really hard, not to make every chapter the same length; there’s something to be said about the erraticism of varying chapter lengths…and the real truth is the reason I’ve always gone by chapter word counts and kept them around the same is to easily figure out the word count and where it all stands without having to pull it all into one document. I can’t work from a master document until I am in the final editing stage, and always operate by chapters. It’s methodical, and I also wonder if that methodology might be stifling creativity?

You see, I can always turn anything into a version of Imposter Syndrome, no matter what it is.

I am awake and feeling okay, too, which is a pleasant surprise. I slept well last night. I stopped and made some groceries on the way home, and spent the evening reading Rival Queens, which is about Catherine de Medici and her daughter, Margot. We’re almost up to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre–a religious genocide–during which Margot saved her Huguenot husband from the bloodthirsty Catholic mob. It was, sadly, yet another failed attempt by the Queen Mother to end the religious strife in France by killing everyone who wasn’t Catholic. It sometimes feels like I’ve been reading this book forever, and that’s probably because I have been reading for well over a year now. I’m still having some trouble focussing on reading, and thus it’s taking me far longer than it should to get deeper into my TBR pile. I am hoping to finish Hall of Mirrors this week; I just need to manage my free/spare time better. I’m not used to having free time, or at least, not this much, and I am trying to adapt to that so I can still have relaxation time in addition to reading/writing.

A nice problem to have in my sixties, methinks.

It also was raining when I went to bed last night, which certainly helped me to fall into a good, deep sleep. It’s been a very wet summer thus far–the humidity has been brutal on my sinuses, frankly–which isn’t a good thing for New Orleans; the more rain the more soaked the ground becomes and the less able to soak up water when it comes, which makes it easier to flood. They’re putting up a house on the one remaining vacant lot on the block; it started going up a couple of weeks ago (which reminded me of my unfinished short story “Condos for Sale or Rent”), so yet another place where water can go during a flooding rainstorm is now gone. We’ve still been fortunate that our block has only flooded once in all the years we’ve lived here (and it wasn’t after Katrina), and can only hope that our luck continues to hold. I think it’s going to rain again this evening as I run errands on my way home from work (mail, prescriptions), which will be annoying but livable, really. I don’t think we’re going to be busy in clinic this morning or this afternoon, which is very cool…I did manage to get caught up on things yesterday, and just have a few more things before I can wrap up the month of June completely.

I also have some chores to do tonight when I get home.

So here’s hoping for a good day, rather than a slightly irritating one. Every day is a new day, after all; and it is what you make of it, methinks. I am going to take my leave of you now and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later, most likely.

You Make Me Feel Brand New

Saturday morning and we had a marvelous thunderstorm last evening. Paul got caught in it, coming home from the gym, but it was also a flash-flood alert storm, too. I should have curled up in bed with a book, but settled for the easy chair, my chair blanket, and a sleeping kitten. We wound up watching Godzilla Minus One, which was enjoyable. It’s funny that I can watch these movies so comfortably and easily now and enjoy them, when they terrified me as a child. I think it was WGN in Chicago that would run them and call them “creature features” (which was probably the case everywhere) and that always stuck in my head. I had such bad nightmares that Mom and Dad banned me from watching the monster movies, but the vampire/wolfman/Frankenstein monster movies also were nightmare material for me. I know I also used to have Dark Shadows nightmares, too.

Having a big imagination when you’re a child isn’t always a good thing.

I haven’t had nightmares in years, at least not ones I remember–I don’t remember any of my dreams anymore when I wake up, which used to be a thing for me. Not sure how or why that changed over the years, but it did. Maybe it’s because I use my imagination so much to write and create that it’s too drained for me to dream anymore. That might be the case, but then again who knows?

I spent some time in the laundry room working on the shelves, and I did purge more books to take to the library sale today. I am going to do that and go to the gym today–errands are first, of course–and then I think tomorrow morning I’ll cross over to the West Bank to go make some groceries. I have to clean out the refrigerator today, too. I’ve been kind of low energy this three day weekend; and not getting nearly as much done as I would have liked this weekend, but that’s life these days, you know? There’s also today. I want to work on the files and do some writing today, get rid of these boxes of books, and maybe clean some. I need to do the dishes and the kitchen, too. I also need to clean myself up; I haven’t shaved since Monday and my face is itchy and scratchy. I’ve really been a slacker this weekend thus far, but I am also not beating myself up over it. It is what it is, and sometimes I need down time just like everyone else. (I do miss my old energy levels, though.) I haven’t checked today’s weather, either. I am hoping for some rain this morning so I can curl up with my book for a while this morning before lugging the books to the library–but that’s going to open up so much space in the living room! I am really enjoying this progress I am making on the house, you know. I may even attack that last file drawer today, too.

