Category: writing

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Well, I finished the outline yesterday and am actually feeling pretty good about it. As I finished outlining the last chapters, I began to see with a much greater clarity what the problems with the manuscript were, the changes that needed to be made to it, and what would, in fact, make it a much stronger book than what I originally wrote. It’s going to require a lot of work to fix it, frankly–more than I would have preferred–but hopefully it will turn out to be exactly what I wanted it to be.

And that’s a good thing.

Yesterday was one of those days where I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked; I just felt off center and off-balance for most of the day. I’m not sure why that was; one of those eternal mysteries, I suppose. I did have some trouble sleeping last night as well, which sucked because I have a ten hour day of work today including bar testing tonight. Ah, well, I should sleep well tonight, one would think.

We watched the third episode of The Handmaid’s Tale last night, which continues to chill and disturb me. It is so incredibly well done,  and while the men are repugnant, the absolute most chilling characters to me are the collaborationist women. Atwood’s novel was such genius, really, and I love how the show is taking the time to fill in all of the backstories and develop the characters even more so than she did. The not-knowing in her book was particularly chilling, but I think the show is making it a much richer, complex tale–which is also necessary for something that is visual rather than simply read. I am thinking I need to find my copy and read it again.

We also watched a documentary about H. H. Holmes, billed as America’s first serial killer–although I would posit the Benders in Kansas were the first. I first knew of Holmes because Robert Bloch wrote a fictionalized account of his ‘murder castle’ that I read called American Gothic. (I love Bloch, and went through a period where I read all of his work I could get my hands on; Psycho is still one of my favorite crime novels) The documentary was very well done, but all I could think about while I watched was the Benders and wondering whether there were any books about them. I’ve wanted to write about them ever since I first heard about them, when I was a teenager living in Kansas, but am not sure if I want to do it as a historical crime novel, or as horror….or both. Someday!

I’m almost finished with Cleopatra’s Shadows, which I am sort of enjoying, but wish I was enjoying more. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, because I am enjoying it, but I only have about sixty pages to go, and I will be curious to see how the author deals with the inevitable (I mean, it’s historical fiction, I know what happens) end.

I’m having lunch with a friend whom I haven’t seen in years today before work, which should be a rather pleasant experience. It’s always lovely to catch up with friends.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Here’s a Tuesday morning hunk for you, Constant Reader:

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The Unicorn

Monday morning, and not only a new week but a new month. May, of course, is when the Formosan termites swarm; usually they join us sometime around Mother’s Day, but I saw people posting about them last night on Facebook. Maybe it was the extremely mild winter; hopefully, the early start means an early end. It really does seem like one of the plagues of Egypt when the termites are swarming; our first experience with it back in May 1997 was absolutely horrifying. Even typing about it now makes my skin crawl. We’ve been relatively lucky over the past fourteen years or so; living in the back as we do, we only get a few inside the house and once they do, off go the lights and we light candles.

It really surprises me that there really isn’t anything that can be done with these things.

Last night, we watched the documentary Tower, which is about the first mass shooting at  a school, and another episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, which continues to be riveting. I vaguely remember the events of Tower;  I was almost five when Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower and started shooting people. It really did seem as though the world, and the country, was going crazy. Only a few weeks before the Texas Tower murders, Richard Speck raped and murdered eight nursing students in Chicago, and in retrospect, my mother’s paranoia about our safety–a young woman with two small children and a husband from the rural South living in the big city–really isn’t so surprising. There were also some horrible riots in Chicago in 1996, and of course, the riots in the wake of Dr. King’s murder in 1968 were still to come (in the wake of those riots, some of my father’s relatives who lived in Chicago packed up and moved back to Alabama). The Democratic National Convention was also in Chicago in 1968… and the Chicago Police Department’s brutality against the protestors documented by news cameras for the world to see.

