PT was hard yesterday–it keeps getting harder every time–but I got through it, did very well with it, and then walked outside, my endorphins pumping through my veins and it was simply a beautiful, sunny day in New Orleans. I picked up my prescription before PT, and got the mail afterwards before driving home down Prytania Street. I did have trouble finding a place to park on the way there, so was a few minutes late–it’s close to Napoleon and people were already camping out on the parade route for the night parades–so I was certain I wouldn’t find parking when I got home. My spot was there Thursday night when I got home, so what were the odds I’d have parade parking luck two days in a row? But lo and behold, my spot was waiting for me when I got home.
Needless to say, that also dramatically picked up my spirits! And now the car won’t move again until Monday…which begs the question, will I have parking when I get home after PT Monday morning?
I spent most of my time out on the corner Thursday night just marveling at it, the way I always do at first–so many people, so many costumes, so much partying and so much joy; how dark it is here at night, so it’s like the dark is reaching down from the sky to absorb the lights from the parade and flames of the flambeaux, and everyone is a good mood. It’s so lovely to just go out and hang with friends and neighbors and strangers. You always end up talking to total strangers and having a good time, relaxed and a slightly buzzed (some people do overdo it and become Carnival tragedies) and watchings kids tossing footballs around on the street when there’s a break between parades (or a breakdown in the parade) and of course, the marching bands are fucking amazing. I am going to write about Mardi Gras again soon, so it’s good to drink it all in again and remember fun times of past seasons.
I was too fatigued from the PT yesterday to go out there last night, so we watched LSU Gymnastics beat Georgia last night and then just relaxed for the rest of the night. I did watch the first episode of Abbott Elementary, which I really enjoyed, so we’ll continue watching that, I think. Despite a great night’s sleep, I am still feeling fatigued this morning, which means I’ll be dead tired after Iris today. We’ll see how I feel about Tucks after Iris is over. Sunday is always insane down there at the corner, so we generally skip Sundays, and then it’s Orpheus Monday.
I did get some chores done yesterday, too. I worked on the laundry room and swept the living room, got all the bedding laundered, and rested after getting my work-at-home duties completed. I think since it’s Iris Saturday, all I will do today is read and watch television or some movies or something. I did finish reading Deliberate Cruelty, so I am going to try not to start another one until all the ones I am in the middle of are complete. I also need to make a series of to-do lists: one for the apartment, one for my career, and one for my every day life. I need to snap out of the lethargy, and I really need to dive headfirst into writing again. I want to get these stories finished and I want to get back to work on the book I’m in the midst of and has been stalled for quite some time.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and ready for Iris to roll. See you later, Constant Reader, and may your Saturday be everything you desire in one.
Friday morning after Muses, and I am a little tired–physically. Mentally I am alert as ever and feel great, but I am not used to standing on the sidewalk for so long anymore. Chaos last night was my first parade (the floats were hilariously inappropriate; all I will say is the theme of the parade was “balls” and leave it at that), and we came home to rest before Muses arrived. We didn’t stay out for long, I was tired and sleepy and it got here around ten; we lasted out there for about an hour before I started flagging and came back inside. However, I realized I should have gone to parades to warm up for this weekend; I forgot that it takes a parade day to warm you up and get you in the proper spirit; I should be good to go tonight if my PT this morning isn’t too vicious.
And yes, we got a really cool shoe.
I had a good day at work yesterday, got a lot of things done and caught up and feel confident not being in the office again until Ash Wednesday will not be disastrous for me or put me really behind on things. I came home early (it took me an hour), and I came inside and watched this week’s episode of Capote v. the Swans, which was done in documentary style, which was an interesting take. I’m not quite as obsessed as I was about Capote when I first started watching, but I do want to read the Gerald Clarke bio of him, and maybe even George Plimpton’s Capote. It’s taken me awhile to get interested in Capote, and while I wouldn’t say it’s an obsession anymore, I am still very much interested in this incredibly famous openly gay man in the middle of the twentieth century. I have added Deliberate Cruelty, a true crime narrative about Ann Woodward’s feud with him by Roseanne Mantillo, to the books I am reading and I finished it last night.
And yes, I am beginning to understand precisely why he wrote “La Côte Basque 1965” and why he published it, but more on that when the show is finished and I give it, and Capote, an entry of their own.
As for me and the weekend, I have taken Monday off and so I am hoping that I’ll be able to get some reading and writing done today, Sunday and Monday (I will always take Saturday off from everything to go to Iris). I want to finish editing this one short story and finish writing another, and perhaps get them submitted somewhere. I have laundry going already and a dishwasher to unload and reload. I have PT this morning, a prescription and the mail to pick up, and then the car won’t move again until Monday at the earliest, as I will need to probably make a grocery run. I also should be able to finish reading Deliberate Cruelty so I can focus on Lina Chern’s Playing the Fool, which I am greatly enjoying. I also have some blistering blog entries to write, so this weekend should be fun on that score.
And hopefully I’ll be able to get this place ship-shape and get myself caught up on everything that needs catching up on.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have yourself a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.
So, are you ready for some MORE blatant self-promotion?
During the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, the other panel I was on had to do with writing young adult fiction (the other panelists were amazing, I might add), and once again, I am answering the questions sent to us by the moderator to turn into an interview with JUST me (because it’s all about ME ME ME) but I do urge you to seek out the video of the panel. It was terrific, and I was definitely the most uninteresting person on the panel, seriously; this is NOT self-deprecation. (I bought everyone’s books during the panel, I might add; definitely check out Lauren Melissa Ellzey.)
What is the definition of Young Adult? How does it differ from other genres?
