Category: writing

The Chain

Vacation all I ever wanted…interestingly enough, I’ve been sleeping extremely well since Friday; maybe it’s the cold (for us) snap, but I’ve been getting at least nine hours of divinely deep sleep every night since Friday. Which is lovely, really–the whole point of this stay-at-home vacation was to not only get a lot of work done but to get rested and relaxed. So, I have to say that’s all working out quite well so far, which is lovely. Yesterday I worked and we got caught up on watching some of our shows (Eyewitness, Gotham, Supernatural, The Exorcist, with Arrow and The Flash and Secrets and Lies on deck), and I read some of Falling Angel, which has a great noir voice.

I love me some noir. I think one of the problems I have with writing noir–or when I’m trying to write it–is I can’t ever get that noir voice right. I’m going to try to write a noir novel in 2017; it’s been dancing around in the back of my head for a really long time, and I think the time is ripe for me to try to write it at long last.

Woo-hoo!

The kitchen is a mess this morning, and I do have a couple of errands to run today, in addition to the work I want to get done. One of the purposes of said vacation was to get a good deep cleaning on the Lost Apartment done, and I plan on working on the kitchen today around the work I have to do. It’s funny how you can let things slide for so long…actually, no, it’s not, but I also have to cut myself a break. I work full time, write full time, and edit part time. Something has to give in that scenario, and two of the things that have are my workouts and my cleaning schedule around the house. I need to stop beating myself up over these things; there are only so many hours in a day, and I am fifty-five and need down time sometimes.

I think maybe one of my goals in 2017 will be to cut myself a break every now and again, and accept that I don’t have to try to be Superman anymore.

Wow, just typing that felt freeing.

We’ll see how that goes.

But I feel up to the challenge. In 2017 I am going to write another Scotty book, a noir, and another y/a. I also want to get some of these short stories revised and redone and submitted out and out there. (I also need to update calendar reminders for deadlines re: some anthologies I want to submit to.) I also need to step up my reading, and spend less time on social media.

All right, I need to dive into the spice mines or I’ll start goofing off and get nothing done.

Here’s today’s hunk:

Songbird

I always say that short stories are much harder for me to write than novels, and I also realize that makes me sound completely insane. But it’s true. I don’t know why I have such a mental block about writing short stories, but the sad thing is I do. I make it much harder than it probably needs to be, most likely. And there’s nothing I admire more than people who write excellent short stories. There’s apparently nothing Stephen King can’t do when it comes to writing; I can name of the top of my head any number of absolutely brilliant short stories he’s written. Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, William Faulkner–the list goes on and on. I wish I read my short stories, honestly; it makes sense to read short stories when I don’t have a lot of free time to read a novel, or between clients at work, etc. I really want to reread King’s collections Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, and I have anthologies all over my house, as well as back issues of both Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine that I should really read.

Music often inspires me; all of my blog titles are song titles, for example, or a lyric from a song, so when I heard about Jim Fusilli’s new anthology Crime Plus Music, crime short stories inspired by music, I had to get a copy.

Thus far, I’ve only read one of the stories, but it’s quite exceptional and may be one of the best short stories I’ve read this year: Alison Gaylin’s “All Ages.”

Gaylin is one of my favorite authors. I’ve loved all her novels (there is one I haven’t read; I’m holding it back because of that weird thing where I always want there to be one more book I haven’t read by a favorite writer), and her What Remains of Me is one of my favorite novels of 2016. Her contribution to my own anthology Blood on the Bayou, “Icon”, was something I was incredibly proud to publish.

But “All Ages”–wow.

We started with the hair. Bret said that was where all adventures started–Great hair, great music, great buzz. And so the first thing we did on the night of the all-ages X show at The Whisky was to lock ourselves in her upstairs bathroom with two cans of Aquanet, three boxes of Midnight Raven temporary dye, and an assortment of pics and combs, gels whose names I can no longer remember but whose colors I do–battery acid green, radioactive yellow…Each of them with anepoxy-like consistency and a sickly chemical smell. We teased the mercy out of each other’s hair and took swigs from a bottle of peach schnapps we’d found at the back of her parents’ liquor cabinet and we played X albums–Under the Big Black Sun, Los Angeles, some bootleg tape recorded live at one of their local shows. Bret’s trifecta in action. And it was working. Exene’s steely voice grew more and more beautiful with each gulp of schnapps, John Doe’s growl a cloud I could float on. My hair turned stiff and black and defiant and before long I was a star, a punk rock star. I felt like dancing.

