Category: writing

Do What U Want

Day Three of Parade season. Looks to be another beauty out there today, with a high of 75 degrees (shorts and a T-shirt, woo-hoo!) and sunny with the usual cerulean New Orleans blue sky. Fabulous. Today, of course, is a shorter parade day; there are only four today, and they are pretty much back to back to back, starting at eleven: Femme Fatale, Carrollton, King Arthur, and Alla, so it will all be over by five. At that time I shall retire back to the Lost Apartment, get ready for tomorrow and a bizarre, slightly abbreviated work week, and watch The Walking Dead.

I am in a really strange place these days. As Constant Reader knows, my mind (creativity, whatever you want to call it) can go all over the place and sometimes can get out of control. This requires me to focus when I am writing; because i am constantly getting other ideas that sound better to me than what I am actually writing. So now that I have nothing on deadline, nothing under contract (edits to come, of course, on a couple of manuscripts) and am free to do whatever I want, write whatever I want…I can’t figure out what to work on. I started a short story last week, have another short story I want to write, and there are a couple that need heavy revision–as well as a couple of uncontracted novel manuscripts that also are in need of revision before sending them out into the world–but it’s also parade season, which makes getting anything done more than difficult. Yesterday I spent some time doing some on-line research about a true crime I heard about that occurred some seven years ago–and, in that Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, I am only about two degrees away from–and I am trying to wrap my mind around how to fictionalize it. It’s a great great story, and the way I want to write it is how the crime affects, and brutalizes, someone who was innocent of the crime but profited from it, nonetheless…but while managing to get a substantial payday from it, also had his life ruined. It’ll probably just end up in the files and nothing will ever come of it.

I did manage to get a cozy worked on last week; maybe a series, maybe not, maybe nothing will come of it, who knows? I also started putting together ideas and thoughts and characters and scenes for a noir I’ve been wanting to write for some time. But as far as actual writing, nothing much.

As for the week, well, Monday is a normal one; Tuesday I am going in late and working late because I have to take a friend to the doctor early that morning; I am going in late on Wednesday because *I* have to go to the doctor in the morning and then walk home because of parades; I took Thursday off in order to run to Costco and the grocery store to lay in supplies; Condom Duty Friday night and Monday; and then it’s Fat Tuesday and we’ve lived to tell the tale of Carnival 2017.

We watched a wonderful documentary on our local PBS station (WYES) last night after the parades, called The Sons of Tennessee Williams, which was about gay life in the French Quarter and how the gay Mardi Gras krewes got started. It was really well done; and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know anything about the gay history of New Orleans. I am most likely going to stream it again if it’s available anywhere; if not, I’ll go ahead and buy the DVD. Watching it last night, my legs and lower back aching from being on the parade route all day, I was getting ideas for stories…but was too tired and relaxed to make notes about anything other than the title. I also spent some time between parades cleaning and organizing, and came across another fun book I’ve not really looked at in a while: Voodoo in New Orleans by Robert Tallant.

AH, the luxury of time! I am also thinking I need to run by Garden District Books (maybe Thursday) and take a look around at their New Orleans section. I may need to add some Lyle Saxon to my New Orleans library, among other things. I love that people think of me as a New Orleans expert, but the truth is I know very little about my beloved adopted home.

And now, I am going to retire to my easy chair and read some more Lori Rader-Day.

Here’s a Carnival hunk (or two) for you:

Poker Face

So, last night I watched the documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story. I’ve been digesting it ever since, and still am not really quite sure how I feel about it.

If you aren’t aware of the background story, essentially in the late 1990’s stories began to be published written by someone who wrote under the name “Terminator”, and they were quite good, actually. Eventually, a novel was published called Sarah; “Terminator” was now writing as “JT LeRoy.” By the time Sarah was released, I was working as editor of Lambda Book Report. We’d gotten a review copy of it along with a press release about the author’s background, and basically claiming that the novel was loosely autobiographical. JT’s mother, Sarah, had been a truckstop prostitute; and that was the world JT was raised in; JT was also very young and unsure of his gender/sexuality, and had also worked as a truckstop prostitute. It was a fascinating story, really; but at the same time it seemed kind of, well, off to me. People were raving about the book, and I didn’t actually have to assign it out to anyone: a reviewer emailed me, having just read it, and begged me to let her review it, so I did.

Hey, when someone volunteered to review, it made my life easier and I rarely said no. But I was able to keep the review copy that had been sent to us, and I read it in my spare time–when I wasn’t having to read something to review or determine whether it should be reviewed–and I was impressed. It was a very dark story, but very well written. So, I emailed JT to let him know how much I enjoyed the book, and to congratulate him as well as to let him know we were running a review of it, and since it was going to be a full page review, rather than one of the shorter ones we usually did, I needed an author photo. He emailed me back…and then another bell went off. The email was barely literate, for one thing: and while I knew editors sometimes work really hard with authors…it just didn’t seem to click for me. Something wasn’t right. And a few days later I got a letter thanking me for my interest in the book–again, a handwritten letter rife with grammatical and spelling errors.

And I recognized the author photo. It was an image that had run on the cover of a Dennis Cooper novel that had been published ten years earlier.

And since JT was supposedly only twenty or twenty one at the time…it didn’t compute. Had he been the model for the book cover image? But he would have only been ten or eleven at the time. Again, it didn’t make sense–but it was neither my place nor my job to question this, so I just let it go; and we didn’t run the author photo with the featured review.

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. I did get a copy of his next book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but it never came out of my TBR pile, and I was no longer running the magazine, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I did occasionally see notices about readings being held of JT’s work–with big name celebrities, like Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine, actually reading the work because JT wouldn’t do public appearances and was reclusive. Which, you know, was fine–but it was also interesting. But then he started showing up in magazines and so forth–always in sunglasses, and I also wondered if he was actually bald; because he was clearly wearing bad blond wigs. Again, I arched my eyebrows, but hey, whatever works. It was revealed that he was HIV positive, one of the books was being made into a movie…and then the scandal broke: JT LeRoy didn’t exist; he was a myth, a creation, and the person who was actually writing the books was a straight lady with a longtime male partner and a child, and the partner’s sister was ‘playing’ JT for public appearances and for photographs. I didn’t really see this as a huge scandal at the time; authors always use pseudonyms, and while there was some deception there–the woman pretending to be JT, the backstory, etc.–the bottom line for me was the writing was good, and the fact that it wasn’t autobiographical after all made the achievement even more extraordinary.

But the claiming to be HIV positive…that didn’t sit well with me. It was an insult to everyone infected and living with HIV; it was an insult to everyone we’ve lost to the disease. How very dare you claim HIV positive status to lend authenticity to your fabrication. You deserve to go to hell for that.

But I wanted to watch the documentary. I knew from seeing a review of it in the New York Times that it was primarily focused on Karen Albert, why she became first “Terminator” and then “JT LeRoy”. It’s an interesting story, and while I felt like the documentary was too busy apologizing and making excuses for Ms. Albert–the way she talked about all these different personas she took on–JT, his friend Speedy (which is who she appeared as in public with JT, so she could be there at the readings and everything else public that was going on for JT’s work)–it sounded almost like there was an element of dissociative identity disorder going on there; she certainly had the kind of childhood which tends to result in that particular psychiatric disorder. But she insists that isn’t the case; but she seems to fall back on a particular writerly trope that has always rather put me off as pompous and annoying: the notion that writers have no role in their actual writing and that the characters TAKE OVER.

Um, no. I don’t know where or why that trope about the experience of writing started or even how it got started, but I’ve always felt it’s a steaming pile of bullshit and whenever I hear any writer say something along those lines my eyes roll so hard they almost unscrew out of their sockets.

Don’t get me wrong; when I am writing, especially in the first person, I have to get completely inside the character I am writing about and channel them–but they don’t take me over. I don’t BECOME Chanse or Scotty when I am writing about them. They are a part of me but they aren’t me.

The documentary, though, is fascinating, and Karen Albert is an interesting person. Do I think she set out to pull a long con? No, I don’t. I do believe that it got out of control and she didn’t know how to contain it–and there were also money issues involved; why kill the goose that’s laying the golden eggs? But I also think she doesn’t own her part in any of it; she’s so busy (in the documentary) giving explanations and justifying the masquerade that she doesn’t really feel any remorse about the lying and the fraud. She only regrets being caught.

Interestingly enough, the publisher of the JT LeRoy books have published new editions to coincide with the release of the documentary–which makes the documentary and her role in it even more suspect. Hey, here’s another chance for me to sell some books!

