Category: writing

It Might Be You

It seems as though fall has finally come to New Orleans; I’m almost afraid to type that for fear of jinxing it and bringing the heat and humidity back. Yesterday was simply beautiful; it is so gorgeous here when the weather finally turns and we get our allotted weeks of autumn. I’ve been in the doldrums (had the doldrums? I don’t know) a bit this week; a malaise has set in, and I suspect it might be the post-Bouchercon malaise, which hits every year, the inevitable crash after the high joy of being amongst my friends for a long weekend, talking about books and joking and making wonderful new memories.

As I continue outlining Jackson Square Jazz, I am amazed at how intricately the story is plotted; how the personal story Scotty is experiencing is woven into the case he has stumbled into. I honestly don’t remember writing the book much; I didn’t really remember much of it, either–I’ve not had a copy in my hands to reread it. I am, from doing this, getting a strong sense of Scotty and who he is; and I did spend some time yesterday revising the first chapter of the current Scotty. It’s making more sense as I revise it; and I think I am also getting a sense of where this story is going to go. I feel the thing that’s been possibly missing from the last Scotty books has been the personal story; I’d have to go back and reread them to see if I am correct. But it has been lovely rereading this story, as it were; I always think of my earlier books as being perhaps not as mature as the later ones..but I am finding that I am not correct in that assumption. I am very fond of Jackson Square Jazz, and I’d forgotten a very key element to the story; the Cabildo fire, and how seeing a documentary on the local PBS station (WYES) about the fire inspired me to write the book several years later. I am very excited to finally be getting this book together and out there as an ebook; I hope to have both it and Bourbon Street Blues up for sale by the end of the year. The cover for Bourbon Street Blues is almost finalized, and I love it, can’t wait to share it with everyone.

I think the doldrums, the discontent or malcontent or whatever it may be, also is sort of stemming from knowing that I need to push myself harder as far as my career goes. I’ve found myself in a nice place without much effort and maybe it’s time to put some more effort back into the career, you know? The world is so different now; I haven’t done a book signing in a store since Murder by the Book several years ago, with Rebecca Chance sharing the stage with me. I think this current Scotty book is going to be terrific, quite frankly with all modesty pushed to the side; with the caveat, of course, that it will be terrific if I pull the story off. And if I do, it will be quite fun and quite funny.

I also outlined another manuscript that’s been sitting in a drawer for a long time; a y/a novella that’s slightly less than forty thousand words. It’s been sitting in the drawer because I didn’t like the ending and it needed to be about twenty thousand words longer, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to make it longer or how to fix the ending. As I was outlining it this evening, it dawned on me precisely how I could do both those things; it requires an extensive revision, but it’s one that I can do relatively easily. I even figured out the new opening–and naturally, made notes. It’s called Spellcaster, and I don’t know if that title actually will work for it, but it’s a good working title, and perhaps something better will come to me when I revise it.

Christ, how many projects can I have going in my head at the same time? Maybe that’s why I am having the doldrums, and finding it hard to focus?

Ya think?

Oddly enough, after showering I feel much better, and I am going to get my act together.

ONWARD!

And here’s a Hump Day Hunk for you, Constant Reader.

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I’ve Got a Rock and Roll Heart

I wish the time would change already. I don’t know why it was moved back another week or two, but seriously.

I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I needed to, but that’s okay, you know. Any progress is better than no progress, and I am inching closer to the finish line. Yesterday I started doing a line edit of Jackson Square Jazz, but decided that it would be easier now to just do an electronic edit–there’s a lot that needs to be fixed and changed (I cannot believe what a messy manuscript I turned into Kensington all those years ago!) and so instead I am rereading it and making an outline from it, as well as making notes on continuity errors that need to be checked against later volumes in the series…you so rarely get a chance to correct them from the beginning, you know? I really shouldn’t let this opportunity to correct the continuity mistakes in the Scotty series go by; plus I also see this as an excellent opportunity to finally get the Scotty concordance/Bible done, so as to avoid these problems in the future. But it’s a lot of work, seriously, and I do wonder if I am using all of this as an excuse not to work on the new one.