As you can tell, the coffee is starting to work its magic on my brain and I am starting to feel alive and awake. I definitely am going to get through some of this stuff this morning, huzzah! (A quick check of the weather indicates rain at ten, so huzzah!)

I have also been thinking about the book projects a lot these last few days, which has been cool and helpful. I keep getting Imposter Syndrome every time I think about the WIP–but not the usual kind, thank God; this time it’s more “are you sure you’re telling this right?” before realizing that the plan for this book was to always over-write it to begin with and then trim it down and turn it into something I can take pride in; which isn’t how I usually write books in the first place. I also realized that I am not in fact finished with Chapter 3, either; I rushed it and did one of those “I can fill this in later because I want to call this done now” things that I always regret and resent during the revisions, so this weekend I need to get back to that chapter and really finish this draft so I can move on to the next. I also need to get back to work on some short stories, too. I’ve really got to stop letting my mind have the night off more regularly!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to get the books organized in their boxes for ease of transfer, get the dishes finished, and maybe–just maybe–work on the floors some. I’ll also probably be back later at some point, too. Have a lovely day and catch you later, Constant Reader!

Oh Very Young

Friday morning and I slept late and I don’t care. I also did little to nothing yesterday and I don’t feel in the least bit guilty about it, either. Ordinarily, I’d be chastising myself and feeling like I wasted an entire day, but so what if I did? Am I never allowed to actually have a day off where I don’t do much of anything? I did get the laundry finally done, but I’m not going to kill myself this weekend, either. There are definitely things I need to do today–laundry, errands, gym, writing–but I am going to get to things when I get to them and if I don’t, there’s always another day.

And if there isn’t, oh well, no need to worry about any of it, is there?

Yesterday was lovely, as non-active days inevitably are. I wrote some posts and worked on the laundry yesterday morning, but once Paul got up, I turned the television onto Wimbledon for him and I kept sitting here at my desk, finishing that blog post, which was very cool–the television usually is a distraction, and it wasn’t yesterday. I did eventually move into the living room to watch television with him, and we got caught up on The Boys (which is going so hard on the right this season that sometimes I laugh out loud; one of the most horrible supes this week quote that trash from Georgia MTG, and then I realized the entire character was her, and laughed and laughed and laughed), then watched the entire new season of That 90’s Show (the best character is Ozzie the young gay). We also finished the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders documentary on Netflix, which again was really just a better produced and edited together season of their old reality show, but a lot more serious and it also went in on some of the girls more. I said, while watching, “It really does take a certain kind of person to want to be one of these girls, doesn’t it? It’s like they create this big sorority.” That was what it reminded me the most of–a big sorority–with little to no drama between the girls…which I suspect would NOT be tolerated should it ever happen. Usually watching anything documentary style, or non-fictional, usually gives me several ideas of how this little “bubble” they live in could lead to crime; and I realized yesterday in all our years watching Making the Team and now this, that’s never happened once. Even sitting here this morning with my coffee and a cat in my inbox (Sparky is watching Cat TV out the window), I cannot think of why anyone would want to kill any of those girls or even their coaching staff. Kellie, the primary coach, reminds me a lot of that woman from Navarro from the Cheer series.

Besides, I was just thinking the other day that if and when I write another young adult novel, I am not going to write about cheerleaders and football players. That was my primary experience in high school, but there are so many other kids that are neither of those things and I kind of would like to write from a different perspective rather than the usual, high school stereotype kids. (Which, now that I’ve said that, is precisely who The Grimoire of Broken Dreams is about; so it will be the last of those…but The Summer of Lost Boys will be about a high school outsider; it’s the only way the story works in the first place.)

I do have some picking up to do today, and I certainly need to get the dishes done–which always makes such a difference when it comes to how the kitchen looks–and I’d like to get some more filing work done…at least alphabetizing so the files are easily found. I have one more file drawer to get through–there’s a lot of sorting that needs to be done on it–and then that is finished. I’d like to get started moving boxes off the tops of the cabinets this weekend, too. Some of it is just paper that can go in the trash; others are books that also need to be gone through. I hope the library sale is open tomorrow so I can drop these books off to them, which will also make the living room look less cluttered. I also have a long term scanning project to work on, too–all my old articles and reviews and so forth that I have stored neatly in a box; I’d like to get that all scanned so I can give these old queer magazines and newspapers to the local queer archive. I hate throwing it all in the trash; someone might someday want to see these old issues of Lambda Book Report that I edited, and I doubt they are electronically available; it wouldn’t surprise me if even Lambda didn’t have copies of its issues going back to the 1980s.

