Category: Southern Gothic

You Make Me Feel Brand New

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh Very Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe my memoir could be called Deluded.

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

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

Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing

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

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

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

Tree BASTARDS!

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

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

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

I Remember Mama

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

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

And it just dropped this week.

The smell of bleach always reminded him of his mother.

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

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

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

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

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

And surprisingly, I was able to just keep going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(I’ve Been) Searching So Long

Sunday morning and I slept late. I’ve been off both days this weekend, not really sure what that’s about…but this morning when I saw the clock and the time, I remembered that either yesterday or Friday, I was confused about taking my daily pills and I may have taken them twice…and a double dose for one day of my daytime anti-anxiety medication definitely would have led to exhaustion. Lesson learned. I am usually a lot more careful about these things, and so I need to better about paying attention.

I was sleepy for most of the day yesterday. I ran errands and came home, and then started working on things again, which was terrific. I had low energy, obviously, but I cleaned out the two remaining file boxes in the living room, thus clearing out the corner where the boxes stood, and which will now be taken up by the vacuum cleaner and the crate of Sparky toys, which opens up the living room still further. I started clearing books out of the laundry room and am on pace to get that shelf emptied and used for pantry items. This overhaul of the downstairs will obviously continue Thursday as I begin my four day weekend. I also managed to finish reading Horror Movie yesterday, which was sublime and wonderful, and started John Copenhaver’s Hall of Mirrors, between breaks so I could rest. I took a lot of those breaks, I might add–and during several of them I started to fall asleep. I did nap for about half an hour in the late afternoon, which is weird–and today I still feel a bit sleepy. All I need to do outside today is go to the gym and make a very quick grocery run, and then I get to come home and hopefully shower and get some writing done. Stranger things have happened, you know.

But the house is a mess and I am working very hard not to chastise myself for the way I left the apartment looking when i went to bed last night, barely able to stagger up the stairs. It won’t take long, really–the majority of the mess in the living room is the donation pile, which simply needs to be stacked properly and loaded into boxes. Likewise the kitchen won’t take long to look orderly again, either. There’s a lot of stuff to be put away for sure in the kitchen, and I’m not done with the laundry room, either–but it’s not a priority and can wait until the holiday weekend if necessary.

Sigh. I’m also very behind on my Pride Posts, which will defiantly continue to run through the Independence Day holiday weekend as I celebrate queer independence, and pray for our gains not to be lost to the current joke of a Supreme Court. I will never forgive anyone involved in “but her emails” or “benghazi” or anything else that smeared and slandered the most qualified candidate for president in decades so we could get fascism instead. Thanks, privileged white liberals for thinking she was corrupt or too shrill or not charismatic enough. And don’t think I won’t keep bringing that up until we’ve survived (if we survive) this election. We lost Roe v. Wade in no small part because that arrogant, narcissistic Hollywood she-bitch sneered on national television that she “don’t vote with (my) vagina.”

I hope to either spit in her skank face or piss on her grave before I die, and thank you again for making any number of films I enjoy unwatchable again because all I think about when I see her face or hear her voice is “we lost our rights because you’re an arrogant bitch who thinks she is a political expert when the truth is you don’t know jackshit and learned NOTHING from the 2000 election when you helped elected Bush.”

There’s a direct line from her performative progressivism to every justice who overturned Roe. I wish someone would bring up Nader to her in an interview. 2016 was a repeat performance of 2000. And for the record, she is not an ally. AOC is, and understands how to get things done and has evolved and learned how to work for progressive causes in Congress. She is an actual hero.

And my inability to write my Pride Post about The Rocky Horror Picture Show is because I don’t want to mention her or use any of her images, which is difficult.

Hurricane Beryl apparently is now a Category 3, with the potential for becoming a 4 once it enters the Caribbean, which is rather early maybe for a storm this size, which doesn’t bode well when we’re kicking off the season and the B storm will come ashore as a 4. It looks like the most likely path means a Yucatan landfall before crossing the Gulf again to come ashore close to the Mexico/Texas border. There are also two other potential storms out there, one in the Gulf (what if Beryl consumes this one? YIKES) and one out in the Atlantic. I guess I need to start looking into hurricane supplies and get the house stocked up again.

