Category: true crime

So Fine

Well, I got all my tax stuff done yesterday and uploaded into my accountant’s portal and that’s the end of that shit for at least this year now. I don’t know why I always hate doing this; it’s not fun, to be sure, but it never takes super long and it’s such a relief when it’s done…praise Jesus. But that put me into a mood–not sure if it was depression or what, but I wasn’t exactly in the greatest mood after finishing. Not a bad mood, by any means, but just a kind of weird funky malaise of some sort. It didn’t help that it was raining and gloomy all day. I had to run errands after work (in the rain), made it home and just sat down for awhile and took a red pencil to “When I Die,” and there was a lot of deleted material. That also kind of made me feel not so great, either–even though a lot of the deletions had everything to do with switching the story from about two couples to three young men. Paul and I watched two more episodes of the Dead Boy Detectives, which is really quite good and we are enjoying it a lot. There’s some queer subtext going on with the show, but nothing truly overt other than the Cat King.

I woke up this morning to the news about Tulane calling out the cops and campus police to break-up a protest for Gaza on the campus last night…and they brought out horse cops. The irony that the cops only get called or try to break-up protests by progressives on college campuses doesn’t escape me, but no one ever cares about Nazi marches or things like what happened in Charlottesville not that long ago. I always hear people complaining about how college students and the young don’t vote, don’t get involved, etc etc etc. Well, now they are engaging in world affairs, and they really don’t like seeing genocide on their screens. So, I guess it’s about what they chose to be interested in? And I don’t think having them arrested or the police physically assaulting them is going to change their minds? It always bothers me whenever I see the police attacking protestors. It’s definitely a free speech issue, and of course with memories of Kent State lingering in my mind…I just don’t like it. If the protestors aren’t being violent or damaging property (remember, the police’s job is to protect property, not people), what’s the harm? Don’t come for me, either–I also feel Jewish students have the right to feel safe on campus and of course there’s no place for anti-Semitism anywhere in American society, but spare me the pearl-clutching from the right–you know, the people who believe there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville? I had read that the students had closed down St. Charles Avenue for a little while the other day–again, an annoyance to drivers, nothing terrible or serious or revolutionary in any way–and was kind of pleased. Apparently, Tulane’s president feels that the protestors aren’t students for the most part (the old “outside agitators” thing, thank you, George Wallace for that terminology), but again, I despair. I also despair at the people who think the protestors should be shot and killed, which…seems unconstitutional in ways you don’t have to be a lawyer or a legal scholar to recognize. The fear that the crowd might become uncontrollable or violent isn’t a justification for denying the students their First Amendment rights.

Again, property not people, and the sooner most white Americans wake up from their lifetime of brainwashing about what the role of cops actually is the better. And I say that as a crime writer. I don’t like the notion that the cops are above the law, can violate it with impunity as well as the legal rights we all share in theory. I was thinking about this lately, about how most crime writers never delve into police corruption or never really challenge the notion that the cops are the good guys when all too often their frail humanity gets in the way. I’ve thought about this a lot since the original police brutality protests about innocent Black people being murdered by the cops–at his point there are so many I can’t remember them all or what actually got the country riled up in the first place. I have taken to thinking that I write a lot of copaganda; my police officers–always supporting characters and never the lead–are honest, hard-working, not corrupt, and can be counted on.

I do not feel that way in real life. I have had an idea for a book about police corruption in New Orleans for a really long time now; the problem (for me) is that it’s a Venus story, and I don’t think I necessarily have the chops to write from the perspective of an older Black woman cop nearing retirement. I’ve wondered how I could turn it into a Chanse or a Scotty book, where Venus hires them to look into a case that’s been written off; I had wanted to call it Just Another Random Shooting, but if it’s a Chanse or a Scotty I have to stick to the title scheme I started with. Or I could spin off Jerry Channing, my true crime writer, who has appeared in several of my books already and who I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time.

Interestingly enough, my hearing aids haven’t been working that great lately and I was beginning to think I’d have to take them in again for repair…but last night after I got home from work, both ears popped (a pressure thing) and this morning my hearing aids feel like they are turned up way too loud! I had to turn them down. Today I can hear my fingers clicking on the keys, I could hear Sparky whining for treats upstairs, and so on. I feel pretty good this morning and it looks like it’s going to be another beautiful (borderline too hot) day today after the gloom and rain of yesterday. Huzzah!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, stranger things have happened!

Frankie

Saturday and a big day of being out of the house. I had planned on not doing much outside the apartment vis-a-vis errands, but Paul’s state ID expires today (and he only realized it last night) so somehow only getting the mail today has morphed into the DMV, Costco, lunch out, and the mail. Ah, well, I can come home and write in my easy chair. I finally figured out why my Macbook Air doesn’t sync with my Microsoft accounts; it needed to have Word updated and the passwords reset…so now I can access everything from the laptop, which makes life ever so much easier for me. I was actually working on the revision of “When I Die” yesterday when Paul decided he was done for the day and came downstairs so we could watch Mary and George (still superb) and more of the second season of Vigil, which is absolutely fantastic.

I did get some chores done around here yesterday–I laundered all the bed linens and another load of laundry, and worked on the dishes, which need to be finished this morning, and did some picking up and organizing–and while I am relatively certain these errands are going to wear me out today, at least I feel rested this morning. I was still a big tired yesterday from the week, and when I woke up was a little groggy. This morning I feel ever so much better, frankly, and so I hope I can go ahead and make it through the day.

I have been watching with macabre enjoyment this bizarre civil war within the Republican party, and am not entirely sure how this is all going to end up. Yesterday the news broke and went viral about South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, one of the potential VP candidates for the right, who wrote in her self-promoting-I-am-to-be-taken-seriously-on-the-national-stage-book-about-me-in-an-election-year that she hated a fourteen month old puppy who “couldn’t” be trained (that’s a you failure, Madam Adulteress) so she decided to shoot him in a gravel pit–and then shot a goat she didn’t like on top of it when that didn’t sate her bloodlust. I immediately knew when I saw the Guardian article about it that she was 1) pretty much finished and 2) not really aware about the divide between urban and rural when she wrote that in her book. I know exactly the kind of mindset she has about animals–she’s rural–because it’s the same mentality my parents had about animals because they grew up on farms and you don’t have animals in the house as pets, for one thing, and for another, when you grow up on a farm and are used to killing animals for food–cows, pigs, chickens, etc.–you don’t get really sentimental about them because they die. I also knew it wasn’t going to play well with voters and most Americans, because most of us love animals and try to do whatever we can to save them, not shoot them. She also doesn’t get it, still; she defended herself with a post or statement of some sort where she talked about that very thing–and how many animals on her ranch/farm/whatever she’s had to put down recently. Way to throw gasoline on the fire, Madam Adulteress!

And way to not understand the American electorate. And if you don’t know that the vast majority of Americans love animals and especially dogs–you’re probably too ignorant and out-of-touch with most Americans to lead anywhere other than an extremely rural state, and most definitely not the entire country.

Interesting how many Republicans have been horrific dog owners–Noem, the Romneys, and the Huckabees of Arkansas.

My parents may not have had any sentimentality about pets, but they also didn’t have any.

Ah, Mary and George. I hope you are watching, Constant Reader–even if you aren’t into history, the show is the kind of bitchy back-stabbing plots and subplots and twisty/turny show that reminds me, with its wit and bitchiness, of some of the greater nighttime soaps and even of Real Housewives shows. I also like how fluid everyone’s sexuality is at the Jacobean court. I really need to read a bio of King James; I’ve certainly read enough about his mother Mary Queen of Scots and his son, Charles I, who lost his head during the second English civil war. I know Antonia Fraser, whose superb Mary Queen of Scots I read when I was eleven, wrote a bio of James that I always wanted to read but never did. Perhaps this is the proper time? I also should read bios of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu to get a stronger sense of the time period…and I really am beginning to think I might be able to start writing Milady, my long-dreamed-of novel, later in this year.

And on that note, Constant Reader, I am heading into the spice mines to load the dishwasher and get the day’s business started. Have a fabulous day, and who knows? I may be back later.

Just Ask Your Heart

Thursday and my last day in the office this week. I wasn’t as tired yesterday as I had been the day before, thank the Lord, but was still a bit raggedy as I got to the end of the workday. I was efficient at the office yesterday, but man, there was a very weird vibe to the day. Maybe it was the use of the National Guard on college campuses? I don’t care what you think or what your opinions, values and beliefs are we should never be calling out the military to handle “security” on college campuses. I get that the right hates college students–they always have; they cheered the Kent State shootings fifty-four years ago–and it’s just astonishing to me that no one makes the connections to the last years of the North American colonial period? It was all protests until the war actually started in 1775–the Boston Tea Party was particularly a notable one. What did the British do to maintain order in Boston? They brought in the military to quench and quell dissent, outlawed protesting and criticism of the King and Parliament…and none of it worked, it simply agitated the colonials to more protest and eventually violence. I always laugh a bit when the right wing–the ones who scream about liberties and freedom all the time–call for ending protests, driving cars into protestors, etc. They are the British in this scenario. And yes, the conservative colonists were actually on Britain’s side. It was the radicals and the progressives who defied King and Parliament and created a country.

The right to peaceably assemble and protest is imbedded in our national DNA and included in the Bill of Rights. But no one seems to care about the actual Constitution anymore (looking at you, SCOTUS), just what they think it means so they can defend their indefensible and unconstitutional beliefs and values.

I also wrote a great opening line for my future project The Crooked Y: “I hated the place they took me to after they arrested Mom.”

We did watch some more of Vigil last night, and there’s only one episode left in the first season, which will we watch tonight and most likely move into Season 2. It’s very good; it’s. a murder mystery/suspense thriller where a lot of the action takes place on a British nuclear submarine on patrol. It’s very well written, well acted, and riveting. The British are the best at crime series, seriously–and they are consistently good. I’m not sure why our crime series aren’t as consistently good as theirs are, but there it is.

I continued on my research wormhole yesterday about the French Quarter Stabber–seriously, once I get something in my head it gnaws at me until I give in–and it’s okay, I think. I feel more rested this morning than I have all week, really, and so hopefully that will carry me through the rest of the day and into the evening. I think I’ll probably just come straight home from work tonight, since i can run errands on my lunch break tomorrow, and that way I can get here and get the laundry started while finishing the dishes and doing some writing before Paul gets home. I also want to get back to reading Suicide Notes and even dipping into some poetry. (Who am I?) But I am starting to feel like I am also starting to get it; I like discovering it for myself without having professorial expectations loaded onto me–which always made me hate whatever I was being forced to read unwillingly–and I always love figuring things out for myself. Perhaps I’ll be wrong, but at the same time, everything is dependent on the reader, right, and their interpretations? It’s subjective, so therefore there’s no wrong way of reading it. It’s not like I plan on starting to write it or anything.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I hope to have a great day where I get a lot done, and perhaps I’ll be able to finish another draft post…stranger things have happened! Thanks for stopping by–I appreciate you taking the time from your very busy day to check in.

I’ve Had It

Yesterday wasn’t the best. Oh, nothing bad happened, it was a kind of meh day. I felt mentally refreshed but physically tired when I got up, and as the day went on the tiredness of my body seeped into my brain and my creativity. By the time I got home from work, I was too tired to do much of anything creative. I put away dishes and did another load as well as finished a load of laundry, and dozed off in my easy chair for about an hour before Paul got home. The nap didn’t really help, but I did sleep super well last night and feel rested all over this morning. This is a good thing, as it’s Pay-the-Bills Wednesday again, and today I am going to try to finish my taxes and get them off to my accountant.

So, yesterday was kind of a wash for me. I didn’t try to force anything, mainly because I didn’t have the will or the need. This morning I am feeling good and awake and my mind is already bouncing all over the place. Since getting up this morning I’ve come across an interesting news story that could tie into a fun Scotty book, have had some thoughts about my next book to write, and more ideas about how to make “When I Die” better. See, this sort of thing can’t be forced; I can make myself write but if my mind isn’t feeling creative and bouncing all over the place, it’s absolute torture that needs to be completely revised from the first word to the last. The rewrite of “When I Die,” for example, is going to be an almost totally word for word revision; the concept and setting are there, but the characters need to be changed and more depth added to the new ones that wasn’t there in the first draft, and that pleases me. I am also extremely pleased with “Passenger to Franklin.” I do need to polish it some more, of course, and make it prettier and tighten up the ending a bit–it seems abrupt to me, but I could be wrong. But I feel pretty good this morning, so here’s hoping for a nice, successful day without stress and/or irritations or aggravation. I will make groceries on the way home and swing by the mail, and hopefully Paul will be home early enough for us to watch another episode of Vigil.

I was talking to another writer friend last night about the business and it provided me with some definite food for thought about my future. I was already thinking about trying something different–I feel like I’ve gotten a bit stagnant with my work, and so I need to start pushing boundaries and trying some different things. I think I definitely want to try writing a gay romance novel, something I’ve thought about for quite some time, and I may try to branch out in other ways. I still definitely want to get these books on my list to get out of the way done, but I like the idea of writing a romance and stretching that way. I was even pondering the possibility of rebooting the Chanse series, but not using the same pattern of titles. I like the idea of revisiting him and seeing where he is now–is he any wiser or happier? But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like going backwards–always a concern–and I also think it would be far more of a challenge to write a Chanse book now than it was ten years ago when I ended the series originally.

The release of the French Quarter Stabber on parole also had me going down some wormholes yesterday between clients. The French Quarter Stabber was a teenager who murdered three or four gay men in the 1970s; there was some serious homophobia and undoubtedly some self-loathing involved there. I think it would make for an interesting exploration of who he was in fiction, but it might also make an interesting true crime novel–something I’ve never really considered doing, but it could be a fun project to research and work on between other projects–particularly how these murders were handled by the local press and police in the same decade that saw the Upstairs Lounge fire/mass murder, and how that did or did not change in the few intervening years.

And again, suburbanites and North Shore racists: remind me of precisely when New Orleans was the idyllic crime free city? Because my brief researches into the past show a city that was always a hotbed of crime.

Anyway, the Stabber’s story will easily fit into a project I already have in progress that just needs a lot of revision and rework, but I love being able to pull this new research into a project where it will fit snugly and perfectly. Yay! Obviously, I am feeling a lot better about things this morning than I did yesterday. I wasn’t down or depressed or anything yesterday, but it was a low energy day which had a lot to do with my blood sugar, something I’ve been trying to be better about. When I don’t eat, my blood sugar drops and I don’t have any energy. I don’t think this means that I am pre-diabetic or anything, but just another thing about getting older I need to pay more attention to than I have before. Sigh. It never ends.

But today I feel like my life is very much the art of the possible this morning, and I am going to ride that wave like a surfer on Oahu’s north shore. So…I should probably head into the spice mines and start paying some bills. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I will most likely be back later.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Lonesome is a great word that doesn’t get as much use as it used to; it was a very popular emotion/feeling for songwriters (especially those in the genre then known as “country and western”) to write about back in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s a very evocative word, and I am not sure why I don’t hear it as often as I used to. I love the word, and one of my ideas is to write a book called Kansas Lonesome at some point. The premise would be that there’s a podcast called that, which covers Kansas true crime stories throughout the state’s history; I am not sure how that podcast will play into the story I want to write, but that’s the foundation of that book, whatever it turns out to be. I am currently in the process of writing a short story (one of many, by the way) with a college student investigating a crime site out in the countryside to sus out background information for a podcast episode for the producer/star of the podcast. I do think the book may be inspired (Kansas Lonesome) on a homophobic incident that occurred in my old school district in Kansas; a young lesbian was put off the bus and banned from riding for saying she was a lesbian. The school district tried to cover up everything, but it turned out the girl was the only one telling the truth, the bus driver was fired, and the superintendent lost out on a big career move…and a few months later, she disappeared. Her name was Izzy Dieker, and as best as I can tell, she’s not turned up yet and it’s been over two years since she went missing. There are just some articles noting her disappearance, and then….nothing.

That is a great premise for a crime novel, isn’t it? Kansas Lonesome is becoming what I will soon probably be referring to now as “the Kansas book,” now that the other one was finally finished and published. But I think I will probably write The Crooked Y first; there is so much material in Kansas for prairie noir, isn’t there?

It really is amazing how much crime–specifically brutal murders–have happened in such a sparsely populated, deeply Christian red state. (“But crime only happens in those scary big cities!” Fuck off, trash. And by the way, immigrants aren’t coming for your women or your jobs.) The Benders are another grisly story from Kansas’ blood-drenched past, and I’ve always wanted to write about them, too; and hope to do so before I run out of time on this mortal coil.

And last week I stumbled across another fascinating tale of corruption and illegality involving a district attorney, a judge, and a police chief…a truly horrifying tale about how justice can be (and is all too frequently) twisted to fit the agendas of people who are evil but so convinced of their own righteousness that bending rules and not turning over evidence to defense attorneys, suborning perjury and coercing confessions from people?

Sidebar: Yes, Sarah Palin, that’s the real America, you charlatan snake-oil salesperson. Hope you’re enjoying being completely forgotten, grifter and Grandmother of Bastards.

Anyway, that’s a lot of words to talk about how Kansas is actually a horrific true crime state, with lots of examples of horrible murders and desperate people. I sometimes wonder if has anything to do with how flat the state is, and how sparsely populated. I know sometimes those winter winds off the prairies are brutal, whistling around the house and rattling the windows, trying to find a way into the warm cozy inside. Sometimes that wind can whistle, too–and I can imagine in a time without electricity or much entertainment, listening to that wind and being so lonesome out on the prairie could easily drive you mad1. I could write a book of short stories and simply call it Kansas Lonesome, with the premise that the podcast host and researchers are doing the background research into these old crimes or something. That could be an interesting way of bringing those stories together…but I also think Kansas Lonesome is too good of a book title to not use it for the novel I was thinking about earlier in this entry–the one about Izzy Dieker.

Loneliness, though, while sad and depressing, is a writer’s friend. When you’re lonely, you have to entertain yourself, and I always drag out the journal at those times, or warm up my computer and start writing away. I think a lot of my creativity came from being lonely as a child, the recognition I clocked early that I wasn’t like other kids in many ways so I stayed away from them because I didn’t know if they were going to make fun of me or bully me. and so I retreated very often into my own mind. I read a lot, obviously, and watched a lot of television and movies (while reading), and I just kind of lived in my imagination for lengthy periods of time. I preferred my own world, frankly, and still do; I hate leaving my own world for the real one.

I do wonder sometimes if I would have still wanted to be a writer if I had felt like I belonged, if I was like every other little boy. But even when I was a kid, I looked at the future that was expected of me and found it wanting. A Lot. I hated the very idea of fitting into one of the ticky-tacky houses in the suburbs and the day job that was all-consuming and the wife and the kids and the lawn work and upkeep on the house and…yeah, that sounded always terrible to me, and the older I got the more I resisted that future. Had I followed the path laid out for me by society and family I would have been absolutely miserable by now. Would I have been so attached to books if I had friends, kids in the neighborhood and the comfort of knowing people did actually like me? It was the love of books and wanting to give other people the feeling I got when I read one I enjoyed that made me want to be a writer in the first place, and the more I read the more I wanted to write. I used to write all the time when I was a kid–things I didn’t take seriously at the time, and would completely dismiss…but I was always writing. I made up a world once, with its own countries and lineages and so forth, kind of a fantasy alternate kind of history. I wrote my own versions of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I wrote short stories in high school. I started writing a novel when I was seventeen, and while I might have gone months without writing at times, I always was writing, always coming up with titles and ideas, and I was always happiest when I was creating.

And now, here I am hurtling toward my sixty-third birthday with a lot of publishing credits to my name and boxes and boxes of ideas…that I want to digitize and throw away the paper files in an attempt to cut back on clutter. I have my next two years’ writing schedule pretty much figured out already. I’m happy. That’s the bottom line of everything, isn’t it? Being happy? I love my life. I love writing. I love connecting with readers and other writers. And I think I am continuing to grow and develop as a writer. I don’t ever want my best work to be behind me, and I don’t think it is. I’m feeling good and optimistic again, and that’s always a good thing.

  1. There was a really great chapter in James Michener’s Centennial that talked about this very thing; how on the prairies in the winter the wind could drive one mad. After I read that book I could never listen to the wind again without remembering that. ↩︎

Alvin’s Harmonica

Here we are on another Wednesday Pay the Bills Day, and are we feeling bright and chipper this morning? No, not really, but we’re getting closer to the weekend and that’s always a good thing.

We’re also in a “severe weather alert” and there’s currently a tornado warning until one pm. That should make driving to work exciting, should it not? Sigh. The weather is supposed to be bad all day–high winds and heavy rains, on top of the tornado warning–which also means an odd day at work. Will people try to come in to keep their appointments in inclement weather like this? You never know, and so the entire day is going to be weird like that. We’re also having a site visit from our chief funders for my program today, so I also need to be on my toes. We’re ready for the visit; I got everything caught up that I needed to for this, and so it’s just a matter of making sure everything today runs as smoothly as possible. Heavy sigh. And after some more checking, I see that City Hall is closed today for the weather, they’re allowing parking on the neutral ground because of potential flooding, and yeah, not looking forward to getting there or driving home later today. But at least if there is a tornado, our office building is probably the safest place for me to be during a tornado anyway.

I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday, and so didn’t get very much done. We watched the new Netflix movie Scoop, about the notorious BBC interview with Prince Andrew after the whole Epstein thing went public that basically ended him as an active royal–his titles and responsibilities taken away and forced to live quietly for the rest of his life out of the spotlight and public eye. It was interesting, and had some terrific performances. After that I got up to do chores before bed, so I got the dishes put away and did several loads of laundry before going to bed. Tonight I will do another load of dishes and then the kitchen will be in relatively good shape.

It’s already started raining, and I can tell it’s going to be one of those “oh the city is definitely going to flood” storms, and it’s not going to let up much all day. Huzzah. The pumps all seem to be working, though, which is always a plus. It’s the kind of day where my preference would be to sit in my chair wrapped up in a blanket while Sparky sleeps in my lap and I read more of The Cypress House–it’s a wonderful day for being snug and warm with a book while you listen to the rain come down and the occasional thunder.

Ah, well, maybe it’ll rain this weekend and I can do that.

A lot has happened in the world and culture over the last week or so, and I’ve unfortunately not really remembered to make commentary on some of it. Congratulations to the South Carolina Gamecocks and Coach Dawn Staley on a fantastic season and a national title! I was also incredibly impressed with Coach Staley’s response to the gotcha question about transwomen in sport before the game–which she also called out and didn’t care about any controversy or backlash to her opinion–and that’s the kind of ally-ship we need and deserve. She is a class act in every way, and what she has built at South Carolina is the kind of dynasty the Tennessee women used to enjoy under Pat Summitt, and that is saying a lot.

And almost every day I almost fly into a rage at the right-wing’s attempts to legislate women’s healthcare and bodily autonomy, with the latest outrage courtesy of the Arizona Supreme Court, overruling a recent fifteen-week ban legislated and putting a draconian law from the OLD WEST DAYS OF 1860 TO GO INTO EFFECT. Those fucks are a disgrace to American jurisprudence, and I love that the Attorney General flat out said “we’re not enforcing it, fuck those pieces of shit.” And don’t think for a minute that the evangelicals won’t come for birth control (they’ve already abolished IVF in Alabama) and same sex marriage. You know, I hate to break it to these blasphemous idolators (Trumpism is idolatry, sorry not sorry, have fun in Hell: thou shalt have no other gods before Me). If you want an idea of the country and culture they want, look no further than Puritan Massachusetts. Remember The Scarlet Letter? That’s the kind of shit they want to bring back. You can never ever give a religious extremist an inch….because when you do, they want everything. (And Catholics, don’t think you aren’t on their list after they outlaw and get rid of everyone else. Right after the Jews, they’ll come for you because they always have to have an enemy. The Right’s entire purpose is scapegoating and blaming minorities for everything. So when things continue to suck after they’ve gotten rid of the “problem minorities,” they’ll have to find another group to blame. Remember how the Soviet Union collapsed and the Right didn’t have another enemy in place? Saddam Hussein stepped into that vacuum happily.)

Okay, I am going to brave the elements and go to work. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I will chat with you again maybe later, Constant Reader.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Easter, which really should be the highest holy day of Christianity–but it’s not. That would be Christmas, which again–really doesn’t make sense. But at least the date of Jesus’ birth is fixed–as opposed to how the day of his death floats.

I overslept again this morning and I suspect my exhaustion–which carried me through yesterday as well–has everything to do with the situation on Friday. Yes, I know I am being vague, but I also never am sure about crossing a privacy line for someone else. Essentially, I lost the entire day, and let’s just say that I am glad I am on anxiety medication because my mind would have exploded this past week, probably. But it was exhausting and draining, both emotionally and physically, and that all kind of caught up with me yesterday. I did get some things done–laundry and I did run an errand–but was completely worn out yesterday and had excessive fatigue. I feel better this morning than I did yesterday, but I also have a lot to do today and hope that I can manage somehow. I feel motivated today, which I didn’t have the energy for yesterday, and as soon as I finish this I am going to get cleaned up and finish cleaning the kitchen and dive into my day.

Sounds good, anyway.

