Tuesday night as I talked with Jean, Candice and Harry about my two latest books I suddenly realized–towards the end of the conversation–that technically I have a third book out in current release with my name on the spine.
To wit, this marvelous anthology:
Which, if you like, you can order right here! There are two options to choose from–the clothbound special edition with the cover page signed by all three of us, or the less expensive paperback. I believe there’s also an ebook option.
And look at this table of contents:
How is that for some amazing company to be in, eh? Not to mention the co-editor credit with Art Taylor and Donna Andrews, who are as equally lovely as people as they are insanely talented writers (and highly intelligent people). I mean, my story is sandwiched in between stories by Martin Edwards and Naomi Hirahara, for fuck’s sake.
Rarified air, indeed.
So, who is this Father Knox, and what are these commandments that had to be broken?
Father Knox himself
Father Knox was an early twentieth century mystery writer, who was also a member of the Detection Club, along with contemporaries like G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie–speaking of rarefied air–and he came up with the ten commandments for mystery novels:
The Criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has allowed to follow.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No (outdated racist term for someone of Chinese ancestry) must figure in the story.
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
The detective must not himself commit the crime.
The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly below that of the average reader.
Twin brother, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been dully prepared for them.
I mean, how fun would it be to write a story breaking any of these rules, let alone a book doing so (hmmm, tempting–this would be a great fun thing for a Scotty adventure)?
I chose commandment two: all supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course, so I wrote a suspense story that may (or may not) have a supernatural agency involved; “The Ditch,” which is also a Corinth County story and one I am particularly pleased with.
I am going to begin reading the anthology, perhaps a story a day, as part of my Short Story Project (always ongoing) as well as to help promote the anthology, which has as fine a collection of contributors as I’ve ever been associated with.
Tuesday and back into the office. My energy spurt after getting home from the pre-operation appointments didn’t last for very long, I’m afraid, and by the middle of yesterday afternoon I was groggy and tired; adrenaline crash from the anxiety rollercoaster, no doubt. We started watching Happy Valley, which is certainly a grim show (I said to Paul, “it’s like a British version of Mare of Easttown“–although obviously Happy Valley came first, but they are very similar in tone and mood: bleak). But the acting and the writing is first rate, and we both are really enjoying it. They called in some prescriptions for me that I’ll need post-surgery, but apparently in checking the CVS website, I have to call them about the pain pills. Terrific. It’s always such a joy trying to reach a pharmacy on the phone. But I have to swing by uptown to get the mail after work today, and so I might as well call so I can pick everything up on my way home from the office.
I am way behind on everything, but I feel a lot better about the post-surgery period. I don’t know how long it’s going to take before the pain goes away, but I imagine I am going to be in a painkiller stupor for at least a couple of days, at the very least. I’ve never really had the kind of surgery where you’re put under and cut on since I had my tonsils out when I was three or four. That’s not bad–going sixty years between surgeries–so I really have nought to complain about, but I kind of wish I had more experience with it so I knew what to expect more; it’s the not-knowing that really triggers my anxiety. Now I am wondering about putting on shirts with the arm-brace on; am I allowed to take it off to put on a shirt if I put it right back on again? Doesn’t the arm need to stay in the same position, even when I am showering? Heavy sigh. They did send me home with a packet of information to read over, so I’ll be doing that today as well. I also have to get the paperwork for my leave finished and turned into Admin today. Heavy sigh. I do have the letter from the surgeon that is required, and I think I have everything I need. (More anxiety, hurray.)
I also need to practice putting the brace on, too. The demonstration wasn’t enough to make me think oh sure I can do this easily on my own with a bent arm.
For the record, I tore my biceps muscle in my left arm back in January. For a number of reasons I am not in the mood to go into right now, I am now finally getting the surgery to have the muscle repaired. It’s a long and slow and painful recovery process; I need to wear the brace for at least three to four weeks, and then it’s physical therapy for months until I get the clearance that it’s all healed and working properly again. I got the distinct impression yesterday that it’ll take about a week for me to be weaned off the pain medications–again, that’s fine, what choice do I have? I don’t know how much, if any, typing I’ll be able to do that first week, and besides, if my brain is scrambled on oxycodone, I wouldn’t be able to write and/or create much anyway. But it didn’t sound like things were going to be as terrible or as worst-case as my mind always seems to want to come up with.
It was also a cold and wet rainy day yesterday; we’ve not had rain in quite some time–not nearly as much as usual in our tropical clime–so the whole day had that undercurrent and wet and cold that I’ve not experienced in quite some time (last winter, to be precise) and so that was also off-putting. I felt cold all day, was wrapped up in a blanket in my easy chair as I doom scrolled social media, watched some documentaries on Youtube (the wives of Charlemagne; the separation of power between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire; and the Black Death), and also caught an episode of Moonlighting, in which Maddie’s mother thinks her husband is cheating so David and Maddie investigate. I also saw some social media posts about Moonlighting not aging as well as I had originally thought, which was worrying. I have such fond memories of the show, and I’ve been enjoying rewatching it, and I thought I was paying attention to the “well it was a different time” things–but I didn’t really see the show as misogynist as I feared it would be, and there were other things that I was certain wouldn’t hold up on–casual homophobia? Casual racism? Casual misogyny? It was written and filmed in the same decade that gave us such great misogynist comedies as Porky’s, Sixteen Candles, and Weird Science (don’t @ me; I don’t make the rules), so how could it not be problematic on some levels today? I’m also a little disappointed that my rewatching didn’t somehow note the red flags (I actually posted at one point that I was surprised it wasn’t more offensive); but it’s also the classic set-up arrangement for old-style screwball romantic comedies–one prim and proper character, another who is spontaneous and always up for a good time and both learn from each other as they grow together into coupledom. I know there are some issues in the old movies too–but I still love them.
