Category: Uncategorized

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. ↩︎

Memory

Ah, how I love cats.

I’ve been putting my cats into my books now for quite some time.

It’s kind of funny, because I never wanted to be one of those people–posting pictures of my pets, writing them into my books–until, of course, I actually acquired a pet. It never occurred to me to put Skittle into any of my books, until we lost him to a very rapidly advancing cancer when he was only seven.

Skittle was such a beautiful cat.

Skittle came to us when he was about six months old, when we were still living in the carriage house. (We’d gotten a mouse, and were advised by friends, neighbors and landlady to just get a cat…to which were both like “Really? We don’t want a cat and we know nothing about them” but after the third mouse sighting, it was, yeah, we need a cat. We got Skittle on Christmas Eve, 2003, as a bit of a Christmas present to ourselves. (We never saw the mouse again.) And cute and tiny as he was, we had no idea what a cat was like or what was normal behavior for them…and he had us completely charmed and under his thumb by the end of the day–head butts, making biscuits, cuddling and a non-stop purr machine. Skittle was beautiful, but was afraid of the outside for a while. He’d been found at about two weeks old in the middle of the road in a rainstorm, so the sound of cars scared him for a long time, and he was terrified of going outside for the first few years. Then one night I was coming home from a party–Paul was staying in the Quarter for the TW Fest, and I was home taking care of the cat–and the front door didn’t latch. When I got up the next morning the door was wide open, and Skittle was nowhere to be found. I called him a few times, and he came out from under the main house and sat down on the walk, nonchalantly cleaning himself as a very-relieved me ran and grabbed him.

After that, we had to watch and make sure the door closed because he’d dash out if he had the chance. He always let us catch him eventually, but he liked to explore and check for vermin and other live toys to torture. He was a great hunter, and could take a palmetto bug out of mid-air with a massive leap. He loved to play fetch, was very affectionate, and loved people, always winning them over by winding through their legs and rubbing against them, begging to be petted. He was also long-haired and I swear he shed that entire coat at least three or four times a year; his hair was everywhere. He also was smart–he trained me to know what four different noises he made were: food, water, litter box to be cleaned, and I either want to be petted and go to sleep on you in your chair. When I had a laptop as my primary computer (from 2003-2010), I had it sitting on a metal tray at eye level while I used a separate keyboard, and Skittle loved to go to sleep up there. When I got an actual desktop computer again, he lost his place to sleep while I worked, and he did. Not. Like. That. One. Bit.

He got sick first over Memorial Day that weekend, and he was dehydrated. The vet rehydrated him again and he was back to his normal self…but over Labor Day he was sick again. It was cancer, and from the first diagnosis that Tuesday after Labor Day and when we took him back a few weeks later….it had spread to all of his organs, and it became just a matter of time. Keeping him alive would require three months in the hospital, thousands of dollars, and no guarantee he would make it through.

We were both devastated when we brought him home that Wednesday night, and we made an appointment to send him over the Rainbow Bridge for Saturday. We spoiled him that Thursday and Friday–treats and tuna, as much as he wanted. Ironically, those last few days, he seemed like himself again to the point that I had to be the monster on Saturday morning and convince Paul it was better to let him go now, rather than watch him decline because he wasn’t getting any better; it was almost like he knew so he wanted us to remember him the way he always was. Paul spent that entire day after we got back in bed, while I was an empty shell of myself, removing all reminders–toys, food, etc. because every time I found one I’d start crying again, so I rounded them all up.

I wanted to get another cat, but Paul was so heartbroken, he wasn’t sure he could handle another so soon. (I was also heartbroken, but I also knew we had to rescue another one.)

Scooter was such a handsome fellow, too.

Thursday the vet called to let me know Skittle’s ashes were ready for us to pick up, so I went over there on my way to work in the morning and picked them up. They had some cats there for adoption from the SPCA, and there was a beautiful orange boy, named Texas, who was so sweet I wanted to take him home right then. But I didn’t know if Paul would be upset if I brought home a replacement cat, so I didn’t, but I remembered him and thought I’ll talk to Paul about it tonight.

Paul was asleep on the couch when I got home from work that night, and so I turned on the television and thought, “I’ll ask him about Texas when he wakes up.” I read while something was on television–a Real Housewives marathon, I think–and about an hour later, Paul sat up on the couch, completely freaked out that he’d just seen a mouse looking at him from the top of the recycling bin. I hadn’t seen anything. He was just dreaming–and his subconscious was letting him know it was okay to get another cat. Thirteen years later, he still insists there was a mouse. So I told him about Texas, told him to go by and look at home and if he wanted him, to make all the arrangements and I’d pick him up after work. Paul fell in love with Texas, and nothing would do except that I pick HIM up from work and we’d go together to get him.

Scooter jumped out of the crate and hid under the coffee table, which was a bit concerning. But after about an hour of us leaving him alone, he came out, crawled onto the couch and onto Paul, laid down on his chest and started purring and headbutting him, and then he came over to me and did the same. We renamed him Scooter that first night, and for thirteen years, we had this incredibly sweet ginger boy.

Such a sweet boy. Around this time was when I realized that if I started putting MY cats into my work meant they would live forever. So I gave Chanse’s friend Paige (who hadn’t yet appeared in a Scotty book an orange and white cat named Skittle. I gave Scotty a cat named Scooter, and I can’t remember which cat I gave to Valerie in my cozy series; it was either Skittle or Scooter. Jem also has a black cat in Death Drop, but he is fictional–what else but Shade?

We had Scooter for thirteen years. He had a bout with diabetes, but insulin shots cleared that up (thank God; I hated giving him those shots) and he was mostly healthy. One morning last summer before I went to work I noticed Scooter was huffing–and having trouble breathing. I tried to soothe him, but I could tell he was terrified…and thought, Oh no, this is probably it for him, how am I going to break it to Paul? Later that morning he called me at work to tell me we needed to take Scooter in, and we were probably going to lose him. We took him over that morning, and they called us later to let us know it was congestive, and he wasn’t going to make it. They had him comfortable, but whenever they took him out of the oxygen thing he’d start huffing again. It was, alas, fatal, so I walked over there and held him while they put him to sleep and he crossed the rainbow bridge. I sobbed all the way home, and still can’t think about him without tearing up.

The house felt so empty without a cat. But finally we steeled ourselves and headed to the SPCA to pick out a new rescue.

Sparky!

And we brought Sparky home, and I’ve been entertaining you all with tales of the kitten here ever since. He’s a darling, and he’s getting so much bigger than the little kitten with a big voice and adorable energy. He picked us out–just as Skittle did–and I love that he’s got orange coloring, as you can see above.

And I guess I’ll have to start another series so I can immortalize Sparky, too.

Everybody Wants You

Here it is Sunday morning and I am coming back to you once again from the spice mines where I am recovering from my biceps tear repair surgery. I haven’t had a lot of pain; they had given me what’s called a “pain ball”—which is a nerve deadener that was attached to my shoulder so I wouldn’t feel any pain. I was skeptical, but it really did work. The most pain I ever felt was the equivalent of a Charlie horse, at least so far anyway! I do worry that I jinx myself a little bit by talking about not having any pain, but that’s just how it all shakes out. I try not to be superstitious, but it doesn’t always work. I was worried about the transition from the pain ball 2 not having anything other than painkillers on demand, but it hasn’t been that bad. The brace is bulky and uncomfortable, but i can live with that. It was the ice machine that was really bad, and I am off of that now unless I need it for swelling or pain or something in the meantime. It wrapped around the brace and blew cold air into the attachments that were around my arm to prevent swelling and to reduce pain and I took it off for the first time Friday to see if I could go without it. I managed to get through Friday night and last night without needing it, which i think is a good thing probably, right?

I have been a slug ever since the surgery. I haven’t really done much of anything except lay in my chair, let sparky sleep on me, and watch a whole lot of streaming. Some of it was really good, some of it was really bad, and some of it was just laughable. It is also really amazing to me that with all of these streaming options that I have on my Apple TV, that it is really hard for me sometimes to find something to watch. Is there too much choice? Are so many options that it’s difficult to make a choice? But there’s also the issue of getting into something that’s not very good. Paul and I do stick to our 15 minute rule with movies and our one episode and a half rule streaming series. And there’s so much to look for that I don’t even know what to look for anymore! I find myself forgetting shows that I wanted to watch because new shows are coming out all of the time and then we move on. It does remind me of the olden days of cable where you could have over 300 channels and nothing to watch all the fucking time. (Interestingly enough, I have discovered that dictation will turn curse words into asterisks instead and will not spell out the word so I have to do that manually! Who knew Microsoft was such a prude?)

Interestingly enough, I have also developed an enormous pimple on my nose. I am 62 years old and I am still getting pimples. I suppose this is payback for my adolescence when I didn’t have hardly any at all during high school and college! I don’t mind really, it’s just kind of funny to me and it’s also on the bridge of my nose, which is where my glasses rest. Of course! I am also hoping that I’ll be able to run some errands on Monday. I have a prescription to pick up and the mail, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to do a small grocery run to pick up a few things. Navigating all of this with one hand is not going to be easy of course, but it needs to be done and at least I’m not on pain medication so my mind is clear. I have the wagon to help me bring the groceries back, and I also think on Monday I’ll try to get back to normal around here answering e-mail, reading, paying bills (always a joy!), and maybe even trying to get some writing done through dictation which might be a little frustrating but—the more I do it the easier it will get I am sure.

This hasn’t been the easiest of years for me. Over the course of the last 12 months, I lost my cat and my mother, injured myself severely, had all of my bottom teeth removed and got new dentures, and had a major surgery. But the teeth removal was great because now I have dentures and can chew much better than I have in years; which is difficult to get used to again. But at least I no longer look like a hillbilly from the holler! It’s unfortunate that I didn’t have this done before mom died because I know my teeth really bothered her, even though she never said anything. WHEW! Just dictating that got me overwhelmed and sad, and a bit teary eyed.