Gaylin captures the 80’s beautifully, and what it was like to be a kid during that time (she also does this in What Remains of Me). The story, also like the novel, flashes back in time from the present to the 80’s, as the main character remembers what happened the night of the X concert, and how she and Bret hadn’t been friends for years, now that she is attending Bret’s funeral. It’s a lovely story, about friendship and loss, the complicated relationships between girls…and there’s a twist that will knock you out of your chair.

The book is worth the price for this story alone, and it has an amazingly stellar line-up of top crime writers in addition to Gaylin as well: Craig Johnson, Val McDermid, and Gary Phillips, just to name a few.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

And now back to the spice mines.

Go Your Own Way

I had planned, all week, to take yesterday as a day off. I am going to have to write and edit like a madman all of my vacation (woo-hoo! I’m on vacation!) and decided that yesterday, and Thanksgiving day itself, would be my days to do nothing but putter around the house and read and so forth. I also somehow wound up in Facebook jail for posting a photo of a guy in a bikini three years ago that someone somehow decided yesterday ‘violated their community standards of nudity’–who knew that a man in a bikini was naked? Puritans. So I went to Costco and cleaned up around the house and spent the day finishing reading Owen Laukkanen’s The Watcher in the Wall, and once I was finished with that, I started reading William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, around essays from Barbara Tuchman’s Practicing History.

Damn, I do love to read.

We also started getting caught up on the shows we watch last night.

It was time.

Adrian Miller had planned to wait, a few more days, another week, maybe. Hell, when he woke up for school that morning, before school, he wasn’t even sure he would do it anymore. He’d thought about his mom and dad and sister, about Lucas, and wondered what kind of monster would want to hurt them the way he was planning. He’d hugged his parents goodbye and walked out the front door, and it was a beautiful fall morning, crisp and bracing and clear, and he’d decided, not yet. Maybe not ever.

But then he showed up at school, and it all started again.

Lucas wouldn’t talk to him. Lucas never talked to him, not in public, anyway. Lucas avoided his eyes in the hallway, wouldn’t eat lunch with him, made him wait until the final bell rang and they could go to the park, or to Lucas’ dad’s basement, somewhere far away from school and Lucas’ real friends.

I really, really loved this book.

Take this opening. Laukkanen perfectly captures the experience of what it feels like to be that kid; the one who has no friends, the one who counts the minutes until the final bell rings, who dreads going to gym class or the cafeteria for lunch and going to school every morning; who dreads going to bed every night because it means when you wake up you have to go to school again; what it feels like to wish you would die in your sleep so it would all be over; to wonder if you would ever have the nerve to kill yourself.

I was that kid once.

When I bought the book (because I wanted to read one of Owen’s books) I didn’t realize it was a book in a series, but to be honest, I didn’t realize it was a series until I was well into it, and by then I couldn’t stop reading even if I had wanted to; and it didn’t matter at all. Maybe the reading experience would have been heightened by having read the series in its proper order (I’m a bit obsessive about this sort of thing) but I didn’t feel like I missed anything. It worked perfectly well as an introduction to the series (which I am now going to go back and read), and that’s truly not an easy thing to do. (I don’t think, for example, my series can be read out of order.)

The series characters are Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere, who work on a joint FBI-BCA violent crime task force. They get involved in this particular case when Stevens’ daughter–distraught about her classmate Adrian Miller’s suicide–asks them to do something about it. There isn’t much they can do at first, but as a courtesy they start looking into it, and soon discover an ugly world on-line of suicide groups and chatboards…and disturbed individuals who encourage the suicidal to go through with it. Adrian was the victim of one such person, and as they start to dig into this subculture more, they soon realize that there will be more kids talked into killing themselves while this person watches via webcam.