In fact, I am wondering if I am using this as an excuse to not work on many things, if I’m going to be completely honest.

In other exciting news, we’ve got tickets for LSU-Arkansas. Huzzah!

But I did start rereading the Scotty WIP last night and started making an outline for it. I’m also going to slowly start revising it, based on the notes I’ve made, and keep going forward. I’ve not heard back from any agents, but I am going to focus on Scotty this week and then spend the weekend and the next week to tweak the book I am submitting for representation. Another young adult novel that i wrote a while back and put in the drawer because I didn’t know how to fix what was wrong with it–of course, last night it came to me how to fix it, so I am now trying to figure out when to squeeze working on THAT into my already busy, hectic writing schedule.

Sigh, life as a Gregalicious is never easy or for the faint of heart.

And now back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for your Tuesday:

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Far from Over

Monday morning. I am very tired this morning; I worked Condom Outreach yesterday at the Halloween New Orleans Tea Dance at Crescent Park, which was fun, tiring and entertaining on many levels. Lots of pretty boys to look at, lots of alcohol/drug related sloppiness, and the weather was bizarre. It was hot and humid when we walked over there, than a nasty storm rolled in for a while, and after the storm moved on it was very cool the rest of the time. It’s still cool now; I suspect the heat and humidity have finally broken, thank the Lord.

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I have to say, Crescent Park is beautiful; the view of the river there is spectacular. I also took some terrific panorama shots:

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Gorgeous, right?

Last night we watched the premiere of The Walking Dead, and I have to say, finally. Last season Paul and I wearied of the show; primarily because Rick and the gang basically turned into wimps over and over again. It was awesome last night seeing them kicking ass and not bothering to take names. Huzzah!

I also started my reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and am reading it more slowly than I usually do; trying to savor it as well as thinking about its influence on other novels about ‘the bad place.’ I’ve already seen it’s direct influence, in the earliest chapters, on Burnt Offerings; Eleanor’s drive to Hill House is very similar to the drive taken by the family to the house in Burnt Offerings. The writing is so lyrical, and whimsical, almost like a fairy tale in its use of language and imagery; and Eleanor, poor Eleanor…also of note–Eleanor is selected by Dr. Montague for the Hill House expedition because when she was a young girl, stones rained down on her family home from the sky for several days without explanation; there’s mention of the same phenomenon happening to the Whites in Stephen King’s Carrie.

And that opening!

Lord, if I could only write an opening that sublime and beautiful and haunting.

 

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Another good night’s sleep. I barely know what to do with myself. Today is my Sunday, since i have to work tomorrow, but that’s fine. I have to run a couple of errands but intend to spend the day cleaning, watching football, maybe doing some editing, and trying to finish reading Anna Dressed in Blood. October is winding down, and I still need to reread The Haunting of Hill House and I want to read Stephen King’s End of Watch by the end of the month. Then I am going to get back to crime reading–I have the ARCS of the new novels by Laura Lippman (Sunburn), Alafair Burke (The Wife), Alison Gaylin (If I Die Tonight) and Ivy Pochoda (Wonder Valley). Such a plethora of riches…and I also have a lot of other wonderful books waiting in the TBR pile.

The house is a disaster area, quite literally, and if I don’t get something done about it today I may just lose my mind. I had lunch with my friend Laura yesterday, and after getting back from yesterday’s errands I had literally no energy left. I don’t know what has happened to my energy levels, but I definitely think I need to start going back to the gym regularly. I haven’t since August, and I think my body is sending me an SOS. I hate when that happens. I am thinking about going to the gym later today before the LSU game and doing a light, get back into the groove work out. I also was thinking of doing just that tomorrow night after work as well.

We’ll see, as I always seem to say.

But yes, I have to stop feeling tired and using that as an excuse for not getting things done. I am way behind on everything, did nothing on the to-do list I finally put together last week, and this shall not stand. I have way too much to do–of course, maybe I am allowing the amount of things I have to do overwhelm me which creates the self-fulfilling prophecy of getting nothing done–but today I am determined. I am not feeling tired the way I usually have when I’ve woken up this week from my good night’s sleep, and so I am going to try to get caffeinated and get moving on everything,

And on that note, I am off to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for you.

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Human Nature

I slept well again last night–which keeps the streak of good sleep alive at five nights and counting. I don’t have to work today, which is lovely; I am hopefully having lunch with a friend and running a couple of errands before coming home to clean, edit, revise, and hopefully do some writing.

The Lost Apartment is also a mess, so part of my day will be taken up with cleaning. It really is tragic how messy this apartment can become over the course of a week, and I haven’t done the floors in forever. The windows are also pretty nasty; this lovely cool weather we are enjoying will be most helpful in that regard, since I know I won’t be drenched in sweat the moment I go outside. I need to make a grocery list, and I also want to read some more of Anna Dressed in Blood, which started kind of slow but is starting to pick up a little. I also want to start rereading The Haunting of Hill House this weekend, which means I need to finish reading Anna.

I got caught up on Riverdale last night, and I have to say the first two episodes of this season are pretty damned dark. There were three murders in the second episode of this season (SPOILER), and now that they’ve recast Reggie, he’s front and center–and a drug dealer. Wow, didn’t see that coming. The young cast continues to get better, and are incredibly appealing, and apparently the ratings are really up, which is terrific. Now we need to get caught up on The Exorcist, and maybe give the reboot of Dynasty a whirl. I’m not sure how I feel about Dynasty being rebooted; I guess they decided, since the Dallas sequel never really caught fire, to just start over with the tale of the Carringtons and the Colbys, which I guess I can understand…but I also don’t want them to follow the original storylines, either. From everything I’ve read so far, they aren’t doing that…and it looks like Steven’s homosexuality isn’t going to be so “is-he-or-isn’t-he” as it was back in the 80’s, when it was hugely controversial (and the show completely ignored HIV/AIDS) to have a gay character in the first place.

A story I’d sent out for submission was rejected yesterday, which I was expecting. My short story game isn’t as strong as I’d like it to be, and while I love this story, it doesn’t really fit in well with the theme of crime, you know? I also wasn’t pleased with how it ended, which means that the ending wasn’t set up properly, so I am going to let it sit for a while before rereading it and figuring out how to tweak that ending to make it work properly. It clearly didn’t work the way it’s currently written. But it’s a story I want to tell…and even last night, as I mourned in the usual way I do when rejected (even when I’m pretty sure the submission will be rejected) it did occur to me that I might know a way to make it better already. So I need to make that note and shove it into the folder.

Onward and upward, as they say.

And here’s a hunk to slide you into the weekend:

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What About Me

It is fall in New Orleans, and the light has changed. Summer is a brutal season here, and it is easy to wonder, as you bake in the sun and get drenched in sweat from the thick humidity, why on earth you ever thought you could live here. Then fall comes, and you remember; the extreme heat and thick humidity are gone and the light is just spectacular. The blue of the sky is simply stunning, like the Mediterranean Sea where it’s shallow, and the sunlight itself, softened and not quite as harsh after the shifting of the earth on its axis, bathes everything with a gorgeous glow.

I am off to Thibodeaux today, to do testing at Nicholls State University this afternoon with some of my co-workers. I’ve never actually been there before; I’ve never explored Louisiana south of the city–now that I have a new car, once football season is over I am going to rectify that by not only exploring more of New Orleans but more of Louisiana as well. I printed out Bourbon Street Blues last night preparatory to doing a copy edit and some tweaks to the story; it is still firmly fixed in 2004 so I won’t be updating some things that I don’t think should be changed: Scotty still won’t have a computer nor a cell phone, and will still be a a bit of Luddite when it comes to the Internet (he still is, but not to the degree he was when we first met him). It’s pretty amazing to realize how much technology has changed since the book was first written, back in 2001-2002. It’s also going to be kind of fun to go back to Scotty’s roots, as it were, and reacquaint myself not only with his origins but who he was when I first created him.

That can only help me write the new one, you know?

I also found the original electronic draft of the short story I started rewriting this week, but the whole story isn’t there. I don’t know if I ever wrote the entire first draft, or if I just did so in my head. I was pretty certain I’d written the entire thing, so I might have to go digging through the files this weekend to see if I can find it. I am off tomorrow, which is lovely, and Saturday as well. I am now reading Anna Dressed In Blood, by Kendare Blake. I’m enjoying it so far; a y/a reviewer compared my book Sara to it, so I thought I should read it, and am finally now getting around to it. I’m toying with the idea of another paranormal y/a with a gay main character, and so it’s kind of nice to see what other stuff is out there as well.

We got caught up on American Horror Story last night; although the stupid FX app skipped last week’s episode, so we were a bit lost, but after we finished we didn’t see any reason to go back and watch the previous one–although apparently there was a hot sex scene with Billy Eichner and Colton Haynes. Meh, don’t care enough; maybe this weekend.

So, I should probably dive back into the spice mines this morning before I leave for work. For Throwback Thursday, here’s the original cover of Bourbon Street Blues.

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Lawyers in Love

The cold spell we brought with us back from Toronto continues, and it’s lovely, if I am going to be honest. I had yet another good night of sleep after bar testing last night, and of course, walking back to the office through the Quarter was wonderful. It was a beautiful October night, and the Quarter is putting on its Halloween finery. There was a house completely done up with killer clowns, which was fantastic.

See what I mean?

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I’m going to have to do bar testing again before Halloween so I have an excuse to walk around and look a the decorations. There’s a pair of houses on Royal Street between St. Philip and Ursulines that goes all out for every holiday; I can’t wait to see what they’ve done for Halloween this year.

I have this Friday off because I am working Sunday, doing condom outreach at the Tea Dance party along the river…which means I should have some great pictures.

I am slowly crawling out from under the backlog that piled up while I was in Toronto, which is lovely. I made a list and started working my way through it; and I am pretty jazzed. Scooter will be pleased, no doubt, because my plans for my days off this weekend entail mostly sitting in the easy chair and editing. I also have some news to announce relatively soon, which is also pretty cool.

I had decided not to re-edit Bourbon Street Blues and Jackson Square Jazz because, you know, I wanted the new editions to be like the originals…but then I realized the files I have are unedited; no copy edits or anything, so I am going to go ahead and try to do some mild revisions. I also think doing this will help me with the new Scotty as well.

All right, back to the spice mines.

Dead Giveaway

Tuesday morning, it’s sixty degrees and I’ve had another glorious night of sleep. I am still a bit groggy, only being on my second cup of coffee, but today it’s back to reality after the bliss of Bouchercon and being wrapped up in the world of writing and publishing for almost a week. Heavy heaving sigh. I think we brought the cold weather back down from Canada with us! But I am digging out from under–I really did go AWOL while we were gone on a lot of things–so this morning I need to get caught up on my email and get the house back in some kind of order. I have Friday off as well, since I am working Sunday (condom outreach at the Gay Halloween tea dance at Crescent Park), so that will also help some as far as getting caught up is concerned.

Methinks I need a to-do list.

I started writing a short story yesterday; it’s an idea that’s been lying around in my head for a really long time and I thought, hell, I should start writing this, partly because an idea for the opening came to me. For the longest time this dark noir story was set in Kansas in my head–I even wrote, I think, a rough draft a long time ago but have always wanted to revise it as a noir, and reading Craig Pittman’s Oh Florida! made me realize that part of the problem with the revision I was having was because it should have been set in the panhandle of Florida. (I really recommend the Pittman; Im enjoying the hell out of it and it’s bringing back a lot of memories for me of all the time I’ve spent in Florida) I had started writing another one last week–“Sorry, Wrong Email”–that I would also like to finish this week….so much to do; I really need to make that damned to-do list.

First thing on the to-do list: make a to-do list.

