Category: writing

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

So I turned in the essay yesterday, and now I have nothing hanging over my head as far as deadlines are concerned, which is kind of lovely. Oh, sure, there are edits and revisions that are bound to come; and then page proofs and all of that, but this is the first time Ive not had a deadline in I don’t know how long. Seriously. I am visiting my family this week preparatory to doing Murder in the Magic City this weekend in Birmingham and Wetumpka, so I may or may not be around much until I am safely back in New Orleans Sunday evening.

The drive took about eleven hours–maybe about ten minutes over, and considering that Google Maps said the drive would take eleven and a half hours, I think I made great time, stopping a total of three times (twice for gas, once to eat). The car handles wonderfully, and the ride is very smooth as well. All in all, I am very pleased with my purchase–which, given how much I spent (and will spend) on it, is an enormous relief. It would be terrible to spend that kind of money on something and not like it, you know?

As I was packing and going through my bookcase, looking for books to bring along to read on the trip, I realized, much to my shock, that my bookcase contained a Laura Lippman novel I hadn’t read; it must have come out in a year when I was judging a book award or something, and so it went onto the shelf and by the time I was able to read again, she must have published another book–or something like that. It is inexplicable to me, otherwise. But what a find! Here I was thinking I was going to have do without a new Lippman to read until 2018.

They throw him out when he falls off the barstool. Although it wasn’t a fall, exactly, he only stumbled a bit coming back from the bathroom and lurched against the bar, yet they said he had to leave because he was drunk. He finds that hilarious. He’s too drunk to be in a bar. He makes a joke about a fall from grace. At least, he thinks he does. Maybe the joke was one of those things that stays in his head, for his personal amusement. For a long time, for fucking forever, Gordon’s mind has been split by a thick, dark line, a line that divides and defines his life as well. What stays in, what is allowed out. But when he drinks, the line gets a little fuzzy.

Which might be why he drinks. Drank. Drinks. No, drank. He’s done. Again. One night, one slip. He didn’t even enjoy it that much.

“You driving?” the bartender asks, piloting him to the door, his arm firm yet kind around Gordon’s waist.

Laura Lippman is one of those authors who never disappoints. I always say that the best authors are the ones who write books that make me think, make me reevaluate how I write and create, and make me want to do better. One of the reasons I decided to go off contract and no longer have deadlines was a sense that I was rushing too much; that my work might be better if I wasn’t pressured to do it in a set amount of time, and that I could explore doing different things if I had more time to polish and rewrite and think about the book at hand; and part of the reason I think that way is because of reading amazing writers like Lippman.

The Most Dangerous Thing is a fine novel, and while there is a core crime at the heart of the book, Lippman uses that crime to explore her characters, and how that crime affects and changes the course of their lives, how they interact with each other and how people can become locked into perceptions, not only of themselves but of other people–and how reality can be so very different from what you perceive it to be.

HIGHLY recommended.

Voulez-Vous

A final push today and the essay will be finished. Huzzah! I also need to pack today and prepare for the trip; I will also have to go to bed early as I want to get an early start tomorrow. The drive is about eleven and a half hours, not including stops; with stops, figure maybe twelve to thirteen. (The times are estimates, of course; I’ve made the drive in less than eleven hours before and it’s also taken longer.) I also need to clean out my email inbox before I go; make sure there’s nothing left hanging that needs to be taken care of, and then drug myself early into a nice, restful sleep (I really do need to go to bed around ten tonight, which is a minimum of an hour and a half earlier than I usually do.) I stocked the larder yesterday, have paid all of the bills that fall due before I get paid again, and other than the essay and packing, I’m pretty much done. If I can knock the essay out early, I can then go ahead and do some straightening/cleaning (I cleaned out the refrigerator yesterday after getting groceries, in an attempt to get everything to fit in there).

