Eight or so years ago at this time Paul and I were in Italy. Sigh, Italy. God, how I love that country. I would love to live there in a village in Tuscany–well, really, anywhere in Italy would work just fine, really. I do so hope we’ll be able to go back someday. I’d love to see Pompeii, Milan, and Rome. And both Corfu and Capri–especially after reading (listening) to Carol Goodman’s wonderful The Night Villa. (One of the real life incidents she mentioned in the book from Capri’s history fascinated me, and took me down a wormhole and now I want to write about that historical incident, of course.) I have since written a short novella (or long short story) set in Italy called “Don’t Look Down,” which was included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, and I have another novella-in-progress set in Venice called “Festival of the Redeemer,” which I hope to polish and edit at some point before the end of the year. Sigh, Italy. What a beautiful country, with lovely friendly people and the most amazing food and….so beautiful. You can see why the Renaissance flourished there.
I got the final edits on “Solace in a Dying Hour”–two questions (one in which I had made a mistake) and the rest was copy edits and the deletion of a paragraph. So that’s a wrap, methinks, and I am really fond of the story, too. It was my first venture into Louisiana urban legends and myth; well, really the second, because I did write “Rougarou” about a decade ago, but it’s been a while since I’ve turned to Louisiana legend and folklore to write a story, and writing about le feu follet was a lot of fun. I want to do more of these, of course; as Constant Reader may remember, I’ve become fascinated by the story of Julia Brown and the Great Hurricane of 1915, when her town, Freniere, was wiped off the map. Freniere was located on that narrow strip of land running between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain; if you’re driving west out of New Orleans on I-10, and then take the Hammond exit north on I-55, that’s the land the bridge is built on (when you’re actually driving over dry land, that is). I’ve always called that swamp the Manchac Swamp, but I don’t think that’s it’s real name (and I’ve called it that in books, too. Yikes!). You cannot get to the location where either Freniere or Ruddock (the other town in that area that was wiped away by the Great Hurricane of 1915) any way except by boat; apparently some of the swamp tours will swing by the old location where the graveyards still are, but the wreckage and remains of the towns are long gone. Both towns were only reachable by train or boat when they actually existed; there were no roads in or out of town, which always makes me think why would anyone want to live in such a remote and isolated place? But yes, you can bet the witch Julia Brown will appear someday in something I write.
I also got a rejection for a story yesterday, but it was one that I expected so it didn’t sting. I knew it was a long shot to begin with, so that’s fine, and I can certainly send it to another market, which I will most likely do after reading it again to make sure it’s actually quite terrible and I was in a complete state of denial about it being publishable in the first place. Rejection is just part of the game, of course, and there are any number of reasons your story doesn’t get accepted that have nothing to do with the story’s quality itself. I like my story and I think it’s clever, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be looked over another time, you know?
I feel rested this morning. I was very tired when I got off work yesterday afternoon, which is fine; I’d rather be tired after work then during it, you know? I didn’t get much of anything done once I got home, either–I had to pick up the mail and a prescription on my way home; today I can just come straight home–and I have some things I need to get taken care of when I get home from work tonight. Which is cool, I think I can spend a bit of time preparing (I have to make a promotional video–which clearly I’ve been putting off as it is due to be turned in tomorrow) and of course, I have to make the kitchen in the background behind me look–well, not embarrassing for me, at the very least. (Although I don’t know how much more embarrassed I can get filming myself. I hate the sound of my voice and I hate the way I look on video recordings–mainly because the actuality of how I look does not come close to the way I see myself in my head–pictures, recordings and the mirror often provide deeply disturbing shocks for me.)
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines this morning. Y’all have a marvelous day, and I’ll be back tomorrow for another entry. See you then!
Wednesday and the middle of the week and the countdown to Bouchercon continues. I think we leave two weeks from today? I booked my parking at the airport for the trip reservation yesterday, so it’s starting to feel like it’s actually going to happen. I am looking forward to this trip–I can’t believe I’ve not seen some friends since 2018–even though it’s going to be completely and totally exhausting. We have to change planes in Chicago both directions (because that always makes trips more relaxing and less stressful, you know) and then of course there’s the to-and-fro with the airport up there and…no, I am going to focus on the fun aspects of the trip rather than the hassles and irritations that come with traveling (I am also in denial over my usual travel insomnia).
Yesterday was okay. I got tired right around lunch time, and ran my errands on the way home (I did, however, cut one errand out that will have to be run today after work). By the time I got home, my mind wasn’t in a focused place, so rather than trying to read anything I did chores–laundry, dishes, straightening up, filing–and when Paul got home we watched the finale of Only Murders in the Building, which was fun, and the final episode of that Woodstock 99 documentary we’d been watching whose title I can’t recall at the moment (we enjoyed it so much we might actually watch the documentaries about the other shitshow festival, Fyre) but it was enjoyable before we retired for the evening. And it was really nice getting up to a relatively clean kitchen this morning. Hopefully, tonight I’ll have the energy to do the floors before doing some reading and writing.
I realized last night the reason I’ve been so reluctant to go back and revise these first two chapters of Scotty (as well as fix the problems in the four chapters of the other book) has been primarily because I intellectually know that they are terrible and need a lot of work, and I haven’t really been in the mood to examine just how terrible of a writer I can be (hush, you there in the back) when I writing a first draft and the story is still gestating in my head. I also keep defaulting to Mississippi River Bottom as the title of this book, which it’s not–it’s Mississippi River Mischief. Mississippi River Bottom was the working title for Jackson Square Jazz, and that flashed back into my head this morning as I referred to the book as “bottom” rather than “mischief.” In JSJ, Scotty meets the young figure skater at a seedy gay strip club–which I dubbed “the Brass Rail”, and I’ve used ever since as a stand-in whenever I need a seedy gay strip club for either Scotty or Chanse or a short story or anything I am writing where I need a seedy gay strip club. Most people assume “the Brass Rail” is the Corner Pocket, but it wasn’t originally. There used to be a seedy gay strip club in the lower Quarter–I don’t remember exactly where it was–called MRB’s, that had a stage AND a pole, should one of their dancers be so inclined. When I was new to New Orleans, I asked someone what MRB’s stood for, and they replied, “Mississippi River Bottom”–which amused me to no end; what a perfect name for a seedy club! It wasn’t until later that I learned it actually stood for Mr. Boudreaux’, which makes more sense…but in my heart I always kept thinking “it’s Mississippi River Bottom”, and when it came time to write the second Scotty. I decided to use that as a title. My publisher didn’t like it and suggested I do something alliterative, to mirror the first, which is how the Scotty titles began. Most of the book centered on the Cabildo fire on Jackson Square, so Jackson Square Jazz made sense to me as a title, and the publisher loved it. I’ve kept using the Brass Rail since then–it played a pivotal role in Royal Street Reveillon–and it’s going to appear in the new Scotty as well. Continuity alert! When the Brass Rail made its first appearance in my fiction, like MRB’s, it was located in the lower Quarter…however, whenever I’ve used it since it migrated to the Upper Quarter; which, of course, is always possible–businesses in New Orleans change locations quite frequently, and certainly much more frequently than anyone might think. It’s going to remain one of those unremarked-upon continuity errors in the series–why bore the reader by trying to come up with a backstory for the change in location, especially when no one has even noticed?
*eye roll to infinity*
I’m also thinking a lot about the book lately. I have some odds and ends I really need to clear up this week, but I also have been thinking about the book and what its story should be and how to make it all make sense. One of the great stressors of my life is not being able to write as often as I would like; my spare time is becoming more and more limited, and there’s always something else I need to do–that has nothing to do with my writing, which I resent, and I am growing more and more resentful of the time I spend doing things besides writing, which isn’t a good thing.
And on that note, I need to make a to-do list, I need to start getting things done and cleared off my itinerary, so I am going to head into the spice mines. Y’all have a lovely day, okay?
Tuesday morning and I am awake, swilling my coffee and trying to think of what all needs to be done this evening when I get home from work. The weekend wasn’t nearly as productive as I would have liked…but it was also my birthday weekend so I am cutting myself some slack here (I know, it’s like I don’t even know myself anymore). I slept well last night, which is lovely, and am feeling awake this morning and not in the least groggy; I could easily go back to bed (which was enormously comfortable this morning) and sleep for a few more hours, but this morning that’s simply not in the cards. I have to get ready for the spice mines here in a moment, but I am just going to sit here and enjoy my coffee for another moment or two here before getting going. My coffee tastes rather good this morning, always a nice sign that it’s hitting the spot, and who knows what this day will bring? I am hoping for the best, as always; a smooth easy day at the office where things go the way they are supposed to, and then a stop on the way home to get some incidentals at the Fresh Market. The office space is a bit of a mess, but hopefully it won’t take long for that to get rectified.
I am also at a crossroads with a couple of projects, where I am trying to resist the urge to go back and fix what I’ve already done so I can move on with the next chapters. I think I am going to have to just go back and fix those chapters because, at least with the Scotty, it’s definitely keeping me from moving into the next chapter. The opening of this book has to be just right, or else the rest of the book will not work. And maybe–just maybe–I should go ahead and do the prologue, which is usually one of the last things I write (primarily because I am having trouble right now giving backstory in the first two chapters which is kind of necessary–since the prologue isn’t written–but I also need to know how I do the backstory so I know how much (or how little) to say in the text of the novel itself. I was having a bit of despair over the weekend over the state of the book, but just talking it through here this morning is helping clear things up in my head a bit–you see how that works? This is one of the reasons I always say the blog is really, at its most basic, intended for me to talk about things and my life and talk them through and maybe get some clarity in my brain once it’s talked through.
Ugh, August in New Orleans. I don’t know if it actually does get nastier, weather-wise, here in August or if it’s just being tired of the excessive heat going on months now. It rained again yesterday and overnight, and literally walking outside the air is so hot, damp, and heavy it feels like sitting in a steam room. Just stepping out the front door sucks the energy and spirit right out of you. I did manage to run my errands yesterday successfully–I skipped a couple of the errands, like returning the library books and stopping by Fresh Market, which I pushed off till today for after work which I will undoubtedly regret when I get off work and it’s rush hour traffic as I drive uptown on Claiborne Avenue–but it is what it is, and really, yesterday I wasn’t in the mood to run all over New Orleans in the rain and/or the heat/humidity and said fuck it, tomorrow at least I’ll already be out of the house.
Probably not the smartest or best reason to make a decision about running errands, but don’t judge me until you’ve lived here through a summer.
But it’s Tuesday morning and time to go back into the office and handling my patients again, which is a pleasure; I honestly enjoy interacting with my clients, in all honesty, and while it’s not the same as it used to be back in the olden days, I still like to believe I am making a difference in their lives, helping them reduce their risks of getting an STI.
We started watching a documentary about Woodstock 1999–a shitshow if there ever was one; and of course, knowing what’s going to happen makes watching the episode about the planning and the first day and the bright and high-minded mentality of those who organized it (I forgot there had been one in 1994, also a shit show but everyone wasn’t on the Internet yet so it didn’t get as much exposure as 1999 did)–the mentalities of young people in 1999 were significantly different than those they had in 1969; the world, the culture, society and civilization were dramatically altered and changed during that thirty year period. To me at the time, I just remember thinking this is some nostalgia that needs to remain nostalgia–kids nowadays aren’t about tearing down the Establishment and peace and love and harmony anymore; all you have to do is watch MTV’s programming to see this is going to draw that spring-break, party party party fratboy mentality and that is a completely different vibe than 1969. I inevitably was proven correct, but we only got through the first two episodes last night and there’s one left–which is the “all hell breaks loose” episode.
(Writing this reminded me to check the Hurricane Center. There’s still a system out there in the eastern Atlantic, but still not anything to be concerned about. Late August is always a tricky, stressful time for hurricane season–partly because of the Katrina anniversary, but we’ve also had at least three other hurricanes right before Labor Day since then as well, including last year’s delight, Ida.)
I did read some more of Gabino’s book, but it’s so powerful and well-written that the pain and suffering literally comes alive viscerally on the page, and I literally can only take a chapter or so at a time before it gets so intense I have to put it down. The book is brilliant and sad and wise and heartbreaking, and I can’t help but think things for the main character are going to continue to get worse. I think this is probably going to be one of the best books of the year–the writing is gorgeous yet raw as an exposed nerve at the same time–but it’s probably going to take me longer to read it than usual.
And on THAT note, I should probably head into the spice mines and start getting ready for work. May your Tuesday be as joyous as it possibly can, Constant Reader.
Monday rolls around, and it’s a work-at-home Monday. I’m not sure how many work-at-home days we still have left to us in the future; it’s going to feel very odd going in five days a week after all these years of limited in-the-office time. Ah, well, the more things change and all that. Life is always about change, really; which does make you wonder about people who inevitably fall into ruts. I can rarely get into a rut (can’t spell routine without r-u-t) because everything is always different. When I worked for Continental, they used to always tell us “the only constant in this business is change”, and I realized that also applies to life. Things are changing around us all the time. No two days are really the same–certainly not at my day job–and therefore the only rut I ever feel like I’ve ever gotten myself into is just the actual work week; but the tasks and duties are never the same even if the schedule is the same. Every client is different, every testing/counseling session is not the same as the one before or after, every book or story I write is different and the process of writing each is always different.
It rained pretty much all weekend, which gave the outside air a feeling of oppressive heavy dampness whenever I stepped outside of the apartment all weekend. It was a lovely and relaxing weekend, too. I am not pressed, nor did I press myself to get things done, which was also kind of nice, quite frankly. We watched House of the Dragon last night–I kept thinking, “ah, this story is based on the Pragmatic Sanction which led to the War of the Austrian Succession”–and it wasn’t bad. You could tell they don’t have that Games of Thrones sky’s-the-limit budget; some of the CGI wasn’t great and you could tell they didn’t really have crowds or lots of extras in some scenes that required them. We’ll keep watching, of course (the entire time I was thinking, why doesn’t the uncle marry the niece? The Targaryens weren’t above incest–and in fact, many royal marriages in European history were uncle/niece; looking at you, Hapsburg family) but I don’t think it’s going to have the same “must-watch” feel to it the way Game of Thrones did–which was “must watch as soon as its available.” It’s not bad, by any means. It’s just on a smaller scale than Game of Thrones was, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I read some more of Gabino Iglesias’ The Devil Takes You Home, which is incredibly well-written and powerful as an exposed nerve, with an intense depiction of suffering and pain and agony, and how that changes a person. It’s very emotionally heavy and packs a very powerful punch in those first few chapters. I’m looking forward to reading more of it, but it’s also not something you can gulp down in a few sittings. The language is too lyrical and beautiful yet stark; I feel it needs to be read slowly, so you can enjoy all the beauty and power of the language being used to tell this very dark story. I doubt seriously that the book is going to leave me feeling uplifted and happy–I don’t see how it could; but it may be a story about redemption and coming back from a very dark place…yet somehow I don’t think that’s where Gabino is coming from with this exceptional work. Getting inside that level of grief is difficult. I can’t imagine how hard it was, as a writer, to go to such a horrifyingly dark place–and that’s the FIRST FEW CHAPTERS. Sheesh.
I do have to take time from my workday today to run some errands–I ordered groceries, need to get the mail, need to drop off library books–so I am hoping it’s not going to be horrifically miserable outside today the way it was the weekend. There’s a tropical system in the Atlantic off the Cape Verde Islands heading this way–well, west at any rate–to keep an eye on. The Katrina anniversary looms, and we’ve had several storm systems around the same time numerous times in the years since 2005. I certainly hope that isn’t the case, as it could affect our trip to Bouchercon, but I think we were back home last year from Ida around the same time we would need to be leaving for Minneapolis (I could go back and look it up on the blog, I suppose, but Ida wasn’t a good time and it’s still a bit raw for me to want to actually do that just yet); any way, it’s not something I want to deal with again this year.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Sixty-one and a day. It feels no different that sixty-one, of sixty and three hundred sixty-four days, or that matter. I had a lovely day yesterday–I must carve out some time today to thank people for all the lovely birthday wishes all over social media yesterday, which is always nice. I spent most of the day off-line, as I intended; I wanted to actually have a complete day off from everything, and it was lovely. I finished (finally) my book yesterday morning, and started Gabino Iglesias’ latest The Devil Takes You Home, which is superb. Gabino manages, somehow, to find terrible beauty in despair, and the first chapter is like a sucker-punch to the soul. I finished watching a documentary about post-war British cinema, Reel Brittania (it’s really good) and then we watched a whole lot of other things the rest of the day–the eleventh episode of The Sandman, which adapted two stand-alone stories from the comics run (“Dream of a Thousand Cats” was my favorite of the two, but “Calliope” was also incredible; seriously, The Sandman comic was one of a kind)–and watched some other things, gradually making our way to season two of Outlaws, which I don’t think is as good as the first season but it’s still fun to watch.