So it’s Monday morning and I took the day off from work, as I have to head out to Metairie for my pre-operation meetings and clearances and so forth. Woo-hoo. But at least today I expect to know what my recovery is going to look like, and how much time I will actually need to be out of the office. I didn’t sleep great on Saturday night, despite LSU’s big win over Florida, and was up before seven yesterday morning and not really feeling like doing much of anything. I did spend some time with Lou Berney’s delightful Dark Ride, which is like nothing he’s done before–something I always deeply admire with authors–and I really love the voice of his main character. There’s a reason Lou’s won every conceivable award from crime fiction writing; his work is exceptional and I only wish he were more prolific. Hardly is memorable, for many reasons that I cannot wait to get into when I’ve finished reading the book.
The Saints played abysmally yesterday, so I was glad I decided I was too drained already to expand any more emotional energy on watching the game. I was very low energy all weekend, which isn’t surprising, given that I’m kind of dreading the information I am going to be getting today even as I know it’s information that I need to have in order to make decisions that need to be made. Heavy sigh, yes, small wonder I was low energy all weekend. But that’s okay; I did actually think about writing this weekend, and did some of the mental groundwork and even wrote a scene in longhand in my journal, of all things. I also started coming up with names for characters for the next book, which is always fun, and started thinking about which direction to take the story. This is progress, and I will accept that gratefully without flagellating myself or wishing I had produced more and had written something on the computer.
I’m not going to lie, my anxiety is spiking this morning and so I am going to need to struggle a bit with it this morning. I know I’m just borrowing trouble, and being anxious or nervous about the appointments this morning will not change and/or affect what I am going to be told today, which is knowledge I am going to try to use as I sit here to calm my nerves and keep my adrenaline from spiking. I’m going to take Lou’s book with me this morning to read while I wait at the surgeon’s office, and thank God for good books with great writing from talented friends, right? It’s weird to think I’m having surgery next week and it’s also Thanksgiving week, too. I am not sure what we’re going to do for the holiday, since it’s two days after my surgery, but I can get some things over the weekend for it and hopefully it won’t be too big of a deal to make pulled turkey in the crockpot, but then how will I shred the meat with just one hand? A conundrum, for sure. I am going to probably be learning all kinds of lessons in these coming weeks about how imperative it is to have two hands–which is ableist thinking, I know; some people make do their entire lives with merely one hand.
The big news in college football is that Texas A&M went ahead and fired their head coach, Jimbo Fisher, triggering the biggest payout ever for a fired football coach. I thought, at the time, that the contract extension was insane; all he’d managed to do was take A&M to a one-loss season during a pandemic and a limited schedule. They finished in the top ten that year, if I am remembering correctly, but they still didn’t win their division or make it to Atlanta, so I thought it was presumptuous. Of course, this was also right around the time that it was becoming apparent that LSU was going to fire Ed Orgeron, and Fisher had been a target before Orgeron was hired….so A&M was preemptively moving to keep their coach from leaving for Baton Rouge. But A&M underperformed other than that one season, and it was a very bad deal–it’s costing them almost eighty million dollars to fire Fisher, which is also going to create a massive mess for hiring a replacement and for the replacement as well. Fisher was terminated immediately and not being allowed to finish out the season, so when A&M rolls into Tiger Stadium Thanksgiving weekend, they’ll be led by an interim coach. It’s not the first time the LSU-A&M game has had an interim head coach calling the game, either, nor will it be the last, most likely. I mean, seriously–how much money do the Aggie Exes have, for Christ’s sake?
Apparently, a lot. I would imagine the Longhorns are even richer, and they’ll be in the SEC next year.
We finished watching Karen Pirie last night, and it was on the third episode that I realized I’d read the book on which it was based–The Distant Echo, which I had greatly enjoyed. We also are watching the second season of the Jane Seymour crime series, Harry Wild, which is enjoyable–and applause for Ms. Seymour for allowing herself to age gracefully. There you see the primary difference between British and American actresses; Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren and Judi Densch have allowed themselves to age, and it’s a beautiful thing to see–whereas American actresses their age now have rigid faces filled with Botox and filler and with all their skin pulled back tightly. It always seemed to me that having a face incapable of movement or expressing emotion would be a negative for an actress, but their insecurities and fears are also predicated on generations of youth worship in Hollywood and sweeping actresses out the door once they’ve hit forty. (In All About Eve the age issue for Margo was turning forty; that same year Sunset Boulevard gave us fifty-year-old has-been Gloria Swanson. The irony that Jessica Lange and That Woman were twenty years older when they played Crawford and Davis in Feud–in which the two fifty-something women miraculously revived their careera–wasn’t lost on this viewer.)
