Category: writing

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.

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You

Sunday of the three day holiday weekend, with an enormous pile of work to get done today. I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I had hoped because–well, let’s be honest, distractions and lazy. I am also in the process of learning how my car’s gadgets and so forth operate–I didn’t realize until yesterday that I also have, for example, a rear camera that turns the stereo screen into a television, so I can see how much room I have to back up and so forth. It startled me when I happened to glance at it yesterday at the Rouse’s parking lot, but will come in handy for parallel parking. I also love that all I have to do is plug the iPod into the car and it plays beautifully through the stereo, and this bluetooth phone capability thing is life changing.

So, yes, Constant Reader, I am loving my new car. I probably won’t love it quite so much when it’s time to make the first payment, or renew the insurance (I paid it in full) the first time, but for now, it’s kind of cool. I haven’t named it–someone asked me if I was going to–but for now it’s name is NEW CAR!!!!

And I find that I don’t mind driving at all any more–although I do find myself getting a lot angrier at terrible drivers on the road now.

Last night we watched a really fun movie called Keanu, which is a Key and Peele movie, and it’s quite funny; it’s about the world’s cutest kitten, and how it becomes the subject of a gang war, and Our Heroes also have to get the kitten away from the gangs. We also started watching a Canadian series on Netflix called Slasher, which seems to be a cross between the Halloween, Scream, and The Silence of the Lambs movies, but it definitely held out interest despite it’s being so derivative (and let’s face it, it’s kind of hard to do this kind of show and NOT be derivative). We will definitely keep watching, as we’ve both lost interest in Ray Donovan during its second season.

I still haven’t finished reading my Ellison short story, “Grail,”–I know, I know, bad Gregalicious, bad Gregalicious–but hopefully I’ll get to that today. It’s quite good, as all Ellison stories are–you really can’t go wrong with reading Harlan Ellison’s anything, really–but by the time I finished working yesterday and cleaning and after running the errands and all, I was tired and simply wanted to watch television. I hate that about myself–I should be able to read and engage my mind, but NO–but it happens every once in a while.

I still need to finish reading the Pelecanos. I’d hoped to be finished with the book before this weekend, and had fully intended to spend THIS weekend relaxing and cleaning and reading. Heavy heaving sigh. And I only have one more weekend before the trip to visit my parents….although I should be able to get a lot of reading done during that trip.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And I really want to get back to that short story I started, “Quiet Desperation.” I also have figured out how to rework several other short stories I’ve struggled with–“The Ditch”, “The Weight of a Feather”, and “Death and the Handmaidens.” This always happens when I am trying to finish something–I get all these other great ideas about new projects and how to fix others. It’s annoying, because I would almost always rather work on that than what I am working on. I hate that my mind does this to me, without fail, every single time.

Heavy heaving sigh.

All right, I need to get to the spice mines. That spice ain’t going to mine itself.

Here’s today’s hunk:

The Nightmare

Halfway through the week! It’s all downhill to the THREE DAY WEEKEND now.

Huzzah!

Tomorrow I have to work late again–woo-hoo, bar testing!–and I have some errands to run during the day before I head in to the office. I didn’t sleep very well last night, so am hoping–with my long day tomorrow–that I will get some good sleep tonight. I think I will. I also have to stop at the Rouses on my way home from work tonight to get some things and pick up Paul–his office being a block from the grocery store has certainly worked out to his advantage–and then hopefully can relax a bit this evening before going to bed. I am kind of tired today and really just want to curl up into a ball and go to sleep…but that’s just not going to happen. Heavy heaving sigh. It’s also raining, which also makes me drowsy.

Heavy sigh.

I did manage to read another Harlan Ellison story, “Cold Friend,” last night.

Because I had died of cancer of the lymph glands, I was the only one saved when the world disappeared. The name for it was “spontaneous remission,” and as I understand it, it is not uncommon in the world of medicine. There is no explanation for it that any two physicians will agree upon, but it happens every so often. Your first question will be: why are you writing this if everyone else in the world is gone? And my answer is: should I disappear, and should things change, there should be some small record available to whomever or whatever comes along.

“Cold Friend” is an odd little story; and I’m still digesting it, to be honest. I probably will have to reread it, because usually I know what Ellison is doing in the story–and I am not really sure what he is doing with this story.

Eugene, our main character, is still alive; but the only thing left of the world is a three block section of Hanover, New Hampshire, and he spends some time explaining what is left of the world, discovering some odd things about it–like the food in the supermarket never spoils, the power and water is still on, but the phones don’t work, and there are no people anywhere. The world just vanishes at the edge of his little section that has somehow survived, and at first, he has to fight off attacks from individual enemies like a Viking, a Hun, and a Goth. Eventually, a woman shows up and joins him, and they become friends…but Eugene isn’t used to women and has never done well with them, so it’s a bit rocky.

