Category: Southern Gothic

What’s New Pussycat?

I can tell you what right now: Sparky wants treats! Nothing new there, of course, but to him it’s what he needs to start his day of being Apex Predator of the Lost Apartment, where no pen or bottle cap is safe, and he does his part to declutter by knocking everything to the floor. He really is a doll. I just wish he liked to cuddle more in the bed. He’ll sleep and cuddle with me in my easy chair–I think this imprinted on him after my surgery, when I slept in the chair for at least two weeks–but other than that? Nope. Even if you take him to the bed and curl up with him, he’ll wiggle out and go under the bed to protect us from whatever might come down the (blocked off) chimney. It was funny yesterday; I’d forgotten to reset the alarm (I’d set it to seven for Monday and forget to reset it back to six Monday night when I went to bed), but I woke up at five, knew what I’d done, and just kept waking up every twenty minutes or so. I finally got up without the alarm yesterday at six, and Sparky was so sound asleep he didn’t hear me get up! I was already downstairs, had cleaned my teeth and washed my face and was brewing coffee when he sleepily staggered into the kitchen with his eyes half-closed, and chirped half-heartedly.

Trust me, Sparky, I know the feeling well.

I was tired last night after work and making groceries, so I collapsed into my easy chair after writing over 900 words. It was a struggle to get those 900 words down, too, but it didn’t trigger one of those oh my God I can’t make the word count for the day and does this mean I am never going to be able to write again and I am going to be behind! You know what? It’s not the fucking end of the world. I wrote 2000 Monday and 900 yesterday. I’ve done over ten thousand since I started a week ago Sunday. Paul was also late getting home, so Sparky and I hung out in my easy chair and I watched the news before reading another magazine from the stack of them here at my desk. Once Paul was home, we watched the US Open for a while before I had to go to bed. It’s very exciting to have two US men in the semi-finals, which means an American in the finals for the first time in a very long time, which is kind of exciting.

We’re in a flash flood warning for the rest of the week (!) as we are supposed to get up to eight inches of rain or more over the next few days. The weekend is supposed to be neither super-hot or excessively humid and will “feel like” fall–so that could mean anything, really. 60s thru 80s, or somesuch. LSU plays Nicholls this weekend, which I am not wild about watching. They’ll either win by a lot and with ease, which is boring to watch (and I inevitably feel bad for the other team) or it’s disappointing because LSU played badly. I’ll probably give in and watch, but will read while I do. I feel pretty good this morning–it was a bit of a struggle to get up, frankly–but it should be a good day as the coffee is kicking in and I am feeling more awake with every moment.

I hope to finish the chapter I started yesterday today; I am having fun with the book even if it is more complicated and tricky than usual (I am trying something challenging); and I am hoping the more I am able to flex my writing muscles and write more and get more into the habit of it my productivity might go up as well. I have all these essays I’ve started over the last year or so that I need to finish, and I also need to write something for the Substack; I don’t think I posted anything last week and if I want to be a professional and grow it as a marketing tool for my writing, I need to be more…regular with it. I can’t blog and write a newsletter essay every damned day, but I can write a blog entry every day and write a newsletter essay every week, even while writing a book. I can feel that I am also starting, from time to time, to get a little anxious about being so far behind on all my writing. I would like to get all of these in-progress stories and essays finished by the end of the year, but am also aware that’s a very ambitious program. I mean, it is possible, of course; everything is, but it may not be realistic. Then again I seem to be past anxiety and stress (yay correct medications!) but I am also finding that I no longer need anxiety and stress to write, which is absolutely lovely. Yes, I did worry a bit about that when my creativity was fallow, and yes, I feel much better about everything in general. It’s amazing what a difference actually writing and creating does for my mind.

But it does, and that’s just a fact. Nothing makes me more aware that I am meant to be a writer than how much better writing makes me feel. It’s also nice to be enjoying it; it feels like I’ve not really had the opportunity in a very long time to savor and enjoy the entire process, and it’s really terrific to rediscover my joy at being a creative. After almost thirty years of being paid to write, I’m finally in a place where I can just kind of enjoy myself and appreciate it more and maybe, just maybe, I’ll even be able to do more promotion when the next one comes out than I’ve been doing for about a decade.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a good Wednesday, Constant Reader, and remember that we’re on the downward slide into the weekend now!

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Cast Your Fate To The Wind

Ah, and here we are, three day weekend in the rearview mirror as we coast headfirst into a Tuesday that is destined to feel like a Monday all day. I set the alarm and got up at seven-ish; an hour later than a work day and really, something completely sensible to do on days off. An extra hour still feels like a treat, and then I have the entire morning to get things done. I washed dishes, made breakfast, wrote two posts, and then dug into the book and cranked out over two thousand words before noon–with the entire day still ahead of me. I wish I could tell you that I worked on some other writing, but I didn’t. I was reading newsletters and magazines that have stacked up (another thing that is stupid–I let magazines pile up, collect dust, and just be clutter rather than simply reading them at first opportunity and then tossing them in the trash–or tearing out an article that may be of interest to me at a later date (can’t imagine how all that paper piled up on me over the years). I am pleased to say I have only three back issues of Texas Monthly (their true crime reporting is stellar) and the latest 64 Parishes to read now. I also watched some news clips on Youtube, fell into a wormhole about the history of the Cathars in southern France and the Albigensian Crusade that killed them all, and finally started reading about the Baptist War in Jamaica–there’ll be more on that at another time, trust me on that– before doing some filing and touching up around here. All in all, it was a lovely weekend, and I am so delighted to be back into the book again (I was worried about picking it back up again after the last few days not working on it), and knowing that my editorial and creative eye is coming back together, too. I still have to get used to my life as it is now, and I know there are going to be bad days that I just need to accept and roll with, and not beat myself up over those sorts of things. Being too tired to write or create is a valid reason for not doing so. It just is painful and the writing isn’t any good, anyway–and it’s not like I need to prove to myself that I can write a goddamn crime novel, do I?

I feel pretty rested and good this morning. We shall see how that develops for the rest of the day. I think we’re pretty busy today; or maybe not; maybe it was next week? We always get busy at the STI clinic after Southern Decadence…which kind of makes me a little proud, because we’ve trained our clients so well that they know about the window periods for the bacterial infections so they wait. (The schedule isn’t that busy; I just checked it–laptop came home with me on Thursday–so yes, it’s next week that is super-busy.) I have to make groceries on the way home from the office tonight; I may be too tired to work on the book tonight but…that’s okay.

Yesterday afternoon I was kind of at loose ends and dangerously close to being bored, when I remembered a conversation at work recently, in which one of my co-workers told me he loves to watch bad movies with a friend to laugh at them, so I asked, as is my wont, if they’d seen Voyage of the Rock Aliens–I have yet to find anyone else who has seen it (I saw it twice in the theater) and so that was in my mind. Right now I can’t remember the brain trail that led me to think of it yesterday, but I did, and the whole movie is up on Youtube…so yes, I rewatched it, and…it really can’t be watched alone to be laughed at properly. Anyway, it was the great Ruth Gordon’s final movie (what an epitaph!), starred Pia Zadora and an incredibly beautiful young Craig Sheffer. It’s a weird mash-up of the bad scifi and beach movies of the 50s and 60s, a lot of the humor is of the time (I’m sure kids today, or even viewers of any age for that matter, would get the Lake Eerie jokes, because the lake was cleaned up), and it’s even more godawful to rewatch after forty years or so. It may even be worth it’s own entry…

We also started watching Kaos, which is demented in a very fun way; a modern twist on Greek mythology. A reboot kind of, if you will. Jeff Goldblum is perfect as Zeus, as is Janet McTeer as Hera. Of course, since it involves Orpheus and Eurydice, it put me in mind of Hadestown, which I saw on Broadway in New York thanks to Mike Ford. I’m looking forward to watching more tonight, if I’m not too tired and Paul isn’t working on a grant the way he has been for the last week or so. Of course, I could unwind with my Alison Gaylin ARC, which I am doling out to myself as a reward for getting things done.

I am very glad that my brain has finally unlocked and I am not only writing again, but writing the way I did before the recent times of troubles. I’m enjoying it, and am having fun with it again. I don’t know if I am all the way there again yet, and I’m not all the way back to normal (or whatever passes for normal in my life) quite yet, but I don’t feel like there’s a dark cloud in my brain and just getting through the day is a triumph anymore. Now that it’s unlocked, I can also see that some of the stories I’ve written over the last four years and not been able to place (or finish)? Now that my mind is more clear than it’s been in a while, I can see what the problems are–the voice and tone of the story. They’re written kind of in a cheery, pleasant tone, and that doesn’t work with what the stories are about. What was I thinking? No, they need to be colder, and more desperate, unsentimental, which isn’t as easy for me as it should be. They need to be harder and colder and crueler, more desperate, in order for the stories to work, which is also pretty cool. I’m so glad I’ve figured this out at long last! I also think part of the reason I made the stories not as dark as they needed to be was because of the shitshow life had become for us all and I didn’t want to write anything dark. My brain was telling me something, wasn’t it?

I also walked to Walgreens to get treats for His Impious Majesty, listening to the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast and rather enjoying it–it’s really hilarious, you should check it out–when the door opened in my brain and I finally figured out what podcasts actually are: they’re like radio shows of old only with a more modern delivery system. so we’ve kind of circled back around the entertainment my grandparents used to enjoy–radio/podcast, they are basically the same, with the primary difference how you get distributed to listeners, kind of like do-it-yourself radio. Yes, it only took me how many years to figure it out? Heavy sigh. But now that I finally get them, I can start looking for others that could be fun and informational. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around them–sometimes I have to connect newer technology to older so I can understand its purpose. Yes, I am well aware how obtuse I can be, which I think is a part of the wacky brain chemistry that I want to talk to my doctor about. I don’t need medication to control the wandering mind syndrome, as I’ve remembered how to write again, so that’s not an issue. But it would be nice to have a diagnosis rather than simply wondering and self-diagnosing from my reading.

I also started relearning German on Duolingo this weekend, which makes sense. There are crusty memories deep in the recesses of my brain, and doesn’t it make more sense to try triggering my memory rather than starting from scratch with a whole new language. So far, so good. I can order coffee and bread and wine in German now. So, when I am in a German coffee shop I can say, kaffee und brot, bitte.

I didn’t really have much FOMO about Bouchercon over the weekend–obviously, I know I would have had fun had I gone because now I know too many people not to have fun, if that makes any kind of sense to you. I did miss seeing everyone, but my primary regret in not going was not being able to participate in the voting down of removing the DEI (aka inclusion) from the Bouchercon operating by-laws…yes another attempt by a mediocre white man who used to be on the Board and was long associated with it (back in its misogynist, racist, homophobic days where that kind of shit was not only tolerated, but enjoyed) deciding that since he had a problem with inclusion the entire conference should just do away with it. Thanks, Al Abramson, I remember reporting being treated homophobically by programming years ago and you just patted me on the head and basically told me to get over it. Fuck you all the way to hell and back, and don’t think we aren’t fucking organized, you miserable piece of bigoted trash. Can’t imagine why queers felt uncomfortable and unsafe attending your fucking event, and the trash LOC couldn’t even be bothered reassuring us, and in fact, exposed how homophobic the LOC was. But thanks to the alert Board members and some others–CWoC, QCW–rallied the troops, but the Board also refused to consider it and the refusal of this last minute last ditch attempt to make it a Karen-and-Chad conference again. But this is also why we have to be forever vigilant, because there’s always some mediocrity trying to drive out the marginalized.

Must have been a real bitch-slap seeing how diverse the Anthony Awards were.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday that feels like Monday, and may be back later.

Red Roses for a Blue Lady

Labor Day and the last day of the three day weekend and Southern Decadence. It’ll be back to work with me again tomorrow (not going to say huzzah for that, sorry) but at least it’ll be a short work week. Alas, we don’t get another holiday until Thanksgiving, but I may take some time off this fall just to relax and rest and do shit, you know? I am finding these long weekends are enormously good for me physically and mentally, to be honest. I set my alarm to get up earlier this morning rather than letting myself just sleep as late as I wanted to,, and I feel better than I have all weekend sleeping late. Peculiar and strange, c’est moi. But I do want to get some things done today while taking it easy as well. I am trying to put off going to the grocery store until tomorrow; I may be able to get away with just a short walk to Walgreens because His Majesty is out of treats…but maybe it’s better to do it today and get it over with.

It does feel like I haven’t been to the office in an eternity.

Well, LSU lost it’s fifth straight season opener last night, and while I am trying not to get terribly discouraged about the season–it always sucks to start off the season with a loss–because it’s hard to say already how good USC is; so I really don’t have any idea of how good this year’s Tigers are. I had a feeling they were overconfident, and as galling as it is to lose to Lincoln Riley of all people, they could have won the game had they not consistently shot themselves in the foot, over and over, and there were a lot of questionable play calls that left points on the field. It actually reminded me a lot of the Florida State loss two years ago. Anyway, the Tigers have an easy game next week before coming home to play UCLA, so we’ll see how they regroup. I will also say Garrett Nussmaier is a great passer, so there’s potential for a great season despite the early loss. The loss cast a pall over the Lost Apartment, and I went to bed early, planning on rising early this morning, so that worked out just fine.

I had a lazy day around the house yesterday, not really doing a lot of anything. I read some more of We Are Watching, the new Alison Gaylin1 (preorder now, it’s coming out in January) which is marvelous as is everything she writes, before spending some time watching the US Open and news clips on Youtube. My shoulder was still sore from the vaccination on Saturday (it’s still sore this morning, too), and so I thought it best to take it easy and not risk getting unwell from the shot (which has happened the previous shots); or maybe it was my brain leaning into being lazy, which is always its preference. I did think a lot about the book yesterday, and feeling actually kind of excited about it, to be honest. I am trying something with it that’s more of a challenge to me, and that’s really exciting for me. I also spent some time filing yesterday and I did get ahead on the dishes and so forth. Today I can vacuum, if I so chose; but overall I am planning on a mostly low-energy day with lots of Sparky time relaxing in my easy chair. I am also planning on reading some more this morning.

The excitement I am feeling about writing this book has also kind of had a simmering effect on my creativity; rather than bursting with ideas the way I usually am when I am writing a book, I get a new idea but it’s more developed than the usual “just a title and a character and the basic idea,” which is also cool. I am also solving problems with some short stories I’ve stalled on, so yeah, it was a good weekend in that regard, and I am also working on some essays. It’s not like I’m not working even on days when I don’t advance the word count on the book, either.

Social media, such as it is now, is becoming more and more a waste of time that I don’t need to deal with in my life, frankly. One of the major problems is that it’s an election year, which is making people drop their masks with the mealy-mouthed can’t we all be friends despite our politics and the privilege that just drips from those statements just enrages me. The difference between me and the Right is that I don’t want anyone to be stripped of their rights. The Right’s corruption of American symbols has always been more about show than belief; kind of like their religion. I apparently spent a lot more time on Twitter than I thought I did–one never really is truly aware, is one–and now that Facebook is basically circling the drain, too, I am amazed at how much more free time I have. I guess I had become far more dependent on social media than I would have preferred or believed? Yesterday was another prime example of how bad Facebook is becoming. A lesbian writer friend had posted an image of a hideous Confederate flag cake with a joke about marrying your first cousin. Some woman I don’t know took offense, and said that flag has evolved into representing all Southerners.

I beg your fucking pardon?

Yeah, I let the racist bitch have it with both barrels before blocking her skank ass. Was she another lesbian writer? I don’t know and I don’t care, but if she is a writer, if that’s the way her mind works she’s probably a shitty writer as well as a shitty person. NO ONE defends the Traitor’s Flag and claims it represents all Southern people–because it sure as fuck does not represent Southern Black people, and to say that it does is so fucking racist you need to be repeatedly slapped, shamed, and driven out of the public square.

The paradox of tolerance is you cannot tolerate intolerance.

I also figured out what I need to do with Never Kiss a Stranger, and managed to convince myself my inability to finish that book was not a failure, either of imagination or as a writer. I knew how the book ended, and I knew how I wanted it to begin, but I didn’t know how to write the middle. The fact that it also started as a novella that I decided to expand and make longer has something to do with it, too; I kept going back and forth on whether there was enough story for a book or if I should, indeed, keep it as a novella, which can be forty thousand or less. There’s really not a place to publish novellas anymore, so at best I’d be able to do a novella collection or something as I have several others on hand, too–and one is almost nearly complete. Maybe I should include it in my collection of short stories? That would definitely fill that book out.

So, despite not really doing a whole lot of writing over the holiday weekend, I am not chiding or berating myself this morning over “wasting time.” It was a productive weekend, and I am getting better at being kinder to myself. I’m still figuring out the work/writing/life balance, but what I do know is that balance is a lot better now than it’s been in several decades.

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and repair to my easy chair for some more of Alison’s book. Have a great Labor Day, and never forget it was unions that got us the forty-hour work week, paid sick time and vacations, breaks, and weekends. I may be back later; we shall simply have to see how things go, won’t we?

  1. Part of the reason I am enjoying the book so much–it hit me yesterday–is the writing style/voice reminds me very much of Ira Levin, who I’ve been thinking about a lot lately; been wanting to revisit The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil, especially since JD Vance reminds me of one. ↩︎

Silhouettes

Monday morning after a lovely weekend, and we have Labor Day coming up this weekend. Huzzah! I am a little bleary for being up so early this morning, but I don’t feel tired, just not completely awake yet. The good news is I wrote thirteen hundred words of the new Scotty yesterday, and feel very smug and pleased about it. At first I was concerned when the tap was turned off, 1300 words is nothing compared to my old output, but I realized those muscles are tight and haven’t really been used as thoroughly or regularly as I should, so they are going to need to be retrained, just like I need to be retrained with regular going to the gym. I have to slowly build back up so I don’t strain or pull one of those muscles. The weekend was nice–low humidity, and the so the temperatures didn’t feel as brutal, especially since we’ve gotten used to it “feeling like” over 110 for almost two solid months. Yeesh. I think the humidity is coming back today; I know we may have rain this afternoon. But overall, this morning I feel pretty good–at least so far–and am ready to get some stuff done.

It really is lovely to have the weekends free from everything, you know? I didn’t get nearly as much work done on the house as I would have liked, but at the same I worry the lack of pressure or any anxiety driving me is making me a bit more lackadaisical when it comes to things…despite intellectually knowing that my brain has been rewired so I have to rewire everything else to get things done. It’s a learning process, and I had thought I had my routines and so forth down to a science. And hopefully, this time around I will not teach myself the bad habits I allowed to develop over the years. We shall see, won’t we? I did also rethink some of this stuff over the weekend, too. I’ve been so rigid in my writing and how I construct a novel and rarely, if ever, varied that pattern. It was what worked for me then, and I never really had the free time to sit down and figure all of this stuff out. I’m kind of doing that now, and I also think writing two books at the same time (when I was still writing books and hadn’t yet encountered the nightmare that was 2023 kind of broke my writer brain a little bit. It happens, you know? But the rigid way I always used to write my books wasn’t working for Never Kiss a Stranger, and because it’s not my usual kind of crime novel, the unstructured writing of it made it much harder to write. If I am going to finish that book–and I intend to at some point–it needs a plot summary and an outline. Maybe that’s something I can work on while I work on this new Scotty? Stranger things have happened, after all.

Maybe, just maybe, I should do the same with Scotty, rather than making it up as I go? Again, I did that with the first and second, didn’t I? Something indeed to ponder as the three day weekend draws nearer and nearer by the day. I am excited to be writing another Scotty book, because it’s in my comfort zone, and isn’t that where I need to be to get into the swing of persevering with the daily writing, in my comfort zone? I think it’s probably smarter to write another Scotty, and then step out of my comfort zone and go back to Never Kiss a Stranger...although I did remember yesterday why I focused on finishing it in the first place. It developed from me going from finishing the novellas into a collection, realizing this one could be a really good novel, and then moving on to writing it…when what I should have been doing, if I wasn’t doing another Scotty, was finishing either Muscles or Chlorine, and I am going to write one of those next, PERIOD.

But it’s also nice to be putting thought into these things.

On the way home, I am going to stop and make groceries. Once I am there I am going to finish the dishes and laundry, possibly make dinner (or possibly not), and get the rugs back in place in the kitchen. Paul will be home, so I should make something for dinner but I’m not really sure what…and I definitely don’t like deciding while at the store itself what to make for dinner. Pizza would probably be the easiest thing, really; just got one of those premade crusts and slather pizza sauce and cheese over it. I do need to work on my cabinets, but that might be a project for the three-day weekend. I also need to revise and update the to-do list. I feel pretty good this morning, and the nice thing is that my “bad” days now are just more low-energy than depressions as deep as the Grand Canyon, like it was before. I also need to start listening to my body again. I need to stretch regularly, and I need to get back to rehabbing my arm/shoulder at the gym or I will never get back to (as close to) normal (as I can get after the injury and surgery) again. But I’m starting to fall into a routine, I’m not sleepy and groggy until well after ten every morning anymore, and getting up is more about leaving the warmth and comfort of the bed more than anything else.

I hate when I’m comfortable and have to stop.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader. I might be back later–I’m trying to write an essay about toxic masculinity for the Substack, and trying to stick to the “one essay per week” thing there. Or…I may come back over here and try to talk about something, you never know.

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Unchained Melody

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and yesterday was a rather lovely day, in all honesty. I didn’t put any pressure on myself, but did make some progress on the apartment itself. I cleared out two boxes off the top of the cabinets, and know now what the others are–and know they can simply go into the attic once it is cleared out. This means…I am getting to the point where I can start working on the attic. This pleases me enormously, and there’s some other stuff that needs to be done here in the workspace this morning before I make a minor grocery run. We watched this week’s Bad Monkey, which I am loving, and then some more Solar Opposites. I also managed to get a week’s worth of dishes taken care of–I was really lazy and taking advantage of the entire “birthday week” excuse this week, I am a bit red-faced to admit–and reminded myself to never let it get that bad again…which will last probably about a week.

I also watched the Georgia Tech-Florida State game. I simply flipped over to it while looking for a movie to watch (to no avail; nothing sounded good) to see the score, and saw the end of the second half with the score tied 14-14. That intrigued me enough to continue watching, and it turned out to be a rather good game, as Georgia Tech kicked a field goal on the last play of the game to upset #10 Florida State, 24-21. It was a great game–I do sometimes watch college football when I don’t care about either team–made even greater by the upset win for Georgia Tech (I am not a FSU fan), and that kind of got me into the mood for football season. LSU’s first game is this weekend; Sunday evening in Las Vegas, of all places. I have no idea how good LSU is going to be this year–I am not one of those people who reads analysts and so forth and practice reports; they are meaningless really until it’s actually a game and they’re keeping score. I prefer to be surprised, and college football is always full of surprises. I don’t even pay attention to the NFL preseason, either.

I wasn’t a complete sloth yesterday. I did do some things around the house, and looking around this morning, there’s more that needs to be done. I’m not used to having all this free time, which is the primary adjustment I am having to make in the present day…and it’s kind of nice, you know? I still need to figure out how to be more productive, and how to utilize the time, but I worked so hard for so very long and never had a minute’s peace for so long that it’s just kind of nice to not be worried about things anymore. I plan to spend some time this morning straightening up the kitchen again, and picking things up and filing, and I also want to do the floors. I didn’t leave the house yesterday so I have to make that grocery run today (to make dinner tonight I have to go), but that’s not a big deal, really. It’s nice, though, to not be stressed and anxious about not working in my free time.

I even thought about writing projects yesterday. I am really leaning towards shelving Never Kiss a Stranger for now; I realized yesterday it was one of those stupid “stubbornly obsessive” things that I get into my head every once in a while. I remembered yesterday that originally I had intended to finish my novella collection this summer, which meant working on that, and then I realized it was more of a book than a novella, and decided to write that for the summer. And even though I was having trouble with it on almost every level of turning what I already had into a novel, I was stubbornly refusing to shelve it and move on, which was counter-productive. No one cares if I finish that book now or at some other time, or if I never write it at all. So, I am going to put it aside for now and forget about it for a while. It only makes sense to get back into regular writing with a Scotty book, and a Scotty book will be somewhat easier for me to write…and easier for me to get back into the swing of writing again after so much time away from it.

I also realized that the MAGA meltdown over Gus Walz was an excellent way to open my essay “Are You Man Enough?”, and so I did scribble some notes on that yesterday as well. I am actually kind of looking forward to this work week, believe it or not, and I do think getting to work on another Scotty–Hurricane Season Hustle–will be a lot more fun for me going forward.

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

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The Birds and the Bees

Wednesday morning and back to the office with me today. It’s a good thing, but I did really enjoy my four days of rest and relaxation. Yesterday I did nothing. I mean, I didn’t put any pressure on myself to do anything and was just a lazy slug for most of the day. I did do some of the dishes, and I did make salisbury steak for dinner (I really do like it, and it wasn’t that difficult) and even took a nap yesterday afternoon (fell asleep for almost two hours in my chair). I watched the DNC last night, and was reminded of how much I love the Obamas; Michelle certainly burned the Republicans to the ground, and after years of them going high–it was nice to see them drag the right and Trump for the racist, juvenile filth they are. It was very cathartic to see and hear, frankly. I feel so much better about the election it’s like a whole new world for us to live in now. Oh, I know it’s going to be much closer than it should be (bigotry and prejudice will still sway some people, alas), and election night is going to be incredibly stressful. But I no longer dread the election, even if it there is an eternity until the votes are counted.

These changes over the last month or so have been so incredible. I went from feeling like I was living under another dark cloud–the same one that’s been up there since 2016–and that dark cloud just made everything else so much worse. Everything just seemed bleak, and then so much else happened in the time since. I think that also had a lot to do with the writing burnout I was/am experiencing on top of everything else awful that has happened in the intervening eight years. There were a lot of dark clouds since 2016, and of course when you’re already prone to things because of your anxiety and some deeply imbedded self-loathing that you’ve never really gotten past, it makes the writing so much harder. I’ve clearly slowed down over the last seven years or so–and the successes I’ve had I’ve not really been able to enjoy. I’ve been nominated for a lot of mainstream awards since the sewage rode the escalator down and grifted his way into the White House, which is incredibly cool.

It’ hard to believe it has only been a month since the President decided not to run again.

I’m also on the fence about Never Kiss a Stranger, and I am slowly coming to the conclusion that it just may not be the time for me to write it. I think I am going to go back over those chapters I’ve already done this week and try fixing them. I think that it’s not so much “Imposter Syndrome” or burnout or even laziness as it is maybe not the right time to write this book. Maybe it’s not a book and should just remain novella length? Not everything has to be a novel, after all. It does, as a novella, need more work; but it also needs more work as a book. And if I can’t decide right now which one it should be…maybe it’s just not the right time for me to be writing this book. Maybe I should just write another Scotty–not that it will be easy to do so–but just to get back into the swing of writing again. There is something comforting about revisiting Scotty’s world; and it means I need to revisit those books, and maybe–just maybe–it’s time to copy edit Jackson Square Jazz and get that ebook up and available.

And it’s also entirely possible that Never Kiss a Stranger is one of those projects destined to remain unfinished. I have quite a few of those on hand these days, it seems! But not everything needs to be finished, and not every idea plays out in a story or a novella or into a book, you know? I also worry about repeating myself with my work; what if I’ve already written this character or this story or used this subplot already1; the problem is I’ve been creating and writing for so long–as well as plundering old stuff for plots and character names–that the possibility of completely forgetting that I’ve used a plot or characters already is pretty high.

So, I am going to futz around the rest of this week, work on some stories, and maybe see how a new Scotty might flow for me. Hey, you never know.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later on or tomorrow!

  1. Absolutely no disrespect intended, but even Agatha Christie recycled plots. ↩︎

King of the Road

Well, happy birthday to me. It’s actually midnight and I am up far past my bedtime. I stayed up watching the Democratic National Convention, and wow, what an evening that was. Then I realized it wasn’t that long until the end of my sixty-third year and the start of my sixty-fourth. Yikes indeed! Who’d have thought the old queen would last this long? I certainly never gave it a thought, and just always dismissed with it a shrug and oh I’ll be long dead by then. Surprise! Here I am, a little at sea and dealing with the complicated feelings of being older and all that serious stuff I’ve managed to avoid thinking about or dealing with for so much of my life. And yet…here I am, still alive and kicking and with a brain that’s only slightly slower and a memory that has a lot more blanks than it used to and really, a lot less energy than I used to have but that’s all kind of normal. I am also still getting used to the free time I have now, and kind of enjoying just having no pressure on me.

There are worse things than turning sixty-three, frankly. Seventy, for example. Just kidding, I have no idea how bad or good that will feel when it happens.

I had a nice day yesterday. I went to the grocery store and mostly cleaned and picked up things around the house, and worked on the kitchen. I actually took the rugs out and shook them for the first time in I don’t want to know how long, and came down to a nice, orderly looking kitchen. I was thinking yesterday that I don’t really want to do anything today–but then realized I actually like organizing and cleaning, so won’t rule any of that out while heading into the day. I am going to try to not leave the house–I may go to Five Guys for lunch, but the jury is still out on that. We’re not in a heat advisory today, which is also kind of great–first day in many weeks that we’ve not been in one, so indeed happy birthday to me! I am also not rushing to finish this either; I am going to finish this and post it whenever I feel like it. (Who am I kidding, I’ll finish and post while I am sitting here, won’t I?)

I’m just going to do today the way I want to do today, and do what I feel like and won’t feel any pressure to do anything I don’t want to do, or rather, don’t feel like doing. It’s a very weird feeling, frankly. I realized yesterday that part of the problem is that period of physically not being able to write very much (or at all) has gotten me out of the habits, and that means I don’t remember how to focus, which is also why I am having trouble reading (I am going to try to do some this morning to kickstart those sleeping muscles and hoping that reading will remind my brain how to focus). Part of it is memory loss, of course–the COVID experience in 2022 seemingly wiped my memory banks, and that’s only gotten somewhat worse. But that’s okay. The creativity has come back (which I always worry about) but what’s missing is the focus; I have to harness the creativity and make it work for me going forward.

I also found myself, as is my wont, having all kinds of thoughts and ideas about works already in progress or potential future projects, all the while remembering all the way back when my novels first started coming out–and how different the world I first published in was from today’s. I also started thinking about my next Scotty book, and what the plot of that is going to be. Interestingly enough, I was also thinking about a future Scotty book, in which we address Cancer Alley at long last. Maybe it’s not out of my scope to write environmental crime novels set in Louisiana, exploring how the conservatives have essentially allowed the state to be looted and plundered, environment be damned, for generations and do not want any changes to the status quo. Why not me? It’ll be challenging, for sure, but doing the research will be fun and informative. Or…maybe Cancer Alley would be the kind of story that would be better for a Chanse novel? Do I want to bring him back? It IS fun to think about, to be honest.

I also decided that as I build the Substack essay audience, I have to do better work to post there. I’ve been doing it mostly the same way I do this blog–find a topic to discuss from my life (whether it’s media I’ve consumed, something about writing, the trials of being gay, life lessons learned, experiences that made me who I am today) and then sit down and write and post it, without edits or rewrites. If I ever move it to a paid model, I have to give people something that they are willing to pay for to read–and that’s why I am thinking it’s a good place for these essays, even a short story here and there, and so on–and that means I have to start thinking of the Substack in a more professional manner.

And maybe, just maybe, I should start looking at this blog as more of a professional endeavor for me than something I just dash off in the morning while I am waking up.

Big thoughts on my birthday. And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I am getting another cup of coffee, heating up a breakfast sandwich in the microwave, and then I am getting into my chair with the new Alison Gaylin ARC. Happy birthday to me, and may you have a marvelous day, Constant Reader; it’s highly doubtful I’ll be back before tomorrow morning when I return to work and get up ungodly early again.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Blergh.

I am up way too early this morning, and I can’t even have any coffee. I am having labs drawn this morning, and I need to fast for them…so I always schedule it for super-early so I can get it over and done with and back home to the shower and my coffee. I am not working at home today like I usually do; we’re having a department meeting and although I had permission to join the meeting on Teams…I also had some admin work to do in the office so I figured I might as well just go in person and do my work time there. I mean, I took Monday and Tuesday off, so missing out on a work-at-home day when I have four days off in a row isn’t going to be a major issue for me. And it’s not a full day, anyway. We’re going to Costco after I get home from work later, and I do have some errands to get taken care of this weekend. But I took Monday and Tuesday off for my birthday, so I have four days to relax, read, clean, or just do nothing if I so choose.

Well, I am home from having the labs drawn. I won’t spare you the gruesome story of the poor phlebotomist who had to locate a vein–the vein he finally found in my right forearm only gave one vial, so he then had to use my left hand; it actually didn’t hurt (I’ve steeled myself to having blood drawn, and having it done so regularly for my PrEP prescription has kind of inured me to sharp pointy metal things going into my skin. I also scheduled my flu shot and my RSV vaccine for tomorrow morning, so look at me–getting all this medical stuff knocked out and being pro-active about my own health, which is actually kind of lovely. It’s one of those things that I consider “ooh, look at me being a responsible adult” which is kind of a reaction to being told for so long that I was so completely irresponsible by so many people. I do enjoy, however, those moments when I behave like an actual adult. (I’ve set the bar pretty low for myself, in case you couldn’t tell.)

Despite being tired on my way home from work last night, I did do a speck of writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about a short story that’s been in progress for almost ten years, but I was never really sure how to end it, or really what it was about. I got the idea for it when I had to stop to use the rest room at a rest stop in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. There was only one other car there, and it was running with the passenger door open. At first I was amused–I guess someone really had to use the bathroom pretty badly–and of course my next thought was that it was probably a woman…but as I walked up to the building and went into the bathroom there was no one in the men’s room, so I assumed I was right. But after washing my hands, I walked back out and the car was exactly the same as it was when I passed. I called Highway Assistance–in case it was something serious and there was a woman lying on the floor in the bathroom or something, and once I was back on the road again, I thought about the situation all the way to my parents’, and pictured a woman coming to the same rest stop and encountering the same situation, only she finds an unconscious bleeding woman in the bathroom…and the main character is really not in a position herself to call the police. A picture of the Smoky Mountains on Facebook–the riotous colors of fall–came across my feed over the weekend, and it put the story back into my frontal lobe, so I decided to work on it some more this week since it was taking form in my head. I know why the main character is there, I know why the bleeding woman is there, and all I have left is deciding which ending is the best. I didn’t write much–Sparky kept distracting me before Paul came down to watch television with me–but I did get some writing done, and that feels simply wonderful.

Anyway, this day is going to feel off all day because it’s out of the ordinary. Getting up and out for the lab work; coming into the office for a meeting and to catch up on Admin work here that should be done before I leave for my brief vacation this weekend–odds and ends, really, that shouldn’t wait until I return to the office on Wednesday.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for this strange Friday. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I doubt I’ll be back before tomorrow morning.

Help!

Wednesday and it’s Pay the Bills Day again! Woo-hoo! I didn’t sleep through the night–getting up a couple of times, but I feel rested and fine this morning. Go figure. I hit a wall again yesterday afternoon, and was very tired when I got home last night. I did have my Sparky time, collapsing into my easy chair and getting caught up on the news; he expects this time now, because I’ve trained him to expect that after I get home and he gets fed–just like he tries to wake me up every morning at six on the days I don’t have to get up. Friday I have to go to Quest to get labs drawn at seven in the morning, and I also have a department meeting that morning as well, so I’ll roll out of bed and stumble, bleary-eyed, to Quest, then come back home and swill coffee and get cleaned up to head into the office (since I am already there, I am just going to do my hours at the office rather than coming back home to do work-at-home duties.

We started watching The Decameron last night before giving up after the second episode. It’s a great idea and I love that they made a show about one of the great classics of history, but it just doesn’t really deliver completely. There were some great moments, and it might get better, and I also see why they made it; a bubonic plague show, after the pandemic? But it just wasn’t engaging in the way I would have preferred, so we watched an episode of Evil, which we’d been watching before the Olympics and had forgotten about. But it’s kind of a fun show–a religious X-Files, basically–and it’s engaging.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own work–probably because I’m not really doing any of it at the moment–and why I write it and what can I do about the dumpster fire the world is turning into. I’ve mentioned here several times how much I wished we had a Louisiana John D. MacDonald type writer, addressing the exploitation of Florida and the environmental damage that exploitation hath wrought on the state (Condominium is a great book about greedy developers and corrupt politicians), and originally I always was thinking someone else would be better to do it than me. But…that’s really laziness on my part, because studying the ecological disaster Louisiana has become (with no bottom to the disaster in sight, especially given what we have in Baton Rouge now) was a lot of work. I’ve always wanted to address the situation in Cancer Alley1, which is a stain on the nation. Those communities are mostly black and completely poor, so you can imagine how much our politicians–including those representing those parishes–care about them. It is a disgrace.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the erosion of the wetlands, making Louisiana at even higher risk of disaster during hurricane season (which we are in right now).

And given what we are dealing with in terms of political leadership these days (Project 2025 is already here), someone needs to start talking about this stuff.

Why not me? Although I suppose it would mean resubscribing to the MAGA Times-Picayune again, which totally sucks. Heavy heaving sigh. Can anyone be a local crime writer without reading the local paper? Probably not, so I might as well bite the damned bullet and get back on that train at some point. I hate having to compromise my principles. But I also don’t have to enjoy it, do it? And with football season on the horizon, sigh. Their coverage of LSU, Tulane2, and the Saints is really the best. Sigh. I’ll just donate the same amount to the Harris campaign.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; stranger things have happened.

  1. “Cancer Alley” is the eighty-two mile section of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, with a ridiculous amount of petrochemical plants and refineries in the poorer parishes, where the rate of cancer is insanely high and everyone knows it’s the factories poisoning everyone, but no one ever does anything about it. It is Louisiana’s shame, frankly. ↩︎
  2. See, Ellen? I don’t always forget Tulane. ↩︎

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

Bring back that lovin’ feeling now it’s gone, gone, gone….

One of the worst things about being a writer with a very vivid imagination is that I often think I’ve written more of a short story than I have, and inevitably am a little shocked when I open the most recent draft of the story and what I remember writing isn’t there…and then it hits me that I either thought the story through until that point, or I scribbled ideas for it in my journal…so that gradually morphed into oh I never did write that scene/story/ending. I then sigh in disgust at past Greg for not actually writing it into the story itself and then try to remember what I can of it as I try transcribing it. The loss of my short term memory also plays a relatively large role in this madness, too. Can you guess why I am mentioning that this morning? Yep, this was the case when I looked up two short stories to add to my collection; I was trying to decide which stories I have unfinished that just needed a revision and I thought I was there with several more stories than I clearly was when I looked at them last night.

One of the ghastly things for me about being a writer is thinking I’ve written something when I actually haven’t. I was tired yesterday when I got home from work; I hit the wall at some point in the afternoon, so I succumbed to Sparky’s demands and let him cuddle with me in the easy chair when I got home from work. Paul worked at home yesterday, so when he came down we watch John Oliver and then finished Dirty Pop, the Lou Pearlman documentary. It did feel weird not having the Olympics to watch, but this is that fallow two weeks or so between the Olympics and college football getting started. Has the NFL preseason started? I am terrible about that, but since I no longer (refuse to) pay for the Times-Picayune (a ringing endorsement for the red candidate from their editorial board was the final nail in that coffin once and for all) it’s harder to remember about the Saints. I shouldn’t be surprised; the billionaire who bought the paper also is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who ran for governor back in the day. Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t remember the paper being slanted so heavily to the right back in the day. Anyway, there’s certainly no excuse for me to not get a lot done this weekend other than laziness….and laziness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either; I think it’s your body telling your mind to rest. I also have a four day weekend this weekend for my birthday, so that should be really nice. I suppose I should make a to-do list of projects to work on for those four day–definitely taking books to the library sale will be number one on the list.

I did sleep really well and got up pretty easily this morning. I’m still in that I could fall asleep again if I went back to bed stage, but the body is starting to awaken and my mind is feeling sharp. I hope I don’t get tired this afternoon the way I did yesterday, but I don’t really have any control over that. It didn’t, in fact, rain yesterday as was promised; it’s possible again today as well and we’re hitting a heat index of 112. Yay. It didn’t seem so bad yesterday as I drove home, picking up the mail on the way. I’m still listening to the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno, which makes me laugh multiple times in the car; it’s attempt at being sexy and provocative laughably bad, and their reactions to Belinda Blinked are hilarious. There’s many seasons of this, so I should be set for listening in the car for quite some time. I just haven’t been in the mood to listen to music lately while driving, which is unusual. I’m just tired of all my playlists and albums on Spotify, and I’m so disconnected from what is popular music that I have no idea what everyone is listening to these days, and odds are I wouldn’t care for it if I did. (The first time I heard something popular and thought what the fuck is wrong with kids today was when I was in my thirties…so yes, I’ve been a cranky old man shaking his fists at the clouds for thirty years)

One of the things I have been doing in the evenings is paging through a book I read several years ago called Weimar Culture: The Outside as Insider by Peter Gay (I’ve had Weimar Germany on my mind since about 2015 or so) and it got me to start thinking about my work as art, and its place in the overall world of queer art and literature. I don’t think students of queer literature in the future will be reading and/or studying any of my work, by any means; I think the only thing I have going for me is being prolific and producing a lot of work. I think there are many queer crime writers whose work would be seen as more influential and of more literary and artistic value than mine–Michael Nava, J. M. Redmann, Ellen Hart, Kelly J. Ford, Lev Rosen, Christa Faust, Margot Douahy and John Copenhaver, just off the top of my head, are far more likely to make up the reading list for a Queer Crime Lit class. We really do have some amazing queer crime writers out there currently and some pretty amazing ones in the past. I was thinking about writing about queer crime and its giants, but as a queer crime writer myself the possibilities for giving offense are simply too great for me to even attempt such a thing. I also haven’t read every queer or queer-oriented crime novel, either, so it would hardly be definitive, like Michael Bronski’s Pulp Friction. Besides, I’m hardly an academic; that kind of writing isn’t really my style. I admire it, wish it was a voice and style I could slip into comfortably, but it’s really not.

I would, at some point, like to engage in scholarship. Maybe after I retire. Maybe I could take an on-line class on literature and/or one on writing essays. So many potentialities, so many possibilities…kind of nice.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader and one never knows; I may be back later.