I am, however, looking forward to House of the Dragon dropping tonight, though.
It rained yesterday most of the day-some lovely thunderstorms added into the all-day rain for variety–which made it even more lovelier to stay home in my easy chair with a blanket tucked carefully in around me while I read my books and watched the television. It was really relaxing, which is what I wanted more than anything else in all honesty–a day where I could simply just completely unplug and let every part of me rest. It’s generally not a bad idea for me to do this with one day of every weekend–inevitably it falls on Saturday so I can spend the entire day watching college football (GEAUX TIGERS!)–but I am also going to need to take some time to go exploring around the outer edges of New Orleans; I was thinking the other day that I’d like to drive up the River Road, along the levee–the map can’t really give me the answer I need–and I also need to go explore the river and bayou parishes, to get a better idea of what they are like and what they look like and so on and so forth for this Scotty book.
I am probably going to spend today cleaning, revising and reading. I had thought I couldn’t actually spend the entire day sedentary yesterday and would inevitably get up to do some cleaning–because it bugs me, for one thing, when the house isn’t as tidy as it could and should be–but surprise! I guess having COVID did teach me one thing: that I don’t always have to be doing something and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing nothing, if that’s what I want to do. Usually, when I spend an entire day doing as little as I did yesterday I inevitably feel guilty the following day about the loss of time (that whole you’re not getting any younger, Greg thing that constantly runs through my head) but maybe I am starting to mature enough as I realize gradually that I will never be able to write everything that I want to write, or read everything that I want to read. I don’t always have to be working, and relaxation and rest is essential for my mental health, particularly as I get older (the inside of my head is a very intense and scary place, trust me on this, Constant Reader).
But…I am now sixty-one, and that much closer to retiring from the day job. I am trying not to think about retirement with a lot of hope and longing; sixty-five will get here soon enough, and I would like to make some good use of the four years between now and then. So, I am going to bring this to a close, Constant Reader, and start the process of cleaning and organizing so I can start the editing/writing process for the day.
And I will talk to you soon, Constant Reader. May you have a lovely Sunday.
Twenty-eight years ago I came to New Orleans for my birthday weekend, and my life changed completely. Earlier that month I had already taken a cold, hard, long look at my life and I didn’t like what I saw. I had been wrapped in misery for years, wallowing in it, and diving so deep into the misery that I allowed it to erase my dreams and any hopes I had for the future. It was, after all, very easy to blame outside forces for my miserable life, and when you dig deep down into the misery, well, it’s a lot easier to just wrap yourself up in self-pity than take any responsibility for your own happiness; making excuses not to try rather than reasons to better myself. I worked for Continental Airlines at the Tampa airport–most times not a bad job for the most part, but the bad days were horrible–and didn’t make much money. I was broke all the time and yes, I wasted a lot of money treating myself to things–like buying lots and lots of books every payday–in an effort to make me feel better about myself and my miserable life. I was horribly lonely.
A bad experience with someone I was romantically interested in was the impetus for the changes I made to my life, because for whatever reason that night everything just bubbled up to the surface; I hated everything about my life, I hated where I was at, I felt trapped and like nothing good was ever going to happen to me. I stayed up the entire night, feeling sorry for myself and unable to sleep, tossing and turning and occasionally crying. At seven o’clock the next morning (it was a day off) I went into my bathroom and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror. I never want to feel this way ever again, I thought as I looked at red swollen eyes, the unshaved face. the dark purplish circles under my eyes. I then repeated it out loud. I went back to my desk, sat down and opened my latest journal and wrote the words: I hate my life. I stared at the words for a few moments, and then added, I have no one to blame for this but myself. I am the only person who can change things for me. I want to be a writer. I want to be published, and I don’t want to work for Continental for the rest of my life in this job that makes me miserable. I am lonely and it’s probably too late for me to find a life partner. But I have to stop being afraid of everything, and I can’t go the rest of my life NOT living because I am afraid of dying. Other men are not attracted to me because I am overweight–no one ever looks at me twice when I go to bars. I cannot change my face but I can change my body. I will eat healthy. I will drop some of this extra weight. I will do crunches and push-ups every day from now on, and if by January I have been consistent with the workouts and the diet, I will join a gym. I need to start figuring out who I am and how to get what I want because no one is going to knock on my door and just give it to me. The only person who can change the things in my life is me, and I am going to work on being the best possible me that I can.And that means taking the steps necessary to change who I am and what my life is so I can become a writer.
Three weeks later, my birthday weekend rolled around and I flew to New Orleans with a friend for the weekend. We were staying with his on-again off-again boyfriend–who turned out to be one of the nicest gay men I’ve ever known. I really liked him. thought he was a good person–but once they broke up for good that was the end of that; I guess he associated me with his ex and so couldn’t be bothered anymore (or he did a great job of acting the part of the generous host; I am not sure how the invitation to stay with him came about; all I knew was we were going to New Orleans for my birthday and staying with this guy), which was always a shame. I was always grateful to him–have been for twenty-eight years–because coming to New Orleans that weekend was yet another key piece to the puzzle of Greg’s future, a piece I didn’t even now I needed.