Okay, that’s NOT helping, so I think I should head into the spice mines for now. I am going to eat something and start working on this mess while writing another entry. I may also be back later, since one never knows what I will be doing at any given time.

Midnight at the Oasis

…so put your camel to bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Thankful for What You’ve Got

Well, it’s Thursday AND it’s National HIV Testing Day! Know your status!

I feel good this morning, so I am back to the normal-yet-still-bizarre routine of being tired earlier in the week and being more awake later, apparently. I was tired after work yesterday, but I did do some writing (not much, really) before finishing the laundry and making dinner–shrimp fajitas, and they were amazing–and we settled in for the next episode of Presumed Innocent, in which Jake Gyllenhaal continues to shine but Rusty is such an unlikable prick that I forget that it’s gorgeous Jake I am watching and get repulsed by his behavior…but it makes sense for his character, and it’s a terrific performance. I didn’t get to read anything last night, but it’s fine. Tonight I need to clean the kitchen once I am home from work. I have lots to do at home on Friday for work, so hopefully it’ll be a productive day. Next week is of course the 4th holiday, and I did take Friday off for another four day weekend, which will be lovely.

And I get to have leftovers for lunch today! Huzzah!

One of the most fun things about being a writer is imposter syndrome. I do experience this (a lot) but it doesn’t mean I don’t have confidence in my writing or what I’m writing; what I experience is more along the lines of things like should you even be telling this story or are you sure you are structuring this book properly? ` But that’s the great thing about editing and revising; you can always restructure and move things around once you move on to the next draft. I don’t believe the story is too complicated and complex for me to write, by any means; i know I can write this and it will be a terrific book when finally finished. I love writing, and it’s lovely to be back in the weeds with something new. I’m writing again, and while all may not be right in the world, at least it feels like it is in mine.

I hope to finish reading the Tremblay novel this weekend and get started on another. I also have to revise and proof my story for that anthology deadline this Sunday–it’s been so long since I’ve submitted anything anywhere that I am not entirely sure how that will feel. But if I get rejected, I get rejected. Rejection is all part and parcel of the business, which can be very brutal on a fragile ego laced with insecurity. Why do I still have those insecurities? Why do I still need to get validation as a writer? I’ve written over forty books. But instead of looking at the shelves of my bookcase and feeling satisfaction (which I did do several times during the malaise), I tend to think about the books I’ve not finished, and feel like a failure because I started and never finished something. I am a completist, alas, and so as long as those unfinished novels still are hanging out in my files, it’s going to bother me that they aren’t finished. I particularly want to finish a horror novel I started writing in my twenties–can you believe I still think about that book? And what I originally wrote is absolutely terrible–and that’s not me being self-deprecating. I’ve always been able to write stories and come up with ideas, but the things I wrote weren’t good. I wasn’t very good at dialogue and I was prone to melodrama (the soap opera influence), but the raw ability and talent was always there–some were just able to see it while others weren’t. Rightly or wrongly, I was always able to write coherently; it might not have been good but the sentences were grammatically correct and my writer’s eye was sometimes able to spot something so true and honest and real that my stories stood out. The one thing I could always count on was writing a cohesive story or paper for any class, and I never feared writing papers.

I actually preferred essay tests to multiple choice, frankly.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Friday Eve!

Whole Lotta Trouble

Be gay, do crime.

I don’t remember the first time I saw that phrase somewhere, and I don’t know where it originates from, but actually–being gay used to be a crime (and our “supreme court” seems determined to make that so again), so I’ve always wondered if that was where it started from. I do like the phrase, though.

I also don’t remember how Sins of the Black Flamingo came to my attention, but it did. I subscribed so as not to miss an issue, and intended to read it all in one sitting so I could write about it…but never got around to it, like a loser, and as I was looking through the draft entries for the blog the other day, I saw that I’d started an entry after reading the first issue…but never finished reading the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.

the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.