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and start getting ready for this morning’s round of pre-surgery appointments. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back this afternoon for some blatant self-promotion.
There are few things more Louisiana than rooting for LSU…unless its rooting for the Saints, maybe. Southern people love their football, especially the college variety.
Paul and I have not been to a game since 2021, when our “never saw the Tigers lose in person” streak, which began with the Mississippi game in 2010, came to an end with the only loss to Auburn in Tiger Stadium this century. We managed to make it through twelve seasons without ever seeing the Tigers lose while we were at the stadium, which is a pretty good run.
Chanse was an LSU alum–he even played football there–and I think I’d idly mentioned in the first book that he’d been injured in the Sugar Bowl in the last game of his senior year, and never elaborated more than that on his past at LSU. I think there were some more reflections in the second book in that series, but I know I never brought it up again after the second book in the series. I have an in-progress Chanse novella, which is set on the LSU campus at his old fraternity, but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish the story of the fraternity murder. As for Scotty, his background was so vastly different from Chanse’s that I couldn’t really send him to LSU. Men in his family on his mother’s side all go to Vanderbilt; his sister Rain went to Baylor. Storm did his undergrad at Vanderbilt but went to Tulane Law. Scotty of course flunked out of Vanderbilt (his parents rebelliously chose UNO), but the whole family on both sides root for LSU.
And of course, Valerie’s twin sons go to LSU in A Streetcar Named Murder.
I also make the point that the murder victim–a cousin of Scotty’s–in Mississippi River Mischief, along with his wife and kids, went to LSU; the wife was even a Golden Girl with the marching band (the kids are current students there). I built an entire Scotty mystery around the kidnapping of Mike the Tiger, the live mascot who lives on campus (Baton Rouge Bingo) and while I’ve not really done a lot of referencing of LSU in the Scotty series since that particular book, that is probably going to change with one of the upcoming books in the series. I roughly have plans for three more–one set during the summer of 2019, while the boys are living in the dower house on Papa Diderot’s estate in the Garden District; another during the cursed Carnival of 2020, and then a pandemic shut down book…and that just might be the end of the series. It may not be–I will probably keep writing Scotty books as long as I can type and the synapses in my brain still fire–but I am not going to rule out ending the series, either. Depending on what happens with my surgery and my recovery, I hope to write the next Scotty this coming spring.
And there are some things from this current book I’ll have to deal with in the next as well–as well as Scotty’s grandparents and parents aging. I’m thinking the cursed Carnival book will deal with a death in the Bradley family and the fall-out from Papa Bradley’s will. (I’ve only really gone into the Bradley side of the family once; and there’s a lot to unearth and explore there.)
I’m also toying with the idea of writing a book from Taylor’s perspective, and there’s always that Colin book I’ve been wanting to write forever.
So, if you want the series to continue, it will help if you order a copy of it!
The fortune queen of New Orleans, stroking her cat in her black limousine…
Ah, Cher’s 1970’s musical career. This one was always a big hit at Tea Dance at both Cafe Lafitte in Exile and the Pub on Sundays; there’s really nothing like a gay sing-along, is there?
I suppose being a fan of Cher as a child was kind of a sign? What is it about performers like Cher and Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli that draws young boys into their fandom who are going to wind up gay? Why was I drawn to actresses like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, and Doris Day before I knew I was gay? It’s something I’ve often wondered about–what is it about those women that draw us in like Formosan termites to a lit chandelier on a Monday night after Mother’s Day?
Ah, Formosan termites. That brings me around to today’s blatant self-promotional post for Mississippi River Mischief.
Isn’t this a cool, spooky looking shot? I took this out one of my kitchen windows one Sunday afternoon during a mighty New Orleans-style thunderstorm, and love how spectral and haunted-looking it turned out.
I still can’t believe that it took me this long to write about the swarming termites.
No one warned Paul and I about them, for the record. We had no idea that first May we lived here on Camp Street that the city was infested with swarming Formosan termites whose breeding season was the few weeks past Mother’s Day every May, and they are a scourge. We were swarmed, and had no idea what to do with them or how to handle the situation, or anything. We were running around the apartment spraying Raid everywhere, swinging at them with brooms, and they were everywhere. When the swarm finally passed, the apartment was filled with wings and corpses. It was horrible. We talked to the property manager, who apologized for forgetting to warn us–and the primary problem with the apartment on Camp Street (which was where Chanse also lived) was we had a very bright security light mounted on the front corner of the building–which drew them, and our apartment was right there. We learned to turn off everything that gave off light–including the television–when the first scout flew into the apartment, the mad dash around turning off everything, and then sitting there in the dark with maybe a couple of candles lit, waiting for the fury of the swarms to die down.
But that damned outside security light…ugh.
They are quite literally like one of the Biblical plagues of Egypt, and you see why the Egyptians constantly cried to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.