Tower is incredibly powerful, and an interesting way to film a documentary. The filmmakers interviewed and spoke to the survivors, and then used filmed actors the right age to reenact what happened, then animating them, while interspersing actual film footage and photographs from the ninety-six minutes of pure hell the city of Austin, and the University of Texas, endured. What happened that day was horrifying enough, but reliving it through the personal stories of the survivors, and their memories of what happened that day, made it even more heartbreaking and moving. The documentary primarily focuses on the point of view of two of the police officers, one of the students who helped victims, another witness who watched it all happen through the windows of a nearby building (one of the most moving moments is when this woman, a young girl at the time, says, “This sort of thing is a defining moment. I stood there in the window, knowing there were people out there who needed help, but I was too afraid of being shot to do anything. That was when I knew I was a coward.”), the University bookstore manager who climbed the Tower with the three officers to take out Charles Whitman, but the two personal stories that moved me the most was the young paperboy who shouldn’t have even been there, but was filling in on the route for another boy, and had his young cousin riding on his bike with him when he was shot in the leg off his bicycle, and of course, Claire, one of the first victims, eight months pregnant and leaving the student union with her boyfriend, who was killed instantly. Claire’s baby was killed when she was shot in the abdomen, and she lay there, on the cement in front of the Tower, with her boyfriend lying dead near her, unable to move or get helped because anyone who went out there was in the line of fire, roasting on the hot cement in the heat of an August day in Austin. A young woman named Rita ran over to her, talked to her the entire time, lying on the ground near her, keeping her conscious and keeping her alive.

I cannot even imagine how horrible the ordeal must have been for her, or how she has lived with the memories of everything she lost that day for the rest of her life.

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Simply extraordinary.

I’ve almost finished reading Cleopatra’s Shadows–have maybe another hundred pages to go, and also made some serious progress on decluttering the apartment. I’ve decided that I am going to clean out the storage space–both the one over the laundry room as well as the rented one–and try to declutter the Lost Apartment as much as I can. I am only going to  keep research books, my children’s series collections, signed books by friends, and my Stephen King hardcovers. Anything else is going to be donated. If I had more time I might try to sell them on ebay or Amazon, but I just don’t have the time and I don’t want to mess with it, to be perfectly honest. So, every Saturday morning–or every morning when I have to work late–I am going to take boxes out of the storage places, go through them, and start donating. I feel very good about this decision, quite frankly.

I also intend to finish the outline of the WIP this week, as well as a second draft of “Quiet Desperation.”

Onward and upward, y’all.

Love Is All Around

Thunderstorms are in the forecast for today–of course, it’s the first weekend of Jazz Fest, and it always rains for Jazz Fest–and I have to make a grocery store run. I’m going to have another cup of coffee while I write this and then make a dash for the store. I slept fairly well last night, despite waking up around four in the morning but it only took me about another fifteen minutes before I fell back asleep. I have a lot of things I want to get done today, so hopefully the thunder and rain will help motivate me. Either that, or I’ll curl up with Cleopatra’s Shadows, which I am enjoying. And really, going to the store early on Sunday morning is the smart thing to do–because everyone is either getting ready for church or already there.

Paul and I watched the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale last night, and my God, was it chilling. I finally read the book a few years ago, and like so many others, thought it was exquisitely written and thematically terrifying. I wasn’t sure how they would do it as a series, though, and I have to say, it’s riveting and terrifying, and not really hard to see how something like the repressive world of Gilead could happen in reality. Elisabeth Moss is definitely shaping up to be one of the best actresses of her generation, and her choices of roles–from Mad Men to Top of the Lake to this–certainly capture her range. We’ll keep watching, of course.

I drove up to Ponchatoula yesterday to pick Paul up; he’d gone up there on Thursday to visit our friends the Marshalls on the train. His birthday was Friday, so we weren’t together on his birthday, but really, after twenty-one years together (twenty-two on July 20th), things like birthdays don’t matter as much to us as they did when we were newly coupled. I know that probably sounds terrible, but my own birthday never mattered much to me–my family wasn’t big on things like that when I was a kid, and I learned early on that caring about my birthday and making a fuss about it always ended in disappointment, so I got over it very young–and I inevitably end up hurting people’s feelings because I just don’t see what a big deal it is. I also realize that makes me sound awful and uncaring, but I really do think birthdays are for kids.

Although it’s really interesting to reflect back on my life and see how I’ve learned to lower my expectations in order to avoid disappointments. It’s very self-defeating in some ways; I’m trying to learn not to be so self-deprecating about myself. There really is something to be said for daily affirmations, which I’ve started doing. Plus not having deadline pressure is helping me relax, and it’s nice being able to take the time to really evaluate and assess everything about my writing and my career and where I want to go with it in the  future. I was so busy writing for so long I never took the time to actually sit back and think about things, make plans, set goals, and figure out how to get there.

All right, I’d best get to the grocery store before the storms start.