What makes the book so brilliant, though, is that Laukkanen takes us into the mind of the psychopath as well; how he became this person who enjoys watching young people kill themselves, how much he enjoys playing the game, and how he has turned it into a for-profit business. And while it is a slithery, creepy, horrifying place to be–at the same time you can’t help but feel some empathy for this awful, horrible person you want to be caught; since you know the backstory of how he came to be this monster. This fleshes him out, makes him more real–and all the more terrifying, as it is easy to see how such a psychopath is created.

Laukkanen also shows us the point of view of his new target, a sad lonely girl who hates her life, lured in by an Internet boyfriend she meets on one of the suicide chat boards and comes to know through Facebook and other social media (he uses the pictures of an attractive boy who committed suicide already to create this fake presence, and we learn how he does this and how easy teenagers are prey to this sort of thing–which is also terrifying), and finally she decides to go meet him, taking a bus from Tampa to Louisville…and the race is on for Stevens and Windermere to save her.

The pacing is amazing; you never want to put the book down. The writing is superb, and Laukkanen’s characters are all very real.

Oddly enough, once I finished reading this I realized I actually already had the first book in the series, The Professionals, in my TBR pile.

Looking forward to reading some more of Owen Laukkanen.

Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)

One more day to get through and then it’s vacation. Woo-hoo!

I have literally been riveted by Owen Laukkanen’s The Watcher in the Wall; I hated having to put it down and go to bed last night. I’m about halfway finished; Paul won’t be home until late tonight so I am hoping I’ll be able to finish it tonight. I’m probably going to read Michael Thomas Ford’s Lily tomorrow; the LSU game is on early and after that I am probably going to do a lot of cleaning and organizing and reading. (I’ve decided to take Saturday off from all projects, in order to recharge my batteries.) There’s no Saints game on Sunday, so I am debating whether I should attempt Costco before the LSU game tomorrow, or just go Sunday while everyone’s at church.

Decisions, decisions.

Of course, while I juggle these multiple projects, I’ve been thinking a lot about a couple of short stories I’ve been working on for years, “The Ditch” and “Fireflies”; this was triggered, I think, by reading the Lisa Unger novel. I’ve been also thinking about a y/a novel I’ve wanted to write for years called Ruins; rereading the two Barbara Michaels novels in October started me down that path, and the Unger kicked it into overdrive. The problem with Ruins is that I borrowed some of it for Lake Thirteen; if I am going to write Ruins I’ll have to come up with some new things to say, and replace the scenes I borrowed. The problem with Ruins, of course, is that it’s a Civil War ghost story, and you can’t write that kind of book without addressing the elephant in the room: slavery and racism. I originally wrote it as a short story a long time ago (correction: make that a really bad short story; I think it was one of the stories I wrote in the 1980’s when I was trying to emulate Stephen King. I didn’t address any of those issues in the short story; I blissfully pretended, as so many others have done, that none of that mattered. God, the naivete. I think this is why I have so much trouble with trying to write about Alabama. Is there anything more annoying than a progressive white person trying to address race issues? I loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it as a kid; I reread it again recently and, while still thinking it was a moving story that was beautifully written, recognized several problems with it. I have copies of the Colson Whitehead novel that just won the National Book Award and the controversial book Ben Winters published earlier this year; I also found a copy of William Bradford Huie’s The Klansman, about the civil rights struggle in Alabama in the 1960’s, on ebay that I want to reread. (I read it when I was young; I’d like to give it a reread as an adult.)

Maybe after I read Lily. The time has never been more ripe for reading about racism, and studying America’s history of it. I also have Philip Roth’s alternate history The Plot Against America.

Hmmmm.

Of course, actually writing Ruins is a long way away; I have so much to do before the end of the year…

But it’s lovely feeling creative again. I am making lots of notes. The book is coming along rather well, too. I may even get all these things done when I am supposed to

Scary. Who am I?