There’s a part of me–the packrat part–that wants to keep all of this and archive it and all my papers and put them somewhere, like at Tulane (who wanted them at one point) or the Historic New Orleans Collection; but that seems a lot like hubris to me, you know? “Oh I am so important my papers need to be collected for future scholars and historians” isn’t something that rolls easily off my keyboard, you know? After a lifetime of not being taken seriously to the point that I rarely take myself seriously, it’s hard for me to imagine that my writing and my life would be of interest to anyone in the future, you know? Someone told me that I was the only writer who documented what life was like here for a gay man before Katrina, and sadly, all I can do is think of all the things I haven’t documented here, like the wars over Southern Decadence against homophobic pedophile Grant Storms (it’s always projection with them, isn’t it?)–I wanted to write a book about that, and Storms himself along with psychotic Louisiana Republican politician Woody Jenkins1 inspired Bourbon Street Blues–and various other battles here in the state. Cancer Alley, the poisoning of poor black communities by petrochemical plants and oil refineries, the loss of the coastline and the wetlands are all things that should be written about, and I really wish there was some John D. Macdonald here in Louisiana who could write about the environmental disaster the state already is, and how we are making it worse by the day every day.

But I’ve decided2 to just throw it all away, really. I don’t have the time or the interest to catalogue and organize a lifetime of writing, let alone the logistics of getting it all somewhere, and every draft I’ve written is electronic, except for the files that are so old no program will recognize them anymore, and there’s also this blog. It’s never been the whole story, and it’s always been relatively carefully curated, but when I do write things here I don’t censor myself. The only blog topics that have always been off-limits are Paul, my family, and deeply personal stuff. I also try very hard not to invade the privacy of my friends, which I wasn’t so good about in the early days back at livejournal almost twenty years ago.

I also think that’s why I want to keep doing the Greg’s Gay Life or Pride Posts throughout the rest of the year. I’d like to document more of my past, the things that I clung to (like the tiny queer rep in film, movies and books when I was a gayby), and sharing what it was like to live through things. I have no desire to write a memoir of any kind, but I kind of do at the same time, but my fear is always the faulty memory and the memories of the other people who were there will inevitably be different. I’ve already noticed how the kids I went to high school with clearly had no idea how miserable I was; the mask I wore of the class clown who makes sure everyone is having fun was more successful than I ever thought it was…although I have become convinced everyone knew somehow I was gay. That delusion was hard to let go of, but it’s also true. No one I ever came out to was surprised, you know.

Maybe my memoir could be called Deluded.

And on that note, I am getting some more coffee and going to work on the sink. Have a lovely Friday, whether you are off like me or have to work. I’ll most likely be back later.

  1. Jenkins was too extreme for Louisiana back then, but he’s to the left of our current governor. Jenkins was also the first Republican that I can recall who claimed the election was stolen from him and wanted an FBI investigation. This behavior killed his career in state politics; he couldn’t even get elected to represent the racist part of Baton Rouge that recently seceded from the capital. And yes, Louisiana will go at least 60% for another crybaby sore loser this November. Funny how that works. ↩︎
  2. Don’t @ me about this; my mind is made up. ↩︎

Help Me

Ah, the 4th of July. I already did my holiday post this morning, in which I put in words what I’ve been feeling about this country for a very long time, and I don’t think I’ve still managed to get a lot of it out of my system entirely yet. The state of the world is such that it’s both infuriating and terrifying at the same time, and thinking about it for too long inevitably always puts me into a bad mental state. I’m taking the day off from most everything–I’ll do chores and so forth, because I can’t just sit still for very long–but I want to go to the gym for a bit and I also want to spend some time reading; have an actual day off, you know, from the pressures and worries and cares of the every day world. So no news, no social media check-ins (other than blog posting; I am very behind on that, and more on that later), and seriously, how lovely to have one day when I can make the world go away.

Yesterday was an odd day, really. Having a three day work-week was already off-putting, and I could never remember what day it was all week, and I felt a bit off-balance. I did get some work done on the book, which was awesome, and I plan to do more of that this very weekend, thank you very much! It’s nice to feel excited about writing again, even as I fear that I am also letting time slip through my fingers. I have become very aware of the grains of sand running through my hourglass these days and it’s really not as grim or sad as other people always make it out to be when I mention it, you know? I always knew I would never have enough time to write all the ideas for stories and books that I wanted to; but always optimistically wrote the ideas down and dutifully recorded them for me to come back to someday. Going through the files–I still haven’t finished that, but I am hoping for this weekend, in all honesty–reminded me of a lot of things about myself and my writing and who I am as a writer, you know? Things like ideas that resurrected themselves as new ideas because I’d forgotten I already had the idea once before; book and story ideas that evolved and changed titles (“The Snow Globe” began life as “St. John’s Eve”); and various ideas and things that can actually be folded into the same story. It was also fun paging through my journals–I still need to put my hands on the old ones from the 90s–and seeing how some of the recent stuff took shape, too. So many, many ideas. But I’ve also made peace with the fact that some of these ideas will never see print, but I will never be able to stop having ideas until my brain stops functioning. The last thing I will probably do before passing out of this life will be scribbling an idea down on something handy, and then I will expire.