Second thing on the to-do list: figure out what my next horror read will be. (I’m thinking I need to finally finish off Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes trilogy with End of Watch, which is more paranormal than mystery; but I may save that for a weekend read.) Maybe it’s time to reread The Haunting of Hill House, which I haven’t gotten around to doing yet. Hmmmm. Decisions, decisions.

And man, looking around my kitchen at the messy wreckage…I need to get this mess cleaned up.

Okay, enough procrastination. It’s back to the spice mines with me, and here’s a hunk for your Tuesday morning:

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Steppin’ Out

Home. Sunday night–early evening, really–and I am exhausted. Bouchercon just sucks the life right out of me every year, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I have the best time every year: reconnecting with friends I don’t see nearly enough; making new friends; drinking waaaaaaaaaaay too much; and laughing until my abdominal muscles hurt and hurt and hurt. Right now I think if I started laughing I’d also start weeping in agony–that’s how much I laughed this weekend. (And let’s not talk about the ten hours of non-stop drinking that was Friday evening. Oooooooohhhhhh.) I often have trouble sleeping when I’m home; this is exacerbated when I travel, so I’ve not had a good night’s sleep since I left on Wednesday. I am now very close to running out of steam, but am struggling to stay awake so I can hopefully get a good night’s sleep tonight.

And I won the Anthony Award for Best Anthology; rather, Blood on the Bayou: New Orleans Bouchercon Anthology 2016 won. I just edited it. It’s kind of thrilling; it was an incredibly difficult category and I was seriously just honored to be in the company of the other nominees. Art Taylor deservedly won the Macavity Award for Best Short Story; again, I’m just so thrilled that I was even on the shortlist that I really didn’t care about winning, and Art’s story was simply phenomenal.

Okay, I am too tired to think clearly. I’ve been trying to write this for hours now, and I think I should just go to bed and finish in the morning.

Monday morning. I slept so good last night. I woke up several times during the night, and I did wake up much earlier than I thought I would, but I feel rested; it was good sleep, and that’s always a plus. It’s also weird because it’s not light in the mornings anymore; it’s fine, and I’m going to love the extra hour whenever we get it–but I always hate giving it back.

Wow, what a weekend. As I said before, I laughed so hard all weekend; it was almost non-stop. I can’t believe how much I drank…but every year Friday turns into an epic drinking marathon. (This year broke Raleigh’s record.) So many great friends, so many highlights…the only low light was the “not able to sleep in hotels so am always running on accessory” thing, and that’s my low-light of every year and every conference. I met some amazing new people and made some amazing new friends; I was on two glorious panels with fantastic people and fantastic moderators and fantastic audiences; my biggest regret is the same as it is every year–that I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would like with everyone I would like. Toronto was absolutely lovely, and so was the hotel. (The hotel bar was just okay, but the private lounge on the 43rd floor was fantastic.) I read two books on the trip–Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco and The Vines by Christopher Rice, and started reading Oh, Florida! by Craig Pittman on my way home–which is also fantastic. I got some new books that I’m looking forward to reading: The Blinds by Adam Sternburgh; Sunburn by Laura Lippman; and the new Ivy Pochoda, Wonder Valley. (I finally met Ivy this year, and she told Paul and I a story about visiting Louisiana with her mother that had us both sobbing with laughter.) I had some awesome meals–but I think my favorite was the noodles I had for lunch on Friday, with the fish and chips on Sunday night at Braddock (not sure if that was the place) a close second. I drank wine instead of martinis–the martinis in Toronto were somewhat less than what I would have hoped for–and I got to laugh with so many wonderful friends. Paul, of course, was with me for this entire trip, and he fit in like I knew he would–I swear I think some of my friends like him better than they do me (I’m looking at you, Wendy) and oh, how I could go on.

I even ran into the ChiZine crew–Michael Rowe, Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi–on Saturday night as two of my writing worlds converged!

And that LSU game on Saturday! That and the books are getting their own posts.