It’s also a very bright and cheery day out there–it’s been cold since around the festivals–and I am hoping to cook out today, too. We spent most of the day relaxing with the television on. I did read some of Last Summer, too, which I am really getting into, and I think my next read will be an old Michael Koryta, The Cypress House. He really is one of my favorite writers, and I need to read more of his backlist as well as get caught up on recent releases. I pruned the books a very little yesterday, and we did watch some great stuff yesterday. We watched Quiet on Set Friday night, which was grim and creepy and horrifying, and then yesterday we watched Thanksgiving and moved onto Will Trent, which we’d been meaning to get around to but kept forgetting–it’s quite good. Thanksgiving was another holiday slasher movie, kind of clever and didn’t take itself too seriously (always a plus in a slasher movie) and I enjoyed–but it didn’t say anything new or do anything wildly clever or original. Quiet on Set, on the other hand, was deeply disturbing–which brings me to another point about the falsity of the right and it’s anti-queer lies about grooming and pedophilia. Every day I see pieces posted on social media about another male (sometimes with a female accomplice) convicted of raping and/or sexually abusing children…and getting off with thirty days in prison, or three months, or suspended sentences.

Where is all the outrage about THAT? Judges and juries giving light sentences for raping children? That’s how I know the right is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to these issues. They chose to attack a small minority and accuse them of not being safe around children, but where is there concern about all these religious figures, church leaders, your counselors, and COPS who are getting away with destroying children? Watching Quiet on Set made me aware just how hypocritical they are. If they really cared about children and keeping them safe, they’d go after actual people who, you know, commit the crimes and the disgusting sentences they get for said crimes. It’s hard to take any country seriously who doesn’t punish actual perpetrators of crimes against children, but instead accuses innocent parties while looking the other way when the criminals don’t fit their narrative.

I’m tired of liars using children as a bait-and-switch to come for queer people.

Sigh. It’s easy to get frustrated and fearful these days with the world in the state it is currently in; I take no pleasure in seeing my predictions about the rise of modern American fascism, made in the early 1990s, coming true in my twilight years. You see, I recognized the rhetoric of the right, and how they were using queer people as scapegoats for everything, in the decade as the same language and dialogues that Germans used on Jews and queers in the 1930’s, and I also saw, with the rise of Fox News, the further decline of the American system and way of life. We’ve never really achieved, as a country, the democratic utopia the founders strove for–but it seems like a significant portion of the country no longer sees patriotism as country over party anymore. The Divine Right of Republicans to run the country was part of the unholy marriage of conservatives and evangelicals that Reagan fostered as a Machiavellian scheme to retain power. The right has been smearing the left as communists since the fall of the Tsar in 1917–it’s still a slur they sneer today (communist, commies, socialists) while painting themselves, quite offensively, as the real patriotic Americans.

Sometimes I think I am thinking overly optimistic and that more and more Americans are beginning to see the tin god as precisely that; a golden calf they worship despite their Holy Book’s continued warnings about false gods, false witness, and liars.

And for the record, I have always believed that faith in religion should be shown by works, not words. Anyone can say they are a Christian and they love Jesus–it’s their behavior and what they do that truly matters.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy Easter, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

How Do You Do?

Saturday morning and I feel good. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day outside–yesterday and the day before were gorgeous–and I don’t feel exhausted or fatigued or tired. My muscles are a bit fatigued, but they aren’t sore, which is super great. I also woke up early for a Saturday, too. I am thinking this might turn out to be a terrific day. I am going to go drop books off for the library sale and get the mail and wash the car (it was attacked by a mob of birds, from the looks of it) before coming home and having a nice rest of my day–hopefully productive. I did have a productive day yesterday, too.

My legs are a bit fatigued from walking to the gym yesterday as well as going to Costco, but as opposed to PT, I wasn’t worn out from it nor did I fall asleep in my chair. I’m not sure what that means, really; is my stamina coming back? Does it have to do with the time of the day? I don’t know, but it was a lovely evening for a walk and the program I am doing on my own is relatively short; only eight different exercises. Huzzah! I honestly didn’t know how it would go, and having it go relatively easily was actually quite nice. We’ll see how this continues to go, and then I am going to get back into a regular three times per week routine after the therapy is all done. I am going to have a different mentality completely this time with exercise, as well–more concern about my health than trying to look good. Feeling better is much more desirable than looking better, if that makes sense? (I always tried to keep my mind on the benefit of working out rather than the physical improvement, but it rarely if ever worked because I was so hard on myself about not being in shape and not looking better and so on. Anxiety.)

I didn’t finish putting away everything from Costco last night, so I’ll have to finish that today. I also need to do some filing and organizing, and the floors definitely need to be worked on. I also want to get some reading and writing done, too. My plans for the weekend perhaps might be overly ambitious, but so be it; they always have been historically but you can’t get stuff done unless you’re overly ambitious. We shall see how the day goes, I suppose.

We watched the LSU Gymnastics last night, and then Paul went back upstairs to work some more while I relaxed downstairs and watched a true crime documentary called Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders, which…I don’t know. Doing a true crime documentary about an unsolved case seems…unsatisfying, at least to me as a viewer. (Granted, Murder on the Bayou and all the others about the Jeff Davis Eight also ended with no one being apprehended; yet it was very interesting all the way through.) I am not going to lie–watching true crime documentaries are often inspiring for me and give me ideas about stories and books to write, so I also have an ulterior motive in watching them. Down the Hill wasn’t that interesting of a story, to be honest, but the image of the railroad bridge that ended on the other side with no more tracks is one that will stick with me for a while. (I’m in the process of writing a short story called “The Haunted Bridge”, so that also is kind of helpful in some ways.)

I think this morning–before I run my errands–I may rewatch Saltburn so I can finish my essay about it. This is one of the few movies in recent memory that really resonated with me as I watched, seeing layers and possibilities within the story that straight people apparently didn’t pick up on? Which is why I think it’s important for me to talk about it from a gay male perspective, which sounds rather arrogant now that I’ve written it down, doesn’t it? But the gay perspective is so often not covered in media, and it’s the kind of lens that straight people have trouble seeing. (Hint: the one film that Saltburn reminded me the most of is one that no one ever mentioned, which…renders a lot of the criticisms directed at the film moot? And why on earth did no one compare it to The Great Gatsby, another book/film about someone infiltrating the world of the rich?)

As you can see, my mind is waking up. I’ve noticed this week that my mind seems clearer than it has in a long time, and the fog I’ve been dealing with since having COVID in the summer of 2022 seems to have finally lifted. I made it through the week with energy and not feeling tired and getting things done, as though my Type A personality has finally reemerged from a years-long sabbatical. Which means…that it’s time to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines this morning. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll undoubtedly be back later.

Could It Be Forever?

Work-at-home Friday, and what a full day I have in front of me. I have work at home duties to get done, a telephone appointment, and an on-line team meeting today. After I am done with my work duties, I get to head over to the gym to work out on my own for the first time since 2022 (!!!), and at some point we’ll be doing a Costco run. Yesterday was a very good day; it was the first time in years that I woke up feeling rested and awake and good to go–and it lasted all day. I wasn’t tired when I got home, despite picking up the mail and making groceries. I hung out with Sparky, watched this week’s episode of Feud, and made notes for writing to come. I also typed up notes for other stories, so I could create computer files. Paul got home in time for me to spend a little time with him before going to bed, and I slept very well. Apparently, overnight Sparky figured out how to get on top of my dresser and started knocking everything off, so all my stuff was put inside a drawer. Sigh. He really is too smart for our own good. He’s lucky he’s both sweet and adorable.

I also have some thoughts about stuff that’s been going on in the world and in my publishing world lately. They aren’t fully formed and ready to be vocalized as of yet, but I figure those thoughts will come together and written about at some point over this weekend to come. This is my first normal weekend after three straight abnormal ones (two weekends of parades followed by a trip to Alabama), so while I am probably vastly over-estimating how much I can or will get done, I am hopeful that I’ll get a lot of it done. I was pleased yesterday to see how much I had gotten done off my to-do list without consulting it, and I am also already feeling alert and awake and no longer tired, either. This was how yesterday went, so here’s hoping that today will be the same: energy and mental acuity all day.

It would be nice to get all these blog entries in draft form finished, too. We shall see. Tomorrow I’ll be taking books and beads out to donate in the morning, swing past the post office most likely afterwards, and then come home to clean and write. I also want to rewatch Saltburn this weekend so I can finish that entry–which is also more of an essay abstract. And I did write some more on my short story “When I Die,” which is getting longer but has finally started getting to the good part. I also have four more “where the idea for this book come from” entries on the Chanse series to finish as well. I also have some other chores around here this morning I need to take care of during breaks–the dishes, some filing, and some laundry. There’s trash to take out, too, and I kind of want to really start making progress on the apartment. I want to get the floors done this weekend and I want to move furniture in the kitchen for cleaning and so forth, too. As I said, I am feeling ambitious about this weekend, and since I am not going into the weekend exhausted and needing rest…I have high hopes.

I also need to get my entry about Carol Goodman’s River Road finished. I really enjoyed it, and if you aren’t reading her books, the good news is it’s never too late to start and there’s a terrific backlist.

And on that note, a load of laundry is finished and needs to be folded, so I am heading into the spice mines for the day. No worries, I am sure I will be back again later, okay? Have a lovely Friday in the meantime!

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Ah, Third Chanse.

If you will recall from my last entry about the Chanse series, I had a new editor for the second book in the series. I had also written a proposal for the follow-up, Murder in the Rue St. Claude, which was going to be about a nursing home and an angel of death. The second book ended with a tragedy for Chanse, and the last scene of the book was Chanse saying goodbye to someone before their life-support was turned off. I did a trickery and was going to have the person be in the nursing home, still living, only a suspicious death happens there and one of the workers talks to Chanse about her fears. The editor wasn’t the most professional or organized person, and I had to send the proposal to her three times on request with no contract offer. I was very irritated by this, but there were also a lot of changes going on there–including moving the offices from LA to New York, which I thought was an incredibly stupid business decision…and I wound up with yet another new editor right before Katrina hit. I honestly wasn’t sure if I would go back to writing ever again–one of the lulls in my career–but things eventually settled down and I started house sitting for a friend in Hammond over on the north shore while I waited for the city to reopen so I could drive into the city and get some more things from the house. I did, my friends’ trip was cut short, and I was going to return to Kentucky to my parents’ after one more swing by the apartment to pick up things. Imagine my surprise that my mail service was open, my grocery store and bank were open, and so was my gym. We’d moved into the main house from the carriage house, which hadn’t been rented yet as it needed some work before the hurricane, and so….I just moved back into the carriage house and cleaned up around the property and kept an eye on the main house, as well as emptying out the water from the machines that were trying to keep the insides of the apartments dry (the roof was gone).