And she never apologizes for, or even tries to justify, the HIV lie. She makes the point that the books are fiction and they exist, so calling the whole escapade a fraud isn’t honest; she seems to think the more grandiose word “myth” is more apt to describe what she did with the creation of JT LeRoy.

JT LeRoy, though, was a fraud. The books are real, of course, and nothing can take away from the fact that she wrote two really extraordinary books. Would the books have become so successful had she not created the fraud?

We’ll never know.

And here’s a hunk to slide you into the first weekend of Carnival parades:

Just Dance

I’ve always been amused that Valentine’s Day and venereal disease share the same initials. Granted, it’s really SAINT Valentine’s Day, but still–look up the story of St. Valentine for yourself.

Now THERE’S some romance, right? Not exactly a Nicholas Sparks novel there, is it?

We’re still watching–and enjoying–Santa Clarita Diet, which becomes more and more clever with each episode, as is Riverdale–it was really fun seeing Betty go to the dark side last week, and I hope it’s foreshadowing of future story for her. I’m also still reading Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things; I just hate that I’m so tired when I get home from work every night that I can only read a little bit.

As for the writing, this morning I completed edits on a short story I’ve sold and turned them back in to the editor. I am very pleased to be a part of this book, but I don’t have permission to discuss it publicly yet; but I will say my story is called “Lightning Bugs in a Jar” and it’s one I am very proud of. Constant Reader knows how hard short stories are for me to write, so every time I sell one it’s a victory.

As far as the writing goes, I started outlining two books this week; just to see where they go and if they are, indeed, something I want to write. One would be the first in a potential cozy mystery series (under a pseudonym, of course) and the other is a stand alone called I Know Who You Are. I am more interested in the stand alone at the moment, to be honest–but once I get these two outlines finished I am going to go on to outline two more I have ideas for–and yes, one of them is the Colin stand-alone I’ve been talking about forever.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Bad Romance

I slept in again this morning. It really is amazing how much stress I was under before, and how removing the stress of deadlines has made such an amazing difference in my life thus far. Of course, this is my first weekend at home after cutting out the stress of deadlines–and also, getting the new car has also made me realize how much stress the old car created unconsciously.

It’s really kind of lovely, really.

Parades start this coming Friday–which is really kind of crazy/scary, you know? I do love me some Mardi Gras, but it’s so exhausting, especially the older I get. Paul and I were talking about Krewe du Vieux last night: “It would be fun to go watch if we weren’t old.” Now I don’t especially think we’re all that old, but I am so old that I don’t want to drive down to the Marigny/Quarter and deal with a crowd of people. Living so close to the St. Charles route has spoiled us, more than anything else; it’s so easy to just walk down to the corner. This coming Friday I’ll have to take the streetcar to work and walk home; next week that will continue with Wednesday, Thursday and Friday parades; Lundi Gras I’ll have to walk both ways because people will start camping out on the neutral ground over the weekend and the streetcars can’t get through. The weather has been gorgeous the last few days; if it’s like this during the parades it will be even lovelier.

Note to self: buy prosecco at Costco. And sippy cups.

The reorganization of the kitchen went extremely well; I just have a couple of drawers and cabinets to finish today before I can relax into my easy chair and read. I should also do the windows in the kitchen; they are filthy and it is beautiful outside. Hmmmm.

Well, let me see what I can do with the cabinets before I get carried away.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

Million Reasons

I overslept this morning.

It happens, you know? I’d intended to get up this morning, swill down some coffee, and then get in the car and drive over to the West Bank to my car dealer to pick up my license plate, and then go make groceries. Now that I’ve slept in, I am thinking, well, I can go get groceries, and then come home and work on the kitchen, and get the license plate one day before work this week.

This, you see, is how it happens. But I am also thinking that my temporary plate is still good until March, you see, so it actually would make sense, efficiency wise, to wait and go one morning this week, make a list of questions for the guy who sold me my car (he’d explained some things about the car to me the morning I bought it, but of course my mind was completely in I just bought a car mode so I retained none of it), and then stop at Sonic (I love Sonic) on my way into the office.

See? Rationalization is totally key to everything.

And ye Gods: next weekend there are parades. Woo-hoo!

Which reminds me, I need to take a before shot of the bead chest before the parades start.

So, I am going to make groceries at some point, but I am also going to work on organizing and redoing my kitchen as well, which includes the freezer–which is slammed full of things because I’ve just been shoving things in there willy-nilly and now every time I open the freezer door shit falls out. (You have no idea how badly I want one of those refrigerators that has the freezer drawer at the bottom; my goal for this year is to get one.) I also am going to work on my filing–which includes my computer filing–as well as working on an essay for Sisters in Crime on being a gay mystery writer. I was supposed to turn it in for their next newsletter, but I simply couldn’t figure out a way to write it that didn’t sound like whining (I don’t sell more because my characters are gay! Waaaaaaah!), which I absolutely abhor and hate. But I am also looking at this short essay as possibly working out as the prologue or intro to a non-fiction book, part a critique of societal homophobia and how that works/affects gay writers, that I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time, and have attempted to start, organize, and think about perhaps a thousand times.

But this past week it finally hit me on how, precisely, to write such a thing, and how to do it in a way where it not only didn’t sound like whining, but could actually make people reading it think, why, yes, that does indeed make sense and I can see why this is a problem.

One would hope, any way.

So, that’s where I am today. I certainly am also hoping to get some quality reading time in as well with Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things.

And I guess I should get started on my day since it is now past noon!

Here’s Taylor Lautner, in honor of his birthday.

Waterloo

So, since I didn’t have to go into the office until later yesterday, I decided to take the morning/early afternoon and read (Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things is soooo good, Constant Reader), did some laundry and the dishes, and then began a new project: cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen cabinets and drawers. This, as always, made me enormously happy, and now the two bottom cabinets on the right side of the stove are now organized, with plenty of room in there for more stuff–should that become necessary–and the cabinets under the sink are now nice and neat and not crammed full of stuff.

It is perhaps wrong how happy this makes me.

And now I am looking forward to doing MORE of this over the weekend. All of the cabinets are not organized properly; there are also undoubtedly many things that can be donated or discarded in all of them, including my kitchen drawers. There certainly must be a better, more efficient way to put the dishes/mugs/bowls/glasses in their cabinets, after all, and I will find it.

It’s weird, really weird, how not having a deadline hanging over my head has made me feel…I don’t know, more relaxed? My stress levels have gone way down, I’m sleeping so much better than I was, and I am so much more relaxed. I can also tell the difference with my mood; things that would have pushed me into a rage or fury or depression with a deadline over my head now get more of “meh, whatever” response from me, which is kind of great. But now, with two weeks of not really writing anything other than blogs and emails behind me, I’m kind of ready to get back to work on writing some things. As I said the other day, the weekend in Alabama helped shake loose some cobwebs about a cozy series idea I’ve had for years that I think I’ll be able to get going on at some point now; I was writing the series Bible the other day and it was coming fast and furious at me. I have two manuscripts to rewrite, of course, and then there are the edits hanging over my head for the last two I turned in, and short stories galore. I may spend this weekend writing nothing; it’s definitely possible, and I want to finish Lori’s book preparatory to reading a cozy or two before going back to King and Koryta; there are also some literary novels (!!!!) I want to read as well.

Not to mention I have literally dozens of comic books on my iPad I need to catch up on.

How I do love to read.

So, perhaps this will be another weekend of catching up around the house on all those things that slide while I am on deadline (i.e. since 2007) as well as maybe toying with some writing, and doing a lot of reading.

Woo-hoo!

And now, back to the spice mines…oh, wait! I have NO SPICE TO MINE. So, here’s a hunk for that.

Thank You for the Music

I have a late night of bar testing tonight, and as such got to sleep in a bit this morning, which was quite lovely. I am having lunch with a dear friend tomorrow (huzzah!), and I don’t really have any errands to run today before I go in to the office. I could, of course, run a few–there’s always something that needs to be done–but I can make a Costco run this weekend, as well as swing by the grocery store. I also have to pick up my license plate from the dealership, but I think I will also postpone that till next week. Plus I don’t have any deadlines, so I don’t have to worry about getting writing done this weekend so…yes, I can just run errands with a clear conscience this weekend and not worry about “when am I going to get my word count done?”

SO lovely, really. (And I may change my mind and run over to the dealership later today on the way to work….but it’s lovely having options.)

I do have some things around the house I need to get caught up–some cabinets need reorganizing and cleaning out; as do some of my kitchen drawers, and there’s always filing. Carnival is looming on the horizon; Krewe de Vieux is this weekend, and from all the reports I’ve heard and things I’ve seen on-line, with its theme of “The Crass Menagerie” they will be taking on the administration in Washington this year in their vulgar, hilarious and satiric fashion. I was reading some of the the descriptions of some of the floats and themes for the marching groups aloud to Paul last night and he replied, “So, when all of the pictures and videos go viral, the White House will declare war on New Orleans Sunday, won’t they?”

I replied, “I guess it depends on what Saturday Night Live does, really.”

I think, though, this morning I am just going to relax and ease into my late night. Drinking coffee, having some breakfast, and curling up in the easy chair with Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things does seem like just the right way for the day to get going, doesn’t it?

I’m also still a bit aglow from the weekend. It’s really so lovely to be around other writers and people who love books and love to read. It also recharges the batteries and feeds the creative muscles. Yesterday between clients I jotted down notes for a cozy mystery series I’ve been wanting to write for years, and could never quite wrap my mind around; oddly enough, after a weekend in Alabama I was able to get it all to click together in my head. Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen, but it was a lovely moment as all those clicks popped into place, you know? That’s always nice.

So, my chair and my book are calling to me, so I will leave you now, Constant Reader, with a hunk to get your day off to a great start.

The Name of the Game

Yesterday we had some heavy weather in New Orleans; the part of the city known as New Orleans East (which was decimated in the post-Katrina flood) was hit by tornadoes. It was, to say the least, kind of eerie. We of course got the severe weather alert texts at the office, and all moved downstairs and away from the glass. I spent five years or so living in Kansas, so I am well acquainted with tornadoes and what to do in case one is coming, but New Orleans East and the North Shore were pretty torn up. There are any number of places on-line to donate; and of course, if you’re local, there are some places where you can drop off supplies or volunteer to help out listed on both NOLA.com and TheAdvocate.com.

Wow, such a weird day. And it was my first day back at work, which required re-orienting myself back to the day job reality from a book weekend. The switch from one life to the other is always a bit disorienting, but I came away from the weekend with some great books to read (Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day; Peaches and Scream by Susan Furlong; Digging Up the Dirt by Miranda James; Stripped Bare by Shannon Baker; Run by Andrew Grant; and The Contractors by Harry Hunsicker. The authors who were there whose books I didn’t buy copies of are on my wish list).

I started reading Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things last night, and it’s quite good so far; I was sucked in almost immediately. I think she won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for this one; I know she was also nominated for an Anthony Award. I got to hang out with Lori a lot over the weekend, and she really made me laugh quite hard. She, Harry, Shannon, and I also made a field trip after the Homewood Library event on Saturday over to the Vulcan statue.

Lori was quick to note he wasn’t wearing pants.

I also came away from the weekend with more of a resolve about writing, the way I always do when I go to a book weekend or a writer’s conference or whatever you want to call those weekends when writers gather to speak to people who love books. I also figured out (finally) how to do the cozy series I’ve always been interested in writing (or trying to write; cozies are a lot harder than people think they are), and I also have some ideas about some other things I want to do. So, it was a big win, over all.

And now, back to the spice mines.

One of Us

On Sunday, a panel I wasn’t on was asked by its moderator if they had ever met and embarrassed themselves in front of one of their literary heroes? I wasn’t on that panel, but had I been, my answer would have been “Yes, I met Stephen King at the Edgar Award banquet a couple of years ago and was a complete gibbering idiot.”

Although I am pretty sure he is used to that by now, it’s something that I still think about, and am embarrassed by, to this very day.

Then again, what DO you say to someone whose work you’ve admired for over forty years? Who inspired, and continues to inspire, you to this very day?

He won the Edgar Award for Best Novel that night for his book Mr. Mercedes. I have to admit I don’t read King the way I did for years; buy it the day it comes out and shut everything out and do nothing, watch nothing, ignore the entire world until I had devoured the book. I still haven’t read 11/22/63, haven’t finished The Dark Tower (have about four books to go in that series), put aside Doctor Sleep and Black House, and not only hadn’t read Mr. Mercedes, but none of the other two books in the Bill Hodges trilogy either.

Bad fan, bad fan.

But I took Mr. Mercedes with me on this trip, saved it for last, and just finished it a little while ago.

Whoa.

Augie Odenkirk had a 1997 Datsun that still ran well in spite of high mileage, but gas was expensive, especially for a man with no job, and City Center was on the far side of town, so he decided to take the last bus of the night. He got off at twenty past eleven with his pack on his back and his rolled up sleeping bag under one arm. He thought he would be glad of the down-filled bag by three A.M. The night was misty and chill.

“Good luck, man,” the driver said as he stepped down, “You ought to get something for just being the first one there.”

Only he wasn’t. When Augie reached the top of the wide, steep drive leading to the big auditorium, he saw a cluster of at least two dozen people already waiting outside the rank of doors, some standing, most sitting. Posts strung with yellow DO NOT CROSS tape had been set up, creating a complicated passage that doubled back on itself, mazelike. Augie was familiar with these from movie theaters and the bank where he was currently overdrawn, and understood it’s purpose: to cram as many people as possible into as small a space as possible.

As he approached the end of what would soon be a conga-line of job applicants, Augie was both amazed and dismayed to see that the woman at the end of the line has a sleeping baby in a Papoose carrier. The baby’s cheeks were flushed with the cold; each exhale came with a faint rattle.

The woman heard Augie’s slightly out-of-breath approach, and turned. She was young and pretty enough, even with the dark circles under her eyes. At her feet was a small quilted carry-case. Augie supposed it was a baby support system.

“Hi,” she said. “Welcome to the Early Birds Club.”

“Hopefully we’ll catch a worm.” He debated, thought what the hell, and stuck out his hand. “August Odenkirk. Augie. I was recently downsized. That’s the twenty-first-century way of saying I got canned.”

The book deserved its Edgar Award. Wow.

One of the things I love the most about Stephen King’s work is how incredibly well he draws characters; he even manages to make the worst of the worst, characters you absolutely hate, understandable.

The prologue to the book is, as you can see above, set in a line for a job fair outside of an unnamed city in Ohio’s civic center. In the relationship between Augie and Janice, the young mother, he immediately creates two characters you feel like you know–the older guy who’s lost his job and is worried about his future; the young struggling single mother who just wants to work so she can provide for herself and her child. These are working class people who are hurting, who are worried, who are willing to do whatever they have to do. But as the morning sun begins to rise, someone driving a Mercedes jumps the curb and deliberately drives into the crowd–the last we see of Augie is him lying down on top of Janice and her baby to try to protect them from the car.

The book is, actually, a taut, fast moving thriller that begins after the prologue; about a duel of wits between retired police detective Bill Hodges (who was in charge of the Mercedes killer investigation) and Mr. Mercedes himself, the killer. The killer is now stalking Bill–divorced, estranged from his only child, now retired and with nothing to do. Bill sometimes takes out his gun and considers eating it…and the killer’s plan is to drive Bill to suicide.

Instead, Bill is reinvigorated upon receipt of a nasty letter from the killer, and so begins a cat-and-mouse game that kept me turning the pages and up way later then I needed to be. Wow; what a great story! And I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series–there were some loose ends there that will be tied up in later books in the trilogy.

VERY recommended.

Does Your Mother Know

It is so wonderful to sleep in your own bed after being away for almost a week. I don’t sleep well anywhere other than my bed, no matter how tired I am, and so last night when I tumbled into my own bed for the first time since the previous Sunday night, I was asleep almost the moment I hit the pillow and slept deeply and well. I feel very well rested this morning, if a little disoriented from traveling, which is always a good thing. And the new car is a rock star.

I have the day off from work today, so I can decompress and run errands and get everything around here back under control; jumping back into the day job today would have been a mistake and I would have been tired the rest of the week, which is never optimum. The house needs tidying and there’s laundry to do as well; and at some point I am retiring to my easy chair in order to finish reading Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. I’d thought I’d be able to finish it this past weekend in Birmingham, but alas–we were all having so much fun I wound up getting back to my room too late to spend some time reading. Thank you to Margaret Fenton and Tammy Lynn for organizing a wonderful books weekend to support two libraries, and thanks to the engaged audience of readers who showed up in both cities. I got to hang out and get to know some acquaintances better, some quality time with good friends, made some new ones, had a lot of laughs, went to visit the Vulcan statue in Birmingham, AND SOLD ALL OF MY BOOKS. Yay! I also feel very energized about writing again, and I (of course) came up with an idea for a new series while there.

I call that a win.

One of the many books I read last week was Last Words by Michael Koryta. I had an ARC from a few years ago (thanks Erin!) that I had not read, and so I decided to take it along with me on the trip to read. I’ve been a huge fan since I read So Cold the River a few years back, and his Those Who Wish Me Dead was one of my absolute favorites books of the year a couple of years ago. He is one of those writers whose books I parcel out to read because I don’t want to be out of new Koryta books, you know? I never want to think, “I’ve read all of his books and will have to wait for him to write a new one”.

But Last Words reminded me again of how great a writer he is, and I am going to have to resist reading everything he’s written over the next few weeks. I may allow myself another, though.

The last words he said to her: “Don’t embarrass me with this shit.”

In later days, months, and years, he will tell everyone who asks, and some who do not, that the last words from his lips to her ears were “I love you.” Sometimes, during sleepless nights, he can almost convince himself that it is true.

But as they walked out of their building and into the harsh Florida sun that September afternoon, Mark Novak didn’t even look his wife in the eye. They were moving fast even though neither of them was running late. It was the way you walked when you were eager to get away from someone.

Great beginning, right? Pulls you right into the story.

Mark Novak is the our main character, but there’s also another point of view character, Ridley Barnes. Ridley isn’t a reliable narrator (it is a third person point of view novel, but the point of view of both characters is so sharp and strong it may as well be first person). Mark and his wife worked for Innocence Incorporated, a non-profit legal firm that investigates death row cases to prove the innocence of the convicted (a not-so-well disguised fictional rendition of The Innocence Project). His wife was an attorney, Mark is an investigator. When they separated that hot summer day, she was off to interview a psychic who’d contacted them about one of their cases; he thought it was a waste of time and they argued about her going. SHe went off to the interview and he headed for the beach house they’d rented for a vacation…and time passes and she never shows up. Koryta does an excellent job of walking the reader through the stages of this sort of thing: the annoyance that she’s late; the anger because he hadn’t wanted her to go in the first place; and finally, worry and fear that something has happened. Something did happen: eventually, state troopers show up to let him know that her car was found in a ditch and she was dead; shot in the head.

Flash forward a couple of years, and Michael is still reeling from his wife’s death, and has done some things that have put his job in jeopardy. His boss has sent him up to Indiana to look into a murder case where there was no conviction or even a trial; Ridley Barnes was the chief suspect in the death, but there was never enough evidence against him for a trial or even an arrest. Barnes has written to them, and wants them to look into the case; to prove once and for all whether he did or did not commit the murder.

A young girl and her boyfriend had gone into the Trapdoor Cave and gotten separated. After days of searching, Barnes–who was an expert caver and an expert on the mine–separated off from the search party and eventually came out carrying her dead body. Michael is convinced the case is a waste of time–and it’s winter in Indiana. But once he gets to the small town and starts asking questions, strange things start happening, and what he remembers from his first day of questioning people is completely different from other people who witnessed the events report back. Has Michael lost his mind, or is everyone in the town part of a conspiracy to make him look crazy? And Barnes himself, who claims he doesn’t remember what happened down in the cave when he found the girl, often goes into the cave (or others in the area) to get away from people and calm himself. He believes that the cave is sentient and speaks to him; and there’s also a ‘dark man’ down there.

Two of my biggest fears are the dark and tight spaces (I have severe claustrophobia), and there are scenes when Barnes is working his way through the cave where I literally got so creeped out I had to put the book down, from the descriptions of the dark and the tight spaces. Barnes also has to get back into the cave with another search party when Michael is kidnapped and left alone in the cave in his underwear, in the cold and the tight and the dark with no idea where he is. That entire sequence is so chilling I thought I would have nightmares.

But as the book rushes along to its final solution, the pacing is exceptional, the writing vivid and exceptional, and the characterizations strong and great; reminding me again why Michael Koryta is one of my favorite writers. His most recent books is a sequel to Last Words, and I am really looking forward to getting into it–but I am resisting temptation as I have already selected the next book I am going to read.

Highly recommended.