But probably the best–and this is simply because it was bigger than just being a good time for me–part of the weekend was being on the Writing the Rainbow panel. Moderated by Kristopher Zgorski of BOLObooks.com, the other panelists were Owen Laukkanen/Owen Matthews (seriously, buy his books!), John Copenhaver (whose debut novel I can’t wait to get my hands on), Stephanie Gayle (read her books–and she looks like Laura Dern with dark hair), and Jessie Chandler (seriously, read her books). When I was assigned the panel, my first thought was great, three people will show up for this. 

I was wrong, The room was packed. Kristopher had great questions for us, and the answers were all fantastic and thought-provoking. We talked about great queer books and great queer writers, talked about our own experiences writing about queer characters, and the audience was so receptive and amazing. I almost got teary and emotional, honestly; it was the first time I’ve ever be on such a panel at a mainstream event to have such a  great audience and such a great crowd. We’ve come such a long way. I just wish some of the great writers who were publishing when I first was getting started were still publishing so they could have enjoyed this moment as well. It was an honor to talk about Michael Nava and John Morgan Wilson and R. D. Zimmerman and Mary Wings and Katherine V. Forrest and there were so many others we didn’t  get to mention…and there certainly wasn’t enough time to mention all the great people doing the work now–although we were definitely able to plug the two great lesbian writers, Ellen Hart and J. M. Redmann.

And now, I have some things to get done around here while my other blog posts take form in my head, so I will leave you with a picture of me and my partner in crime for the weekend, the always amazing and hilarious Wendy Corsi Staub:

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Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy

Tomorrow morning at this time I will be running around, hoping that I am not forgetting to do something before we leave for Toronto. I haven’t had much of a chance to get excited about the trip, but this morning it’s starting to be kind of real to me. The kitchen is a mess–I made Swedish meatballs last night–and so I need to get the dishwasher loaded, start gathering things to pack for the trip, etc.

I also queried another agent yesterday, and submitted another short story. I have three more agents to query on my list today, and I might submit yet another short story to another market. We’ll see how that goes.

I also printed out Jackson Square Jazz last night; I am going to do the ever popular copy edit with it. It also occurred to me that this is a golden opportunity, as the ebooks for the first two Scottys are about to go live, to re-edit them and therefore make the ‘new’ versions of them worthwhile to have for people. I haven’t completely decided whether I am going to re-edit the books or not, but we shall see how it goes. It’s really dependent on the time factor, and since I am trying to finish writing another Scotty at the same time…it’s also not a bad idea, as rereading the originals will put me in a Scotty mindset, which can’t hurt, you know?

I started reading Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings last night, and was very quickly absorbed into the story. The beginning is reminiscent of several other horror classics–Rosemary’s Baby, Harvest Home, The Haunting of Hill House–and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s clearly a ‘haunted house/bad place’ story; I’ve never seen the movie nor had I read the book before, so I am kind of excited about it. I also need to pick out the books I’m going to be taking with me on the trip.

We also finished watching Harlan Coben’s The Five mini-series last night on Netflix. There are ten episodes, and it’s a interesting show with several different mysteries, several different crimes, and they are all connected in some strange way to the disappearance of a small boy some twenty years earlier. The main characters–Slade, Danny, Mark, Pru–were all friends, and one afternoon they were off in the woods playing, with Mark’s younger brother Jesse in tow. Being older kids, they wanted to go off and do their own thing, so they sent Jesse off on his own and he disappeared. A child molesting serial killer later confessed to killing him…but the body was never found. Flash forward twenty years, and Jesse’s DNA has turned up at a brutal crime scene, which begs the question, is Jesse still alive? How did his DNA wind up at a crime scene twenty years after he disappeared? And then his DNA turns up at another brutal crime scene. What is the connection between the cases? Lots of twists and turns, and several big surprise twists made it quite enjoyable to watch. The cast was also really good, and the mini-series format gave the writers the opportunity to delve into the characters and their lives a lot more. It also was very haunting in that it’s theme–the damage the disappearance of a child can do to those left behind–is something I am fascinated by.

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Highly recommended.

And now, back to the spice mines.