Squeeze-Wax

Back to the office for me today, with tomorrow yet again a work-at-home day for one Gregalicious. Yesterday was an interesting one. It’s always strange disrupting your usual work week with a day off, but I slept super great Tuesday night and woke up feeling incredibly well-rested and on top of things. I did a load of dishes and a load of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, did some filing, and had a highly productive chore morning. I went to my doctor’s appointment (more on that later), and ran some errands before getting out of the blistering temperature of another heat advisory into the delightful cool of the Lost Apartment. The doctor visit was okay; we’ve (he’s) come to the conclusion that the issue with my left arm is most likely a torn bicep tendon, which will need surgery to mend. Hurray. Which means since our corporate insurer is dropping us after December 31 and there’s been no word about what’s going to go down with that, I need to have this done before the end of the year. Huzzah even more. So far, that’s dental surgery in September and now arm surgery before the end of the year. But…since the corporate insurance scum company is dropping us, I’m happy to force them to spend more money on us.

Insurance, the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people. Every kind and every type: an utter joke and scam to make shareholders profits.

But I am glad it’s going to be looked at and potentially repaired; this staying out of the gym has been horrendous and I hate that I am getting so out of the fit condition I prefer to usually be in. At least we’re saving money on the gym membership; we put mine on pause after I originally injured it. I tried talking Paul into a SPCA run to look at kitties this weekend, as I do not like living in a kitty-free home, but he is going to visit his mom soon and wants to wait until he gets back. I get that–not wanting to go away right after getting a pet–but it also means I won’t have a cat to keep me company while he’s gone. Heavy heaving sigh. But I can also consider our new kitty, when we get him, as a birthday gift. (And I will keep working on him, of that you can be sure.)

I read deeper into Megan Abbott’s brilliant Beware the Woman yesterday, around appointments, errands and chores, and it is deliciously marvelous. As always, reading Megan inspires me to write better myself–the truly great writers always are an inspiration, even as their talent awes me it also inspires–and it gave me some ideas, too, as the best writers always do. I am looking forward to finishing the book this weekend, after which I will move on to S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed. I’ll get my grubby paws on a copy of the new Laura Lippman soon enough, and let me tell you, I’ve got some amazing reading ahead of me for the rest of the summer; Eli Cranor, Jordan Harper, Alison Gaylin, Wendy Corsi Staub, and the new Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel, Silver Nitrate, just arrived the other day as well.

I also was asked to moderate a panel at Bouchercon on Saturday afternoon; which brings my panel total to four (the other three are nominee panels, and since I have THREE nominations that means THREE panels; my queer crime writer friends are always telling me I need to shout that from the rooftops, so I am trying to be a little less self-deprecating and trying to take more pride in my accomplishments, and let’s face it, it’s pretty impressive and cool to have those three Anthony nominations. I think S. A. Cosby and I are the only people to be nominated three times in the same year; pretty heady company to be in, quite frankly.) That means I’ll have to prepare and I no longer have Saturday as a free day; but that’s okay. I can sleep in, grab some coffee, and make notes that morning before the panel. That Saturday is going to be one of those days where I’ll have to remember to eat, so I should probably make lunch plans with someone.

I slept well again last night, so deeply I didn’t want to get up this morning, but it’s my last day in the office for the week and I think I’ll survive somehow. I got my errands done yesterday, and didn’t get as much done around the house as I would have liked. I really need to make a project out of the kitchen drawers and cabinets. But it was miserably hot out there and I did get everything done outside the house that needed doing, and now this weekend I may need to make a single grocery/mail run while dropping books off at the library sale; there are at least two, if not three, that are ready to go. I may even get another box down from the attic to go through for book purging. We also watched more of The Crowded Room last night, and if Tom Holland isn’t at least nominated for an Emmy for this, the Emmys will be an utter and complete joke.

And on that note, it’s time for me to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader and I may be back later.

Pur

Wednesday Pay-the-Bill day, and I have the day off because I have a doctor’s appointment smack dab in the middle of the day, so…no choice but to take the day off. I don’t mind, despite the disruption of routine it causes. I have errands I can get done, and I can also take Megan Abbott with me to the appointment to read while I (inevitably) wait.

Coming home from work wasn’t as rough yesterday as it was Monday. I did pause once I shut the front door to wait and see if Scooter would come downstairs before remembering, which made a bit sad. It really doesn’t feel like home without a cat in it. And of course, our next cat may not be anything like Scooter. Scooter was a completely different cat from Skittle, after all–Skittle wasn’t nearly as affectionate, but he was but only when he wanted to be and for as long as he felt like it, while Scooter was constant. I’m torn between a kitten and one that’s already full grown; primarily because everyone wants kittens and it’s harder to adopt out full grown cats. Kittens are awfully cute; Skittle was a kitten when we got him. But our stairs are pretty steep for a kitten to navigate, and it also means we’d have to be a lot more careful with the front door. Scooter had no interest in going outside whatsoever; the front door could be wide open and he was having none of it. He was so disinterested in the outside he wouldn’t even stare out the windows–unless he heard Paul talking outside on his phone. That always intrigued him, and was the only time I ever worried about him going outside–if Paul was out there, Scooter would want to join him. But as a general rule, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about outside. (I’m with you, Scooter, I’d never go outside again if I could get away with it!)

I wasn’t tired yesterday either. I slept really well on Monday night–I’ve slept well ever since I finally adapted back to my life and reality after my vacation and the 4th holiday fucked with me–and we had a relatively easy day at the office. Between clients I did some more deep diving into Alabama history; I don’t know why it never occurred to me until this week that if I was going to write a short story built around an urban legend, why try Louisiana when I have all that history and lore and legends about my home state? I found a particularly gory and grotesque Civil War revenge story–based in fact–which might do the trick. One of the things that has been interesting me lately is the concept of the interior civil war inside the state of Alabama in the north hill country; Union sympathizers who didn’t believe in secession and refused to fight for the Confederacy, and some even served in the Union army. The Alabama Home Guard was particularly brutal; they were the ones who committed the atrocities that triggered the vengeance story, and that something I think I can work with. I know there’s a legend that one of my aunt-by-marriage’s ancestors served in the Union Army and when he snuck home for a visit, the Home Guard caught him and skinned him alive. Gruesome and horrible, but the back country in the South’s entire history is gruesome and horrible. There are a lot more stories to be told about the part of the country from whence I came…

I slept well again last night, too. I was able to sleep in a bit later because I took the day off for doctor appointments–I need to talk to my doctor about my arm and my toe again, heavy sigh–but since the appointment was in the middle of the day, I didn’t see any point in either going in before and returning after so took the entire day off. It’s a nice break to the week, really. We watched this week’s episode of Last Call, and then went back to The Crowded Room–mostly because we didn’t have anything else to watch last night. The first five or so episodes of the show moved really slow and you couldn’t really be sure what was going on. I figured out it was dissociative identity disorder that was plaguing the poor sad character being played (brilliantly) by Tom Holland; but the episodes we watched last night moved the story along, tied it all together, and were riveting. Paul and I agreed it was an odd storytelling choice; risking losing the interest of the viewers who might not continue because it was moving so slow and made so little sense. We wouldn’t have gone back had there been anything else for us to watch–but the performance by Tom Holland! My word, he’s quite the talent. I knew he could act–I’ve seen him give incredibly strong performances in two films, Cherry and the other one, The Devil All The Time, which was, in my opinion, terribly underrated as a film. I suspect Holland will win an Oscar at some point–if people can stop seeing him as Spider-Man.

I was thinking it might be fun–since our anniversary is tomorrow–to surprise Paul with a cat when he gets home from work tonight. But the more I think about it, the more I think that as fun as that would be, I think he’d want to be involved in the selection process. So, probably the best thing to do is talk to him about it tonight when he gets home from work, and maybe going out to the SPCA on the West Bank to see what kitties they have on hand for rescuing. I’ve looked at several websites for adoptable cats in the area, and of course want them all (Wendy Corsi Staub recently wrote a piece for CrimeSpree to promote her new book, Windfall, about winning the lottery; she asked a bunch of us what we would do should we win the huge lottery…and I should have said “buy a ranch so I could adopt all the cats in the world and give them a loving home,” because I would really love to do that), so probably its best to involve Paul in the process. Paul picked out Skittle, even though I found Scooter. I’m still missing Scooter–expecting him to come down the stairs at any moment, listening for him, and sitting in my easy chair after I get home from work just isn’t the same thing; I cannot justify sitting there doing nothing without the “cat sleeping in my lap” excuse.

I’ve got laundry going, and I need to finish the load of dishes in the sink so I can put them in the dishwasher and run it. I am going to try to get some things done around the house around the appointment, but we shall see how that goes. We’re in another heat advisory today–seriously–but this morning I am going to swill coffee, do some stuff around the kitchen, and maybe spend some time with Megan Abbott this morning. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.

Violaine

Oh, I got my final panel schedule from Bouchercon over the course of the weekend; as expected, I got my Anthony nominee panels only–but there are three of them, he typed modestly.

You can find me at:

Thursday, 2 pm: Best Humorous Mystery panel, moderated by Janet Rudolph, with Catriona McPherson, Jennifer Chow, Raquel Reyes, and Ellen Byron.

Friday, 9 am: Best Anthology panel, moderated by Holly West, with Art Taylor, Josh Pachter, and Mysti Berry.

Friday 1 pm: Best Children’s/ Young Adult Panel, moderated by Alan S. Orloff, with Fleur Bradley and Lee Matthew Goldberg.

Not bad. I have to get up early on Friday morning, but the others are at times when I am usually coherent and functional, which will be incredibly cool. I also am finished with everything by Friday afternoon, so I had all day Saturday free until the Anthony Awards presentation that night. This year, I get to lose three times, as opposed to my two losses at last year’s. There is, however, no disgrace in losing to any of my fellow finalists, as I like and respect them all very much; they all are great people who do phenomenal work and they all deserve much more recognition than even this will give them. And that Best Humorous panel? I think I shall say nothing and simply sit there being entertained by the quick wits of the four comic geniuses I will be on stage with.

Coming home from work last night was just as sad as I thought it would be. I ran errands after work–mail, grocery, gas–and had bags to carry and so forth. I was putting the groceries away when I realized I was listening for Scooter to come downstairs. I shook that off, put everything away, and then went to sit in my easy chair like always to rest for a moment before doing something else productive–I have a sink full of dishes–and as I flipped through Youtube channels I was bored out of my skull…and then realized there wasn’t any need to sit in my chair because Scooter didn’t need or want my lap anymore. That made me tear up, so I watched highlights of the College World Series, but watching Florida lose (almost as much fun as watching LSU win, which makes the College World Series final from this year almost more than I could hope for as a happy place for me) but it didn’t shake off the gloom… and I also realized I was staying in the chair so as not to disturb sleeping Scooter, who wasn’t there. I cried a bit and got up to start doing some more things around the kitchen. Paul came home from the office, and he was sad because Monday was a work-at-home day for him as a general rule, but he spent the morning missing Scooter so he went to the office after his trainer. I’ve been looking at adoptable cats on-line, but of course I want them all. There’s a gorgeous fourteen-year-old ginger that I am sure is going to be hard to adopt, but much as I would love to give his final years a good home losing another one so soon would be too hard on both of us. We need a cat that’s going to give us at least thirteen years!

But then I think do I have another thirteen years? Which I don’t like to do, because it will talk me out of having a cat because I don’t want to die on my cat. Sigh.

Yesterday turned out to be okay at the office, in case you were wondering how that went. There’s no telling, of course, what is to come down that road, so as Mom always said, why borrow trouble worrying about it? I’ll be coming straight home from work tonight; I have tomorrow off for doctor’s appointments so I don’t have to get up early and there’s certainly no need to run any errands since I can run them tomorrow. It’s a bit weird and awkward around there–I think the entire department is a bit in shock–but we’ll see how it all goes. The only constant is change, right?

I started doing some more research for a short story I want to write about an urban legend–it’s for my Sisters’ chapters next anthology–and I realized yesterday that I don’t have to do something Louisiana based, and it’s not like there aren’t plenty of urban legends in Alabama. I got another Alabama history book in the mail yesterday, Hidden History of North Alabama by Jacquelyn Procter Reeves, which is mostly about urban legends and secrets from the past of the north part of the state. Where we’re actually from is more central than north; the foothills of the Appalachians, if you will. There were some horrible atrocities committed on Union sympathizers in that part of Alabama by the Home Guard–I’ve heard and read some truly horrific stuff, seriously–which might be a good urban legend to write about. I’m having the best time looking into both Louisiana and Alabama history; it’s so much easier to write about a place once you know more about it; the more you know the easier it gets, hence research.

I’ve also been reading Matt Baume’s Hi Honey I’m Homo, which is about sitcoms of the 1970’s and their fledgling attempts at gay representation. I already have been enjoying Baume’s Youtube channel for years–queer rep in culture–and I’m also really loving his book. It’s fun revisiting these shows and remembering how closeted gay teenaged me watched the shows for their queer content, eager to see if that was, indeed, who I was as a human being. I’ll talk about that more when I blog about the book–some of the rep was good, some of it was confusing–but it is fun revisiting these shows from a present day point of view and perspective.

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

Bluebeard

Monday morning and back into the office. I am kind of dreading it, to be honest; there was apparently some shake-ups and drama at the office on my work-at-home day while I was dealing with Scooter. Can’t wait to get into the office today and find out what’s up and what the future holds. Who knows? I may be coming home a lot earlier than expected and never going back.

