Category: writing

Love Will Keep Us Together

Yesterday, since there wasn’t an LSU game to stress over, I simply did chores and idly watched (had the television on while I read or did chores) some games–Texas A&M vs. Tennessee; Alabama vs Arkansas, Florida State vs Miami–until we started watching some of our shows. I have to say, given what has been going on in the country over the last few years, and particularly since Friday; Friday night’s episode of  The Exorcist was especially powerful. What I really enjoyed about it was it showed how seductive evil can be…and the scene on the el, when Casey was basically being groped and assaulted by the drunk bro in front of everyone who watched and did nothing? Absolutely horrifying, and yes, while not wanting to provide spoilers, I had no sympathy for the dude bro.

Kind of how like in Carrie, I didn’t have much sympathy when the bullies started getting theirs.

But while I was watching football games yesterday, I was also rereading Danse Macabre by Stephen King. It’s really quite exceptional, even better than I remembered; it’s an examination of the horror genre from a personal perspective, but it’s incredibly smart. It could, quite seriously, be a text for a Genre Fiction class. It’s written in, as I mentioned, an incredibly accessible style, yet it also delves into serious scholarship and examination of the primary themes in the genre. It really, really is quite brilliant.

I overslept this morning, of course, as I am wont to do on Sundays, but the great thing about it is that I feel completely rested for the first time in days. I’ve already done the dishes, intend to clean up around here, and then I am going to write for a while. Then in the later afternoon, I am going to take my camera out into the neighborhood and take some pictures. There are some interesting changes going on down on Magazine Street.

Oh, yes, horror; I am supposed to be talking about horror, aren’t I?

When I was a kid, ABC used to made-for-TV movies and aired them on Tuesdays as the ABC Movie of the Week. Some of them were ‘important dramas’; like Go Ask Alice; some were bad comedies, some were mysteries, and some were horror. Many of them were quite terrible, but some of them were memorable; they often used film stars past their prime, and while I admit I’ve not seen any of them in years, the first one I remember–one that terrified the crap out of me–was Crowhaven Farm; which is on Youtube, and I have it on my watchlist, but haven’t gotten to it yet–partly because I fear it won’t hold up, and what scared a ten year old might seem silly to an adult.

url

I don’t remember the entire plot, but it had to do with a city couple either inheriting or buying Crowhaven Farm, and moving out to the country because their marriage was struggling; partly because they hadn’t been able to conceive a child. Once they reach the farm, though, the wife–Wikipedia tells me her name was Maggie–starts remembering things about the farm that she couldn’t possibly know; she walks over to a wall and touches a secret latch that opens a panel to a secret room, for example. She starts having flashes of a past in Colonial times; and there are ghosts walking around Crowhaven Farm–that apparently have it in for her. They take in a foster child but then Maggie learns she is pregnant…and some of the memories have to do with her being ‘pressed’–a punishment where suspected witches were placed beneath a wooden panel and stones piled on it until she is crushed to death (it always seemed like an unpleasant way to die to me). Back in Colonial times, the area had it’s own Salem-like witch issues, and it turns out that Maggie, back then, escaped death by pressing by ratting out some other witches who now want to get even with her in THIS life.

The ending was especially scary to me.

I used to watch the movie every time it aired, because I enjoyed it so much…and I’ve never forgotten about it, either. It popped back into my memory when I remembered that Barbara Michaels’ superb ghost story Ammie Come Home had been made into a Movie of the Week called The House That Would Not Die, starring Barbara Stanwyck, and went looking for it. I found it on Youtube…which suggested Crowhaven Farm to me.

Good stuff.

I also hope to start reading Bracken MacLeod’s Stranded tonight.

And now back to the spice mines.