But now that we live in the back of the house, we’ve been pretty insulated from dealing with them. Sometimes when I walk the garbage out in May, I can see a small swarm around one of the street lamps, but all the lights in the front of the house are off. We usually turn everything off if and when a scout flies into the television screen and immediately light candles and sit in the dark until we feel the coast is clear.
So when I started writing Mississippi River Mischief, I thought the best way to open the book was with the line It was the Monday after Mother’s Day and the termites were swarming. I posted this on Twitter, and local meteorological icon Margaret Orr replied “what a great opening line!” which kind of made my week (I am a big Margaret Orr fanboy) and helped me realize I was on the right track in writing something about New Orleans that rarely makes it into fiction. (Author’s note: That isn’t the opening line anymore; I added Scotty asking the guys a question about the renovation, and then after he talks, that’s where the line is. I just couldn’t get the prose to work with that as the first sentence; it read awkwardly, so I moved Scotty speaking up.)
Nature, and the natural world, is all around us here in New Orleans; the occasional alligator will sometimes lumber into the city limits; snakes and nutria and squirrels are all over the place, and of course there are the insects–the flying cockroaches (aka palmetto bugs), the swarming Formosan termites, the stinging caterpillars–peculiar to here. The tropical climate makes everything over-bloom and grow and expand and try to reclaim the natural balance of the region before it was settled. This is NOT the place for you if you have pollen allergies or have sinuses sensitive to the air pressure (I do); and I swear by Claritin-D for allergy and/or sinus relief (not the over-the -counter kind, but the kind you have to ask for at the pharmacy because you can make meth with it). OH–and the gecko lizards, always darting around and running up the side of buildings or fences or trees.
So, yes, since Scotty had finally bought the building he’s lived in all these years, I thought it was time to talk about termite swarms, as they would be an enormous headache for a property owner, and what better way to start a book where Scotty is now a landowner than with swarming termites?
Friday, but I am not working at home this morning. We have a department meeting, and then I am going to stay at the office until around two this afternoon to get things done. I am taking Monday off because all my pre-surgery appointments are that morning, and I don’t know how long that is going to take. As Monday is a paperwork and not-in-the-clinic day, it’s not a big deal as long as I get all of the work I would ordinarily do on Monday to get the clinic ready for the rest of the week done today. I am going to run a couple of errands on the way home, and then I am in for the rest of the day. I will have to run some errands tomorrow–post office, mostly–but hope to spend most of the weekend inside the apartment. I slept well last night, mainly because I had the “Thursday exhaustion” that hits me every Thursday since I started working this schedule, but that’s okay. I came straight home from work yesterday, and didn’t do much of anything once I was there. Oh, sure, I watched another episode of Moonlighting–and their lesser episodes are still charming–and later Paul and I watched the season finale of The Morning Show, which was a lot of fun. I did watch some Youtube documentaries about the Knights Templar and the Fall of Constantinople in 1204–which I never get tired of learning about, and will turn up in one of my books one day, just you wait and see.
I’m also looking forward to this weekend. I am going to get some books pruned to take to the library sale on Saturday, and I think I am also going to get the car washed. I do kind of want to see the Georgia-Mississippi game, and of course I’ll watch LSU play Florida, but that game worries me a bit; there’s always a let-down after losing to Alabama and having the pipe dreams of the season dashed finally, and LSU has beaten Florida four straight years, which is tied for the longest LSU winning streak in the rivalry. I also just remembered that this is the last season of the SEC as it has been since the initial expansion into two divisions thirty years ago; sure other teams have joined since, but the East-West divisions remained intact all this time. I don’t know how I feel about the expansion into a super-conference and the addition of Texas and Oklahoma, and the rotating schedule seems like a pain in the ass, but we’ll see how it works out. I suspect in about another decade realignment will be revisited and some teams may break off from their super-conferences and form a new smaller more manageable one…who knows?
I also want to read Lou Berney’s Dark Ride this weekend, and maybe start reading my next book, which I think is going to be Zig Zag by J. D. O’Brien, who was on my Humor panel at Bouchercon (that was probably one of the best panels I’ve ever moderated, and I want to read all of their books), because both have to do with stoners–Lou’s main character is a stoner, and J. D.’s book is about a dispensary heist, so they’re both what I call stoner noir–so they kind of go together. I also want to get to the new Angie Kim sooner than later, I am volumes behind on Laurie King’s marvelous Mary Russell series, have two Donna Andrews novels on deck as well, and then I want to really start making progress through the stacks and get things read.
I also need to do some writing this weekend. I’ve been really terrible this week about being organized, so there’s more of that to be done this weekend. I think I’ve started working on what submissions will go where, and I’d love to get a stronger handle on all of that by the end of the weekend. I know I want to get one of my stories submitted out again somewhere, not entirely sure where, but the worst thing they can do is reject it, right? And that just means my story isn’t right for them, that’s all, and that is fine. I need to get more zen about rejection, you know? And I also need to be easier on myself emotionally about the whole writing thing. Sure, it would have been great to get a lot more writing done before my surgery. No, I don’t know what the aftermath and recovery is going to look like–I am finding that out Monday at my pre-surgery meeting–so I won’t know for sure until Monday what I am going to be capable of doing in December. I think I’ll probably be back to work right before Christmas, but I also don’t know what I am going to be able to do once I go back. Will I be able to test people? How mobile will the next cast be? (I think I am going from rigid to flexible after the first three weeks.)
Uncertainty is not the friend of anxiety, but I think I am doing a pretty good job of not letting my anxiety take control of my conscious brain, at any rate. And this morning I’ve managed to unload the dishwasher already and start another load–and when I get home from my partial day at the office I’ll get started on the bed linens. I am running an errand on the way home, and then I intend to spend the afternoon mostly reading the new Lou Berney while doing some light picking up and pruning of the books, and maybe even get some writing done. Stranger things have happened.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later with some blatant self-promotion. Tuesday is the official release date for the new Scotty, which is very cool, and then the next week we go into surgery. WHEE.
Today’s blatant self-promotion for Death Drop image is of one of my favorites from the world of Drag Race–Manila Luzon. I fell in love with her during her initial run on the show, and wanted her to win. (She didn’t, alas, but I also like Raja, who did win that season.)
When I was a personal trainer, I always asked new clients what their fitness goals were. Straight women inevitably wanted to lose an average of ten pounds or so; gay men always wanted to look like underwear models or Olympic athletes; and lesbians generally just wanted to be healthier. I tried to educate the women on the fallacy and dangers of “dieting”, and that the best thing to do was restructure and rethink how and what they ate and when. I used to always tell the gays, “can you afford a personal chef and nutritionist, and can you exercise three to four hours a day every day? Because they don’t look like their photos most of the time…they usually maintain their bodies regularly but go on ridiculously limited diets that aren’t healthy and also dehydrate themselves to look more cut for pictures. And it’s also their full time job to look like that. Now, let’s realistically talk about a plan that can make your body fit and toned in a healthy way that will be easier to maintain.”
Jem, my main character in Death Drop, is a professional hair stylist and make-up artist, and also has a good eye for fashion. His job is to make women, as he says, feel beautiful and confident, and as a gay man, he also can see the endless pressures from every direction that are put on women. Part of his issue with Marigny Mercereau, whose fashion show he is hired to work in the book, is that he hates the clothes she designs because the silhouettes are unattractive and they don’t flatter women’s bodies. Add to that the fact that the last time he worked for her, her check bounced, and yeah, she isn’t one of his favorite people. But so much is going on that night of the fashion show that Marigny’s clothes–and his dislike of her–aren’t in the forefront of his mind.
I mean, he does have to do drag for the first time that night–in front of a bunch of wealthy or upper middle class women he would love to have as glam clients. And Jem has stage fright.
That is one of the keys for me with Jem and the whole drag thing: he has stage fright, like I do. I’ve never really written about that much in my fiction–I know I’ve talked about it on here ad nauseum ad infinitum–but despite mining almost every experience I’ve ever had in my life into my fiction at some point, it’s kind of odd that I’ve never written about stage fright. I have it, bad. I am sure it’s a symptom of my anxiety–as everything is–but I have it, and I’ve always had it bad. When I was in plays in high school, it was torture. I liked being in the plays–I used to dream, as a kid, of being in show business, and yes, practiced award acceptance speeches in the mirror while clutching a shampoo bottle–but the actual performances? Absolutely not. I generally shake so much when on panels that I usually try not to use my hands when I talk–which I always do–because I don’t want anyone to see that I’m literally trembling in terror; I am also usually sweating a lot and my heart is racing and there’s a massive adrenaline rush…panels aren’t as bad as moderating one is; but now that I know it’s anxiety I try to handle it. Before I moderated that panel at Bouchercon this past year, I walked around a lot before the panel to burn off the adrenaline and try to get my heart rate down to something passing as normal. Also knowing it was based in anxiety gave me a handle on it; when I know what is going on I can try to cope with it better than what I did before–which was just grit my teeth and get through it.
Jem didn’t have stage fright while walking in the fashion show–and he also knew it was because of the lighting and it being after dark, he couldn’t really see the people in the audience. He knew they were there, but as long as he couldn’t see them it didn’t phase him. His fears of performing, of getting on stage, is going to be something he is going to have to work on in future books–of which I am hoping there will be at least three, if not more. He probably won’t have to deal with it in the second book either–because while he has graduated from drag school and performed in the graduation show, that was for friends and family and not the general public–because the second book takes place at a national drag pageant…which is being protested by a hideous hate group called Moms4Freedom…which I am having a lot of fun with, rest assured.
And on that note, I will bring this to a close–there will be more blatant self-promotion to come!
