Category: working out

Invisible

Sunday morning and a lot to get done today. I was horribly lazy yesterday; I wound up doing very little other than reading–I finished The Bad Seed and then moved on to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (I’ve never read John LeCarre, and am trying to get better read in my. genre’s classics, both titles and authors) and got some chores done, but other than that–not a goddamned thing. So today I I have to play catch up as well as go to the gym and somehow pay some attention to the Saints game, which is at noon. (I’ll most likely do some things around here, go to the gym around elevenish, and then come home and do things while the game is on.) The LSU game went about the way I expected it to last night–55-17 final score–so congratulations to Alabama’s players and coaching staff; I can’t imagine there’s a better team in the country this season, so it’ll be fun watching y’all go all the way again. LSU has to play Florida next weekend, which will most likely be another horror show like yesterday’s, but at least at that point the season will be over.

This football season is yet another gift the year 2020 has given me. Thanks, 2020, thank you.

It feels cold again this morning in the Lost Apartment–I have my space heater on and a cap on my bald scalp–but it doesn’t look so bad outside, really. Lots of clouds hiding the sky and the sun, but this week is supposed to be warmer than last, so I think I’ll be able to hang this week after last week’s cold spell.

Once I finish this I am going to make a to-do list for this week–I really need to make a point of doing that every Sunday, so I have a roadmap for my week–and also so that things won’t slip through the cracks and be forgotten. This has been a really bad year for me to try to remember everything I have to get done–I keep forgetting things, which isn’t good–so I am trying to be ever so much better about this. The whole year I’ve felt like I’ve been in this weird state of limbo, just drifting and trying to get by, keep dog-paddling and keeping my head above water, and it’s not been easy. (It’s not really been an easy year for most people, I suspect.)

Last night as we binged Big Mouth after the LSU game, I was trying to remember the highlights of the year–the good things that happened that I am grateful for, and realized that, sadly, most of the things I was thinking of was television or movies I’d watched, or books I’d read and greatly enjoyed. I had a pretty good year at the beginning of the year in selling short stories–I sold quite a few this year, continuing a trend from last year, to the point where I keep forgetting story sales I made, which is so weird–but also means that in 2021 I am going to have some stories appear in anthologies or publications, which is terribly cool. I know I stretched myself as a writer–hell, I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story this year, and created a Sherlockian world in 1916 New Orleans–and while there were anthologies and things I tried (and failed) to submit to, I have some terrific stories now that are in some state of writing that could turn out to be something interesting. I am looking forward to spending some more time with both “The Sound of Snow Falling” and “The Rosary of Broken Promises”–and there are any number of others I’d love to dive back into. The problem being, of course, that I have limited writing time, and for the rest of this month I have to focus on finishing the one book and then the first two months of 2021 finishing the other. I’m not really sure what I want to spend the rest of 2021 doing; I know I am co-editing the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology and that’s going to take a chunk of time to read all those submissions and make decisions and then edit them all, but let’s face it, it’s also not my first time at the anthology rodeo. I want to try to write another Scotty at some point in 2021, and I know I also have Chlorine to work on, but…I guess we’ll just have to see how the year pans out.

I know I want to pull another short story collection together, too, and of course there’s the novellas…

I also polished off a journal last night, so I get to start a new one this morning, which is kind of fun. I’ve been blasting through journals at a pretty good pace since I started using them again, and while I cannot say that they’ve been enormously helpful in keeping my act together and keeping me on track with any of the writing I’ve been doing, they’ve been wonderful for me to jot notes and ideas in, and I’ve been doing much better about going back into them and rereading them and getting the unpolished jewels out of them. I have a really nice one that has a magnetic clasp that I got at Garden District Books, and then got a pack of three the last time I went to Costco, so I am certainly set for journals for the year.

I’ve also got to get the copy edits on my essay finished.

I also spent some time yesterday slowly but surely pruning the books. I’ve done a great job of pruning them already, so much so that there’s slim pickings for getting rid of things I will most likely never read–I always stop myself and have to think, long and hard, about whether I should get rid of an unread book–but I also need to keep making room for more–because at some point I’ll start buying books again. Not sure when that will be financially feasible–right now, books are filed in the “luxury item” column, especially when I already have so many on hand that I’ve not read–but I have quite a list of books that I want to get when I can.

There are never enough books, frankly.

And on that note, I need some more coffee as well as fold some laundry. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader!

Love Story

Thursday morning, and I am working from home today. I have some errands that simply must be run this morning–fortunately I only have to work a half-day today–so once I get this posted and get my own act together, it’s off to the errands so I can come home and do data entry/make condom packs. I think I am going to rewatch the Christopher Reeve Superman–it’s a 1970’s movie, after all, and I don’t know yet if it will deserve a place in the Cynical 70’s Film Festival; I don’t think so, but I think it could be a fun reread while working with my hands.

I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday–so tired that I skipped the gym (!) and didn’t work on the book. Tonight when I finish my condom packing I am going to have to get back to the book, and figure if I can get two chapters done in one day I’ll be back on schedule. LSU’s lamb-to-the-slaughter game against Alabama isn’t until Saturday evening, so I should be able to get several chapters finished during the day that day, and maybe even more. Who knows? There’s a plethora of possibilities.

I slept late this morning–I did wake up at six, again at seven, and finally at eight. I feel much better: very rested, relaxed, my muscles feel good, and my back also doesn’t hurt at all. This is, needless to say, quite lovely, and while it is cold this morning, the cold is nowhere near as bitter as it was the last few mornings, so I can handle it. I haven’t even put on a cap to keep my head warm, which is a lovely thing. It’s very gray outside–the sky is covered with clouds, so it’s kind of grayish-gloomy; like winter mornings I remember from my childhood in the Midwest. I ordered electric blankets the other day–a friend on Facebook suggested it when I was complaining about the cold, and had one of those wow it never ever occurred to me to get electric blankets moments when I truly wonder about my intelligence and intellectual capacity. But in fairness to me, I don’t think I’ve ever owned an electric blanket, and we certainly didn’t have any when I was growing up….but thinking about it this morning, what a difference that could have made that bitterly cold winter I spent in Minneapolis twenty five years ago….

I am still reading both The Bad Seed by William March and Lincoln by Gore Vidal; obviously I was too tired last night to make any headway on either. Paul and I did watch an episode of something that might turn into a guilty pleasure for us….Cajun Justice, about the sheriff of Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana was an enormously popular location for reality television shows back in the day–remember Duck Dynasty?–and since one of my co-workers is moving to Plaquemines Parish (Houma, specifically) she was the one who found this single season reality show…when she mentioned it to me the other day–when we first talked about her move down there, and it’s been a couple of weeks; it was around the time I was looking up Cajun/Louisiana folklore for a potential Christmas horror story, which is when I was finding all those wonderful bayou supernatural legends, like le feu follet and the lutin…which I was able to look up in Gumbo Ya-Ya. The show is kind of, I don’t know, offensive in some ways, as it depicts Cajuns and their culture as an exotic thing; lots of talk about voodoo and black magic and so forth. (This is part of the problem I had with writing about Cajuns and the supernatural; I’m afraid I’ll give in to the stereotypes rather than depict the culture and the people authentically.) I mean, I do want to write short stories illustrating Cajun culture and their interesting folklore and legends (Monsters of Louisiana), but I also want to do it correctly. Gumbo Ya-Ya is an excellent source material, a great starting place, but I am also very aware that its authors were also steeped in the white supremacy and racism of the time in which they wrote and compiled the book, which also makes it harder to decipher what is real and what isn’t.

All right, I’ve got dishes to put away and laundry to fold before I hit the errand trail, so have a happy Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.

Hold On

Good morning, Wednesday, how are you?

It’s very cold again this morning; I am swathed in a blanket and I also dug out the space heater. According to the weather, it is a mere 48 degrees this morning–warmer than yesterday, certainly, but still not exactly balmy as the sky begins to lighten and I sip my cappuccino and blearily try to withdraw from the arms of Morpheus. I was exhausted last night, and even went to bed before ten. No insomnia, I am pleased to report, last night. I slept deeply and well and–once the cobwebs clear–I will feel pretty well rested, which is kind of lovely.

I got another chapter of the book finished as well, which was also nice. It’s beginning to come together, and hopefully I can get another chapter done today. I need to go to the gym when I get off work today, so here’s hoping the weather gets warmer. The high is supposed to be in the low 60’s today–which is cold for a long walk, but I can hopefully hang with it. It depends, I suppose, on how tired I feel tonight when I get off work.

But the blanket and the space heater are working very well together this morning, and I am starting to feel warm now, which is lovely. I really don’t like cold weather. But why don’t you turn on the heat? you may well be asking yourselves. Because it’s an old New Orleans house, for one, and for another all the heat winds up on the second floor–so the first floor remains cold while the upstairs turns into a sauna. And so, those lovely windows around my desk with the sweet view and the wonderful natural light? Yeah, when it’s cold they are like cold conduits. The surface of my desk is very cold, my keyboard colder and, as Ali Valli commented on a Facebook post of mine the other day about the cold, “there’s nothing like a bathroom in an old south Louisiana house on a cold day.”

I was too tired last night to read, so The Bad Seed remains on my end table, beseeching me to pick it up and keep reading, alas. We did watch another episode of A Teacher on Hulu last night, and I’m not really sure what I think about this show, to be honest, other than it’s not particularly good? We’re kind of hate-watching it at this point…if you’re not aware of it, it’s another one of those “high school teacher has an affair with one of her students” stories. I know it’s probably misogynist of me, but I hate stories where someone behaves self-destructively; the entire time you’re watching you’re saying to yourself, “I just can’t be sympathetic to someone who is really that stupid.” I’m not really sure why there is such a fascination with these stories–I also know they are a lot more common in real life than we might want to think or believe; it seems like every few months or so some young female teacher in one of the more rural parishes around New Orleans is busted for sleeping with a student–there was one case, I think, maybe in Destrehan?–where two female teachers were having sex with the same student, and maybe they were having three ways? I don’t remember. But there have been several rather famous cases–maybe Mary Kay LeTourneau being the most notorious, since she allegedly got her lover-student and some of his friends to kill her husband–which is the case the book and movie To Die For were based on. It has led to some interesting conversations between Paul and myself about teacher-student relationships–in particular, the incredible difference between when it’s a male teacher and when it’s a female, as well as how they are reported on and discussed–and how the women always seems to fall in love with/become obsessed with their young male student lovers, whereas the men are inevitably just predators. (The women are also predators, don’t get me wrong–but the men move from target to target whereas the women become, usually, fixated on one particular student.) The show’s not done particularly well, really; I really don’t understand why this particular teacher fixated on her student, and I’m not really certain I understand the male student (who is played by the same kid who played the gay male lead in the atrocious Love, Simon) either.

Yesterday saw the official end of a publishing tradition: BookExpo is dead, never to be revived or rescheduled or anything. The event was expiring already–digital books, publishing mergers, etc. kind of did it in completely; and the event was already starting to die off when I first started going, back in 2000. The last time I went–I think–was either 2006 or 2007, and I could already see a significant difference from previous years–not as many events, not as many authors, not as many publishers–and it was so expensive. For me, it was fun to go, if a bit overwhelming–and I always took every book that was offered to me, because I always felt bad for people offering–but it’s definitely the end of an era. It makes you stop and think, really; what else is never going to come back after the pandemic? Things aren’t going to ever go back to the way they were–too much has already changed, and some work-arounds are turning out to be, actually, better in the long run than the way things were done before.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Hope you have a lovely and warm Wednesday!

Back to December

And suddenly, one morning you wake up and it’s December, and you think, for just a moment, wow, how did that happen? And you try to remember last December….which now seems as long ago and remote as the Middle Ages. I mean, doesn’t it? As I was saying to someone the other day, “remember when RWA burned to the ground? It hasn’t even been a year yet, but that seems as remote in the past now as the Knights of the Round Table and Camelot.

Yesterday was a nice day to ease back into working. I didn’t have any issue getting up, nor was I tired when I got home; good thing, as I needed to go to the gym. I’d skipped Sunday because when I walked there and back on Friday, somehow I managed to rub a blister onto the back of my left heel, and it was painful wearing shoes. It was also cold and rainy, and between the blister and cold rain…yeah, wasn’t feeling it too much, so I decided to wait till I got home from work on Monday and hope that I’d have the energy and the willpower to go. It was incredibly cold (for New Orleans, coming in after weeks of high 70’s/low 80’s weather), but I bundled up into my sweats and off I went.

But despite the cold, a lovely workout was had, and then I scurried home. It was the cold wind, really, that made it so bad.

It was also supposed to get down to 38 last night. It certainly feels like it this morning as I sip my cappuccino, my hands desperately trying to leech all the heat out of the cup. I did manage to work on the book last night as well (another chapter down; roughly eleven left to go, but if I get one per day done it’ll be finished in ten days and then can sit for a moment or two while I get ready for the final polish before turning it in), which was lovely. It’s taking shape and getting better; I really can’t wait to get it turned in. I need to finish a story, too, and I need to really get cracking on the Kansas book when this is all done and behind me.

The sun is rising, which means the gradual warming will begin, which is lovely. It’ll be cold though when I dash out to my car, and from my car into the office, but at least that means I can wear a sweater. I love sweaters, and don’t get many opportunities to wear them, so there’s that part, which I do like. I also like when the apartment is cold, which means wearing sweats and watching television or reading underneath blankets. (I’m under one right now, in fact, and it’s nice and toasty; one of those thin ones that somehow manages to keep me warm, like the ones they used to give you on airplanes.)

The other thing about it being cold is it makes it harder for me to wake completely up. My insomnia came back last night with a vengeance–it’s been awhile, and I figured the cold, plus the exhaustion from the gym, would have put me under in no time at all. Instead, despite how lovely and warm the bed and blankets were, I never really feel into a deep, restful sleep. I am going to be extremely tired tonight, and may even go to bed earlier than I usually do; we shall see once I get home from the office today.

I do worry the world is going to close down again sometime soon–although I am fairly certain that even if we do, I’ll be considered an ‘essential worker’–I kind of think I am, even if I am not a medical professional; I help keep people safe and healthy (at least that’s the goal) and the service I do provide, which is necessary for our PrEP clients to get their prescriptions renewed, is kind of essential–but we did close the program down during the original lockdown, so….I just hope not. As little as I like getting up at six three mornings a week, I love interacting with my clients and getting out of the house and feeling useful. But I do think another one is coming; it’s just a matter of time, and as the infections rise thanks to Thanksgiving…imagine how people are going to be about Christmas.

And on that note, it’s time to get in the shower and pack my lunch and get my day rolling. Have a happy first of December, Constant Reader.

…Ready for It

And here we are, the last day of my vacation. As much as I hate to see the time off come to a bitter end, I am also kind of ready to get back to the office and get back to work.

It’s rained off and on all weekend, which has wreaked havoc with my sinuses, and it’s rather dreary outside my windows this morning. I slept fairly decently last night–waking up every now and then–but overall, it was a good sleep. I feel a bit sore and tired this morning–I got a blister on my left heel walking to the gym Friday, which is really and truly annoying, particularly since I’ve had the shoes I was wearing for several months and have worn them every day without incident; so why all of a sudden did the damned shoe rub a blister onto my foot? I really don’t need more irritation, and now I am worried about whether walking to the gym today will exacerbate the problem. My back is also sore and my legs feel tired, but skipping today would mean having to go after work tomorrow and Wednesday, and really, neither of those is a really likely option. I prefer my Sunday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, thank you very much. Maybe if I bandage it up well….

The LSU game was terrible, just terrible, on both sides of the ball. Texas A&M didn’t look much better than LSU, frankly, and the announcers kept talking about how A&M could get into the play-offs…and I was all, really? The game just seemed like a lot of offensive ineptitude from both sides. And while both freshman quarterbacks got into the game, neither really accomplished much–and that’s on the offensive line. Nobody was blocking anyone, and when you don’t block anyone, your quarterback ends up getting sacked. The play calling was also a little suspect to me; this has been such a weird football season thus far–the Denver Broncos are coming to play the Saints today without any quarterbacks–the more I think it should have just been cancelled and all players given an extra year of eligibility. I really don’t see how they can legitimately have a play-off and crown a champion when some schools haven’t even played all the limited schedule games they had scheduled. Ah, well. The Saints game should be interesting today, at any rate.

I worked on the book some yesterday and feel a lot better about the whole thing overall. If I can get through this draft relatively quickly–one or two chapters per day–I can then let it sit for a week or so and then go back in with my red pencil and build up the subplot threads running through it as well as come up with the perfect ending to the book; it came to me last night, and I think it is the right ending. We shall see, I suppose.

I also finished reading Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! by Stephen Rebello last night, which is the behind-the-scenes, gossipy look at how the movie version of Valley of the Dolls came to be. I love both book and movie, so I’ll have a separate entry about that book. I read some more of Night of Camp David as well, which is an interesting animal as far as political thrillers are concerned. (Granted, I’ve not read many political thrillers.) I’m over halfway finished with it, which will then lead to the dilemma of what to read next. Heavy heaving sigh.

I fell into an Internet wormhole last night on my iPad during the Iron Bowl (which was just as disappointing than the LSU game; I watch the Iron Bowl because it usually is a good–if bizarre–game full of crazy plays, freakish scores, and the feeling that anything can happen at any time; a trouncing by Alabama isn’t particularly interesting to watch, frankly), and it started with someone posting a picture of a really hot guy on one of the Facebook “hot guy” groups I belong to–I did a little bit of research into the guy, and it turned out he was an actor, did some porn in the 1970’s, and then became a private investigator in Hollywood–someone else had already claimed the title “private eye to the stars” but this is basically what this guy also does. Yes, you can hear the wheels turning in my head, can’t you? As I daydreamed and explored this concept in my head–the games, as I have previously mentioned, weren’t really holding much of my attention–I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether this would be a better series to write about in the 1970’s or in the present. But I really love the concept of the porn-star-turned-private-eye, and even came up with a title for the first story: Slow Burn.

It’s kind of fun feeling creative again, I have to say, and to have finally picked back up the reins of the book at last. I think it’s a good book, too; the story is involving and evolving as I revise this most recent draft. (I’m also amazed and more than a little saddened, at how bad some of the writing is; but that’s what drafts are for, aren’t they?)

As my vacation slowly winds down, I am surprisingly not disappointed by how little I have gotten done over this week. I got some things done; started two new short stories, got the book back in progress, did some absolutely necessary tidying of kitchen cabinets and so forth, and I did get some reading done. I think I can face the office tomorrow without an issue, either–other than getting up early, which is going to take some serious readjusting again–and over all, feel pretty good about everything.

And now back the spice mines.

Treacherous

And it’s Saturday, and my vacation is slowly but surely drawing to a close. Heavy heaving sigh,

It’s been lovely, actually, even if I haven’t been particularly inspired to do a whole lot this entire time. It’s always easy–and kind of a cop-out–to say, well, you needed the physical, intellectual, and emotional rest, but I really need to cut myself a break every now and again. The endless struggle between “feeling lazy” and “everyone needs a break” is an endless war inside my head; inevitably, the things I need to get done will get done and at some point, I’ll forgive myself for the rest.

I had a very strange inspiration for a short story the other day, which I scribbled down and have some vague idea of where the story will go; it’s called “The Sound of Snow Falling” and the first line is: It was the ice storm that finally broke him. I love that first line; whether it will wind up being a good story remains to be seen. But one thing I’ve never mined in my fiction is my utter hatred for cold weather; perhaps it’s time.

I actually worked on the book yesterday afternoon! It was lovely, and while it still needs polishing up some, I am confident that now that I’ve gotten past whatever the fuck it was that kept me holding back from working on it, I am certain I am going to get this done sooner rather than later–which is a very good thing, as time is running out very quickly. Today I have to run some errands, so I am planning on working on the book before I do that. The Iron Bowl (Auburn-Alabama) is today, and LSU plays Texas A&M tonight, so I need to try to get as much done as I can before the 2:30 kick off.

I did go to the gym yesterday and today my back muscles are sore and tight, so I am going to need to use the heating pad at some point today–probably while I drink more coffee and read some more of Night of Camp David, which is kind of scarily prophetic, given it was published originally in 1965. We also watched this week’s episode of The Mandalorian, which did a marvelous job of tying the show into the the original trilogy, the prequels, and the final trilogy–apparently, it also tied the show into The Clone Wars, which I’ve never watched (and perhaps should). We also found out the Child’s name–Gorgu–and as always, the show was enormously entertaining (also: a guest spot by Michael Biehn, of The Terminator and Aliens fame!) and visually stunning and splendid. It did occur to me last night that the show–in which the Mandalorian’s quest is to find Gorgu’s people–can’t ever really separate them, as their relationship is at the beating heart of the show.

The show is really one of the highlights of my every weekend, frankly.

We weren’t ready for bed yet, and were trying to find some stand-up comedian special to watch before hand–to no avail–when Amazon Prime suggested Porky’s to us. I had actually run across the movie when looking for things to add to my watchlist, and the film–from 1981–was a watershed moment in “teen movies”–when they turned from the unrealistic fluff from Disney or message movies to sex comedies. I assumed the movie wouldn’t hold up–I remember thinking it was really funny when I was twenty and saw it in the theater–and I was correct; the humor falls very flat in almost every case; the way women are treated–and the way they are expected to simply put up with it (and do) is horrifying, It’s a comedy predicated on the idea that high school boys are always horny and always trying to get laid–none of the boys have a relationship of any kind with any women–and the only female cast members exist only as potential sex partners–Wendy is the female equivalent of the boys, and despite her easy way with her own favors, (basically the boys see her as a willing sex partner who can be persuaded to have sex with just about anyone) she is actually popular and has a lot of friends. (This struck me as wrong when I originally saw it–she would have had a bad reputation-–and none of the girls would have been friends with her) The other women in the cast are Miss Honeywell (a very young Kim Cattrall)–again, everyone calls her Lassie because she gets very aroused by the smell of the equipment room and howls loudly as she gets laid–and an uptight, overweight, gym teacher known as Beulah Ballbricker, that they all call Ball-breaker and I suppose her sexual repression and determination to keep the girl students safe from the lusts and perversions of the boys is played for laughs. She represents the sexual frustration and repression of the time, I suppose, that all the kids are rebelling against; but you also can’t help feel sorry for her in some ways.

The movie clearly doesn’t hold up–there are still some moments that are funny–but it depends entirely too much on very low sex humor for laughs, and its very vulgarity was what made it funny; it was shocking, and you would laugh back then because you couldn’t believe they were doing these things in a movie for laughs. Some forty years later, it’s no longer shocking, so it’s not funny anymore and it’s just plain vulgar. They also tacked on a subplot about prejudice and anti-semitism to, I suppose, give the movie a “serious” message about how stupid bigotry actually is in reality. And yet it–along with Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Animal House of a few years earlier–changed the teen movie forever, and paved the way for other movies of the 1980’s like Risky Business, Sixteen Candles, and The Last American Virgin. With the enormous success of this low-budget indie film, along with Ridgemont High and Animal House, Hollywood finally got the message that you can’t go wrong with sex comedies for teens–and teen movies, while still kind of extreme in some ways, began to more accurately reflect what life was like for teenagers, as opposed to the Frankie-Annette movies of the 1960’s and the Kurt Russell films for Disney in the 1970’s; or began developing films in which the teens were actually fully realized characters–I’m not sure how realistic the notion of running a brothel from your parents’ home in a wealthy suburb is. (Although now that I’ve said that, Risky Business was probably based on something that actually happened.)

There’s a really interesting essay or dissertation or even book there, methinks, but I’m not enough of a film expert to do such a thing–although it would make for interesting reading.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. The caffeine is beginning to kick in, which is most lovely, and I am most anxious to get functional and to work on the book as quickly as I can. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader.

Lover

And now it’s the day after the holiday, where Americans ignore all sanity and safety precautions and slam into stores long before sun-up for bargains and to get their Christmas shopping finished. I don’t know if this is actually happening this year or not–I flatly refuse to participate in the nonsense of greedy consumerism (the antithesis of the holiday they intend to celebrate) known as Black Friday; for years, this was the day I drove home to New Orleans from Kentucky. In these pandemic times, I have not bothered to find out what the retailers are planning or planned in terms of safety and so forth; there was no need for me to know, frankly, and at some point today I’ll go to some news sites and see the horrors that transpired for myself.

No thank you.

I finished reading The Hot Rock yesterday, which I enjoyed very much, and then moved on to Night of Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel, which is also interesting. Knebel–I don’t know if anyone else remembers him, but he used to write political thrillers back in the 60’s and 70’s (probably the best known work of his would be Seven Days in May, primarily because it was also made into a film, and the subject–the US and the USSR on the brink of nuclear war–was timely and always in the back of everyone’s mind, right up until the day the USSR collapsed). I’ve never been a big fan of political thrillers, to be honest–political fiction has never really interested me too much, primarily because the reality is too much like fiction as it is, and for another, so much world building to do, even if you simply take the US government and political system as it is and simply graft your story and characters onto it–even if you use the actual history as the history of your new world. Paul and I avoided The West Wing for years for this very reason–why get vested in a fictional world of American politics when the real world is right there in front of you all the time–but we discovered it one day when Bravo used to do the marathons all the time, and went back and watched it from the beginning, and it remains one of our favorite shows of all time.

So, it’s entirely possible I would thoroughly enjoy political thrillers after all–I’ve certainly enjoyed, or at least never minded, when thrillers (like those of Robert Ludlum) brushed up against reality or created their own fictional American political world.

Like I don’t have enough to read already, right?

I was reminded of Knebel and his work back sometime during the past four years, as some website (maybe Crime Reads?) did a piece on this particular book, which had returned to print, and focused on a president who was losing his sanity, and the only person who really was aware is the first term, junior senator from Iowa, whom the president has taken a liking to, and keeps inviting to Camp David for late night conversations where the president tells him his insane, Fascistic intentions for his second term. (Yeah, can’t imagine what triggered the publisher to bring this back into print, can you?) I had never read Knebel back in the day, but reading this piece made me curious, not only about this book but about Knebel in general. The Cynical 70’s Film Festival has also reminded me of the deeply cynical political fictions of the time (I really want to read The Manchurian Candidate)–so many thrillers set in or around politics back in the day–and, of course, conspiracy theories flourished. (The true heyday of the JFK conspiracy theories was clearly the 1970’s.)

All in all, yesterday was a highly enjoyable, relaxing day; today will be more of the same. Sure, I did some cleaning–I cleaned out two of my kitchen cabinets, reorganizing them to make them more functional–and of course i made a turkey roast in the slow cooker, which was quite marvelous. We finished watching season one of Mystery Road, which was quite good, and then moved on to the first three episodes of the HBO MAX series, The Flight Attendant, which was based on a Chris Bohjalian novel, and stars Kaley Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory in the lead. Cuoco is tremendously appealing and quite talented. Working the first class cabin on a flight to Bangkok, she becomes involved with one of her passengers, played by Michiel Huisman, and agrees to go to dinner with him in Bangkok. She blacks out during the evening–she’s an alcoholic and in severe denial about it–and wakes up next to his bloody, dead body (his throat was cut) and has absolutely zero memory of the evening before. It’s an interesting mystery, and as I said, Cuoco is terrific in the lead, and is surrounded by a terrific cast.

There really aren’t enough books–particularly crime thrillers–built around flight crews, frankly. I kept thinking about that last night as I watched; I have a short story in progress about a gay flight attendant called “The White Knuckler”, which I’ve never finished, and it also reminded me of how much I love the Vicki Barr Stewardess mystery series for kids.

So, what’s on the agenda for today? At some point I need to get to the gym, and of course the kitchen is in ruins. I am probably going to clean up the mess in the kitchen this morning, then move onto my easy chair to read some more, and then I am going to write all afternoon before going to the gym. Since we watched all the episodes of The Flight Attendant that are currently available–there won’t be a new one again until Thursday–we’re going to need to find something else to watch tonight to entertain us. Which can sometimes prove challenging, but there are worse things.

Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

False God

Yesterday’s big vacation excursion was Costco.