Midnight at the Oasis

Stephen King. What is there left to say about Stephen King? From the first moment I read Carrie, I was a fan. I’d read a lot before I discovered him; and yet his writing was a revelation to me. What he was able to do with setting, with character, the way he made his stories–regardless of subject matter–relentlessly realistic opened my eyes to what one can accomplish with writing. Over the years, as I’ve continued to read King (I still am not completely caught up; I am several books behind–the days when I could buy the book on release day and devour it in one or two sittings are sadly, far in the past), I continue to marvel at his extraordinary expertise. And while some of his books seem to go off the rails a bit, I would be proud to claim any of what I consider his lesser books (and by that I mean ‘ones I am not as fond of as others’) as my own: The Tommyknockers, Rose Madder, Dreamcatcher. I used to reread his books, over and over again–I don’t even know how many times I’ve reread salem’s Lot and The Stand and The Dead Zone and Christine, for example; and I wish I had the time to sit down and reread them all, from Carrie on. His On Writing is the one text I would tell every beginning writer to read from beginning to end, commit to memory, go back to whenever needed.

But I decided I wanted to talk about a different Stephen King title today: Danse Macabre.

stephen-king-danse-macabre

As I often point out, I am more of a fan of horror than anything else; I’ve not read as widely in the genre as I would like, nor do I even know enough about the genre to write about subgenres and subcategories expertly. There are any number of horror writers whose oeuvres I’ve stuck my toe into, and found the water just fine, but haven’t had the time to fully commit to reading: Christopher Golden, Gemma Files, Douglas Clegg, Brian Keene, Nick Cutter, and John Boyne, just off the top of my head, and there are many more. There is just so much time, after all, and there are just so damned many books; and as someone who is primarily defined professionally as a crime writer, I have to read so much within my own genre, not to mention true crime–and of course, I love my nonfiction, which I can just walk away from without too much worry of having to go back to the beginning to start over.

But I do feel that King’s Danse Macabre, published originally in 1981, is an excellent overview of the horror genre up until that date. King’s non-fiction writing is very similar to his fiction; it’s smart but also accessible. And it’s excellent; it is serious scholarship about the genre of horror, written by the grandest master of the grand masters, talking in an accessible way about the best books, the best writers, the best films, and the best television programs within the genre…how they influenced his own work, and why. It’s truly exceptional.

I’ve always had a copy of Danse Macabre–well, I’ve always had a copy of every Stephen King book in my house–and it’s been a long time since I’ve revisited it. I may, once I tire of rereading Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots, give it another whirl. Reading it the first time was what reminded me of Richard Matheson, introduced me to other writers like Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison (my God, Harlan Ellison) and even, for the first time, made me truly aware of Shirley Jackson; reading this was what sent me to the used bookstores in search of books by these authors again, and I’ve never regretted those forays into their work–Ellison and Jackson are certainly up there on my list of absolute favorites, and many of the others I originally found through reading Danse Macabre are certainly favorites.

And that’s not even including the television shows and movies.

And now, back to the spice mines.

You and Me Against the World

I am very tired this morning. I did bar testing last night, and today feel like one of those extras on The Walking Dead about to get macheted by Michonne. I am so tired at this point getting macheted sounds almost preferable.

As my month of writing about horror continues, I had intended to talk about Stephen King today, but since I am so tired and incapable of much coherent thought, I decided to talk about the inspiration behind my novel Sara.

imgres

I’ve written about this book before, but while Lake Thirteen is a ghost story, and there are some serious paranormal elements to Sorceress, Sara is the only novel I’ve written that could be described as horror. It’s also my least successful novel; and by that, I mean the lowest selling. Trying to figure out why a book didn’t sell is literally just asking for it; the downward spiral into depression and full-on crazy. But Sara was different than anything else I’ve written; as I said before when talking about it, it was my “get even with everyone I went to high school who was mean to me” book; and when I first wrote it, that was really my mindset, sadly. Fortunately, I am more evolved now than I was when I wrote the first draft of Sara back in 1991, and when I was revising and rewriting for publication, I had to change/remove a lot of that; I was clearly in a very bitter place when I was originally writing Sara…

Stephen King’s Christine is one of my favorites of his; I know people make fun of it–the haunted car and all that–but I loved that book. It was high school as I remembered it; I knew kids like the kids in the book, and the book affected me deeply. I still think of Christine (as well as Carrie) as two of the best young adult horror novels ever written and published; I may talk about Christine more later in the month.

When I first decided to write Sara, it wasn’t intended to be written as a young adult novel any more than Christine was written as one. Sara was my first attempt to write a horror novel for adults; as I have said before, in the 1980’s I decided I wanted to write horror. I wrote a lot of short stories from about 1985 through the end of the decade (through 1992, most likely) that I never did anything with; but it was around 1991 that I decided to take the plunge and write the novel. Sara was originally inspired, not only by Christine, but by getting the invitation to my ten year high school reunion three years earlier. (That invitation also inspired my short story “Promises in Every Star.”) I thought an invitation to a high school reunion would be a great way to start a book, and when I started writing Sara, I decided to frame the story the same way King did with Christine; with the point-of-view character looking back at the things that went on during his senior year, then having them play out, and then end back in the present day with him remembering…and being afraid.

I was about five chapters into the book, and struggling (it really amazes me to remember how little I knew about writing a novel and so forth back then; particularly given what a spectacular mess I was making of my life. It’s a wonder I wrote anything at all, frankly.) when I discovered Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine. In my stupid, immature, addled “don’t know what I am talking about” way, I decided that it would be easier to write Sara.

I know, I was younger, much more foolish, and incredibly arrogant in my foolishness.

But on the other hand, I’m not sorry I did make that foolishly arrogant assumption; I wouldn’t be writing young adult fiction now had I not had that “epiphany.”

When I was rewriting Sara for publication, I dropped the framing device and re-set Sara in the present day; in the original, Glen wasn’t gay because that would have never worked in a book being set in 1978; which was, really, the major hole in the story. Had I indeed made him gay, bullied for being gay, in denial for being gay–AND had it set in 1978, it would have worked so much better, I think.

I do think Sara is a good book, though.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Feelings

Since October is, for me, the month of Halloween and therefore irrevocably tied to the horror genre, as Constant Reader already knows, I have decided to write only about horror in this month. I am casting my mind back, as it were, over the years and trying to remember what films and books drew me to the genre in the first place. As an author, I am often asked in interviews or on panels about influences, and while there are certain answers that I always give–Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, James M. Cain, Daphne du Maurier–there are often authors, books, films and television programs I forget at the time. (I once made a list of my favorite movies in response to a meme…and somehow forgot to name what could possibly be my favorite film of all time: The Princess Bride. In my defense, I often do these things very quickly and off the top of my head. )

So, in talking about the genre this month, I am also trying to dig deeper and not write about influences I have talked about before; or at least I am going to try not to–there is simply no way I can write about horror and not, for example, talk about Thomas Tryon’s terrific The Other, or Ira Levin. I do feel as though I’ve talked about Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House ad nauseum already; likewise with Daphne du Maurier’s sublime “Don’t Look Now.” (I may give in to the inevitable temptation and do so before the 31st; but I am going to honestly try to resist those temptations.)

 

omegamancover

I think I was twelve when I first read something by Richard Matheson: I Am Legend. It had recently been made into a film starring Charlton Heston (I’ve seen the film, renamed The Omega Man. It’s okay, but not as good as the book.) I Am Legend, for those not familiar with the story (it was also filmed again sometime in the last decade or so, with Will Smith. I have not seen the remake), is one of those “last man on earth” stories; only in Matheson’s world, a terrible plague has turned everyone who has not died into vampire-like creatures. The last man on earth is Robert Neville, who somehow is immune to the plague. He barricades himself up into his home at night while the vampires try to find a way to either get inside or taunt him, hoping to lure him out–while during the day he scavenges for supplies and kills vampires by staking them through the heart (the matter-of-fact description of him doing this is chilling and has always stayed with me; there are several scenes in Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot where the gang of heroes also hunts and stakes vampires during the day–when I first read ‘salem’s Lot this reminded me of Matheson’s book. Likewise, when I read Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel The Stand, it again reminded me of Matheson’s book.) I Am Legend isn’t just a scary book about the aftermath of the end of the world though; there’s a lot of thought given to what it means, what this new society of people, this Brave New World of vampire-like people will be like, and what it’s like to be the last of your own kind. I didn’t catch a lot of this when I was a kid, and frankly, as it delved more into philosophy towards the end the unsophisticated reader I was found it a bit disappointing. When I revisited the book in the 1980’s–I went on a Matheson kick, and was delighted to discover that many episodes of television shows, or films, that I greatly enjoyed were actually based on Matheson’s work: Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes–it’s quite an extensive list.