I think that’s been the hardest thing about the surgery recovery; that anesthetic and the painkillers and just the recovery of from that trauma to my body has made my emotions all over the place. Also, just sitting around thinking about things and your mind starts to wander and you can’t help but miss your mom. Facebook also gut punched me the other day by bringing up a memory within adorable picture of scooter. But sparky wouldn’t be here if we still had scooter, and i am very glad we were able to rescue them both. I think I will always be sad about mom. I don’t think you ever get over losing your mother no matter how old you are. And of course, I always think about dad saying that your mother is always the first person to love you. I had thought about going to visit dad during this recovery time, and i still might—it just depends on how my arm feels and if I think I can handle 12 hours in the car in two directions. It’s probably a stupid idea but I really hate the thought of not seeing dad during any of the holiday season. However hard this has been on me, it’s been 1000 times if not a million times worse on my dad . Paul is also thinking about going to visit his mom during the Christmas season too—but I think by the time he’ll be able to go I should be functional on my own. At the very least, I’ll be going back to work before then. I’m still not sure exactly how I’m going to put shirts on; I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it I guess.

We’re also watching bodies and Netflix which is really good, LSU won yesterday which was very cool, and Auburn lost the iron bowl in the most Auburn way possible. Heavy sigh. But for all intents and purposes as far as I’m concerned anyway, college football season is effectively over anyway.

And on that note, I’ll bring this to a close have a great Sunday everyone!

On the Wings of Love

So, I have figured out how to use the “dictate” function in Microsoft Word, which I can then turn around and cut and paste into my blog. This is very cool; because now I don’t have to wait until I have both hands to make blog entries, write emails, or just write in general. I do have to remember the punctuation, though. Ah, technology is wonderful, isn’t it?

The surgery itself went very well. It was difficult that morning, because I had to get up at 5:00 to be there for the surgery in Metairie at 7:15, and had to fast after 10:00 PM the night before. I couldn’t have coffee that morning and I had trouble sleeping; so as you can imagine I was tired and groggy when I got to Lakeview Hospital. But I also was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle the recovery period and I had a lot of anxiety about it; which is a big surprise, right? Anyway, it’s been a roller coaster since getting home Tuesday morning. My emotions were all over the place the last couple of days, and I think that had a lot to do with reaction to the anesthetic, the medications I’m taking, and basically, the trauma to my body; it would be a surprise if my emotions hadn’t been all over the place the last few days– which kind of sucks. I also couldn’t sleep Tuesday night for whatever reason, and so was exhausted all day Wednesday. I did sleep really well Wednesday night though and the last two nights as well. I don’t think I have ever been this inactive for this long for a very long time–if ever. It’s starting to get to me a little bit, and I think that has something to do with the mood swings and the emotions—being unable to get up easily from my chair and navigate the apartment whenever I need to (and having to plan every time I get up) hasn’t been easy for me to deal with emotionally. I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised, since I I’m such a control freak and have so much anxiety.

But voice to text may be a lifesaver for the next two weeks; unfortunately, I don’t speak as fast as I can type, which is very strange!

I am hoping that today I will be able to read a little bit; my mind has been kind of loopy due to the medications and things since getting home so it’s just been easier to watch television and not even try to engage my brain.

Paul has been very helpful during this whole thing, which has been really nice. I am also learning that I am a terrible patient because I don’t like to bother anyone to do things for me, which has always been a problem — it makes me feel like I’m a burden to people. But being loopy and on drugs has also sent my mind into bizarre directions and into weird memories these last few days. Since Mom died, I had to do a lot of rethinking about my life and my own history, remembering things that explain why I act the way I do or why I react the way I do to certain things. It helps to know I have anxiety just like she did, and once I’m on the road to recovery from the surgery I’ll be able to start treatment for the anxiety at last, and will finally be on the right medications. I cannot stress enough how important it is to advocate for yourself with your doctors. Do not be afraid to ask questions, do not be afraid to not take their word for everything, or their immediate answer, and keep asking questions because the only way you can get better is if you talk to your doctor and get the right kind of medication and the right kind of treatments so that you can live your best life and not be suffering all the time. I always believed that I was mentally normal anyway and that everyone’s brain worked the same way that mine did. I wish I had known sooner that mom had anxiety. Oh well. Hindsight is always 20/20.

It’s funny, too, because dictating engages my brain in a different way than writing with my hands does. My brain works a lot faster when I am typing, rather than when I am dictating, and having to think about what I am going to say, whereas I can just put my hands on the keyboard and things just start coming out of me without much thought really; it kind of is a subconscious thing for me, which kind of explains a lot.

We watched the new Spiderman animated movie, which i think was called Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse? Anyway, I really enjoyed it almost as much as I did the first, which I guess was Into the Multiverse? I wish I had known that it was a “to be continued”, though; that was very disappointing to not get to the end of this story to see how it all works out for Miles and Gwen Stacey! I also have been rewatching episodes of Moonlighting in addition to finishing Happy Valley, All The Light We Cannot See, and some football games. I feel more rested than I have in a very very very long time; which says something really terrible about my life really. I apparently never take time off of work to just rest up and relax. Usually when I do take time off it’s to go to a conference for self promotion for the books or to go visit my family which is a 12 hour drive in both directions—not optimal for rest and relaxation.