I feel good this morning. I feel rested and relaxed and I’m actually in a pretty decent mood. When I finish and post this, I am going to do some chores and get the downstairs picked up a bit, and I may even work on the shelves in the laundry room and purge some more books and free up that second shelf for storage, which is what I would absolutely love. I want to clean out my cabinets this weekend, too, and figure out what is a more efficient way for the kitchen to be set up. But it does, overall, look better than it has in years, which is terrifying when I think about it. How had I let everything slide for so damned long? How did I allow everything to just keep stacking up without doing anything about it? Sigh. I really do need to stop shaking my fist at Past Greg, seriously.

Remember how I said I was going to keep doing Pride posts through today? I’ve decided to say fuck that and continue writing about being gay in America, my own past as a gay man and what that was like, and gay influences on the culture. I cut back on that a lot over a decade ago, because I decided that my blog should just really show how I am a person and a writer like all of my heterosexual counterparts, who just happens to be gay. But I have a pulpit here, where I can educate a very small audience–or bring back memories for some of them–and I feel like I need to start doing that again. The truth is homophobes are never going to read my work, or this blog; why should I worry about offending people whose offense is inevitably due to internalized homophobia they may not even be aware of? It’s often surprising to see the blinders so many straight people are delighted to put on when it comes to queer people (“can’t we agree to disagree? Your existence is just a political agenda anyway”–literally eat ground glass, motherfucker).

Being unaware of your privilege doesn’t mean you don’t have any.

And on that note, I am going to go do my chores. Happy 4th, everyone and I may be back later.

Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing

And in one of those weird things, today is Wednesday but it’s also my Friday. What the hell, right? It’s also Pay the Bills Day, and tomorrow is a holiday and a four day weekend starts and I am feeling a bit groggy this morning. I slept well last night, and haven’t completely woken up yet.

I did manage to go to the gym on the way home from work; and all afternoon I was trying to talk myself out of going. I was tired, I wanted to just go home, and so on and on and on. Even after I picked up the mail in my workout attire, I was talking myself out of it all the way there, and finally just went and got it over with. It felt great, as exercise always does, and I was still energized when I got home (thank you, endorphins) so I got started on laundry and the dishes and made some progress on the book, too. But this morning I have muscle fatigue from the gym, which is what I was mistaking as not being completely awake yet. I am , but the muscles are tired and that’s what I am experiencing this morning. But I feel better physically this morning than I have in a long time. I am going to go tomorrow and do some other, non-rehab exercises for other body parts (although anything to do with the upper body involves the left biceps and shoulder), and then go back to rehab on Saturday. Also, the working out helps me sleep better, too. Now that my mind has been aroused by my morning coffee, I feel terrific–rested and alert and everything. Maybe today will be a really good day; one never knows, does one?

I am going to stop on the way home from work to get some things to cookout tomorrow–it is the 4th, after all; barbecuing is practically de rigeur at this point–and maybe pick up some cheesecake or some kind of “treat” for us this weekend. I do think tomorrow will be my “don’t write” day; in which I just read and clean all day and not worry about getting any writing done. I’ll do some planning, of course–I sort of finished Chapter Three yesterday, but I am going to go over it again because I was skipping things that need to be there because I actually wasn’t in the mood to write them (including a sex scene). The book will need a significant revision when this first draft is finished, but I am not going to worry about that now (although future Greg will be shaking his fist and threatening past Greg, I am sure). I also need to work on some short stories, too; I finally realized over this past weekend how to fix one that’s been turned down by everyone–the story I wrote for the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology, “The Sound of Snow Falling”– because it doesn’t work; the trigger for the murder isn’t really there. So I need to do another revision of that and make it even nastier than it was; and then I can throw it into my short story collection. Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees.

Tree BASTARDS!

We’re watching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders documentary on Netflix, and we really got sucked into it again. Years and years ago, somehow we discovered Making the Team, a reality series about going from try outs to the first performance of the year. It was so insane and crazy and wild, and we were just fascinated to see these beautiful young women with these extraordinary bodies getting body shamed or told they need a makeover and so on and so forth. The documentary is very similar to the old series (maybe this is Netflix’s way of relaunching the show, who knows?) but it’s a little more in-depth than the show was. The whole thing–being a part of the “team”–is very beauty pageant/sorority like; this is not a reality show where you’re going to see women fighting and arguing and throwing drinks at each other (that would be unseemly for a DCC team member) so if you’re looking for conflict, it’s going to come from watching these women not achieve their dream–which isn’t fun because you do feel sorry for them…while wondering “wow.” Some of them have been dreaming of this since they were little girls…I guess it’s the same as having a professional sports dream? It does make me think whenever I watch–the really interesting ones are the ones whose mothers were also DCC, so it’s a “family legacy.”