0ee08510ac0676ae995599ec51738eff

I also read Hell House when I was about thirteen, but didn’t connect that Matheson had written both books. Hell House, about “the Mount Everest of haunted houses”, was similar in structure to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but also very different. It was made into a terrifying film called The Legend of Hell House, which I recently rewatched, and actually holds up. (As a weary, cynical adult, I can see how cheaply the film was made now; but it’s just as spooky and scary as it was when I was a teenager and it terrified me.)

hellhousebookcover

That was the version I originally read; this is the one I reread:

imgres

Again, I would love to spend a week in a mountain cabin sometime revisiting Matheson’s work.

And now, back to the spice mines.

You Light Up My Life

Last night I took the streetcar down to the Quarter to have drinks with two friends in from out of town at the Carousel Bar. It was a lovely day in New Orleans, with no humidity (any day without humidity is a beautiful day, frankly) and then the ride home after dark was equally lovely.

I didn’t get as much writing done this weekend as I had hoped, and I really need to get over this procrastination thing. A friend pointed out to me that I do this to myself all the time; that rather than sitting down and making myself write every day, I’ll just on any excuse not to–which results in stress and panic as the deadline looms. I did get some writing done yesterday; just not as much as I would have liked. I think I solved the problem I was having with one short story, and as I rode the streetcar yesterday I think I may have solved the problem I was having with the other.

Both of these are, of course, good things.

So, my plan is to continue working on the revision of Bourbon Street Blues, finish those two short stories this week, edit the other two for submission, and get about five thousand words written on the next book, while mapping out my ideas for the next Scotty. It may seem daunting–and it is; that’s a lot of work–but as long as I stay focused, I can get it all done; there’s no doubt in my mind. It is amazing what you can do when you focus on one thing at a time. If I get stuck on one of the stories, I’ll work on something else. This has been the problem I’ve been having lately; if I get stuck on something I just stop working, and that isn’t how I’ve managed to remain productive for so long; if something stalls I move on to something else and come back to the original piece of work the next day. Working on something else keeps my creativity working, and shakes out the cobwebs. And there are always cobwebs. Don’t ask me how it happens, but it does.

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

Here’s today’s hunk:

dd82ee59682857b15753a27de9ff02c5

Watching Scotty Grow

As I work to revise Bourbon Street Blues for its ebook debut, and plan out yet another Scotty book (tentatively titled Reality Show Rumba, but that may change to St. Charles Second Line or something else, I’m not completely sold on that as a title), yes, I’ve got Scotty on the brain, what can I say? I’m in that weird mode where ideas are bouncing around inside of my head, and can’t seem to focus enough to get any one thing worked on and finished.

It ain’t easy being a Gregalicious.

As I said when I rode the streetcar to and from the NO/AIDS Walk last weekend, the ride felt wonderful because I felt reconnected to New Orleans. I’ve felt some disconnect over the past few years; partly because I was so damned busy doing so damned much, and partly because the city has changed somewhat over the years as well that have followed Katrina. It was inevitable; the city was going to change even had Katrina not happened, and the question remains, were these good changes for the city? The so-called ‘sharing economy,’ with the coming of AirBNB and Uber and Lyft, are good things but can also be bad things; AirBNB had resulted in private homes being turned into rental properties–but is that what has driven up property costs and rentals in New Orleans, or was that a result of the rising property costs? I signed up for a realtor’s daily emails about properties for sale–mainly because I saw a sign on a house I’ve always loved and wanted to set a book in, so I wanted to be able to see the inside and the yard–and I am daily astounded at the costs of the properties she has listed. I have yet to see one for less than 1.2 million; when I was writing Murder in the Rue Dauphine, I mentioned in passing ‘the million dollar homes in the Garden District’ only to be corrected by my first reader: “There are no homes in New Orleans that cost a million dollars or more, not even in the Garden District.” As I said, every featured property in the daily emails I get from this realtor are a minimum of 1.2 million; then again, I am certain people from other cities would think them bargains, as they also are a minimum of 4000 square feet or more.

The only way Paul and I could ever own property here would be to hit the Powerball.