While I was in Hammond, my new editor got me to reluctantly co-edit an anthology about New Orleans called Love, Bourbon Street (a title I hate to this day), and he was trying to talk me into writing a Chanse book about Katrina. I didn’t really want to, but he kept insisting and finally, I gave in and agreed to write it. However, the nursing home I was researching was a place they left people to die in–wasn’t touching that with a ten foot pole–and it occurred to me that I could wrap the case around Hurricane Katrina. He was hired by the client the Friday before Katrina, and obviously he couldn’t do the job now.

And that was the seed from which Murder in the Rue Chartres (no title at the time of contract) grew.1

This is the original cover from Alyson Books.
This is the new cover for the Bold Strokes ebook

It was six weeks before I returned to my broken city.

Usually when I drove home from the west, as soon as I crossed onto dry land again in Kenner, excitement would bubble up inside and I’d start to smile. Almost home, I’d think, and let out a sigh of relief. New Orleans was home for me, and I hated leaving for any reason. I’d never regretted moving there after graduating from LSU. It was the first place I’d ever felt at home, like I belonged. I’d hated the little town in east Texas where I’d grown up. All I could think about was getting old enough to escape. Baton Rouge for college had been merely a way station—it never occurred to me to permanently settle there. New Orleans was where I belonged, and I’d known that the first time I’d ever set foot in the city. It was a crazy quilt of eccentricities, frivolities, and irritations sweltering in the damp heat, a city where you could buy a drink at any time of day, a place where you could easily believe in magic. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Any time I’d taken a trip before, within a few days I’d get homesick and started counting the hours until it was time to come home.

But this time wasn’t like the others. This time, I hadn’t been able to come home, and had no idea how long it would be before I could. Now, I was nervous, my stomach clenched into knots, my palms sweating on the steering wheel as I sang along to Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn the Beat Around” on the radio. It was everything I’d feared for the last few weeks when I thought about coming home, the anxiety building as the odometer clocked off another mile and I got closer to home.

It was different.

The most obvious thing was the lack of traffic. Even outside the airport, the traffic was usually heavy, sometimes slowing to a complete standstill. But other than a couple of military vehicles, a cement mixer, and a couple of dirty and tired looking sedans, I-10 was deserted. There was a film of dirt on everything as far as I could see, tinting my vision sepia. Huge trees lay toppled and debris was everywhere. Signs that used to advertise hotels, motels, restaurants, storage facilities, and pretty much any kind of business you could think of were now just poles, the signs gone except for the support skeleton. Buildings had been blown over, fences were wrecked and down, and almost everywhere I looked blue tarps hung on roofs, their edges lifting in the slight breeze. My breath started coming a little faster, my eyes filled, and I bit down on my lower lip as I focused back on the road.

No cars joined at the airport on-ramp, or the one at Williams Boulevard just beyond it. No planes were landing or taking off.

Most of the writing I did in the fall of 2005 was my blog, which at the time was on Livejournal. (The old stuff is still there, but I started making things private after a year because of plagiarism; I guess people thought they could steal my words if they were on a blog.) I documented as much of the experience as I could, so people outside of Louisiana could see that the city wasn’t fully recovered despite no longer being in the news. American attention had moved past New Orleans by the spring of 2006.

When I started writing the book, I was really glad I had done that with the blog, because more than anything else it reminded me of the emotions I was going through, that horrible depression and not remembering things from day to day, the need for medications, panic attacks, depression, and the way the entire city just seemed dead. I did repurpose a lot of stuff that was on the blog–rewritten and edited, of course–and I could tell, as I wrote the book, that I was either doing some of the best work of my life to that point or I was overwriting it mercilessly. You never can be sure.

But I also needed to flesh out the murder mystery I came up with, and I also wanted to write about a historical real life tragedy of the Quarter. The client who hired him that Friday before Katrina roared into the Gulf and came ashore was engaged, and she wanted Chanse to find her father, who’d disappeared from their lives when she and her brothers were very young. But what happened to her father? Who killed her, and why? Was her murder a reaction to her looking for him?

I had started using Tennessee Williams quotes to open my New Orleans novels with the third (Jackson Square Jazz: “A good looking boy like you is always wanted” from Orpheus Descending) and I liked the conceit so much I kept doing it. I knew someone who’d built a crime novel around the basic set up of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I thought, what if the person who knows all the answers has been in a mental hospital for decades? Then what if Mrs. Venable had succeeded in getting Catherine locked up with all of Sebastian’s secrets lobotomized out of her head?

I named the family Verlaine as a nod to the Venables, and aged Mrs. Venable as well as gender swapping her (this was also a bit influenced by The Big Sleep), and I was off to the races.

My editor wrote me when he finished reading the manuscript and told me it was one of the best mysteries he’d ever read. The reviews! My word, I still can’t believe the reviews, and how good they were. I got a rave in the Times-Picayune, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

And yes, it won a Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Mystery.

  1. The irony that two books I wanted nothing to do with, let alone write or edit, ended up with each winning Lambda Literary Awards, does not escape me. ↩︎