My friend Laura says there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure as one should never feel guilt about something you enjoy, but I do always feel a bit guilty watching these girls because they are really very sweet, and I think it’s great they are chasing their dreams. I guess the real guilt is that I feel like this is a very low bar as far as goals would go, but who am I to decide whose dreams are good and whose are bad? Just because I cannot imagine having that be my life goal doesn’t mean I should diminish or demean those who do.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get this day a going. I may be back later–you never can be entirely sure what I am up to these days! Have a lovely 3rd, everyone!

I Remember Mama

A number of years ago a friend–another writer–emailed me to ask if I would write a noir short story for an anthology she was pulling together with a another author, with a focus on noir in hot climates (Scandinavian noir was the “hot” thing in crime publishing at the time) that would be called Sunshine Noir, and since I lived in New Orleans, she knew I could write something dark and nasty despite the sunshine and heat.

The result was a story named “Housecleaning,” and it was also included in my collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I was delighted to hear recently from wonderful Barb Goffman that she wanted to make it her “Selection” for Black Cat Weekly’s issue 148, and of course said BY ALL MEANS!!!!

And it just dropped this week.

The smell of bleach always reminded him of his mother.

It was probably one of the reasons he rarely used it, he thought, as he filled the blue plastic bucket with hot water from the kitchen tap. His mother had used it for practically everything. Everywhere she’d lived had always smelled slightly like bleach. She was always cleaning. He had so many memories of his mother cleaning something: steam rising from hot water pouring from the sink spigot; the sound of brush bristles as she scrubbed the floor (“Mops only move the dirt around. Good in a pinch but not for real cleaning.”); folding laundry scented by Downy; washing the dishes by hand before running them through the dishwasher (“It doesn’t wash the dishes clean enough. It’s only good for sterilization.”); running the vacuum cleaner over carpets and underneath the cushions on the couch.

In her world, dirt and germs were everywhere, and constant vigilance was the only solution. She judged people by how slovenly they looked or how messy their yards were or how filthy their houses were. He remembered one time—when they were living in the apartment in Wichita—watching her struggle at a neighbor’s to not say anything as they sat in a living room that hadn’t been cleaned or straightened in a while, the way her fingers absently wiped away dust on the side table as she smiled and made conversation, the nerve in her cheek jumping, the veins and chords in her neck trying to burst through her olive skin, her voice strained but still polite.

When the tea was finished, and the cookies just crumbs on a dirty plate with what looked like egg yolk dried onto its side, she couldn’t get the two of them out of there fast enough. Once back in the sterile safety of their own apartment, she’d taken a long, hot shower—and made him do the same. They’d never gone back there, the neighbor woman’s future friendliness rebuffed politely yet firmly, until they’d finally moved away again.

“People who keep slovenly homes are lazy and cannot be trusted,” she’d told him after refusing the woman’s invitation a second time. “A sloppy house means a sloppy soul.”

I’d written the first line long before I had a need for a story; I wrote it down in my journal with the title HOUSECLEANING underlined twice for further emphasis. In one of those great moments of serendipity, I had just been paging through that journal earlier that same morning and after I finished reading the email, I thought, “I’ll write ‘Housecleaning’ for this.” I literally opened a new Word document, wrote the title in all caps, hit return and typed The scent of bleach always reminded him of his mother.

And surprisingly, I was able to just keep going.

The funny thing is now I remember what triggered the initial note in the journal–I actually had that very same thought as I was filling a bucket in the sink with hot water and bleach. I poured the bleach into the water, smelled it, and thought of my mom. I then laughed and scribbled the sentence–and title–down because I rightly thought it was a great title and a great opening line. I used to always joke about my mom that she made Joan Crawford look like a slob, and it was true. Her house was always spotless. Her kitchen floor was cleaner than most people’s dishes. Her refrigerator and cabinets were organized to within an inch of their lives and she could put her hand on anything in the house within two minutes without even having to stop to think. She cleaned the house every day. I think I’ve told the story of the coffee spoons before? If you know this story, feel free to skip ahead.

Mom and Dad always drank their coffee black (she used to put milk in hers when I was a kid, but she stopped at some point) and I’ve always sweetened mine and put creamer in it. So, I need a spoon to stir it. At home, I have a spoon rest where I keep my coffee spoon so I can keep reusing it. Mom didn’t need one, so no spoon rest. Every time I’d get a cup of coffee when I was visiting once, I had to get another spoon because the one I’d just used had disappeared out of the sink. It took me another cup to realize she was washing the spoon I just used and put it in the dishwasher. I had already gone through three spoons before I caught on and kept it with me.

No one was ever going to drop in on my mother and find a dirty house. She took that seriously.

Obviously, my mother was vastly and dramatically different from the mother in this story. (I’ve always been reluctant to say my mother inspired the story for obvious reasons, but she did.)

The odd thing about this story was that I wrote it almost all in free form, with no real certainty where it was going to go, so it kind of was written organically; I didn’t put any thought into it and just started typing from that opening line, and the story came to me as I wrote it. It was messy in its first draft, but I worked on it and cleaned it up and cut out some excess, and I ended up very pleased with the story. The premise–that the main character is remembering his past growing up with his mother while doing a chore–I think really worked; even though the story is almost entirely about the past, there’s some present-day involvement that become increasingly clear as the story goes on.

Thanks again to my original friend for getting me to write the story in the first place (thank you, Annamaria Alfieri!) and for Barb for bringing it to Black Cat Weekly. And if you want to read it–and the other good stuff in the issue–you can order it here.

Midnight at the Oasis

…so put your camel to bed.

Work at home Friday, and I am delighted to have made it through another week, which was at the least bizarre and at most a really screwy one. Next week will be screwy, too, because of July 4th, but oh, well. I am taking the 5th off too so I can have a four-day weekend next weekend, which means more organizing and getting rid of things. I am going to do some more book pruning this weekend, and am going to dump more files, too. My end goal is to stop using the shelves in the laundry room for book storage and turn it into an overflow pantry, with extra stuff moved in there to clear out cabinets and so forth. I have some errands to run later today and more errands to run tomorrow; but I am hoping to make progress.

Paul was late getting home last night–he had meetings, and then stayed at the office during the massive thunderstorm that rolled through here last night. I didn’t get much done last night after I got home because I got very tired in the late afternoon and after getting the mail, I just basically collapsed into my easy chair and played with Sparky. Again, I couldn’t focus on reading, but I am hoping to finish Horror Movie this weekend and start Hall of Mirrors. The US Gymnastic Team Trials for the Olympics are this weekend, so we’ll be spending some time watching that, of course–I keep forgetting the Olympics are this summer–and I had another breakthrough on the new book last night, so I guess I can claim that I wrote last night–thinking and planning counts as writing, after all, and am getting a bit more excited about what I am doing with it, and the imposter syndrome seems to be taking a back seat at long last. I also have to do one more pass on that short story, which is due on Sunday.

I also need to bang out some more Pride Posts, which will finally come to an end on the 4th of July, and I have some plans and thoughts for that final post, too.

Something I just realized last night during my thinking session in my chair was that this weird nostalgia kick I’ve been on since Mom passed was naturally triggered by that (and all the conversations I’ve had with Dad about their early life together and his childhood) and of course, by the fact that I am writing two “historicals” in a row, both set in periods I lived through so I am trying to remember what it was like; how it felt to be gay in New Orleans during the early 1990s, and of course a lot of immersion into the early 1970s. I’ve already decided to set the book in 1994–the year my life actually truly began–so trying to remember what was where and what the city was like back then has also been flooding me with memories. The kids at work have also been asking questions about my life and past.

That, along with some other things I’ve been noticing lately, also has had me thinking deep thoughts. There was a social media post about becoming a daddy, and how people in my generation and the one right after…well, we didn’t really have a lot of men a lot older than me that were out in the 1990s to serve as mentors and/or guides to the community. HIV/AIDS had killed off a good number of them, leaving a void amongst the survivors without that oral history of the community being passed from generation to generation. There was a conversation about “role models” somewhere the other day, which is something I never wanted to be or ever thought I could be, and I’ve actively avoided it. Hanging out with and bonding with the Queer Crime Writers at conferences over the last few years was marvelous, and I actually started feeling like a part of the queer writing community again. That has also made me realize that while twenty years or so may have passed since my first publication–twenty-four in August, actually–I have done a lot, written a lot, and been nominated for a shit ton of awards, both queer and mainstream. (Hell, next year will be the twentieth anniversary of Katrina; which means it’s been almost as long ago as Betsy was when I started coming here) I’ve lasted a long time, if nothing else, and that longevity has to count for something, right? I don’t think I am the most prolific queer writer (I think Neil Plakcy and Mark Zubro are more prolific than I am, at least with the crime writers, anyway), but I have been around for a very long time, with minor breaks of a year or so here and there. Like it or not, I’ve become a community elder, and I intend to try to be better about helping out queer writers and lending a hand when I can.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely be back later on.

For the Love of Money

I firmly believe that writers should be paid for their work.

On the other hand, it ain’t easy making a living from writing.

Good morning, it’s Monday and I have the day off. If the plans hadn’t changed, I’d be driving back this morning and I would be very, very tired. Instead of spending the weekend visiting family, however, I spent the weekend at home getting things done. I worked on the filing some more yesterday, and will probably do so for at least part of today as well. The file drawers still need to be alphabetized, but all the “in process” book files have all been gathered together, duplicate files deleted, and I am in much better shape now with them than I have been in years. Sparky let me sleep until seven this morning, and I decided to stay up rather than going back to sleep after feeding him; since I need to get used to getting up again I thought it was smarter to just stay up. I’m going to read some this morning, and I also plan on writing today. I am going to make shrimp fajitas for dinner tonight, which is ambitious–but could be very tasty. We shall see how it all turns out, won’t we? But my kitchen is clean, the counters are all cleared off, and there’s a load of dishes that need to go into the dishwasher at some point today, too. There’s another load of laundry that also needs to be done, and I think I may just stay inside the house all day.

Last evening we got caught up on House of the Dragon and Interview with the Vampire, and I’ve got to say, Dragon moves at about a glacial pace. Very little has happened this season thus far, which is weird and odd. I mean, isn’t there going to be a dragon war? Why all this delay in getting the story moving again? They’ve all been preparing for war since the last episode of the original season and guess what? They still are. Vampire also moves at a slow pace, but it’s interesting to watch and is following the story of the book pretty closely, even with the differences and changes made to Mrs. Rice’s original works. Next week is the season finale, and I was a little taken aback that we’ve already watched so much of it already. Tonight we’ll get back to Dark Heart, and of course tomorrow it’s back to the office for one Gregalicious. I don’t mind, really, and the staycation I’ve been promising myself for August and my birthday is actually looking not only do-able but something to actually look forward to. I mean, look at all I got done this weekend! Maybe that will give me the motivation to clean and clear out the attic–stranger things have happened.

We’re also in a heat advisory until seven o’clock tonight. Hurray–and now it’s even more likely that I will not go outside today.

The opening of this entry–about writers deserving to be paid for their work–was inspired not only by today’s title, but by a post I saw on some social media by Gabino Iglesias, who is one of my favorite current writers (seriously, you need to check out The Devil Takes You Home, which was an Edgar finalist and won the Stoker for Best Novel; I can’t wait for his next book), and is one of the best authors to follow on social media because he’s all about supporting his fellow authors, giving good advice for those getting started, and basically boosting other authors every opportunity he gets. (There was also a thread from Nick Mamatas on the subject, in which he explained why some genres don’t pay well while others do.) The bottom line they both made was that everyone should get paid for their writing and no one should ever give it away–because accepting that your work has no monetary value is terrible and gives publishers an excuse for either low-balling or not paying anyone they publish. I’d never really thought about it that way, and I have been, throughout my career, guilty of doing work for free like an idiot or not properly placing a value on my work. Doing work for free has never really appealed to me; I certainly don’t give the day job one extra minute that is unpaid, but I often have gifted short stories to anthologies for one reason or another, mostly because the anthologies raise money for charity. Early on in my career, you see, I didn’t have extra money to donate to charity. When I worked for the airline, I did volunteer work for charities because I didn’t have money and that continued through developing my writing career. If I couldn’t donate cash, I’d donate my time or my work if the cause was something I believed in. I’ve also sold work that I was never paid for, either, which isn’t in the least bit acceptable.

Things to ponder.

One of the things I decided over the course of the weekend (I also figured out how to improve “The Sound of Snow Falling”, huzzah!) was that all the extra time I seem to have on my hands now that I no longer volunteer my time anymore can be better utilized than I’ve been doing; I am going to teach myself some things, I think, and I’m going to start working on doing more marketing and promotion, too. I also want to be able to take my time more with my writing; there really is no rush other than the ticking of the clock counting out the grains of sand left in my hourglass. I would like to finish every project that is unfinished at the moment, and of course I am always going to be getting more ideas all the time.

And is there any better way to unwind and relax after a day at the office than reading? I think not, and now that I can stream Spotify through the television, I am going to listen to music while I read and write and clean from now on rather than having something playing for background noise that I inevitably wind up watching rather than getting other things done.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back with a Pride post again later–I finally finished reading Sins of the Black Flamingo, and it definitely requires an entry of its own. Ta for now!

My Sharona

Saturday morning here in the Lost Apartment and I am feeling rather pleased with myself as I accomplished a great deal. After finishing my work-at-home duties yesterday, Constant Reader, I worked on the filing…and by that, I don’t mean “put files away”–no, I mean I went through the boxes of files in the apartment and cleaned them out. A lot of files are just titles and a quick scribbled note; I got rid of all files for stories/books that didn’t have at least a few paragraphs written; was able to combine duplicate files and pare them down; and I had files of research and ideas for multiple projects spread out over the various file boxes are now all consolidated and together. I still have the filing cabinet to work on, but I still feel like I accomplished quite a bit. Having everything together for the various projects will make working on them that much easier, and it’s exciting to know I went from four and a half boxes of files down to one and a half. GO ME! I also managed to launder all the bed linens, and also a load of dishes. I reorganized my workspace as well, so all in all, a most productive day and one with which I am very pleased. I am going to work on the kitchen cabinets today as well as the file cabinet and workspace. I also have to make a mail and grocery run, need to clean the car, and go to the gym for more arm rehab as well.