One of the things I know I am going to do with the next Scotty book–one of the many things I am going to do with the next Scotty book–is determine whether or not Scotty and the boys are going to stay in the Quarter. GASP, right? But one penultimate New Orleans thing that I’ve never written about–although I’ve endured it numerous times–is the joy of renovation. The house the boys all live in on Decatur Street was, of course, rebuilt after the fire in Bourbon Street Blues–I did write about Scotty having to live in the Marigny while the house was being rebuilt in Jackson Square Jazz–but about eleven years have passed since then; the house survived Katrina and everything that followed, but eleven years of heat and humidity, of wood swelling and shrinking, of termites…well, it’s about time the house on Decatur Street got renovated again–and of course, treated for termites and so forth to begin with. And so the boys have to go live elsewhere while the place is gutted and rebuilt yet again…and now, the question is whether or not they want to move back into the Quarter or not, or maybe buy a place. Scotty has come into his trust funds, after all, and so there is plenty of money…but it should also make for an interesting subplot. And the plot of this one…I think this could possibly be the best Scotty of them all.

At least, I certainly hope so.

I’m very excited about it. Now I just have to write two other books first.

Here’s the cover for the work-in-progress I am primarily focusing on:

wicked-frat-boy-ways_final

 

Cat’s in the Cradle

The death of Agnes Nixon this past week saddened me, and spurred me to write two blog posts about her greatest, and most famous, creations; All My Children and One Life to Live. I watched both shows, along with General Hospital, off and on for over thirty years; I only stopped watching soaps when I needed the time I spent watching them to write–a decision I’ve never really regretted all that much. But I watched, over the years, many different soaps at one time or another: The Edge of Night, Dark Shadows, Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, The Young and the Restless, Another World, Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, Capitol, Love is a Many Splendored Thing–it’s really quite staggering. And at night, I remember watching Peyton Place with my mom as a kid–although I don’t really remember much of it–and later, I was a huge Dynasty fan. I did watch Dallas, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest during the 80’s night time soap heyday; I also watched others that didn’t last very long, like Emerald Point NAS, Flamingo Road, Paper Dolls, and Bare Essence.

It’s pretty safe to say I am a fan of the serial/continuing story format. When I was in college, I managed to get into a graduate level English course despite being an undergraduate because I was able to write a paper that was good enough to get me in; it was on Popular Culture in the 20th Century, and attendance wasn’t required–always a plus for me–and there were no tests; you only had to write a lengthy paper on some aspect of popular culture in the 20th century for your grade. I chose to write about soaps; the paper, which would wind up being 120 or so typewritten pages long, was title “How Changes in Daytime Drama Storylines Have Reflected Changes in American Culture and Society Since the 1950’s.”

God, how I wish I still had a copy of that paper.

I really wanted to work for the soaps in the 1980’s; my ambition switched from being a mystery and/or horror writer to being a soap writer. I still think it would be a lot of fun, even if there are very few soaps left to work for. But writing that paper required me to do a lot of research into the soaps and their histories; I’ve never minded doing research if it was a subject I was interested in. So, I kind of became a mini-expert in the soaps, and their histories, and there were a lot of interesting trends. It was interesting how moralistic the soaps were–something that hadn’t changed from their early days; back when there was a Motion Picture Code and a Comic Books Code, and censors for television (do they still have censors?); in which someone who did something bad always had to be found out and punished. (An interesting aside: one of the bad things that characters could do, and be forgiven/rehabilitated for and not necessarily punished for, was rape. But that’s a subject for another time–but I want to go on record to say that characters who had long runs on soaps, and in fact became very popular, at one time were rapists: Luke on General Hospital, Mickey on Days of Our Lives, John on As the World Turns, Roger on Guiding Light, Todd on One Life to Live; far too many for it to be a one-off, and enough to make it a trend. Even in prime time, on Dynasty Adam raped Kirby and was never prosecuted; she later agreed to marry her rapist.)