What? you may very well wonder in horror, You went to Costco TWO DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING?

It wasn’t bad at all, frankly. Costco’s parking lot can be packed and yet I rarely feel crowded inside the store, and the checking out and paying part of the trip never seems intrusive, never seems to take forever the way it can in other stores, and I never really mind. Plus, everyone who works there is so friendly, polite and nice–this makes the experience ever so much more pleasant. I even took Paul with me, and even that wasn’t as bad as I feared it might be. (I took Paul to Costco a while ago to get new glasses; it was his first time there and he loves it. How can you not, frankly? And every time I do go to Costco I wish I had a bigger freezer. Yes, honey, that looks wonderful, but we don’t have room for that in the freezer, sorry.)

I really hate that going to Costco makes me wish I owned a separate freezer.

Today is also Payday, aka Pay-the-Bills-Day. and of course, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I have a million things to do today–including making groceries–but once I get home from today’s errands I have every intention of not leaving the house over the course of the next four days for anything other than the gym. My back is sore again this morning, which is odd; how can it have not been sore since the other day and then have the soreness return again is beyond me. But I keep meaning to use the massage roller and never get to it; perhaps that is something I need to take a little more seriously and should do every morning as I swill down my daily caffeine supply.

I didn’t write a damned thing other than my blog yesterday–and I really don’t know how that happened, or how the day escaped me the way it did. It would, of course, be incredibly easy to simply blame it on the Costco trip and be done with it; Costco is a disruption, no matter how you look at it, and of course the living room corner is filled with boxes now–but I really shouldn’t allow that to make the rest of the day essentially worthless to me for writing (although, really, in all honesty, I pretty much will seize on any excuse not to write), but I did make some notes in my journal about “The Rosary of Broken Promises”–its at that kinda-stuck place now–but I really need to be buckling down on Bury Me in Shadows. The cover is coming–I looked at options yesterday, which is always fun (and also makes the book seem more real in some ways to me)–and I am no longer looking at this week as oh look at all the free time I have anymore. I haven’t done any deep cleaning, I haven’t organized anything, and yet somehow I am already on day 5 of my vacation with very little to actually show for it, other than I feel incredibly well rested and level emotionally, which is always a plus.

I kept thinking, all day yesterday, that it was Thursday and today would be Friday. This is a direct result of working from home on Thursdays and Fridays for so long, methinks. It was quite disorienting, and even this morning I have to keep reminding myself it’s Wednesday and not Friday. I have a gazillion emails to answer–it really is a bottomless pit–and of course I must pay the bills this morning as well (a loathsome chore) and I am definitely am going to write today once I get all that out of the way.

That is the plan at the current moment, of course.

I don’t even know what I’ve been doing these past few vacation days, if I am going to be completely honest about it. Yeah, the Lost Apartment looks better, but I haven’t even been reading much, either.

We did watch the new Sarah Paulson movie Run on Hulu last night, and it was much better–and completely different–than I was expecting. Paulson is one of our finest actresses of this period, and I’m glad she was here for the explosion of great television so her talents can be appreciated fully. She was terrific in Ratched, and she is terrific in this as well. It’s another one of those crazy moms with Munchhausen by proxy, like the Gypsy Lee Blanchard story and that side plot on Season One of The Politician (how bad must season two have been, despite Judith Light and Bette Midler, that it came and went so quickly without much notice?), but it’s not the same story at all and it’s quite excellently suspenseful; imagine if that plot line was given to Patricia Highsmith or Daphne du Maurier to write–that’s what Run is. And quite enjoyable, frankly. It’s also not getting much buzz, at least not that I’m aware of, and that’s a real shame.

And on that note I am. heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thanksgiving Eve, everyone.

Treacherous

Tuesday morning, and. the second day of paid vacation leave. Yesterday was a pretty good day, all in all–I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked; but I did get some things done and progress was made. I also went to the gym, which was lovely; I actually identified which exercise I was doing that was causing my back to be sore–and frankly, it was one I didn’t like to do–so I eliminated it and substituted another one. My back is still a little sore today, but nothing like it was before and in fact, last night it didn’t hurt at all. So, again–progress.

“The Rosary of Broken Promises” now sits at a solid three thousand words, and in all honesty, I am just vomiting up on the page and will worry about cleaning it all up later. It’s going well–definitely will require revision and rework; as I said, I’m just kind of feeling my way through the story and figuring out who my main character is (and resisting the urge, which is constant, to turn it into the opening of another stand alone novel) and why he is who he is; the story, ostensibly a poor family’s Christmas story, has already taken a much darker turn than I’d originally intended. But it fits, it works, it makes the story darker and richer and more personal than what I was originally thinking when I sat down to write it. It’s definitely not right for that anthology call that inspired me to be writing a Christmas story to begin with, and seriously, I am not sure where it might be right for (always a problem with writing short stories–figuring out where to sell them) but I. like the story a lot and, as always, my worst case scenario would be another short story collection of my own.