I did finish reading Gore Vidal’s Empire yesterday, and frankly, wasn’t all that impressed with it. Oh, Vidal was a great writer; he knew how to use words and string them together, but at least in this book he didn’t create great characters; his characters are emotionless ciphers that don’t engage the reader. Vidal was an incredibly smart man, and a very great thinker; no one can take that away from him. But just because he was smart didn’t mean that he was right, you know? Often as I read the book, I would think to myself, man, he really hated this country; and then I would also find myself wondering, or is my reaction to his cynicism about this country a part of my own brainwashing?

As a child, going through public school, watching television with my parents, I was instilled with values and beliefs, some of which I have come to not only question but violently disagree with as I developed, through reading, my own experiences, and my own witnessing, my OWN set of core values and beliefs. Periodically I do catch myself thinking something automatically and not critically; and then I have to examine the automatic thought, figure out where is came from, and whether it actually has any value, any basis in reality and fact. Much of what I learned as a child has been, in fact, unlearned as an adult.

I’m not sure I agree with Vidal’s analysis of our country and its history. To be fair to Vidal, I’ve not read his other fictionalized histories: Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Washington D.C., Hollywood, and The Golden Age; nor have I read his essays and nonfiction on the subject. I’d like to read Burr at some point; just to get some better idea of Vidal’s thoughts about American history and what was true. Obviously, Aaron Burr is not a hero of American history, and yet Vidal seemed to think he was; I am curious to revisit this. I have always been taught that Burr was a villain; and in the interest of confronting things I was taught to decide on their veracity and validity, it may be necessary to reexamine that period of time in American history (which is why I am also interested in reading Howard Zinn’s “People’s Histories”).

Interesting thoughts on a Sunday morning with an essay to write about writing crime fiction in New Orleans.

But the book I have selected as my new bathroom read is a book called Royal Renegades by Linda Porter. It is not published in the US, only the UK; I ordered my copy through Book Depository, and I don’t recall how I heard about the book in the first place. The focus of the book, which is nonfiction history, is on the marriage of King Charles I and Henrietta Maria, and the lives of their children. I have some knowledge of Stuart England, but am not as well-informed as I would like to be, particularly on the 1620’s (which is a period of particular interest to me for a secret project, which I have been trying to research for years, without a great deal of success). This particular royal marriage–which, of course, led to disaster for the Stuart dynasty; with repercussions well into the eighteenth century, only ending with the final defeat of the Stuarts in the 1740’s–started a string of Stuart marriages in which Protestant English kings married Catholic princesses and made them Queens: two of their sons not only became king but also took Catholic wives; their second son even went so far as to convert (and this led to his deposal). Henrietta Maria was not only French, but her mother was Marie de Medici–yes, so her lineage went back to Italy and Florence and the amazing Medici family, reestablishing Medici blood into the French royal lineage after it died out in 1589. This was also the period of Cardinal Richelieu, one of my favorite historical statesmen; the Thirty Years’ War in Germany; and the further colonization of North America by the European powers. Anyway, this history begins with the first meeting between King Charles I and his French wife; she would be the last French-born Queen of England, and she was, indeed, the first French-born Queen in nearly two hundred years, after centuries where a French queen was the norm, not the exception. I’m looking forward to it.

Yesterday evening, after chores were completed and work was done for the day, Paul and I watched the European Figure Skating Championships on our NBC Sports Apple TV app. we are both huge fans of the two-time defending world champion French ice dancing team of Guillaume Cizeron and Gabriella Papadokis; their performances are breathtakingly beautiful.

And so are they; Guillaume also, apparently, works as a model.

You can see why. I’ve never understood why American male figure skaters and male gymnasts don’t get contracts as underwear models, at the very least; those bodies are en pointe.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Chiquitita

Ah, the South.

Constant Reader knows I am a child of the South; my childhood is filled with memories of summers spent at my grandmother’s in the country in Alabama: picking wild blackberries in the woods, orangish-brown creeks and rivers, fields of cotton and corn, towering pines trees and hollows filled with kudzu. I remember the heavy thick humidity of lazy afternoons, the four o’clock bushes blossoming every day at four, the round rocks in the gravel roads, the way darkness pressed against the screens at night with moths and other insects fluttering their wings trying to get to the light, lightning bugs floating in the air glowing yellowish-green as the sun went down, the sound of rain beating out a rhythm on a tin roof. Next week I am off to visit my parents, and will be driving through the south; through Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and Tennessee. I used to get creative on those long drives, particularly through Alabama, where exit signs and Birmingham itself trigger a lot of memories, things I’ve forgotten, and make me itch to sit down and start writing. I’ve written a lot about Alabama, but have only published two of my Alabama stories (“Son of a Preacher Man” and “Small Town Boy”), as well as one book, Dark Tide. But even though my main character in the novel was from upstate Alabama, it was set down on the Alabama Gulf Coast–which is really not much different than the Mississippi or Florida panhandle coasts.

I really do think the next book will be an Alabama one.

If you’re not familiar with Ace Atkins, you need to go buy his books NOW. He wrote a wonderful New Orleans-based series, featuring music history professor Nick Travers, some terrific stand-alones, and now is writing the Robert Parker Spenser novels in addition to a great series set in upstate Mississippi featuring former Ranger Quinn Colson. I am several volumes behind on that series–I am taking one with me next week–and they are truly fantastic; the first two were back-to-back finalists for the Best Novel Edgar award. Yesterday, I read his contribution to Mississippi Noir, “Combustible.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I said.

“Hell you shouldn’t,” Shelby said. “You fucking owe me.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you want to meet Lyndsay Redwine?”

“Ever since I saw her in a bikini at the city pool.”

“Then shut the fuck up and drive.”

Shelby was fourteen. And she talked like that.

This delightfully dark little story, which plays with point of view (not easy to do in a short story), is incredibly well done. Atkins has an eye for the rural South; he makes it easy to imagine and visualize the area, the characters, and the situations they find themselves in. A lot of this is done through voice, again not easy to do, and the story, as the best ones often do, inspired me to want to write something.

I do recommend it, and so far Mississippi Noir is knocking my socks off.

And now back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk to start your weekend off:

S. O. S.

I was incredibly tired all day yesterday; so much so that I’m surprised my eyes weren’t crossed most of the day. This is to alert you, Constant Reader, that I did not read another short story yesterday, and so have nothing to offer you this morning. But to give myself a little bit of credit, I’ve done much better this Short Story Month than I have in previous years, so that’s something. And in reading these stories, I’ve also learned a lot about the craft and art of writing short stories, and I’ve also had to think about that as well–so this is the first time Short Story Month has actually had the desired effect on me. So I am counting this as a win, no matter what others might think. So there.

I depart on Monday for a trip to the frigid North to visit my family, and then on the way back, as I previously mentioned, I am doing the Murder in the Magic City weekend event in Birmingham and Wetumpka before returning home to New Orleans a week from this Sunday. I don’t have anything pressing to work on while I am gone–still, taking the MacBook Air just in case something comes up (despite hating to work on it), but hoping nothing will. I hope to do some reading–I’m taking four books with me; including an Ace Atkins and a Michael Koryta and a Laura Lippman–and I also have a lot of comic books on my iPad to catch up on as well.

I also think I am starting to come out of the post-book(s) malaise a bit; I woke up this morning with a great idea about the essay I need to write, and am very hopeful that I can bang that out today and tomorrow so I can not worry about it this weekend. Huzzah!

I am also going to try to read Ace Atkins’ story in Mississippi Noir for tomorrow.

And on that note, I am going to get my day going. I am going to run some errands before going into the office–another late night of bar testing looms–and then after tomorrow, my vacation starts, so yay!

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader.

Money Money Money

I made my first car payment today, and despite everything I’ve done with the car since going to the dealership–registering it, getting a brake tag, insuring it, driving it, learning how to use the functions, teaching myself how the bluetooth works, etc.–now it seems like it’s really mine; even writing the check for the down payment didn’t make it seem real, you know? But authorizing the electronic transfer of the first payment from my bank to the finance company–the first payment that’s coming from my paycheck–has made it all too real.

I worked on my short story “Quiet Desperation” and my essay yesterday, without much success; writing anything this week has turned into a horrible chore. I don’t know if that’s because of the usual post-book malaise I usually go through–and I wrote so much last year I never really was able to allow the malaise to play out; or rather, I did and then was forced to do a lot to meet deadlines. I don’t know; I don’t know why I can’t just sit down every day and spend two hours of dedicated time to writing. Yet it never seems to work out that way for me; and I just can’t seem to make myself do it. I can usually, on a good day, write anywhere from three to five thousand words in two hours or so; so if I did it every day imagine what I could get done in a year. But…yet…I don’t know why I can’t ever make myself do these things that would, ultimately, make my life so much easier.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Ah, well.

So, I read another short story yesterday, yet another one from The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, edited by Laura Lippman. There are some terrific authors in that collection, as well as some whose work I have not read before. I was going to read the James Lee Burke story, but then decided to read one by someone whose work I’ve not read before. I chose Ed Kurtz’ “A Good Marriage,” because I have a copy of his novel The Rib From Which I Remake The World in my TBR pile, and thought I should get started reading his work, since I probably won’t get around to the novel for a while.

Wow. What a chilling, yet great, story.

We were at the Allens’ anniversary party, which I hated, and Hannah hated it too. It was not as though we didn’t like the Allens–Joe Allen, anyway, a big, fat, affable bear of a man–it was just all so tacky. I was of the opinion that notifying other people of one’s forthcoming birthday was vulgar enough (don’t forget my gift!), but an anniversary always seemed like a private thing, a husband/wife thing, nothing to do with me or my debit card. Joe could buy his wife lunar real estate for all I cared, just leave me out of it. As far as I knew, Hannah felt the same way.

But Joe insisted, and his wife made sure to send us their wish list by e-mail, so with twin engine grumbling we went and presented them with the Waterford vase they wanted. She cooed hungrily over the damn thing and he nodded with appreciation. There were a lot of people there. The gifts were piling up in the corner by the fireplace. Finally, after the inimitable Mrs. Allen opened their (her) last gift, the assemblage was freed to drink, drink, and be drunk. A trio of hulky guys whose guts were threatening the structural integrity of their shirts swarmed the keg. Hannah and I opted for the crappy boxed wine.

God, I’ve been to that party.

“A Good Marriage” is a terrific story. Kurtz paces it nicely, building up steam as we soon learn that ‘good’ is really dependent on, to quote Obi-wan, “your point of view.” The story isn’t about the party at all; but the party is what kicks off the story, and there’s an incident there–mild, nothing, innocuous–which triggers what happens in the rest. And that nothing incident triggers such a strong reaction that the reader begins to understan, subtly, that things are not as they appear in this tale of marriage; and that in fact this ‘good marriage’ is anything but…and in fact, it’s quite horrifying. He also flips the script; what’s wrong in this marriage isn’t what usually is wrong in this type of marriage. Chilling, and very well-done.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk for you.

The Winner Takes It All

I wrote over three hundred thousand words’ worth of novels last year.

That is only the final word counts on the books I wrote last year. That doesn’t count any words written and discarded; essays; this blog; short stories; or even emails.

I realized this yesterday afternoon when I got home from work; I walked into the Lost Apartment and saw that the scaffolding was finally down (I’d forgotten how much space there actually is in the living room; no worries, it still needs to be painted though); this startled me so much that I just put the groceries away and decided to sit down and read for a while. I still haven’t finished reading the Pelecanos novel; not that it isn’t good–it most definitely is–but I am trying to read a short story a day and that, of course, has cut into my reading time. I plan to finish reading that this weekend, though–it’s not one of the books I am taking on vacation with me so it must be finished before I go.

But realizing that last year I probably wrote close to half a million words (at least) was a bit of a shock; one that I am still reeling from this morning.

So, when it was time to retire to my easy chair, I looked at the pile of anthologies, single author collections, and magazines for my short story reading…and had that weird feeling of…well, nothing there moved me. The only thing I wanted to read was another story from Laura Lippman’s Hardly Knew Her, and having just done one of her stories I wasn’t sure that I should do another. I looked through my bookcases and a book I’d forgotten about’s spine screamed at me from the shelf: The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, edited by Laura Lippman. I grabbed it and retired to my chair, opened it up…and giggled.

The first story was by Megan Abbott.

As I curled up and started to read, I smiled to myself in cat-like satisfaction. Abbott AND Lippman, I thought to myself as I started to read, does life get better than this?

The story was originally published in the Dangerous Women Volume One anthology, edited by George R. R.Martin and Gardner Dozoir in 2014.

He waited in the car. He had parked under one of the big banks of lights. No one wanted to park there. He could guess why. Three vehicles over, he saw a woman’s back pressed against a window, her hair shaking. Once, she turned her head and he almost saw her face, the blue of her teeth as she smiled.

Fifteen minutes went by before Lorie came stumbling across the parking lot, heels clacking.

He had been working late and didn’t even know she wasn’t home until he got there. When she finally picked up her cell, she told him where she was, a bar he’d never heard of, a part of town he didn’t know.

“I just wanted some noise and people,” she had explained. “I didn’t mean anything.”

He asked if she wanted him to come get her.

“Okay,” she said.

On the ride home, she was doing the laughing-crying thing she’d been doing lately. He wanted to help her but didn’t know how. It reminded him of the kind of girls he used to date in high school. The ones who wrote in ink all over their hands and cut themselves in the bathroom stalls at school.

Almost everyone who writes novels about crime–well, probably every author, my familiarity runs to crime writers–always get asked in interviews where they get their ideas from. I can’t speak for other crime writers, but I know I often get inspired by the news. I’ll see a story, either in the paper, on-line, or on the news, and will think to myself, “Hmmm. I wonder what really is going on there?” True crime is often much more twisty and fascinating than actual fictional crime. I sometimes do think that I read crime, and write about it, in order to understand it better, make some sort of sense out of it because MY mind doesn’t work that way. Who are these people, where did they come from, what made them the way they are?

Megan Abbott’s wonderful story from this collection, “My Heart is Either Broken”, is about a Casey Anthony-type mother whose daughter is stolen from her from a coffee shop. She asked a stranger to watch the little girl while she ran to the bathroom; when she came back the stranger and her daughter were gone. No one believes that she didn’t kill and dispose of her child; her behavior doesn’t seem normal for a grieving mother, nor does she seem to particularly miss the child that much–at least in the public eye. She is one of those people–I’m one of them–who reacts to stress or tension or nervousness by smiling; which of course gets her reamed in the court of public opinion and in the press. The story is told from the point of view of her husband, the baby’s father…who wants to believe his wife, desperately wants to believe the woman he married couldn’t have killed their child…but the mounting evidence is making him doubt her, and hate himself for doing so. The story is genius, really; in conception and execution. The end is a real punch in the mouth, too.

And where is the single-author collection of Megan Abbott short stories?

And now, back to the spice mines.

I Have a Dream

This weekend–the first in I don’t remember how long where I didn’t have a horrible deadline for a book hanging over my head–has been enormously relaxing and peaceful. The US Figure Skating Championships are going on, and so is the Australian Open, so Paul is on a total sports overload. I greatly enjoyed seeing the pictures and posts all over social media and the news about the Women’s Marches all over the world, and am extremely proud of all my friends who participated.

It gave me hope.

Ironically, having a free weekend with no book deadline has me feeling enormously guilty for doing nothing. WHY CAN’T I EVER JUST RELAX? Madness, seriously. But my kitchen is a mess, and there’s a load of laundry I need to fluff in the dryer–it’s been there since Friday morning–and I kind of would like to work on my cabinets and filing some. Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but i just am not comfortable not doing anything. I hate that.

Okay, so I took a break and cleaned out the top drawer of the filing cabinet (huzzah!), did the dishes, put yesterday’s away, and did a load of laundry, currently drying. I also curled up in my easy chair with Scooter and read Megan Abbott’s Edgar nominated short story, “Oxford Girl,” and Laura Lippman’s “Pony Girl.”

Wow.

I have been an advocate for women crime writers for a very long time, and will continue shouting to the rooftops about the amazing women writers of our time even after my voice has gone hoarse and my throat hurts. These two examples from two of the best writers of our time, bar none, regardless of genre, are pristine in their beauty and delicious in their darkness.

Megan’s story is from Mississippi Noir, edited by Tom Franklin, and is part of Akashic’s amazing City/Place Noir series. If you’re a fan of great writing and stories that will punch you in the face before reaching inside your body and squeezing your heart until you wince, you really need to check out these books.

Two a.m., you slid one of your Kappa Sig T-shirts over my head, fluorescent green XXL with a bleach stain on the right shoulder blade, soft and smelling like old sheets.

I feigned sleep, your big brother Keith snoring lustily across the room, and you, arms clutched about me until the sun started to squeak behind the Rebels pennant across the window. Watching the hump of your Adam’s apple, I tried to will you to wake up.

But I couldn’t wait forever, due for first shift at the Inn. Who else would stir those big tanks of grits for the game-weekend early arrivals, parents and grandparents, all manner of snowy-haired alumni in searing red swarming into the cafe for their continental-plus, six thirty sharp?

God, what a beginning.

This story, about an ill-fated romance between a sorority girl (Chi Omega) and a fraternity boy (Kappa Sigma), hits on every cylinder. The best writers–and Abbott definitely counts in that number–manage to layer their work with unsuspected subtleties and subtexts that may not be immediately obvious, but resonate nonetheless and continue to do so once you’ve finished reading it. Abbott takes a traditional, tired trope–pointless college hook-up that means more to the girl than the guy, turns into a relationship that means more to the girl than the girl, oops she’s pregnant–and, like the master she is, turns it inside out and makes it fresh and new again. She managed to do, in a short story, what Theodore Dreiser took a thousand pages to do with An American Tragedy, and she does it with minimal language, well-chosen words that, in combination with her other words, sing like an aria. And so real–this college noir tragedy was so real it flashed me back to my own college fraternity days, so long long ago. Wow.

Laura Lippman’s “Pony Girl” was originally published in New Orleans Noir, which Constant Reader should remember also included a story by our own Gregalicious. I read the story back when the book came out ten (!) years ago, but revisited it for Short Story Month since it was included in her collection Hardly Knew Her…and it’s just as chilling as I remembered it.

She was looking for trouble and she was definitely going to find it. What was the girl thinking when she got dressed this morning? When she decided–days, weeks maybe even months ago–that this was how she wanted to go out on Mardi Gras day? And not just out, but all the way up to the Interstate and Ernie K-Doe’s, where this kind of costume didn’t play. There were skeletons and Mardi Gras Indians and baby dolls, but it wasn’t a place where you saw a lot of people going for sexy or clever. That kind of thing was for back in the Quarter, maybe outside Cafe Brasil. It’s hard to find a line to cross on Mardi Gras day, much less cross it, but this girl had gone and done it. In all my years–I was nineteen then, but a hard nineteen–I’d seen only one more disturbing sight on a Mardi Gras day and that was a white boy who too a Magic Marker, a thick one, and stuck it through a piercing in his earlobe. Nothing more to his costume than that, a Magic Marker through his ear, street clothes, and a wild gaze. Even in the middle of a crowd, people granted him some distance, let me tell you.

Another great opening! The story itself, which seems simple on its face, a girl dressed incredibly provocatively on Fat Tuesday and going into a bar with a friend which puts her in danger of being sexually assaulting, and calling attention to herself over and over again, is yet filled with twists and turns and surprises. As the story begins and gains momentum, there is a very strong undercurrent of slut-shaming to it, which kind of surprised me, coming from Lippman; but then again, she is also telling the story from the point of view of a nineteen year old male…so in order for the voice to work he has to be real. And as the story gets going, as the ‘uh oh, she’s going to get raped or assaulted or something’–she masterfully flips the script and the story takes a turn for the macabre. Genius.

And in honor of this terrific Mardi Gras story, here are some hot guys on Fat Tuesday.

Super Trouper

I was rather tired yesterday, and as such didn’t get to read a story for today. My apologies, Constant Reader; I shall try to make it up to you by reading two for today. (One of them will be Megan Abbott’s Edgar nominated “Oxford Girl,” from Mississippi Noir, and I may read another Laura Lippman short story. I feel the need for comfort reading today, and there is nothing so comforting than reading brilliant authors at the top of their form.)

I am starting to recover from the hangover of having finished a book, coupled with the stress of buying a new car. I still haven’t quite settled into the car yet; one of the goals for this weekend is to read the owner’s manual and see how everything in the car works. It rides lovely, though, and I swing from exhilarated to stressed about it by the moment. But this is the first weekend in months where I don’t have book-writing stress to worry about, and can fully relax and let myself readjust to what passes for normal around the Lost Apartment. I’m also going to reorganize the kitchen cabinets this weekend, and try to get my filing cabinet cleared out; there’s stuff in there I no longer need, duplicate files, etc., and it’s NOT ALPHABETIZED. I also have an essay to work on, which I am struggling with, but now that I can actually devote myself to it fully, the words should flow.

And week after next, I’m on vacation–going to visit my parents before driving back down to Birmingham for the Murder in the Magic City event–and then it’s Carnival time. Fat Tuesday is late this year; February 28th, which means the weather should be lovely.

I’ve managed to drop about five pounds since the new year began, simply by exercising healthier eating choices more regularly (I’ve reluctantly given up on my beloved Cheese Puffs and chips) and that has already made a difference. Getting to the gym twice more a week rather than the once I am already doing should also be helpful, and now that the book is done and the car is bought, I am hoping to start making that a thing beginning this weekend. A little bit of cardio, a little bit of weights, and a whole lot of stretching. I also am going to start getting massages, at least one a month with a goal being twice–it really does make a difference; the massage I got in Las Vegas last spring made me feel better for almost an entire month. Self-care is going to become a priority for me this year. I’m getting too old NOT to care, anymore.

And with that, I will say adieu for the day. Here’s a hunk to get your weekend off to a good start:

Mamma Mia

I got my brake tag Tuesday afternoon (FINALLY) and so now my car is at long last legal; six days after I bought it and drove it home from the dealership. Woo-hoo! I also bought one for two years, which I didn’t think you could do. Ah, well. There you go. I’ve also had a few almost panic-attacks over the last few days: a new car? Financing? What were you thinking how the hell are you going to pay for this what happens if this happens or this happens and how are you going to handle this and what if someone hits it/scratches it/steals it/vandalizes it and so on. I also panic when I am stopped at a traffic light and I see a car coming up very fast behind me.

Sigh. It ain’t easy being a Gregalicious.

So, I rewarded myself after getting my brake tag by curling up in my easy chair with the delightful Laura Lippman’s short story collection, Hardly Knew Her, and read the first story, “The Crack Cocaine Diet.” Originally published in The Cocaine Chronicles, in 2005, this is a wonderful wonderful story.

I had just broken up with Brandon and Molly had just broken up with Keith, so we needed new dresses to go to this party where we both knew they were going to be. But before we could buy the dresses, we needed to lose weight because we had to look fabulous, kiss-my-ass-fuck-you fabulous. Kiss-my-ass-fuck-you-and-your-dick-is-really-tiny fabulous. Because, after all, Brandon and Keith were going to be at this party, and if we couldn’t get new boyfriends in less than eight days, we could at least go down a dress size and look so good that Brandon and Keith and everybody else in the immediate vicinity would wonder how they ever let us go. I mean, yes, technically, they broke up with yes, but we had been thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons. (Pro: they spent money on us. Con: they were childish. Pro: we had them. Con: tiny dicks, see above.) See, we were being methodical and they were just all impulsive, the way guys are. That would be another con–poor impulse control. Me, I never do anything without thinking it through very carefully. Anyway, I’m not sure what went down with Molly and Keith, but Brandon said if he wanted to be nagged all the time, he’d move back in with his mother, and I said, “Well, given that she still does your laundry and makes you food, it’s not as if you really moved out,” and that was that. No big loss.

Isn’t that opening extraordinary?

Laura Lippman has long been one of my favorite writers, and every novel/short story I read from her is a revelation; every time I read something from her, I am always amazed. Reading her work is humbling for me, and yet also inspires me and pushes me to work harder, be more creative and to think differently about my own work. The way she can juggle an incredible, long-running series with powerful, creative and smart stand-alones is really a master class in how to build a successful career as an author.

This story, though.

When I wrote my first noir story years ago, the anthology editor’s instructions were simply to come up with my own definition of noir and write a story that fits that definition. For me, the definition was ‘the endless nightmare–someone innocuously makes a bad decision and things just keep getting worse, and the decisions made also get worse–as the choices are between bad and bad.” That story was “Annunciation Shotgun” (one of my favorites), but years later I heard Laura on a panel define noir as “dreamers become schemers,” which is a better definition. And boy does this story fit both definitions. Our main character and her friend made a bad decision–‘hey, we need to look hot at this part our exes will be at, so let’s do a lot of coke and lose weight’–which then leads them down a path that gets darker and darker and darker. The stakes continue to rise with each decision, with each new situation, and the surprises and twists come like machine gunfire. God, what a story. And I sure as hell didn’t see that ending coming.

Bravo!

Here’s a hottie for the day:

Take a Chance on Me

And it’s done. I turned the manuscript of The Book That Would Never Be Finished last night in to my editor, and now all I have to do is write an essay due by the end of the month whilst I wait on edits on three, count ’em, three, manuscripts. Huzzah! I cannot even begin to express to you, Constant Reader, how absolutely delightful it is to be finished with that. I am torn as to whether it is any good or not–like I am whenever I turn in a manuscript–maybe someday that sense of being an absolute phony who’s managed to fool people into thinking I am a writer will go away…and yet, over thirty books in print later, not so much.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Someday. I keep telling myself that someday I will be more confident about my writing.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I did finish reading Harlan Ellison’s “Grail” last night, and enjoyed it. It’s a very good story; I don’t think it has the emotional impact of his best stories–then again, maybe if I’d had the time to read it all the way through in one sitting, it might have–but it’s quite enjoyable.

Years later, when he was well into young adulthood, Christopher Caperton write about it in the journal he had begun to keep when he turned twenty-one. The entry had everything to do with the incident, though he had totally forgotten it.

What he wrote was this: The great tragedy of my life is that in my search for the Holy Grail everyone calls True Love, I see myself as Zorro, a romantic and mysterious highwayman–and the women I desire see me as Porky Pig.

The incident lost to memory that informed his observation had taken place fourteen years earlier, in 1953 when he was thirteen years old.

During a Halloween party from which chaperoning adults had been banished, it was suggested that the boys and girls play a kissing game called “flashlight.” All the lights were turned off, everyone paired up, and one couple held a flashlight. If you were caught kissing when the flashlight was turned on you, then it became your turn to hold and flash while others had free rein to neck and fondle in the dark.

Aside: does anyone still say ‘neck/necking’ in reference to making out?

“Grail” is just that; Christopher spends the rest of his life looking for the holiest of Holy Grails, True Love–which isn’t, as one might think, about finding the right person, but is actually a thing, an object; he traces it and spends his entire life on the quest for it. It’s an allegory of sorts, but as always, Ellison’s writing and characterization is superb. I do recommend this story; it’s in his collection Stalking the Nightmare.

I also realized last night, in my excited frenzy about finishing the book, that I actually have Laura Lippman’s short story collection, Hardly Knew Her, and even better, I have not read it (although I’ve read some of the stories already, in other collections), and I literally rubbed my hands together in glee. I will be reading one of those stories today, to discuss tomorrow.

Life is good.

And in honor of the quest for True Love depicted in “Grail”, here’s a sexy Cupid for you.