Here’s a hunk to start your week:

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Sweet Inspiration

Friday morning, and I finally slept like the dead last night. It was truly marvelous. I feel rested and like I can get a lot done today, but I really don’t want to go get groceries. I honestly feel like I could go the rest of my life without ever setting foot in another grocery store and wouldn’t miss it in the least. In fact, as I sit here, I am contemplating how I could conceivably put off going until tomorrow or Sunday. Paul’s visiting friends on the North Shore, and I am driving over there tomorrow to have lunch with them before driving home (Costco on the way home, too). But really, isn’t it best to get it over with now and be done with it completely? Not have it hanging over my head?

Heavy heaving sigh.

I’ve almost finished outlining the WIP, which is quite exciting. I intend to spend part of this weekend playing with it–fleshing out characters, getting deeper into the town itself, and its history, putting together all the back stories so that I can go into writing the next draft–which will include some rearranging and some shifting in structure, as well as polishing language and making it sparkle and shine–and I am actually looking forward to it, which is rather bizarre, considering how much I LOATHE revising/editing/rewriting. But there is something to having let the manuscript sit as long as I have; I’m not sick of it, I’m not tired of the characters, and I am bringing a fresh new perspective to it.

I’m also rediscovering my joy in writing. I hope to get the new draft of “Quiet Desperation” finished this weekend as well. We’ll see how it all goes, though, won’t we?

All right, I really need to get some things done this morning.

Here’s a hunk for Friday for you:

 

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Nobody But Me

As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep very deeply last night, and I was wide awake this morning by six thirty. Not a bad thing; I’ll probably sleep well tonight, and I am trying to get organized. The kitchen/work space is an absolute disaster area, and I am also doing laundry, having to put away dishes, and file and organize. I am going to be really tired later, but must stay awake and watch Twitter because tonight is THE EDGAR AWARDS, and I have so many friends nominated! I can’t BELIEVE how tense I am, and I’m not even up for anything!

No lie, but if I were ever an Edgar finalist, I would probably cry.

It’s lovely to be back home; this past week or so has literally been crazy. I’ve driven almost a thousand miles (yay for new car!) and had a really nice time reconnecting with my Southern roots. I am an Alabama boy; I used to joke that I still have red dirt between my toes. I love Alabama, and I love the South. But that love doesn’t mean that I also blind myself to the problems down here, and have actually spent a lot of my adult life trying to figure out ways to change things down here. But when you drive through Alabama and Mississippi, you can’t help but be blown away by how beautiful it is down here.

I’m also aware that I can be blown away by the natural beauty as I drive because I don’t have to worry about being pulled over for Driving While Black.

Alabama’s license plates, and welcome signs, all say “Alabama the Beautiful,” and it’s true. So many trees and forests, lush green grass, the sky is beautiful…and I feel so connected there. I always am inspired when I visit Alabama, or even just drive through it. I don’t write much about Alabama, but when I do, I feel like it’s some of my best work. Dark Tide is my only novel set in Alabama, and it’s one of my personal favorites. I do want to write about Alabama, and I do have an idea about how to turn what I consider one of my best short stories into a novel. I may do that next; we’ll see how I feel when I get finished with the current project. I am also leaning towards shelving the Scotty book for a while. I like the idea behind the book, but I don’t really think it fits Scotty. I’m also struggling to find his voice again, so I think it might be best to take a break from him for a while.

I had a lovely time at the Alabama Book Festival. Troy University and the volunteers and staff did a fantastic job, and Old Town Alabama (or is it Old Alabama Town?) is gorgeous. I really liked Montgomery a lot–it’s a charming little city–I just wish I hadn’t been so tired. I worked doing bar testing the night before I drove up, and as such I was tired the entire time I was there–not sleeping well in hotels had a lot to do with it as well. My panel went really well; Lachlan Smith is very perceptive, insightful and smart, and I look forward to reading his books. I started the first in his series, and was really enjoying it before I put it aside for Thirteen Reasons Why; I’ll get back to it when I finish Cleopatra’s Shadows. Our moderator, Jessie Powell, did a really great job as well, and we had a nice audience. It was also lovely to see Carolyn Haines and Dean James and Tammy Lynn from Wetumpka again, and I also got to meet some lovely people whose company I enjoyed tremendously.

I never thought I’d ever be liked in Alabama, frankly–gay writer of gay stories–but that was my own prejudices and buying into the notion that everyone in Alabama is prejudiced and bigoted. It’s easy to make that assumption; just as it is easy to make that assumption about Louisiana. There are progressives in the South; we’re just outnumbered, but we’re fighting the good fight against prejudice and bigotry and discrimination and hate. Sometimes it feels like we’re fighting all alone, and progressives lucky enough to live in states that are more progressive are more than willing to write us off all the time. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

And on that note, I need to get moving on the day and back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, John Wesley Shipp from when he appeared on Guiding Light in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, and fueled many a fantasy of mine.JohnWesleyShipp

 

Time Has Come Today

I arrived home from a second trip in less than a week about an hour ago. I made fantastic time from Oxford; I made it back to New Orleans in slightly less than fice and a half hours, including two stops for gas. I had the best time there, as well. I have lots of things to talk about regarding both trips, but right now I am decompressing and trying to get organized because I have to work tonight…and am already running out of steam. Whine. Ah, well, I can sleep late tomorrow. I did fall in love with both Montgomery and Oxford, though, and feel strangely reconnected to my Southern roots.

But I  also want to talk about this fantastic book I read on the trip, Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll.

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For the record, Constant Reader, anything blurbed by Megan Abbott is generally going to turn out to be fantastic.

I inspected the knife in my hand.

“That’s the Shun. Feel how light it is compared to the Wusthof?”

I pricked a finger on the blade’s witchy chin, testing. The handle was supposed to be moisture resistant, but it was quickly getting humid in my grip.

“I think that design is better suited for someone of your stature.” I looked up at the sales associate, bracing for the word people always use to describe short girls hungry to hear “thin.” “Petite.” He smiled like I should be flattered. Slender, elegant, graceful–now there’s a compliment that might actually defang me.

And so we meet Ani FaNelli, engaged to a successful businessman from old money, and she herself has her dream job at The Women’s Magazine (read: Cosmo). Ani had a horrific experience in her ritzy private high school in Philadelphia, which her social climbing mother forced her to attend, and after this event, focused on reinventing herself and doing whatever she had to in order to get the great life she felt she deserved after that horrific humiliation. But the facade of pretending to be the perfect fiancee is starting to wear thin…and as the book flashes back and forth between her wedding planning in the present day and what happened to her back at the Butler Academy, the edges begin to wear a little thin and she slowly begins to remember who she is beneath her carefully constructed facade, and the unraveling begins.

Ani is probably one of those characters male reviewers like to talk shit about–you know, the “unlikable woman”, which has apparently become so prevalent in suspense thrillers since the enormous success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and this one has the obligatory “girl” in the title, even–but the title phrase does come up during the course of the book, and as the story of Ani’s high school experience unspools…it’s so much much worse than you think it could have been.

This was an Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel (she lost to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, which also won the Pulitzer Prize), and it’s riveting. Highly recommended.

Bottle of Wine

Oxford, Mississippi is a beautiful little town. I arrived here yesterday afternoon–the drive didn’t leave me nearly as exhausted as the one to Montgomery did, even though it was longer; I suspect it was because I worked late the night before doing bar testing so was already tired. I checked into the Inn at Ole Miss, and then went foraging for dinner as well as exploring.  I had a lovely dinner at City Grocery; shrimp and grits, similar to the dish I make but slightly better–but I also was able to spot the spice differences, as well as the obvious addition of sautéed mushrooms, so the next time I make it I am going to make those alterations and see if it turns out the same way. I washed it down with a lovely glass of a Napa Chardonnay, and then wandered back down to the Inn, taking lots of pictures and getting all kinds of inspirations and ideas for a campus crime novel.I am not sure what the situation here is as far as campus crime, but I am making notes and a file, and perhaps some other time I can come up for a few extra days, talk to some more people, do some research and figure out how to get the story whipped into shape.

I also finished reading Jessica Knoll’s sublime Luckiest Girl Alive, which was absolutely amazing, and I intend to discuss that wonderful novel in more depth once I am home and at a computer rather than writing this on an app on the iPad (don’t get me wrong, this is very cool, and this is the first trip I’ve taken where I’ve not brought the laptop–and I will most likely never bring it again, as the iPad basically can replace it completely, and it weighs significantly less. I also started reading Cleopatra’s Shadows by Emily Holleman, which I am enjoying and focuses on two women who have always fascinated me: Cleopatra’s sisters, Berenice and Arsinoe, and whom I myself have always wanted to write about.

My panel is this afternoon at four; they are picking me up at 3:30 in front of the Inn and I am really not certain what the discussion is going to be about. It’s a month-long event called the Radical South, a counter-event to Confederate History Month (in a moment of irony, I am here at a counter-event to Confederate History MOnth while the Confederate monuments in New Orleans are being taken down; which is also a subject for another time as I have very strong feelings about that myself) and after that I am being taken out to dinner. Tomorrow I intend to rise early, avail myself of the complimentary breakfast here at the Inn (it was sublime this morning), and then check-out and head home, as I have to work tomorrow night. But that also gets me a short day on Thursday, which is also lovely.

The weather is also sublime; rather cool for late April, but not humid, which is always a plus.

And now, I am going back to the spice mines.IMG_1725

 

I Say a Little Prayer

Today I venture north to Oxford, Mississippi, home to one of my literary heroes, William Faulkner, and also home to Ole Miss, aka the University of Mississippi. This isn’t going to be a quick ‘in-and-out’ like Montgomery; I am spending two nights there (the event is tomorrow night) and will drive back down to New Orleans on Wednesday. I have to work later that evening, which is daunting and will make for a long, exhausting day, but I feel like I will sleep rather well that Wednesday night, if for no other reason than pure exhaustion. I am feeling rested this morning, but not quite awake; I am going to continue with coffee-swilling before I shave and shower and depart. I am already packed; all I have left to do is put the current book I’m reading (Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll) and my iPad into my bag. I believe the event is tomorrow evening, so I will have all day to explore Oxford. I will be taking the camera with me, and I plan on making a pilgrimage, at the very least, to Faulkner’s home. (In an aside, sometimes when I mention that Faulkner is one of my literary heroes I get mocked, or get called pretentious; but I truly enjoy reading Faulkner. He isn’t easy to read, or follow, but the language! The way he builds the story! I still think The Sound and the Fury is the greatest American novel, no matter what–but I have been thinking lately I should, as an adult and more mature reader, give both Hemingway and Fitzgerald another try.)

I did finish reading Thirteen Reasons Why yesterday afternoon, and no, it didn’t end in the same was as the television series, and yes, it’s ending was just as dissatisfying to me, although it made sense. The book makes no judgments of the characters, including Clay, although the relationship between Clay and Hannah wasn’t as developed or as evolved in the show; I didn’t get a sense of why Clay would care as much as he did from the novel. But it was a fun read, and let’s face it–as I said on the panel Saturday, what could be more noir than high school? All of my young adult fiction, frankly, is based on that principle.

We also finished Feud last night, along with the rest of the country, and Jessica Lange was absolutely heartbreaking. Sarandon really was great as Bette Davis, but for some reason, I just think Lange was better as Crawford. The whole cast was terrific, really, and it was horrible what happened to both women as they aged, how the industry turned their back on them, what it’s like to be a woman in Hollywood–and how that hasn’t, really, changed. Ryan Murphy is an interesting writer/producer. American Horror Story seems to go off the rails every season; I never got past the second episode of Scream Queens; and I never watched Nip/Tuck–but really enjoyed Popular. But with American Crime Story and Feud he’s done an extraordinary job; but then again, in both instances he didn’t have to really come up with a plot or an ending to the story he was telling: both were based in reality. I also am terrified of his Hurricane Katrina season of American Crime Story. It could be terrible, absolutely terrible; all I can do is hope that filming in New Orleans–as he did with American Horror Story–made him fall in love with the city the way Jessica Lange did (she now lives here).

Obviously, I’ve not written a word since I left for Montgomery on Friday (other than here), and hope I’ll have both the time and the energy while in Oxford.

And now, back to the spice mines.6f72d89ae05ea0959513f24176fd12e5

Sealed with a Kiss

Very tired this morning. I only woke up less than an hour ago–I drove home from Montgomery last night, and of course, had trouble sleeping in the hotel on Friday night. Ten hours plus of driving over the course of two days wore me out, and tomorrow I am driving to Oxford, MIssissippi–approximately five and a half hours or so, with stops probably closer to seven hours–and when I drive back Wednesday I also agreed to do two testing events that night for work. Sigh. I am going to be the walking dead by the time I get home Wednesday night, and Thursday is going to suck pretty badly. Ah, well. Such is life, you know? And Paul is going to take the train Thursday up to Hammond for his birthday to see our friends Bev and Butch; I’ll have to drive up there on Saturday to get him, so that weekend is going to be a bit of a mess as well.

Ah, well, I’ll get over it.

The drive up to Montgomery on Friday was nice; it was a beautiful day for a drive, and Alabama is quite beautiful. I did go ahead and make the detour through Chef Menteur Highway and over the Rigolets bridge (which was rebuilt after Katrina and is much more impressive than it was before), and while I didn’t stop, I am glad I did it because it took me through New Orleans East (still showing the wreckage from last year’s horrific tornado) and I also saw Little Vietnam, which I don’t remember seeing the last time (2003) when I was out that way. I am glad I drove out there, as it gave me a better idea of what it’s like out there, and will make writing my story about it even easier. And it really only was an extra fifteen minutes. I’ll go again, when I have time to stop and take pictures, walk around, and get a better idea of the area, but am very glad I went. (And frankly, it was really kind of inspiring. I am going to do a lot more exploring, not just of the city but the area around New Orleans. Seeing it makes me want to write about it, you know?)

I had never been to Montgomery before, and the part of the small city where I was, downtown and near Old Alabama Town (the historic part of the city) was really quite nice and lovely. The Book Festival itself was a lovely event, and everyone was very kind. I signed a lot of books, and the panel I was on was interesting with great questions posed, not only by the moderator but by the audience when it was opened up for questions. After my signing, I got in the car and drove home, getting home just before nine. We finished watching Thirteen Reasons Why, and then the first episode of The White Princess. Jay Asher was at the Alabama Book Festival, and I wanted to meet him/hear hims peak, but during his talks I went to lunch because I was tired and hungry and had to be at my best for my panel. Missed opportunity, but ah, well. I don’t know that I’m quite ready yet to talk about the show–I am still tired and foggy from the trip–and I have to go to the grocery store at some point today, and I need to pack for the Oxford trip. But it was lovely talking about books and writing with book people–it’s very invigorating–and I am hoping when I get back from Oxford I’ll be able to get some more, good, work done.

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

Here’s a Sunday hunk for you.

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Bend Me Shape Me

 

In a couple of hours, I’ll be on the road to Montgomery, Alabama, for the Alabama Book Festival. The route takes me on I-10 East to Mobile, where I will then get on I-65 north all the way to Montgomery. It’s a lovely drive, if gas stations and places to eat and rest stops are a bit on the sparse side, and I am going to drive leisurely. I’ve decided to make that detour on Chef Menteur Highway over the Rigolets after all, and maybe even stop at a few places that look nice to take pictures. It’s also a lovely looking day outside, so it should be a great day for a lovely drive through the countryside.

When I got home from bar testing last night we watched the eleventh episode of Thirteen Reasons Why–Clay’s tape–and it was so much more heartbreaking than I feared it would be. Bitter cynical Queen Greg cried a couple of times, and the performance of Dylan Minnette as Clay was not only surprising in its subtle nuance, but perfectly done in an understated way that was much harder to watch–and more heartbreaking and effective–had it been over-the-top histrionic, as most directors and actors seem to choose. The entire young cast is quite effective in their roles, and I’ve also become more impressed by the performances of the adult actors. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the show, though, is the seamless editing, the way the show transitions between past and present. The big reveal of Clay’s tape also explained so much more about the behavior of the others kids, which seemed almost inexplicable before. The last two episodes will probably be just as intense….and I am also looking forward into finishing reading the book. In an odd coincidence, the book’s author, Jay Asher, is also appearing tomorrow at the Alabama Book Festival. I am sure his talk will be jam-packed; but I am going to make the effort to go see him.

I love listening to authors talk about writing, frankly, and 90% of the time they don’t annoy the crap out of me. I am excited also because being around book people is always an inspirational high for me.

I doubt that I’ll have time to work on the outline while I am in Montgomery–I’ll probably arrive with just enough time to check into my room, maybe take a shower, and then head over to the author party. I am looking forward to seeing some of the people I met in Wetumpka there, and of course, the always delightful Carolyn Haines and Dean James are also going to be there this weekend–I do always love seeing them.

And now, I am going to have some more coffee, and get ready to head out. Happy Friday, Constant Reader!

Here’s gorgeous Brandon Larracuente, who plays Jeff on Thirteen Reasons Why, one of my favorite characters on the show.

Brandon Larracuente