I was very productive yesterday morning, all things considered. I slept in a bit, got up, and wrote the blog, worked on the dishes and laundry, cleaned up a bit, and found some computer files I was looking for. What’s truly strange–really really strange–is that my imagination is so powerful that I can remember writing entire short stories without actually having written them. A friend had mentioned the deadline for the 2024 Malice anthology, with an international theme to it, and I thought Oh, I have that ambiguous Central American–set Mayan ruins story I wrote a long time ago. I distinctly remember writing the entire story…only to look through all my electronic files to only find one with a few sentences, at best a paragraph, written. I pulled the file out of the file cabinet and sure, that’s all there was. I’d swear I’d written the entire thing…even looking through the old files from the 1980’s that had to be retyped, before remembering that I got the idea on a trip to the Yucatan….in about 1993. This means I remember writing something that I never did.

And people wonder why I think I’m not mentally stable?

I also pulled up a file for a potential next novel–the one I was thinking about before I left for the trip a few weeks ago, and even it isn’t what I remembered; primarily because all the changes I made were made in my head and not really made electronically. I originally wrote the first chapter with the story still set in the French Quarter; I moved it mentally to Camp Place in the Lower Garden District and made changes…in my head. Lord, where is my straitjacket? This isn’t the first time this has happened; where I’ve finished writing something in my. head but never got it typed up into the word document, to be bitterly crushed and disappointed later when pulling up the file. (This also happened with, among many others, “A Holler Full of Kudzu”.) I am certainly not sure that I’ll be able to get this story written, revised, and edited by the end of the month but….stranger things have happened.

I also read some more into Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman and am completely in her thrall. Jesus, reading her makes me want to just give up and never write another word. Well, that’s extreme, but authors who are on her level do make me want to push myself, to try harder, and to do better work. I read for a little while, a few more chapters, then got up from my chair (quite reluctantly) to do some more chores. I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as perhaps I would have liked to have, but it was also my first Scooter-free weekend and I kept getting sad. I imagine I’ll still do so on occasion for a while, but I am also going to resolutely start looking for a new cat to adopt this week. The house just doesn’t feel right without a cat. This morning when my alarm went off I actually went to fill his food and water bowls before remembering they weren’t there anymore. I was afraid that would happen today, to be honest; knowing reality wouldn’t kick in instantly when I rose the bed. Today is also the big meeting with the entire department. I don’t know what that is about, or what is going to happen, or what even to expect. Hell, I may be unemployed by noon, who knows? Not the kind of stress I needed for the weekend on top of everything else, but when it rains in my life the streets definitely flood. I at least slept well last night. We finished watching Fake Profile last night, which was a lot of fun, with a completely insane series finale. I don’t see how they could do a second season, but stranger things have happened with Spanish-language Netflix programming.

I also read a couple of short stories from one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents books, Stories That Scared Even Me, and realized something about my own short stories; the stories in these Hitchcock anthologies aren’t necessarily what we would traditionally refer to as “crime stories,” but I don’t think they count as outright horror, either. The stories are what you would expect from the television series–as well as others like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Night Gallery–stories that are more macabre than anything else, really; some with a very bitter and dark sense of irony more than anything else. The two stories in this anthology that I read over the course of the weekend, “Fishhead” by Irvin S. Cobb and “Camera Obscura” by Basil Copper, were these kinds of stories (the latter perhaps being a bit problematic–the ‘moneylender’ in the story is, while not coming out and saying so, the worst stereotypes of anti-Semitic tropes, while not coming out and saying the character is Jewish); more macabre in outlook than either horror or crime. I’ve also never heard of either author–but back in those days someone with a strong imagination, excellent typing skills, and dedication could make a decent living writing only short stories…ah, for those good old days of the business, right? I’ll probably do a google search on them–and the others whose names I don’t recognize–at some point because I am nosy.

Looks like the heat advisory streak, going back to early June if not late May, might get broken today. Not as humid as usual, but still the high will be 93. It felt cool out there this morning when I took the trash out.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Monday, everyone.

Summerhead

I’ve lost track of how many days in a row New Orleans has been under a heat advisory, but I’m beginning to think we’ve never not been in one. It’s always hot here in the summer time, and I can remember walking to Walgreens years ago and being completely drenched in sweat by the time I got home. When I taught aerobics in the summer time I showered three or four times a day (any wonder I developed psoriasis? Although it makes for an amusing question, I don’t believe that any more than I believe the moon landing was faked; I should probably find out what causes psoriasis at some point), and the city always swelters in the summer time. The summer heat here is unlike anywhere I’ve ever lived before; Tampa and Houston had a very similar type climate to New Orleans, but both of those cities somehow seemed to not ever get as brutally hot as it does here.

