Category: tennis

This Diamond Ring

Work at home Friday, and the eve of the three day Labor Day weekend. It’s Bouchercon in Nashville and Southern Decadence in New Orleans, and I am not leaving my house today. It’s going to rain all day, for one, and I am a little worn down from the week. That’s normal, thank God, and maybe I am getting the point where my routine is becoming, well, routine. I’ve commented endlessly here how weird it is that I’d start the week tired, and get more rested and energetic the deeper into the week I’d get; so it bears commenting that this week was kind of normal, getting more tired rather than energetic as the week wore on. I managed to get home from work yesterday between storms, and alas, it looks as those it’s going to rain all weekend, which sucks if you came to New Orleans to hang out in the streets of the Fruit Loop to have a good time. But we gays are nothing if not a problem-solving make-the-best-of-everything people, and I know folks will have a great time while they are here. I was too tired to write anything last night, which I figured would happen, and it was fine. Paul and I mostly watched the US Open, then I watched the CNN interview with the Democratic nominees before going to bed relatively early; I did some things around the kitchen last night before going to bed. I definitely need to clean it/straighten it up today before doing my work-at-home duties.

I was tired.

I am glad that I am about to have a three day weekend; I’m even more delighted that it’s going to rain all day–with thunderstorms, which are my absolute favorite. I do love the rain here, and I probably write about about rain far too much in my books, but rain is definitely one of the things that you can’t ignore if you’re writing about New Orleans. This entire book I am writing now is around a tropical storm that I’ve invented (Clothilde) and I am torn between making it a tropical storm or a Category 1. I also want to try something different with this book, making it more of a challenge to write, but we’ll see how that goes. It’s so nice to feel excited about writing again, Constant Reader! Huzzah indeed! Now if I can get my brain rejiggered to start reading again, all will be well in my world. Paul also is going to be out of the house all day–meetings and so forth–so it’ll just be me and the Demon Cat Sparky. I can live with that, I think. Paul’s also going to bring pizza from Midway on Freret, which is amazing. Huzzah! No worries about making dinner tonight!

As you can tell, I woke up in a pretty good mood this morning, which is always a lovely thing. I feel rested and awake this morning, my coffee tastes amazing, and Sparky is galloping around playing with a bottle cap (no need to buy His Majesty any toys when he’s fine with either an empty box or a bottle cap). I have a meeting at ten to start my work day, and I am just going to take it easy, answer some emails, and pick up around here before that rolls around. I am hoping to finish Chapter Three of the book today–I’m at a transition, and I did start moving on from where I’d left off on Wednesday, but only a paragraph before I petered out. I want to finish Three and possibly start 4 today, and then tomorrow before I write I’ll go ahead and review what is already done and add some things and probably take some out. I also need to start rereading the backlist, and this weekend might be a good time to tackle that Scotty Bible I’ve been wanting to, and maybe make some progress on the copy edit of Jackson Square Jazz so I can get that back into availability. Next year Scotty turns 22, Jackson Square Jazz turns 21, and maybe I can celebrate the longevity of the series around its original publication date. I have the time now to promote myself more, and that’s kind of what I need to be doing. I’m also having to get used to having free time that’s not just blowing things off for a day or two, and that means getting used to not feeling guilty for taking a day off from my writing career to let my brain rest.

It’s weird not having all that outside pressure on me anymore. I mean, I’m still grieving, of course, but it’s nothing I can’t handle anymore, and of course I’m still not entirely recovered physically from the surgery yet (my own fault, for not pushing myself to do my rehab exercises the way I should have–see? There’s always something I can beat myself up over). But it’s also incredibly freeing, and of course last year was one of those awful years that happen in my life from time to time. Yet I’m always reminded that I’m still overall pretty lucky. How can anyone complain when their dreams have all come true?

I also concluded yesterday (Katrina anniversary–which may have accounted for being tired yesterday; there’s still residual PTSD around that date) that I am going to start paying more attention to Louisiana’s horrific policies and our monstrous governor and his rubber-stamp legislature, and perhaps addressing them? I’ve never written much on here about how horrible living in the Project 2025 testing ground can be–but at least I live in the big blue dot of New Orleans, so I am spared the worst of it. There has yet to be a stare-down between the city and the state but I do know our city council is very defiant and anti-Landry’s fascistic tendencies, which makes me love this city all the more.

And no one has yet explained to me how having the Ten Commandments displayed in public school classrooms will fix the roads and the levees while reducing poverty and illiteracy in Louisiana. I suspect I’ll be waiting a really long time…interestingly enough, of all things, LSU is defying the governor, who issued a ridiculous executive order demanding college and university sports teams cancel scholarships for athletes who are not present during the playing of the national anthem before the game. LSU’s football team would all lose their scholarships because of this; the tradition in Tiger Stadium is the band goes out and plays the Pregame, then the National Anthem, and then the band makes a tunnel for the team to run out on the field while the band plays another one of LSU’s fight songs (there are quite a few, and several were written by Huey Long). Decades of tradition and pregame hype vs. expelling the entire team?

Yeah, Landry’s not going to mess with the football team–or any of the LSU teams, really.

And on that note, here comes today’s first storm, and I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later!

Oh Very Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe my memoir could be called Deluded.

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

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

If We’re Not Back in Love By Monday

I’ve been sleeping deeply and well lately for an insomniac; I suspect it has more to do with the pain being exhausting than anything else. Any surgery is traumatic to the system and requires rest for recovery, and oral surgery is no different than any other. I’ve taken today off as well as tomorrow; I was thinking yesterday I could probably just go in today and do some paperwork or something, but (and this is not laziness) I started thinking it’s probably best to give myself enough recovery time before I head back in–and I also know the clinic is jam-packed with appointments for today and tomorrow, and I just don’t think I have the energy to deal with that today. I think one more good night’s sleep with probably do the trick.

The Saints won a nail-biter yesterday and I didn’t watch the US Open final; I just can’t with Novak Djokovic anymore. I used to like him until he became an anti-vax/COVID denier, and I can’t with that, I’m sorry. I respect his athleticism, commitment to his sport and being the best, but as a person? I can’t help but feel he’s a selfish, arrogant, borderline sociopathic asshole. Of course he’s entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to me being a fan and watching him play, either. For the record, that’s how it works. I don’t deny him the right to be an anti-vaxxer/COVID denier, but I also don’t have to be a fan or watch him play. We got caught up on Only Murders in the Building and Ahsoka last night, too. I also finished several in-progress blog entries, including the one called “Shame” about homophobia in crime fiction and how things have gotten better over the years–but we can’t forget how bad it used to be, either, which was the point of the post, really; telling the crime community that we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going any fucking where.

Get fucking used to us.

Today I am going to try to do some chores around here. I’m feeling like a slug–anxiety talking again; I always feel like I should be doing something and down-time is time wasted–so I think I should do some things today. I suppose it depends on my energy stores, and how long it holds out. I want to read some more of Shawn’s book this morning–I think my resistance to that brutal opening was more of the post-surgery exhaustion–and I also need to empty the dishwasher and do another load that is soaking in the sink. I also want to make something to take for lunch this week–I’m thinking Swedish meatballs in the slow cooker, but am not sure if my minimal chewing abilities can handle the meatballs, even if I cut them up smaller before putting them in my mouth; I don’t think I can swallow them unchewed in some fashion–and I do need to go buy more ice cream and yogurt. I think some of the soups and ramen on hand could be useful. I can’t wait till I can eat a burger again, to be honest.

I also need to answer all the emails that have been languishing in my inbox for quite some time. I owe Dad an email–I’ve not had the strength after Bouchercon and the surgery to face writing him–and my sister’s birthday is this week. I also need to mail something, so I think I’ll drive uptown to make groceries and see what else is possible for soft foods for the week (mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, that sort of thing). I need to get the things on my to-so list knocked out, too. I feel more rested and more myself this morning, but maybe that’s because the pain pills haven’t quite kicked in yet. I also need to start revising/editing Jackson Square Jazz; I’m very excited about that finally being available again, and since Scotty turns twenty-one next year, I kind of want to celebrate the series throughout the year and I don’t know, maybe give away first editions? Something, anyway.

It’s also hard to believe Chanse will be twenty-two in January. I’ve been doing this for over a third of my life now. I owe it all to my stubbornness and obliviousness. Someone smarter and more aware would have probably given up a long time ago, but here I am, still here, older and possibly wiser and certainly not much smarter than I was all these years ago when I was a wide-eyed innocent walking into the world of the published word. I always remember that first August Paul and I lived here back in 1996. We went to a fundraised for the LGBT Center, and there was a tarot card reader there. (I’ve always been fascinated by tarot; I blame the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, which also connected New Orleans and the tarot in my mind. I write about a “private eye” who’s slightly psychic and reads tarot cards and lives in New Orleans. Coincidence? Probably not. Sadly, it’s always been one of my favorite Bond movies and always has held a special place in my brain for introducing me to Bond, New Orleans, and the tarot…unfortunately, the film does NOT hold up forty or fifty years later.) Anyway, the question I thought about as I held the cards in my hand was will I ever be a published writer? The answer the cards gave her was “Yes, but it will not be anything like you think it will be.” A generic answer, yes, that could apply to any number of questions…things are generally never what you thought or imagined they would be. Being a published author is definitely not anything like I ever dreamed or fantasized about when I wasn’t one. I know I thought being published would change my life for the better (I was not wrong about that) but…yes, it’s nothing like what I thought it would be like. Publishing can be a very cold and lonely place, but all you can really control is the work itself. You can’t control whether or not you get published, you can’t control whether or not the book sells, you can’t control the way readers and reviewers will react to it, you can’t control whether you get award recognition. All you actually can control is the writing itself, and do the best you can. I always hope my work is getting better–which should make reediting and revising the original Jackson Square Jazz interesting…

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close, make another cup of coffee, and start working on the chores around the kitchen, while streaming music through my iHome speakers. I’ll probably check back in later–I have all those unfinished blog entries I need to eventually finish and post–and I also want to get some fiction writing done today as well. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader–do you think today’s photo will get my adult content flags on social media?

Two Dollars in the Jukebox

This marvelous interview with the amazing Margot Douaihy dropped while I was in the midst of Bouchercon or preparing for it, so I always intended to share it around on social media (what a thrill to be name-checked by such an amazing new star in the world of crime fiction). Her debut crime novel Scorched Grace was so phenomenal that I still think about it from time to time; her New Orleans was so exquisitely and artistically rendered that it gave me pause–and also made me wonder if I’ve been coasting and not working as hard as I should. (I always think that when I read a work that blows me away–I should try harder.)

Yesterday was spent in my chair watching college football and making notes in my journal on projects that are upcoming or are currently in progress. Despite all the sleep (I slept for eleven hours Friday night, and again last night) I still feel a bit out of it and drained and tired; but I am going to take a shower in a little bit and I am sure that will perk me right up. I did read some more of Shawn Cosby’s newest book but those opening few chapters hit me right in the soul and it’s going to take me a minute to process it. I also posted like three or four entries yesterday, too–I finished turning John Copenhaver’s questions for the Outwrite DC panel into a Greg interview (I plan on doing the same with the questions from the Bouchercon panels because I can, mwa-ha-ha!), also finished my entry announcing Death Drop, and another one about how The Children’s Bible was one of my first sources for images of hot muscular men (thanks again, Golden Press, for those sexy illustrations! I didn’t even mention Samson), so I am making progress on getting these drafted blogs finished and posted.

I feel a little pain in my mouth this morning, so I rinsed with salt water and took my pain pills. Pain is draining and exhausting, even if you take something for it, so that’s why I think I was so behind the eight ball with everything yesterday–it’s certainly why I am sleeping so much and so deeply, for which I am eternally grateful. There’s no more bleeding, which is great, and I am trying out hot coffee this morning (caffeine deficiency may have played a huge part in the tired thing yesterday). All I ate yesterday was protein shakes and ice cream (Haagen-Dasz strawberry; today is vanilla bean) which was weird and not very filling; I am going to have to go buy yogurt and more ice cream tomorrow, methinks, and explore some other soft food options, like oatmeal. I am going to have oatmeal for breakfast this morning–I actually like oatmeal and am not sure why I stopped having it in the mornings–and then see if I can figure out some other things. I bought some soups, so maybe I can soften crackers in the soup too. I remember moving back onto solid foods was an issue the first time around, so I have to keep that in mind as I slowly start reintroducing solids back. I know I will miss this unashamed and unabashed deep dive back into ice cream. My face also never swelled up, which is another indication of how good my dental surgeon was. Well done and bravo, sir!

The highlight of the day yesterday for me was watching Coco Gauff win the US Open. How absolutely delightful, and how delightful to have a young American star again to root for. I love tennis, but there really hasn’t been anyone on the women’s side with a larger than life personality like Serena Williams, or just flat out charismatic and likable (like Kim Clijsters) to watch and root for in a very long time. I think the guard is also gradually changing on the men’s side, with the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic triume slowly retiring as they get older, and it’s fun to see rising young stars like Carlos Alcazar play, too.

As for football, well…the Alabama-Texas game was exciting to watch, if strange; I’ve not seen Alabama play that sloppy or poorly very often in the seventeen years or so since Nick Saban came to Tuscaloosa. I also can’t remember the last time Alabama lost so early in the year–which means a second loss ends any play-off hopes they may have unless they go on to win the SEC. To see Alabama lose in Tuscaloosa by ten points to a non-SEC team early in the season? Unthinkable. The conference is not off to a great start this year; Miami roasted Jimbo and A&M yesterday; LSU’s horrific loss last weekend to Florida State; Mississippi got super-lucky to beat Tulane yesterday; and the rest of the conference isn’t exactly off to a great start either–even Georgia hasn’t looked invincible in their two wins, despite the margin of victory. The SEC is due for an off-year anyway; we’ve literally won four national championships in a row (2019 LSU, 2020 Alabama, 2021-22 Georgia) with three different teams, which is something no other conference can say this century, and also doesn’t include Florida, who won two in the aughts (as did LSU: LSU was the first team to win two titles since championship games were implemented). The only teams not from the south to win national titles this century are Oklahoma and Ohio State, and Oklahoma might as well be a Southern state as it’s not really in the Midwest either. In fact, the only two Big Twelve team to win national titles this century–Oklahoma and Texas–are joining the SEC next year. I’m still not sure how I feel about the realignments and conferences being killed off, but…the sport has changed dramatically since I was a child and ABC held the exclusive right to air games. LSU blew out Grambling State last night 72-10, and looked much better than they had the week before in that embarrassing loss to Florida State; but there’s also a big difference between FSU and GSU. I guess we’ll get a better idea of what LSU is like once we play at Mississippi State next week, and we’ll see how well Alabama bounces back from this disappointment for them. Auburn did manage to hold off California last night (I went to bed), but I also think Florida lost their opener to Utah? Yes, they did, or maybe it was Oregon? Regardless, they lost. Pity. (I despise Florida, and will only root for them when they play someone I hate even more, like Tennessee.)

So, today I am going to take it easy one more time without feeling guilty for not doing anything productive. I am going to do some chores–emptying the dishwasher, maybe some filing to clean up the mess that is currently my desk situation, and the refrigerator needs cleaning up too–and repair to the chair to read Shawn’s book for a bit. I also am going to make another cup of coffee and perhaps some oatmeal, washed down by a protein shake. I don’t know if my heart and blood pressure can take watching a Saints game, but Paul will want to watch and there’s also the men’s final for the US Open today. And maybe I will finish some other blog posts. One never knows, really.

Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader–and if I’m not back later, be sure I’ll be back in the morning.

When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again

Saturday morning and my first day of the rest of my toothless life. Ironically, you cannot tell I don’t have any bottom teeth by looking at me, even when I talk; it was more obvious when I was only missing some. I also uploaded my new prescription for glasses to Zenni and ordered three new pair–purple, black and clear. I like my red frames, so I will probably give in at some point and buy a pair of those, too–and even with the four pairs I’ll wind up with this year and the three I got from Zenni last year, I am barely paying more than I paid for one pair at the optometrist’s. Not too shabby. So I go back to the dentist to get fitted for the new dentures in three weeks, so I will have the new ones in about a month or so, which is fine. Eating will be probably a challenge, but I am sure I’ll be able to get used to it, and there’s all kinds of softer type food I can eat that doesn’t require teeth to chew.

So yesterday I just drank protein shakes, and today I may progress to yogurt and ice cream. I need to pick up the mail today, so I am going to stop at the Fresh Market on the way home to pick up some more soft food options (baking potatoes, too). I wound up not doing a whole lot yesterday, but I had oral surgery and nine teeth removed, which is traumatizing to the body. It’s little wonder I was really tired for the day, and of course pain killers also make you drowsy and tired. I did read some more of Shawn’s book–what a fucking opening!–and will spend some more time with it today, I think. I don’t feel any pain–I was pretty much pain free by the late afternoon. Whether that was me healing, or the pain killers, or some combination of the two, I cannot say–but I woke up this morning without pain and after rinsing my mouth out, I’m pretty sure the bleeding has stopped. By tomorrow I’m supposed to work my way back into more solid foods–albeit ones that don’t require biting or chewing much, which kind of belies the “solid food” aspect of it–but I’ll be okay. I need to shed a few pounds anyway, and as long as I am getting calories from somewhere, I should be fine. Today I can have fizzy drinks (aka sparkling water and soda) and I have to start rinsing out my mouth every three to four hours with salty water. My face never swelled, which was kind of a cool thing.

I didn’t really do much of anything yesterday; I mostly sat in my chair watching the US Open and did some laundry and dishes, but that was about it. I am going to read some more of Shawn’s book today–I also need to run some errands, as I need softer food options, as I previously mentioned which means going out into the heat. I also need to get gas. I wonder if it’s okay to have coffee this morning? The instructions don’t say anything about hot drinks after the first day–he did mention something about it but I don’t remember what precisely it was, but I remember thinking so no soup either?A quick check of Dr. Google doesn’t recommend anything hot like coffee for at least two days, if not up to five? Yikes. But okay, we have those frappuccino things from Starbucks that Paul likes, and so that should handle my caffeine needs. I do like iced coffee, it’s just that I don’t have any way to make it here at the house. Then again, it’s also not on the written instructions, which I think means it’s not as important as the other things on the list? Probably best not to risk it. I tend to heal and recover more quickly than most (Paul is practically a mutant, given how fast he recovers from things), so I think I should be okay by tomorrow for coffee?

The weather forecast seems to think that we aren’t going to be in the high nineties/over a hundred this week, which is a lovely break. Then again, it is September, and it starts to cool down a little bit after Labor Day. I am hoping that I’ll have the motivation today to get some work done, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don’t get things done the day after an oral surgery. Sorry, that’s just how it is.

So I think I’m going to finish this, my iced coffee, and get my ice cream before heading back into the living room and spending the rest of the morning reading. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

I’m Knee Deep In Loving You

And today I am having the oral surgery. Heavy heaving sigh. It will be horrible as these things inevitably are, but at least when I come out of it and start healing, I no longer will have to worry about mouth pain again, or for a while at any rate. Whew, so no big plans for my weekend other than soft and/or liquid foods and pain medication. It will be weird. It also makes a little sad, too, because the last time I had this procedure done I went to Kentucky to have it done so Mom could take care of me.

I always meant to go back up and have it done there…sigh. Oh, Mom.

But life is much better with the ability to hear. It’s really amazing, and I don’t think I ever heard this clearly in my life before, so clearly my hearing has always been a problem. And I have a new prescription for my glasses, so I’ll be ordering new pairs from Zenni relatively soon, which is great. So, soon enough I’ll be able to see clearly, I can already hear better, and the mouth pain will be finished. Yesterday was weird, because I knew I had this today, and so I am also taking off Monday and Tuesday, just in case. I also made a plan to make sure I get there and back; I am taking a Lyft there, then to the CVS for my pain prescription, and then another home. It makes more sense than trying to find someone who has the day free and is willing to give it up to cart me around.

There was a truly marvelous thunderstorm that erupted right as I was leaving the office yesterday–and I still managed to drive home without getting irritated, annoyed and aggravated at the hapless New Orleans drivers who’ve clearly never driven in the rain before because it’s so rare here. Bitch, please–everyone learns how to drive in snow because its unavoidable in places where it snows, so why are New Orleanians such shitty drivers in the rain? That is definitely an unsolved mystery.

I finished doing the page proof corrections and sent them in yesterday, and so the two books being released this fall in back-to-back months are finally, once and for all, finished and I can move on to writing other things without guilt. (I had already started writing other things, of course, but I did have that nagging guilt about these two books not being finished and in production yet.) I”m still not entirely certain what all I am going to be doing next–I have no contracts in place, but am not letting that bother me in the least (which is an improvement; being out of contract usually puts me into a panicked frenzy in which I start pitching things everywhere–which is not the best, you know; and always gets me in trouble) and I am relatively certain I won’t be lucid for most of the weekend (then again, you never know; I have a high pain threshold and I don’t think I stayed on the pain pills the first time longer than a day or two) and my terrible memory (which used to be so pinpoint sharp it was eerie) doesn’t help.

We also watched some of the US Open last night before I went to bed–I didn’t finish watching the Madison Keys match, which she should have won in the second set–which was kind of fun. I don’t feel as excited about sports as I used to; not sure what that is about, but it’s an unfortunate reality.

And on that note, I need to start getting ready. I am not wearing the hearing aids because I don’t need to hear the procedure clearly, frankly. Hopefully I’ll be able to check in tomorrow, or even later today. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!

Sunflower

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I slept super-great last night–the first time this week that has happened–and only woke up once. I feel rested and good this morning. Tomorrow, of course, I have to get my oral surgery done in the morning (yay? Well, the end result will be a lot of pain to end the almost constant pain I’ve been living with for years, so that’s better, right?) and then it will be a soft food/mostly liquid (not alcoholic) for I don’t know how long. I weighed myself yesterday, and with even my shoes and belt on and my keys attached to my belt and my wallet in my pocket, I’d lost three pounds since the last time I weighed myself (I would imagine all the eating I did in San Diego made me weight go up dramatically). It would be great if I could get back down to 200 at some point (I remember the days vividly when I would never admit to weighing that much publicly; then again, weighing that much would have completely freaked me out).

I managed to get the page proofing for Mississippi River Mischief done last night after work, and the book’s not bad at all. The writing is strong and the plot makes sense, which is always a plus, and it does move along nicely. I also had forgotten that I had set up the next one in the afterward; or at least had gotten the premise begun–this next one is going to take place while the boys are living in the dower house on Papa Diderot’s Garden District property, and maybe, just maybe, this next one will be the long-awaited and never-written (thanks to Katrina) Hurricane Party Hustle. Then again I am getting ahead of myself, am I not? Let me get all this other stuff done first and then I can worry about the tenth Scotty. But next year Scotty turns twenty-one at last (legal at last! legal at last!) and so I think I may spend a lot of time next year celebrating twenty-one years of Scotty. I think the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz might finally get launched, making the book available for the first time since 2010, and then I can rest easy at long last. I’m not sure how much work I am going to be able to do this weekend–will I be on painkillers the entire time? Will I be too zonked out on painkillers to get anything done this weekend? I guess we shall just have to wait and see. I also don’t know if and when I’ll be blogging again, either. But hopefully I can be lucid enough to read S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed or if I can’t read, lucid enough to watch movies.

We watched some of the US Open last night, which was nice. I keep forgetting that it’s happening; we stream now rather than have cable, so I no longer have any idea when anything actually airs or what is actually airing, which is a significant shift in how I watch television. It was nice that so many Americans made it to the quarter-finals–it’s been a long time since the US made such a great showing at the US Open–and sadly, I have to admit that I’ve just not been as interested in tennis since Serena Williams retired. But I do love to watch tennis, as I remembered last night as I proofed, occasionally looking up to watch the action. We watched Madison Keys win, and then watched Carlos Alcazar until I went to bed (Paul of course stayed up watching).

The cover proof also landed in my inbox this morning so that’s what I’ll be doing tonight: filling out the page proof form and proofing the cover. I’m starting to feel creative again, too, which is super-great. I want to get some more writing done, and of course I need to start plotting out the next two books I am going to write while trying to finish a draft of Muscles, which is the plan for this fall (I probably will have to put Muscles aside to work on something else, but might as well get as much done as I can before the arm surgery, whenever that might wind up being).

More and more people who’d been at Bouchercon are testing positive for COVID, which believe me is the worst possible outcome I could have when I swab myself every morning. Sure, it means I’d have to reschedule the oral surgery, but there are definitely worse things that could happen to me then testing positive for it. I would definitely need to be past it when I consult with the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine. It’s weird because everything is so up in the air until I know what’s going on with my arm, and how long the recovery process is going to be. I don’t know that I want to be doing a lot of traveling with my arm in a soft cast and a sling (and not the good kind, wink wink nudge nudge) because how would i handle the carry-on luggage? Heavy sigh. Again–not going to worry about it because that’s just borrowing trouble.

And on that note, my test is negative and I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader.

Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Goodbye

Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.

I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.

But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.

But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.

I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.

I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)

I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.

And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!

Second Hand News

Labor Day Monday and I have a nice relaxing day ahead of me of writing and reading and who knows what else? We also leave for Minneapolis the day after tomorrow, which is also kind of exciting. I did make a small run to make groceries yesterday and had a small Costco order delivered. I also watched some tennis (Coco Grauff) and then we watched the LSU Game. Jury’s still out; they played very lackadaisically to me, it seemed; not quite gelled as a team yet, but lots of talented players with some kinks to work out yet. They ended up losing 24-23, could have tied and/or won the game at the end, and rallied from 24-10 down in the closing minutes, so that was promising. I am of course disappointed the comeback failed, but at one point it literally looked like we were going to lose 31-17, and that final drive went ninety-nine yards in sixty-five seconds. So, they could continue to improve and get better, which is a good sign. I impatiently was hoping this could be turned around in one year, but….it even took Saban an off-year before turning Alabama into what it is today. It was a fun weekend of football, to be sure, and I am always happier when it’s football season.

I mean, take away the two fumbled punts, the blocked extra point, and the blocked field goal, and LSU would be 1-0 right now.

I am curious to see how the rest of the season shakes out.

I skim-reread Jackson Square Jazz yesterday, and again, I was very pleasantly surprised at how well the book still reads, roughly nineteen years after release, and again–I really did do a great job with the characters. I am writing an entry about it, of course, and then started skim-rereading Mardi Gras Mambo, too. I really wish I could remember what the plot was in the first two failed attempts to write the book, but maybe it’ll come to me while I skim reread, but I rather doubt it; I forgot those original plots years ago. I am glad that reader asked me about the Scotty books, though. I had figured I’d talked about them often enough that Constant Reader didn’t really need me to write the backstories behind the books in this series, but I am having the most wonderful time revisiting the books and remembering the process that produced each one. And these first three are so far back in my distant past that it’s almost like reading new-to-me books; I always wondered if my own work would ever get to that point, and clearly, they have done so. I’m not sure how to feel about it, but I imagine Philip Roth didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his first couple of books, nor did Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, or Erle Stanley Gardner. (Not that I put myself up there with those greats of crime fiction, but you know what I mean.) We write books and we move on from them to write other books, and the farther in the past those old titles get, the more distance I feel from them and the less I remember about them, which makes them much easier to read (at least for me).

And it’s really helping me get back inside Scotty’s brain and his voice, too. Always a bonus, you know?

Today I am going to take it easy but still get things done. I need to write–which I’ve done woefully little of this weekend–and I also need to overhaul the first three chapters of this book before I can move on with it, which should be taken care of today. (I started to do it yesterday but…Coco Grauff was playing!) I also have some other things to get done today–maybe I should make a list of what all I want to get done today; can’t hurt–including making my packing list for the trip (I checked the weather; I think I can get away with taking a sweat jacket with me rather than a coat; every night it’s supposed to dip into the 60’s, which, as we all know, is the dead of winter to me) and some other loose odds and ends. And the skim-rereading of my books is at least getting me to read again–just wait till Wednesday afternoon at the airport though; I’ll be tearing through that Gabino Iglesias novel like it’s going out of style. I don’t think I’ll finish reading the Iglesias, the King, and the Andrews on the trip, but I am taking a book in reserve just in case–A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren. I also need to prep myself for reading only horror in October, the way I do every year; I know there are some Paul Tremblay and Stephen King and Christopher Golden and some other great horror novels sitting there waiting in my TBR Piles. There’s also some great short stories I should read, too. I am sitting on a Daphne du Maurier novella–“A Border-line Case”–and maybe I should spend some time today reading that?

I do love me some du Maurier (reminder to self: reread My Cousin Rachel).

So, we’re basically sitting on today and tomorrow as interim days. I think the house is in good enough shape as is for us to leave without doing some more cleaning, but I always do some cleaning while I am writing. There’s a load of dishes that need doing, and some other picking up and things needing to be put away, but that’s always the case, isn’t it?

And on that note, I am going to make a to-do list, finish those dishes, and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Labor Day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

7

Landslide

Friday and a three-day weekend looms. Huzzah? Huzzah! There’s football games to watch this weekend (GEAUX TIGERS!) as well as a lot of work I need to get done before I leave for Bouchercon next Wednesday. Which is fine, of course. I just have to buckle down and get my head back in the game, is all. I’ve been tired this week after work–part of that is getting up at six in the mornings, certainly–but it’s irksome to not be able to get as much writing (and good writing, not the horrible shit I’ve actually been writing) and reading in every night as I would like before I turn my brain to relax mode. Ideally, I will be able to get some things taken care of this weekend; writing and reading and cleaning and getting ready for the trip. We have a two o’clock flight out in the afternoon, and we have two hours (!) at Midway Airport–but there’s also a Home Run Inn pizza place at that airport (I noticed it when I had to change planes there last spring when I flew to Kentucky–a mistake I shall never made again) and so perhaps we could have some wonderful Chicago-style pizza for dinner on our way to Minneapolis. I think by the time we get to the hotel and check-in and all settled it might be too late in the evening to do much of anything other than unpack; I also have a very early panel on Thursday morning which means I will have to get up around seven.

I hope there’s lots and lots of coffee to be had in the hotel, else it won’t be pretty.

Yesterday was a tired day for sure. I didn’t sleep deeply Wednesday night–not restless per se, but I was in a shallow sleep for most of the evening, if that makes sense? Not that horrible if I open my eyes I will be awake but that half-sleep where you know you’re asleep but you’re also aware of everything? I hate that. So by lunchtime I was already running out of steam and trying to just hang on until I got off work. I was going to run errands on my way home but was too tired and just came straight home (I can stop by the mail and the Fresh Market tonight or go tomorrow). Once again I was too brain-dead to either read or write, but I did make progress on some chores before collapsing into my easy chair to be a Scooter pillow. I watched Venus and Serena play doubles–Paul was out having dinner with a friend–and then we watched Five Days at Memorial and Archer, and finally were able to watch last week’s episode of American Horror Stories–Hulu kept fucking up when we tried before; we’d get halfway into the episode than it would reboot back to the beginning; finally last night it worked–the weird Judith Light gets a facelift episode–and really, it wasn’t worth all that trouble. These stand-alone horror stories are really hit-and-miss, just as they were in the first season; sometimes they are interesting and clever, other times as satisfying as eating something with no flavor. And then it was bedtime.

I slept fairly decently last night and feel a bit of a sleep hangover this morning, which is fine–I’m assuming the coffee will wipe the dust off everything and remove the cobwebs from the corners of my brain–but today is a short day in the office, which is always nice before a three day weekend–and of course, I intend to run those errands tonight (so I don’t have to tomorrow) and I also need to start making a list of the things I need to pack. I know I am going to take Gabino’s book with me to read on the trip, along with the new Donna Andrews (Round Up The Usual Peacocks) and Laurie R. King (Back to the Garden) to read when I have time or at the airport and on the planes; I imagine I’ll finish Gabino on the way up and get started on the Andrews; which I’ll finish in Minneapolis in order to read the King on the flight home. I also have a copy of Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side–a friend had posted on social media that they were going to watch the campy film adaptation with Jane Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, and I thought wasn’t that a book first? It was, and since it’s a New Orleans novel–set in the French Quarter in the 1930’s–I thought perhaps I should read this? So I ordered a copy, and it’s rather well written–I’ve glanced through it a couple of times, always finding some sentence that makes me think wow this is either really amazing or incredibly overwrought and overwritten–which is a very fine line to walk. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not I think it’s amazing when I read it.

I had promised myself I wasn’t going to go down any Internet wormholes again for a while, the other day one of the New Orleans and/or Louisiana history pages posted about the murder of a Storyville madam (which I’ve always thought could be an interesting basis for a book) by her long-time live-in lover to whom she’s always been rather abusive, and it mentioned that her killer, although a common-law spouse, was only able to inherit a very small portion of her estate due to “Louisiana’s concubinage law” and well, how could I not go looking that up? Louisiana has some very bizarre laws, particularly when it comes to inheritance; but you also have to understand that up until the Civil War ended, Louisiana had some very bizarre customs. The “concubinage law” was actually passed to protect the dead person’s “legal” family as well as his “extra-legal” family from each other if there was no will, or even if the will cut out one family to the benefit of the other. It’s from plaçage, of course; that dreadful custom where a wealthy white man had a white wife and children, but also had a Black mistress and children with her.

The “concubinage law”, for the record, was on the books until it was repealed in 1987.

1987.

Jesus.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.