I think it’s primarily an age distinction, to be honest, which is something that always makes me uncomfortable. Growing up I read far above my age level; when I was in seventh grade I was reading at a college level, per the tests and so forth. I mean, I did read The Godfather when I was ten; my parents, despite their conservative religious beliefs and values, let me read whatever I wanted without having to ask permission–I think when I asked Mom if I could read something the last time she replied “Read whatever you want, I don’t care” and after that I never asked again. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as young adult; everything was either for adults or “juvenile.” The juvenile category contained multitudes, beginning with the Little Golden Books and picture books to kids’ mysteries to Judy Blume. I think sometime in the 1980’s the genre was separated into “juvenile” for kids 8-12 and “young adult” for 12-18.
But there are kids like me, who can read above their age/class level and others who can’t read at their age/class level, and I think in some ways that differential could be harmful for those who are below-average readers–reading is the most crucial aspect of education, because if you can’t read…and no matter how many ways they try to make the language around slower readers more accepting and less stigmatizing…it doesn’t really help kids to be told they’re below average or not as smart or quick as the other students. (One of my primary problems throughout my education is I would understand something the first time, while others inevitably didn’t, and as the teacher explained for a second or third or more time, my ADD would kick in and my mind would wander because I didn’t need to listen and then wouldn’t be listening when the teacher moved on.
Ah, well.
Oh, and all subgenres of fiction also have the middle grade/juvenile and young adult sub-sub-genres.
Why or how did YOU choose YA?
I don’t know that I chose y/a so much as it chose me.
I started writing when I was a child (all my childish scribblings are lost to moves and time passing), and I wrote about kids my age. My first attempts at writing were always some kind of kids’ mystery series, a la The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators (I’d still like to do this, frankly), and when I became a teenager, I started writing about teenagers. I wrote a bunch of short stories while in high school about the same group of kids going to the same high school. Those stories slowly but surely grew into a sprawling, handwritten novel about the county with plots and subplots and main characters and minor characters and all of this history; a “Peyton Place in Kansas kind of thing”. I worked on it for like five years, and eventually had this enormous sprawling mess that needed to be revised and rewritten and typed…and since I didn’t know how to type, made that part of it a problem. So I shoved it into a drawer and started pulling from it rather than revising it; taking out plots and characters and using them in other books and other stories.
After I finished that, I spent the next five years mostly working on short stories. I started another book, more horror than anything else, but never got further than the third chapter. I finally decided to write a horror novel built from my old manuscript and those short stories from high school. I was about three chapters into it when I discovered two things: there was a big market in y/a horror at the time (Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine were HUGE during this period) and so I bought some of them. When I finished, I thought, “You know, I should turn Sara into a y/a novel” (because I thought somehow that would be easier? Foolish, foolish rookie) and so… I did. I was right in that thinking of it in those terms made it possible for me to finish a draft, but I wasn’t very happy with it so I put it aside and started writing another one, Sorceress, which was also horror but also had some strong Gothic moments in it. When I finished that one, again I wasn’t pleased with it so I started another–Sleeping Angel–which was the one I thought really had potential. I never finished that draft–by this time I’d discovered that gay fiction and nonfiction existed, so I started reading that and trying to write about gay characters instead.
Those manuscripts remained in my drawer for well over a decade, until a friend of mine took a job as a young adult acquisitions editor, and she wanted to work with me. I told her I’d written three (although it was technically two and a half), and gave her a brief synopsis of them. She liked Sorceress the best, so I started revising and editing it and turning it into something publishable. Once it was all done, she’d left that publisher, but started her own small press for y/a books for underrepresented teens, and she wanted to launch the press with Sorceress. I said “okay” and we were off. I eventually realized I needed to let Bold Strokes know, and when I did, I got an email back saying you know we do y/a, too? And so I sold the other two to them, and have never looked back since then.
Are there specific rules for writing YA (things you can’t do)? Does Bold Strokes add on or impose specific or additional rules?
I don’t pay too much attention to rules, frankly. There’s no graphic sex in my books, but it’s hinted at. I also try to swear less in young adult books than I do in adult fiction, which is probably not as big of a deal as I think it is? The society I grew up in was a lot more puritanical–believe it or not–that the one we live in today. So I always default to that setting, and then have to shake it off. Swearing isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be. No one thinks they’re marrying a virgin anymore, and on and on. And having been attacked for daring to accept an invitation to speak to queer high school students, I tend to tread softly. There have been a couple of times where I’ve had to change language, or how a scene went, because my editor thought it might be problematic; and frankly, I never want to be offensive, so I have no problem with it. I don’t see it as a free speech issue the way so many intentionally offensive writers claim it is. I shouldn’t take offense to someone calling me a faggot? Grow the fuck up. The so-called free speech “crusaders” are always defending hate speech as well as trying to shut up the people who find it objectionable. You do not have a constitutional freedom from consequences or getting a negative response to things you say and do, period. It’s really not hard to understand unless you want to be passive/aggressive and childish and a moron.
How do you remember back to these days, specifically how it felt or feels? (this is coming from your moderator who is much older than you are)
Well, for one thing, I’ve always kept a journal and I still have them all. (I was insufferable when I was younger, seriously.)
My sister has a theory that we forget a lot of the pleasant memories from our childhoods, but remember the traumas in great detail. I believe the truth of that, because school was a nightmare for me from the day we moved to the suburbs until I was done with it. I remember how it felt to read Greg Herren sucks cock on a desk at school. I remember how it felt to be mocked, laughed at, and bullied by assholes. I do remember the good things, though I tend to always focus on the bad.
The first thing I always do is abandon whatever “wisdom” about life I’ve theoretically learned since leaving high school, and put myself into the teenager mindset: they think they are the main characters in everyone they know’s story, and everything is the end of the world or their life is ruined and you are the most horrible parent ever! I’m not entirely sure I’ve escaped thinking that way, to be brutally honest: I am horribly selfish.
How do you come up with your characters? Your stories?
I am weird in that I inevitably always start with a title. I hear something or read something and think, that would make a good title. The next question is what story would fit that title? And it kind of goes from there. The title may change, the character names and story might change and evolve, but I can’t write anything that doesn’t have a title. Bizarre, I know. Usually with my young adult stuff it’s an idea I’ve had for a number of years and finally decide to explore whether it’s a novel or a short story, and go from there.
Dark Tide was originally called Mermaid Inn, Bury Me in Shadows was originally Ruins, but the others pretty much stayed the same from beginning to end.
I wrote #shedeservedit because I was angry about the Steubenville/Maryville rape cases, and remembered stories and gossip from when I was in high school and college…and rethinking them through a more evolved brain about women and misogyny… well, it made me angrier. I had already planned on writing a story set in the same town with the same characters and opening with the same murder (I always referred to it as “the Kansas book” for years), but the motive was something I always had trouble grounding in reality. After those cases…it clicked in my head. You need to write this story about small town misogyny, protecting the star jocks from the girls at all cost, and make that the plot. It was easy to write because I was angry. Making it a compelling read was harder, because the subject matter was sickening to me.
I needed to write that book, and I don’t regret doing it, either…but it’s not exactly a feel good story people can escape into, either.
Why do you think YA is so popular?
It’s more accessible, I think. I mentioned reading ability before, and I do think that most readers aren’t into the Great Literary Tomes, hundreds of pages of beautiful writing with no real point or story. People kind of want to escape their cares and worries, and y/a books tend to be really entertaining. We’re competing with phones and tablets and streaming, so we need to write entertaining and engaging books.
Any specific must do-s or must-haves to get your writing each day?
I’m not nearly as anal about that as I used to be, before I returned to work full-time. I am very aware that I have little time to waste when I write, and thus must seize whatever opportunities to write show up. But if pressed, coffee. I can’t write unless I’ve had coffee when I got up.
I think this is all of them, but I could be wrong.
Wednesday and the parades are rolling again tonight. I don’t think I’m ready to deal with this, to be honest. I can’t believe it’s the final weekend of Mardi Gras madness already, can you? I have to run a couple of errands today after leaving work, trying to get it all accomplished and get my ass home while it’s still possible to find a place to park. Much as I don’t want to deal with the errands tonight, tomorrow would be even more difficult as it’s Muses Thursday, and going straight home from work is no guarantee I can park within a mile of the house. Sigh. The pleasure of living inside the box, right?
I was super tired when I got home yesterday, and I never did feel like I was fully awake all day, to be honest. I was finally able to get my night time prescription refilled again, after the first pill bottle mysteriously disappeared (all fingers point at Sparky, and it’s probably under the dishwasher or the couch), and so I had to adjust back from one medication (I still had my old night time medication) to the right one again, which would explain why yesterday I never felt like my brain escaped the fog. Today is, in fact, the first day in a long time where I’ve felt mentally alert again, which is great. It’s terrible when you’re not on your game, and you aren’t sure why; now that I am in my sixties mental things are much more alarming than they used to be–and some memories I’ve forgotten are so forgotten even when I am reminded, in great detail, I don’t remember anything about it. That’s disturbing on a very deep level; my mental acuity is something I do worry about as I get older. We don’t have any mental deterioration diseases in the family as far as I can remember–I need to ask Dad about that, along with any other genetic conditions he and Mom might have or know about within the family (we aren’t a family that talks about that sort of thing much; I think it’s mostly because we have so much genetic tendency to faulty wiring in our brains to begin with)–but I think I’d know about it if it was in the immediate family.
Anyway, tonight when I get home from work I need to do some laundry and the dishes. I don’t know if I’ll go out to the corner tonight or not, but all signs point to not. Nyx is the final parade tonight, and as far as I know, Nyx is still a horrific white supremacy krewe (last year my mind was not on Carnival), so I don’t know if I’d want to go to that even if I didn’t have to get up so early in the morning tomorrow. I do need to write about that at some point, don’t I? The great thing about being a crime writer is you never run out of prejudice, bigotry and hate to write about.
It looks like I’ll be going to Alabama to see family and visit Mom’s grave next weekend; Dad is going down for the anniversary of losing her, and I’ll go up and meet him up there for the weekend. It’s just easier, really, for me to go instead of my sister, and I don’t think Dad should do these grave visits without one of us there for him. It’s also kind of for me; it’s just easier mentally and emotionally to focus on Dad’s loss rather than my own. It’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with it, but this is how I generally deal with any kind of personal loss or tragedy in my life: focus on the grief of others. I also suppose that the impending anniversary (today, I think, is the anniversary of her final stroke? It’s all murky to me other than knowing she died on Valentine’s Day) has probably also been working on me subconsciously (subconscious BASTARDS!!!) and could have something to do with the foggy funk I’ve been in lately, in addition to the unfortunate medication change of the last couple of weeks.
I didn’t watch the Grammys the other night, but I did watch the Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs “Fast Car” performance on Youtube, which brought back a lot of memories. “Fast Car” was a very important song in the development of my life and my adulthood; the lyrics of feeling trapped and needing to escape a toxic life situation resonated very deeply with Double Life Gregalicious, and helped start the process of finally merging those two very separate mentally unhealthy existences, which is something else I should blog about–but it was amazing seeing the audience reaction to a middle-aged out Black lesbian, and I’m going to have to listen to her album again; it’s been a hot minute. But thanks again, for your voice and your music and your soul, Ms. Chapman.
I did edit a short story–or started editing, at any rate–last night, and it really is amazing what you don’t see when you’re in the midst of writing it and when you come back to it again after a lengthy period of time. “How the hell did I not see how clunky that sentence is?” was constantly running through my mind, and I also realized what the point of the story was–he’s reached his breaking point, and I need to communicate that to the reader more clearly than in the original draft. It felt good, you know, to work on something, and feel like I was doing some good polishing work on it. I really do love writing.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely check in again with some more blatant self-promotion later.
Okay, that’s technically not true. I don’t write fiction every day, and I don’t work on a book every day. I generally don’t count the blog as actual writing, but it is writing, I suppose, so I do write that pretty much every day. But I’ve never included the blog in daily word counts or anything; just as I wouldn’t (and didn’t) consider emails, text messages, and social media posts as being part of the daily production output (although I suppose I should; I estimated how many words of blog I’ve done since starting this nineteen years ago–twenty in December–and it was a staggering amount, especially since it was probably dramatically under-counted), and never will.
I do think about writing fiction every day, even the days when I am so exhausted and brain dead I don’t think I’m capable of much of anything creative. I am always thinking, and it’s very rare that the brain turns off, unless I go to sleep (thank you, sleeping pills!); as long as part of my mind is awake and alert my mind will eventually wander into creative thinking. It’s just how my mind works.
During the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon last month, I was on a couple of panels, and as usual have decided to turn the questions sent by the moderators as the basis for self-promotional posts. It has been a hot minute–I’ve not done a hell of a lot of promotion since the surgery knocked me off my tracks for a few months–and while I know many other books have come out since and the Greg has a new book excitement amongst my readers has already died down long since, but what the hell, right? I’m nothing if not a narcissist (or have, at best, some narcissistic traits at any rate), and let’s face it, one of my favorite subjects is ME, so why not? No one has to read these self-promotional posts, either. Just scroll on by, if that’s how you feel; my feelings will not be hurt in the slightest, and I no longer have the anxiety of oh my god no one likes me how can I make everyone like me?
How do you ensure that your latest work is not similar to something you have written before? Can you even remember everything you have written before?
After the eighth (?) Scotty book, someone on social media commented on one of my posts asking how many car accidents has Scotty been in? I’d never really thought much about it, but in that moment I realized quite a fucking lot, and that doesn’t include my other, non-Scotty books, either. I realized that I had been in a car accident in 2008 (the first in decades, and I wasn’t at fault) and my car was totaled. It was so weird, and so different from anything I’d ever imagined being in a serious accident like that would be; it took me days to get the taste of chemicals from the airbag out of my throat and my voice was scratchy and husky for about a week or so after. So, of course, I wrote about it in my next book…and then I think I started having a car accident in a lot more of my books. There was also a car accident in one of the earlier Scotty books–Jackson Square Jazz–and so…I didn’t put one in Mississippi River Mischief.
I had never truly worried about repeating myself until that moment of oh my God do I have a car accident in every book? And so now, I try to be really careful. Am I just rewriting a scene I’ve written before? Scotty is on book nine now; I don’t think it’s feasible for me to sit down and reread the entire series every time I am about to write another one. I have always intended to make a Scotty Bible–what all the regular characters look like, their relationships to each other, where they live, little tidbits I’ve dropped over the years that are clues to their personalities–so that I could verify the information in the series and not have to go looking for it (because I am nothing if not lazy, so I’d put it off and forget it and then realize it’s too late to change that now! FUCK!). I also should go back and outline the books, too–just to have something easy to reference when writing another one.
Since I write more than one series and I also write stand-alone novels, I just realized I should probably do this with all of my books…but I am way too lazy to ever get that done. So I will go on trusting my brain and my memory…which is clearly a mistake!
When naming your characters, do you completely avoid names which you have used in the past or do you feel that the characterization alone is enough to differentiate?
I have names I always fall back on–I also tend to like names that start with L’s and J’s for some reason–so I have to be careful with that. I don’t keep track of all character names I’ve used, and I suppose it’s possible that I could “recreate” a character with a name I’ve used before, and even make them the same…but I also re-use characters; they cross over from series to series and back and then to the stand alones. When I was writing Death Drop, I was originally going to have Blaine and Venus be the cops; they were the cops in both of my previous series with a gay male protagonist, so why not keep expanding my New Orleans universe? I eventually changed my mind–I don’t know why, really, or remember, which is probably a more accurate statement–and changed the names; I think I wanted to differentiate the Killer Queen series and make it more distinct from Chanse and Scotty.
I’m worried more about creating characters that are similar to others I’ve written about more so than the name. I was thinking about starting another series–one with a true crime writer as the main character, and he’s already appeared in both the Scotty and Chanse series; I even had an idea for the story. But when I started creating him, I began to realize he was like a mash-up of Chanse and Scotty, so I abandoned the idea. Now that I am thinking about it again, so what if their backgrounds are similar? He’s nothing like either one of them, and it was a good story idea, so…you never know. I try not to ever conclusively rule anything out. I even think about bringing Chanse back every once in a while.
A question I’m sure most of you have received—do you ever worry that you will run out of ideas?
That’s the least of my concerns. I am more worried I won’t live long enough to write everything I want to.
After all these books, do you still enjoy the writing process?
The primary goal of my life has always been to try to surgically remove anything I don’t enjoy from my existence. I am very blessed in that not only do I get to write and tell my stories and people want to read them but I also have a day job that I enjoy and can feel good about the work I do there. So, the only way I would ever stop writing if I stopped enjoying it, and I can’t ever see that happening. Sure, I’ve had times where I had to step away because of burn out or exhaustion, but I always knew it was a break and I would come back to it again. It’s been difficult for me since my surgery in November to get back into it, but I am making progress. I love writing, and am so grateful this childhood dream came true.
I used to bristle a bit when people called me prolific; I just love to write. But I finally stopped that nonsense and accepted the descriptor when I hit my tenth book…which was over thirty books ago. If that’s not prolific, I don’t know what is. ↩︎
Americans have always been fascinated by rich people.
We all want to be rich, after all; as someone once said, “The United States is a nation of temporarily distressed millionaires.” So, in lieu of actually being rich, we obsess about them. The rich used to be celebrities for no other reason than being rich. It’s always been interesting to me that in our so-called “classless” society (which was part of the point; no class privilege, everyone is the same in the eyes of the law) we obsess about the rich, we want to know everything about them, and we lap up gossip about them like a kitten with a bowl of cream. I am constantly amazed whenever I watch something or read something set in Great Britain, because that whole “royalty and nobility” thing is just so stupid and ludicrous (and indefensible) on its face that I don’t understand why Americans get so into it; the fascination with the not-very-interesting House of Windsor, for one. We fought not just one but two wars to rid ourselves of royalty and nobility…yet we can’t get enough of the British royals, or the so-called American aristocracy. (Generic we there, I could give a rat’s ass about the horse-faced inbred Windsors and their insane wealth, quite frankly.)
I wanted to be rich when I was a kid; I spent a lot of time in my youth fantasizing about being rich and famous and escaping my humdrum, everyday existence and becoming a celebrity of sorts with no idea of how to do so. I was intrigued by the rich and celebrities; I used to read People and Us regularly, always looked at the headlines on the tabloids at the grocery store, and used to always prefer watching movies and television programs about the rich. (Dynasty, anyone?) I loved trashy novels about obscenely wealthy (and inevitably perverted) society types and celebrities–Valley of the Dolls has always been a favorite of mine, along with all the others from that time period–Judith Krantz, Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon and all the knock-offs. I was a strange child, with all kinds of things going on in my head and so many voices talking to me and my attention definitely had an extraordinary deficit; I always referred to it as the “buzzing.” The only time I could ever truly focus my brain was either reading a book or watching something on television–and even as a child, I often read while I was watching television. (Which is why I read so much, even though that buzzing isn’t there anymore and hasn’t been for decades.)
As I get older and start revisiting my past (its traumas along with its joys) I begin to remember things, little clues and observations that stuck in my head as a lesson and remained there long after the actual inciting incident was long forgotten. I’ve always had a mild loathing for Truman Capote, for example, which really needs to be unpacked. Capote was everywhere when I was a child; there was endless talk shows littering the television schedules those days–Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, John Davidson, and on and on and on–and Capote was always a popular guest on these shows. I wasn’t really sure what he did or who he was, but he was someone famous and he was on television a lot. I saw him in the atrocious film Murder by Death, and I know I knew/had heard that he was a homosexual, a gay; and I also knew I was a gay. It terrified me that I was destined to end up as another Capote–affected high-pitched speech and mannerisms, foppish clothing that just screamed gay at anyone looking; Capote made no bones about who or what he was and refused to hide anything…yet he gained a kind of celebrity and fame and success in that incredibly homophobic time period, and no one had a problem with putting him front and center on television during the day time.
But this isn’t about my own self-loathing as evidenced by my decades of feeling repulsed by Truman Capote; that I will save for when I finish watching Capote v. the Swans.
“Carissimo!” she cried. “You’re just what I’m looking for. A lunch date. The duchess stood me up.”
“Black or white?” I said.
“White,” she said, reversing my direction on the sidewalk.
White is Wallis Windsor, whereas the Black Duchess is what her friends called Perla Apfeldorf, the Brazilian wife of a notoriously racist South African diamond industrialist. As for the lady who knew the distinction, she was indeed a lady–Lady Ina Coolbirth, an American married to a British chemicals tycoon and a lot of woman in every way. Tall, taller than most men, Ina was a big breezy peppy broad, born and raised on a ranch in Montana.
“This is the second time she’s canceled,” Ina Coolbirth continued. “She says she has hives. Or the duke has hives. One or the other.Anyway, I’ve still got a table at Côte Basque. So, shall we? Because I do so need someone to talk to, really. And, thank God, Jonesy, it can be you.”
I do want to be clear that once I started reading Capote, he quickly became a writer whom I admired very much; I don’t think I’ve ever read anything he’s written that didn’t take my breath away with its style and sentence construction and poetry. He truly was a master stylist, and perhaps with a greater output he might have become one of the established masters of American literature, required reading for aspiring writers and students of American literature. In Cold Blood is a masterpiece I go back to again and again; I prefer his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the film without question; and I was blown away by his debut novel, Other Voices Other Rooms, which was one of those books that made me think my childhood, and my being from Alabama, might be worth mining for my work.
I read “La Côte Basque 1965” years ago, and didn’t really remember it very much other than remembering I didn’t care for it very much. I was aware of the scandal that followed its publication and that all of Capote’s carefully cultivated rich society women friends felt betrayed by it and turned on him, which sent him into a decline from which he never recovered, before dying himself. I’ve always seen Capote as an example of wasted talents. Anyway, I read the story but not being familiar with his social set, I didn’t recognize any of the people gossiped about in the story or who the woman he was lunching with represented (Slim Keith, for the record), and so it kind of bored me; it was a short story about someone having lunch and gossiping about people the reader had no way of knowing who they were or anything about. I assumed this was because the story was an excerpt from the novel, and the novel itself would establish who all these women were and their relationships with each other. But I did know it was all thinly veiled gossip about his friends, and they never forgave him for it. (I also didn’t recognize “Ann Hopkins” in the story as Ann Woodward; I hadn’t known until the television series that he was involved in her story. I primarily knew about her from reading The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and articles in Vanity Fair, and I actually thought, when reading that book, that it was based on the Reynolds tobacco heir murder that Robert Wilder based his book Written on the Wind on; it wasn’t until later that I learned about the Woodward incident) so I thought, well, it was an entertaining if confusing read.
It was kind of like listening to two strangers talk in a Starbucks and gossip about people you don’t know; entertaining but nothing serious, not really a story of any kind, and I didn’t at the time see how it would all fit into a novel as a chapter in the first place. What purpose to the overall story did this nasty gossip play? Why was it necessary for Ina to share these stories at this particular lunch (and don’t get me started on White Duchess and Black Duchess)? Were these people she was talking about important to the book as a whole? It was hard for me to tell, and I put it away, thinking at the time probably a good thing he never finished the book.
Watching the show about fallout from the story’s publication, I decided to read the story again.
And I still question why Esquire chose to publish it, as well as why Capote thought this chapter was the one to send them. Capote was a genius, of course, and after In Cold Blood was one of the biggest names in American literature (he truly invented the true crime genre); of course they are going to publish whatever he sent them, no matter how bad it was. It wasn’t promoted as a story, after all, it was a novel excerpt.
What I’ve not been able to figure out from any of this is why he thought he could publish this without any fallout from his “swans.” I guess it went to the grave with Capote, who clearly didn’t–and I don’t think ever did–understand why they were so upset with him, which just astonishes me. (Someone once thought I based a character on her–I didn’t–and was very angry with me. I didn’t care, because I neither cared about the person nor her concerns, but I know how careful you have to be as a writer with these sorts of things.)
I wish I could say I liked it better on the reread. I did not. It’s still the same mess it was when I originally read over twenty years ago. It’s just a rich woman being bitchy to her gay friend she feels free to be bitchy about her friends with, and when you have no context (even knowing this time who the actual people were, and yes, he barely disguised them) about the women being discussed or anything about them…it’s just boring, gossip about people you don’t know and you don’t know enough to care about, so it’s just a bitchy little boring lunch. I don’t know what could come before that or after, as an author myself; had I been the fiction editor at Esquire I would have been pissed that was what he sent in, and I would have definitely taken a red pencil to it before I would have published it–and Esquire? Why did Esquire, a men’s lifestyle magazine, publish this when the right place would have been Vogue or Vanity Fair or even The New Yorker. None of it made sense then, none of it makes sense to me now; and if this is the best example we have of Answered Prayers, maybe it’s not such a bad thing that the manuscript–if it ever existed–disappeared.
Sorry, Truman, you were a great writer but this one was a swing-and-a-miss.
Monday morning has rolled around again and no, I didn’t want to get out of the comfortably warm cocoon of blankets yet again today. It was a nice, relaxing weekend. I didn’t go out to see any parades yesterday because I felt exhausted on Saturday and while i felt much better yesterday than I had, I thought it best to stay inside and rest for the day rather than push myself by going to stand on or around the corner for a few hours. This weekend is the big final push (I have to leave work early both Wednesday and Thursday), and I decided it was wisest to take Lundi Gras (Monday) off; Orpheus is that night and there’s no way I’d ever be able to find a place to park anywhere near the house. I do have PT that morning, so I’ll go to that and run some errands before heading back home and parking the car for another two days.
It actually turned out to be the best choice I could have made for the day because a friend called that I hadn’t spoken to in nearly two years (a myriad of reasons, mostly due to health concerns and my own insane rollercoaster life) and had I been out at the corner, i would have missed the call. It was a lovely conversation, and I realized once again how much I’ve missed, not only her, but so many others of my friends. I have always had the misfortune to have the majority of my writer friends not live anywhere near me, so it’s not like I can meet someone for a drink or lunch or anything at any time we so please. This has always been fine with me, but every once in a while it gets a bit lonely, so the few local friends I have are very precious to me. It was absolutely delightful to hear from her, and we were on the phone for nearly an hour, which was marvelous. (I’d been watching the Philip Seymour Hoffman Capote at long last when she called, which was really quite good and Hoffman deserved his Oscar, I think.) So yes, I kind of went down a Truman Capote wormhole yesterday. I am thinking Other Voices Other Rooms needs a reread, and maybe even a dip back into his short stories wouldn’t be a bad thing to do. My former antipathy for Mr. Capote (still processing it) has now turned to fascination; who was he behind that mask, that persona, he developed to hide behind? It’s also been years since I saw the film of In Cold Blood, too; it might be worth another look, too. This newfound obsession with Capote is multi-layered, too; it might take more than one lengthy post once I work my way through the way I’ve always reacted to Capote’s public face. (The self-loathing is coming from inside the house!) But after the call and after the film, I pretty much spent the rest of the night scribbling in my journal while watching an endless stream of Youtube videos, just to see what the algorithm thought I’d be interested in (Constant Reader, I was not interested in most of them, but I wound up watching a series of short histories of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of my favorite historical women of all time.).
I didn’t write as much as I would have liked this weekend, either, but it’s also Carnival. Very little gets done during Carnival as I am too busy juggling and planning around parades to have much energy left to devote to writing. I did write some really good notes in my journal, though, which was fun; I always forget how much fun it is to freeform scribble in my journal and see where my subconscious mind takes me. It never matters if anything ever comes of it; it’s just playing around with words and ideas and names and form. I’ve been joking with myself that I should write a memoir called I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, which is a terrific title for something like that (shout out to the Pet Shop Boys, because almost every song title is unabashedly clever and brutally honest and would make for a great title for essays or something), but as I always say, my memories lie to me all the time–which can be a problem when writing a memoir. Maybe personal essays would be a better idea than an actual memoir…and really, has my life been interesting enough for a memoir, anyway?
But I suppose that’s always in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think my life is anything special, or even unusual other than I am out of pace with traditional society with my sexuality and my chosen profession…but then other people will be amazed at some story of my past that I tell (usually after a few drinks) and I guess I never really think of me or anything that happens to me as anything other than normal and I always think everyone else has the same sort of things go on in their lives so it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But I have met a lot of important people and important writers. Larry Kramer used to call me periodically at Lambda Book Report to yell at me, but that was just Larry–he always seemed to be angry about something, but was actually also a really nice man (your mileage might vary, of course, but he also always made me laugh). Barbara Grier also used to call me about once a month to yell and swear at me, but I found her terrifically amusing and I could listen to her all day (and Barbara loved nothing more than a captive audience). There were only a few people in the business, actually, who were terrible to me when I worked there; I always seemed to have the ability to listen to everyone politely and was always pleasant and never argued with anyone….but there were a few I’d rather run over with my car and then back over them again rather than ever deal with them under any circumstance for any reason.
You know who you are, trash.
But I survived the first weekend of Carnival, and I am now thinking I want to watch the other Capote film, the one with Toby Jones–and maybe even revisit Murder by Death, which was another one of those after-church matinee movies Mom used to take my sister and I to. I just need to get through today at the office, and then I need to do my errands and go to PT before settling into my easy chair for the evening. I may go back to Lina Chern’s Play the Fool, which I am really enjoying, or my reread of Edna Ferber’s Saratoga Trunk, or Rival Queens, or even some short stories. I have some of Capote’s, and that might be interesting to reread. My friend who called yesterday afternoon recommended pairing Other Voices Other Rooms with To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a book I have issues with (more on that later at some point), but reading them as parallels to each other; the same childhood from different points of view in the same small Alabama town; it’s been a hot minute since I read the Capote novel but I did love it when I did. I don’t think I still have a copy of it, though.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. It’s a windy, gray wet day in New Orleans, and so I don’t think I’ll have a lot of issues sleeping tonight, either. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and you never know–I may be back later. Stranger things have indeed happened!
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and the sun is shining. It actually looks like a stunningly gorgeous day out there for parades, and of course King Arthur, the last of the day, is one of my favorites (a lot of gays ride in King Arthur). Yesterday was a slow day. I woke up after sleeping for ten hours feeling a little inside out, and the weather wasn’t a help. It rained off and on all day; the parades were all moved up because of the threat of weather (which was accurate; we had a flash flooding thunderstorm later on in the day), and since I was so tired and wrung out, I didn’t feel like attending any of them. I’ll probably go out for King Arthur, maybe for some of the earlier ones, and we’ll see how it goes.
As I said, I was extremely tired all day yesterday and decided to let my body and brain rest for most of it. I did do the dishes and I did get some things done early on, but I soon repaired to my easy chair, where I spent the rest of the afternoon reading–more on that later–but one of the things I wanted to reread was “La Cote Basque” by Truman Capote. I knew it was the story that turned his “swans” against him; I read it many years ago when I went through a Capote phase, when I was able to get past my distaste1 for him personally to start reading his work–which I quickly became a fan of; I love his writing, especially In Cold Blood, and I’ve always preferred the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the film. I always thought he wasted his incredible talents, like so many did, and I am starting to appreciate him more as a person than I ever did before2 and now am curious about reading biographies of him. I never watched any of the films made about him, but now…now I am thinking I should watch them. Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Gore Vidal all knew each other and were contemporaries; openly gay men who didn’t give a fuck about morés and ignored the rule of “don’t ask don’t tell” that pretty much was the only way gay men or other queers could really survive the reality of the deeply homophobic world they existed in. I cannot imagine, but that was also the reality of the world I was also born into, creating internal conflicts that I am still trying to unravel to this day–like why I held Capote in so much distaste, which was really internalized homophobia, which I’ve been confronting since I first watched Capote v. The Swans, and trying to process my way through it.3
Ironically, I wound up rewatching those first two episodes again, because Paul wanted to watch–he also feels the same as me about Capote, which is partly why we never saw any of the earlier films about him–and it’s well done enough for me to easily sit through it again, and it surprised me because I never became bored, even though I’d already seen those episodes. We watched two more episodes of Lupin yesterday, despite my falling asleep during the second, after which we retired to bed.
And here I am this morning, feeling rested and not at all as tired and drug out as I was yesterday, which is a very good thing. I don’t know how much of anything I am going to get done today–I do know I want to spend some time reading and editing, if not writing–and of course there’s always picking up to do around here, and maybe I could vacuum.
I also spent some time yesterday finishing reading the novelization of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last of Sheila, which I really enjoyed almost as much as I did the film,4 which will be covered in its own entry. I’ve been entranced by this film since I first saw it as a child one Sunday after church, and it still holds up; I’ve never once rewatched, knowing the surprise ending, and been bored or not entertained. (It’s also weird because there are scenes in Capote v the Swans showing Capote shooting Murder by Death, which was one of my earliest memories of seeing Capote, written by Neil Simon, one of the most popular playwrights of the middle part of the century that no one talks about anymore either but he was everywhere back then; I doubt Murder by Death holds up–and I didn’t really like it that much when I saw it in the theater back then, either.)
I’m also thinking it might be fun to revisit In Cold Blood and some other Capote works while I watch the show. I’ve always liked his short stories and his writing style…
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely King Arthur Sunday, everyone, and I’ll catch you maybe later.
Definitely will be more on this later, probably once I’ve finished watching. Capote v. the Swans.↩︎
Friday morning and a work-at-home day; after I get home from a doctor visit and PT, and a brief grocery run to pick up the things I forgot last night on the way home. I didn’t make a list, of course, so once I got home I remembered the things I forgot to get, and remembered still more this morning, sigh.) Parades actually start tonight, with Druids, Cleopatra, and Alla, I think; I’d have to check to be sure. You’d think after all these years I’d have the parade schedule memorized, but no, I don’t. It’s supposed to rain all weekend and it looks rather gray out there in the morning light, but the sun isn’t all the way up yet either and it might turn out to be one of those gorgeous winter days with blue sky and sunshine and warmth.
I was correct about being tired when I got home from work last night, and so didn’t get a lot done other than hanging out and bonding with Sparky. I watched this week’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which was a nice, no-stupid-arguments episode, and then decided to watch Capote v. the Swans because I was bored, and tired, and wasn’t sure that Paul would want to watch it anyway–and even if he did, he’ll never get home in time to watch much of it before the festivals anyway. I had seen some people hating it, the reviews are mixed, but I actually enjoyed watching. The acting is terrific, and like most Ryan Murphy shows it’s beautifully styled and constructed. The clothes and sets are impeccable. Naomi Watts is amazing, and Tom Hollander is pretty good as Capote. I have some of my own personal issues about Capote I clearly need to work through–it’s a long story and probably should be the center of its own entry, and probably will be once the show finishes its run and I review/blog about it. I had wanted to read more last night, and maybe do some chores, but once I went to the chair that was it for the night. I didn’t think I was that tired, but clearly I was. I even fell asleep in my chair and was snoozing away quite happily when Paul came home and woke me up.
I did sleep really well last night, too.
I’m not sure what this weekend holds for me other than being trapped here in the neighborhood during the parades. I want to get that story finished and I need to get the place straightened up/put back in order, not to mention all the chores I always end up having to do over the course of the weekend. There’s a load of clothes drying right now and I need to empty and reload the dishwasher so it can run while I am out of the house for the morning. I do have work-at-home duties to get done today as well. Tomorrow morning I am not getting up to an alarm–which is always lovely–and hopefully it will be a lovely, relaxing weekend of parades and beads and throws and watching stuff while writing and reading a lot.
I feel pretty good this morning too, which is also kind of nice. I feel rested, and since i am not rushing to get things done before heading into the office I canI’ve dy. PT is probably going to be quite rough, honestly; I’ve advanced more rapidly than anyone expected, so it gets a lot harder every time as the therapist tries to break me, LOL. I also need to make a list of things I need to buy for the house–a rolling cart for office supplies, some air filters for the HVAC system, a taller ladder, and so on–that I always forget about and I really do need to get more focused. None of the stuff can be delivered during the parade season, of course–or the windows for delivery are so narrow they can be easily missed–but the new microwave is delightful, and so are the new knives I bought. (I can’t believe how sharp they are!) There’s definitely something to be said for buying new things to replace old things you’ve had forever. I also want to get blinds for my windows so I don’t have to be blinded and so damned hot all summer in here when I am working, either.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get this day rolling. The chores and work won’t do themselves, after all, and I do need to get ready for this morning’s round of appointments and so forth. Have a lovely Friday and I may be back later; if not I’ll report back tomorrow morning after the first night of parades.
Thursday and the last day in the office for the week. I am very tired this morning. I slept well but could easily sleep for another few hours or so (interesting that I went from almost non-stop anxiety about insomnia to anxiety about sleeping too much, isn’t it?), but as I slowly and groggily get going this morning, the coffee is definitely hitting the way it is supposed to. Tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment and PT, as well as whatever errands I can get run before the parades start tomorrow night. Gah. I can’t believe it is already parade season, and I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked in the meantime. I did work some more on the story yesterday night after I got home from work and the errands (I picked up the mail) and settled in for a relaxing evening.
For some reason I watched the season premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which is now picking up with the fallout from last season’s “Scandoval,” and I don’t know about continuing to watch. I had stopped watching the show years ago–years before Stassi and Kristen were fired for being racists, and long before Jax met and married that bizarre woman. I came back briefly for the scandal, and watching the aftermath I am just not feeling it, and probably won’t watch more. I do sometimes question my fandom of these reality shows, which generally feature terrible people being terrible, all for the sake of entertainment. I had never really watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before–I had intended to, but then Jen Shah was arrested for massive scale fraud and remained on the show, and that was a bit too much for me (likewise, I stopped watching New Jersey when the Giudices went to jail, and I remain conflicted about Beverly Hills with fraud-adjacent Erica Girardi unapologetically remaing as a member of the cast and even getting, apparently, a redemption arc this season; which I vehemently oppose); I did start watching this most recent season at the urging of friends and yes, I was missing reality drama by not watching; I doubt that I will go back and watch the old seasons, which is something I never really do; why go back and watch old drama that doesn’t matter anymore? Reality shows like these are really like the old prime-time soaps; you can start watching at any time and just jump into the show without having to go back and watch the back stories–which you could never do with the daytime soaps but you could with the night-time.
Well, what do you know? I never finished this before leaving the house this morning so I find myself trying to finish this over my lunch break–and even my lunch is later today than usual, so yeah–been a day. But I feel good, tomorrow morning I have appointments and PT and so forth; before coming home to do work-at-home duties for the rest of the day. I’ve also kind of lost the train of thought I was riffing on before leaving the house this morning, and checking out what I’ve already written here didn’t return me to that particular mindset, so who knows where this is going to wind up going? I hope I have the energy after making groceries on the way home from work today to finish working on my story so I don’t have to worry about that over the weekend. I don’t know how my parade attendance will go this weekend; Paul’s got a lot of work to do and going out there by myself–which I can handle, and have done before–just isn’t as much fun as when I am with Paul, even if we barely speak while we’re out there. And I am not sure how much my stamina is going to hold up, either. We shall see, I suppose.
It’s also supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, which will put a damper on the weekend anyway.
I did also watch the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians last night, and I have to say I really do enjoy the series much more than I did the films. I did read the books a very long time ago–Rick Riordan’s series are the best fantasy novels for kids bar none, fuck all the way off, TERF Queen–so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I thought the series really adapted the books well, and I also appreciated that the cast went with kids rather than teens (or actors in their twenties acting as teens); which made the story make a lot more sense than it would with them in their mid-to-late teens. It’s also such a great concept; I really envy Riordan that idea, seriously. I used to want to do something similar–I still want to write a young adult novel set during the Trojan War–and I’ve had other ideas involving mythology and gods and goddesses, but nothing has ever come to fruition. The best idea I had I am not sure is usable, honestly, but every so often I remember it and think oh, if only…
Ah, well. As it is, I won’t have time to write everything I want to before I die anyway, so there are some things I will never get around to–and as long as it’s taking me to write this damned short story, I may not even wind up writing the things I do think I’ll have the time to get to, of course.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. You never know, and sorry for being so late today.
Queer and Loathing in America 