I’ve started looking at adoptable cats in the area, and as usual, I want them all. If I had a house as big as my parents’, I’d probably have at least four or five cats. I do love cats (even if I came to it late in life), and I really do want to write Daughters of Bast someday. I don’t know if that’s a story I can actually write and tell–since in order for it to work, the main character would need to be a descendant from a High Priestess of Bast, which means she wouldn’t be (at least not entirely) white. I know the “#ownvoices” movement has seemed to have lost some traction (concerns about who writes what is now taking–rightfully–a backseat to concerns about book bannings), but even if publishing has stopped being concerned that non-marginalized voices are writing about marginalized characters, the lesson was learned at least by me. And while Daughters of Bast is a great concept and idea (in my opinion), I’m not sure I have the right to write that story, but I do not see how I can without venturing into problematic territory. I will write something based in or around Egypt at some point though; Egypt has fascinated for far too long a period of my life (as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, the pyramids, and their culture) for me to never write about it….but then again, I’ve not written anything historical, have I? A short story here and there?

Yesterday was actually kind of lovely. I’d cry here and there, of course, when I’d have a reminder–sitting in my chair alone watching Youtube, I started to call for him to come sleep in my lap before remembering was one of those moments–and of course, it feels weird going to bed without him curling up inside my arm. I keep picking up things–toys he’d played with a couple of times before abandoning, water dish, plastic container of cat food–which make me sad, but it’s gradually grew into more of a resigned sadness by the end of the day rather than the emotional kick in the gut. We got caught up on Hijack, with Idris Elba on Apple Plus, which is really quite good; started watching Last Call on HBO, based on the Edgar Award winning true crime about a serial killer praying on gay men in New York; and then moved on to Fake Profile on Netflix, which is, as all Spanish language crime melodramas are, fricking fantastic. We’ll probably finish Fake Profile today, but am not sure what else. We also finished season one of Platonic yesterday, which was also terrific.

I did spend some time reading Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman; I only read the first chapter but its hallmark Abbott; the voice, especially, is just as haunting as always and I always marvel at how lyrically she puts sentences together. Her writing style is so evocative; it’s amazing to me how she can create an entire image in your head with a clever turn of phrase. It’s a kind of writerly witchcraft not many authors have, and while I am sure it has a lot to do with her education (she’s incredibly intelligent) and her own influences, she is just kind of a genius, really. I plan to spend some more time with it this morning, once I get some things cleaned up around here–the kitchen is a mess, and as always, dishes dishes dishes and filing filing filing. But I did do some clean-up around here yesterday and I also successfully pruned the books down. I got rid of some of the empty boxes that have piled up around here, and so progress was made on the messy, slovenly hovel I call the Lost Apartment. I slept pretty well last night, too. I also spent some time brainstorming loosely in my journal for the next book I’m going to write. (I also just realized I’ve been listening for Scooter to come downstairs and demand his breakfast; I suppose that’s going to be a lengthy wait this morning…)

I’m not really sure what I am going to do today other than some clean-up and some reading and maybe some more brainstorming. I need to write Dad, among other important tasks, and there’s still some loose ends hanging around I need to get tied up at some point. There’s always something…but at least I am starting to feel creative again, which is always a plus. I was really feeling depleted there for a while, you know? I am also making Swedish meatballs for dinner. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve cooked–I’ve really fallen down on the job as far as that is concerned–and I also have doctors’ appointments on Wednesday so my week is going to be broken up into two parts around that.

And on that note, I think I will repair to my easy chair with Beware the Woman. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Cico Buff

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and it’s a somber bit of a morning here. I’m still sad and a little in shock that Scooter declined so quickly, but in retrospect I am glad it was fast and he didn’t suffer for long. Skittle’s slow decline into death lasted months, which was terrible and heart-wrenching and soul-shattering. I decided that I am going to take the weekend off–no social media, no emails, no nothing. I am going to, of course, write blog posts–I will always try to write blog posts–but I am going to clean and organize and read and think and watch movies and television shows and so forth. This hasn’t exactly been my favorite year so far–how can a year in which you lose your mom and cat in less than half a year be a favorite of any kind–but it’s not been an entirely bad year, either. My life has always gifted me lovely wonderful things while at the same time gut-punching me with something awful; the other night when I realized i was caught up and/or ahead of most everything, I also thought which means something bad is going to happen–which is terrible, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially when good things happen to me.

I got some more Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies in the mail yesterday (Stories That Scared Even Me, Stories for Late at Night, and Stories Not for the Nervous), and I think it’s time to dial back on buying them, at least until I start getting most of them read. But to take my mind off my sadness I think I need to read a novel, so after I get the kitchen cleaned and organized a little better, I think I’ll probably curl up with Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott at long last, and spend the weekend with her. I think spending a nice, relaxing weekend is just what the doctor ordered, and you know, it’s long past time I did a really thorough clean of this place, and it shows. The condition of the apartment has deteriorated (primarily due to my laziness coupled with a general exhaustion I’ve felt the last few years) to the point that I hope there’s no afterlife; because if my mom can look down from heaven and see how slovenly I’ve kept house for so long…yeah, she’d be haunting me for sure. Several years ago I did finally realize that I am super-hard on my housekeeping skills because Mom was über clean; her house was always spotless and everything was where it went. Messes never lasted for more than five minutes in my mother’s house. She’d finish cooking and there wouldn’t be any mess left behind; something I’ve only managed a few times throughout my life…and yet it always felt marvelous when I was able to pull that off.

I also just realized/remembered that our anniversary is this coming week; the 20th, to be exact, will mark twenty-eight years of the Greg-Paul relationship. Twenty-eight years. I never dreamed that I’d ever find someone compatible to me, let alone have a relationship that would last almost three decades (if we can survive another two, we’ll make it to thirty), but I suppose I can do an “ode to Paul” on our anniversary, so I’ll table this talk for now. I do need to get him a gift; and I know exactly what to get him; I just have to remember to order it today so it may arrive in time…if it doesn’t, no big deal. We’ve both become rather lackadaisical about anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays at this point. They just are, and being together and still happy is the real gift.

Yesterday after I got home from the Cat Practice, I watched a true crime documentary that was interesting from a domestic suspense perspective; it was one of those “I didn’t know I was married to a predator” stories that I’ve always kind of wanted to do from a gay male perspective; lots of things to unpack, discuss, and talk about there. After the documentary, I put on the final game of the College World Series so I could watch LSU win it all yet again–mostly for background noise, really, while I waited for Paul to get home. After that, I was scrolling through Prime looking for something light and funny to take me out of myself, and wound up watching The Beverly Hillbillies, which is silly and fun and funny–still funny–but was so hated by critics and reviewers, despite resonating with viewers and being a Top Ten hit show its entire run. I never understood it myself, and remembered watching when I was a kid. My memories of the show airing weren’t strong, and so it was easy for me to go along with the mentality that it was low humor and tacky and clichéd and bad. I started watching reruns at some point as an adult, and was startled to see how misunderstood the show was; I may have to write about it sometime because it struck me as a particularly biting social satire on American culture and society. And it’s still funny; and the Clampetts are never the butt of the joke; the joke is always on the “city folk.” (Even while grieving, I still think about writing.)

I also listened to The Drowning Tree while doing my data entry; it’s really quite marvelous. But then Paul called with the news from the Cat Practice and that was that for the day. I’ll have to use some paid-time-off to make up for the afternoon hours I lost to handling the Scooter situation.

And on that note, I think I am going to go ahead and head into the relaxation zone rather than the usual spice-mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and if you have a pet, give them a big hug for me.

Boot Scoot Boogie

Scooter was such a good boy.

He rescued us from our grief when we lost Skittle back in October of 2010. We’d never wanted a cat. I’d never had one, and neither had Paul–we both had dogs growing up–and his mom continued to have dogs. My dog was my only pet, and my parents never had another. (They grew up on farms, and felt no sentiment whatsoever for animals. Mom would always roll her eyes when I mentioned Scooter because she could not wrap her mind around someone voluntarily allowing a cat in the house, let alone loving one.) We got Skittle originally because we had a mouse in the carriage house–and everyone’s response, from our landlady to neighbors and friends, was simply, “You need a cat.” It was the day after Christmas in 2002 when we went to the SPCA in the Bywater and brought six-month old Skittle home. When we lost him (cancer), we were both bereft. Paul took to bed for over twenty-four hours while I walked around the Lost Apartment in a sad daze, wondering how such a small thing could take up so much space in the house and in my heart that both seemed empty and cavernous without him in them anymore. Thursday afternoon after we lost him I went and picked up his ashes from the Cat Practice, and while I was waiting, there was an adoptable cat in of the two cages behind the front desk. The sign said he was two years old and named Texas. He stuck his paw through the bars to me, and I wanted to take him home right then as I scratched between his ears and he purred. I would have, were I not worried about how Paul would feel about a new cat; figuring I could broach the subject at an appropriate time. That very night Paul fell asleep on the couch, and dreamed he saw a mouse sitting on the recycling can just inside the kitchen door (to this day he swears it wasn’t a dream; I was awake and saw nothing, for the record, but I don’t argue the point with him because the end result, regardless, was he decided we needed a new cat and I wasn’t going to say no), and as he said “we need a cat” I said, “There’s a really sweet one at the Cat Practice named Texas. Why don’t you stop by there on your way to work tomorrow and see him? If you like him, we can make arrangements to adopt him and I can pick him up on my way home from work.”

Well, that just wouldn’t do once Paul met him. He called me and told me that he’d signed the papers, and I could pick him up at his office at four so we could get him, and that’s what we did. Scooter came home with us that night for a week trial. It took an hour for us to decide we couldn’t bear to part with him. I do remember thinking, as he purred and head-butted me and made biscuits in my lap, but his fur is so wiry! Skittle was so soft!

By Sunday, Scooter’s hair was also soft and silky because he knew he was at home and no more cages for him.

He was, without question, the sweetest cat in the world. All Scooter ever wanted was to cuddle. And was very insistent on his rights to my lap whenever he wanted it. He would come and howl at me while I sat at my desk working, and if I ignored him, he’d eventually come over and start tapping me with one of his paws, that look on his face, and I’d give in, every single time. He would sleep in my lap in my easy chair until Paul stretched out on the couch–at which point he would completely desert me without a second glance and would head over there, where he’d stay for the rest of the night unless Paul got up. We always used Scooter as an excuse for service–I’d ask Paul to get me something from the kitchen so I wouldn’t disturb Scooter; he would do the same. Scooter would sleep with me when I went to bed, and then, once Paul got into bed, climbed over him and went to sleep on his other side. He loved people, being just a tiny bit shy around someone new for about thirty seconds before realizing oh this person might pet me or let me sit in their lap and he’d start trying to charm the person. We spoiled him mercilessly, but he never really cared much about toys or catnip. He just wanted a lap.

He also always seemed to instinctively know, somehow, when something was wrong with me or I was upset. Whenever I’d get a text from my father or sister updating me about Mom, within minutes he’d appear out of nowhere and climb up into my lap and purr and head butt me and let me know he was there for me. He could do this for Paul, too; so much so that I wondered if cats were empaths (and yes, I want to write a book about cats; a sort of magical realism thing called Daughters of Bast). He also usually would come running down the stairs when I got home; he’d hear the key in the lock and come running. He would always stop on about the third step and howl at me, like he was saying there you are at last! Where have you been? I’ve been alone for a couple of hours! Such bad daddies I have!

Of course, he may not have known. He just wanted a lap to sleep in and cuddle, and so whenever I was upset or something bad was going on in my life or I just was overwhelmed, that regular, consistent demand for a lap was comforting, and I only really paid attention when I was upset, because it always made me feel somewhat better. I could take comfort in my cat’s adoration of me.

I will also be forever grateful to the art department at Crooked Lane for wanting to put Scooter on the cover of a A Streetcar Named Murder; I also gave Scotty and the boys a ginger cat named Scooter. Scooter will live on in the pages of my books forever; so I guess I also managed to grant him immortality of sorts…even though most readers won’t know that Scooter was our ginger baby.

We named him Scooter because it sounded like Skittle, without being the exact same. We did worry, like the overdramatic queens we are, if getting a new cat was betraying the love of our lost one. Silly and ridiculous on its face, of course, but grief doesn’t always make sense to those left behind; we think and do erratic things when we’re struggling with loss. I do think, at least for me, part of the pain and the grief I feel is because Scooter counted on us to take care of him, and losing him means we failed him in some way. I know it’s not rational to think that way, but I can’t help it and no matter how much I remember how badly we spoiled him and how he basically was the Boss around here, it doesn’t make that guilty feeling go away.

Paul and I both also have a habit of nicknaming people and animals we care about; so Scooter became Scoot, Scoot the Boot, Boot, Bootercat, das Boot, and so on.

The house feels so empty.

I’m going to stay off-line for the most part this weekend; Paul and I have both decided that we’re not going to answer emails or deal with anything this weekend other than spoiling ourselves. Next week we’ll start looking for our next cat–probably Skipper–and maybe by next weekend the cat-sized hole in our lives will be filled. The only blessing in Scooter’s loss is we’ll now be able to rescue another cat who needs a forever home, and spoil him mercilessly.

