Category: travel

Jambalaya

Louisiana is beautiful.

The state’s nickname is “sportsmen’s paradise,” because all of the macho male outdoor sports–hunting, boating, fishing–are available here in abundance. We’re also called the Pelican State (most prevalent) and several other nicknames, not all of which are complimentary.

Louisiana has always been a conservative state, despite the existence of New Orleans. Originally French then Spanish before becoming American, Louisiana also was a part of the Confederacy and had an economy based on enslavement. We weren’t that far removed from David Duke’s gubernatorial bid (which came all too close to succeeding), and I remember Paul had gone on site visits with his boss at the Arts Council south of the city, and came home saying, completely in disbelief, that “people had yard signs saying ‘this is Duke country’–and me replying, sadly, “in the South they don’t bother to hide the racism–they see it as a positive.” But you cannot really go anywhere in Louisiana without being awed by the natural beauty on display here. I love Madisonville, and the Tchefuncte River area. It’s always a lovely drive to take 90 east when you head north (yes, I am aware I am saying you take an east-west highway to go north; welcome to New Orleans), and head out through the Venetian Isles area and drive along that narrow strip of land separating the lakes, crossing the Rigolets bridge and heading into Slidell.

A while ago, I was following a Twitter conversation about Burt Reynolds movies from the 1970s. Mind you, when I was living in Kansas our movie options were limited. There was a drive-in movie theater on the way from our little town Americus to the county seat of Emporia, and there was a small twin cinema on Commercial Street. The summer before my senior year Smokey and the Bandit opened on a Friday, and the following Friday Star Wars opened in the other theater. Both movies ran for about three months….so I saw them both repeatedly as there was very little else to do. The 1970’s were an interesting time for depictions of rural Southern sheriffs; Jackie Gleason hamming it up and going completely over the top. This was also the same time period that gave us corrupt politician Boss Hogg and the inept sheriff and deputies he controlled. These were always played for laughs, but the thing is–there really wasn’t anything funny about these types of characters in real life. Political and police corruption have always gone hand-in-hand in the Southern states; the police merely existing to enforce and enable the existing power structure. That Twitter conversation, along with reading Ethan Brown’s Murder on the Bayou and the various true crime documentaries about the Jeff Davis 8, put me in mind of writing about that kind of corruption. But I also kept wondering, but is this still true in the South? Do these kind of corrupt power structures still exist in the South? Would this read like a period piece?

And then the Murtaugh scandal broke.

Guess what? It IS still like this in the rural South. Thanks, Murtaughs!

I already had an idea for the next Scotty, and was pulling it all together, using a relatively minor political scandal here locally as the starting point for the story–which involved a conservative politician getting involved with a teenaged boy who worked at the food court at a mall, mostly buying him presents–clothes, underwear, swimsuits–and having the kid send him pictures wearing it. The age of consent in Louisiana is seventeen, and the kid was over seventeen, but while still being an icky thing, it wasn’t illegal–and they never did anything beyond that. It was mostly a harmless flirtation, until the kid, who was gay, realized that the nice man buying him gifts was actually a hardcore far right family values politician, so he went public. I still needed a murder, but I thought it would be simple to come up with one–the politician would have every reason in the world to kill to protect his secret, and he had his parish sheriff’s department to help commit and/or cover up the crime.

I did borrow two of the Murtaugh crimes for the book, but as starting points more than anything else, and came up with my own theories of said crimes for my own story–I wasn’t writing true crime, after all, and I wasn’t interested in proving the guilt of the Murtaughs. What I was interested in was exploring the decline and fall of a politically powerful family that had controlled a parish in Louisiana for well over a hundred years, almost like an absolute monarchy with primogeniture. I had also originally started the story with the kid coming to Scotty and Frank (through Scotty’s old buddy and former workout partner, David, who now teaches at NOCCA) because he gets a text from an unknown number which contains one of the pictures he has sent his older male friend (that he doesn’t know is a family values politician), and is worried about his own future if the information comes out. I wrote an entire draft of this story, but it didn’t work and I didn’t care for it…which was when it clicked into place: use two of the Murtaugh crimes to start with, and built it out from there. I decided that the kid at the mall wasn’t the original target of the politician, and that the original target was killed in a hit-and-run accident the year before; I also used the boat crash, turning it from a boat hitting a bridge to a pick-up truck hitting a bridge and pitching the passengers in the back into the bayou.

I also liked the teenager/older man dynamic, because it had played out with Taylor in the previous book–and Scotty had his own past with an older man when he was a teenager, which I was finally able to circle back around to.

I also invented the parish–surprisingly enough, there is no St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish in Louisiana–but it’s based loosely on what are known as the bayou and river parishes (Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist). I already had a fictional parish on that side of the river (Redemption), but I decided Redemption wouldn’t work for this book, so I made it a neighboring parish.

Jealous of My Boogie

Research is always important for a writer, always.

I will generally spend years doing research for books before I start writing them; my scattershot approach to research usually goes something like hey this sounds interesting I should look it up which then takes me down wormholes and I’ll become obsessed with something, I’ll come up with a story idea that I can use the research for, and then it may sit in the files for years, occasionally striking my fancy sometime when I come across something else that might fit in with that, and so on. A lot of my research never makes it onto the pages of my books, either–I could have written chapters on glass-making and the Murano style of Venetian glass in The Orion Mask, but finally decided that, while I thought it was all interesting–Phyllis A. Whitney used to use her books to educate her readers about the area she was writing about, which I loved–but it definitely bogged down the story because there was no way I could figure out to tie the glassmaking to the modern day story.

That was very disappointing, I don’t mind saying.

Likewise, I didn’t have as much time to research drag the way I should have before I started writing Death Drop. Ordinarily, I would have wanted to actually talk to the local who runs the drag school; I would have talked to any number of queens about performing, how they got into it in the first place; and there are so many aspects of drag culture and so many levels and layers to it that it was impossible for me to get the research done and write the book at the same time. Ideally, I would have liked to have actually paid someone–preferably my former supervisor, who went to the drag school and now works full-time in drag as Debbie with a D (check out her Instagram, seriously)–to do the full drag on me–wig, make-up, pads, dress and shoes. (I kind of still need to do this, so I know how it feels; I relied on memories of high school plays for the make-up and wearing a Minuteman costume with real buckled and heeled shoes for walking in heels; I didn’t care for that one bit and have nothing but the deepest sympathies for women or anyone who has to wear any kind of heel on a daily basis. I can still feel how sore my calves were the next day.)

Me with my supervisor’s pageant crown

That was part of the reason I made the book an origin story for Jem and “Joan Crawfish,” the drag name he is christened with at the last minute as he sent down the runway at the Designs by Marigny fashion show. I don’t know drag lingo or slang–outside of whatever I’ve picked up from watching RuPaul‘s Drag Race and having co-workers who do drag and the occasional drag show I’ve caught over the years–and so neither does Jem/Joan. And the second book–set in Florida at the Miss Queer America pageant–will include some of that, as it will have to as he’s already finished the drag school he was considering entering at the end of Death Drop.

It doesn’t hurt that my current supervisor does pageants and was even Miss Gay Mississippi USofA; so I have a good source of information that I see at the office every day, which is….kind of cool, actually.

I do feel pressure to drag it up a bit more in this second book (You Gone, Girl) than I did in the first, but the pageant itself makes for a lot of drama and comedy, and that’s not even taking into consideration all the protests and bomb threats and things and other shenanigans that the evil witches from Moms4Freedom are throwing at the pageant.

And I am going to have some serious fucking fun with those Moms4Freedom bitches, believe you me.

Cover Girl

Drag is a part of queer culture I’ve always known about but has also been something primarily on the periphery of my gay life and world; I’ve only occasionally ever thought about perhaps doing it–as a gag or as a costume at some point; a very dear friend has always wanted to dress me up as Joan Crawford (narrow waist, big shoulders, enormous eyebrows), which is something I would consider doing if it wasn’t so much work–I am way too lazy to ever do drag properly and respectfully. I did a very poor attempt at drag many years ago, for a Showgirls themed birthday party for a friend; the result was far from pretty. I did sometimes used to use mascara and eye liner when I would go out; it emphasized my enormous and expressive eyes which most people have always considered my best feature (although aging has deprived me of my eyelashes). Drag was just another part of the community and culture, like leathermen, bears, and gym queens–another patch on the quilt that makes up our queer world.

My primary interest in drag has always been historical and cultural; drag culture has always been a part of the gay bar scene, since time immemorial, it seems. I have always been interested in every aspect of gay culture since coming to terms with my own sexuality and recognizing that not coming to terms with it meant a lifetime of guaranteed misery, and shouldn’t I really take a chance on being happy? There was always a lot, for me, of misunderstanding about drag culture and its place in the gay community; but that also primarily came from people outside of the community and therefore didn’t have the slightest grasp of it–i.e. ignorant slurs that all gay men dressed like women whenever they had the chance, you know–not “real men.”

But seriously, who wants to buy into the cult of toxic masculinity? No fucking thanks.

I don’t know the history of drag, but I did know–from the very beginning–that there was a significant difference between drag and the trans experience; there’s definitely crossover, but the Venn diagram of drag and trans is not a complete circle. I understood this always, even when I knew very little of either. This was always the issue I had with To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar–the queens in the movie didn’t just do drag for performance or pageants, but dressed as women in their everyday life…which made them transwomen who also did drag. The failure of that film to define the difference between the two, I think and believe, has a lot to do with the current-day conflation by the Right of drag queens with transwomen. Likewise, was the Nathan Lane character from The Birdcage (and the French original) a transwoman or a drag queen?

And the fact that I, knowing as little about gay life and culture as I did in 1994, knew that the Wong Foo movie was conflating two completely different things as the same certainly means that other, better-educated people should have, as well.

But it’s also important to remember that the movie wasn’t made for the queer community–no Hollywood studio film with queer characters is intended for a queer audience, and thus there’s a falseness to them that rings hollow to me (don’t even get me started on Philadelphia); what Sarah Schulman once (paraphrasing) described as “the creation of a fake public homosexuality that will play in Peoria.”

There’s an essay in that, methinks.

The first time I went to a gay bar in Houston is my first true memory of seeing someone in drag performing on the bar in person. She was doing Liza as Sally Bowles from Cabaret, and as I walked in the door with some co-workers from That Airline, the first thing I saw was her up on the bar, with a musclebound dancer on either side of her in bikinis or thongs, and I can remember thinking wow this is decadent like Isherwood’s Berlin–but I liked it. I felt at home there, in a way I never did in gay bars in Fresno (or anywhere else I was able to sneak away and visit one), and felt like that night was when my gay life actually began: I was with co-workers, I was going to a gay bar openly, and the co-workers knew I was gay but had never really experienced being gay as anything but misery and depression and a curse. I don’t remember the name of the queen, but ever since then, “Mein Herr” always brings a nostalgic smile to my face.

But again, I didn’t go out much or do much during those two years in Houston as I still wasn’t completely comfortable being totally out. I moved to Tampa in 1991 and started living as an out gay man…and started spending more time in gay bars. A popular night for airline employees as Tuesday Nights at Tracks, where cocktails were only fifty cents and no cover before ten. There was also a drag show at midnight, with an actual stage in a show room, and that was my first real experience watching drag queens perform. There was a gay paper there–I cannot remember what it was called to save my life; I know the one in Texas was This Week in Texas, called TWIT by everyone–but it often had information about performances and other night life ads and so forth. I began to get a better understanding of drag, its place in the community, and its importance to gay culture, period.

And of course, once I moved to New Orleans, there was Bianca del Rio.

The mainstreaming of drag actually began in the early 1990’s, with RuPaul having a surprise hit record out of nowhere, “Supermodel (You Better Work)”, which started exposing more people to drag who ordinarily would have never seen one. RuPaul was everywhere in the early 1990’s, and even had her own talk show on MTV for a while. The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and its homogenized American version To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar were both incredibly popular. (I enjoyed Priscilla, and I’ve already touched on my issues with Julie Newmar–which will probably become an essay at another time.)

There were, of course, other successful queens out there before RuPaul’s big breakthrough and later, comeback with Drag Race, but few had as large a profile in the culture as RuPaul. Lady Bunny, Miss Coco Peru, Miss Richfield 1998, and Varla Jean Merman were all making a pretty decent living as performers before the drag explosion that followed the launch of Drag Race.

I’ve met numerous drag queens on the local scene both in and out of drag–I’ve always been fond of Princess Stephaney and Blanche Debris (who is retired now), and the drag community of New Orleans was always incredibly supportive of the NO/AIDS Task Force. I met Bianca out of drag a couple of times, but I doubt he remembers me…but Drag Bingo at Oz on Sundays with Bianca and Blanche (I just realized their first names both translate into English as white) was always a blast–and I made a point of never trying to get Bianca’s attention because she was always quick and that tongue was sharp as a scalpel always.

I also work with several co-workers who either did drag or have started doing it while I’ve known them, which indirectly helped me with the writing of Death Drop and my original story for a drag queen. Jem is sort of patterned in some ways on one of my former co-workers who actually went to a drag school here in New Orleans–and eventually quit his full-time job to do drag full-time. He’s been in Queer as Folk and numerous other shows filmed here, and has been booking gigs all over the country–check out his Instagram, isn’t he fucking gorgeous? So that gave me the idea to make the first book with Jem his drag origin story.

Learning about drag to write this book–and its sequel–has been an enjoyable learning experience for me. At some point I know I am going to have to do a transformation; I need to know how it feels to have the make-up and the padding and the wig and the dress and shoes on. I can imagine it all from doing theater in high school, but it’s not the same.

And yes, I will share the pictures when and if it does happen.

Call Me

Wednesday morning pay-the-bills day blog, and how are y’all this morning?

Yesterday was ever so much better than Monday (low bar) but I slept really well Monday night and felt very rested and centered yesterday as I went to work. Hilariously, as I walked out to the car in my Prevention T-shirt, I felt a bit chilly. When I got into the car it felt downright cold, and once I started the car the a/c started blowing and YIKES! So I quickly switched it over to heat…and as the lovely warm air began blowing through the vents, I saw the thermostat on my dashboard reading 70–it was seventy degrees and I felt cold. But…for well over a month–an endless summer–of temperatures that felt like 110-120; 70 degrees is a forty to fifty degree drop. That is actually a significant drop in temperature, and one that would certainly be felt as cold anywhere.

I have to go uptown to get a sonogram this morning (and no, I am not pregnant). This has to do with the genetic heart defect Mom had; they want to see if I have the same problem (technical term: Arterial tortuosity syndrome) so if things start going haywire with my blood pressure and so forth, they’ll know where to start (it took weeks for them to figure out what was wrong with Mom after her initial stroke). I think part of the reasons I feel so off this week, while exacerbated by the lack of sleep and driving this weekend, has been subconsciously felt anxiety about all these medical tests and things I am having done; plus Dad’s birthday was yesterday and Mom’s is tomorrow; these are their first birthdays with her gone, so it’s going to kick a little harder, which is only natural, I think. I was also productive in that I ordered our new refrigerator this morning to be deliverer on Saturday (yay!) and I registered for jury duty. Of course this is the perfect time to be called for jury duty–when I have a million doctors’ appointments and a surgery scheduled–and of course, you have to show up in person to try to get out of it, which means getting a doctor’s note and showing up at the courthouse on Friday. I can do that, of course–but it’s just more pain in the ass shit to do on a day when I already have a doctor’s appointment. I suppose I could just go there after the appointment. I don’t know. It’s just more irritation on a week where I’d rather not have more irritations. (The MRI is scheduled for Friday morning, that’s what it is.)

Heavy heaving sigh.

I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home yesterday from work, but I didn’t seem to get very much done. I did spend some time reading more of the Sager novel; I’d like to get that finished this weekend at the latest so I can move on to the Elizabeth Hand, the reread of Shirley Jackson, and Infested by Angel Luis Colon. I should, I think, be able to get them all read by the end of the month; I may even have the time to revisit The Dead Zone by Stephen King, which I’ve been meaning to do since the 2016 election. I’m still trying to get a grip and handle on everything, but it’s hard to do with all of these tests and appointments and everything to stress about, even if I try to let it all go it’s still there working away at my subconscious. I also don’t understand why I am so reluctant to face the fact that I am still grieving my mom, seven months later, and her birthday is tomorrow; something else I need to unpack, I suppose. But progress is being made on everything, and of course I am delighted to be getting a functional refrigerator at long last.

Which means I get to spend Friday partly getting the apartment ready for a refrigerator delivery and installation and removal of the old one; which means moving all the food over to the carriage house Friday evening.

I was also thinking back to precisely when I lost the reins of my life and when I started being discombobulated and losing control of my own narrative. I think the stress truly began taking off after buying the car in 2016; the car payments wreaked havoc on my finances and put me even further into debt, which was something I was very concerned about for several years, obviously (still am, but am paying it all down and feel a lot better on that score). Then came the Great Data Disaster of 2018, when I lost all the back-ups and my desk top computer stopped functioning properly; I wasn’t able to afford a new one (thanks to the car payment wreaking havoc on my finances) which also didn’t help–a computer that was super slow, crashed and/or froze up all the time, and was barely functional for what I needed didn’t help–and of course by the time I paid off the car and was able to buy a new computer we were deep into a pandemic and I was doing all that volunteer work while barely holding onto my own sanity by my fingernails. That was also the period of time (2016 on) when the filing got out of control as did my computer files; so now trying to climb out of the wreckage is a Sisyphean task, apparently; I never feel like I am caught up on anything because there’s so much fucking mess to straighten up and organize, and I can never just take a few days to even try to dig out from under the mess because there’s always something else going on that needs attention right now.

These are the things I was pondering as I sat in my easy chair last night watching videos on Youtube–documentaries about the Hapsburgs again–and waiting for Paul to come home. I find that I’ve become a lot more introspective about my past lately (since turning sixty, really) as well as working on unpacking things and understanding why I am the way I am a lot better. I’ve spent most of my life trying to work on myself and become a better person–reading, thinking, watching, etc.–and admittedly, not always succeeding; but a lot of that is because I’ve not looked back and unpacked things I’ve experienced or went through. I’ll give you a case in point: one night during Boucheron I was sitting with my friend Teresa at the pool bar during happy hour enjoying their amazing nachos when Lou Berney joined us. As we talked, he asked us both if we’ve ever come close to death before–close calls. I’d never been asked that before and I really had to think. And while Teresa was answering about a car accident situation where she was almost killed, I remembered an experience I had when I was twenty. I related the story and they both looked at me, eyes open wide, and were like “Jesus fucking Christ, Greg!” I hadn’t really thought about that incident in a really long time; I had started writing a blog entry sometime in the last ten years (it’s still in drafts) where I talked about that experience–it is one of the reasons I am so anti-gun–but other than that…no. But having that brought up into the forefront of my mind, I realized something.

I had never expected to live this long, and I’ve always had the feeling that I would die young. I don’t know if this is a common thing for people or not, but I have just always had that thought in the back of my mind for most of my life–when I’d think about the future, I would always stop because why think about it when you’re going to die young? I gradually began to believe that was because I lived through the 1980’s; the HIV/AIDS thing. But after remembering and talking about that incident back in 1982, I realized that after going through that was when I began thinking I wouldn’t live very long; the arrival of the “gay plague” right around the same time didn’t help much in that regard either. I’m not being coy in calling it the incident–tl;dr: the husband of one of the managers at the Burger King I worked at went over the edge and came into the place and shot her multiple times (today he would have had an automatic weapon and I would have died that day, or been wounded–because that’s not what this post is about and I do want to finish my draft post where I go into more detail.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, if not later.

Don’t Fall in Love With A Dreamer

Yesterday was a little frustrating, I am not going to lie. The day went off the rails early and just never seemed to get back on track. Frustrating news, irritation, depression, and high anxiety all combined to make yesterday a challenge for me to stay on track and balanced, so much so that I just felt overwhelmed and didn’t even try to cope or stay centered because I felt tired all day on top of everything else that was going so irritatingly wrong yesterday.

I did sleep well Sunday night, but I was still worn out from the driving and so forth from the weekend.

So yeah, I was channeling some Major Bitch Energy yesterday, but managed to keep it all inside and not inflict it on anyone else. This was the big win of the day–because I used to just give rein to it and everyone else would just need to get out of my way or else. But I didn’t snap at anyone, I didn’t swear at anyone when I was driving home after work–but I did drive straight home after work, despite needing to run errands. I was smart enough to realize how close I was to snapping at someone or just being a dick in general, so I went home to spare the world and some unsuspecting person my foul mood.

Sigh.

And then I got home to find out that they’d started working on the house today–not really sure what they are doing but it’s an old house in New Orleans so it literally could be anything–and didn’t give any warning–as evidenced by the kitchen wall clock lying in pieces on the kitchen floor (it’s easy to put back together), and then I noticed a lot of the framed pictures in the laundry room were on the floor. The workers didn’t give any warning nor did our landlady; but Sam the handyman knew there were things on the walls so he called Paul. He got five minutes notice, but didn’t think about the clock in the kitchen–and why would he? It’s a whole different room, even if it is connected to the laundry room and one wall is also the back wall of the house.

I also slept wrong or something either Saturday or Sunday night so my neck was sore yesterday (still is this morning, in fact)–turning my head to the left hurt, which of course made driving an absolute joy. I do remember taking good health and not always hurting for granted for way too long. Sigh, I guess there is some truth to that saying you really don’t know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone; it never even crossed my mind to be grateful I was in good physical condition. I didn’t even know how lucky I was; but I certainly am very well aware that I am a physical wreck at sixty two. Heavy heaving sigh. My neck is still sore this morning, but Ben-Gay has been doing the trick and it’s not quite as bad this morning as it was yesterday.

So, by the time I finally got the laundry started last night, I was already in a mood and said fuck it and repaired to the living room with Tug for some lap time. A purring sleeping kitten in your lap is the best thing for anxiety and stress after a bad day.

Hopefully today will be a good day. I am going to attempt to start eating more “not soft” foods this week at some point. I do still have a lot of that soft food stuff to get rid of anyway, so its just as well I was wrong about how long it would take to get my dentures (I don’t think I ever really told a timeline, which was why I got confused) because all this remaining soft food I’ve not gotten to yet will get used and it won’t just sit in the cabinet for months (years) waiting for me to get fed up at last and start pitching things, right? And I don’t need to have the expensive ice cream–it just has a high calorie count and is very filling and I like it, so I can probably start doing without that; maybe switch to something less expensive and with chunks of stuff in it. I don’t know that I can’t chew so much as I can’t bite into things, which is why I am going to start practicing with other foods. Most of this soft stuff is just carbohydrates, which my body is turning into sugar which is making me pre-diabetic which is also building up my uric acid which is manifesting as gout (everything is connected in your body–everything). I did make it into work, only had to use two hours of my sick time (I get to use two more on Wednesday when I get my sonogram), and managed to get some things done both there and on the home front.

As I was driving both to and back from Panama City Beach over the weekend, I also went down memory lane back to my childhood again. I hadn’t been back to Panama City Beach since the summer I graduated from high school, back in 1978; we went on a trip to visit the relatives and the beach and all for about three weeks that summer, right after I graduated. We never used I-10 back then–was there an I-10 then? Probably–but once I took the exit for 331 south, I knew exactly where I was; Defuniak Springs, and 331 was the road to my grandmother’s old place on Choctawhatchee Bay. And sure enough, 331 took me to the bridge over the bay–no longer a draw bridge or a two lane bridge; now it’s two separate bridges with two lanes crossing in either direction–and the gas station at the corner where you’d turn to go to my grandmother’s is now a park, which I didn’t catch until I was past it. I was going to turn and drive down there on the way home, just to take a look, but by the time I got across the bridge I was deep into The Only Good Indians and I was tired and just wanted to go home. But these old sites–and the incredible beauty of the beach at Panama City Beach–brought back a lot of memories and thoughts about me, my life, and my writing; as did spending time with my aunts and uncle on my father’s side of the family–none of whom I’d seen outside of weddings or funerals since that last trip down there before we moved to California in the the first months of 1981, and that made me go down that road. We spent most of Saturday after I arrived watching football games–Alabama-Texas A&M, and then Notre Dame-Louisville–which reminded me again of how deeply rooted football is as a family thing; we bond over watching football games, pretty much rooting for the same teams while hating the same ones. (They all overlook my LSU fandom, but they’re all Auburn fans who hate Alabama with a passion–my dad and mom and our little branch were the exceptions; rooting for Alabama unless they were playing Auburn. For me, the SEC is now LSU–with Auburn a distant second and Alabama just behind them in third. We all hate Tennessee and Florida–but they hate Georgia; I don’t. Even Dad hates Georgia.) But it made me think more about the panhandle books and the Alabama books I still want to write–and I was also laughing at myself for trying to make the books set there (like the ones in Kansas) so based in fictionalized reality that I feel tied to making the towns almost exactly the same; it’s fiction, lunkhead, so you can change things; it’s okay. (This also kind of dovetails with my “NOLier than Thou” post; because I realized I’ve always created fictional places in New Orleans while still trying to get the city right…it’s really about the mentality than the actual geography.)

But I would like to go back and explore; perhaps Paul and I can find a place over there to rent for a few days–a condo or something so we can eat at home and so forth; Paul would be more than happy to just be given beach access 24/7–and then I could think about the two or three books I want to set there. (I also want to set some books and more stories in the fictional town of Tuscadega, which I invented and based on Freeport, where my grandmother lived. “Cold Beer No Flies” was set there, for example. And driving through Mobile made me think of Dark Tide, too.) It was also interested because the Google Earth views I’d looked at made Panama City Beach look a lot different. It is a lot different than it used to be–more built up, no vacant lots, and yes, there are condos and massive resort hotels built on the beach side of Lower Beach Road (there was only a Beach Road back in the day–now there’s Lower, Middle, and Upper Beach Roads), but there are still public beaches where you can drive up and park right by the dunes and walk a very short distance to the beach, and those tourist-serving little shops that sell gimcracks and souvenirs and beach towels and inflatable rafts and suntan lotion are still there–not as many, but there are some, bearing names like Surfin’ Safari and so forth. I also took some pictures to help me remember things if and when I write about the area again. (It’s where I want to set my Where the Boys Are/slasher novel mash-up that I am calling Where the Boys Die. )

And another story–another one of the ones from back in the day when I was still in college and trying to figure out how to become a writer (which is what I thought those classes were for; they were not) I had written another one that I had turned in with “Whim of the Wind” (the first semester with a good teacher, I had started to feel like I could be a writer again, and by the second semester when I took the class a second time–you were allowed to take it twice–I decided to write a lot of stories to turn in….which was when I first started writing fast, I suppose. Anyway, when I turned in “Whim of the Wind” I turned in another story called “Thunder Island,” which was also set in the panhandle. It was also well received by the class, but not as well as the other, and so I’ve never really thought much about the second. I tried rewriting it once, but to no avail, and since then it’s just kind of been languishing in the files. Ironically, the story was about someone who was returning, after a long time, to the area after a funeral and was remembering a summer when he was a kid, staying on the bay with his grandmother…but while the story was good and worked, now it’s problematic. I’d have to update the story and change some things, and it’s not a crime story at all–although technically in its original problematic form it was an inadvertent crime story. Funny that I completely had forgotten writing a story set in the panhandle almost forty years ago that actually predicted the drive I just took. Maybe I should look it over again? May not be a bad idea.

But the most important thing for me to do today is assess my situations and figure out where I am at with everything, and what I need to get done. I am still in the midst of medical processes–part of yesterday’s problems stemmed from me either never being told or misunderstanding the denture process, which is much longer than I thought and I won’t be getting the final ones for another four to five weeks–and tomorrow morning I am having a sonogram on my heart and Friday an MRI on my shoulder. I need to get a handle on things because all the medical stuff keeps pushing everything else out of my brain; how do people prepare for surgery when they have a gazillion other things to do on top of that? I guess you just endure. I have no control over the situation–which is probably part of my problem with the whole thing–and just have to put my fate in the hands of others, which is something I never like doing and always chafe at; it’s part of the reason why flying is such an issue for me (one of the many reasons, all of which have to do with my faulty brain wiring)–I have no control over anything. You have to surrender control of your fate to the airline once you walk into the airport until you walk out of the airport at your destination and that really chafes at me. Anxiety, of course–on the one hand I know what the general disorder is and that everything else I thought was wrong with my brain’s wiring is just a symptom of the macro disorder, and I am better about controlling it now that I know what it is…but yesterday was one of those days where I felt no control at all over my life and situation and so that started the spiraling and it just got out of control.

But I am happy that I’m better and more balanced (and better rested ) this morning–the neck is still stiff and sore–and on that note, will head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back later, probably.

Cars

This morning I get to go pick up my temporary teeth before heading into the office. It’s no longer a clinic day; I’d be covering Mondays for a colleague who’d had major surgery and he’s back now. I am also a little tired this morning. I slept really well last night but could have slept much longer, the physical and mental hangover from having driven so much this weekend. I left for Panama City Beach during half-time of the LSU-Missouri game; and given how LSU had been playing, you can imagine my delight when I checked the score when I stopped for gas to see that the Tigers had rallied to beat the other Tigers 49-39. The Saints destroyed the Patriots 34-0 while I was driving back yesterday; again, imagine my delight when I checked the score when I stopped for gas past Mobile (I try not to ever spend money in Mississippi, for any number of reasons. The same with Tennessee). So my teams apparently do better when I’m not able to watch, which is something I’ve suspected for quite some time.

This is a week of medical stuff–the teeth this morning, a heart sonogram on Wednesday morning, and something else entirely on Friday that I can’t think of. The MRI of my shoulder, I think? There are so many appointments and things going on while I am getting ready for this surgery that I am not even entirely sure I can keep track of them all–the anxiety roiling up from the depths again–but I am pretty sure I put everything on my calendar and I am resisting the urge to give into the anxiety and better check compulsively numerous times to be sure stage. I know I wrote everything down on my calendar; I will double-check that tonight when I get home from work, and that will be the end of it as far as that kind of anxiety and stress and pressure are concerned. I think I am doing a great job of controlling the anxiety by recognizing it and refusing to allow it to take control, but some days are definitely harder than others. I only got irritated several times on the drives this weekend–and I would say that those situations would have irritated any driver, even those without anxiety as a mental disorder.

I did get to listen to The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, which I greatly enjoyed (more on that later) and Saturday before I left I read some more of Final Girls, which is starting to get rolling now–although it occurred to me in the car that I should have listened to the rest of Final Girls in the car and thus been able to move on to something else to read this week, but ah well, sometimes that’s how life goes. I was very tired when I got back to New Orleans last night–the drive was very smooth, with a few exceptions of stupidity along the way (I’m looking at you, Mobile tunnel) but I didn’t sleep great Saturday night after that drive, and so that’s why I’m dragging and a little the worse for lack of sleep. I also have a bit of a sore spot in my neck from sleeping wrong at some point over the last two nights, my guess being it was last night’s, combined with poor posture while driving. Tug also missed me; he spent most of last evening sleeping in my lap, but once he woke up he turned back into the terror Paul had described when I got home–knocking everything off every surface he climbed up onto; attacking my feet; chasing pens around the room–definitely some big kitten energy going on. Yeah, it’s a bit annoying, but at the same time it means he’s acclimated and knows he’s at home enough to feel safe to play and have fun and be a kitten, which is great. Maybe not when he’s walking all over my keyboard confidently like there’s nothing there, or when he’s trying to get whatever I am eating, but it’s great that he’s so comfortable in the house that he can be himself, and that’s always a good thing.

And now I get to spend the day trying to acclimate back to my every day existence, which isn’t always easy. Going away always is unsettling for me, and then I have to figure out how where I am at and what all else I have to get done and do and plan and so forth; which is another reason why having a to-do list is so vitally important; it helps me to re-acclimate to my reality after a break /interruption. I also can’t remember where I am with things at the office, either. Yay? But I need to get to the office and get some things done today–and as my coffee is kicking in and clearing the cobwebs out of my dusty brain, I am starting to feel more motivated than I was before I left; I think maybe knowing that the weekend was causing me some anxiety subconsciously which undermined (self-sabotaged) my attempts last week to get things handled and done and under control.

One of the lovely things about driving long trips like this weekend is that my mind wanders and I think about things; the ability to keep up with an audiobook while my mind sifts through problems and unties the Gordian knots of confusion and self-delusion in my mind has been truly wonderful. While in the car this weekend I was thinking back to what all I had gotten done and accomplished since the start of the pandemic disruption (and yes, I know I am not unique and it has happened to everyone), the general sense of “I am not getting anything done” and “when I am writing I’m not enjoying it” which has been unsettling me and keeping me off-balance since March 2020 (hard to believe it’s been almost four years, isn’t it?), but on the other hand, professionally the pandemic was actually very good to me. I got a substantial raise and promotion at my day job; I got nominated for a shit ton of awards over the last couple of years, and sure, I think there was a significant gap in publishing–from Royal Street Reveillon in the fall of 2018 until Bury Me in Shadows was about a three year gap now, wasn’t it? That in and of itself is the longest gap in my publishing career, but then I came on like gangbusters in 2022 with #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, and Land of 10000 Thrills (Bouchercon anthology), and of course have two back-to-back releases this fall with Mississippi River Mischief and Death Drop. I was also publishing short stories during the 2018-2021 interregnum, and I was working on a multitude of other writing projects during that time in addition to the books that wound up being released in fits and spurts since 2021; I still find it hard to believe I went that long between books–maybe I’m forgetting something? But I don’t think I actually am; I am terrible about remembering everything I’ve written and published, and always forget things. But at first I was disappointed in myself to think I’d gone that long between books before silencing that negativity, and then I nipped that in the bud. There’s no disgrace in admitting that the pandemic knocked me for a loop and off-balance; I’m not the only person this happened to, and it takes a massive life disruption to slow down my writing–which is pretty impressive.

It’s hard to stay positive as it goes against my brain’s wiring, but I am getting better.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Monday be just as lovely as you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

Funky Town

Up early to head over to the West Bank to get my oil changed before heading to the panhandle this afternoon. My life is really a non-stop thrill ride, isn’t it?

I was grumpy yesterday, partly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to be productive over the course of this weekend which is of course silly on its face; why be irritated about something you have no control over? It is what it is, and I promised to do this and I want to see my dad, so I don’t know why I was feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I’m trying not to let things I cannot control hold sway over my emotions, my mood and my life anymore; as you can see, it’s not going 100% better–but I have to say overall I feel better about everything on a daily basis a lot more. I’ve not really been writing–using the excuse of this weekend’s trip to justify not doing so, but …there were two options. Try to write, knowing I’d have to take a break this weekend and get something done; or just blow it off and let my brain rest. Since the writing was not coming easily and felt like pulling teeth, it probably was just as well I wasn’t feeling motivated because that feeling turns into disgust and depression if the writing doesn’t go well, so I have to be careful with that sort of thing. But I was able to read some more of the Riley Sager, which I am enjoying, and of course I’ll get to listen to Stephen Graham Jones in the car on the way over there and back. My mind also wanders when I drive, even as I am listening, and I come up with ideas and things while i am behind the wheel of the car. I-10 east isn’t a fun drive, but at least I don’t have to go all the way to Lake City in eastern Florida in order to catch a highway south, thank you baby Jesus.

Clearly, the best day and time of the week to get my car serviced is Saturday mornings at seven. I left the house just before seven this morning, drove over there, got the car serviced and paid for it, then made a quick grocery making run on Manhattan Boulevard and walked back into the house with the grocery bags at about eight thirty this morning. There was little to no traffic, and since I can’t eat anything solid yet, there was no reason to stop at either Sonic or Five Guys on the way home (not that they were open yet, and if they were, they’d be serving breakfast, shudder). That went so smoothly–and yes, believe you me, I was feeling some anxiety as I walked out to the car this morning–that I am now beginning to wonder if letting myself sleep in on the weekends rather than setting the alarm for six to get up like I do every day of the week….I mean, I am awake and feeling functional right now, which is more than I can usually say at this time when I’ve allowed myself to sleep in a bit. (Tug also is used to being fed when I get up at six, so needless to say, he was having some Big Kitten Energy this morning as I kept hitting snooze.) It was also a lovely morning out–it was only sixty-nine degrees outside, which felt amazing; we’re obviously having a cold snap–and I also took a different exit since there was so little traffic; I stayed on 90 and got off at Camp Street instead of Tchoupitoulas, which brought me up Magazine–which I’ve not really drive up in a very long time–at least not since the office moved in 2018. It’s also very different down there, so I am going to need to walk around and explore that part of the neighborhood at some point.

LSU is playing at Missouri today; Missouri is undefeated but not ranked very highly, but there’s no telling how the game will turn out. It depends on which LSU teams shows up, I reckon. I think I’m going to be leaving around noon, so I can catch the beginning of the game and have an idea of how it’s going to go before Dad texts me and I depart on my four and a half hour journey into the heart of the panhandle; the belly of the beast, as it were. I read some more of the Sager novel in the waiting room of the dealership this morning; I’m enjoying it, for sure, but it has a bit of a slow start because of the necessary exposition and back story; I’ve gotten to the place where the present-day narrative is really starting to take off, so I imagine it will read like a brush fire now. Alabama is also at Texas A&M; I think Alabama has found its groove now and is most likely going to win out the season. Plus, I really hate Jimbo Fisher–I’ve hated him since he was at Florida State, and let’s not forget what he did to that program before getting his big payday at A&M (which he has yet to earn).

We finished off this season of Only Murders in the Building, which wrapped up the case of the Broadway show murder and ended with yet another murder in the building which is the set-up for the next season. I doubt Meryl Streep will return for another season, but hey, you never know. We also watched this week’s Ahsoka, but my mind was drifting a lot. I’m not sure if that was the season finale; I thought last week’s could have served as the finale, to be honest. But Our Flag Means Death is back, so we can watch that tomorrow when I get back (yay!) and something else has also dropped a new season for us to watch, but I’m not sure what it is at the moment.

And on that note, I am going to pack and start doing the last minute things I need to get done before I depart. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–I may not be back here until Monday, so try to go on without me.

We Didn’t Start the Fire

As Banned Books Week comes to a close, it was exponentially more important and timely this year than before–given the Right Wing’s vicious, well-organized and ultimately doomed to failure attempts to control what people are allowed to fucking read in this country (for the record, you shrewish harpy lying “Moms4Liberty”–the First Amendment exists because the Founding Fathers foresaw the rise of people like you, and amended the Constitution to stop your skank, anti-American asses).

I’ve participated in Banned Books Week in the past; I’ve certainly done readings during it (the ones I remember reading from are Annie on My Mind by the late Nancy Garden–which was not only burned but tried for obscenity--and Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis; I should have read from Peyton Place at least once). I’ve not participated in a long time–haven’t been asked, to be honest–and so I don’t know if anything is going on in New Orleans for it, or whether it’s something we no longer do here, or what; but I never get offended when I’m not included. Life’s too short for that–and yes, I am well aware that such a thing used to offend me, which was incredibly stupid. I’m really sorry I spent so much of my life and my time allowing negativity such free rein in my head.

The first time I did Banned Books Night, it was after Hurricane Katrina (at least the first one I remember) and it was at the House of Blues; Poppy Z. Brite also read, and I gave him a ride home afterwards; it was in that car and on that ride that he convinced me I could write another Scotty book despite everything that had happened to New Orleans since I’d written the last one; that’s why Vieux Carré Voodoo was dedicated to him.

He gave me Scotty back after a very difficult time, and I will always be grateful for that,

Above are the covers of my seven of my first books. They all look pretty racy, don’t they? But only two of them are actually erotica–Full Body Contact and FRATSEX. Those were the only two erotica anthologies I edited under my own name before switching to Todd Gregory.

The reason I am sharing the covers is because the covers is what the Concerned Women for America, Virginia Chapter, used to get me banned personally (not just my books!) from a high school in suburban Richmond. They used the covers to try to get the Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school shut down, and they used those covers in the House of Burgesses to try to get GSA’s banned at every state-supported school in the state of Virginia.

They came for me based on the covers, not the content–because they had not read the content.

And please, bear in mind, they did not include the erotica anthology covers in their attempts.

In other words, they called me a gay pornographer but didn’t use the actual pornography I actually had done to try to get me banned.

There’s a book in the entire experience at some point for me; I’ve always intended to write a book about the experience called Gay Porn Writer–because that was how they branded me, and the news media, in their attempts to be fair and unbiased, gladly picked up that branding without question or thought or without even looking into me and my writing career in the slightest bit. It was also my first experience with learning that the media cannot be trusted; they are not driven by a desire to print and report the truth; they’re looking for clickbait headlines that drive clicks or people to pick up the paper (print was still very much a thing back then) and which headline would you click on:

Gay author banned from local high school; First Amendment questions raised

or

Gay porn writer’s high school appearance cancelled.

The second one is a lot more enticing, as well as concerning, don’t you think?

That, to me, was the most interesting thing of the entire experience; the perceptions, smears, slanders, and how no one was even the slightest bit interested in the truth. The question that was at the heart of the entire thing is precisely what is driving the bans and book removals and so forth now: how old is old enough to know that queer people exist, that literature and art about us exists, and that we’ve always been here despite being regularly erased from history. It also begged the question we are fighting yet again today: does merely the mention of an alternate sexuality automatically make the book adult content–which really means pornography. We can’t have kids thinking about sex, can we? And we certainly can’t have kids reading a book, recognizing the struggle a character is going through as similar, and feeling less alone, now can we? We’ve got to keep those queer kid suicide rates high!

You see, even the homophobes know the truth that they cannot eradicate our existence, and they also know the truth that the only difference between queer people and straight people is who we are sexually attracted to; ergo, even if you don’t talk about what it means but you have a character who identifies as queer–the “queer” difference means kids will either know that queer people exist (THE HORROR!!!) or think about sex.

And certainly, we cannot have anyone under the age of eighteen thinking about sex, can we? Just because most people become obsessed with it after going through puberty doesn’t mean we should educate them properly. Proper education for teenagers about sex and sexuality would mean a drop in teen pregnancies, teen STI infections, and the need for teen abortions. The spurious argument against sex education for teens has always been we’re just encouraging them to have sex. But that’s stupid; their fucking hormones are encouraging them to have sex, no matter what we teach them, and the more we teach them that sex is bad and wrong will only encourage them to do it more–and once they realize it’s actually a lot of fun and nothing bad immediately happened–they will have more of it.

It’s just basic human psychology. Deny someone something and they will want it all the more even if they weren’t interested in it to begin with. Nothing is more desirable than the forbidden.

The smart thing to do is educate them properly about safety, the risks and hazards of having sex at a young age–and this kind of education will also help teach them about finding the language to get help for sexual abuse they may be experiencing.

But oh no! We don’t want them to have sex! Because not educating them about sex and sexuality has worked so well so far, right? Better they find out by looking stuff up on-line or going to porn sites, right? As a sexual health counselor, I am constantly amazed at the things my clients do not know, or how wrong what they think they know is. Every day I see how our educational system fails to prepare us for one of the most important aspects of our lives.

And learning that queer people exist, can live and love and have happy and fulfilling lives, well, that isn’t what these people want for kids. No, if you’re queer, they want you to be miserable and unhappy and suicidal. What could be more Judeo-Christian than that? The rise in people identifying outside the gender/sexuality binary doesn’t mean that prior generations didn’t have those same people existing in them; just that the world and society wasn’t as accepting and understanding then so they had more to lose by coming out, by talking realistically about who they are and what they feel–and it’s scary, very scary. People who do fall into those binaries, who don’t have to worry about what other people will think about who they are and how they identify, shouldn’t be the ones deciding what is real and what isn’t.

And the sad truth is these people are simply terrified of having a queer child, period. So, they figure if they take away anything that might tell their child it’s okay to be queer and to be yourself, their child will instead choose to live in a closet for the rest of their lives and be completely miserable.

Which tells me all I need to know about what kind of parents these people are.

Their love has conditions, which means it isn’t love at all.

I was always under the impression that parents, first and foremost, want their children to be healthy and happy….which is apparently another myth I’ve been gaslit into believing since childhood. #notallparents

Biggest Part of Me

Well, I am not going to get my dentures until Monday; they just called and the dentist isn’t in today, so I can’t get them until Monday morning, which makes this weekend a bit more difficult–sigh, eating will be a bit of a challenge for me this weekend in Panama City Beach, but at least I get them Monday morning–which means I can get groceries and start eating normally again on Monday; which is fantastic and makes me incredibly happy. I think I can probably chew if I take the uppers out, but I hardly would want to be doing that in public. But Monday I can eat normally again, although I still have a lot of the softer food to get rid of without wasting. I’ve actually liked some of these options I’ve adapted to–who knew hot and spicy ramen would be so fucking good?–and I will miss the ice cream of course, but I didn’t really lose a lot of weight while on this diet (my body always adjusts very quickly) but I am hopeful that will become more of a reality for me (actual weight loss) once the teeth are done and the surgeries are over and I’ve recovered. The weather has become cool enough for me to take walks when I get home from work; I’ve just been so focused on bonding with li’l Tug that I’ve not really made use of the time as productively as perhaps I should have.

Tug is becoming more and more at home, and showing more and more Big Kitten Energy every day. When I got home from work there was a trail of…well, I won’t say destruction because that wasn’t what I found; but there was a lot more stuff on the floor when I got home than was there when I had left. Last night he slept a lot in my lap, but then would get the “wanna play!” zoomies, where he was running around knocking things off and playing with everything and chasing things. I read some more of Riley Sager’s Final Girls, which is quite interesting and holding my attention, and then switched over to some Youtube videos. I watched another old episode of Friday the 13th the Series, which is fun, as always; it also occurred to me that I’ve basically given a sort of the same set-up backstory to A Streetcar Named Murder that the show had; my main character inherited an antique shop from an old uncle of her husband’s she didn’t know, the first case involved an item from the store, etc. etc. etc. (I just last night put that together–there truly are no new stories under the sun, are there? This is what I mean when I say things like I have so many influences I can’t possibly list or remember them all–pretty much anything I’ve ever read and any movie/television show I’ve seen has influenced me in some way.) Paul had a meeting last night so he wasn’t home before I started falling asleep in my easy chair; Tug and I repaired to bed before Paul got home around ten and I slept until eight this morning; ten hours! That never happens, Constant Reader, and it felt great. I feel very rested and relaxed this morning before I dive into my work-at-home duties, of which there are quite a bit today. I also have some errands to run late this afternoon after work, and of course tomorrow mornign I have to get up early and get the oil changed–which means more of the Riley Sager. I’m also a little excited to listen to Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians on the way over and back, and I want to finish the Sager this weekend so I can reread The Haunting of Hill House and The Dead Zone before moving on to Elizabeth Hand’s A Hanunting on the Hill–although I’ll reread the King before the Jackson, because it just makes more sense to pair the Jackson with Hand’s retelling of the same tale, doesn’t it?

The switch from blast-furnace summer heat to the coolness (relatively speaking) of fall has been wonderful, and I hope my Entergy bill reflects the cooling of the weather. The kitchen is a mess, as always on Friday mornings, so of course I have some things to do around here before I get started on my work-at-home chores or do some writing or reading or whatever I need to get done here around the house. The new season of Our Flag Means Death dropped last night, as well as other new episodes of our shows (Ahsoka, Only Murders in the Building, among others) and we also want to start The Changeling, based on Victor Lavalle’s superb novel.

So I am hoping for nice productive day at home. I feel rested and relaxed–always a plus–and maybe not as motivated as I would like, but hey, that’s on me and the coffee I have yet to finish consuming. I’m going to finish off my morning with a cup of cacao, because I am trying to get used to it and it would be great to wean myself entirely off coffee, but the cacao is taking some getting used to–it doesn’t really have the bitter bite of coffee, which is the part of the taste I prefer. Cacao is more like unsweetened hot chocolate–and it’s probably the real chocolate taste, as opposed to the insanely sweetened version Americans are used to. I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to get the oil changed in the car–since I’ll be on the West Bank, I should probably go ahead and grocery shop while I’m over there, and then I won’t have to worry about it when I get back on Sunday night, which does make the most sense.

And so, on a more cheery note than usual lately, I am going to take this chance to head into the spice mines. I may be back before tomorrow morning’s before the oil change at the crack of dawn, but one never can be sure. At any rate, have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

NOLier Than Thou

(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)

While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.

This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.

Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)

It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).

I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)

It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)

And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).

So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.

When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.

I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”

Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?

A very valuable lesson, to be sure.

So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.

And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.

The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi