Category: television

She’s in Love with the Boy

Well, good morning to you, too, Wednesday!

Last night after I got home and worked for a while–“Festival of the Redeemer” is coming along nicely, as well as some other things I’m doing–and when it was time to take a break for the evening, Romancing the Stone popped up on one of my streaming services (goal: determine cost-effectiveness of every streaming service compared to usage; and start canceling subscriptions–there’s far more to watch than I’ll ever be able to catch up on) and I thought, “ah, I’ve always loved this movie,” so I clicked play. I hadn’t thought about the movie in a very long time, but it’s one I remember fondly; I love Kathleen Turner and this was before Michael Douglas soured on me (I don’t know why, am aware that it’s completely unfair and based on nothing but raw feeling), I think it was one of Danny Devito’s first big roles in film after his big break as Louie on Taxi. It was clearly intended to be an attempt to reach the audiences that turned out in droves for Raiders of the Lost Ark (this was a big time for action/adventure films of this type), but while it’s not Raiders, it has a lot of its own charm and appeal.

If you’re not familiar with Romancing the Stone, it’s essentially another one of those movies about writers that shows how little screenwriters know about actual book publishing, or even how the novel-writing process works. It begins with a bizarre yet funny scene from a Western, with Kathleen Turner doing a voice over narration. As her heroine and her love interest finally evade the bad guys and ride off into the sunset together, the film cuts back to Kathleen Turner, sobbing at her typewriter, saying out loud oh that’s good, and then typing THE END. She then celebrates finishing her novel with her cat, Romeo–because she apparently has no friends, no love life, nothing, despite being an international bestselling author. (I will say, however, that one of the things I do appreciate about this film is that her apartment in Manhattan isn’t anything special; it’s not even remotely as nice as the one Monica and Rachel share on Friends–and one would think an international bestselling author could afford something nicer, but it was nice to see a relatively realistic Manhattan apartment.) She is kind of a nerdy girl; little to no make up, hair pulled back tightly, baggy clothing. Of course, over the course of the movie as she falls in love with the Michael Douglas character as they travel throughout Colombia (and there’s another flaw in the film; she has to rush off to Colombia to try to save her sister, and bring the treasure map her sister sent her in the mail–yet rather than flying from New York to Cartagena–where her sister is–she flies into some interior airport and then has to catch a bus through the jungle to Cartagena; Cartagena is a major city with an international airport. She could have just flown there–but then she wouldn’t have wound up in the interior, met the Michael Douglas character, found the treasure, etc etc etc.) We also see, as she falls in love with Jack (Michael Douglas) her blossoming into her full womanhood; she wears her hair down and lavishly styled, sexier clothes, make-up, etc.–because of course a successful career woman can’t be a complete woman without a man.

Not such a great message for a romantic adventure film, really. And once she returns to New York–and quickly bangs out a novel based on her adventures in Colombia–you can see the difference in her is also lasting, despite the fact she and Jack have been separated, but she keeps hoping–a “hopeful romantic”, as she describes herself to her only friend, her publisher, played by Holland Taylor–that he’ll show up; of course he does, complete with his dream sailing ship which they talked about in one of their getting-to-know-you, falling-in-love down sequences, and roll credits. The boat is even named after one of  her most popular characters.

I did enjoy watching the movie again, frankly; despite its weird misogynistic messages. It was a hit, and even spawned a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, which I also remember enjoying, and it also made me think about how writers are often (incorrectly) portrayed in films and television programs–particularly romance writers. Joan, of course, is one; so is the wretched misogynist character Jack Nicholson plays in As Good as it Gets, and of course, one of my favorites–the character Meryl Streep plays in She-Devil.

But for the record, I’ve never once typed THE END when I finish a manuscript, and they also always make it seem as though writers write a complete and finished manuscript that is publishable the first time through.

If only that were the case.

I did manage, as I said earlier, to get some work done on that short story yesterday instead of what I should be working on, but sometimes something like “Festival of the Redeemer” gets stuck in your head and keeps insisting on coming out rather than what you should be doing. This morning I am going to try to get some emails caught up–I’ve already folded a load of laundry, emptied and refilled the dishwasher–and then I am going to try, desperately, to get some work done on the Secret Project, and maybe another five hundred or so words on “Festival.” I’m worrying it like a sore tooth, frankly, and for some reason I just want to write this story, give voice to this character, see Venice through his eyes, and slowly develop how poisonous the relationship he’s in actually is, and why he’s decided to do what he’s going to do in Venice. This is tricky–of course, it’s always tricky when trying to figure out motivation for killing someone, particularly when the relationship is as young as the one in the story. I don’t know if the story will actually work, and I’m not really sure I am telling it correctly, but I am deeply enjoying writing it, even if there’s no market for it anywhere.

Oh, well. I suppose I can try to talk my publisher into doing a second short story collection next year.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone!

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Is There Life Out There

I slept well last night, so well that I didn’t want to get up this morning–yet these wasn’t another option, so here I am, with my first cup of coffee with darkness pressing against the windows as the sun slowly begins to rise in the east. It’s not terribly cold this morning in the Lost Apartment, so I assume it can’t be that cold outside. Stranger things have happened, though. And this is, of course, the first week that is going to end with parades this weekend on the Uptown route; the preview or prelude, if you will, to the six days of utter madness to come.

Thinking about it makes me feel very tired. I wonder which parade the LSU football team will be riding in? The last time they won the championship it was Rex; I wonder if that will hold true this year as well? I doubt Joe Burrow will be riding, though. I think he’s already departed from Baton Rouge.

It took me a while to decide what to read next, after finishing Tracy Clark’s sublime Broken Places. I finally settled on a reread of Mary Higgins Clark’s Where Are the Children? I’d be meaning to reread it for quite some time–I originally read it in its first paperback release when I was a teenager; it was one of those “phenomenon books” of the 1970’s, as I mentioned the other day; everyone was talking about Where Are the Children? when it was released, and it wasn’t as easy for a book to go viral back then as it is now. My memories of it were relatively vague since it’s been forty years or so since I first read it; I simply remember who the real bad guy was, and that the woman had successfully disappeared after the first trial–which probably would never happen today,, of course; her face, and videos of her, would be plastered all over the 24 hour news networks and the tabloids, so her disappearance probably wouldn’t work today–but I was relatively certain that she was the only point-of-view character, which, as i discovered as I started the reread yesterday, wasn’t quite true. The villain’s point of view is there, as is Nancy’s new husband’s, and you know what else? It’s even better than I remembered it; the pacing is genius, and the way Clark writes is also genius. I’m glad I picked it up again; it wasn’t easy to put it down, frankly, and I am itching to get back to it.

We also watched The Pharmacist yesterday on Netflix. I’d seen some local chatter about it on social media, and I knew it was a true crime documentary set here in New Orleans (or close enough nearby). It’s exceptionally well done, and it’s primarily set in Chalmette, in St. Bernard Parish, which borders the lower 9th ward of New Orleans. (Chalmette is also where the Battle of New Orleans took place, and the historic park is there.) I remember the story of the pharmacist trying to get justice for his murdered son from back in the day, but I didn’t realize Dan Schneider’s story had gone beyond that, which it did; exposing a pill mill office in New Orleans East, which helped lead to the opioid crisis as well as the new heroin outbreak. I do remember having to test at a clinic in Chalmette or Arabi in St. Bernard Parish once a month for several  years, and I never really tested a lot of people out there for HIV/AIDS, but on the rare occasions when someone would want to get tested, they inevitably would talk to me about how bad the addiction problem in St. Bernard Parish was–I remember one man telling, sadly, that “nearly everyone in the parish is addicted to something” and “you see discarded needles everywhere–in every parking lot, along the side of the road, pretty much everywhere you look.” Watching The Pharmacist brought back a lot of those memories of Mondays, heading down St. Claude Avenue to where it becomes the St. Bernard highway, crossing the Industrial Canal into the lower 9th and so forth.

Remember how I said the other day I am hardly an expert on New Orleans or Louisiana? This is a case in point. I think somehow I have to figure out how to write about the Louisiana opioid crisis at some point…no one else seems to be doing so.

I also went to the gym yesterday afternoon, and it was wonderful. I don’t want a cookie, but I would like it stated for the record that I neither had to force myself to go, and that once I was there, I enjoyed myself. It’s kind of nice to work my muscles again, and they feel like they are adapting to regular exercise again–this morning they don’t feel either tight or tired, which is kind of cool. I’m glad I resisted the urge to pick up like I hadn’t worked out in years, remembering to start slowly and work my way back into the routine. Right now I am doing a full body workout three times a week; this week is two sets of 12 reps on everything; next will be three sets; and then the week after that raise the weights. If I can keep this going–and right now, it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason not to–by about May I’ll be ready to go into a more concentrated, more difficult work out routine, focusing on specific body parts each time rather than the entire body.

I had started watching the Anthony Minghella version of  The Talented Mr. Ripley the last time I went, and so yesterday watched for another thirty minutes or so; I am close to halfway through the rewatch. The film is vastly different from the book, of course–a lot of the book was internal–and the homoeroticism, and Tom’s sexuality, are a lot more apparent in this film version than it was in the book. The book was more coded, the film, made in a freer, more accepting time, isn’t as afraid to delve deeply into the matter of Tom’s sexuality. In this second half hour of the film, the character of Freddy shows up, played perfectly by Philip Seymour Hoffman (he, along with Cate Blanchett and Matt Damon, definitely give the strongest performances in the film), and it’s also remarkable how beautifully the movie was filmed; it’s hard to go wrong with shooting on location in Italy. Watching the fracturing relationship between Tom and Dickie also makes more sense in the film than in the book; again, Damon’s performance is remarkably nuanced and sympathetic; you can’t help but feel sorry for Tom, so dazzled by this glimpse into a world he never knew before, and as someone who has been the “poor friend tagalong who can’t afford to make his own way,” I understand completely how Tom must have felt. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about that, and when I got home I started work on a new short story–“Festival of the Redeemer,” set in Venice. I’ve always wanted to write a story set in Venice (I did Tuscany in “Don’t Look Down,” and will eventually do Florence as well, I am sure) and I’ll probably work on that story some more this week.

I also worked on the Secret Project yesterday, which is finally starting to take shape.

And now, it’s time for me to get ready to head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll catch you on the flip side.

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He’ll Have to Go

Saturday morning, and I slept in until nearly eight thirty! Living large here, I have to say.

Yesterday was one of those days; the temperature dropped, as you may recall, and once again when turning on the heat Thursday night, it didn’t really come on–it did, but it never truly got warm in the Lost Apartment, either upstairs or down. So, I wound up having to stay home from work to wait for the HVAC guys, who actually arrived dutifully when they said they would (this is so rare as to merit mention), and worked on it for a while. They did eventually leave, and I went to the gym and ran my errands.  I don’t know if the heat is actually fixed or not; we didn’t need it last night anywhere other than the kitchen, and I have a space heater for in there (it never warms up in the kitchen, ever) but I did manage to get a lot of cleaning and organizing done. I also managed to start watching the film of The Talented Mr. Ripley on the iPad yesterday at the gym (the Anthony Minghella version) and it veers away from the book’s narrative much more than I ever had supposed; the character of Meredith (played by Cate Blanchett) doesn’t exist in the book, nor does the entire subplot about Dickie’s affair with the village girl in Mongibello. But the one thing I will say about this film–and the thirty or so minutes of it I watched–Matt Damon is exceptionally great in the role of Tom; far more so than Jude Law as Dickie (he was nominated for an Oscar; the film made him a star), and this just might be one of Damon’s best performances.

Paul, I believe, is off to the office later today, and has plans with friends to go watch Krewe de Vieux tonight; I intend to stay home and work on the Secret Project, get my taxes together and sent off to the accountant, and emails to answer. There’s also organizing and filing to do, and I need to do the floors; I always leave the floors for Saturday vacuuming. Paul’s absence also gives me no excuse for not reading and writing for most of the day; around the cleaning, at any rate–and I am actually looking forward to getting a lot of both done today.

I’m still reading Tracy Clark’s Broken Places, which is really good, and in fact, once I finish writing this I am most likely going to  head over to the easy chair and spend a few hours with it this morning before moving on to the Secret Project. I am also really enjoying Jason Berry’s City of a Million Dreams, which I am not very far into, but I feel confident in recommending just based on the introduction and part of the first chapter. I’ve not read Berry before–he’s local, and has written quite a few books, including taking the Archdiocese to task for covering up the sexual abuse of children–but I am impressed enough to start adding his canon to my TBR list. We started watching Avenue 5, which was much funnier than I thought it would be–and Hugh Laurie is terrific as the captain; the entire cast is actually quite good. We’re probably going to also start watching The Outsider on HBO, which presents a conundrum for me; I generally like to read the book while I am watching the TV series based on it (I did this with Big Little Lies, and found it to be incredibly enjoyable; I’ve not read the King yet, but once I am done with the Clark, I am definitely going to pull The Outsider down from the shelf and give it a go)., but I guess pulling down The Outsider and moving it up to the top of the TBR list won’t hurt anyone or anything.

Parades also start this coming Friday on the St. Charles Avenue route; the challenge is going to be continuing to write and go to the gym around my job and the parades; parade watching is always a blast–it will probably never get old for me–but it’s also exhausting and keeps me up later at night than I probably need to be awake, given how early I will have to get up the following mornings.

It’s also lovely to wake up and sit at my desk and glance around and see clean, clear counters and a sink that is primarily empty of dirty dishes. There’s a load in the dishwasher that needs to be put away, and a load of laundry in the dryer that also neede to be fluffed and folded, but like I said, other than that and the floors (and these stacks of file folders and scribbled notes scattered around my desk), there’s no cleaning to be done this morning. My muscles are tired this morning from the gym yesterday, but I’m not sore, and I feel more stretched than I usually do, which also actually feels good–I may just stretch out a bit a little later; I’d forgotten how good it feels to have stretched muscles as opposed to tight ones.

So, that’s the plan for today, at any rate. I’m going to go pour yet another cup of coffee, take my book and repair to the easy chair; after that, it’s back to the desk to do some writing and answer some emails (I never actually send them until Monday morning; emails beget emails, and I’d rather not wake up Monday morning at the crack of dawn with an insane amount of emails to answer; it’s too, too daunting to deal with on a twelve hour day).

I was also thinking the other day–thanks to a post by someone on Facebook–about books that should be paired together, like a good wine and some good cheese; how reading the two back-to-back can enhance the reading pleasure of both. Michael Koryta’s The Prophet (which is one of my favorite books), for example, pairs beautifully with Megan Abbott’s Dare Me (and you need to be watching the television adaptation of Dare Me); Alafair Burke recommends pairing Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and there was one more I can’t quite remember, but it was also quite brilliant. (I also think pairing Stephen King’s Carrie and Christine together enhances the pleasure of reading each even more.)

I was also thinking about “event” books; Gone Girl was probably the most recent “event” book–a book that sold a gazillion copies and everyone was talking about. There have always been “event books”, which in the pre-Internet, pre-social media days was harder to have happen, and yet it did, all the time. Two such books from the 70’s include Thomas Tryon’s The Other and Peter Benchley’s Jaws; the fame of Jaws was spread even further by an event film based on it that has almost entirely eclipsed the book. Robin Cook’s Coma was another one of these; I intend to include The Other in my Reread Project this year, but rather than Jaws I am going to reread Benchley’s second novel, The Deep, and Cook’s second novel, Sphinx–which was Cook’s only non-medical thriller thriller.

And on that note, I am going to repair to the easy chair with my coffee and Tracy Clark. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader; I certainly intend to.

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Something in Red

Well, we made it to Friday yet again, did we not? One week from today the St. Charles parades kick back into gear again; and the madness of Carnival season descends on those of us who live inside the box. (“The box”, for those of you Not From Here, designates the most common parade route: Tchoupitoulas up Napoleon to St. Charles to Canal to Convention Center Boulevard; the river/Tchoupitoulas forms the one side of the box–it’s usually open somewhat to traffic, but when the parades are lined up…it’s best to avoid. Living inside the box means you have to be home and parked at least an hour to two hours before the start time of the first parade, else you’ll be unable to get home.) So, yes, for a total of about seven or eight days scattered over two weekends, the parade schedule will dominate my life and force me to accommodate my life around them. It’s a very fun, if exhausting, time.

The weather changed dramatically, as it always does at this time of year when it rains. It was in the thirties overnight, and while it is supposed to be in the fifties today–it’s going back up to sunny and warm this weekend–it still feels like its in the thirties inside the Lost Apartment today, which is rather unpleasant. I’m layered, and the space heater is one, but it’s still unpleasant and I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning at all. But I did get up, and I am going to go to the gym–it’s gym morning–around ten; I’d set the alarm for seven but the bed felt simply too delicious to get out of, so instead of nine I’ll go at ten. Compromise. I am resisting the urge to say I’ll go when I get home from work because I think we all know that will turn into well, I went twice this week and I’m tired and home now.