Curious and unsettling, very well written as everything by Ellison is, I wouldn’t call this one of my favorites of his stories, but I did enjoy it.

And now back to the spice mines.

Since Eugene was dying of cancer in a hospital, here’s a sexy doctor.

Some Become Strangers

Tuesday, and I have a late night of bar testing staring me down. Heavy heaving sigh. But the weather has shifted back to the pleasant side of things; we turned the heat off last night when we got home and it’s still comfortable inside. The sun is out, fluffy white clouds dance across a bright blue sky, and I have a few hours this morning to straighten up the kitchen, get organized and do some writing before I head into work for the day.

I feel a bit disoriented this week. I am not sure why that is. Maybe because it was so cold this weekend; maybe because i had that panel at Comic Con on Saturday; I don’t know why. But I am looking forward to my three day weekend this weekend; that is going to be absolutely lovely. I have to work another late night this Thursday–so the three-day weekend is going to be particularly lovely for me. Yay!

I have, however, utterly failed you, Constant Reader. I didn’t have time to read a short story for today’s entry. But I feel like I’ve done a really good job so far this month, so a one-time failure can’t really be held against me. And I promise to read a story tonight to discuss tomorrow, okay? It’ll probably be a Harlan Ellison, because my paperback copy of Approaching Oblivion fits so nicely in my jacket pocket.

It does.

Today I have to work on the book and finish an essay that’s due today. Hurray! I was hoping to get the book finished before the weekend so I could actually just get some rest and relax and read this weekend, but that’s not going to happen. But when I do get all of this finished, all I have to do is another essay by the end of the month, which I should be able to get done, and rework some short stories, maybe start writing another book. Huzzah! I need to really get going on something new sometime soon, which is why I think I am so unsettled and off-balance. This current book has been a slog, quite frankly; much harder than I thought it would be when I planned it, and I don’t know why. Burn out, maybe? I don’t know. But there you have it. I’ve said it out loud so hopefully the curse is broken; because that’s how I seriously feel about this book sometimes–that it’s cursed.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I was commiserating last night with another writer friend–who is having the same problem with finishing her WIP and is hating hers almost as much as I’m hating mine–and I asked her, not entirely joking, “Why do we do this again?”

Her reply? “Because we like having written.”

Which is very true.

The funny thing about writing is that it never gets easier. Some parts of the process might get easier–you learn craft, you learn how to outline and how to write dialogue and sentence structure and the create a rhythm with the words and how to create characters and so forth–but the self-doubt never goes away; at least it doesn’t for me. For me, being a writer is this never-ending bipolar struggle between feeling confident in my abilities and crushing self-doubt. I have book and short story ideas that I’ve never written, never gotten started on, simply because I don’t believe that I have the ability to tell them properly. I rarely, if ever, read things I’ve written and published and thought, wow, this is really good, actually.

What must that be like, I wonder, to reread old work and think it’s good?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of everything I’ve published (while there’s a few books I’d like to have back, frankly, I am proud of some aspect of them), and even whenever I read something I don’t like by another writer–I don’t talk about books/stories I don’t like here because I respect the amount of work that went into their creation. I know what it’s like to struggle with a story or a book, putting it out there and then having it get shit all over–yet another reason being a writer is so damned bipolar! But you keep reminding yourself that you don’t like everything you read, so therefore not everyone who reads my work is going to like it, and so on.

Heavy sigh.

And now back to the spice mines. Here’s a hot guy to reward you for reading my whining.

Imperial Hotel

First five day work week of the year, but fortunately there’s yet another three day weekend looming. Huzzah!

One can never go wrong with a three day weekend, I find. And then I have another five day work week, and then I am on VACATION for a week. Lovely! But I have much spice to mine; so much spice to mine it’s not even funny. Heavy heaving sigh.

Isn’t that always the way? And then it’s Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is late this year–February 28th–which means the weather should be gorgeous for it. That’s something, at any rate.

Today’s short story is by Truman Capote, and is from his collection The Grass Harp and Other Stories. It’s called “Shut a Final Door.”

“Walter, listen to me: if everyone dislikes you, works against you, don’t believe they do so arbitrarily; you create those situations for yourself.