And of course whenever I travel I have trouble sleeping.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for this wonderful Saturday of the holiday weekend. How the lovely rest of the day, and hopefully I’ll be back at some point to let you know how things are going in the recovery process for me. Thank you for always reading!

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Black Friday.

I don’t know long this will be; typing one-handed is an exercise in frustration. But here i am, giving it the old college try. Things have been challenging since the surgery; i am attached to a cooling machine which keeps the arm iced, which I then have to unplug and carry around if I want to get up and out of my chair. (It’s complicated, but if I detach the easy way I can’t hook myself back up to it one-handed, so Paul has to do it for me.) The most difficult thing has been the anxiety and depression, which I think is normal, given the situation. I’m having my first cup of coffee since Monday, since I had to fast for the surgery itself. Yesterday was hard, because it was the first “family” holiday since Mom died; I thought having the surgery this week would make the holiday easier.

I was incorrect. It did not. Retrospectively, it would have been hard to go; but it wasn’t any easier here and I probably should have spent it with Dad. Ah, well, neither the first nor the last time I’ll be a disappointment to Dad.

This morning is the best I’ve felt since the surgery. I feel like me this morning, and mot as tired. The dressing can come off today and I can shower, which is going to be amazing. Paul has a meeting this afternoon, so I am going to wait until he gets home from that to shower. That will definitely make me feel better, I am sure. I think my head is also clear enough this morning/today to read rather than try to watch television. Thank God, because I’m running out of things to watch. Yesterday I watched a Netflix series based on an award-winning novel that was so fucking terrible all I could think was I hope the book was beautifully written because this is so fucking problematic I can’t believe it won awards. We also started watching Shining Vale, a Courtney Cox show from Starz that is wild and crazy and over-the-top; it’s oddly fascinating but I think it’s quite odd in a David Lynch/horror way that is kind of fun.

I’m not sure how much I will be here until such time as I can use both hands to type; this has already taken a ridiculous amount of time already and I haven’t written much, have I? (I just tried to use the other hand and clearly not ready for that yet.) But writing this is, in a very small way, progress and a return to normalcy–at least a step that way–is a good thing, right?

Hope your holiday was awesome!

Dark Lady

The fortune queen of New Orleans, stroking her cat in her black limousine…

Ah, Cher’s 1970’s musical career. This one was always a big hit at Tea Dance at both Cafe Lafitte in Exile and the Pub on Sundays; there’s really nothing like a gay sing-along, is there?

I suppose being a fan of Cher as a child was kind of a sign? What is it about performers like Cher and Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli that draws young boys into their fandom who are going to wind up gay? Why was I drawn to actresses like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, and Doris Day before I knew I was gay? It’s something I’ve often wondered about–what is it about those women that draw us in like Formosan termites to a lit chandelier on a Monday night after Mother’s Day?

Ah, Formosan termites. That brings me around to today’s blatant self-promotional post for Mississippi River Mischief.

Isn’t this a cool, spooky looking shot? I took this out one of my kitchen windows one Sunday afternoon during a mighty New Orleans-style thunderstorm, and love how spectral and haunted-looking it turned out.

I still can’t believe that it took me this long to write about the swarming termites.

No one warned Paul and I about them, for the record. We had no idea that first May we lived here on Camp Street that the city was infested with swarming Formosan termites whose breeding season was the few weeks past Mother’s Day every May, and they are a scourge. We were swarmed, and had no idea what to do with them or how to handle the situation, or anything. We were running around the apartment spraying Raid everywhere, swinging at them with brooms, and they were everywhere. When the swarm finally passed, the apartment was filled with wings and corpses. It was horrible. We talked to the property manager, who apologized for forgetting to warn us–and the primary problem with the apartment on Camp Street (which was where Chanse also lived) was we had a very bright security light mounted on the front corner of the building–which drew them, and our apartment was right there. We learned to turn off everything that gave off light–including the television–when the first scout flew into the apartment, the mad dash around turning off everything, and then sitting there in the dark with maybe a couple of candles lit, waiting for the fury of the swarms to die down.

But that damned outside security light…ugh.

They are quite literally like one of the Biblical plagues of Egypt, and you see why the Egyptians constantly cried to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.

But now that we live in the back of the house, we’ve been pretty insulated from dealing with them. Sometimes when I walk the garbage out in May, I can see a small swarm around one of the street lamps, but all the lights in the front of the house are off. We usually turn everything off if and when a scout flies into the television screen and immediately light candles and sit in the dark until we feel the coast is clear.

So when I started writing Mississippi River Mischief, I thought the best way to open the book was with the line It was the Monday after Mother’s Day and the termites were swarming. I posted this on Twitter, and local meteorological icon Margaret Orr replied “what a great opening line!” which kind of made my week (I am a big Margaret Orr fanboy) and helped me realize I was on the right track in writing something about New Orleans that rarely makes it into fiction. (Author’s note: That isn’t the opening line anymore; I added Scotty asking the guys a question about the renovation, and then after he talks, that’s where the line is. I just couldn’t get the prose to work with that as the first sentence; it read awkwardly, so I moved Scotty speaking up.)

Nature, and the natural world, is all around us here in New Orleans; the occasional alligator will sometimes lumber into the city limits; snakes and nutria and squirrels are all over the place, and of course there are the insects–the flying cockroaches (aka palmetto bugs), the swarming Formosan termites, the stinging caterpillars–peculiar to here. The tropical climate makes everything over-bloom and grow and expand and try to reclaim the natural balance of the region before it was settled. This is NOT the place for you if you have pollen allergies or have sinuses sensitive to the air pressure (I do); and I swear by Claritin-D for allergy and/or sinus relief (not the over-the -counter kind, but the kind you have to ask for at the pharmacy because you can make meth with it). OH–and the gecko lizards, always darting around and running up the side of buildings or fences or trees.

So, yes, since Scotty had finally bought the building he’s lived in all these years, I thought it was time to talk about termite swarms, as they would be an enormous headache for a property owner, and what better way to start a book where Scotty is now a landowner than with swarming termites?

And I remembered the buy link! Maybe I’m getting better at this.

Butch Queen

Today’s featured queen is Varla Jean Merman, who is also originally from New Orleans. Varla Jean has never been on Drag Race–but was a guest on an episode of Project Runway. Varla often returns to New Orleans–or used to, anyway–to appear in Ricky Graham shows that were often brilliant musical parodies of classics (I really regret not seeing Shut Up Sweet Charlotte) and out of drag is a really hot muscle bear.

You never know what you’re going to get under the make-up, wig and dress, do you?

Today’s blatant self-promotion has to do with supporting characters. Every series needs a supporting cast of regulars that readers enjoy checking in with whenever a new book comes out, and they usually allow us to see a side of the main character that we might get otherwise. Sometimes supporting characters in a book series–just like in a television series–can become more popular than the main character, which creates the temptation to spin those characters off into their own series, just like happens with television. Paige Tourneur, Chanse’s best friend, was enormously popular with the readers. I tried spinning her off into her own series to no avail; Paige’s snarky sarcastic sense of humor works well for a second banana, but perhaps not for a lead character. Scotty, of course, has Frank, Colin, Taylor, and his entire family to bounce off–and I was happy to bring David back for a brief appearance in the new one.

But when it came to Jem, who were going to be his friends and/or family and nemeses? Usually, when it comes to characters, in order for me to write about them, I have to know their names (just like I can’t write a story or book that is untitled; too much uncertainty for me to not get anxious), but I was also in a hurry when I was writing Death Drop because I had a very short turnaround and a lot going on all at the same time…so I just started naming characters after my co-workers at the day job. Yes, I have co-workers named Jeremy (Jem), Kyle, Ellis, Latoya, and Blake; and I borrowed Jem’s last name from another co-worker. (My co-worker Kyle is also a pole dancer, so I made Jem’s best friend and roommate Kyle also a pole dancer)

I thought it was important for Jem to have a roommate; Mee Maw’s house that he inherited is really too big for just one person; and since Mee Maw owned the house outright all Jem needs is someone to pay enough rent to pay the property taxes, so it’s a good deal for Kyle as well. Since Jem wasn’t from New Orleans originally, he needed a roommate that was a native, and thus had connections and friends and ties to the community to help ease Jem into the gay scene of the city. (For those of you who pay attention and like these sorts of things, the guy Jem had been dating and ghosted him at the beginning of the book is the same guy who dumped Jake just before the beginning of Bury Me in Shadows; also, Jem’s client and friend Rachel Delesdernier Sheehan originally appeared in the Chanse series, before appearing in the Scotty as well. The bridge over the river in Mississippi River Michief was named after Senator Sheehan, and the Sheehans were the family involved in Murder in the Garden District–I always connect my books to each other even if it’s in a small way.) Jem has been living in New Orleans for a couple of years now, and his friend group has expanded and grown, and we will meet more of his friends, neighbors and acquaintances in the future.

The important thing about supporting characters is that they have to be fully realized; they may not be the main character, they may not take up as much oxygen or space, but they need to be realistic, they need to have interior lives, and they need to be three-dimensional. I did a lot of character building with the supporting cast of Death Drop, but I can’t really talk a lot about them without giving away spoilers for the story. But all of my supporting cast, at least to me, works…and make the book stronger.

I was also told that it’s not blatant self-promotion if I don’t include a buy link, so here is where you can order Death Drop direct from the store. Support an indie press AND an indie bookstore at the same time! What a deal!

Back to My Roots

Sick of my self-promotion yet? You can always scroll away, which is truly the loveliest thing about the Internet. You can always scroll past or close the window.

But buckle up, buttercup–I got another book coming out in ten days.

This is what happen when you blow deadlines, by the way. One of these was supposed to come out before Bouchercon–the Scotty–but a lot was going on in the second half of last year, okay? (The takeaway from this is don’t be like Greg–meet your deadlines.)

So, Greg, you decided to write a book that was an origin story for a drag queen amateur sleuth. Why start with the origin story?

Two reasons; one practical and the other artistic. The practical reason being that I’ve never done drag. I know some people who are drag performers, and as a gay man I’ve always been aware that drag is a part of our bar culture. Of course I’ve watched RuPaul’s Drag Race–not regularly anymore, but was a big fan in the original seasons. But watching a reality show isn’t enough research to write authentically about drag. I also didn’t have a lot of time to do a deep dive into drag culture and the world of drag; there wasn’t a big turnaround on the book from conception to contract to deadline to release. Artistically, I wanted to show his journey from the casual thought about possibly taking it up to actually becoming one and growing and developing as a performing queen. I also thought it would be more interesting to look at the world of drag and performance from the neophyte point of view; a wide-eyed outsider learning the ins and outs of what drag means.

Do you feel that writing such a book in our modern times is a political act? Drag queens have been under attack for quite some time now from the religious right, trotting out the tired old homophobic tropes of “grooming” and “recruiting.” How much did that play a part in your thought process of writing?

Anything queer these days is a political act. It’s horrible, but it’s been this way most of my life.

To begin with, drag has been around forever. Thetis dressed Achilles as a woman and hid him away at the court of King Lycomedes of Skyros to escape serving in the Trojan War. Women used to be barred from performing on-stage, so women’s roles were played by men for centuries. The examples from before the twentieth century are endless.

Usually, men in women’s clothes was used as a sight-gag–what could be funnier than a man wearing women’s clothing, after all, ha ha ha ha–but I remember Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters doing it. Milton Berle, television’s first star, used the gag repeatedly and effectively and became famous for it. I remember watching Geraldine as a child on The Flip Wilson Show, and of course Some Like It Hot is one of the greatest comedies ever filmed (Tony Curtis made a beautiful woman, actually). Harvey Kormann often wore drag on The Carol Burnett Show, and the list just goes on and on and on–Bosom Buddies, Mrs. Doubtfire, etc. Gay bars have hosted drag shows for decades. The current problem with drag has nothing to do with grooming or pedophilia or recruiting and everything to do with right-wing ignorance; the conflation that transwomen are a threat to public safety and are really just drag queens; therefore in their logic drag queens are also a threat to public safety. It’s ignorant, uneducated, and morally reprehensible.

None of this is even about actual, valid concerns from parents wanting more dialogue on the subject. No, it’s about grifting for cash from homophobes and transphobes, and trying to get political and societal power by selling bigotry, prejudice and ignorance. It’s despicable, craven and cowardly.

It had never occurred to me to write a series, or a book, or even a short story centering someone who does drag; the book wasn’t my idea. But once I was recruited for the project, there was no question in my mind as to whether I would do or not; of course I would. I had been getting very angry and frustrated with all the transphobia and homophobia I’ve been witnessing since the rise of hateful trash like that LibsofTikTok (all you need to do is retweet that heartless failure of a human being to be blocked by me everywhere and your existence winked out of my life and world, never to return), and wanting to do something to try to counteract all of the lies and hatred and discrimination. I didn’t even have to think twice to say yes to this. Transpeople are my queer siblings, and so are drag performers. Come for my community at your own peril. I was happy to write a book addressing some of these issues while also showing how much ignorance, outright lies, and hatred those “issues” are built upon.

Flip Wilson as Geraldine; Some Like It Hot, and Bugs Bunny

This is your fourth mystery series set in New Orleans. Is it difficult to come up with a new concept for a series set there? Do you ever fear repeating yourself, or not being able to differentiate between the series?

You can never run out of ideas or things to write about when it comes to New Orleans. I’ve written nineteen or so books set here, and haven’t even scratched the surface of the material that is here–and when you extrapolate further to Louisiana, there’s even more. I go down research wormholes all the time. I wrote a story several years ago for an anthology called The Only One in the World, and the anthology premise was everyone had to write a Sherlock Holmes story; the only thing that was off-limits was the London of Holmes’ time. So I set my story in 1916 New Orleans, and had to do some research to make sure the foundation of the story was solid. This sent me down so many research wormholes–ones I am still following to this day, while finding new ones all the time. The Sherlock story led me to the 1915 hurricane, which wiped out several lake shore villages on both Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne; turns out the first Filipino settlement/immigration in the United States was here, on Lake Borgne. Just today I found out Louisiana had one of the only, if not the only, leper hospitals in the US. In my novels I’ve touched briefly on the history of the city and the state–Scotty’s dealt with the Cabildo Fire and the legacy of Huey Long, for example–but it’s always a challenge to start a new series set in New Orleans.

Scotty lives in the French Quarter and Chanse lives in the Lower Garden District, and most of their cases take them mostly into the neighborhoods that are my New Orleans–Uptown, the Quarter, the Marigny and the Bywater. I’ve not even covered the entire city! Sometimes a case takes them over the bridge to the West Bank or over the causeway to the North Shore, but the stories aren’t set there. So, for A Streetcar Named Murder, I put Valerie in the Irish Channel close to Louisiana and Magazine streets. For Jem, his inherited home is on St. Roch Avenue in the neighborhood known as both the Seventh Ward or St. Roch (realtors are trying to rebrand it as the “new Marigny,” which is laughable) and while he and his friends do go to the bars in the Quarter, a fictional one on St. Claude Avenue I named Baby Jane Hudson’s (which will eventually devolve, as things are wont to in this city’s gay community, BJ’s) is their usual hangout. I want this series to focus more on that part of town more than anything else.

I do worry about how easy it is to repeat yourself as a writer. I’ve mentioned before I started writing a stand-alone (potential first book in a new series) with a different main character here in New Orleans but realized all I was doing was making him a hybrid of both Chanse and Scotty–and so I put that one away in a drawer. I may come back to it sometime. But I do think Jem is dissimilar from both Chanse and Scotty enough so readers of both series won’t think “retread!”

So this is the start of a new series?

I’m writing a sequel called You Gone, Girl, which is set at a national drag pageant in Florida. So it’ll be political too. I really like Jem and his community of friends, so I hope this turns into a long-running series. I know I enjoy writing him, and that’s always key for me.

Please order it here. Retirement from the day job ain’t looking good, folks, so please, buy as many copies as you can. They make especially great gifts for the tight-assed evangelical homophobes in your life.

Sissy That Walk

Release day!!!! You can order it here, or get it from your local bookstore! Thanks!

And it’s Halloween, which makes it all the more perfect!

If you’d like to get to know the main character, Jem Richard, a little better, he wrote “A Day in the Life” post for Dru’sBook Musing that went live yesterday (thanks, Dru!!!). I like Jem, and had a lot of fun creating my accidental drag queen–because Death Drop is really the origin story of how Jem became a “killer queen”–a drag queen who solves mysteries.

I love origin stories, always have; which is kind of what Bourbon Street Blues was; the Scotty as a private eye origin story. The thing with writing amateur sleuths, which often can become a problem, is the unreality of it all; every day people rarely encounter murder mysteries, and real life murders usually aren’t terribly complicated (although there are some true crime stories and trials that beggar the creative mind), I used to call it the Jessica Fletcher syndrome–everywhere Fletcher went, someone died–and if she was visiting a relative that person would become a suspect. The show ran forever and the tie-in book series is also still going strong. (And yes, I am aware that private eyes mostly work on adultery and insurance fraud rather than solving murders…my mind isn’t always as logical as it could be.) I made a joke out of it in the Scotty books–he’s always stumbling over bodies–but I also didn’t want to do the same thing again in a different series.

That’s the problem with series–you want to be original with the new characters and everything. I had mentioned before how i wanted to write a new series only to realize the character I was creating was really just a mash-up of Scotty and Chanse. I was really worried about that with creating Jem, too–how to avoid making him a combination of my previous gay series set in New Orleans.

Like Valerie in A Streetcar Named Murder, I decided to make Jem of New Orleans but not of New Orleans. His father was born and raised there, but moved to Dallas after college and getting married, which is where Jem grew up. He spent the summers with his paternal grandmother in New Orleans; she had her own salon catering to upper class Uptown women and Jem loved hanging out in the Beauty Shoppe. I developed an entire back story for his childhood, but didn’t include most of it other than his parents are a bit uncomfortable with his sexuality and his older brothers were athletes…and he was not. His family was Mee Maw and her house on St. Roch in the 7th Ward…and when she died, she left him her house and he moved to New Orleans after a break-up and several years working in a high-end salon in Dallas.

Now, he doesn’t want to work in a salon again so he does glam for wealthy women, gets gigs working on touring theater companies, or films and television shows filming here. The income isn’t always steady, but when it’s there the money is good. I really became rather fond of Jem, and here is the scene where he becomes an accidental drag queen:

“How tall are you?” I heard Ellis ask from behind me as Tamponia String left my chair.

“I’m five five,” I replied, wiping the table clean with a sanitary wipe. “Why?”

“Please tell me you wear a men’s eight shoe.”

“I do,” I replied cautiously. “Why are you asking?”

“Turn around.” I did, to see Ellis looking me up and down thoughtfully. “You are almost exactly the same size as Trailor Swift.”

Uh oh. “And?”

“Trailor just called,” Ellis gave me a rueful smile. “She broke her ankle, so can’t make it, so we’re a model short—”

“Oh, no, no.” I waved my hand. “Sorry, Ellis, but—”

“Three hundred dollars? And you get to save the show?” He winked at me. “Trailor was going to wear the wedding gown at the end. Haven’t you always wanted to be a bride?”

“I don’t think I ever want to get married,” I retorted. “Seriously, Ellis, can’t you get someone else? You have to know someone you can get at short notice?”

“They’d never get here on time and we’d have to start late—Marigny would lose her mind and no one needs to see that,” Ellis said grimly. “Look, you killed on Fat Tuesday, I know you can do this.”

“But I don’t have padding or boobs or a wig—”

Ellis clapped his hands. “Queens, may I have your attention please?” Silence descended. “Trailor broke her ankle and can’t make it, but the show must go on.” He gestured at me. ”Jem here is the right size to fit into her gowns, but we need to get her made up and her hair done and she doesn’t have any wigs—”

Every eye in the room turned to me.

There was dead silence. I was about to decline the opportunity again when Floretta snapped her fingers, “Come on girls, we’ve got to turn this boy into a Queen!”

And they fell upon me.

And you know, with all the oppression being directed (all lies, as always) by the trash on the right (looking at you, LibsofTikTok; sorry you’re trash and no one loves you or ever will), it just felt right to center a new series on a drag queen.

I really like Jem; hope you all do too!

Who Can It Be Now?

Monday morning and I decided to go in later than my usual Monday morning time–I don’t have to be there at seven-thirty if I am not working in the clinic, nor do I need to leave before five, so I made the executive decision last night to sleep an extra hour this morning and go in at eight-thirty instead and stay till five. So what if running errands after work now will get me home around six instead of five thirty? Again, these arbitrary “this is how you always do things” mentality, which is part of the whole anxiety issue and so forth, and trying to cope with it and defeat it.

I had dinner with my friend Ellen last night at San Lorenzo, in the old St. Vincent’s Orphanage that was turned into a very cheap hostel and then was completely renovated and reopened as a hotel with a nice restaurant and an outside pool bar. (St. Vincent’s was where they filmed Candyman II: Farewell to the Flesh many years ago.) I always wanted to write about St. Vincent’s; surely an old orphanage converted to a hostel would be haunted, or a great place to set a ghost story wrapped up in a mystery from the past. I do have a New Orleans ghost story I want to write set in my neighborhood. I don’t think I’m going to get to it any time soon, though. It’s been weird, writing has been very hard for lately, and I’m not feeling particularly inspired these days. It has been a rough year for one Gregalicious, of course; between my Mom and Scooter dying, my own health issues, and the long hot brutal dry summer (we’re still in a Burn Notice, or whatever it’s called) and we still haven’t gotten much rain as the Louisiana drought continues.

I started my reread of The Dead Zone yesterday, and it’s very well done. It was one of my favorite King novels for years; I have reread it dozens of times over the years since it was first released. King was on fire during the 1970s and 1980’s; he released one classic after another for years between Carrie and Misery; it wasn’t until The Tommyknockers that I can honestly say I read a King book I neither liked nor enjoyed. (Pet Sematary creeped me out so much I could never reread it; but that was my discomfort with the story and what it was about and I don’t think I was ready at that age for a lengthy exploration of grief and death; I may view it differently now. I always knew, for example, that “Don’t Look Now” was a meditation on grief and the loss of a child; but reading it in the wake of my own grieving process gave the story even more levels and layers than I originally recognized–and I already thought the story was genius. I watched another episode of Moonlighting–it really was marvelous when it was firing on all cylinders; everything worked and the chemistry and the writing and the acting was just aflame. When I got home from dinner Paul and I watched another episode of Elité, and are getting sucked into the story–it’s really a great soap, but it’s best days are still behind it, alas; I just have to recognize the show has changed and moved on from what it originally was–and I do appreciate the fact that characters grow up and graduate and move on….a lesson American shows (could and) should learn.

I feel rested and relaxed this morning for a change; that extra hour of sleep this morning certainly made a difference. Maybe I should recalculate when I come into the office? I’ve always come in at seven thirty since I went to this schedule so I can beat rush hour traffic home, but…do I really need to be here at seven thirty? Can’t I just come in at eight and work until five? I don’t know. I am rethinking a lot of things lately, and the stress and exhaustion (and anxiety) have been wreaking havoc on my mind and mental state lately. I’ve felt very tired and unfocused for a long time now, and that’s affecting me adversely. I’ve not been able to seriously target any one writing project, but just having dinner with Ellen and talking about writing and commiserating about the business helped me focus and clarify a bit; I’ve been feeling at loose ends by not having a contract in place for anything, and not really sure what I should be doing right now, with the surgery hanging over my head. I have no idea how long I’ll be on painkillers and I also have no idea how long the recovery process will be; I suspect I will find that all out on my 11/13 pre-surgery appointment–which is actually coming up pretty quickly. I know having that on the horizon has undoubtedly affected me in a subconscious way; no matter how much you try to compartmentalize your brain–something I’ve always managed to do since turning thirty-three and rebooting my life–things that weigh heavily on you will still impact and affect you regardless. I also realized that trying to control my anxiety is part of my mental fatigue; recognizing it as it starts to happen and then controlling it can be exhausting, and that probably has a lot to do with the malaise I’ve been experiencing for the last few months on top of everything else with the surgery.

It’s kind of been a rough year for me personally, if a good one professionally.

Heavy thoughts for a Monday morning.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May your Monday be glorious and terrific, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.