Which is how it always starts, you know.

I finished reading Bourbon Street this week, and have moved on to City of a Million Dreams, which opens in a prologue about the Confederate monuments tied into Allen Toussaint’s funeral. Jason Berry is a very good writer, and I am already drawn into his (nonfiction) story; which is incredibly cool. I am also enjoying Tracy Clark’s Broken Places, which is also cool. I’ll probably spend some more time with it tonight when I get home from work.

We finished watching the second season of  Sex Education, and of course it sort of ended the way I feared it might; while everyone else’s story-lines came to a rather lovely close, others had to be seeded in order for there to be a third season, and of course the core storyline is Otis and Maeve’s relationship. Otis and Maeve are the odd couple we can’t help but root for to get together; the poor but extremely smart daughter of a drug addict with a sharp tongue and the awkward son of the sex therapist; we’ve seen them grow beyond their original selves and develop as people as well as fall in love with each other; so wanting them to get together is the pull of their story–and even if they did somehow wind up together, for purposes of the show they would have to be pulled apart anyway so we could root for them to get back together again.

I’ve also gotten moving on the Secret Project again; this new opening was the right choice, and I’ve actually found the character’s voice. As I worked on it last night after work, getting in a very difficult four or five hundred words, despite that struggle I also couldn’t help but realize my mind was filling in other details, and both the story and the characters were beginning to expand inside my mind, which is terribly important–and also caused a breakthrough regarding the two unfinished manuscripts languishing in files in my computer: I don’t believe I ever found the core of the main characters in either of them, and that’s why I am so deeply dissatisfied with both manuscripts, and why they never feel right. I do think this last, third revision of Bury Me in Shadows is the closest I’ve gotten to getting his voice right; but this breakthrough on the Secret Project last night also opened the door to what is going wrong with the others. So, once I get the Secret Project finished–the goal is to have it finished by Valentine’s Day/first day of St. Charles parades–I can spend that following weekend primarily working on who my main character is, and reviewing this most recent rewrite, with an eye to making sure I have his voice right.

And then perhaps I can get it finished, once and for all.

I also have to write blog entries about Bourbon Street and another book I finished reading for the Reread Project; if nothing else, I can always say I have the blog entries finished.

I also found The Talented Mr. Ripley on Netflix, so I am going to start watching that while I walk on the treadmill at the gym. I also want to watch this new true crime Netflix series, The Pharmacist, about the drug problem in New Orleans. I watched the trailer for it last night, and it looks quite interesting, to say the least. We also need to get caught up on Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, which of course has been DVRing merrily; I think it might be more fun to binge it, quite frankly.

I’ve also got a short story to start writing–not to mention all the ones languishing in their folders, begging to be finished or desperate for revisions–but this particular one has a due date, and I’d really like to get it started; which means more Sherlock reading tonight when I get home from the office, interspersed with Tracy Clark.

And on that note, I need to eat some carbs for energy before I head to the gym this morning; y’all behave and have a lovely Friday, okay?

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Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)

Hello, Thursday, and how are you doing this lovely morning?

Yesterday was bizarre. I got up in the morning and took care of some business while I woke up–laundry, dishes, etc.–aware that we were expecting bad weather. It rained off and on all morning–nothing unusual there–and I got sprinkled on a bit when I walked to and from the gym (and yes, that’s twice this week and I am doing quite well with this so far, and I’m still enjoying the way my muscles feel), and then as I was getting ready for work and a conference call, a nasty thunderstorm rolled in. I got out of the shower and as I was getting dressed, I heard this weird clicking sound. Puzzled, I walked over to one of the bedroom windows and saw little white pellets bouncing off the windows, the fence, and the crepe myrtles. Hail? It’s hailing in New Orleans? But it’s seventy degrees outside! 

That’s correct, it was seventy degrees and hailing.

Plagues of Egypt, anyone?

It’s also rained heavily all night overnight here in New Orleans; it’s still dark outside and sprinkling.  I slept very well–always sleep well during rainstorms–and certainly didn’t want to get up this morning. Working out does, apparently, help with sleep, and I’ve greatly enjoyed the kind of restful sleep I’ve been having this entire week, which is very lovely. It’s also lovely to be working out for the right reasons again; for so long I was working out for all the wrong reasons; making it about aesthetics and how I looked (and enjoying the kind of attention I was getting for having a worked out physique) rather than doing it because of how it made me feel and to be healthier. Now that I’m older, and am on blood pressure medication and another daily pill for cholesterol–well, I should have forced my old fat ass back into the gym before I had to go on both. But we’ll see now what, if any, difference regular working out makes to those–although it will also be hard to tell whether it’s the result of the workouts or the drugs I have to take. Curious.

We watched another episode of Sex Education, and I have to say, the show is really quite revolutionary and clever, while also being well-acted and well-written. As I said the other day, each episode is basically a lesson is actual sexuality; yesterday’s was one in which a group of the teenage girls, not friends, being forced to come up with what they have in common as women: the answer inevitably ended up being sexually assaulted in some way, or as one of them told their teacher as they walked out, “unsolicited penises.” And sadly, they did indeed bond over their shared trauma. What a horribly sad statement about what it’s like to be a woman–or a teenaged girl–in these modern times.

Today is a long day at the office, and once I’m fully awake I have some emails to answer and some bills to pay; as well as trying to assemble everything I need for my taxes so i can get them off to the accountant and filed and out of the way. I need to get to work on the Secret Project again–I didn’t even open the file yesterday–and I also need to get started on my Sherlock story. I’m just going to get it started and try to get the rough draft sorted; I can always fix things later, after all, and as I often say, it’s much easier to edit something then it is to write it. But at the moment I’m still feeling a bit groggy and not quite awake yet–still on the first cup of coffee–and so that will have to be later in the day at some point.

I also finished reading Richard Campanella’s Bourbon Street, which I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend. My next non-fiction history read about New Orleans will be Jason berry’s City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300, which should be quite fun. I’ve made lots of notes from the Campanella; I’m sure there will be plenty of notes to be made from the Berry. I certainly am enjoying finally learning the true history of my home, and it is certainly inspiring me to write more historical fictions about New Orleans.

And on that note, the coffee is starting to kick into gear, so I am heading back into the spice mines until it’s time to head into the office. There’s also a lull in the rain–which undoubtedly is helping me wake up–but it’s definitely one of those days where you’d rather just stay in bed and read–which actually sounds lovely; if it weren’t for the coffee situation, I should probably do that more in the mornings, you know?

Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader!

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Passionate Kisses

Hello there, Tuesday, how’s the wife and kids?

I forgot to mention yesterday that I also watched Spiderman: Far From Home over the course of the weekend, and while I’m not entirely certain it was as good as Spiderman: Homecoming (I can say without any equivocal doubt it was NOT as good as Into the Spider-verse, which was simply brilliant, and probably the best super-hero film I’ve ever seen), I did enjoy it. It’s hard not to like Tom Holland; and I shall repeat again, I had no desire to watch his debut film as Spider-man/Peter Parker until I saw the clip of his Lip Sync Battle performance as Rihanna doing “Umbrella”, and I also like the way they’re doing MJ, with Zendaya taking the role. It did have some funny moments, some very cute moments, and one can never go wrong with Jake Gyllenhaal; but there was just something off about how they explained away the whole Thanos /half-the-universe disappeared etc.; there are more holes in that explanation (as there inevitably always are when it comes to time-travel and so forth) but it couldn’t be unexplained, and by glossing over it with barely a mention or any explanation…I guess that made it go down easier for fans? But I’ll continue to watch Tom Holland in the role–I’ve never seen any of the Andrew Garfield Spiderman movies, and I didn’t enjoy the Tobey Maguire one I did see, so stopped watching them. But it was entertaining enough, and it held my interest…but while super-hero movies can be fun, I am really getting bored with the BIGGER and BETTER effects, and the fight scenes….they all begin to seem the same after awhile.

It’s kind of why we stopped watching Arrow, despite my passion for Steven Amell.

I wasn’t tired yesterday, per se, although I felt sort of out of it all day; like my brain had never completely woken up. It was strange; it was like a part of my brain never completely woke up so I was sort of sleepwalking through the day despite having full awareness? I can’t really describe it other than that, it was weird and I wasn’t a fan, actually. Last night I slept very deeply and well; I feel very rested this morning and my mind is sharper than it was yesterday–a very low bar, to be sure–but I also managed to get a lot done yesterday despite not feeling completely awake. It was rather strange, to be sure; but I cannot argue with successful production.

But this morning I feel more alive and awake and alert than I certainly did yesterday, so we’ll see how this day is going to turn out. I was curious how the return to the gym, coupled with an early morning, would turn out yesterday; I don’t think that was indicative of how things will be from hereon out, though. My body was just trying to adapt to something new, a change in routine. Last night’s amazing and deep sleep was perfect, and I feel terrific this morning, which is lovely. How I will feel at the end of this day remains to be seen, but I am confident it won’t be that bad. I wasn’t tired at all last night when I got home from work–I even stopped at Rouse’s on the way home–and tumbled into bed relatively early, after an episode of Sex Education. There’s only two episodes left, but it occurred to  me last night that each episode of the show actually is sex education; I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but with each student/client, some aspect of sexuality is discussed and covered and destigmatized; for example, last night’s episode’s sex education had to do with anal douching and hygiene for gay men; one of the gay characters was afraid to have sex for the first time with his boyfriend because he didn’t know how to douche and was worried about what would happen if he didn’t….which turned into a lovely lesson about speaking to your partner, being completely honest about your feelings, and ultimately, Anton lost his anal virginity.

The show is actually a sex education course cleverly disguised as a comedy series about teenagers and their relationships, so the title is even more clever than one might think.

I also managed to figure out how I am going to have to schedule myself through parade season so I get my work hours in without having to use any vacation time–I have to save my vacation time for my trip to New York for the Edgars, and the train ride down to Malice Domestic for the weekend after. Not sure how vacations the rest of the year will play out, other than Bouchercon in Sacramento; but I definitely need to let the vacation time start accruing again. One good thing about the day job–my vacation time accrues relatively quickly, but I am near rock bottom right now with very little time left at the moment. Tomorrow is Pay the Bills day, and I also need to get my tax stuff together and off to the accountant–the sooner I get the return filed, the sooner I’ll get my refund, which undoubtedly will be less than last year.

And on that note, I’m going to get ready for the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

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Foggy Mountain Breakdown

So I actually made it to the gym yesterday.

I know, right? And you know what else? Afterward, I felt great. I’d forgotten about the joys of endorphins, how good warmed up and stretched out muscles feel when they’ve worked,  how nice it is to get hot and sweaty while working your body to maximize or improve its potential. And yet–when it’s time to go again on Wednesday morning (I’ve decided my work out days will be Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, per my day job schedule and around my writing and other work) odds are I won’t want to go, like always, having completely forgotten that it actually feels good to go to the gym.

I’ll never stop resenting the back injury in 2010 that took me out of my regular workout routine I’d been following, with few exceptions, since 1995 (I didn’t work out at all during that wretched year we lived in DC, for example).

But I also worked on the Secret Project yesterday, which also felt really good, and did some other things overall to make things easier for me this week–at least, in theory it will make things easier this week. I started reading Tracy Clark’s Broken Places, the first book in her Cass Raines series (the second of which is a Grafton finalist this year), and am really enjoying it. I’m tired this morning–I probably could have used a good two or three hours more of sleep–but my muscles aren’t sore and still feel relatively stretched out. I imagine if I somehow make it through my twelve-hour day, I’ll sleep deeply and well tonight; I thought I did last night but am still tired this morning. Maybe I’m just not fully awake yet? Something like that, at any rate. But I’m drinking cappuccinos this morning, and hopefully that will kick my brain into gear.

I also made a lengthy to-do list, which will be fun to get through this week.

We finished watching the first season of Messiah last night, and I’m not really sure about the ending. I guess they left it open for a second season? But in either case, it didn’t make an awful lot of sense to me; Paul was equally baffled, and I suspect in either case they simply weren’t sure how to end it, honestly. I suppose I wanted the season to answer the question of whether this mystery man was actually a new messiah or not; and they couldn’t decide whether he was or he wasn’t. I’m not sure I’ll go along for the ride on a second season, when or if one should ever surface, but what started out as something with a lot of potential–just how would the world react in such a situation, politically, religiously, and culturally–wound down without any real resolution or answers.

Or, as is often possible, perhaps I am just not intellectual enough to understand.

We also continued watching Sex Education, which is turning from a clever comedy about teen sexuality into something completely different; more of a teen drama/soap, which is fine; as the cast discovers and explores their sexuality and relationships, more focus on drama was inevitable rather than comedy; but I do kind of miss the humor and Otis and Maeve running their underground sex therapist business. This season thus far they are dealing with sexual assault; alternate sexualities; and the development of a strange kind of gay love triangle between two openly gay boys and one of them’s former bully, who is also slowly coming to his own realizations about his own sexuality. I hate the trope of the boy who falls in love with his bully, who was bullying him out of his own fear of his own desires–which seems like a really weird direction for a show relatively determined (at least in its first season) to explore sexuality in all its different forms and types; but, as I said, the focus and center of the show seems to have shifted this season, and not for the better. But the cast is still as appealing as ever, and Gillian Anderson, as Otis’ actual sex therapist mother, is a gem.

I’d watch Anderson in anything, quite frankly.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Blue

So, Saints & Sinners and the Tennessee Williams Festival were a Jeopardy clue on Friday night; how fricking cool is that? I didn’t see it myself–I was cleaning–but any number of people tagged me on Facebook or on Twitter, so I got to see it, which is cool. The Tennessee Williams Festival has been a clue before, but I think this is the first time Saints & Sinners was–and it’s a queer/LGBTQ festival, so even more cool. Way to go, Jeopardy! There’s a reason why you’ve always been my favorite game show!

Hold up your hand if you didn’t think I’d get everything done yesterday that I’d planned. But it was still a good day, and I wrote some new stuff for the first time in a while. I have these horrible stagnant times, when I don’t get any writing done–and as we’ve already established, I always have to force myself to do it (despite loving doing it) and then when I’ve got my writing for the day finished, I wonder why I have to make myself do something I love–and those stagnant times always make me worry that I’ve lost the spark, the desire, to do it; that this time is the time I won’t be able to get back into it and do it. I worked on the Secret Project for a while yesterday, basically completely rewrote everything I wrote to begin with, and moved onto from the first scene to the next scene, which was also quite lovely.

I did get some organizing done–there’s more to be done today; my iCloud drive is so ridiculously disorganized that it’s almost impossible to use, and I probably should back everything up yet again–and some of the filing; I should be able to get more done this morning before I dive back into the Secret Project. I am also planning on heading to the gym for the first time in a very long time (I prefer not to think about just how long that time has been, frankly), which is my first move in my attempt to live a healthier, better organized, better life. I already am thinking of excuses to get out of going, frankly–which is par for the course, as always–but as long as I don’t tie myself to any particular time table, I should be good. I guess the Super Bowl is also tonight, but I don’t really care about either team–the 49ers or the Chiefs–though I suppose if I had to pick one I’d pick the Chiefs, and that’s mainly because they haven’t won a Super Bowl in forever and I think Kansas City could use the boost. We’ll probably spend the evening getting caught up on shows we watch. We still haven’t finished watching Messiah, are way behind on Dare Me, haven’t started the last season of Schitt’s Creek, and so on.

We haven’t even started HBO’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Outsider, which is getting rave reviews. Who would have ever guessed The Hogan Family’s Jason Bateman would become one of our finest actors/directors/writers for television? I really can’t wait for Ozark to come back.

I also finally finished and published my blog post about Victoria Holt’s Kirkland Revels, part of my Reread Project; I still need to do The Talented Mr. Ripley–it’s started, but I need to finish it.

I am resisting the urge to read Dorothy B. Hughes’ The So Blue Marble next; I need to start reading Tracy Clark’s canon so I can interview her for Sisters; but I also have to read Lori Rader-Day’s The Lucky One for the panel I’m moderating this year at the Jeopardy clue Tennessee Williams Festival late next month. Decisions, decisions. Probably the smart thing to do is read Tracy Clark’s first book next, then Lori’s, and then back to Tracy again for her second book.

I’ve also reached the final section of Richard Campanella’s Bourbon Street, which I am looking forward to finally finishing this month. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the book, which is interesting, well-written, and incredibly informative; it’s going to remain on my desk as an important reference guide for any future New Orleans writing I do–which reminds me, I’ve got to start that Sherlock Holmes story–and probably when I finish the Campanella I’ll probably move on to Jason Berry’s City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Age 300. 

The plan is to get this work on the Secret Project finished this week, get started on the Sherlock story, and then get back to Bury Me in Shadows. I’d like to get Shadows turned in by the end of March, get back to the Kansas book–maybe with some serious focus I can get that finished and turned in by the end of May, and then I can get to work on Chlorine. I’d like to have the first draft of Chlorine finished by the end of summer.

Must stay organized, and must stay focused.

I also finished reading Dorothy B. Hughes’ Dread Journey yesterday.

dread journey

“I’m afraid.”

She had spoken aloud. She hadn’t meant to; she hadn’t wanted those words to come up from her throat to her lips. She hadn’t meant to think them, much less speak them. She didn’t want Gratia to have heard them.

But across the room the girl lifted her eyes from her book.

“What did you say?” she queried.

Dorothy B. Hughes is one of the more unjustly forgotten women writers of the mid to later twentieth century; fortunately Sarah Weinman worked–and has continued to work–tirelessly to bring this women back into the public eye. She wrote the introduction to Dread Journey, and in it she names Hughes as her favorite crime writer of all time. She’s not wrong, frankly; Sarah and my friend Margery are both huge fans of Hughes, and if not for them–and Megan Abbott–I may not have ever started reading Hughes, and for that I shall always be grateful to them. In a Lonely Place and The Expendable Man are both extraordinary; I think, frankly, The Expendable Man should be taught; it’s on my list for the Reread Project, for later in the year. Dread Journey is yet another masterwork by Hughes; I cannot wait to dig my teeth into more of her work.

Dread Journey takes place entirely on a train; the Chief, making its regular run from Los Angeles to Chicago–and you know, at some point, someone really needs to do a book or lengthy essay about crime novels and trains; not only did Hughes write one, but Christie wrote two (the very well known Murder on the Orient Express and the lesser known The Mystery of the Blue Train; as well as others that revolved around trains, like 4:50 from Paddington–called What Mrs. McGillicudy Saw! in the US) and of course, Graham Greene’s wonderful Orient Express comes to mind as well. Trains were part and parcel of the American experience. Trains made travel and connecting the massive distances across this continent much easier in the time before air travel became more commonplace and everyone wasn’t convinced they needed a car; there’s a certain nostalgic romantic element to train travel now, probably a result of these novels. I know that year we lived in Washington, we loved taking the train to Philadelphia and New York, even on to Boston; I’ve always, as I said the other day, wanted to write a book or a story called Murder on the Acela Express, and perhaps someday I will–even though the Acela is more of a commuter train without compartments. One of these days I want to take the City of New Orleans on its twenty-four hour ride to Chicago; it just seems like a lovely thing to do and the reading time! Oh, the reading time.

Anyway, the premise behind Dread Journey revolves around the dysfunctional and borderline abusive relationship between Viv Spender, a self-made Hollywood producer and studio head, and Kitten Agnew, a woman he discovered, became obsessed with, and groomed into a major star–America’s sweetheart, the girl next door. There is a huge difference between Kitten’s public image and who she is–a hard as nails fighter who won’t let go of her stardom in the face of Gratia Shawn, his new obsession, and whom he has decided will replace Kitten as the star of his dream project in the role of Clavdia Chauchat. But Kitten has a contract and isn’t giving up without a fight–and they, along with Viv’s longtime secretary Mike Dana, and several other characters–a journalist returning from the Far East, who drowns his memories of the atrocities and horrors he saw there in alcohol; a snippy, gossipy bandleader; a failed screenwriter returning to New York embittered by his failure; and of course, the car attendant, a man of color named James Cobbett–a decent working man who witnesses almost everything that happens on the car. Will Viv go so far as to kill Kitten to get out of the contract he has signed with her? She’s threatening to sue if she doesn’t play Clavdia; and the tension mounts as the cat-and-mouse game between the two of them slowly draws everyone else in the railroad car in.

It’s a very short read, and a good one. I highly recommend it, and of course, Sarah Weinman’s opening essay is worth the cover price alone.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Tear Time

Friday and a rather chilly, grayish day has come to usher in the weekend. I was exhausted last night when I got home from work–which has been happening more and more lately–and slept really well. Paul didn’t get home until late, so we weren’t able to watch anything last night–but we made our plans for the weekend; since we really don’t care about the Super Bowl we’re going to try to get caught up on the shows we watch this weekend. I also want to get deeper into the Dorothy Hughes novel I am reading, Dread Journey. It’s relatively short, so I should be able to get through it relatively quickly, if I can devote the time to it.

This week wore me out somehow–I can’t remember the last time I was so worn down by a week in which it wasn’t parade season or I wasn’t on a trip somewhere. Not sure what that’s about, but it’s also part and parcel of the reboot I need to do on my life and my weekly routine. Most of all I need to start taking better care of myself, for one thing–particularly when it comes to health-related issues; there’s doctor’s appointments and blood work I need to have done that I somehow never seem to get around to, and that’s a big no-no. Last year was supposed to be the year that got taken care of–and it actually didn’t turn out that way.

But…at least now when I am home and too exhausted after work to write or read or focus on a TV show, I have lots of LSU game highlights from this past season to stream on Youtube.

I’m not, I think, going to try to overdo things this weekend; or make a to-do list that I will never finish, you know? I do need to update the to-do list I have running–I think I accomplished almost everything I needed to on the list yesterday, and there are some emails I need to send this morning before I head into the office later this morning–and I have several blog posts I’ve started writing and need to finish–my rereads of Victoria Holt’s Kirkland Revels and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley have reviews I’ve started and not finished, for example. And as I begin to move on to the next book in the TBR pile, I should get those out of the way because I will also have to write a review of Dread Journey.

And I have some short stories I should finish, and others I should revisit.

The publishing world has really been a dumpster fire for quite some now–first the RWA mess, and now the whole American Dirt dust-up. Both dust-ups ultimately boil down to the same thing: what responsibility do writers have when they write outside their own experience? Particularly when it comes to the marginalized? I have always held that a writer can write about anything they wish; anything that intrigues them enough for them to sit down and spend the time constructing a novel is something they should write about. I chose to write a novel about rape culture in a small town, but I chose not to write it from the point of view of the victim, but rather that of someone else in the town, another player on the football team who wasn’t involved in the incident–but is close friends with the boys who did. I’ve been struggling with this manuscript for several years now; partly from a sense that maybe I wasn’t the right person to tell this story; was centering a teenaged boy rather than a teenaged girl in this story the right choice; was i doing a kind of To Kill a Mockingbird thing, trying to do a #notallmen type thing that would ultimately be offensive?

I like to think the fact that I actually do worry about these things is a good sign.

Anyway, I’ve always said that writers can write anything they are interested in, but have a responsibility to get things right. I’ve written from the point of view of women before; I’ve written from the point of view of a teenaged girl before. Do I, as a gay man, have a right to write about straight women/girls? Of course I do, and no one has ever told me that I don’t. But I also owe it to women–and all the women I’ve known–to create multi-faceted, complex, complicated women characters that are believable and whose experiences are also believable. Likewise, a cisgender straight person writing about gay men have a responsibility to gay men to get it right and create real characters rather than fantasy, and a white person writing about an oppressed racial minority particularly has a responsibility to that minority to do the work and get it right. As writers, we don’t always get it right, and we owe it to that minority to listen when they say we got it wrong.

We need to do better.

And comparing minorities of any kind–religious, racial, gender, sexuality, ethnic–to vampires and werewolves and zombies to justify writing outside your own experience? Shows that you don’t have the empathy to write about any minority. You can’t compare actual human beings to mythological creatures as a justification for writing about them because we actually exist. 

And if you can’t understand how horrible and odious making those comparisons are…well, I’m not going to read your work because I can be relatively certain it won’t be any good.

And on that note, those emails aren’t going to answer themselves.

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Sleeping Single in a Double Bed

I’m a little more tired this morning than I was yesterday morning, which is fine. Hopefully the coffee will do its daily trick and get my eyes further open and my brain more functional, because I have a very long day in front of me and I have, as always, a lot to get done. I did get quite a bit done yesterday–not quite enough, as ever–but I manage to get almost everything on my to-do list crossed off before getting started on writing a new one, but I only wrote one thing down and then I got it done, so I get to start over yet again this morning, Huzzah, I think?

I also see a lot of new emails that need to be answered at some point today as well. Heavy sigh.

It’s cold in the Lost Apartment again this morning, and the sun is beginning to rise in the east. The first news push I saw since sitting down at the computer indicates that the river is rising again. I wasn’t so aware that there was so much snow and rain upstream this year in the Midwest, or maybe a rising river every year in January is something we get to look forward to dealing with from now on; I don’t know. Water is the city’s natural and mortal enemy, and always has been since the French arrived 302 years ago and founded a settlement on a high bank of land between swampy bayous and the river. Reading all this New Orleans history as I’ve been doing lately–over the last year or so–has given me a truly deeper appreciation of the city, its people and culture, than I ever had before. Richard Campanella’s Bourbon Street–which is now up the 1980’s, as tourism began to rise as one of the more important economic bases of the city–has been truly fascinating. A lot of the hotels and businesses and buildings, for example, that I thought had been there forever are a lot more recent than I would have ever dared imagine; even the Bourbon Orleans, which I had always believed was simply an old convent converted into a hotel, was actually built fairly recently; not much of the original convent is still there.

Kind of makes those stories about the hotel being haunted by former nuns and dead Civil War soldiers (the convent was used as a military hospital during that war) kind of suspect now, doesn’t it? I suppose ghosts could haunt a location rather than an actual building; could remain to haunt the newer construction as well as the old.

I still have to write that historical Sherlock Holmes story as well. The French Quarter, in the time I would be writing about, wasn’t the Quarter it is today; it was more rundown in the early twentieth century, and was primarily home to a lot of Italian/Sicilian immigrants, who worked primarily on the docks or in the factories (yes, there were factories in the French Quarter) and most locals regarded the Quarter as barely more than a slum and a rough part of town–not much has really changed in that opinion, frankly, other than no one thinks of it as a slum these days, but locals tend to think of the Quarter as a rough part of town and Bourbon Street as a place primarily targeted for tourists, other than, of course, Galatoire’s, Arnaud’s, and Antoine’s.

I also need to get back to work on the Secret Project, which I had hoped to do last night yet was too tired to bother with when I got home from work late last night. I did managed to cook some chicken breasts for snacking and to take for lunch as well as do the dishes and run the dishwasher, but other than that I was pretty much lying in my reclining chair with Scooter asleep in my lap as I let Youtube do as it wished by allowing it to run unabated or unstopped once I clicked on a Carpenters video–I’ve been listening to the Carpenters a lot lately; consistently amazed at the remarkably pure quality of Karen Carpenter’s voice–which inevitably leads to thinking about how her remarkable, extraordinary talent was essentially destroyed by an eating disorder than killed her, very young; I believe that Karen Carpenter was the first very public person to die from anorexia nervosa, and that death brought a lot of attention to eating disorders, which have never really been out of the public consciousness since she died.

It’s sad to think about all the great music she could have made had she lived longer.

Okay, this morning’s coffee is kicking in, so it’s back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.

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