Anna had said that, and though his healthier side told him she intended nothing malicious (if Anna was not a friend than who was?), he’d despised her for it, had gone around telling everybody how much he despised Anna, what a bitch she was. That woman! he said, don’t trust that Anna. This plain-spoken act of hers–nothing but a cover-up for all her repressed hostility; terrible liar, too, can’t believe a word she says: dangerous, my God! And naturally, all he said went back to Anna, so that when he called about a play-opening they’d planned on attending together she told him. “Sorry, Walter, I can’t afford you any longer. I understand you very well, and I have a certain amount of sympathy. It’s very compulsive, your malice, and you aren’t too much to blame, but I don’t want to ever see you again because I’m not so well myself that I can afford it.” But why? And what had he done? Well, sure, he’d gossiped about her, but it wasn’t as though he meant it, and after all, as he said to Jimmy Bergman (now there was a two-face if there ever was one), what was the use of having friends if you couldn’t discuss them objectively?

He said you said they said we said round and round. Round and round, like the paddle-bladed ceiling fan wheeling above; turning and turning, stirring stale air effectively, it made a watch-tick sound, counted seconds in the silence. Walter inched into a cooler part of the bed and closed his eyes against the dark little room. At seven that evening he’d arrived in New Orleans, at seven-thirty he’d registered in this hotel, an anonymous, side-street place. It was August, and it was as though bonfires burned in the red night sky, and the unnatural Southern landscape, observed so assiduously from the train, and which, trying to sublimate all else, he retraced in memory, intensified a feeling of traveling to the end, the falling off.

In Cold Blood is one of my favorite books, even as it straddles the line between non-fiction (true crime) and fiction, but it is incredibly well-written, and every few years I take it down and reread, as I am wont to do with many books that I have loved over the years. When I was growing up, I wasn’t really quite sure why Truman Capote was a celebrity; I knew him from his many (bitchy) appearances on talk shows, and he occasionally made cameo appearances in films (Murder by Death comes to mind). I think I was vaguely aware he was a writer; but I didn’t read any of his work until I was much older and he was long dead. I loved his debut novel, Other Voices Other Rooms, and of course, In Cold Blood is exceptional. (And the difference between the written Breakfast at Tiffany’s and what it to the screen is astonishing; the story is a dark little tale about a call girl and the gay guy who lives in her building and befriends her–not quite the same as the movie.) I’ve not read a lot of Capote’s short fiction, but “Shut a Final Door” actually won the O. Henry Award when he was twenty-four.

“Shut a Final Door” is very finely written; Capote knew how to use words and to create a rhythm in his work with his sentence structure and paragraph construction. But this story is an example of why I have this problem with writing short stories; why I have it stuck in my head that they are something I cannot do. “Shut a Final Door,” while a fun, well-written story and a lot of fun to read, isn’t really a story; it’s a character sketch, basically painting the picture of Walter and his toxic personality, and how he ends up in this hotel room in New Orleans: all the failed friendships, relationships, and jobs–all of which failed because of who Walter is and the kind of person he is. I’ve known Walters before; worked with my fair share, be friends (for a while) with some, and even dated some (briefly). Walter, and others like him, sows the seeds of their own destruction; no matter how much they like a situation they are in, whatever it may be–they always end up destroying it for themselves, and taking no responsibility for the failure on their own. This lack of self-awareness makes for a fascinating study in character, but there is no resolution to this story–it doesn’t follow the classic arc of beginning, middle and end: there is simply a beginning, a flashback to how Walter wound up here, and then…it just ends with Walter wondering why this always happens.

It’s a character study, not a short story…no matter how beautifully it’s written. The beauty of the writing, and the truth of Walter’s character that is revealed in the story, is quite perfect; I can see why it won an award, but yet…it’s not a story.

And one of the great ironies of this story is that it mirrored Capote’s own life, in the end. His final novel, which was never finished, was excerpted in a magazine, and all of his society lady friends were horrified….because the characters were all based on them, the gossip was barely concealed, and they felt betrayed–and they turned their backs on him….and he never understood why. He died not understanding.

Which makes the story all the more compelling, no?

Today’s hunk is what came up when I google image searched for hot New Orleans shirtless guys; a dancer at Oz.

I Sing for the Things

Again in the thirties this morning. Yeesh. We did turn the heat on last night, and after burying myself in blankets last night in bed, I woke up after a really restful sleep and also realized, despite the pile of blankets, that I was merely comfortable and not hot…I got out of bed and it was pleasant…then I came downstairs to the Arctic temperatures. Madness. Yesterday I discovered that my hands will fit into boys’ gloves–so I bought five pairs so I could cut the fingertips off and wear them to type in my office. I have a space heater going, a wool cap on my head, and with the fingertip-less gloves, I actually feel like I can get some work done in the freezer, er, office, this morning.

