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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yesterday was a weird day, and it took me a while to realize that it seemed weird because everything had been off for the last ten days or so; the same day Paul left for his trip was the same day my supervisor at work went out with COVID. Now they are both back and I have to get used to it again. I didn’t sleep great Sunday night–I slept in Sunday morning later than I usually do and I drank a Coke late, just before bed–and so I was a bit tired and drug out yesterday morning, and my mind wasn’t the finely tuned (ha!) machine that it usually is. I also had to rush home after work because I was expecting a delivery and the window was 5 to 7; and I am always afraid I am going to miss those deliveries. I hate that.
And of course, as soon as I did get home, I kept checking the delivery status. At 5:11 pm it was still “in progress.” Which meant–given the time of day and the way traffic dysfunctions in New Orleans, there was no reason to be concerned or worried about getting home in time ti begin with. But I wasn’t able to get anything done during the time I waited for the delivery–which finally came at 6:30–because I was afraid I’d miss them.
Anxiety is not my friend.
But knowing it’s something I inherited from my mother–she was anxious about everything and worried constantly–has finally made me more aware of how bad my own is, and how bad it has been my entire life. I just thought it was the way everyone was, and occasionally marveled at people who never worried about anything. When Dad told me that Mom suffered from constant, sometimes crippling anxiety, the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head, and I thought that explains everything about you that you never really quite grasped before. I worry I’m going to be late. I worry I’m going to be early. I worry about everything, and yes, sometimes it’s crippling to the point where I can’t do anything. I’ve developed work-arounds, or coping mechanisms, as my former therapist would say, to deal with it and most of the time I can keep it under control–but I also can remembering my mother fidgeting nervously…and I do the same thing. Knowing that my brain is wired wrong–and that it isn’t my fault–has been kind of a relief in some ways, and makes me understand a lot that I didn’t before. Like I said, I’ve never known what it’s like to not have anxiety, to not be anxious about something (anything, everything) and never worry about things, so it just seemed like this was my normal. I mean, it is still my normal, but I know it’s not? I am not making sense. Perhaps I should have had more coffee before attempting this?
Meh, whatever.
But yes, I was off-balance and not firing on all my cylinders yesterday, and as such got no writing done. I did some more research on a new project that was inspired by an in-progress blog entry I have yet to finish, and working on said entry made me think you know you’ve always wanted to write about this and so, in lieu of any new writing last night, I spent the evening–my writing time–researching and realizing how incredibly free writing this could be; because despite its being historical in nature, the era being written about would be so long ago no one could really cite me for getting things wrong–who knows the period well besides scholars who wouldn’t read it anyway? Anyway, it’s taken my fancy and I’ve started looking into it, and there really isn’t much there; much of it can be made up, imagined…there are lots of blanks to fill in, and that could really be a lot of fun. I probably won’t be writing it any time soon–book ideas generally percolate for years in my brain, and over the years I do more research whenever I think about it, trying to be ready for the time when I am finally able to sit down and start writing it. This is the fun part for me.
And I could use some fun about now. This heat is really breaking me.
I think I slept better last night–I feel better and more awake, more lively, more together this morning; at least certainly more so than I did yesterday morning. We’ll see how the day progresses, at any rate. I managed to get some things taken care of yesterday that were odious and things I always put off: I made an eye exam appointment, ordered some things that I need, and sent some emails I’d been putting off. I need to update my to-do this for this week, though; I also need to look at it every morning so I know what needs to be done, you know? But hopefully tonight–since nothing is being delivered and I have errands to run on the way home–I’ll be able to get settled in once I am home, put away the groceries and the mail, etc., and put the dishes away and reload the dishwasher to run. My, what an exciting life I lead. But tonight I am going to run some errands on the way home (mail, groceries) and then I’m coming home and I am going to try to work on my writing a bit, whether it’s a short story or diving back into the WIP–which has mistakes I want to correct before I move on; it’s how my mind works at this stage and yes, probably procrastination plays some part in that mental process…
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in again later.
The Macavity Nominations 2023 (for works published in 2022)
The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, and friends of MRI. Stay tuned for your ballot. The winners will be announced at opening ceremonies at the San Diego Bouchercon in late August.
Congratulations to all.
Best Mystery Novel
Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King (Bantam) Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone (MCD) A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (Minotaur) A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown) Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley) Secret Identity by Alex Segura (Flatiron Books)
Best First Mystery Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz (Atria/EmilyBestler) Shutter by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime) Devil’s Chew Toy by Rob Osler (Crooked Lane Books) The Verifiers by Jane Pek (Vintage Books) The Maid by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
Best Mystery Short Story
“The Landscaper’s Wife” by Brendan DuBois (Mystery Tribune, Aug/Sep 2022) “Beauty and the Beyotch” by Barb Goffman (Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Jan 2022) “First You Dream, Then You Die” by Donna Moore (in Black is the Night, Titan Books) “Schrödinger, Cat” by Anna Scotti (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mar/Apr 2022) “Stockholm” by Catherine Steadman (Amazon Original Stories) “The Angel of Rome” by Jess Walter (in The Angel of Rome and Other Stories, Harper) “My Two-Legs” by Melissa Yi (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Sep/Oct 2022)
Thursday and my final day in the office for the week. It’s been a good week overall–if odd at the office; it was a Mercury-in-retrograde kind of week there, with things not working right and odd situations occurring. Kind of tiring emotionally and intellectually, but not so bad as to drag me down and curl up into a ball in a corner somewhere. I’ve felt rested most of the week and the writing/revising has been going super well (I am so excited to see how much I can get done over the weekend you have no idea); even continued last evening. But I slept well again last night, and I feel pretty good this morning with my coffee, and I made it through almost another week of work.
Last night I watched the first part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion, and just…wow. I’ve never seen anything like that on any reality show reunion. The whole “Scandoval” of it all is just…I don’t know. I watch reality television (anyone who’s read Royal Street Reveillon knows this, of course); not a lot of it, but enough. I find it all fascinating–the way the fans get so deeply involved and vested in these mostly terrible people and what they are doing; the question of what’s real and what isn’t and what is manipulation or over-dramatization for the camera, and so on. The entire “Scandoval” mess? I have so many questions, and there are so many layers. This “scandal” peeled back the fourth wall somewhat, and the viewers got to actually watch as Tom Sandoval, an original cast member for ten seasons, with an assist from his best friend, tried to control the narrative of what we were seeing on screen while keeping his affair off; having the knowledge of what was actually going on while they were filming (and what was being kept out of the camera’s eye) made the attempted manipulation only that much more obvious, and even more fascinating than before. I hadn’t watched the show in years; I got bored, frankly, because it just seemed like the same thing over and over again, but this brought me back (along with a lot of new viewers, plus others who’d given up on it came back; the show is breaking records in the ratings for Bravo and reality shows). As I said to Paul last night, “it’s absolutely amazing how after ten years the show was able to completely flip the script and everything–everything that happened over the past ten years–has been altered as we now see these guys not as lovable goofballs, but dangerously narcissistic monsters manipulating the narrative to make everyone else look worse while making themselves look like heroes.” Future generations of social historians will look at the Scandoval in wonder, trying to puzzle out why this became global news, worthy of being covered in major newspapers, including both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
A cheating scandal on a reality show made worldwide news and has trended every day on Twitter since the news broke months ago. I mean, how fucking insane is that?
I also realized at some point yesterday that the difference I’ve been feeling the last week or so around here means I’ve probably moved into another stage of the grieving process, rather than over it completely. And as I sat there with purring kitty asleep in my lap watching the marathon of the last few episodes of Vanderpump Rules before the reunion episode (part one of three!) aired, I realized you’re in the anger stage. I had noticed myself getting angry much more quickly than usual while scrolling through Twitter, and yesterday I sent some response tweets to assholes trolling friends that were pretty hateful, nasty and cruel (much as their tweets at my friends were). That isn’t like me; usually I’ll start typing the response and delete it unsent, as the actual writing of it vented the spleen and by the time I was finished and ready to send it, would think and how is this improving the public discourse as I deleted it. Not yesterday, so I am going to simply go back to the old “mute/block” trick, or just report them. I do report trolls for hate speech and conduct violations several times a day, with a rather high success rate percentage, if I do say so myself. And honestly, I prefer anger to the sadness, really. Not sure what that says about me, but the sadness paralyzed me and made me unable to write, but since transitioning to the anger stage the book has been flowing and I am enjoying revising it tremendously. Go figure. I wrote more last night, and I have to say, the book is beginning to take shape nicely. It’s amazing how regularly I repeat myself, but that also has a lot to do with my memory issues–oh, I need to explain this and forgetting I’ve already explained it in the preceding chapters…each of them, in fact. So there’s a lot of cutting and rewording and restructuring going on, but Scotty’s voice is starting to really come through and that’s the most important thing.
I was also saddened to hear that Tina Turner passed yesterday. I’ve been a fan of hers since I was a little boy and I saw her perform on some variety show–Dean Martin’s, maybe? I just know it was when we still only had a black-and-white television, which means we were still living in the apartment in the city (sidebar: interesting how television was dominated back then by variety shows and westerns, which are incredibly scarce today…the variety shows were no big loss, and the westerns were ludicrous, racist, and sexist, so no big loss in either case). I think it was “Proud Mary”? When she finally started getting the stardom and accolades and success she’d always deserved (and never quite reached) in the 1980s, I was delighted–and she gave us some truly great music, too. That voice! That power! That stage presence! It saddens me that we no longer have her in this world, but I’m grateful we had a Tina Turner in the first place.
But I will always think of Schitt’s Creek whenever I hear “The Best” now.
I also got the proofs for my short story “Solace in a Dying Hour” to go over prior to the anthology’s release, which is very exciting. I always love when I sell a short story, and love it even more when we get to the later production stages.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Friday Eve be as delightful as you are, Constant Reader, and I will see you again tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 