And on that note, I should probably head back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hottie for today:

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Never Going Back Again

Tonight is my biweekly late night, and tomorrow is my last day in the office before I go on vacation, which is so fucking lovely I cannot wait. I have to do some things today –grocery store and get the oil changed in the car–before I head to work, and I also need to edit and write. I have some laundry going right now, and I also have to do the dishes.

I’m so fascinating.

I am reading Owen Laukkanen’s amazing The Watcher in the Walls, and I think I may take Saturday as a day off so I can watch the LSU-Florida game and relax and finish reading it. One of the lovely consequences of recent events has me avoiding wasting time on social media when I get home from work and actually either watching something on television–last night I watched the season finale of American Horror Story, which was incredibly awful and a complete waste of time, just as the entire season was–or reading; I’m really enjoying the reading, frankly, and there are so many books I need to read. Just that extra hour or so of reading every day is getting me through the TBR file ever so much faster and it’s absolutely lovely. I love reading so much.

I also got some lovely new books in the mail yesterday, not the least of which is Michael Thomas Ford’s Lily, which I am hoping to read very soon.

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I also got Lara Parker’s latest Dark Shadows novel, Heiress of Collinwood; I think I might indulge myself and read those novels during Christmas.

I’m also feeling a bit discombobulated this morning; I am going to have to get out my list and make sure I am getting everything done today that I need to get done.

And on that note–back to the spice mines.

Dreams

I just remembered I am going to be on vacation next week.

It’s not a ‘vacation’ in the sense that I am going anywhere; I simply took the week off from work and am staying home. I have a lot to get done (as always) but rather than being stressed or worried about it, I feel pretty good about it. Odd, I know; who am I and what have I done with Gregalicious? It will be nice, though; I’ll also be able to sleep in and go to the gym; perhaps do some cardio (I can dream, can’t I?) and maybe finally reorganize and clean the kitchen the way I want it to be done.

I finished reading Lisa Unger’s superb Crazy Love You last night, and started reading Owen Laukkanen’s The Watcher in the Wall (which is also superb).

crazy-love-you

As I pulled up the long driveway, deep potholes and crunching gravel beneath my wheels, towering pines above me, I was neither moved by the natural beauty nor stilled inside by the quietude I did not marvel at the fingers of light spearing through the canopy, dappling the ground. I did not admire the frolicking larks or the scampering squirrels for their carefree existence. No. In fact, it all made me sick. There was a scream of protest lodged at the base of my throat, and it had been sitting there for the better part of a year. When it finally escaped–and I wasn’t sure when that might be–I knew it would be a roar to shake the world to its core.

I always say the best writers inspire me; when I read their work, I get ideas for stories of my own and how to improve my own writing. I am now adding Lisa Unger to the list of writers who have that effect on me when I read their books.

Crazy Love You is a rollercoaster ride where you don’t ever know what is real, what is going on, and it’s deeply unsettling to read. But the main character is so well done, you can’t stop reading, you can’t stop caring for him–even when he may (or may not) be doing something truly terrible; you can’t help but hope that it’s not him.

Our hero is Ian Paine, and the story is told in his first person point of view. Ian is the successful artist/writer of a series of semi-autobiographical graphic novels called Fatboy and Priss. Ian grew up in a small town north of New York City called The Hollows, and was fat and unpopular and bullied as a kid. There was a horrible family tragedy when he was young, and that’s when he discovered his friend Priss, a beautiful little girl who lived somewhere in the woods near his own house. Throughout Ian’s life, Priss has taken care of him, when things have gotten bad for him or someone has treated him badly. As the book flashes back and forth in time between the present–where Ian is in love, and engaged to, an almost perfect young woman named Megan and trying to dissociate himself from Priss–to his childhood when Priss stepped in to intervene in his life in some way, we slowly begin to wonder precisely what’s going on. Does Priss really exist, or is she some imaginary friend he’s conjured up to help him deal with his own anger issues? Is she some kind of supernatural creature? Does he have dissociative identity disorder? Is this all some kind of drug-induced hallucination?

This was fascinating to read, and a little heartbreaking; I was bullied when I was young and so of course I can completely empathize with Ian and his absorption into comic books and then graphic novels. And Unger is great at not only her use of language but in building tension, mood, suspense and atmosphere.

I’ll definitely be reading more of her work.

And now back to the spice mines.

Second Hand News

I finished reading Gore Vidal’s Thieves Fall Out between bursts of writing on Saturday, and then during the LSU-Arkansas game Saturday night I started reading Lisa Unger’s Crazy Love You, which is just extraordinary. I often say that the best writers and their work are inspirational to me; they give me ideas and make me want to work harder at my own writing and just be a better writer.

So far, the Unger novel is doing just that–and that’s my hallmark for someone being a truly spectacular writer. I just wish I had the time to just sit down and read it through.

That said, as Constant Reader is undoubtedly aware, I’ve been in a writing malaise lately. I don’t know why this happens, nor do I know how to stave it off, but it’s been the reality. I’ve been struggling to write, and even getting 1000 words out in one day has been absolutely like pulling teeth in the Middle Ages. And yet…yesterday I sat down and in less than two hours I wrote over 3000 words. I think–and I am deadly serious–that reading the Unger novel kicked me past it. I also managed to get a lot done over the weekend on top of the writing as well; organizing and cleaning and so forth. So I think I may be past the malaise this time. Here’s hoping.

I wasn’t crazy about the Vidal novel, to be perfectly honest. It seemed like it could be something truly special; international intrigue in 1950’s Egypt, with after effects from the war and all the intrigue from that, as well as some stuff about the antiquities black market. It was one of the many novels Vidal published under a pseudonym in the 1950’s, after publishing The City and the Pillar basically killed his career for a while. I’ve read other works by Vidal and greatly enjoyed them; I am slowly working my way through his epic Empire (one of the multiple books I am currently reading) and so I thought this noirish thriller would be better than it actually was. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sorry I read it, mind you–I just don’t think it warrants more of a discussion on here.

Although my creativity continues to rage out of control. I had some ideas on how to fix some short stories this weekend, and wish that I could work on them right now–I also got the idea for another novel. Heavy heaving sigh. It really never relents!

Okay, I am going to dive back into the spice mines. Here’s a beefcake shot of Ryan Phillippe, a bonus from 54:

ryan-phillippe-54

No Questions Asked

Monday morning. Heavy heaving sigh. Another week, a lot to do, and probably not nearly enough time in which to try to do it all. I am going to do my level best <b>not</b> to allow this to create a sense of helplessness/impossibility which will lead me to distraction and not even trying, which only makes things worse.

Yes, I’ve been here before, if you couldn’t tell.

I must not panic I must not panic I must not panic I must not panic.

And I won’t. I just have to buckle down and get it done and I know I can.

FOCUS.

Over the weekend, after finishing Triad, I reread another favorite Barbara Michaels novel, Witch, which I had not read in a long time. (I am now reading Gore Vidal’s Thieves Fall Out, originally published under a pseudonym and now reprinted under his actual name by Hard Case Crime.)

witch

According to the directions Ellen had received from the real estate agent, the house was in a clearing in the woods. Gently perspiring in the the hot office, Ellen had thought wistfully of cool forest glades. April in Virginia is unpredictable; this particular day might have been borrowed from July, and the small-town office was not air-conditioned.

An hour later, after bumping down rutted lanes so narrow that tree branches pushed in through the car windows, Ellen was inclined to consider “clearing” a wild exaggeration. She started perspiring again as soon as she turned off the highway. No breeze could penetrate the tangled growth of these untamed forests; moisture weighted the air.

At any rate, this must be the house, though it more resembled a pile of worn logs overgrown by honeysuckle and other vines.

Barbara Michaels, as I have said any number of times, is one of my favorite writers of all time. Witch is one of her better books, definitely in my top tiers of her novels under that name. It tells the tale of Ellen March, divorced, who has been living with her brother-in-law helping him raise his three sons (her dead sister’s) and her own daughter, but now all are leaving for college or private schools, the brother-in-law’s job with the state department is taking him overseas, and all of a sudden, she is at loose ends. As the house in one of the suburbs of DC is to be sold, Ellen decides to buy a nice place out in the country. And she finds one, spends the next few months getting it fixed up, and moves in.

But all is not what it seems in the country.

First off, Ellen has a very bizarre reaction to the house when she first sets foot in it–an exultation, kind of ecstatic joy. And then there are the stories about the house–it was originally built in the seventeenth century, and it was the home of a woman many of the local considered to be a witch–who tended the wild animals in the woods and then “committed suicide.”

And then weird things start happening–she starts seeing a white cat in the woods (the witch had a white cat); sometimes she sees shadows out of the corner of her eye in her bedroom that vanish when she looks; she occasionally hears laughter inside the house; and then she tells, as a joke, fortunes for some teenagers who hang out in the general store in the nearby village of Chew’s Corners…and the fortunes start coming true.

The town, which is dominated by a horrific fundamentalist church called the Earthly Atonement of the Wrath of God, which is even worse than it sounds. So, of course, the “good” people of Chew’s Corners think she is either a witch herself, or being possessed by the ghost of the witch.

It’s a good story–although I would disagree with the cover’s depiction of it as “a story of quiet horror”–it’s still, more than anything else, a suspense novel with some paranormal elements thrown into it for good measure. It’s a great read, and the big reveal is just as shocking on a reread as it was on the original read.

And now, back to the spice mines. This stuff ain’t going to get done on its own.

Kung Fu Fighting

Ugh. Tonight is the LSU-Alabama game, which means I will be incredibly tense all day. Sometimes I do wonder why I watch college football, as it really doesn’t seem like I enjoy it all that much…or maybe I enjoy the tension? Anyway, obviously, I am all in for the Tigers tonight, and win or lose, I will still be a Tiger fan. GEAUX TIGERS!

I also finished reading Mary Leader’s Triad last night, and started rereading Barbara Michaels’ Witch; I will probably discuss the Leader novel tomorrow.

We also watched, around our other shows this week, the latest James Franco film, King Cobra.

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The film is based on a true crime title (which has been in my TBR pile forever) called Cobra Killer: Gay Porn Murder and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justice by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, about the true life murder of gay porn producer/director Bryan Kocis. I remember when it all happened; I also remember thinking this would make a great noir novel.

I have any number of ideas for noir novels set in the world of gay porn.

The crux of the case had to do with Kocis’ exclusive contract with a young porn star who performed under the name Brent Corrigan; the killers–Harlow Cuadra and Joseph Kerekes–were porn producers/stars who were deeply in debt and saw Corrigan’s popularity as a way to get out of the debt, by having him star in one of their films. Kocis was the fly in the ointment with his exclusive contract and his trademarking of the name “Brent Corrigan”; so they killed him. Grisly and dark; it has all the makings of a great noir, and I may still write it, you never know–as I said, I have any number of ideas for noir novels set in the world of gay porn.

It is an industry that sadly lends itself to noir.

The film, starring James Franco, Christian Slater, Garrett Clayton, and Keegan Allen in the leads, with Alicia Silverstone and Molly Ringwald in supporting roles…is well done but not well written, if that makes any sense. The way it is filmed and edited and written tells the story from the moment young Sean Lockhart meets Bryan Kocis, ostensibly to intern in a film production company, only to find himself being turned into Brent Corrigan, gay porn star. The way the role is written you can’t really tell if Sean went to meet with Kocis knowing what he was doing; did he want to do porn for the money, or was he really interested in film making? He also kind of comes across as not particularly smart.

Clayton, however, is certainly pretty enough to be a twink porn star, if you’re into twink porn stars.

Garrett Clayton, late of the Disney Channel:

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The actual Brent Corrigan:

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The movie was, you know, just okay. I didn’t really come away from it feeling anything, or with any further insight to what happened or why; it was just kind of matter of fact. The strongest performance in the film, I felt, was from Keegan Allen, whom I used to watch on Pretty Little Liars; he managed to make killer (oops, spoiler, sorry!) Harlow Cuadra sympathetic; kind of a child/man who was both intellectually and emotionally stunted, whereas Franco’s portrayal of Kerekes left me wondering ‘was it the drugs, or was he actually a sociopath?” But Keegan Allen was terrific.

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The movie was entertaining enough; it held my interest, but as I said, it was matter-of-fact to the point it seemed almost like a documentary; this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then they were arrested.

Corrigan is not pleased with the movie, I suppose I should add, and plans to write his own book about what happened.

And that, really, is the key to all of this, and why I think the movie doesn’t succeed ultimately. I don’t know who Brent Corrigan is, or any of these people, any more than I did before I watched the movie.

One thing they did get right–almost so right it made me laugh–was how bad the acting in porn films are. They would show the start of the scenes, when the actors have to “act”–and they really got the amateurish line-readings down pat.

I do want to read the book now, though, because the story is, in and of itself, fascinating to me.

And now back to the spice mines.

Me and You and a Dog Named Boo

As I continue to muddle my way through this manuscript–honestly, I don’t know sometimes why it’s like pulling teeth and other times it’s just comes right out–I am constantly amazed at how many other ideas I get when I am working on something; ideas that are infinitely more interesting and sound like more fun to write than whatever it is I am actually working on. AND IT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE TIME. And once I am finished, the creativity and urge to work on something else goes right away.

Surely I can’t be the only writer who experiences this?

AUGH.

Madness.

But as I think about these short stories, I remember probably the two finest collections of short stories ever–Echoes from the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier and Night Shift by Stephen King. I recently bought another copy of Night Shift on ebay, as my copy is in a box somewhere. Both du Maurier and King were short story masters; in fact, when I was a kid I loathed short stories and loathed reading them; this was primarily because I had to read things like “The Minister’s Black Veil” ad nauseum in English classes. I wasn’t lucky enough to be exposed to the truly great stories, like Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Jackson’s “The Lottery” until I got to college; but even by then the damage was done; that, along with the assigned short stories in writing courses (if I ever have to write an essay on Irwin Shaw’s “The Girls in the Their Summer Dresses” again I cannot be held responsible for what I do) had conspired to create a mentality that I loathed short stories. My experience writing short stories in writing courses in various colleges and universities had also taught me that I wasn’t a good short story writer; any good short stories I might write for a class were good purely by accident because I did not know what I was doing. That still stands true for today; I would rather write a novel than a short story.

But I am digressing, as is my wont.

Reading the du Maurier and King short story collections made me aware of what was possible for a truly gifted author to do with a short story; just as Jackson did with “The Lottery” and Faulkner with “A Rose for Emily.” My own difficulties with writing short stories comes from not, I realize now, having an actual system; I get an idea–usually both a title and a first line; maybe a character–and then I just kind of write with no idea of what’s to come, or what the story is about. This is the issue I had with “The Weeping Nun”; I wanted to write a story to submit to an anthology about Halloween stories, and I had this great title with an amorphous idea for a story, a point of view character, and an opening line: Satan had a great six pack. The problem, as I started writing the story, was realizing that as it came to me it had nothing to do with a weeping nun; but I was determined to somehow force that into the story so I could use the title.

On reflection, it seems perfectly insane and ludicrous now; but I am nothing if not obtuse and I am incredibly stubborn in stupid ways. I liked that title, and damn it, this story was going to fit that title if it fucking killed me.

The end result was the story was never finished, I missed the deadline for submission, and there was just frustration left in the wake of yet another short story failure.

And of course, this week as I struggled with writing the novel, it came to me in a flash: the story I was writing had nothing to do with the story of the weeping nun; I should have simply retitled the story and followed it to its logical conclusion and saved the story of the weeping nun for another time.

Idiocy, really. So simple, but I just couldn’t see it at the time.

And now I want to finish writing the damned story, which I now see as being about the gates of Guinee on Halloween night in the French Quarter.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk to cheer you up, Constant Reader:

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