Yesterday I was on a panel about Villains at Wizard World’s Comic Con here in New Orleans at the Convention Center, with Genese Davis, the incomparable Heather Graham, and the sublimely talented Bill Loefhelm. I walked down there from the house, despite the cold, and got a lift home from Heather and the awesome Connie Perry (whom I also love seeing). So I got a lot of my Fitbit steps in as well. The panel discussion was pretty lively–really, you can never go wrong with villains, and hey, any time I get a chance to mention/talk about Catherine de Medici on a panel and see people in the audience nodding? I chalk that up as a BIG win.

Today I have to buckle down and work; I’ve got more than one space heater going here in the kitchen and the fingerless gloves really do make a difference, by the way–you never realize how much heat you lose through your head, hands and feet until you actually cover them up. At least it’s not gray outside; despite the cold the sky is blue and the sun is shining, and the bright sunlight coming through the windows feels lovely. I can handle–although I dislike it intensely–cold weather, as long as the sun is out. Dark and grim and gray and cold? Miserable.

Today’s short story is from the anthology Tart Noir, edited by Lauren Henderson and Stella Duffy. The purpose of the anthology was to flip the script on noir; which at the time of publication (2002) was still seen primarily as the province of men and stories told from the male point of view; which usually reduced women to being sex objects in the form of femme fatales. Tart Noir was about the female gaze, noir told from the woman’s point of view (and think about it, wouldn’t The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity, told from the woman’s point of view, be fascinating?), and editors Duffy and Henderson got some major crime writing women to contribute–in addition to themselves, there are stories from Val McDermid, Laura Lippman, Karin Slaughter, Denise Mina, Vicki Hendricks, and Sujata Massey, among others–and the book is quite remarkably good.

The short story I want to talk about today is “Tragic Heroines Tell All,” Lauren Henderson’s contribution to the anthology. Lauren is quite an accomplished author; she wrote the Sam Jones series (which you should check out) and several other things, including y/a, and then started writing the fabulous Rebecca Chance “ripped from the tabloids” bonkbusters (Bad Brides is, bar none, one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read; I giggle just thinking about it), which are enormously fun. “Tragic Heroines Tell All” is also quite clever.

It was always going to be a disaster. I couldn’t understand why I was the only one, out of everyone who worked on the show, who had seen it coming. But they were all too caught up in the celebrities who were participating…the originality of the concept…the miracles our booker had performed, coaxing even the most reluctant guests into the spotlight by dangling the carrot of a large, juicy fee in front of their noses.

Didn’t it occur to anyone, I wanted to say, that if it were such a good idea, someone would have done it before? People who were much better qualified than us? But that would have sounded negative, and we were big on positivity at The Jillian Jackson Show. Besides, I didn’t need to cover my back. I was too lowly for anyone to try to dump the blame for this fiasco onto me. I could watch the slow-motion train wreck unfolding on the screen before my eyes and, in a twisted, perverse, altogether skin-crawling kind of way, actually enjoy it.

The premise of the story is quite clever. When the story was written and the book published, trashy talk shows of The Jerry Springer Show were all the rage on television; everyone, it seemed, had a show along the lines of Oprah or Donahue; the difference being Oprah and Phil Donahue addressed social issues in order to create discussion and understanding; the others went for the lowest denominator and shock value. The show in this story is one of those, and the theme of this particular episode being taped, “Tragic Heroines Tell All,” features two from Greek mythology, Phaedra and Medea, and later Lady Macbeth joins them on stage. The humor is biting–the notion of Medea killing her brother and cutting his body into pieces before later killing her children when Jason abandons her for a younger woman was a bit too much for this audience; as is Phaedra’s insistence she was under a spell from Aphrodite and that was why she claimed her stepson raped her, and on and on.

Smart, funny, and witty–I love this story.

And now back to the spice mines.

Sister Honey

It’s currently thirty-one degrees in New Orleans, and I suspect it is close to that here in my office in the Lost Apartment. My fingers are tingling with cold as I type, and my space heater is going full roar close to my chair. I have on a T-shirt and a sweatshirt, a blanket wrapped around my sweatpant-clad legs. At some point I have to venture out there to go to the grocery store and pick up the mail, and still later I have to go to the convention center for a panel on villains. It was so cold this morning I didn’t want to get out from underneath the five blankets on the bed until slightly after ten o’clock. It’s only supposed to be this weather this weekend; Monday it’s back in the sixties and then next week we are back in the seventies again.

Crazy New Orleans weather.

As Short Story Month continues, yesterday I curled up in my easy chair with Collected Stories of William Faulkner. I’ve not really read much of Faulkner’s short fiction; but I do love Faulkner. Reading Faulkner is never an easy task, and I often think to myself that I should not only revisit some of the novels of his that I have read–Sanctuary, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, As I Lay Dying–but should also try to read more of his work. I read Sanctuary when I was in high school, and read the other three novels when I was in college–but not for a class; I read them for pleasure. The Sound and the Fury is one of my all-time favorite novels, and every time I read something of Faulkner’s–or think about him and his work–I get inspired to write about Alabama. It was during that period that I was reading Faulkner that I wrote most of my Alabama short stories, and whenever I dip back into that well, I don’t know, I can see the Faulkner influence on them. (I am very aware how pretentious that probably sounds; Faulkner was a great writer and comparing ANYTHING I write to him is the ultimate in pretension and arrogance.)

I had not read “A Rose for Emily” in a long time; if it isn’t my favorite short story of all time (and it probably is), then it is definitely one of them. It’s the perfect story, really; the way it’s worded, the use of language, the rhythm of the words, and the story itself, which is grim and dark yet very matter-of-fact. Small Southern towns, whether the Jefferson, Mississippi of the story or the Maycomb of To Kill a Mockingbird, are no different than any other small American town; Peyton Place with a magnolia-scented accent. I have created an entire county in Alabama, along with a county seat–a small town–and have written a lot of mostly unpublished short fiction set there. (It also made a brief appearance in Dark Tide; it was where my main character was from) Every so often I think I should focus more on my Alabama fiction, and rereading Faulkner certainly has that effect on me.

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful attention for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant–a combined gardener and cook–had seen in at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame house that has once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps–an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the Battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor–he who had fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron–remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman would have believed it.

Isn’t that a stunning opening?

I first read “A Rose for Emily” for an American Lit class in college. Unlike almost everything else I was ever forced to read and talk about in a class/write about for class, I actually loved this story (I am actually planning on rereading some of the stories I was forced to read and hated this month; to see if I still hate them: “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Hawthorne, “The Girls in their Summer Dresses” by Irwin Shaw, etc.), and have gone back to reread it any number of times. There is so much truth in this story; this is exactly what small Southern towns and the people who live in them are like; and almost every small town seems to have that strange, eccentric spinster who is the last of a good family living in a crumbling once-proud house.

As you can see by the opening, the story takes place after Miss Emily has finally died; the narrator–whose name we never know, and we never learn anything about other than he is a resident of Jefferson–then proceeds to relate the sad story of Miss Emily, or rather, what the townsfolk know about her. This is all casually pieced together from years of observation and town gossip; the story is told (with incredibly beautiful language) in the tone of someone sharing a good story across the kitchen table, with sweating glasses of iced tea and a bowl of wild blackberry cobbler.

Miss Emily never had a prospect for a husband, other than Homer Barron–who, the people in town viewed as not worthy of a Grierson; he wasn’t a local and moreover, he was a day laborer, brought in to supervise the installation of cement sidewalks. No one really knows what happened between Miss Emily and Homer; but there was a lot of talk. And then he vanished, from town and from Miss Emily, never to be heard from again.

Until now.

Rereading the story, I caught something I’d never noticed before, this particular passage:

When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “she will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had remarked–he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ club–that he was not a marrying man.

Emphasis mine.

First, it surprised me that I’d never noticed that throwaway line of Faulkner’s before–really, if you aren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t really notice it as anything more than what it says; Homer wasn’t a marrying man. But the combination of sentences: “he liked men” and “he was known to drink with the younger men in the Elks’ club” in combination with him not being a marrying man–well, it may not have been intended that way in Faulkner’s mind, but those are codes for ‘gay’ in the Old South; no one ever said the word ‘homosexual’ but instead said things like “not a marrying man’ or ‘confirmed bachelor’.

As you can imagine, this has caught my curiosity.

Faulkner is often called a ‘Southern Gothic’ writer, along with Carson McCullers, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O’Connor, among many others; but I’ve always felt that some of his fiction, and this story in particular, certainly can be considered noir, or noir adjacent. The story doesn’t really answer any questions, but if it was told from another point of view, rather than unknown narrator–her black manservant’s, for example, or even Miss Emily’s herself–the story would definitely become something else than what it is.

But as it is, it is perfect: beautifully written, painfully honest and real, and macabre.

I’ve always wondered if the story inspired the songs “Delta Dawn” and “Angie Baby,” both recorded by Helen Reddy; both songs always make me think of the story, as does “Sister Honey” by Stevie Nicks.

Something to think about, I guess.

And now, off to the spice mines. Here’s a hot Southern guy for you: