Category: short stories

O Come All Ye Faithful

As Constant Reader may or may not know, the Lost Apartment–hell, the entire house–is a haven for stray cats. We feed them and take care of them, so does our landlady, and so does our neighbor on the first floor on the other side of the house—and Jeremy in the carriage house does too. I think the largest the herd has ever been is five cats, but I could be wrong. We’ve been down to two–Simba and Tiger (who has the most seniority)–for quite a while now, and there’s a tuxedo cat that pokes around sometimes, but runs whenever you try to get close to her, but this past week a new cat has shown up, and has taken up residence beneath the house: a a tiny black kitten we’ve not really named yet, but have taken to calling the Dark Lord, because he’s completely invisible once the sun goes down. He doesn’t let us get close–he’ll come out to look at us, but scampers away whenever we try to pet him or get him to come near. We’ve started feeding him, as we feed the others, and Paul will eventually make sure that he becomes friendly, so we can catch him and get him to the vet. I don’t think he’s old enough to be fixed now, anyway. He can’t be more than a month or two old.

I always wonder where these strays come from, you know? Tiger was clearly always feral, but Simba is much too friendly to not have been someone’s cat. And a kitten? Where did the kitten come from?

Ah, the mysteries of being the Crazy Cat Couple of the Lower Garden District.

LSU defeated Mississippi yesterday 53-48 in what wound up being a completely insane game in Tiger Stadium; one in which they managed to go up early in the third quarter 37-21, only to fall behind 48-40 with about eight minutes left in the game. True freshman quarterback Max Johnson (who is 2-0 as a starter) managed to connect up with true freshman Kayshon Boutte (you cannot get a more Louisiana name than that, seriously) on two impressive scoring drives, sandwiched around an impressive defensive stand, to pull ahead with less than two minutes left in the game to go up 53-48; the defense held again, forcing a fumble to end the game with less than a minute to go to escape having the first losing season since 1999 and give Tiger fans–so beleaguered this season–a lot of hope for the future. That team that finished strong after the pasting by Alabama was mostly freshmen and sophomores….and in these last two games there were guys playing I’d never heard of before. Our back-ups pulled off an upset of Florida (which gave Alabama all they could handle in the SEC title game) and then Mississippi (the LSU-Mississippi games are always exciting; for some reason Ole Miss–it is an old rivalry game–always seems to play their best against LSU and the Tigers inevitably have to rally to win the game in the end. Paul’s and my first game ever in Tiger Stadium was the Mississippi game in 2010, which the Tigers needed a last minute score in to win); so pardon us for thinking perhaps next year will be a good one and the year after that a great one–which is the LSU way, really. It was very exciting, and I’ll be honest, I thought we were done for when the Rebels went up 48-40 and our defense looked very tired–very very tired–but in a downpour the Tigers pulled it off and thus made my day.

I also managed to unlock the puzzle of Chapter Eighteen and got it finished, and by doing so I realized I perfectly set up the final act of the book–which will make these other chapters more challenging, but that’s okay because I still have plenty of time to get this all finished and ready to go on schedule, which is very exciting.

I also read very far into The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and I have to say, gay Hollywood history is very interesting, and that particular period, post-war into the 1950’s, is also extremely interesting. I actually kind of wish I was more knowledgeable about the period, or had studied it in greater detail. I’ve already written a short story based in that dangerous era for gay men, “The Weight of a Feather”, which is included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, and of course, Chlorine is set in that time period. I actually have several historical gay noirs planned–Obscenity, Indecency, and Muscles–that will take place during different periods of twentieth century gay history–the 1970’s, the 1990’s, and the early aughts–which will reflect the changing moods and dangers of being gay during various decades, and how different life was for gay men in each decade. It’s an interesting concept, and one I hope readers will embrace.

Plus, the research will be endlessly fascinating.

The Saints play the Chiefs today, and apparently Drew Brees will be playing again. This presents a dilemma for me, clearly; I love the Saints, but the Chiefs have several of my favorite former LSU players on their roster (Tyrann Mathieu and Clyde Edwards-Helaire, to name two) and it’s hard for me not to want to see them do well. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to not watch at all. I don’t know. I have to write Chapter Nineteen today, and am trying to decide if I should go to the gym today, or wait until tomorrow. I overslept this morning–an hour, didn’t get up till nine–and I also only have to get through the next three days at the office before the holidays AND my brief between Christmas and New Year’s vacation–I hope to not only get this book finished by then but have the time to work on my MWA anthology submission and reread and plan the final version of #shedeservedit.

Then again, I’ll also probably be horrifically lazy a lot during that time–it happens.

And on that note, more coffee for me before the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

White Christmas

Well good morning, Constant Reader, and I hope your Saturday is off to a lovely start. I actually missed blogging yesterday–I had started the entry, but wasn’t able to finish before I had to start my work-at-home start time, and by the time I was finished for the day, it was time for the gym, and somehow I never got back here to finish. Deepest apologies, Constant Reader.

It’s chilly this morning in the Lost Apartment, but the sun is bright and shining and it looks absolutely beautiful outside this morning, which is kind of cool. I don’t have to leave the house all weekend other than the gym tomorrow, which is lovely, and I’m hoping to get some good work on the book done today. The last two days I was low energy and unable to think about getting much done, let alone do anything, so today I really need to press my nose to the grindstone and push myself to get back on track. Chapter Eighteen is proving a very tough nut to crack, but I am very pleased with the book (for a change) and am looking very forward to getting back into the groove with it.

LSU’s final game of the football season is today, against Mississippi (I refuse to call them ole miss anymore) and this can go either one of two ways: the Tigers can show up ready to play, for each other, Coach O, and the fanbase; or they can be cocky and overconfident after the Florida win, and get punched in the mouth. I’ll be watching, laptop in my lap, under my electric blanket (honestly, last night I honestly felt that human evolution, progress and civilization all culminated in the invention of the electric blanket), and hoping for the best. It’s a rivalry game called the Magnolia Bowl, and Mississippi hasn’t beaten LSU since 2015, so you know they’re hungry under their new coach, Lane Kiffin. LSU loses and they have their first losing season since 1999; win and they finish 5-5 in a crazy season.

But whatever happens, nothing can take away that win over Florida and ruining their season last weekend, which I am just petty enough to really enjoy.

We finished watching The Flight Attendant Thursday night, and the final episode was perhaps the best one of the entire run; as I have mentioned before, Kaley Cuoco is quite charismatic and likable, like Jennifer Aniston, and even though her character is primarily not very likable, she always is, and that’s an important quality for an actress…although I am rather curious about their flight schedules, because unless things have changed, I don’t think flight crews would work Rome flights as well as Bangkok. There was also a really convoluted secondary subplot that apparently only existed as a reason for one of the other flight attendants to have a gun which he needed to have, in the season finale (it was an incredible length to go to avoid the appearance of contrivance, actually; one almost has to respect the authorial commitment to it), but all the main story was properly wrapped up by the end of the finale, and there was even an opening left for a continuation of the show–also not probable, but it was kind of a nice bow tied up on the final package.

And of course, last night was the conclusion of The Mandalorian. No spoilers, but it was a pretty epic way to end the series, and I am really looking forward to The Book of Boba Fett. I think the series is now officially over–they certainly tied everything up neatly and concluded the story of the Child and Mando–and that pleases me if it is the case; the show was absolutely perfect, and as someone said on Twitter last night, “The best Star Wars movie is The Mandalorian” and I cannot disagree with that sentiment.

It’s hard to believe Christmas, frankly is next week; but this entire year has been a weird one, time has seemed to drag more than any other time, while at the same time it’s almost a relief to have made it this far. 2020 was a deeply unpleasant year, but there were some bright spots. I see everyone doing their “best of 2020” lists and I frankly can’t remember what I’ve watched and what I’ve read, other than I enjoyed almost every bit of it. I had long dry spells where I didn’t write anything, and long spells where all I wrote was the first 500 to 1000 or so words of short story before being stopped dead in my tracks. I still need to get this book revision finished so I can finish my story for the MWA anthology submissions deadline. This final part of the book is the hard part, so I suppose it’s not a surprise that it’s kind of kicking my ass.

This week was a double-feature for the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, beginning with The French Connection, an Oscar winning film (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Gene Hackman) which doesn’t, I’m afraid, play well through a modern lens. I can see why the film was so impactful and impressive back in 1971, but now it plays like a lesser episode of NYPD Blue or Hill Street Blues. It was a gritty, dirty, almost documentary-like movie about a drug investigation, based on a book about a real drug bust–with the cops’ names changed to protect them. Gene Hackman is terrific as Popeye Doyle; Roy Schieder is equally good as his partner..but all I could think as I watched was, “well, that’s a violation of their civil rights” or “ah, nothing like glorifying police brutality” or “well, that entire scene was a fairly accurate depiction of racial profiling.” Popeye is an unashamed racist; the n-word pops up every now and then, and of course ethnic slurs abound–Little Italy is referred to as “Dagotown”, there’s some anti-Semitism, and of course, the French are referred to as “frogs”–but it does also have some great moments: the chase scene involving Popeye trying to catch a fugitive on an elevated train was pretty impressively shot and edited. Hackman is terrific in the role, even if Popeye is the kind of cop who would think nothing of killing a suspect in his custody….The French Connection ultimately is a pro-police violence film that tries to justify the behavior of cops who violate civil rights and are violent and abusive as necessary, and that, to me, is problematic. As far as awards go, among the films it beat out for the Oscar are The Last Picture Show (which is one of my favorite movies of all time), Fiddler on the Roof (the kind of big-budget, lavish musical that would have won the Oscar a few years earlier), Nicholas and Alexandra (another big budget extravaganza I started watching but quickly got bored with–and would have been a shoe-in for Best Picture in the 1980’s) and of course, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Second up was the 1974 film version of Ian Fleming’s Live and Let Die, which was the eighth Bond film and the second novel in the series. It’s also one of the few Bond films I ever saw in the theater, and was my first Bond film. It was Roger Moore’s first outing as Bond, and it was also when the tone and tenor of the Bond films switched, IMHO–I’d have go back and watch the Connery ones again to be certain. But while Connery occasional got off the clever quip or one-liner, the films were very serious and almost grim; Moore had more of a comic sense of the character and with him in the role, the character became more cartoonish and the films more outlandish (Moonraker was completely absurd) and there are many moments in Live and Let Die where, if you think about them too long, don’t make sense: how did he know to bring a deck of tarot cards with him in which all the cards were “The Lovers,” and where did he get that deck in the first fucking place? (And this doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that he basically manipulated Solitaire’s belief in the cards to get her into bed–which is rape because she was deceived into giving consent, PROBLEMATIC) There are any number of these contrivances in the plot of the film; but at the same time Live and Let Die also gave cinema it’s first Black Bond Girl, Rosie Carver (played by Gloria Hendry) and Bond’s first interracial romance, as well as the series’ first Black villains. The movie isn’t nearly as racist as the book–but it’s not exactly an achievement the Bond series should be proud of, either. But it gave the under-appreciated Yaphet Kotto a good role as Prime Minister Kananga, and introduced Jane Seymour to the world. I think I may need to read the book again–I should revisit the original Bond series, really–but one thing about Live and Let Die I do appreciate is that parts of it were filmed in New Orleans and along Bayou Des Allemandes; Louisiana looks beautiful, as does the Quarter–and this is one of those early influences on my youthful mind where I first felt the pull of New Orleans and Louisiana.

But it also boasts one of the best Bond theme songs, by Paul McCartney (or rather, Wings); it was the first time a pop band was selected to do the theme song, and it was the first Bond theme to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Song.

Yesterday I got my copy of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson by Robert Hofler in the mail yesterday, which is the final piece (or one of the final pieces) of Chlorine background research I need to get started on the outline/plotting. My main character is a pretty boy with not much discernible talent who has a Henry Willson-like agent, whom he shares with the murder victim; I have to say the entire story of Willson, his pretty boy clients and their sexuality, endlessly fascinates me, and I am really excited to be writing a period piece gay Hollywood noir–well, eventually, at any rate. I started dipping into the book some last night and am enjoying it thoroughly. I also got a copy of Lawrence Block’s anthology From Sea to Shining Sea, which is crime stories inspired by ‘great American paintings’, and am really looking forward to digging into that. I also got a copy of Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson, because you can never have enough ghost stories around to read.

And on that note, I have some laundry to fold, a dishwasher to unload, and writing to do–so if you will excuse me for a moment, Constant Reader, I am going to head back into the spice mines.

Jingle Bell Rock

Constant Reader may have noticed that I have started using Christmas songs and hot guys in Christmas costume, effective this past weekend. This is my annual countdown to Christmas–twelve days leading up to it rather than the twelve after; most people wouldn’t get that I was doing Christmas to Twelfth Night (which is the night Carnival technically begins–but we aren’t really having Carnival this year in New Orleans, yet another crippling blow to the city’s economy), and I prefer to confuse people as little as possible–particularly since it is generally so easy to do, frankly.

It’s dark and cold this morning as I sit sipping my cappuccino; it’s a mere forty-eight degrees outside, with the high for the day projected to be a toasty fifty-nine degrees. It was cold last night as I walked to the gym–yes, I went after work, which was nice and felt great, and then it was back home to write for a bit before bed. I was very tired–getting up early AND the gym–but I did get some work done on the complete overhaul of Chapter Eighteen, which is going to slow me down considerably, but it’s actually okay. I still have time, and if I can get more than one chapter done in a day I’ll still have time to get it all done and let it sit momentarily before sending it in after one last polish. I did get the final cover design yesterday, which is absolutely gorgeous; definitely one of my favorite covers.

We also watched a couple of episodes of The Hardy Boys before retiring for the evening, and I have to say, I am very impressed with the show. I get why the purists object to it, but the show is better written, acted, and plotted than the dreadful 70’s iteration, which the purists seem to love. But oh no! Diversity! The boys aren’t a year apart! Aunt Gertrude is too young and goes by Trudy! THE HORROR! I think it’s well done, and the series is very close to the spirit of the books–if not as cardboard and two dimensional and simplistic–which has me curious to give Nancy Drew another whirl. (In fairness, I also liked the first episode of that reboot, but I watched it by myself one night when Paul was working late and never got back to it.)

I think maybe this next year will be the year I try to write my middle grade series.

But I slept really well last night, and don’t feel tired at all this morning, which is absolutely lovely. I have taken the week off between Christmas and New Year’s, which means I’ll be out of the office for nearly ten days (New Year’s Eve is a workday, but it’s also a work-at-home day, which means…out of the office for nearly ten days), and I am looking forward to that. It’s also an opportunity to have a lot of down time in case I need it for finishing the book–which hopefully I won’t need–and it will also give me a chance to get started on the final rewrite of the next one, due on March 1, and after that, I will focus on Chlorine until I can get a good first draft out of the way. I ordered The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson yesterday, and it should be here by the weekend, and it’s the final piece of research I need for the Hollywood casting back ground stuff. I will also need to do some other background reading–studios, economics of the period, what else was going on, what was LA and Hollywood like in that period, etc. And perhaps at long last I will also read James Ellroy’s LA Confidential–it seems fitting.

Oh! And I. need some time to finish my short story for the MWA anthology, which will hopefully make it stand out from the submissions pile and get selected. One more thing to scratch off my “bucket list”–get into an MWA anthology. I wish I had some things ready to end out for submission, but alas, I don’t. Maybe “This Thing of Darkness”, after a bit of a tweak, and “Death and the Handmaidens”–again, after another tweak or two–but I hate that I’ve not sent any stories out for submission lately. I also want to finish some of these that I’ve got started.

So. Much. Writing. To. Do.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and hope you’re having as lovely a holiday season as a pandemic will permit.

Mad Woman

And now we ease into Friday and what will hopefully be an enormously productive weekend for one Gregalicious.

Yesterday was a lovely day, if not as productive as one would have hoped. When five pm rolled around, my mind was fried from the condom packing (I watched The Stunt Man while making them; more on that later) and so instead, I cleaned up around here and did some brainstorming. I did a shit ton of laundry last night, and did some other cleaning as well….but I really hate that I didn’t get to the book yesterday evening. Definitely tonight it’s on my agenda, and hopefully if I stay motivated I can get quite a bit finished this weekend. I am still hoping to get this draft version finished before next weekend, so I can stick to the plan of writing some short stories next week before getting back to the final polish on this manuscript so I can get it turned in. The next deadline–the two months for #shedeservedit–is going to be much rougher on me than this revision was, so getting this one finished sooner rather than later is definitely something I need to be focused on.

We watched The Flight Attendant’s new episodes last night–I’m not sure why the release two at a time, quite frankly–but it definitely feels like the show is being padded to fill it out to the necessary (or needed) length. My mind started to wander during the first of the two episodes, but the second one picked up and became more interesting. Kaley Cuoco is a very charming and likable actress, so playing such an unlikable character is, I am sure, quite a stretch for her as an actress; yet the character is so unlikable–and as the show progresses, becomes more and more unlikable–that it becomes very hard to continue rooting for her as she makes bad decision after bad decision–and of course, she is clearly an alcoholic, and the alcoholic fog helps keep her from dealing with her own deeply problematic past. There were some big reveals in the second episode–although one was pretty predictable from the get-go, and the second one didn’t make nearly as much sense as the writers perhaps wanted it to; I won’t get into it here because SPOILERS, but while the show is very well done there are some things that feel rather self-indulgent and unearned. But Kuoco is, as I said, eminently likable and interesting to watch, so we’ll probably see it all the way through.

I signed a contract yesterday to allow Wildside Press to republish my story “Annunciation Shotgun” on the Black Cat Ebook Site as a “Barb Goffman Presents”, which is very exciting. “Annunciation Shotgun” was one of my first mainstream publications for a story with queer characters–although the queerness wasn’t important to the story, which was part of it’s subversive fun, and made it incredibly fun to write–and I do love the story. It was originally published in New Orleans Noir over a decade ago, and of course, was included in my collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories; in fact, I had originally intended to call the collection Annunciation Shotgun and Other Stories. Ironically, part of the credit for the idea for the story belongs to none other than Poppy Z. Brite; I was reading his novel Liquor and at one point, the book made reference to Ricky and G-man living in a shotgun house on Constantinople Street, and I thought to myself, “Constantinople Shotgun is a great title” and I thought about gay friendships and having that one friend who always seems to be an agent of chaos–the one you’re always have to bail out but he’s so charming and lovable you always, always, get out of bed and throw on some clothes and run bail him out of whatever he’s gotten himself into. It was also born out of my fascination with how we live in such intimate closeness to neighbors here in New Orleans–shotgun houses means you share a wall running the length of the house with someone who might be a complete stranger–and that invasive intimacy with people you barely know is something I’ve turned to, again and again, in my short stories. I started writing it originally when the idea struck; when I was asked to write for New Orleans Noir I was assigned the lower Garden District as my neighborhood, which is where I’ve always lived in New Orleans since moving here–which meant the title no longer worked; Constantinople Street is in Uptown. But Annunciation Street runs through the LGD (it also runs all the way uptown to Riverbend), and it’s an unusual, multi-syllabic name, so I chose it for the title. (I still love the title “Constantinople Shotgun”–but I don’t know that I can get away with writing another “shotgun” titled story; but “Constantinople Camelback” is also not a bad title….hmmmmm.)

But I do love the story, and am glad that this opportunity has presented itself…and I’m making a title note to use “Constantinople Camelback” because of course I am.

I’m also waiting impatiently to get the final cover design for Bury Me in Shadows because I’ve seen it and I love it, and it’s one of my favorites of my own books thus far. The book itself is taking shape nicely; I am refusing to listen to my doubts and imposter syndrome and choosing instead to believe in myself and my abilities and skill as a writer.

So, other than refreshing my mailbox, my plans for the weekend include revising at least four chapters of the book, perhaps some thinking about the short story I want to submit to the newest MWA anthology (I swear to GOD I will get a story accepted into one of those anthologies if it kills me), and I definitely want to finish reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

So, yesterday I watched The Stunt Man. I saw it many many years ago–I think maybe on one of the pay cable networks in the early 1980’s? HBO, perhaps?–and it was so strange and so interesting that it really took my fancy. I fucking loved Peter O’Toole, since I watched him and Richard Burton chew up the scenery in Becket, and this was only the second film of his I’d seen. He got an Oscar nomination for this–losing to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, of all things; O’Toole’s failure to win a competitive Oscar is one of the biggest crimes of the Academy–and while this movie isn’t my favorite of his, I’ve always wanted to rewatch it. Essentially, the plot of the movie is this: Steve Railsback (breathtaking in his youthful beauty) is an escaped convict, or is on the run from the cops (and we never really find out why), and he is also a Vietnam vet. While he is running he accidentally stumbles into a movie set and is responsible (this responsibility never really makes sense to me, and over the course of the movie becomes even more and more weird) for the death of a stunt man. The crazed director, Eli, played by Peter O’Toole, doesn’t want to stop filming as he is on a tight schedule and also doesn’t want to deal with the scandal involved with a stunt man’s s death, so he makes a deal with the Railsback character–fill in for the dead stuntman so they can cover it up until the movie is finished, get paid, or turn himself in. Railsback becomes a stuntman–some of the best scenes in the film are him working with a veteran to learn how to do the stunts without harming himself (note: the performance of the guy teaching him to do stunts–an actual stuntman named Chuck Bail–should have gotten an Oscar nomination at least) and of course, O’Toole is stunningly brilliant, as he is in everything. Barbara Hershey is also terrific as the actress Railsback falls for…I also had no idea it was based on a book, which I am now going to have to read. It’s also very cynical–definitely fits in the the Cynical 70’s Film Festival.

Sigh, Peter O’Toole. So talented, so gorgeous. My Favorite Year is also one of my all-time favorite movies, and his failure to win an Oscar as fading star and alcoholic Alan Swann is yet another Academy crime. It’s one of the great performances of all time, and I’ve also always thought someone should turn that movie into a television series–a behind the scenes look at how a television show like that in the 1950’s was made–with a new guest star in every episode and so on. (Just send me my check, Netflix, and you’re welcome.)

Not sure what today’s film is going to be, but it may be another O’Toole 70’s classic, The Ruling Class.

And on that note tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

This Love

Today’s working from home adventure will be interrupted by a trip to the office for a working lunch! I love when we get paid to do work and get fed at the same time. One of the drug companies is doing a brief training for us, and they are treating us to lunch from Mona’s on Frenchmen. I miss Mona’s; when I worked all those years at the office on Frenchmen Street I used to treat myself to Mona’s periodically–their gyro plate was my go-to, always, and I’ve been missing my gyros, so you can imagine my delight when I learned about this training.

Huzzah, indeed!

Free lunch is always a plus.

I also have errands to do at some point, and I probably should go to the gym this evening. I plan to be super-productive today–I am going to watch The Stunt Man while I am making condom packs this afternoon as well–and of course, there are any number of household chores that need to be completed. Ugh, so much cleaning and picking up to do around here, as well as writing to do. I made a pretty decent start on Chapter 17 last night, so hopefully tonight I can get through it and Chapter 18; and with a strong push this weekend I can almost get all the way through the rest of the book, which would be amazing and would put me way ahead of schedule. So, that’s the goal for this weekend, at any rate. I also want to finish The Spy Who Came in From the COld, because I got a very advance copy of the next Alison Gaylin novel, The Collective, which I cannot wait to dive into.

If I can get the book finished this weekend, I can then spend next week working on short stories before diving back into the book’s final pass, and I might even be able to get it turned in early. I am also looking forward to getting the final cover design–which I fucking love–at any minute. I approved the final proof of it yesterday, and so it should be arriving in my inbox at any time. I am also feeling a lot more confident about the book itself, which is always a good thing; this final revision, I think, is helping to really pull it all together.

We tried watching His Dark Materials last night. I’ve never read the books, but that doesn’t mean I can’t watch and enjoy the show (I’ve still only read the first book in A Song of Fire and Ice, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying Game of Thrones both before and after I read the book), but there was too much going on that I didn’t understand and thus made it much harder to follow. Paul fell asleep–which should give you an indication of his level of enthrallment–and so I think we’re going to take a pass on it. We also started watching the new Hulu adaptation of The Hardy Boys (if you will recall, I was highly amused that the kids’ series fan pages were in a major uproar about the show and the changes made to it from the books, and I will agree, those changes are substantial enough to make you wonder why they bothered calling it The Hardy Boys–but would a show called something else get any traction?), which I liked just fine, even if it was a lot darker than anything ever seen in the books. I mean, their mother is murdered in the very first episode–the Hardy Boys, at least in the original series, never dealt with anything so dark and scary as a murder–and instead of the Hardys having always lived in Bayport, they live in “the city” and move to “Bridgeport” during the premiere. They’ve also turned Biff Hooper into a girl (I don’t have a problem with this) and overall, it’s not bad and we’ll probably continue watching. (I will, at any rate; Paul may not) I also want to give the CW series adaptation of Nancy Drew another shot; I actually liked the premiere, but never went back to it from there.

And seriously, there is such a book in these rabid fans and their reaction to changes to their sacred texts.

I also would like, at some point in 2021, to start pulling together my own kids’ series. It has been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid, and lately I’ve been feeling that gravitational pull to writing a kids’ series again. Oh, I know I have two books scheduled for deadlines already and that I need to dive into Chlorine once I get these both out of the way–and there’s probably another Scotty book out there I should write (at least the one)–but as I have mentioned more and more lately, I am becoming much more conscious of running out of time; when I was in my forties, it seemed like there was all the time in the world to write everything I wanted to write. Now that I am approaching sixty like a bullet, and more ideas come to me all the fucking time, I am becoming highly aware of the finite amount of time I have and that I am not going to be able to write everything I want to write. It’s a shame–I really have too many good ideas that will probably go to waste–but you know, that’s kind of how life works.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Happy Thursday, everyone.

Invisible

Sunday morning and a lot to get done today. I was horribly lazy yesterday; I wound up doing very little other than reading–I finished The Bad Seed and then moved on to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (I’ve never read John LeCarre, and am trying to get better read in my. genre’s classics, both titles and authors) and got some chores done, but other than that–not a goddamned thing. So today I I have to play catch up as well as go to the gym and somehow pay some attention to the Saints game, which is at noon. (I’ll most likely do some things around here, go to the gym around elevenish, and then come home and do things while the game is on.) The LSU game went about the way I expected it to last night–55-17 final score–so congratulations to Alabama’s players and coaching staff; I can’t imagine there’s a better team in the country this season, so it’ll be fun watching y’all go all the way again. LSU has to play Florida next weekend, which will most likely be another horror show like yesterday’s, but at least at that point the season will be over.

This football season is yet another gift the year 2020 has given me. Thanks, 2020, thank you.

It feels cold again this morning in the Lost Apartment–I have my space heater on and a cap on my bald scalp–but it doesn’t look so bad outside, really. Lots of clouds hiding the sky and the sun, but this week is supposed to be warmer than last, so I think I’ll be able to hang this week after last week’s cold spell.

Once I finish this I am going to make a to-do list for this week–I really need to make a point of doing that every Sunday, so I have a roadmap for my week–and also so that things won’t slip through the cracks and be forgotten. This has been a really bad year for me to try to remember everything I have to get done–I keep forgetting things, which isn’t good–so I am trying to be ever so much better about this. The whole year I’ve felt like I’ve been in this weird state of limbo, just drifting and trying to get by, keep dog-paddling and keeping my head above water, and it’s not been easy. (It’s not really been an easy year for most people, I suspect.)

Last night as we binged Big Mouth after the LSU game, I was trying to remember the highlights of the year–the good things that happened that I am grateful for, and realized that, sadly, most of the things I was thinking of was television or movies I’d watched, or books I’d read and greatly enjoyed. I had a pretty good year at the beginning of the year in selling short stories–I sold quite a few this year, continuing a trend from last year, to the point where I keep forgetting story sales I made, which is so weird–but also means that in 2021 I am going to have some stories appear in anthologies or publications, which is terribly cool. I know I stretched myself as a writer–hell, I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story this year, and created a Sherlockian world in 1916 New Orleans–and while there were anthologies and things I tried (and failed) to submit to, I have some terrific stories now that are in some state of writing that could turn out to be something interesting. I am looking forward to spending some more time with both “The Sound of Snow Falling” and “The Rosary of Broken Promises”–and there are any number of others I’d love to dive back into. The problem being, of course, that I have limited writing time, and for the rest of this month I have to focus on finishing the one book and then the first two months of 2021 finishing the other. I’m not really sure what I want to spend the rest of 2021 doing; I know I am co-editing the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology and that’s going to take a chunk of time to read all those submissions and make decisions and then edit them all, but let’s face it, it’s also not my first time at the anthology rodeo. I want to try to write another Scotty at some point in 2021, and I know I also have Chlorine to work on, but…I guess we’ll just have to see how the year pans out.

I know I want to pull another short story collection together, too, and of course there’s the novellas…

I also polished off a journal last night, so I get to start a new one this morning, which is kind of fun. I’ve been blasting through journals at a pretty good pace since I started using them again, and while I cannot say that they’ve been enormously helpful in keeping my act together and keeping me on track with any of the writing I’ve been doing, they’ve been wonderful for me to jot notes and ideas in, and I’ve been doing much better about going back into them and rereading them and getting the unpolished jewels out of them. I have a really nice one that has a magnetic clasp that I got at Garden District Books, and then got a pack of three the last time I went to Costco, so I am certainly set for journals for the year.

I’ve also got to get the copy edits on my essay finished.

I also spent some time yesterday slowly but surely pruning the books. I’ve done a great job of pruning them already, so much so that there’s slim pickings for getting rid of things I will most likely never read–I always stop myself and have to think, long and hard, about whether I should get rid of an unread book–but I also need to keep making room for more–because at some point I’ll start buying books again. Not sure when that will be financially feasible–right now, books are filed in the “luxury item” column, especially when I already have so many on hand that I’ve not read–but I have quite a list of books that I want to get when I can.

There are never enough books, frankly.

And on that note, I need some more coffee as well as fold some laundry. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader!

Seven

Saturday morning and it’s rather chilly in the Lost Apartment . The sun is shining and there aren’t many clouds in the sky–I see plenty of blue up there at the moment–and I haven’t checked the weather yet. All right, I just looked and it’s currently forty-nine, with a high of fifty-three predicted for the day. Sounds like the kind of day when one just wants to stay indoors all day and under a blanket, does it not? I have a lot to get done this morning–the sink is full of dirty dishes; more than will fit in the dishwasher, so I am going to have to do two loads–and of course, there’s filing to do and organizing to be done; notes to be read on the work-in-progress as well as chapters to be revised; and I’d like to be able to read some more of The Bad Seed, if not finish reading it today. LSU is playing Alabama tonight, and it’s not going to be pretty, but at least it won’t be disappointing. It’s very weird, there’s always a minor hope, even in bad years, that we might beat them, but not this one. I love my Tigers and I’ll tune in–but I am under no illusions that they’ll pull off a major upset here. Our only hope is a sustained three and a half hour miracle, really; but this entire football season has been such a wash anyway–I really think it should have been skipped, which is what I’ve thought all along–yet here we are.

I do occasionally think that LSU having one of the greatest football teams and seasons of all time last year somehow broke the world, and if LSU having a shitty season is what it takes to reset everything, I can live with that sacrifice.

Yesterday was a good day. I had to swing by the office because I had run out of lube for the condom packs–I brought home flavored–so I had to swing by there to pick up regular lube tubes–and then after returning home, I made condom packs while watching Logan’s Run, yesterday’s entry into the Cynical 70’s Film Festival. I had never before seen it; I, of course, remember what it’s plot was–a world where everyone dies at thirty; the title character is about to turn thirty and he runs. Well, turns out that was a vast over-simplification; Logan, played by a stunningly beautiful young Michael York (I’ve waxed euphoric over his beauty before; I had a major crush on him throughout the 1970’s; have continued to appreciate his work as I got older; and he came to the Williams Festival one year, so I not only got to meet him but was delighted to find he was very charming), is a “sandman”–in the future, after over–population and depletion of resources and so forth, society collapsed and a utopian human city was built under a dome, and all humans devote themselves merely to pleasure, and when they turn thirty, they are renewed; in a ritual, everyone gathers to watch them sacrifice themselves, to be reborn–someone has to die in order for someone to be reborn. The “sandmen” are those who hunt down the ones who decide they want to live and run for their lives. When caught, they are killed and are dead forever–no chance of being reborn. Logan actually has about four years left before he turns thirty, but he is given the job to search for Sanctuary–a place all the runners try to get to safely–and the controlling computer also speeds up his life, turning the life clock in his hand all the way up to almost time for him to die. Jenny Agutter plays the love interest who can help him get to Sanctuary; they run, and it becomes very weird once they escape. The special effects are pretty bad–the movie was pre-Star Wars–and so are the sets and costume designs. It does, I decided, fit into the film festival because the film itself is kind of cynical; it basically took American youth obsession and created a world based entirely in youth; and it’s interesting they chose thirty as the end point of life–after all, the youth movement of the 1960’s always said “never trust anyone over thirty.” As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of all the possibilities they couldn’t explore in a two hour film–and thought, you know, this show could easily rebooted as a mini-series that could go into all of those explorations–the collapse of society, who built and created this new world, who actually is in power in this utopian paradise, how did they get the initial buy-in necessary–and so on and so forth. And with our country growing evermore obsessed with youth and beauty–yeah, this could be really good. Logan would be a good role for someone like Nick Jonas or Alexander Dreymon or any number of beautiful young actors in the business today.

The lovely thing about HBO MAX is they are continually adding more and more films to their TCM app–you can only imagine my delight to see the delightful Peter O’Toole film The Stunt Man was recently added; The Ruling Class is already there. I am a huge Peter O’Toole fan–the fact the man never won a competitive Oscar despite giving career-defining performance in those two films, along with My Favorite Year, The Lion in Winter, Becket, and Lawrence of Arabia never ceases to amaze me. Both The Stunt Man and The Ruling Class certainly fit into my Cynical 70’s Film Festival–they have also added the original The Omega Man and Soylent Green, both of which I intend to watch despite the fact both star Charlton Heston, the king of over-acting. But…both definitely belong in the Festival, and I really wish they would add Serpico.

I also would like to watch Cruising again–to see it from a present day perspective.

The Mandalorian continues to delight as well, and our favorite raunchy junior high puberty comedy, Big Mouth, also came back yesterday.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader.

Love Story

Thursday morning, and I am working from home today. I have some errands that simply must be run this morning–fortunately I only have to work a half-day today–so once I get this posted and get my own act together, it’s off to the errands so I can come home and do data entry/make condom packs. I think I am going to rewatch the Christopher Reeve Superman–it’s a 1970’s movie, after all, and I don’t know yet if it will deserve a place in the Cynical 70’s Film Festival; I don’t think so, but I think it could be a fun reread while working with my hands.

I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday–so tired that I skipped the gym (!) and didn’t work on the book. Tonight when I finish my condom packing I am going to have to get back to the book, and figure if I can get two chapters done in one day I’ll be back on schedule. LSU’s lamb-to-the-slaughter game against Alabama isn’t until Saturday evening, so I should be able to get several chapters finished during the day that day, and maybe even more. Who knows? There’s a plethora of possibilities.

I slept late this morning–I did wake up at six, again at seven, and finally at eight. I feel much better: very rested, relaxed, my muscles feel good, and my back also doesn’t hurt at all. This is, needless to say, quite lovely, and while it is cold this morning, the cold is nowhere near as bitter as it was the last few mornings, so I can handle it. I haven’t even put on a cap to keep my head warm, which is a lovely thing. It’s very gray outside–the sky is covered with clouds, so it’s kind of grayish-gloomy; like winter mornings I remember from my childhood in the Midwest. I ordered electric blankets the other day–a friend on Facebook suggested it when I was complaining about the cold, and had one of those wow it never ever occurred to me to get electric blankets moments when I truly wonder about my intelligence and intellectual capacity. But in fairness to me, I don’t think I’ve ever owned an electric blanket, and we certainly didn’t have any when I was growing up….but thinking about it this morning, what a difference that could have made that bitterly cold winter I spent in Minneapolis twenty five years ago….

I am still reading both The Bad Seed by William March and Lincoln by Gore Vidal; obviously I was too tired last night to make any headway on either. Paul and I did watch an episode of something that might turn into a guilty pleasure for us….Cajun Justice, about the sheriff of Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana was an enormously popular location for reality television shows back in the day–remember Duck Dynasty?–and since one of my co-workers is moving to Plaquemines Parish (Houma, specifically) she was the one who found this single season reality show…when she mentioned it to me the other day–when we first talked about her move down there, and it’s been a couple of weeks; it was around the time I was looking up Cajun/Louisiana folklore for a potential Christmas horror story, which is when I was finding all those wonderful bayou supernatural legends, like le feu follet and the lutin…which I was able to look up in Gumbo Ya-Ya. The show is kind of, I don’t know, offensive in some ways, as it depicts Cajuns and their culture as an exotic thing; lots of talk about voodoo and black magic and so forth. (This is part of the problem I had with writing about Cajuns and the supernatural; I’m afraid I’ll give in to the stereotypes rather than depict the culture and the people authentically.) I mean, I do want to write short stories illustrating Cajun culture and their interesting folklore and legends (Monsters of Louisiana), but I also want to do it correctly. Gumbo Ya-Ya is an excellent source material, a great starting place, but I am also very aware that its authors were also steeped in the white supremacy and racism of the time in which they wrote and compiled the book, which also makes it harder to decipher what is real and what isn’t.

All right, I’ve got dishes to put away and laundry to fold before I hit the errand trail, so have a happy Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.

Back to December

And suddenly, one morning you wake up and it’s December, and you think, for just a moment, wow, how did that happen? And you try to remember last December….which now seems as long ago and remote as the Middle Ages. I mean, doesn’t it? As I was saying to someone the other day, “remember when RWA burned to the ground? It hasn’t even been a year yet, but that seems as remote in the past now as the Knights of the Round Table and Camelot.

Yesterday was a nice day to ease back into working. I didn’t have any issue getting up, nor was I tired when I got home; good thing, as I needed to go to the gym. I’d skipped Sunday because when I walked there and back on Friday, somehow I managed to rub a blister onto the back of my left heel, and it was painful wearing shoes. It was also cold and rainy, and between the blister and cold rain…yeah, wasn’t feeling it too much, so I decided to wait till I got home from work on Monday and hope that I’d have the energy and the willpower to go. It was incredibly cold (for New Orleans, coming in after weeks of high 70’s/low 80’s weather), but I bundled up into my sweats and off I went.

But despite the cold, a lovely workout was had, and then I scurried home. It was the cold wind, really, that made it so bad.

It was also supposed to get down to 38 last night. It certainly feels like it this morning as I sip my cappuccino, my hands desperately trying to leech all the heat out of the cup. I did manage to work on the book last night as well (another chapter down; roughly eleven left to go, but if I get one per day done it’ll be finished in ten days and then can sit for a moment or two while I get ready for the final polish before turning it in), which was lovely. It’s taking shape and getting better; I really can’t wait to get it turned in. I need to finish a story, too, and I need to really get cracking on the Kansas book when this is all done and behind me.

The sun is rising, which means the gradual warming will begin, which is lovely. It’ll be cold though when I dash out to my car, and from my car into the office, but at least that means I can wear a sweater. I love sweaters, and don’t get many opportunities to wear them, so there’s that part, which I do like. I also like when the apartment is cold, which means wearing sweats and watching television or reading underneath blankets. (I’m under one right now, in fact, and it’s nice and toasty; one of those thin ones that somehow manages to keep me warm, like the ones they used to give you on airplanes.)

The other thing about it being cold is it makes it harder for me to wake completely up. My insomnia came back last night with a vengeance–it’s been awhile, and I figured the cold, plus the exhaustion from the gym, would have put me under in no time at all. Instead, despite how lovely and warm the bed and blankets were, I never really feel into a deep, restful sleep. I am going to be extremely tired tonight, and may even go to bed earlier than I usually do; we shall see once I get home from the office today.

I do worry the world is going to close down again sometime soon–although I am fairly certain that even if we do, I’ll be considered an ‘essential worker’–I kind of think I am, even if I am not a medical professional; I help keep people safe and healthy (at least that’s the goal) and the service I do provide, which is necessary for our PrEP clients to get their prescriptions renewed, is kind of essential–but we did close the program down during the original lockdown, so….I just hope not. As little as I like getting up at six three mornings a week, I love interacting with my clients and getting out of the house and feeling useful. But I do think another one is coming; it’s just a matter of time, and as the infections rise thanks to Thanksgiving…imagine how people are going to be about Christmas.

And on that note, it’s time to get in the shower and pack my lunch and get my day rolling. Have a happy first of December, Constant Reader.

The Outside

And the vacation is over and it’s back to work this morning. Huzzah?

As I mentioned, I didn’t get nearly as much done as I had hoped over the vacation, but that always happens. I got back into the writing of the book, and that’s really the most important thing to me; I was beginning to think I was just going to keep blowing it off and then wake one morning and realize fuck it’s due next week and I haven’t done a fucking thing.

You know, like I always do.

But I made some good progress on the book; I started a couple of new short stories (whether they will amount to anything is a completely different subject, of course); I got a lot of rest, and I also managed to get some cabinets cleaned out and organized. Looking back, of course, it feels like I didn’t get an awful lot done and I am not entirely certain where all the time actually went–but I am counting the week as a win and will not give it to my tendency to be negative about myself, which is far too often my default.

I did finish reading Night of Camp David yesterday, and it’s timeliness was a bit astonishing, really; the concept of a president having a mental breakdown and being extremely paranoid is something I’ve seen at least twice in my lifetime, and hope to never see again. I started rereading William March’s classic The Bad Seed yesterday as well–I read it originally a very long time ago–when I was a teenager, I think; I checked it out of the library, as I recall–and I don’t really remember as much of it as I would like. I suspect most of my memories of the story are from the film, frankly.

We finished watching The Undoing last night, and I wasn’t terribly pleased with how it ended; it was an interesting episode, but it didn’t feel earned…no spoilers, of course, but I felt the ending was a bit of a cheat for those who’d watched the entire time, and too much was left unanswered, I felt. Your mileage might vary, of course. Overall we enjoyed it–the performances were great–but we were disappointed with the final episode, is all. We also watched another episode of Murder on Middle Beach, which was interesting–some new added twists and suspects mixed into it last night, and there’s only one more episode. I suspect the mystery of who actual committed the murder isn’t going to be solved in the final episode, but I do hope the young man making the documentary (about his mother’s murder) gets some kind of closure here, otherwise I am not sure what the point of the documentary was, other than the true-crime craze we seem to be experiencing right now in popular culture.

It’s very cold in New Orleans this morning–right now it’s forty-nine degrees, and not getting warmer today. The forecast for the week is abysmal–forties at night, sixties during the day–which is going to make getting up early and going to work a pain in the butt, as I am not a big fan of the cold under any circumstances.

And on that note, I need to start getting ready to head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.