I think at that point I may have lost five pounds or so. My friend was gorgeous; one of those perfect gay men with golden skin and very little–if any–body fat; his boyfriend was his counterpart, only with much bigger muscles, bluish-black hair, and that gorgeous gorgeous olive toned skin darker Italians have. They looked beautiful together, too, and I was in some sense a third wheel that weekend, but it was okay with me. They were totally into each other which left me with time on my own to think and reflect. He picked us up at the airport and took us to his apartment (which was in a complex on Sophie Wright Place that Paul and I eventually moved into when we returned from DC in August 2001), we showered and cleaned up, and headed to the Quarter.
I had been to New Orleans before that particular trip, and while I had always felt drawn in some ways to this city since I was a child, I’d never before felt the sense of belonging I felt that weekend. When we stepped out of the cab that night at the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann, I felt this enormous emotional release, as though tension I didn’t know I. had in my shoulders and brain were suddenly gone and a big burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It was as though my soul was saying at last you’ve come home, and I knew then, before we paid the cover charge to go into the bars there at the corner–Oz and the Pub/Parade–that I was going to someday live in New Orleans…and all of my dreams would come true once I did.
I have never been sure what was different about that trip than previous ones. On my brief, previouos visits to the city before, I’d never gotten a real sense of the city before–we stayed in motels by the airport or on the West Bank–and so it wasn’t really possible to get a sense of New Orleans. Waking up in the spare bedroom in the morning, walking out onto the balcony and looking around at the roofs and unique architecture of the lower Garden District, I felt like I was at home. It was also the first time I’d ever come to New Orleans to hang out with other gay people and in the gay section of the Quarter, and maybe that was the difference? I don’t know for certain, but I do know that was the magical trip when everything coalesced in my head on that trip here. I knew New Orleans was my home, and I needed to live there, and my dreams would finally all come true once I’d moved there.
My friend’s boyfriend was a great host. He made sure to take me to see Anne Rice’s home at First and Chestnut (which was also the home of the Mayfair witches in The Witching Hour, a book I’d loved that had only heightened my sense of need to come to New Orleans), and showed me (us) around the entire weekend; we went to Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District, ate amazing food, and then at night we’d head down to the Quarter to the bars and danced the night away.
That was also the weekend I did Ecstasy for the first time, but that’s a story for a different time.
The entire weekend was a whirl; I have pictures somewhere (or lost many years ago during the course of a move or something) of all the places we went and things we did; the amazing food, dancing all night and going to the Clover Grill in the morning (or La Peniche, over in the Marigny) and then sleeping before going roaming again throughout the city. I fell for New Orleans hard that weekend, and have never really fallen out of love for the city, really, since. We broke up once (that dreadful year Paul and I spent in DC), but we came back and New Orleans forgave us for our desertion and welcomed us back home.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first heard about New Orleans, but I do remember Nancy Drew came to Carnival (called “the Mardi Gras” in the book, eye roll to infinity) in The Haunted Showboat (she also visited briefly during The Ghost of Blackwood Hall), but I don’t really remember much else. I think everyone in the country has a sense of Carnival/Mardi Gras, and always associates that with New Orleans–but New Orleans, obviously, is so much more than that. I was a kid when I watched the James Bond movie Live and Let Die–which whetted my interest in New Orleans and Louisiana–later movies like The Big Easy and Angel Heart and Tightrope expanded that interest, as did Anne Rice’s novels and the Skip Langdon series by Julie Smith. Whenever I had been to New Orleans previously I hadn’t felt anything but a sense that the city was different than everywhere else, and that difference felt alien to me.
But that entire weekend was different. That weekend in the city changed me and changed my life. I’d never felt like I’d belonged anywhere before–I always had felt out of place wherever I lived; part of it was being gay, part of it was being a creative, and the rest had everything to do with being raised by Southern parents with a Southern mentality but not living in the South (not a complaint, I am very grateful to have not been raised down here)–so New Orleans felt special to me; I’d finally found my place or, to quote Pippin, I’d finally found my corner of the sky.
Within a year I’d met the love of my life–who also was in love with New Orleans and wanted to live there–and on August 1, 1996, I drove the U-haul truck with all of our stuff and towing my old car into the city to start the rest of my life. I had already started dipping into the waters of writing–I got a gig with a gay paper in Minneapolis that actually paid me, and had started writing the book that would eventually become Murder in the Rue Dauphine. Within three years of moving to New Orleans I had a book contract and had sold my first ever short stories. Twenty-eight years to the day of that most important visit to New Orleans, and look at me now.
I live in the city I love with the man I love doing the work I love. I’m glad that I didn’t know at the time how important that weekend was going to prove to be; that it was, indeed, really the first day of the rest of my real life, when I finally stopped just enduring my life and actively started living it. It’s not always been easy to live here and love the city; New Orleans can be a hard place a lot of the time. We’ve endured hurricanes and floods, disease and injury, poverty and horror. But even the bad things are made bearable because we live in New Orleans.
I’ve written millions of words about New Orleans. One of the best compliments I can receive is being told that I’ve depicted the city so vividly and lovingly that it’s a character. I do laugh when people call me a “New Orleans expert”–I am anything but an expert; you could fill the Great Library of Alexandria with what I don’t know about New Orleans; every day I discover something new about this wondrous and bizarre place, the only place on earth I’ve ever felt at home. I will never run out of material to write about this magical city, and every day, more ideas and thoughts for stories and characters and essays about New Orleans comes to me.
So, my favorite part of my birthday is the fact that it is also the anniversary of me finding, at long last, where I belong.
And thank you, New Orleans, for always, no matter what, being New Orleans.
I’ve always rather blasphemously called this statue “Drag Queen Jesus”, for reasons that should be fairly apparent.
I am working at home today, which is kind of nice. I do have an errand to run this morning–or rather, on my lunch break–but have lots of data to enter and so forth, so I will be ensconced in the home workspace for most of the day. I am also laundering the bed linens–an every Friday chore–and have some odds and ends to clean up around here. I am going to try to get the chores done today so I don’t have to do a damned thing tomorrow; I think I’m allowed on my birthday to take an entire day off–not wash a dish or do any laundry or run any errands or do anything I don’t want to do. I want to spend all day tomorrow reading and relaxing and just chilling out; that’s my favorite kind of birthday. Paul is going to get us Chinese food for a birthday dinner treat, which we haven’t had in an extremely long time..one of my favorite things to do whenever I go to New York is to get good Chinese food. (I know it’s Americanized, don’t @ me.)
I was tired yesterday, the usual Thursday “I’ve gotten up at six a.m. four mornings in a row” thing more than anything else. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have hoped, but as I said, I felt tired all day–both body and brain fatigue–so when I got home from work yesterday I just kind of allowed myself the evening off. I finished rereading the first two Sandman graphic novels–Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House–which the first season of the show covered, and they were just as marvelous and well-done as I remembered. Hopefully, this weekend I will be able to get back into reading–which is my entire plan for my birthday; I want to finish reading the book I started two weeks (!!!) ago, and move on to the next book on my list. Sunday I will write and edit; and then of course Monday is another work-at-home day as August slowly but surely slides back into September. Whew. At some point–Sunday, most likely–I will need to run some errands, but I’m not going to worry about that today…although I do need to update ye Olde To-Do List.
Last night we couldn’t decide what to watch. I started watching a documentary series about British cinema while I was waiting for Paul to finish working, and when he came downstairs we just started chatting while the documentary continued streaming–and when it got to the part about James Bond, Paul remembered seeing something about the young woman who played Rosie Carver, the first Black Bond girl (who also turned out to be a double agent) and as we chatted, we both confessed that we had a special soft spot for that Bond film (Live and Let Die), which led to me remembering that watching that movie (the first Bond I saw in the theater, and why Roger Moore was always my favorite Bond–although I’ve really come to appreciate Connery’s a lot more and of course, DANIEL CRAIG) and I said, “I bet that movie doesn’t hold up anymore–I watched it a couple of years ago while making condom packs and I was a little surprised at how racist it actually was; why don’t we watch it again and see what we think?” I had also read the book when I was a teenager–very very little in common with the film, I might add–and had reread it sometime in the last decade and, like rewatching the film, more than a little taken aback about how racist it was. (Live and Let Die will probably be an essay I’ll write at some point, both book and movie.) There are some funny moments in the movie–Moore had a much lighter take on Bond than Connery, and the switch in actors resulted in a dramatic switch in tone for the films–and it’s highly entertaining…but yes, it definitely traffics in the worst 70’s stereotypes of Black people and the voodoo aspects of the story on the fictional island of San Monique are pretty bad, as well. Live and Let Die was also filmed and released during the “blaxploitation” period of film, which saw movies like Superfly, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Cleopatra Jones, Shaft, and Coffy being made and released–the time when the incredibly marvelous Pam Grier’s career took off. Was it an attempt to be relevant and possibly try to reach the audience for blaxploitation movies? Probably, but one of the few things that carried over from the book to the movie was that the villains were Black.
And yes, when we finished watching we agreed that the depiction of Black characters were, at the very least, problematic. The movie does have one of the best theme songs of the entire series of films, though (probably the best song Paul McCartney and Wings ever recorded, for that matter).
I had always kind of envisioned Colin from the Scotty books as a kind of cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones–one of the reasons I originally decided to never really talk about what Colin was doing when he wasn’t in New Orleans is yes, even back then I was thinking about spinning Colin off into his own action/adventure series before realizing can you write an action/adventure novel, Greg? I still would like to try–part of the reason my career is so strange and all-over-the-place is me trying new things to see if I could actually, you know, do it–but action has always been difficult for me to write (and now that little voice in my head is saying which is precisely why you should try to write one, jackass) and of course, an international intrigue plot would require a lot more planning than what I am used to doing. I might still do it, you never know–I have a plot in mind that involves the 4th Crusade and the sack of Constantinople; one that’s been in my mind now for several decades–but there are so many things I want to write, and time is running out…
Which, of course, is why I think I’m lazy and am taken aback when people say I’m prolific. My novels and short stories published are maybe about a fifth (if that much) of all the ideas I’ve had or things that are in some sort of progress; that’s what I think about when someone calls me prolific–the files and files of incomplete stories and ideas and characters and scenes languishing on the back burner and collecting dust.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Greg’s Birthday Eve, everyone!
And now it’s Thursday, my last day in the office until Tuesday (I scheduled my work at home days to bracket my birthday weekend, so I don’t have to shower or get dressed if I don’t want to). Yes, probably more information than you ever wanted or needed from me, but live with it–it’s my birthday this week!
Which is funny, really; I really don’t care that much about my birthdays. My parents never made a big deal out of birthdays and while it was always nice to get presents, I never really thought of it as “my day” or “MY DAY” (as some people insist). It’s the anniversary of the day I was born, and an arbitrary marker of my age. I inevitably add a year to my age once the first of the year rolls around, anyway, and I generally don’t run around reminding co-workers or hinting to Paul for gifts or what I want to do or anything like that. I prefer there not to be a fuss–Facebook and other social media will be lovely on my birthday, of course, as lots of people will wish my a happy day and all of those lovely thoughts–and will probably spend the day at home, trying not to do anything. That, to me, is the perfect birthday–no stress, no emails, no writing, no pressure on myself, and no need to do anything other than what I want to do, which is get up in the morning and swill coffee while writing my blog entry for the day (I’ve actually already started the entry, for the record; I do that sometimes) and then retiring to my easy chair to finish reading my book and maybe even move on to the next in the TBR pile.
I might clean, though. I actually enjoy that, especially if I have nothing else to do–and as I said, I am taking my birthday off completely.
I finished the second chapter of the new Scotty last night. It’s terrible–oh, Lord, how terrible is it? It’s kind of scary how bad it actually is, and how bad I can write when I am trying to start something new–and last night, as I sat in my easy chair while we finished watching I Just Killed My Dad–what a sad, strange case; it was interesting to watch, and such a strange case; how do you decide in such a case what is justice?–I started thinking about tweaking those first two chapters before I can move on to the next one. On the one hand, there are sloppy messes, but on the other hand, isn’t that what the next drat is for, or the one after that? I’m not entirely certain, though, how to start Chapter Three, so maybe it’s not the worst idea in the world to go ahead and revise them, get them into better shape, and maybe that will help me roll into the next chapter. I am excited to be writing another Scotty book–excited to be writing another book of any kind, really–and for the first time since probably the start of the pandemic, I am sort of feeling like myself for the first time in a very very long time, which is kind of cool. I wasn’t tired again when I got home from work last night, and I feel like I slept pretty decently again last night, too. Could I have stayed in bed for another hour or two? Of course I could have, but I am conscious, not feeling groggy or physically tired, and my coffee is definitely hitting the spot this morning. I don’t know if that means I have finally gotten used to this schedule or not, but I am not going to question it and am going to roll with it.
Tomorrow of course is a work-at-home day and I have an enormous stack of work that I’ve brought home for me to get through tomorrow and Monday. At some point, I suppose we are going to lose our one day at home per week, and it’s going to feel really strange for me to have to actually head into the office again Monday through Friday, which will require even more adjustments for me. Heavy sigh. As soon as I get used to something…never fails, right?
It’s also hard to believe that Bouchercon is actually coming up–it’s only a couple of weeks now before Paul and I will be heading for the airport, changing planes at Chicago Midway, and arriving in Minneapolis for a short stay where I will be on the run almost from the very beginning. I started putting together my schedule for the weekend–I have four panels (!) and a signing; a publisher party to attend and several meetings and happy hours and so forth with other groups–so needless to say, I will most likely be extremely exhausted when we fly home that Sunday. But I will also hopefully feel invigorated and recharged and like a writer again, a member of the publishing community, which is always absolutely lovely. I’m really not happy when I don’t feel like a writer; it’s so much a part of my identity that not being around other writers or talking about writing or getting feedback on my work helps trigger Imposter Syndrome, which is something I utterly loathe and despise because it leads to depression and imbalances my mind. I am very excited to be going back to Bouchercon; I’ve not been since 2018 because I had to cancel Dallas the week of because I got sick–inner ear infection prohibiting flying–but had I known it would be another three years before I’d get to go again, I would have driven to Dallas.
Ah, hindsight.
And on that note, I am going to swill down some more coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday everyone, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.
Wednesday, and Pay the Bills Day has rolled around yet again. Huzzah?
Yesterday actually turned out to be rather pleasant, or at least not terrible, you know? The workday went well; some things are changing around at the day job–to be expected, as we’ve transitioned to a new department director and some other management staffing changes have occurred–but it’s not nearly as intrusive or annoying as I had feared it could be (the curse of a highly overactive imagination strikes again) and while that’s not to say there haven’t been some bumps, it hasn’t been as rough as I had worried it would be. I think I am starting to adjust at long last to this sleep schedule–I actually forgot to set the alarm last night but woke up at the right time–which is good, I suppose; I still don’t like going to bed early or getting up this early, but it’s become less and less painful the longer it goes on.
I was also highly productive when I got home from the office. I did the dishes and got laundry started (I’ll have to finish it tonight), and then I sat down and wrote around two thousand (incredibly shitty but nonetheless actual) words on the new Scotty. I am really enjoying writing this new book, even if the writing is thus far pretty horrible; the first drafts of Scottys are usually pretty fucking horrendous (I suspect I’ve never really made any moves about storing my papers anywhere is because I don’t want anyone to ever see how shitty my first drafts actually are, or to put my incredibly self-absorbed journals into circulation of any kind, even if it is ‘by request.’) but it feels good to be working on him again. Even as bad as the draft is, for some reason I never experience Imposter Syndrome when I work on the Scotty books, and maybe that’s yet another reason why I never let him go….writing him feels so natural, and there’s an easy comfort to entrenching myself in his world again.
It’s also lovely to get up to a relatively clean kitchen, too. There’s still some more cleaning to do in here–I’d like to spend some time every evening getting the apartment under control so I don’t have to spend much time on my weekends doing that sort of thing. As always, I am going to be trying to write a book during football season, which is always a nightmare for me. But let’s face the facts, shall we? There’s always something else going on that will distract me from the book–in the spring it’s the festivals and the Edgars, in the summer it’s the heat, in the fall it’s football season, and in the winter it’s Christmas and Carnival, so when IS a good time for me to write a book?