Well, I didn’t get my blatant self-promotion done yesterday, so I will have to work extra hard today to make sure it does get done; cannot go two days without any, after all. I do feel tired this morning, and I am going into the office tomorrow. I have appointments for the surgery all morning on Monday, so I am going to take the day off–which means staying at the office after the department meeting to get all the things done for the next week that I would ordinarily do on Monday. I keep hoping the dentist will call about my dentures; it would be so awesome if I could get them on Friday, but surely they will come in by next week. I know things have slowed down with deliveries to New Orleans thanks to the visibility issues we’re having down here in the mornings. There’s a swamp fire in the East (which is why the whole city smells like burning rubber), and that mixes in with the heavy fog and visibility is relatively non-existent. Yesterday morning every bridge into New Orleans was closed except for the causeway, and there were some bad accidents before the bridges were closed. I-55 still hasn’t recovered from that insane massive pile-up in the same conditions last week, and I think it still closed southbound. As you cannot get into New Orleans from anywhere else in the state (other than Metairie and Kenner) without having to cross a bridge, you can see how closing all the bridges1 could cause delays in deliveries to the city–which is also probably why the grocery stores all look so picked over all the time.
I did manage to do some chores last night when I got home–finished a load of laundry and started another; emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it to run again, with another load waiting to go–and I made groceries on Carrollton before heading uptown to get the mail. My new copy of Chris Wiltz’ The Last Madam2arrived yesterday, along with shaving accoutrement that I’d ordered, which was lovely. I think I am probably going to come straight home from work today. I’ve picked up the mail every day this week so far, it can wait again until Saturday when I take books to donate to the library sale. I really need to get back to work on the book and some of the other writing I am trying to get done before the surgery knocks me out for a while. I don’t know how much writing I am going to be able to do during the three-week post-operative hard cast to keep the arm immobile period, but in a worst case scenario, I should be able to sit in my easy chair and read and watch movies, right?
I watched a documentary last night on Youtube about how Egypt survived the Bronze Age Collapse (which is a period which really interests me–all the civilizations crumbled around the same time but we don’t really know why), and I also watched another episode of Moonlighting, and it just so happened that my all-time favorite episode was on deck, “Twas the Episode Before Christmas”–which also is one of my favorite series Christmas episodes of all time. This was the episode where the show fully committed to breaking the fourth wall regularly (they’d flirted with it before, with the occasional joke about the run time of the show or the viewers), but this is the episode where Miss DiPesto finds a baby in her apartment right before Christmas, and from thus the mystery was sprung. I also absolutely loved that the three FBI agents looking for the baby were all named King (hence the Three Kings looking for the baby at Christmas), and other little clever touches like that. It’s also an incredibly well-written episode, anchored by a truly beautiful and sensitive performance by Allyce Beasley as Miss DiPesto–who was robbed of an Emmy for this episode. This also, along with getting the new Donna Andrews Christmas mystery (Let It Crow!Let It Crow!Let It Crow!) and David Valdes’ new y/a romance Finding My Elf, had me thinking about Christmas again, and my weird bipolar feelings about the holiday, and also had me thinking about how little I’ve written about Christmas in my vast array of work; as far as I can remember there’s one short story (“The Snow Globe”) and one book (Royal Street Reveillon), but that’s really it. I’ve written other Christmas short stories, but have never shown them to anyone or wrote additional drafts, because they were gushingly sentimental, and I despise cheap sentiment. (Oh yes, years ago I edited an anthology of gay Christmas stories, Upon a Midnight Clear, which has been out of print for at least fifteen years, if not more.) I am going to try to read more Christmas-set books this year during the holiday season, much as I read horror the entire month of Halloween.
I’m also thinking I should write more about Christmas, and another Christmas book isn’t a bad idea, either.
I just wish I could get my mind to focus on something, you know? But I suspect that has to do with the looming surgery. This weekend, LSU plays Florida on Saturday night, and I am not sure I’ll watch much else–I’ll have the games on in the background but fully intend to get shit done around the house, and read, and write. I am not going to be able to do much around the house for at least three weeks, which has me a little concerned about the laundry–but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. One nice thing about football season is that once LSU is out of contention for anything, I don’t really have to pay much attention to anything else other than them for the rest of the season. I do love football, but not enough at this point to justify wasting an entire day watching games.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I am going to try to get some more blatant self-promotion out today, too.
Ironically, I talked about how you always have to cross water to get into or out of New Orleans in Mississippi River Mischief; and here we are. ↩︎
More research into gay prostitution and the history of sex work here. ↩︎
He met Marmalade down in old New Or-leenz, strutting her stuff on the street, she said “hello, hey Joe, you want to give it a go?“
That classic song by Labelle came out while I was in high school, during the early to mid-1970’s, and there was a lot of prurient young teenager thrill in knowing that the French lyrics translated to “do you wanna have sex with me tonight?” But the song–essentially about a hooker in New Orleans and a man’s experience with her–was an introduction to another side of New Orleans–one you wouldn’t find in the World Book Encyclopedia.
It was very important to me, for a variety of reasons, to make Scotty someone who embraced his sexual orientation and sexuality. I wanted to write someone who LOVED having sex, loved beautiful men, and felt no Puritan-American based shame about enjoying sex. Those kinds of characters were few and far between in gay fiction, let alone in gay crime fiction. After writing the typical miserable cynical bitter gay man with Chanse, I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted Scotty was to be the obverse of Chanse in everything, except their mutual love of New Orleans.
(This was, in part, in response to being briefly dropped by Alyson when I signed the Scotty series with Kensington, being told “two mystery series set in New Orleans would be too alike.” I took that personally, as an insult to my talent, ambition, creativity, and abilities…and I think I proved my point. Once Murder in the Rue Dauphine and Bourbon Street Blues were released–and Rue Dauphine sold super well for them and was nominated for a Lammy–Alyson changed their minds. I’m still mad at myself for not asking for more money.)
But while Scotty was highly sexually active, he never got paid for it. He also never did porn–although I did consider that at one point as an option; I thought a murder mystery built around a porn shoot would be interesting and kind of fun. And of course, in this book he mentions that he and the guys have recorded themselves having sex, and have sexted each other.
Scotty always preferred to keep his status amateur–but he was a go-go boy (stripper, exotic dancer, dick dancer, whatever you prefer to call the guys who dance for dollars in gay bars wearing various kinds of male undergarments), and he was certainly someone who was not averse to having a sexual encounter with a handsome stranger. (There’s a joke about this in Mississippi River Mischief where Frank comments after they’ve met someone, “I’ve been with you for almost twenty years. If you think I can’t tell by now that you’ve recognized someone but you’re not sure from where, which means you’ve probably slept with them, think again”–a paraphrase, but you get the gist; Scotty is often running into men who look vaguely familiar, and that usually does mean he slept with them a long time ago.)
New Orleans, despite it’s rather prim-and-proper high society set (on the surface, anyway), with the Pickwick Club and the Boston Club and the mysterious Mystick Krewes of Rex and Comus and so on, has always been a city of loose morals and freewheeling attitudes towards sex and sexuality. We had a zone where prostitution was legal for three decades or so (Storyville) and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several bordellos operating within the city limits as we speak. There was the arrest of the Canal Street madam; and of course local author Chris Wiltz wrote The Last Madam, a biography of notorious Norma Wallace–the last well-known madam in the city. (Which I need to reread…) Bourbon Street was known for its strippers and vice for decades; there are still strip clubs on the infamous strip running from Canal downtown to Esplanade–and there are usually men in bikinis or something equally scanty on the bars of the gay clubs down down around the St. Ann/Bourbon queer nexus of the Quarter. When I was starting my deep dive into New Orleans/Quarter history, I wasn’t surprised to find out there were “stag” bars down along the riverfront along the levee; and if someone at one of the fancy houses in Storyville had a predilection for the Greek vice that needed scratching, the madam would send one of her bouncers down there to find someone willing to turn a trick, with a fair share going to the house, of course.
I think that’s fascinating, really; and something I want to explore in a story. I’ve started the story (it’s “The Blues Before Dawn” which I’ve mentioned from time to time) but can’t quite nail down the crime part of it. The set-up is great, though, he typed modestly.
I didn’t intend for Scotty to wind up in what is now known as a throuple–a three way couple, or a relationship of three people–on purpose. I wanted to create the dynamic of two men being interested in him at the same time, and have some fun with that in the first book. I absolutely did, and when I sent Colin away at the end of the first one, that was deliberate. I couldn’t decide who Scotty should wind up with, and I wanted Frank to be really who he logically should end up with–but this bad boy with a mysterious background who was so hot and sexy? I couldn’t NOT bring him back, and so I decided I had three books to wrap up the romantic dilemma. I wasn’t certain what the backstory of the dilemma would be, or how it would turn out, or how it would go–but when I was writing Jackson Square Jazz I found the perfect place and perfect way to bring Colin back. That book ended with them deciding to try a throuple to see how it works out. It was going pretty well until Mardi Gras Mambo–and I tried really hard with that book to not end the romantic story the way it ended in that book…and finally decided, since the series was actually turning out to be popular, that I would finish it by the end of the fourth book.
I’ve also not talked about it in the books or on this blog at all, but….they also have an open relationship. (Someone asked me about this at some point after the last book came out.) Nothing else would work for Scotty–he may not take advantage of the opportunities that pop up now the way he used to, but that’s because he has the freedom to make that choice. If he was forbidden from outside sexual relationships, he would cheat–and he doesn’t want to do that because that’s hurtful and wrong. He never wants to hurt Frank or Colin–but both of them are also away from New Orleans for long periods of time; Colin off doing his international agent stuff, while Frank is on the wrestling tour doing shows and promo events; so they are on their own a lot and temptation is always there–after all, all three of them are gorgeous–so while it is unspoken on the page, it’s an open throuple. And usually, Scotty finds outside sex to be kind of dull, unemotional, and not nearly as much fun as it is with one or both of the guys. That’s a character development arc. I also don’t show Scotty going out to clubs or waking up with hangovers with a stranger in his bed anymore, either. He does still go out–he loves dancing–but the gay bar scene has changed since he was younger and he doesn’t find it to be nearly as much fun as he used to.
Though he won’t say no to a hit of Ecstasy during Carnival or Decadence.
How subtle are the changes in Scotty as he has grown, aged and evolved? I think they are miniscule, but a revisit of the first two books in the series has shown a lot of change and growth over the years for him. He is definitely not that same flighty twenty-nine year old who booked a gig dancing at Southern Decadence all those years ago to make rent and wound up kidnapped by neo-Nazis deep in a swamp–I think he’s a little less flighty and a lot more responsible than he used to be…though he’s not as responsible as most people his age. Turning him into a property owner in the Quarter from a renter–and letting Millie and Velma ride off into the sunset in Florida as retirees–has also made him grow up, as now taking care of the property is his responsibility.
I will always be fond of my Scotty, though, and hope to keep writing him till I can no longer type into a computer or speak into a word-to-text app.
my neighborhood is so beautiful at night, isn’t it?
RuPaul likes to say we’re all born naked–everything else is just drag, and she isn’t wrong here.
Everything we wear is a form of drag. We always try to dress properly for whatever occasion, but yes–there’s work drag and formal drag and casual drag and gym drag and sports drag and around-the-house drag and pretty much any way you want to look at clothing…it’s all kind of a costume, really. And those costumes also depend on the time period.
I used to always think that I had no fashion sense–straight women and other gay men have often been astounded at how little I care about clothes or fashion or style. I have slight color-blindness, too–it’s hard for me to differentiate between darker shades; the darkest shades of blue and purple and brown and gray and green all look black to me. I also have some difficulty determining whether colors actually go together or not–which is why when it comes to formal/dressier clothing I tend to stick to black, white and red; I have so many red dress shirts, Constant Reader, you have no idea–so as I got older, I tend to go with what is easiest and less anxiety-inducing for me.
Of course, I also worked at an airport and had to wear a uniform for over two years: airline work drag. And after years of being a personal trainer, where all I wore was workout clothes or sweats, so yeah–my fashion sense has always been untrained and severely lacking for the most part.
Louis XIV, the Sun King–but those tights! That wig! Those shoes! More like La Reine Soleil, am I right?
I also always used to deplore the fact that men’s clothes gradually became so incredibly boring from the heydays of Beau Brummel-type male fashion icons. Look at the above painting of Louis XIV. Now imagine a man wearing that outfit to an awards show or a film premiere. Even our own Founding Fathers wore tights, powder, wigs, and heeled shoes.
But somehow, those clothing items became feminized and gender swapped–of course, women in the past also wore heeled shoes, wigs, powder and tights beneath their skirts and bustles and hoops. But even in the 1930’s and 1940’s, men’s clothes were far more stylish–trench-coats and linen pants, fedoras and other hats, spats and Oxford shoes, argyle socks. I hated the “traditional” styles of dress for men that developed in the post-war period. and the utter rejection of those same styles in the 60s and 70s. Men’s clothing began to evolve a bit more during this period–and some serious fashion faux-pas were prevalent during the last decades of the century.
As I said the other day (and as so many others have pointed out), men have always dressed as women for one reason or another that had nothing to do with gender expression or identity for years. The Sun King’s gay younger brother (he also had a gay bastard son by Louise de la Valliere; homosexuality was rampant at the Sun King’s court) Philippe duc d’Orleans (whose son was the namesake for New Orleans) had many male lovers and often dressed as a woman for appearances at court. I’ve always wanted to write about Philippe, who has always fascinated me–the young gay bastard son of Louis XIV, who died young, was Louis duc de Valentinois; I’ve also had some minor interest in writing about him as well, or just gay life at Versailles in general.
There is a long-standing drag tradition in New Orleans as well. The Red Dress Run, for example, may not be full drag as we know it, but it’s essentially all about men in red dresses for charity.
One of the things I really enjoy about the modern young generation is they don’t subscribe to the antiquated rules of fashion for men and women. I love seeing young actors and celebrities showing up at red carpet events in daring outfits instead of that tired old tux look. Yes, men look dashing in tuxedos; I’ve always wanted to go full tuxedo with hat, cane, tails and gloves–but again, not the ordinary or expected.
I wore a kilt twice when I went to the Edgars, and wore it again at Bouchercon in Albany for our Real Housewives of Bouchercon panel. I loved wearing it–skirts are sooooo much more comfortable than pants–and it was definitely a fashion risk; people who didn’t know me but saw me wearing it undoubtedly thought ah, that one must be gay. I love the way the Musketeers dressed in The Three Musketeers–I think the seventeenth century was probably my favorite era for men’s clothes; I also love a pirate look from the early eighteenth as well.
One thing I definitely need to explore more with Jem is not only his sense of fashion for his clients, but for himself–both in and out of drag. Those are critical decisions for a queen–because while a particular look or style for a queen can evolve over the years, it’s very unusual for them to do something radically different than their usual; again, it probably has to do with ease more than anything else; it’s much easier to fall back on a regular look and color palette than to reinvent yourself every time or to come up with something new every time. I do think I am going to have Jem do the Madonna constant reinvention thing–mainly because it’s more interesting that way for me–because it is part of who he is as a person; Jem thinks he’s boring but he’s actually quite adventurous. Jem has very little confidence in Death Drop, which is easy for me to write because I know how that feels. One of the goals of the series is to show him develop self-confidence and self-assurance and becoming more comfortable with himself, and part of that is going to come from performing in drag and another part from actually solving crimes…which makes him start believing in himself more.
And that is always fun to write–character growth and development.
