Category: writing

Used to Be

Up earlier than I’ve been since the surgery to go to physical therapy at nine this morning. I don’t mind getting up earlier, to be honest; I’ve been sleeping so much since coming home from the hospital I was actually getting worried that I may not ever want to get up early again. Six next week for work is definitely going to be an adjustment, but in some ways I am really looking forward to going back to the office and getting back into that routine. I slept well last night–Sparky of course was looking to be fed around five, but I went right back to bed. I think Sparky will work as my first alarm, before the actual alarm starts blaring at six. It feels a bit chilly this morning in the apartment, and I do need to shower before I head uptown for my appointment.

They finished the ceiling yesterday, thank heavens. All that is left to be done is rehanging the ceiling fan and painting, and I think that’s not going to happen until I am back to work. The roofing guys (I think they are construction of all types, actually) are super nice and helpful–you never know what you’re going to get with blue collar workers, but they didn’t seem to have any issue with Obviously Homosexual Greg; they even rigged a temporary fix for the soft spot in the living room floor–and shared with me that eventually they will be getting around to reinforcing the floor with steel so we never have to be worried about falling through the floor (one of the great and many joys of old homes in New Orleans), which is kind of a relief…although we had gotten used to that soft spot in the floor, I sure as fuck won’t miss it if and when it’s gone.

While they were working, there was naught for me to do except sit in my chair and read, so I finished Donna Andrews’ Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! yesterday, and greatly enjoyed it. (It really doesn’t feel like Christmas until I’ve read Donna’s annual Christmas murder mystery.) Paul also worked from home yesterday, so we got all caught up on Fellow Travelers last night, which is really quite excellent, if horrifically sad and tragic–but as I said to a friend in an email yesterday, these stories still need to be told–if for no other reason than to remind people that what conservatives and right-wingers call “the good old days” weren’t so good for anyone who wasn’t white or straight. The story is built around the Lavender Scare of the 1950s–we all know about the Red Scare, but not about the full throttle purging of queer people from government employ–and it was, indeed, a horrible time of lives being ruined and people committing suicide. A lot of the things that happen in the show (and probably in the book) really happened; I think they fictionalized some people so they could easily maneuver around their story without having to stick to facts or create a potentially false narrative.

And as someone who spent longer in the closet than he needed to, and spent so much time completely terrified that someone would find out and my life would be ruined–I can understand and relate to these characters completely. The closet punished everyone–and it certainly punished the wives and children of these closeted, terrified men. I actually wrote a story set in that time period called “The Weight of a Feather”–my first ever historical fiction–about a State department employee targeted by someone working for McCarthy for blackmail, and how he handles the situation. John Copenhaver also writes marvelous novels set in the DC of the fifties with queer characters, Constant Reader, so if you haven’t checked out his work you really should, especially if you are interested in the period and even if you aren’t; these stories are important and need to be known. He’s also a marvelous writer; I do envy and admire the way he bends and twists language to create images and story.

After PT today I have errands to run–prescriptions to pick up, groceries to make, the mail–but it’s all going to depend on timing. The postal service doesn’t open until ten, but I suppose I could swing over to Midcity and get my prescriptions and groceries and swing by the mail on the way back home; after all, other than the PT appointment I don’t have to be anywhere by a certain time. And since there’s not going to be anyone doing construction work in my workspace today, I should be able to get some writing done, too. I’m behind, as always, but I feel like a strong push over the course of the next few days before I return to work can get me right back on schedule. And I haven’t yet picked out my next read–turns out my Christmas reading isn’t going to work because I don’t have a lot of Christmas books in the TBR pile; Donna’s was the only other one I had on hand. I’m thinking I should read cozies, to keep my mind in that world since that’s what I am writing–but my word, I have so many great books to get to! A delightful problem to have indeed, right?

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I need to make a grocery list, and I need to list everything I am going to do today, too, so I don’t forget anything. I paid the bills yesterday, so everything is caught up at least that I am aware of, and so that was quite a relief. Enjoy your Thursday, Constant Reader–I’ll be back later to write up my thoughts about Donna’s latest two mysteries at some point.

Does It Make You Remember

It is impossible for me to express how much books have always meant to me, and how grateful I am, to this day, to my parents and grandmother for encouraging me to read. We’ve always been a reading family–but no one ever has read as much, or as often, as I did. One of my aunts called me “the readingest child I’ve ever seen”–and she was a librarian. Books made sense to me; the worlds I escaped into whenever I opened a book made sense to me, and none of the worries or cares of my childhood bothered me when I was lost in a book. I also loved history, and thus read a lot of it when I was a kid; the basic overview history classes I had were pretty easy for me because I already knew the history in greater depth than the textbook provided.

The Scholastic Book Fairs were always my favorite day every month, and I was always so delighted when my mom would let me order a few–never all the ones I wanted, because I really wanted them all–and it was even more exciting when I found one that was also set in a period of American history. Johnny Tremain remains, to this day, one of my all-time favorites, and when I was a kid, I wanted to write both a mystery series (like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew) as well as historical fiction.

One such book that stuck with me over the years–and didn’t have as big an impact on culture as Johnny Tremain, which won awards and was filmed by Disney–was Margaret Goff Clark’s Danger at Niagara, which was set on the US/Canadian border during the War of 1812 (which few people write about and is mostly forgotten today). A few years ago I was looking for the original hardcover of Johnny Tremain I had read as a child, when a copy of Danger at Niagara was recommended to me by the eBay algorithm. It wasn’t expensive, it was a library remainder, and I thought, what the hell and shelled out the less than five dollars including postage, and the other day while they worked on the ceiling, I reread its 120 pages.

Sorry for the not-clear cover image; my copy is a library discard and there are no clear images of this cover on-line; at least not that I can find.

Exhausted from a day of fruitless hunting, Homan Reed ate a cold supper of cornbread and milk. Hastily he banked the fire and then fell into bed, forgetting his loneliness and the ever-present danger from across the river.

He awoke at dawn, shivering under the heavy quilts, awakened as much by the silence as the cold. He lay still, listening. Gray morning light had come through the small panes of glass Uncle Oliver had carried all the way from Connecticut. A sound that usually penetrated the log walls of the cabin was missing–a sound that was part of the background of his life in this lonely frontier clearing in western New York State.

His hear began to beat too fast, and he sat up in bed, reaching for the buckskin breeches he had laid on top of the quilts. Homan was a good-looking boy, rather small for his almost fifteen years.

There really isn’t much to the story, really. Homan wakes up to realize he has slept through a raid on his little family farm, and their livestock is gone. His uncle brought Homan and his brother up here after their parents died, and his brother is off fighting in the American army in the War of 1812. The Reed place is right across the river from Canada–and of course, at that time Canada was the enemy. Putting myself into Homan’s place was exciting; trying to imagine what it was like to know that not only was the British army capable of crossing the river at any time, their Mohawk allies were also out and about and a constant threat. Shortly after the opening of the book, the American army burns a Canadian town and turns out women, children, the sick and the elderly out into the cold with no shelter or food; to the author’s credit, she makes it clear this is horrible and a war crime; Homan, who witnesses this from inside Fort Niagara (he’s gone looking for his brother and to try to enlist), is horrified and ashamed Americans could do something so heinous–and everyone on the American side of the river knows there will be retaliation and retribution.

As I reread this short book, I paid very close attention to what we now would call propaganda for American supremacy–and there was some, but not as much as I would have thought, and there was less problematic language than I would have expected for the time (it was published in 1967 originally). Yes, Clark refers to the Tuscarora and Mohawk peoples as “Indians,” as do the characters (which is what they would have said at the time, so historically accurate, if offensive) but she treats the natives with respect–no references to them not being human beings, or being savages or uncivilized or anything like that; Homan even has a friend his age from the Tuscarora people. The Mohawks are referred to as the enemy, but in the same way the British are. There are a few mentions of pro-American exceptionalism propaganda–things like “we are a growing power the world needs to respect”, that sort of thing that Americans have always believed and never questioned until the last few decades or so. But Homan is likable enough, and the story itself, of worrying about your safety and losing your home and so forth, resonates still, even if technically Homan and his family were colonizers.

I really do need to reread Johnny Tremain…

Baby, Come to Me

Today’s hunk is probably going to get flagged for “sensitive content” on the various prudish social media sites, but so be it.

The roofers came in yesterday and worked on the kitchen ceiling, and of course day one, I was able to close Sparky up in the bathroom until they left. Yesterday, he figured out how to open the bathroom door, which meant I had to crate him and he did NOT like that at all. But apparently, our cat is an evil genius and super smart–not a bad thing, it just means our only option when the apartment is being worked on is to crate him, and I really don’t like doing that…but he’s so curious about everything I fear if he got out we’d never catch him and he’d be so excited by all the new things to explore and investigate…sigh. Hopefully they won’t be here long; they just have to do some caulking and rehang the fixture. We will see.

I survived my first physical therapy session–which wasn’t bad at all. They gave me some exercises to do, which don’t take long, and I go back again tomorrow morning for round two. I will be able to schedule it around my work schedule, so that’s also a plus, and I really like my therapist. I have to say, having not had a lot of experience with medical stuff other than when Paul was having some procedure and my primary care visits (and having heard horror stories from other people about hospitals, treatments, insurance, etc.) this was extremely easy and simple. I have really gotten amazing care on every level, despite the misdiagnosis from my former primary care physician, and the insurance (knock wood) has been easy every step of the way; if there were any issues with it, it was handled by the medical staff and I didn’t have to deal with any of it.

The worst part of this entire thing–once I was able to disconnect all the things I was attached to for 72 hours after the procedure–was the antibiotics, which made me nauseous; they had also giving me an anti-nausea medication so I could handle those. But I absolutely hated them. The anti-nausea medication kept me from vomiting it all back up, but I could also tell when the nausea was occurring. I never had to throw up, but I could tell my body was fighting it with the help of the other pill, and while not as unpleasant as actually throwing up would be, it was unpleasant.

And you know, if that’s the worst thing to experience after this kind of major surgery, that’s pretty impressive. I got amazing care.

So, yesterday from shortly after I got home from PT until about six last night I was exiled from my workspace, and so I simply sat in my easy chair and read this year’s Christmas murder mystery from Donna Andrews, Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! and am enjoying it–Meg participating as a last minute replacement in a television reality competition blacksmithing show (which is actually a brilliant idea) was an excellent way to shut down listening to Sparky howl from upstairs while they worked on the ceiling. I didn’t get as far into it as I should have, or would have under ordinary circumstances, but I was often going upstairs to try to calm him down and there was a lot of sawing, drilling, and hammering noises. I got about a hundred pages in, which wasn’t bad at all, really, given all the distractions, and the book flows so smoothly…that’s one of the things that I love about Donna’s books–they are so smooth, everything flows nearly and cleanly into the next scene, chapter, clue, strange occurence, and that feeling carries back and forth between books. I counted the books listed at the front of this volume, and by my count, this is book thirty-three in the series; how many other series have exceeded that number? Ellery Queen? Nero Wolfe? Perry Mason? And all at the same publisher, too. That’s really a skill that should be respected.

We watched some more of Fellow Travelers last night and the show is very good; high production values, excellent writing, superb acting (Jonathan Bailey deserves at the very least an Emmy nomination, but I doubt he’ll get it; gay men playing gay parts seldom get recognized) and it’s an important story–showing how horrific it was to be gay back during the days of Eisenhower and McCarthy, and working in Washington; I’m glad Thomas Mallon wrote the book and even gladder Showtime made it and clearly spared no expense. But…it’s hard to watch sometimes. I won’t say it’s triggering, because that’s not the right word, but as i told Paul last night, this isn’t going to end well. The story flashes back and forth between the 1950’s and the 1980’s, in AIDS-devastated San Francisco in 1985, so…yeah, not exactly going to end on a high note, is it? As I was watching last night, I couldn’t help but think of Felice Picano’s Like People in History, which similarly flashed back to the past from the present–AIDs-ravaged New York in the early 1990s–through the entire progress of queer rights and the arrival of HIV/AIDS. That would also make a terrific mini-series, and these stories, hard as they are to read and watch and relive, are important because the memories of living through that time, and what it was like, are fading…and as those of us who survived the plague years get older and die from causes other than HIV/AIDS, I worry those stories won’t be told, or remembered, anymore. It’s bad enough that it’ll be thought of as distant history and not as horrific as it was, something that happened to other people a long time ago.

I remember when I first started writing, and in that time period for queer people there was always the question–do I write about HIV/AIDS? Does everything–all of our art–have to center HIV/AIDS? Even now, I wonder about whether I should or not in a book; do I have a responsibility to my readers and my community to talk about HIV, PrEP, undetectable viral loads and so forth? Or is that something people don’t want to read about, would find intrusive to the narrative? I’ve never wanted to write anything that even remotely hinted at that heavy-handed “a very special episode” way so many television shows handled social issues in the 1980s.

Heavy thoughts for a Wednesday morning before heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back probably later, depending on the workers.

You Can’t Hurry Love

One week from today I return to the office, and in a little while I’ll be heading to my first physical therapy appointment. I’ve not been outside for a few days–seriously, this recovery has only helped play into my “I don’t want to leave the house” mentality, and it’s amazing how quickly I slide into that–and it feels cold. The roofers came by yesterday and chased me out of the kitchen so they could rip the damaged ceiling out; they will be returning to day to fix it. It was okay, though. I stayed in the living room and brainstormed and worked out the next few chapters of the book, and I also read two books. One was a reread of a book I read as a kid, Danger at Niagara by Margaret Goff Clark1, about a fifteen year old boy who lives along the river during the War of 1812, and the other was the second-to-most recent Donna Andrews, Birder She Wrote2—I couldn’t bring myself to read the books out of order so I could get to the Christmas one sooner, but at least now I can dig into this year’s Christmas mystery by Donna. (There will be more on both books later; I don’t have time to write about them before I leave for PT, and the roofers will be here when I get home. I imagine this means I’ll be reading the Christmas book and brainstorming ideas for my book while they put in the insulation and new ceiling and rehang the ceiling fan.)

I slept super well again last night–and woke up at six, so that’s still wired into my brain, which is a good thing; getting up to go back to the office next week will not be as big a challenge as I feared; I was also wide awake and it took me a while to go back to sleep, and I had a nightmare in that brief hour or so–oddly enough, it was about leaving a faucet running and the apartment flooding and having to clean up the mess while thinking I don’t have time for this. Subconscious deadline fear? Perhaps. But I do feel a lot more confident about writing the book now, and it’s just a matter of being able to sit down for a few hours every day and writing it, and I need to stop pressuring myself to get it right the first time.

We got caught up on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is really well done and very interesting. I hadn’t realized that it all hadn’t aired yet, so we are now caught up through everything that is available to stream on Apple TV, and then we moved onto the Showtime mini-series based on Thomas Mallon’s novel Fellow Travelers, which I have a copy somewhere in the massive TBR stack and have wanted to get around to, if for no other reason than it’s set in the same period as Chlorine, which I have decided I am going to go. back to once I have this new drag queen cozy finished. Yes, that’s right, I’ve decided that once I finish this draft, I am going to go back to Chlorine and try to get a first draft done while alternating with Muscles, and hopefully I will finally get first drafts of each finished by Carnival–which I can easily do as long as I stay motivated. This morning I feel like I can conquer the world again, and I haven’t felt like that in years; it’s been so long I can’t remember the last time I felt so confident in myself. It feels good. I ain’t gonna lie; I’ve been down, depressed, and feeling defeated now for quite a long time–I think going back to buying my car, which, while it was exciting to actually have a new car, that thrill died as I started realizing how much that car payment was damaging my finances. I paid off the car right as the pandemic started, so I swapped out one stressful headache for the overall societal depression everyone was feeling at that time, and I never really recovered or got my equilibrium back, if that makes sense? And of course, I bought the car right around the time Mom’s health went south, so that was also always in the back of my head.

But I am going into the new year with hearing aids and my teeth fixed; and the injury to my left arm repaired. Once I finish the strengthening physical therapy for that (which can’t start till the end of February), then I can start going back to the gym. And that actually makes me excited and anticipatory; I’m not so concerned about looking great as I am about feeling good–there’s absolutely no vanity involved in my wanting to get back into a regular exercise regimen. I think I am going to start taking walks around the neighborhood, if for no other reason than to see the Christmas decorations, and New Orleans always does decorating up. I’ve also been backing up my back-up hard drive to Dropbox, which is taking quite some time, but once it’s all done, the future back-ups will be ever so much easier to do. I really need to eliminate duplicate files–there are so many of them it’s not even funny–and get my electronic storage under control. It’s really such a huge project that it scares me to think about how long it will take, and that’s mainly because of so many duplicate files, and the fact I don’t name picture files…and I am a file hoarder, which isn’t good–but is yet another symptom of my anxiety.

And on that note, I need to eat something before I go to physical therapy, so I am going to bring this to a close. I may be back later; it’s hard to say depending on how the ceiling reconstruction goes, but I will most definitely be back tomorrow morning. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you at the latest tomorrow.

  1. I have some serious thoughts about this book as pro-US propaganda, which i obviously didn’t notice as a child but were huge red flags on this reread. ↩︎
  2. I loved this book, as I do all of her books; it’s a remarkable achievement keeping a series this fresh and interesting this deep in; I think she might be at almost thirty in the series now? A master class in maintaining a long-running series, seriously. ↩︎

Let’s Go Dancing

Monday morning in the Lost Apartment after another terrific night’s sleep. I am really going to miss not getting up with an alarm when I go back to work next week. I’m not going to lie–sometimes this enforced rest has been annoying and frustrating and kind of unpleasant, but on the other hand, I haven’t felt this rested in years. This is nice, as is how refreshed I feel every morning, along with the knowledge that I don’t need to shower as part of the waking-up ritual every morning as well. I think as the week goes on I will start trying to get up earlier and go through the usual morning ritual, to get back into practice with it.

Yesterday was a relatively mild and relaxing one. I literally forgot that the Saints were playing–I’d lost track of what day of the week it was–which is just as well; it seems like the game was an exercise in enormous frustration for Saints fans. Granted, we had a better day than Florida State fans, who were seriously robbed. I figured that maybe they’d get screwed, but the Georgia loss made it seem unlikely; and the final spot in the play-offs was up for grabs between Georgia, Alabama, and Texas–and much as I hated to see the SEC left out, it made sense to me. Georgia lost to Alabama who lost to Texas; but Texas’ loss was to Oklahoma, who didn’t have a great year, and that was after Texas beat Alabama, while the Tide was running the table. I figured that would be the committee’s justification for screwin Texas in favor of Alabama; it never occurred to me they’d screw Florida State over and take both Texas and the Tide. This was an odd year, with a surplus of undefeated and one-loss teams, along with any number of two and three loss teams who only lost to undefeated or one-loss teams (LSU lost three games–undefeated Florida State, one loss Alabama, and two loss Mississippi–whose two losses were Alabama and Georgia). It is, I suppose, a good year for the four-team play-off to go out on; but if people think there aren’t going to be controversies and angry fan bases once it goes to a twelve team play-off next year, think again. LSU’s schedule is insane for 2024 (USC, UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas A&M); the only traditional annual games no longer on the schedule are Auburn and Mississippi State. I think people are already mad about next season, based on the final rankings by the committee? There seemed to be a lot of vitriol on the social media apps last night. So, yes, football fan bases can even get up in arms over projections.

I did read David Valdes’ marvelous Finding My Elf yesterday, which was absolutely delightful, and really left me feeling a bit warm inside when I did finish it, and am really looking forward to when his You Spin Me Round comes up in the TBR pile. I think my next read will be Donna Andrews; and I’ll just read her latest two Megs back-to-back. One of course is the annual Christmas mystery–which I want to read for the season–but my brain won’t let me read them out of order, so I have to read Birder She Wrote first before Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! which is also a great title. I also want to do some writing of my own today; the days are slipping through my fingers and I need to prioritize writing more than anything else with the energy I have on reserve. I also watched Joy Ride, which was quite fun, and then we started watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is extremely well done, and for a television show about monsters–we don’t see a lot of monsters. The story primarily focuses on a young woman who survived the Godzilla rampage through San Francisco, and the whole concept of a world and a humanity that has adapted to enormous monsters, like Godzilla and others (the Godzilla evacuation route and directions in Tokyo was startling) is interesting. Monster movies like this, and the various others about giant creatures from the depths of the ocean or the bowels of the earth terrified me as a child and gave me nightmares. (I’ve never watched any iteration of King Kong, for example, and I think I’ve only seen the original Godzilla, which was a huge mistake as it really did haunt my dreams for years. There was one film about a giant octopus who would unfurl his tentacles to crush a seaside city that I can still see sometimes in my mind.) But I am enjoying this show, and am interested in seeing where it goes; it seems like its primary purpose is to expose some corporation (Monarch) who has something to do with the monsters. There’s also a dual time-line, which you know I love.

The workers just checked in to see if the kitchen ceiling leaked over the weekend, and so they are about to come in and take down the rest of the ruined ceiling in preparation for making it look pretty tomorrow. Yay! I also have my first PT appointment tomorrow morning, so I am curious to see what that’s going to look like. I am going to run my errands tomorrow morning after my therapy, since I’ll already be uptown (it’s near the corner of Magazine and Napoleon), so I might as well head over and get the mail and do whatever brief grocery run needs to be done.

I also started getting better organized yesterday; I got my bills all mapped out for the month (I generally do this after every pay day, after I’ve paid the bills so I know how much debt is still outstanding; it also helps keep me from forgetting to make payments). The desk area looks much better than it did, but I still have some filing and organizing to get done. I’m hoping they won’t be in here for very long this morning; I am going to repair to my chair as soon as they come in and try to read until they are finished, and maybe do some writing once they’ve left. I am terribly behind on everything (hey, I’m starting to sound like myself again!), and so one of my tasks for today is to make a to-do list, as well as a “upcoming submissions date” list so I can try to get some stories back out there.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

All I Want for Christmas Is You

All evidence to the contrary, I do love Christmas. I love the decorations, I love the mentality behind it, I love the festive spirit that people try to keep up during the season, and I even like the music for the most part. (I also find many things wrong with American Christmas, but that’s for another time.) I detest cheap sentimentality, or melodrama for the sake of a cheap emotional response from the audience/reader. I don’t enjoy Hallmark or Lifetime Christmas movies as a genre–predictable, sickly sweet, cloyingly sentimental like cheap perfume–but I don’t care that other people do; my preference is never to yuck someone else’s yum. Obviously, there’s a big market for those films and books, but they generally aren’t for me. I just don’t buy into them when I watch, I suppose, is the best way to put it?

This is also partly why I don’t read a lot of romance novels. But when I saw that David Valdes had written a young adult Christmas romance novel, I thought, you know what? I bet this is really good, so I procured a copy and spent a lovely afternoon reading it.

I loved it.

No one can accuse my dad of being subtle. He loves Christmas the way most guys in the Pioneer Valley love the Patriots. Instead of team jerseys, he has a collection of ugly holiday sweaters that would be kind of impressive if it wasn’t so embarrassing. (Seriously, the llama ones lights up. I can’t.) So I shouldn’t be surprised that when I arrive home for my first, or maybe last, winter break from college, the house looks like, I don’t know, Frosty Con. Snowmen everywhere.

I’m so not in the mood.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Christmas well enough. Even though Halloween is my favorite holiday because of the costumes, I love all the twinkling lights, and you can’t really overplay “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” But’s it been a long day on the bus from NYC, and before it was a long day, it was a long week in a long semester. Not that I’m ready to admit that to my dad.

I purposely chose a bus that would get me home to Lindell while he was working. Yes, it’s, like, almost two miles from the bus stop in front of the old town hall to our place, but dragging my bag for forty minutes was worth it for the chance to come home to an empty house. I need some time alone in the privacy of my own room before Dad gets here and I become the grinch, the carol killer, the fly in the eggnog.

I have to tell him that I’m failing out of school.

And so we meet Cam, first semester Theater major from the small town of Lindell, Massachusetts, coming home with his head bowed and thinking he’s failed at making it in the big city. He was THE theater kid at his high school, but once he’s made it to the city and school of his dreams, he’s just another face in the crowd–and doesn’t feel like he fits in. He’s doing fine in his required courses…it’s the theater ones he’s having trouble with, and his father is working two jobs and he may lose his scholarship. He doesn’t have the heart to disappoint his father and ruin Christmas, so he bides his time with the terrible news–like everyone teen, avoiding the bad news or put it off till later. A chance trip to the new mall in town winds up with him getting a job as an elf in Santaland, where he meets his fellow elves–an older retired military man; a blonde good two-shoes, a Goth girl, and perpetually happy, cheerful and annoying Marco. He also runs into his ex, LeRoy, and isn’t sure if he wants to start up with him again or not; he dumped LeRoy the summer before he left for college, thinking it was better to not try the long-distance thing.

The best part of the job? The elves are in a competition to win a five thousand dollar prize–which will make up for the scholarship he’s losing–by winning a popular on-line vote. As the days pass and he gets to know his fellow elves better, he starts opening up a little bit himself and seeing things from perspectives other than his own. All the other elves help with this process, but especially Marco–who seems to be the embodiment of the Christmas spirit and just a genuinely kind, empathetic soul.

The book is a romantic comedy, so there are funny moments as well as the ones that make you sigh and warm your heart–all of it earned, mind you, and not there for story purposes–but it’s also about Cam growing up into a better, less self-absorbed person who maybe doesn’t project his impressions onto other people and sees them with a kinder eye. Valdes nails the teen voice perfectly; Cam is at heart a good person, if a bit too wrapped up inside his own head with his own issues and problems, but he is deftly drawn and fully conceived, so you root for him even as you groan at his poor choices; you want him to do better, be better, because he really is a good person.

I loved this story from first word to last, and I really wish these kinds of books had been available when I was a teenager. Something like Finding My Elf could be a lifeline for a kid in a bleak rural area who feels so alone and lonely and hopeless.

Perfect Christmas gift for any queer teen you may know, and frankly, it’s a strong enough read for adults, too.

A Love Song

Yesterday was pleasant and relaxing. The kitchen ceiling didn’t leak from the torrential storms (but the leak over the stairs came back; it’s always something). I watched some football games (the Alabama-Georgia game was very entertaining, if the Texas-Oklahoma State one was a massive snooze-fest) while reading Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger, which I really enjoyed (more on that later), and then capped off the evening with the Florida State game on in the background while I did things–some more reading, some brainstorming, some cleaning and organizing. I didn’t finish watching, and went to bed early. It was a nice, restful, relaxing kind of day, and that was really nice. Being forced to recuperate and rest hasn’t been terrible, to be completely honest; it’s kind of amazing how quickly I have adapted to not being active and just keeping my mind free from stressors and relaxing. The house is a mess, of course, but I am not letting it get to me and am just doing the minimum I can, with the occasional big thing–dishes, laundry, something. I’m not going to say that I’ll be glad to go back to the office, but this has kind of given me kind of a taste of what retirement will look like, and it doesn’t suck. It’s still a long way off, to be sure, but it’s also making me rethink paid time off. Is it better to do dribs and drabs with long weekends, or is it better to save the time and take an entire week away? I kind of liked this long period of not going to work.

It’s also really easy to lose track of days and dates, too. I often find myself wondering what day it is, or what the date is, and have to check. I also slept deeply and well again, staying in bed late this morning, which is also fine.

Today I want to get some writing done. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this new book, and it’s really time for me to buckle down, put my ass in the chair, and really start writing this thing. I also want to get cleaned up today–I really need to shave my head; I’ve not done that since before the surgery and it’s getting frightfully long for me (does anyone else remember when the length of a man’s hair was something we were judged about? Like men with long hair was such a huge issue, one that would define our culture and society) and I also need to shave my face. I was a little worn down yesterday, too–it’s hard to remember sometimes that my body needs rest still because it’s not finished healing yet–and for someone who is pretty active (or restless, anyway), getting tired doing things I normally do is bothersome. But I have another week and a day before I have to get up to an alarm and head back into the office, which is going to be the real test: can I make it through a shift in the clinic? The jury is still out.

It’ll be interesting to see what the college football selection committee will do when it comes to picking the final four for the play-offs this year. Who will be included? We have three undefeated teams, two one-loss conference champions, and lots of noise. It will be weird to have no SEC representation in the last play-off series ever, given how many times the SEC has won it–and not just with the same team, either. This century has seen national titles for Auburn, Florida (two), Georgia (two), LSU (three), and Alabama (six). Five teams from the same conference, four of them winning more than one. (This is why I laugh when people talk about “SEC bias”–well, how many national titles has your conference won since 2000 and with how many different teams? The most is two–the Big 12 with Texas and Oklahoma, the ACC with Florida State, and Clemson1, and the Big 10 with just Ohio State. There’s a reason for the bias; it’s called success on the field.) But I can see how they would pass over Alabama for Texas; Texas beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa. On the other hand, the last four titles in a row were won by the SEC (LSU, Alabama, and Georgia twice), and the Big 12 hasn’t won a title since Oklahoma back in 2002. Texas is kind of SEC-Lite, though; beating the SEC champion this year and coming into the conference next year. I saw LSU’s schedule next year and it’s brutal; USC, UCLA, and Oklahoma on top of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas A&M, and Arkansas, with Vanderbilt thrown in on top as lagniappe. No Auburn or Mississippi State, but at least there are two easy FCS schools on the schedule. Talk about a brutal schedule–and we’ll have a new quarterback. Looks like another rollercoaster of a season. This last season’s defense was terrible, but still–LSU only lost to Florida State (undefeated, ACC champ), Alabama (one loss to another one loss conference champion AND SEC champ) and Mississippi (two losses, to Alabama and Georgia); which, given how shitty the defense was, is kind of impressive. So, not a bad season, really, if a bit disappointing. But I didn’t believe the pre-season hype, either; I thought LSU was overrated simply for beating Alabama last year, and was correct. And now the season is effectively over; I have idle curiosity about the play-offs and will of course watch whichever bowl LSU winds up in, whether it’s a New Year’s 6 game or not (probably not; there are a lot of good two loss teams–Missouri and Mississippi–and they need to find a high profile bowl for Georgia and possibly Alabama, too). But it was a fun season, even if a bit disappointing for LSU fans, but I’ll take 9-3 over Orgeron’s last two years as head coach any day of the week. I am not completely sold on Brian Kelly yet, either, but he’s better for the program than Orgeron was, and he’s not insane like Les Miles, either. (Kelly, at least, knows how to work the time clock, which Miles never quite had a grasp on.)

I’m hoping the Saints draft Jayden Daniels, to be honest. This was a truly dismal Saints season–and we won’t even talk about the disappointing Tulane loss yesterday, or that it looks like they are going to lose their coach to a higher profile program, either.

I think my next read is going to be David Valdes’ Finding My Elf, which is a holiday-themed young adult romantic comedy. I met David earlier this year (he’s also a friend of my friend Kelly) on the y/a panel at Saints & Sinners, where I didn’t really belong (my feelings about being considered a y/a writer are a subject for a different time; but the short version is I write books about teenagers now and then, and because the characters are teenagers they’re classified as y/a, but I don’t write them any differently than I write for adults. Maybe I am making too big of a distinction, and this doesn’t from any sense or mentality that y/a is somehow lesser, because it’s not–there’s some absolutely terrific y/a and middle-grade work out there. I leave categorizing my work to the industry because trying to make sense of it is too much for me and I don’t want or need my head to explode.) Anyway, David was absolutely marvelous; his book You Spin Me Round was already in my TBR pile, but I can’t pass up reading a Christmas y/a romcom during Christmas season, can I? I’m also considering writing a romance myself–a gay one, of course–and already have the set-up and the opening scene written up in my head. Maybe I’ll be able to find the time to write it this next year; stranger things have happened.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Selection Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with some blatant self-promotion later.

  1. Miami also won a title in 2001, but they were not in the ACC at the time. ↩︎

House of the Rising Sun

This is probably one of the most famous songs about New Orleans of all times, and of course, doing a deep dive into the history of the song–which began as an English folk song, of all things–was a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I heard the recording by the Animals when I was a kid, and honestly never cared very much about it. I always thought it was about a house of prostitution in New Orleans–Storyville, probably–but never gave it much more thought than that. But when I was looking for titles of songs about New Orleans to use for blatant self promotion for Mississippi River Mischief, it was kind of an obvious one. And when it came up on my list for this next post, I realized I didn’t really know very much about the song other than I didn’t care for it very much. It originated in the 16th century as an English folk song, and gradually evolved into an Appalachian folk song called “Rising Sun Blues” (great title, I may abscond with it, frankly) before finally becoming a folk-rock hit for The Animals in 1964 with its current name. (Musicologists suggests it’s thematically related to the old English folk song “The Unfortunate Rake,” per Wikipedia.)

I do find that kind of thing interesting, even if I don’t have any use for that information. (Although Barbara Michaels did a great job of using classic traditional folk songs and their history as the foundation for her underrated but marvelous novel Prince of Darkness–which I would love to revisit.)

If you were playing Family Feud and the question “what is New Orleans known for”, the top two answers would probably be Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. This annoys the locals and the natives to no end; and it’s understandable. Boiling New Orleans down to those two things is incredibly reductive. But they are major facets of the city, and both are responsible for a lot of tourist revenue, which the parish, city and state desperately need because our state and local governments (all of Louisiana’s cities and parishes) are complete and utter failures. When we moved here in the mid-90s, New Orleans had a strong base of tourism, but it was nothing like now. Since Katrina the city’s primary focus has been building the city into a tourist destination, putting all of the proverbial eggs into that particular basket. The pandemic wound up killing businesses that Katrina couldn’t; the St. Charles Tavern at the corner at Martin Luther King didn’t survive COVID, as one example. (They had amazing fried mushrooms; we used to get them every once in a while as a delicious greasy breaded and deep-fried treat.)

When I first decided to start writing about New Orleans (much as I hate to say this, but New Orleans really IS my muse, and I love that I live in the neighborhood of the Muses here), one of the things I was determined not to do was use clichés about the city in my work. It wasn’t until my fifth novel that I wrote about Carnival/Mardi Gras, which is where most writers about the city inevitably start (cliché as it may be, you also cannot write about New Orleans without eventually having to write about it); I wanted to get more established as a writer before I went there. Part of the reasons the first two Scotty books were set around Southern Decadence and (to a far lesser extent) Halloween was because those were also important holidays for the gays here. I did address Bourbon Street with the first Scotty; I knew that title (Bourbon Street Blues) would tell anyone that it was a New Orleans story, so yes, I took advantage of a cliché there. But I also realize now that most of my New Orleans writings were very provincial in a way; I mostly write about the “sliver along the river”–the Marigny, the Quarter, the CBD, the lower Garden District, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, and Uptown. There’s way more to New Orleans than these neighborhoods–sometimes I send them over the bridge to the West Bank or out to Metairie; there was a very vivid post-Katrina scene where I sent Chanse out to Lakeview, but for the most part I’ve not done much about other neighborhoods here. The West Bank, City Park, the East, Gentilly; all of these rich and vibrant neighborhoods–as well as the diverse ethnic make-up of the city–are very fertile ground for someone writing about New Orleans. Generally, the neighborhoods I write about are the neighborhoods writers who don’t live here focus on because they are the better known ones.

And of course, I’ve rarely, if ever, touched the history of the city–and it is rich, compelling, and fascinating…and super dark.

That’s kind of why I wanted to move this recent Scotty out of the city and into one of the rural parishes not far from the city limits. I have fictionalized these parishes before–I try not to fictionalize New Orleans, but have no problem inventing parishes and towns in the rest of Louisiana. St. Jeanne d’Arc parish is loosely based on St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes, known as “river parishes” because they run along the river north of the city. Redemption, also an invention I’ve used in other books, is based on the “bayou parishes”–not along the river, but between the river and the wetlands/Gulf of Mexico; those are Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Louisiana is just as interesting as New Orleans, and also has an amazing and interesting history of its own. Of course, the next Scotty will be back in the city–his next few, if they go as planned, will all be within the city–but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep writing about Louisiana and my fictional parishes, either.

There really is so much material here I could never run out of ideas.

Shock the Monkey

Saturday morning, and feeling okay. I ran some errands yesterday–mail, prescription, grocery shopping–and instead of going to Five Guys I stopped and got a very healthy turkey-avocado sandwich for lunch instead, on wheat bread, and it was delicious. I used the wagon to bring everything back from the car to the apartment, but after putting the groceries away was very exhausted. I started reading my next book (Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents) but didn’t get very far into it. I wound up watching the Oregon-Washington game (to see how their quarterbacks matched up against Jayden Daniels for the Heisman; I am biased but was utterly unimpressed with either of them) for a while, and then just kind of zoned out and watched documentaries on Youtube for a few hours till the game started. I am feeling better, but my energy levels still deplete quickly–probably why my surgeon didn’t want me to return to work just yet.

Last night I slept through–didn’t wake up at five like I inevitably always do and then go back to sleep–and woke up at eight, deciding to go ahead and get up rather than loll about in the bed. I figured I could write my blog entry, drink some coffee, and then head over to the easy chair to read the new book for a few hours before trying to get back into writing MY new book. I also need to do some self-promotional entries today to get back on track on promoting my two new releases, and I also kind of need to figure out where I am at with all of my in-progress projects and make a plan to proceed with everything. I think I am going to go back to trying to plan out my year and so forth, because this scattershot method I’ve been using for so long hasn’t really worked out the way I would have liked; but scattershot tends to do that. I have any number of short stories I’d like to get finished, and there are also the novellas; and I have at least two novels in progress that are up to five chapters but have gone no further than that. I also need to get better organized with everything else in my life, too–my desk area looks better than it has in years as far as clutter is concerned, but it needs to be cleaned and straightened up a bit, and there are other things in my desk–the stack of Scotty books, for example–that don’t need to be here. I rearranged the work space before the surgery specifically to free up space on the desktop, and it did work; this arrangement looks better than the way that it used to look. I want to write today–I think I am going to work on some things for the new book too, so I can really dive in headfirst; I don’t have much of a plan for the book other than I know what one of the driving forces behind the plot is going to be; who the villain is; and who is going to die. It’s all mapped out in my journal, but I need to write it all up into a word document so I can easily reference it. Plus, typing shit makes it seem more real to me, which makes no sense to anything other than my twisted brain.

Sparky has discovered the great joy of knocking over the recycling to look for bottle caps, which are his favorite toy and means I don’t need to waste any money buying him anything; why spend more money when every bottle comes with a plastic cap toy for the little darling? He’s inquisitive and he’s smart–he now scales the drawers like a ladder to get up on the counter when the drawers are closed; if he can’t get up there the usual way. He showed off this new trick to us yesterday when we were putting away the groceries; so there wasn’t a clear space for him to jump up, so instead he pulled himself up by climbing the drawers. This tells me there’s really no point to putting things out of reach because he’ll just figure out a way to get there. Scooter wasn’t especially smart, nor was he terribly interested in toys or playing or anything, but Skittle was smart–and I suspect Sparky is even smarter than Skittle, and he’s getting so big! I think he might even wind up bigger than Skittle. Do I want to have a big, incredibly smart cat? It scares me just a little bit, to be honest. But now he seems to have calmed down a bit, and is a sleeping kitten donut on my desk. He really is a beautiful cat.

We had a lot of rain overnight–flash flood warnings, tornado watches all around us in neighboring parishes, the usual–I slept through it all. I didn’t even notice it was raining last night–without my hearing aids, I can’t hear anything other than thunder–but I am sure the rain helped me sleep. I didn’t sleep for a full ten hours; it was only nine. I was thinking yesterday that I need to start getting used to getting up early again before I have to return to work on the 12th, so it won’t be as horrible as it might be. I had finally gotten used to getting up early, and now I have to start getting used to it all over again, which isn’t going to be very much fun at all. But this is a relatively easy month to ease my way back into work again, with the holidays and extra time off at the end, so there’s that. And then again, it’s Carnival shortly thereafter, which I think is late again? I haven’t looked, but I think we have a late Fat Tuesday again this next year.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a fabulous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.

Whatcha Gonna Do

Friday, I think? It’s very weird to lose track of days and dates and things like that. Not that I am good with them regularly and never have to stop to think about it, but not having the structure provided by having to go into an office every day has kind of unmoored me. I don’t know that I can honestly blame it on the surgery anymore, since it’s been nine days, right? I don’t know. I slept for another ten hours last night, and feel so rested it’s marvelous. I did ask my surgeon to clear me for work earlier yesterday, and he said no. “I’m afraid you’ll overdo it and spoil all the great recovery you’ve already experienced.” Probably just as well. I’m worried (of course) about the unpaid leave and money, but I think I’ll most likely be okay because everything is going well so far. Things might be tight for a while, but that’s..well, it’s not like I’m not used to that already after the four years of car payments. (I shudder even thinking about that horrible period of juggling bills and running up credit card debt that I am still working down.)

I wrote yesterday and boy am I rusty. It was a serious struggle. I had dictated about thirteen hundred words the other day on my iPad, so yesterday I cleaned that up (I don’t speak clearly, and have always had a bit of a lisp; the dentures have exaggerated that, so voice-to-text isn’t the best method for me, but it’s an option I can use in a pinch; it’s something I could potentially even do in the car with the phone on long drives) and tried to finish the chapter. I didn’t finish it, sadly, and it took me hours to get the additional new 1200 words yesterday down on the page. I’m a little rusty– one of the primary reasons I do this blog is to write something every day so the muscles don’t need to be retrained or warmed up again–but that’s not a surprise. I’m trying not to freak out or stress about it, because that’s pointless and a waste of energy that I don’t have to spare right now. I have finally found a comfortable position to sit at my desk and rest the brace on the edge so my fingers are freed up for the keyboard, which is enormously helpful. I am hoping to get cleaned up this morning and run some errands a little later on–I have to pick up a prescription in Midcity, and thought about making a grocery run and stopping at Five Guys (yay!)–before coming home to curl up in my chair with Nurse Sparky and read. I’ve picked out Lisa Unger’s novella Christmas Presents as my next read; I’d like to kind of keep the Christmas theme going, too, which might mean reading the two latest Donna Andrews novels out of order (just typing that made my stomach clench; my brain wiring is so completely fucked up it’s not even funny), and then picking out Christmas-related titles from the TBR pile–which won’t be easy, the Unger and Andrews might even be the only ones, honestly; which is interesting. I myself have only written one Christmas season book (Royal Street Reveillon) and published one story (“The Snow Queen” from my Upon a Midnight Clear anthology from a million years ago), primarily because I was worried about the temptation to descend into cheap sentiment.

It’s gray and rainy outside today. It started raining last night and continued overnight; which was nerve-wracking. I haven’t mentioned this, or I don’t think so, but a few weeks before my surgery roofers were here working on the patio deck above my kitchen. I came home from work one day to find an enormous hole in the kitchen ceiling–I could look up and see the workers and blue sky–and ceiling debris all over the kitchen. There was rotten wood up there, potentially termite damaged as well, and it just caved in while they were working. They came into the apartment and boarded up the hole with a piece of plywood. Fine, I figured; but that’s a stopgap and not a fix. The next time it rained I could see that the plywood was wet, and then it started dripping. Not good, but not bad. Then after my surgery we had a huge New Orleans storm, and the kitchen ceiling was leaking–all around the board, and elsewhere. I got up that morning and noted there was water on the counter and the stove, and my rugs on the floor were wet. I got out a couple of buckets and went back into the living room to my easy chair to read or watch television. About an hour there was a crash from the kitchen–part of the ceiling had collapsed, and you could see soaked insulation hanging and dripping–and about another hour later more came down. They came out the other day to fix the leak–and there’s no water in my kitchen this morning, thank the Lord. They told me since we had rain forecast this weekend they weren’t going to fix my ceiling–because if the fix didn’t work, it would all just come down again anyway–so when I got up this morning Paul said, “It’s rained all night so be prepared when you go downstairs” which made my heart sink (without my hearing aids I can’t hear the rain) but I came down and checked and all good. So they’ll come back next week and fix the ceiling and that’s the end of that.

I am also very impressed with myself for not freaking out over the ceiling–but at this point, my primary and only real concern is my arm and recovery. I also made my first physical therapy appointment for next week, which is cool. It’s also taking some time for me to get used to having greater mobility and more use of my left arm, too. I tend to walk with it in the bent position it needed to be in for that first post-op week rather than just letting it hang or moving it in unison with the other when I am walking. I think I need to get up every day and go for a walk, really. (Not today–I am not walking in the rain, but if it stops later, it won’t kill me to walk down to the park.) I need to be taking walks and things anyway; at least be stretching periodically to keep my muscles active and not let them get even more flaccid and weak from inactivity. And of course, running errands will get me out of the house today and walking the aisles of the grocery store is good exercise. And I have my wagon to help bring them in from the street. (I am so pleased with myself for buying that wagon, Constant Reader, you have no idea. I need to Scotch-guard it so I can just leave it outside under the overhang so it’s not always getting wet when it rains, or maybe even get a waterproof tarp to put over it.)

I’m also thinking it’s time to get a new microwave. Ours is over ten years old, it doesn’t work as great as it used to, and the instruction manual is long gone. I am also going to get a taller ladder for the downstairs; the five foot one works fine for the fans upstairs, but I need something taller for downstairs, and again–it can be kept outside and brought in when I need to use it. It’s ridiculous that I’ve waited so long to get a ladder that I can use without paranoia and fear of falling as I fully extend to reach the blades of the downstairs fans; get a fucking taller ladder, dumbass. I think it was primarily because I worried I couldn’t fit the ladder into my car and bring it home; now I can have Lowe’s deliver it. Thanks, pandemic! At least it was good for something.

And on that note, I am bringing this to a close for today. Have a fabulous Friday and I’ll probably do some blatant self-promotion later.