I’d also like to get some reading done this weekend. I am behind as always on my reading, but the focus reading properly requires hasn’t been there for a few weeks; I suspect it’s because my head is filled with Scotty–it really is–and so I can’t really make room for anything else at the moment. I am hoping once I get a few more chapters into the story I’ll be able to get back to my reading, as the great reads continue to pile up all around my TBR stacks in the living room. Heavy heaving sigh. But while I may have had a bit of mental fatigue around reading lately, it was really nice to not be super tired when I got home from the office for a change. I have to stop at the store on the way home tonight, so here’s hoping I’ll still have the same kind of “off-work now I’m home” energy I had yesterday so I can finish the cleaning–my birthday is Saturday, so I’d kind of like to not have to do much of anything that day other than relax and chill…and maybe spend the day reading.
Once Paul came home, we watched Only Murders in the Building and a new documentary series on Netflix; a true crime in Baton Rouge! And a recent one at that, 2019–and this is the first I’m hearing of it. It’s not too surprising, I guess–I really don’t pay much attention to the Baton Rouge news a whole lot, other than when they had that serial killer a couple of decades ago–but if it’s a weird enough case to get a documentary series, you’d think I would have heard of it, wouldn’t you? Called I Just Killed My Dad, it’s about a seventeen-year-old who shoots and kills his father, calls 9-1-1, admits it…and then it starts getting more complicated. It’s a very interesting case, and I am kind of looking forward to watching the rest of it.
And on that note, I have some bills to pay before I head into the spice mines for today. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Tuesday and the week seems to be settling into a sort of groove that I can not only handle but isn’t too horrific, to be perfectly honest. The week has started off pretty okay, really; I was notified that Mystery Scene magazine had given an anthology I have a story in a glowing review which included a lovely shout out to my story, “The Snow Globe,” which is absolutely lovely. And I quote: “The Snow Globe,” by Greg Herren, is a dark and humorous Christmas tale–“Santa, Dylan thought, certainly has a great six-pack”–about loneliness, voodoo, and reconnecting with family.
Isn’t that lovely? Usually anthologies I am in get reviewed and my story doesn’t get mentioned; there was a review of one anthology in particular I recall where every single story was individually reviewed…except for mine, which wasn’t even mentioned. Since my story had gay content and characters, I can’t help but think that was due to the reviewer’s homophobia; why would you namecheck every story in the book with a few sentences about each and then not even mention mine, even to dog it? I know, I know, it’s not always homophobia, but one always has to wonder–especially when you have the only gay tale in the book and it is the ONE story that doesn’t even get mentioned. So how lovely was this?
I don’t even mind that the story was called “dark and humorous” even though it wasn’t supposed to be funny (this has happened so many times in my career….)
But, you see, this is yet another one of the problems of being a queer writer of queer work. When things happen like the aforementioned review (where my story was the only one unworthy of review or commentary), as a queer writer of queer work you always have to wonder: was my story that bad, or is this just your average, garden variety homophobia at work? This is always an issue for queer writers; is this a place that will publish a story about a gay man or will they just reject it out of hand? I wonder about this, particularly with the bigger markets for crime short fiction that are out there. I know I’ve sold a gay tale or two to some of the paying markets for crime short fiction; I also know there are some that have rejected every story with a gay character but have taken the ones that centered a straight character. I shouldn’t have to even wonder about this, to be perfectly honest; I should never hesitate about sending a story somewhere as long as it meets their guidelines. And yet, every time I submit something, anything, somewhere anywhere, I always wonder.
I ran my errands after work yesterday, came home and Paul and I relaxed in front of the television, watching the last episode of The Anarchists (weird and sad), and then got ourselves caught up on Becoming Elizabeth, which is quite well done for a Starz English royalty dramatization (earlier series, based on the Philippa Gregory books, were also well done, but not necessarily always historically accurate. Becoming Elizabeth follows the period between the death of Henry VIII and Elizabeth being crowned queen–the eleven year period of the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, which were quite turbulent and Elizabeth often found herself imprisoned, if not her life in jeopardy. It was in navigating those times that her character was formed, and she learned–often the hard way–how to play both sides as well as how to never ever cross the line into treason.
I slept decently, not great, last night, and this morning I am not feeling either tired or groggy, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hit the wall this afternoon, either. I have so much to do it’s not even funny, and I suppose, as always, that the key to getting everything done is to just go down the list and check things off once and for all. I did get some work done on the new Scotty yesterday–not much but any progress at this point is progress–but I was mostly tired when I got home last night, to be honest. I am hoping for a better day today than yesterday was–not that it was a bad day, but it was a very low energy, low motivation day (which probably had a lot to do with me going in on a Monday, which isn’t the usual and at some point I am going to have to get used to again, which I kind of don’t want to do, frankly) so hopefully today won’t be like that. They set up a work station in my testing room yesterday, which means I don’t have to commute back and forth from my desk all day anymore, so today will be me trying to get used to that and trying to figure out how best to utilize the space in the my room and how to make it easier for me to do my job with the new set-up; I don’t know how I am going to get it set up to be functional quite yet, which means work arounds in the meantime until I can get it all figured out.
If it isn’t one thing, it certainly is another.
I also had ordered a new pair of glasses from Zenni.com that arrived yesterday, and I really do like them–I especially like that they were about one fifth the cost of my last pair, which I bought from the optometrist. (I may order another pair or two today; I didn’t want to go crazy until I got the first pair and could see that they worked just fine, which they do.) I had never thought of glasses as being fashionable; they were too expensive, for one thing, to think about in terms of oh I should get different pairs in different styles to coordinate with outfits; which of course meant that, as with everything, I saw glasses as utilitarian rather than fashionable–function over form, if you will. But this pair of glasses was inexpensive enough that I can actually start thinking of my glasses as form and function, rather than as one. So, maybe on my lunch hour I will look around on their website and see if I can find some others that work for my round face and slight wattle.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader! And I will see you tomorrow!
Queer and Loathing in America 