And since the main character is gay…what better time to finish reading it, and blogging about it, then during Pride Month?

It did make sense to me.

I’ve read comic books for most of my life (in fact, comics are why I bought an iPad in the first place), but I’ve also taken long breaks from them, so am neither an expert nor even a super fan (although I would love to do a crime novel set in and around a comic books store; which could be fun and comical). I remember comics I read as a kid, and have some vague memories of other times when I dipped into the comics world as an adult. My iPad is filled with comics that I’ve never gotten around to reading—but what a lovely long weekend reading them all would make! Or maybe just take the iPad with me on a trip and read comics the whole time?

Anyway, I digress. I do need to do a longer form essay about my comics history while stressing the importance of how little I do know about my beloved comics…maybe for Pride next year, since it would take some serious rereading and research to do properly…and it could tie into one of the books currently in progress…but I am getting away from the purpose of this post: Sins of the Black Flamingo.

I mean, isn’t this art amazing?

Comic books helped shape me and my tastes. The original DC superheroes I followed were still drawn as ideal men of the past, like the 40s and 50s, big with a  barrel torso, and muscular but not defined. DC Comics hadn’t really updated its characters from their early days much; but it was during my childhood at the end of the 60s and early 70s that they began modernizing their comic characters, their costumes, and how they looked—which I also noticed. This was also around the time that men’s bodies became more sexualized, and what was hot and sexy for men began to change. The women super-hero’s costumes also became more sexualized, as were their bodies (the Legion of Super-Heroes ALONE had some of the more revealing sexy costumes. Queer super-heroes (although why I never made the connection about Wonder Woman and the Amazons with their island of women only is a mystery to me) were non-existent and wouldn’t start showing up until the late 1980s and early 1990s—and it’s still a few and far-between kind of thing (the Will Peyton Starman run always seemed queer to me, which I’ll need to explore at another time).

So, you can imagine my delight to find this run with a gay burglar as the main character, who wears a costume and is extremely good at his job (I’ve always had a soft spot for burglars in fiction) and that was why I subscribed to the series. (Still shaking my head at how long it took me to finally read them all, and there was an pretty amazing cliff-hanger at the end of #1.)

But when I was a kid, the characters and story interested me more than the artwork, and even with my love of the characters and stories, I never followed either artists I enjoyed or writers, either. Which is probably not the best way to enjoy them, really; it was a friend who was an exceptional artist and comics fan in the 1980s who made me aware I should be paying attention to the artists and the writers…and I did find some extraordinary comics by looking for artists and writers of books from there on. The two I remember the most from that time are Todd McFarlane and John Byrne.

Sins of the Black Flamingo is self-classified as “occult noir,” which is a term I absolutely love and now can recognize that occult noir is something I absolutely love and probably write…and will most likely explore more in my own work going forward, since I now know what to call it, because supernatural never really fit in the same way and I don’t feel like the books I write are actually full-fledged horror, but occult noir? Oh, hell, yes.

Anyway, the Black Flamingo is the alter-ego of our hero, Sebastian Harlow. The Flamingo is probably one of the top cat burglars in the world (as you may know, I love cat burglars and originally made Colin one in Bourbon Street Blues), and Sebastian is this interesting combination of my two series characters, of all things; he looks and is built like Scotty, with the same approach to sex as he did before he met the boys, but has the dark worldview and cynicism of Chanse MacLeod…so naturally, I was going to be drawn to the character. IN the very beginning of Book One, he is hired to steal something from a right-wing museum—basically a museum dedicated to honoring white supremacy. It isn’t until he steals the item they’ve hired him to find that we learn the backstory behind the item…and a golem named Abel is brought to life, and Abel is hunky AF, I might add.