And being creative, actually writing, is fun.

We finished watching Le Manti last night. I won’t spoil the ending for anyone, but I was very disappointed with the incredibly lazy way the writers came up with for who the copycat killer actually was; it was a stereotype thing which has been already debunked, discredited, and is incredibly harmful. Then again, it was a French show and I don’t know how things work in France when it comes to things like this. It was quite a shame, because this laziness was unexpected, given the care they had taken with the story, the characters, and their past histories–and their current relationships. It’s a shame, because overall I enjoyed the show until that point and would happily recommend it, but now I feel like I can’t. Maybe they thought they were being edgy; I don’t know, but it was still terribly disappointing, especially in 2020.

Today I have some more errands to run–Paul wants to go to Costco (I knew he would become an addict the first time I took him there) and I have a prescription to pick up, and there’s a way to do all of this (and a few others) in a nice timely and efficient manner, which is always lovely. I don’t have to go to the gym today since I went yesterday, so other than that excursion, I’ll be home for most of the day, so there’s no reason I can’t write, read, and clean all day.

Other than utter laziness, of course.

I think tonight we’re going to watch that Sarah Paulson Hulu film, Run, which is another take on the Gypsy Blanchard thing–the mom who has Munchhausen’s by proxy and is making her child ill–but it’s done like a horror film rather than a drama, which is an interesting twist that I like an awful lot–although the concept of chronically sick children turning out to have been made ill by a psychotic caregiver is slowly turning into a stereotype.

And on that note, tis time to get back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

Tell Me Why

Monday on a vacation week isn’t nearly as brutal or as unpleasant as it is on a normal work week. Ordinarily I am up and out of bed at six in the morning every Monday; today I was able to be a slug-a-bed until around eight, which is when I generally begin the waking process when I do not have to go into the office. One week from today when I am getting up at six again I shall look back on the glory of this halcyon morning and will, as I shut off my alarm and blearily open my eyes, undoubtedly will wish I were still on vacation.

The Saints won yesterday–Taysom Hill played really well for his first start and first full game as quarterback—which was quite delightful. It was more delightful that they were playing the Falcons. The Saints have now won like seven straight games, which is great, but many of them were squeakers, so while I think it’s great, I’m not so gung-ho about the play-offs as one might expect. But 8-2 is much better than I was expecting for them at this point in the season, so I am going to happily take it.

I did manage to reread the first ten chapters of Bury Me In Shadows yesterday; it was necessary because it’s been so long since I’ve worked on it I couldn’t remember where I was at or what was going on. I found a lot of errors (and even more egregious examples of terrible writing), and I am going to spend some time today on fixing those. I also did an outline as I went, which I am going to continue to update as I work my way through the book, and I am feeling a lot more confident about making that due date than I was just yesterday. I just need to focus and keep writing and keep fixing. I need to thoroughly immerse myself in the book, and I think I can do that this week. (As I started making the outline and listing the character names at the beginning, I literally could not remember the main character’s name. That’s how long it has been since I’ve even looked at this; which is rather disgraceful, but also telling about my mental state, my brain, and my memory.)

I also managed to work on “The Rosary of Broken Promises” yesterday morning before diving back into the book. I have no idea where this story is going or what’s going to be about, but it’s in my head and it’s worrying me, like how you always worry a loose tooth with your tongue. I keep thinking about the story, even when I’m not writing it. It’s shaping up to be vastly different than anything I’ve ever done before, and while I am not entirely sure it will be publishable anywhere–the problem with short stories: at some point, you have to think about reshaping them to fit markets, or they sit dormant in your files until the proper submission call rolls around. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how self-destructive my creativity can be? I mean, I have two submissions calls I want to write a short story for, the timelines and deadlines for both are tight, so what do I write? A story that doesn’t fit either call.

We watched the new episodes of both The Undoing and Murder on Middle Beach last night, and another episode of Le Manti. All three are quite good, and we’re enjoying them tremendously. There’s only one more episode left of The Undoing, in which we will find the answers; I don’t see how they could stretch this into a second season, but I also thought the same with Big Little Lies, and they did a second season of that, so anything is possible these days–which is kind of cool but at the same time, sad.

I have a lot of work and other things to get done today. My back is still aching–not sure what it is, quite frankly, and am getting rather tired of it–but I am also going to the gym later this morning and hopefully that won’t affect it too negatively. It’s very weird; I should probably get it looked at, but if it’s just muscle strain I’d feel like an idiot, and rightly so. So at some point today I need to use my back massage roller thingee, and while it will inevitably tighten back up later, I should probably start thinking about stretching it/using the massage roller every day.

And on that note, the spice isn’t going to mine itself. Have a lovely Monday before the holidays, Constant Reader.