I even wrote, as a joke, a soap parody when I was in college, with my friends as characters. I called it The Young and the Pointless, and it was primarily for my amusement, and that of my friends. Basically, I looked at my friends and asked myself the question, if you were a character on a soap, what kind of character would you be?  I came up with the storylines myself; borrowing liberally from the storylines I’d learned so much about writing the paper, and ironically, my friends couldn’t get enough of it. They really became invested in the story; one even told me “My character wouldn’t say this.” Every day they would ask “have you written any new episodes?” It finally became over-bloated, because people who weren’t in it originally wanted to be, and I tried to be accomodating, and I cancelled it at long last midway through the third “season”. But it was a valuable learning experience for me, in that I learned that 1. I could write stories that interested people and made them want to keep reading; 2. I learned valuable lessons in creating characters and writing dialogue; and 3. I learned how to plot out a story. It was more like the classic parody SOAP than a real soap opera, but it was so much fun to write. I still have the originals somewhere–I’d always intended to type it up and make copies for the friends who were characters in it. Alas, some of them have died in the years since–a rather sobering thought–but The Young and the Pointless lives on in my files.

Yesterday LSU won, beating Missouri 42-7 at Tiger Stadium; their first win under interim head coach Ed Orgeron. LSU looked terrific; the defense played incredibly well, and the offense misfired a couple of times, but over all looked terrific. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell if that was because they’ve come together as a team and are playing up to their potential, or if Missouri just isn’t particularly good; but LSU looked much sharper against Missouri than they did a few weeks ago against Jacksonville State. Their schedule now turns into Murderer’s Row, with games against Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M, so we shall see.

I wound up not being as productive yesterday as I’d intended; I did a lot of laundry and did some cleaning, but not all the cleaning I’d wanted to do. I also didn’t do any writing; I wound up getting sucked into watching some games on television (the last five minutes of the Georgia-Tennessee game was amazing; it reminded me of the last three minutes of the 2009 Georgia-LSU game, where LSU went ahead 12-7, only to fall behind with forty seconds left 13-12, but scored with less than twenty seconds left to pull off the win 20-14). Amazing.

I also spent some time opening Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots and reading random sections yesterday; I originally read the book when I was eleven. The Queen of Scots has always interested me, and also, she was one of that ‘monstrous regiment of women’ who held power in the sixteenth century–when, as I’ve mentioned before, more women were in positions of power throughout Europe than any time prior or since. I also read some of Barbara Tuchman’s essays in Practicing History, and again, thought about how much I would love to write a book about the sixteenth century.

God, how I love history.

And now, I need to make up for the work I didn’t get done yesterday, so it’s off to the spice mines I go.

Here’s a hunk for you to enjoy:

img_1103

 

 

Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree

Good morning and Happy Saturday, Constant Reader! This is my first full free weekend since Labor Day–no Decadence outreach, no LSU tickets, no Bouchercon, no AIDS Walk. Paul’s off at tennis, despite having an abscessed tooth extracted this past week, and the house is silent–I don’t know where Scooter is, having vanished after getting fed and a his morning handful of ‘you’re a very spoiled kitty here have some treats.’ I am doing laundry and will most likely clean today, but I also intend on working on short stories today. I came across an interesting submissions call the other day that I have an unfinished story that would be perfect for, so I am going to try to finish the story that I was asked for, edit two more, and finish writing that one–and maybe even work on the fratboy porn novel. I have to head out to Walgreen’s at some point, but other than that I don’t even have to leave the house this weekend unless I want to. I may go do some cardio later, but I may leave that up in the air as well.

I am reading several books at the moment–some nonfiction; The Proud Tower and Practicing History: Collected Essays by Barbara Tuchman, in addition to The Tigress of Fiori, which is still on my nightstand, and I am now reading Puppet on a Chain by Alistair MacLean; someone had mentioned him recently on Facebook, and I remembered enjoying his work in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and also that I had never finished reading all of his books. Someone had mentioned Puppet on a Chain as a favorite, and it was one I hadn’t read, so it was off to eBay I went to get a bunch of his work. The first book of his I read was Circus–the young gay boy couldn’t help but be drawn to the cover design of a ripped muscular bare-chested man in white tights falling from a high wire. That may have been my first bare torso book cover purchase….hmmmm.

 

circus
Can’t imagine why that caught my eye, can you?

It’s also, I find, very interesting to read thriller writers from the past, to see how much the genre has changed. Obviously, back then the big enemy was Communism and the Soviets; World War II was also recent enough so Nazis weren’t out of the question, either. I also bought some Helen MacInnes novels I hadn’t read while I was there; I look forward to making my way through that stack of books at some point when I have time.

Ha ha ha ha! I even typed that with a straight face.

So, that’s my day; finishing “Lightning Bugs in a Jar” and “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain,” editing “The Weight of a Feather” and “Death and the Handmaidens”, cleaning, watching college football, and listening to my new download of Fleetwood Mac’s remastered, deluxe version of the vastly underrated Mirage album, which I am really enjoying. I’d forgotten how much I really liked the album, and the early versions of the songs are, in some cases, better than the version that was eventually released on the album–Christine McVie’s early version of “Hold Me” is less lick, and without those interesting harmonies overdubbed (which I do like, don’t get me wrong), you can see how the song could actually be performed live; and the early version of Stevie Nicks’ “That’s Alright” (one of my favorite songs of hers) is actually much more country; I’ve always thought Stevie should record an album of country songs.

I also may start editing and correcting Bourbon Street Blues, so that ebook can finally get going. It’s been way too long since people have been able to get it anywhere other than ebay and from used bookstores.

Okay, off to mine spice! Have a lovely day, everyone!

 

 

Angie Baby

Agnes Nixon died yesterday. For those of you who don’t know who she was, she created the long-running soaps One Life to Live and All My Children, among others, and worked on numerous others as well. She created two of the greatest female characters in television history–Victoria Lord on One Life to Live and Erica Kane on All My Children, both of whom made daytime legends of the actresses who played them, Erika Slezak and Susan Lucci.

I loved soaps, and it wasn’t until the late 1990’s that I stopped watching them because i needed the time to write. When I was a kid, both of my parents worked so during the summers a lady down the street watched my sister and I during the day–and she was an avid fan of General Hospital, One Life to Live, and Dark Shadows. My grandmother also worked the evening shift at American Can Company back then, and so she also watched the shows, so on days when she watched us we watched them all together. It was hard sometimes catching up, since we weren’t able to watch them during the school year (other than Dark Shadows, which we could run home from school to catch the last twenty minutes or so of), but watch them we did…and when All My Children debuted, we started watching that one because it was new–we could know everything from the very beginning. The thing that was amazing about All My Children as well, was that it had young characters featured front and center; the romantic lives of teenagers was just as important as that of its older characters. Tara, Phil, Chuck and Erica were all high school students when the show started, and there was something else odd about the adults in Pine Valley, as well. They didn’t just sit around and talk about what was going on with their lives, they also talked about the Vietnam War, protests, and opposing it. The show was actually relevant; while other soaps were insular, where nothing mattered except what was going on in the town as though the rest of the world didn’t exist, the people in Pine Valley were very aware. And both Phil and Chuck–and their families–worried they’d be drafted when they got out of high school.

amcbook

Phil eventually did wind up going to Vietnam, and was reported dead there.

The show was incredibly popular with young people–all of my friends watched it, and as the years passed, the show continued its commitment to young love. Pine Valley also had something else that most other soaps didn’t have–people of color. In the early 1980’s, there were two parallel star-crossed love stories featuring teens–Greg and Jenny, who were white, and Jesse and Angie, who were black. Both stories got equal air time, were equally important, and the young actors were incredibly compelling. There was also a teen villainess, Liza Colby, played by Marcy Walker, who was also fantastic.

Greg and Jenny:
imgres

Angie and Jesse:

imgres-1

The despicable Liza:

imgres-2

Kim Delaney, who would go on to prime time success, left the show shortly after she and Greg were finally, after years of heartbreak, obstacles, and separation, married; the show decided not to recast but to kill her off.

It was devastating.

In college, everyone would gather around television sets in the lounges to watch All My Children ; when Jenny flatlined I remember everyone in the lounge gasped in disbelief; some people actually started crying. Years later, I mentioned to a friend “if someone ever tells you they used to watch All My Children , and you ask them when they stopped watching, they will tell you they stopped watching when Jenny died.”

The show did eventually recover from killing off Jenny, but it took a while.

Over the years, the show created incredible characters played by exceptional actors; Sarah Michelle Gellar’s big break came as Kendall on the show; a young actress who not only could hold her own against Susan Lucci but was a villainess you also felt compassion for. She played Kendall, the daughter no one knew Erica had; the product of a rape when she was thirteen that she gave away, and Kendall turned up as a teenager. The scenes between Erica and Kendall, when Erica tried to explain why she could never love her because she would always see Kendall and remember the rape, were incredibly powerful; Sarah Michelle Gellar would win an Emmy for those scenes, and I never understood why Lucci did not. (Lucci, of course, was nominated a billion times and only won once; it became a running joke for Lucci–the irony being she became much more famous for not winning than any of the women who won did; and when she did finally win, it was national news and she was on every magazine cover on the newsstands.)

e55267ed80865a18956f611ddd65fbb8

Kelly Ripa also got her big break on All My Children , as Adam Chandler’s illegitimate daughter Haley.

One of the other things that made the show special was it wasn’t afraid to be funny; it was more than just unrelenting melodrama and sobbing. One moment your heart would be breaking over Donna’s grief over her child dying in a fire and the next you’d be laughing at the antics of Opal Gardner. All My Children never was afraid to be funny. (One of the greatest characters on the show was villainess Janet–“Janet from another planet”–who did horrible things but at the same time was incredibly funny.)

And of course, there was Erica Kane. You can’t talk about All My Children without talking about Erica. When asked once if she would ever leave the show, Susan Lucci replied, “Why would I? Where else would I get to play Scarlett O’Hara every day?” Erica started out as a bitch on the show–a young teen villainess– but in the skillful hands of the perfect actress for the part and a talented writer who showed the character in all of her confusing complexity, Erica became the center of the show, and was always the star. Erica wanted to be loved, but she also wanted to be rich and famous and successful–and didn’t want to get all of those things by marrying a rich man; she wanted to get them herself. And that drive, Erica’s drive, I think, was what made her such a beloved character. She did things the wrong way, she lied and manipulated, but the disaster that was her personal life never stopped her from getting all the things out of life that she wanted–and when her deceptions once again destroyed her personal life, she always wiped away the tears and repeated her mantra: “I can do anything. I’m Erica Kane.”

And of course, Erica had daytime’s first (and one of the few) abortions.

The show always dealt, like it did with abortion and Vietnam, social issues. It had daytime’s first lesbian character, dealt with HIV/AIDS, had a gay character and addressed homophobia, and of course, Erica’s daughter Bianca became daytime’s first main character to be a lesbian…and to have as troubled, dramatic, and fascinating love life as any of the straight characters.

I could probably write an entire book about All My Children . I learned a lot from the show, about writing, how to plot a murder mystery (the show had some of the best murder mysteries on daytime), and how to create a complicated character.

RIP, Ms. Nixon. I’ll talk about One Life to Live tomorrow.

Afternoon Delight

For the first time in maybe a month, I actually had an appointment with Wacky Russian this morning, and you know what? I feel great.I’ve clearly missed the exercise; and I actually feel like I should be going in every morning and doing a bit of stretching and cardio.

Right? Who am I, and what have I done with Gregalicious?

But the rush of endorphins! What a glorious feeling! I actually feel like the lethargy that has engulfed me since prior to Bouchercon has been lifted; the cobwebs in my mind cleared away, and energy, energy, energy. On my walk home from the gym, I actually solved the problem I am having with this stubborn short story I’ve been struggling with for weeks (short stories are ever so much harder for me than novels, really, and yes, I know that means I am completely insane).

And–since we are on a ‘Greg is insane’ run this morning–the problem is I don’t like the title; it doesn’t really fit, and so I have to come up with a better title.

There is great power in names, and I find that I cannot work on anything unless it has a title that I think fits the story; that title might change over the course of writing and rewriting when something better comes to mind, but if it’s not titled, I just can’t write it. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that also is true about characters. I can’t write about a character unless I know their name.

And this story’s title, while lofty, pretentious and borderline literary (“The Handmaidens of Olympus”) really doesn’t fit the story to me. I’ve played with the title, trying to make that oh-so-pretentious title work in some variation, to no avail. And on the walk home from the gym, I realized that it doesn’t work, it isn’t going to work, and no amount of thinking about it is going to make it work. So, out it goes, and I have to come up with something new.

So, the goal for today is to come up with a new, working title–I have some ideas already–and I suspect the story is going to flow a lot easier for me now.

Weird. I know.

 

Here’s today’s hunk.

img_1115