We also meet Sebastian’s close friend and ally, Ofelia, a Black witch—and yes, this is very much occult noir. The art is fantastic, and done by Travis Moore, with Tamra Bonvillain as colorist, Aditya Bidikar, and editor Andy Khouri, and Andrew Wheeler was the writer.I highly recommend this—if for no other reason than it’s a great gay story with an interesting main character, and who would have ever thought they’d see a gay circuit party within the pages of a comic?

I do hope there’s more adventures in store for the Flamingo in the future. Highly recommended.

You Make Me Feel Brand New

Sunday morning and Sparky let me sleep super late–I didn’t get up until after nine thirty–which kind of wasted more of the morning than I would prefer. I am going to make groceries today, so one of the things I really need to do is clean out the cabinets and the refrigerator. Yesterday I worked on the book for a while, worked on the filing for a while, and threw out a shit ton more files. I have one more filing cabinet drawer to do today, and should probably work on the book some more today. Yesterday was also very relaxing, and I spent most of the day from when Paul got up until bedtime hanging with him. We watched a series called Citadel from Amazon Prime, which was so twisty–I lost track of all the surprises as I was trying to keep track as the story became more and more complicated and twisted. We binged it all, then moved onto to Dark Heart, a BBC crime show which we are also enjoying. We’ll probably finish that today and perhaps watch a movie as well. For now, though, the plan is to work on files and my desk area before running to the grocery store before coming home to write and clean and so forth.

The excitement never stops.

But again, some of the files I stumbled over yesterday will help with some of my Pride posts, too–essays I’ve clearly been thinking about for a very long time, as there were files to be discovered about some of the subjects I am covering in them. I’ve obviously been pondering these longer entries/essays for quite some time now. So, I’ll need to actually combine those files before writing the essays, and there’s one in particular that I really want to get to before the turn of the month. (I cannot believe it’s nearly July already.) But time goes by like sands in the hourglass…LOL.

I am enjoying my coffee this morning, which is as always delightful. I love when it tastes good–some days it’s just coffee and other days it tastes amazing; I think it has to do with my mood, honestly–but I am also out of coffee cake and Jimmy Dean sandwiches so the only option for breakfast this morning is cold cereal, which is fine. I really do need to make that grocery run today, don’t I? This weekend has been lovely so far, I have to say, and I don’t have to go in tomorrow, which makes it feel more charmed, I have to say.

I was also reminded of projects that fit and start. I also found the secondary file for Hurricane Party Hustle, which reminded me that I’d started writing that Scotty book twice already. I wrote it as a proposal to turn in with Mardi Gras Mambo in August 2005, and then tried to start it again at some time during the aftermath of Katrina. I have yet to find that original, pre-Katrina idea, but part of what I am doing with this current version that I am planning is to use the pre-Katrina idea–it can work now, especially by using Katrina and her aftermath to make the story deeper and more complex, plus it will give me an opportunity to explore how it affected my characters, almost twenty years after the fact. I guess the idea, the smart idea, would be to write it and release in in August 2025, twenty years after Katrina in reality but only fourteen years in the chronology of Scotty’s life. I am also a little worried about revisiting the title and the original story because it’s so tied to Katrina in my mind, which is hubris and more than a little narcissistic. Nothing I do in the grand scheme of things is so important that my sins would bring a hurricane down on the city–and that’s not how anything works, any way.

The living room is starting to look better, and so is the kitchen. I am very pleased with myself this weekend, I have to say. It’s nice to have focus and energy and drive and to be feeling good and relieved about everything again. It’s nice, but it’s also one of those things that throughout my life I was worried about expressing or experiencing, since something bad happening is always inevitable. But now that I am older and properly medicated, I can see that I shouldn’t let the inevitable bad thing weigh on me. I should enjoy the times between bad things, and should appreciate those times all the more, so that’s the positive mindset I am slipping myself back into.

It’s not the bad things in your life that define you, but the key is how you react to them.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. No worries, I will definitely be back later with a Pride post, but have a lovely Sunday and I’ll be back to entertain you at some point later.

My Sharona

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

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

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

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

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

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