Sparky even let me sleep in until nine this morning, wasn’t that kind of the dear boy?

One thing I also noticed yesterday was that I turned on Spotify on the television in the living room while i was organizing the files and it helped me to focus–which reminded me that back in the day, I used to always listen to music while I wrote and it helped me go into the focus zone. Listening to headphones doesn’t quite work for background noise, but the reconnection with music as a tool for focus was wonderful. How could I possibly forget how necessary music was for going into the zone to write, or helped me focus while cleaning? It’s nice to know that I can start remembering methods and tricks that helped me write and zero in on things I was doing with laser-like focus. In some ways, I feel like I am learning how to write all over again, which isn’t a bad thing.

I also realized yesterday that what I have been feeling now for a few weeks is good. It’s been so long since I’ve felt good about anything and have been in a headspace of anything other than just getting through and surviving for so long that I am really not even sure how i managed to write and publish anything between 2016 and now, but oddly enough those books are some of my best work–Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, Death Drop, Royal Street Reveillon and Mississippi River Mischief, not to mention some of my best short stories. Go figure, right? I also have done some excellent essays during that time, too. Even on auto-pilot, as I dealt with a lot of personal and professional trials for nine years, I still improved as a writer.

Today I am going to work on the book around some more chores and the errands already mentioned, as well as work on the filing cabinet and finish the floors downstairs. There’s a load of dishes to be put away, and more organization in the living room; getting rid of those file boxes opened up space in the living room and I want to work on making the living room look more spacious rather than cramped–and that has a lot to do with paring down the books some more as well…and I haven’t even started on the attic. I also want to spend some time with the Tremblay novel this morning, which I am enjoying but want to get to the next read in my TBR stack–I am going to read two queer novels back to back, I think, and would love to be able to review them by the time Pride Month ends.

And so, on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a delightful Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely be back later.

Son of My Father

Well, here we are at home on a Wednesday for a midweek holiday1. Huzzah? It was nice not to set the alarm for this morning (the Sparky alarm never needs setting; but I got up and went back to bed) and I feel very rested and good today. I felt discombobulated all day yesterday, alas; a day off on Wednesday with payday on Tuesday really fucked with my head all day. I made a small grocery run on the way home (still spent $96, though), and now am just going to kick back and relax today. I didn’t really physically write anything last night I did think about structuring the next chapter, and I am looking forward to getting to work on that today. I am also going to read today for a bit and I also intend to clean up a bit. Now that the Florida trip has been canceled, I still have Monday off so I get a stay-at-home long weekend and thus another day to really focus on the apartment, reading, and writing.

My coffee is going down easily and well this morning and is also quite tasty. I had thought about making cappuccinos this morning, as it has been a hot minute, but after I clean up everything I may get the machines out for tomorrow morning. It’s been a long time and I do love my homemade cappuccinos, but this morning I am going to stick to coffee. I have a load of laundry to fold and a dishwasher to unload and reload; and I may even try to fix the garbage disposal. I am going to the gym later to do some more rehab work on my arm, and then of course I will come home to chill out for the rest of the evening and maybe watch a movie or something; that Dev Patel movie is available to stream and I do think he’s marvelous, so that may be on the schedule for this evening. We also need to find another show to stream. Such a tough life, right?

I’ve also been thinking a lot about these pride/Greg’s gay past posts, and some of the ones I’ve been drafting are unnecessary, and still others cross over into more in-depth personal essays for my Substack, which is how I’ve decided to divide things up. This place will be the same as always, and those posts will be both here and Substack. Once the audience at Substack picks up–and it is growing, surprisingly enough–then it will become the place for personal essays that I will share to social media…although I am now wondering if it’s best to start sharing them from Substack to social media to build the audience? You see why I am so bad at this; I can never decide what is the right thing to do because I really have no clue. My career has always been about being in the right place at the right time and blundering my way through the last twenty-two years, which is part of the reason why the Imposter Syndrome hits so hard when it comes. But I’m enjoying myself with Never Kiss a Stranger so far, and it’s very cool to feel that way again, and to even look forward to getting back to work on it rather than seeing it as an odious chore.

I also need to make/update my to-do list since I’ll be home over the weekend and it’s a three day one for me.

Ugh, and the filing. I definitely need to do a deep clean of this messy office space/kitchen. But sitting here wasting time while drinking coffee isn’t going to get me anywhere, so I am going to head into the spice mines, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later. I do have several blog posts to work on and I may post some of them later on today. Have a great Juneteenth, my friend, and I’ll catch you again later.

  1. Juneteenth, and I am delighted that we observe this at work now. I’d say a high percentage of the staff are Black, and if we celebrate independence day for white people, we definitely should celebrate independence day for Black people in this country as it was the closing of one hideously dark chapter in US history…granted, it was the opening of a not quite as dark and hideous chapter, but it was definitely progress. ↩︎