Losing them rips your heart out, but I also can’t imagine not having, and loving, one.

Theft, and Wandering Around Lost

Work at home Friday!

Not that I mind going to the office, of course, but I love working at home on Fridays because I don’t have to get up early. Although that hasn’t been much of a problem this week, in all honesty; I’ve not had to force myself out of bed one morning this week, not have I dragged and been tired all morning. I’ve slept well every night this week (probably just jinxed it) which has made a significant difference. I think perhaps my theory yesterday–the release of stress and the absence of anything causing me anxiety because I finally caught up–has probably had a lot to do with why I was able to sleep so deeply and well this week. Now, hopefully this weekend I can start making progress on a deep clean of the apartment, prune out some more books, and perhaps get some other things started. I’ve kept up for those most with the daily shit I always let pile up–laundry, dishes, filing–so I won’t have to spend much time this weekend getting that shit caught up, which is kind of nice; I am not behind going into the weekend.

I really need to do something about the cabinets, to be honest, and perhaps it IS time to reorganize the counters. And maybe we can order our new refrigerator this weekend. One can but dream, I suppose. I slept late this morning, which felt great, but we’re both a little concerned about Scooter. He’s not himself these last few days, and so we are thinking about taking him into the vet to get him checked out. He also hasn’t been howly-bitchy lately, either. He gave me a rather weak attempt at a fill my bowl you cretin this morning, but it was more sad than demanding. He is about fourteen, which I’ve been thinking about lately (sorry, death of loved ones is much on my mind this year, sue me) but I was dreading having to have the conversation about “we may be losing him” this soon. Last night when I got home from work he slept in my lap briefly but then gave up and went to lay on the floor in front of the dryer in the laundry room–he always likes it in there were one of the appliances (whether dishwasher, dryer, or washer) are in operation, I think the vibrations on the floor appeal to him and soothe in some mysterious cat-fashion–but I was doing chores and not paying attention to anything, then realized oh you should play Spotify through the computer and that was when I noticed that I had my iMessages app open on the computer and Paul had texted me around three to call him. I finally did when I saw the text around eight last night, and that was when he told me his concerns about Scooter, which while it saddened me that it wasn’t just my imagination, I was also glad that I didn’t have to be the one to bring it to his attention and talk him through it. He does seem better this morning, but I think we still need to take him to the vet to be checked out. Who knows? It may not be something fatal, but something that medications can clear up. It’s just that he’s so old; we’ve had him for almost thirteen years and they said he was two when we adopted him, which would make him fifteen. He’s such a sweet thing. And no matter how many times I tell myself well if we lose him we can rescue another cat from a grim existence inside a cage , and give him a great life, but that doesn’t help all that much, really.

The trade-off for the great joy a pet can bring you is the sorrow of losing them. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t want to outlive a pet, either; stories about pets whose owners/parents died on them always break my heart. I still mourn Skittle and my childhood dog, Sandy–and Sandy crossed the Rainbow Bridge when I was nineteen, so over forty years ago.

I’m going to try to keep my sadness at bay–Mom always said worrying was just borrowing trouble–and focus so I can be productive today and not get behind on things the way I was before. And work makes for a marvelous way of escaping sorrow, when it isn’t paralyzing.

I did get started last night on the pile of dishes and some laundry last night, which I need to finish this morning, I have work at home duties to do and a couple (how lovely that sounds!) of emails to answer. I want to finish writing some more drafted blog entries that have been there in my drafts forever–or delete them, accepting the fact that I will either never write the entry or it needs to be a longer form personal essay or its no longer topical. Clean the drafts out, Gregalicious! I was also a little pleased with myself for finishing two other draft entries yesterday–one about writing Games Frat Boys Play and one about my story “Solace in a Dying Hour”–the anthology This Fresh Hell, in which it appears, dropped yesterday and you can click on the title link there to order a copy–isn’t it lovely how I try to make things easier for you, Constant Reader?–so I am making progress on that front. At one point I was trying to write entries about each and every one of my books; I got away from that when life got out of my control yet again, and it’s not a bad idea to go back to this stuff. I think I had also stopped with both Need and Timothy on deck; I am going to try to get back on track with that. Hell, the older entries about Scotty and Chanse books might even be on Livejournal, of all places. (Ye olde blog is still up and findable over there; I used to take the entries private after a few months because the blog had been plagiarized a few times; but I think the last year or so are still up.) I’ll have to check to see. But I’ve been keeping Queer and Loathing in America since December of 2004; next year I’ll reach my twentieth anniversary of blogging. (!!!)

I also worked on organizing and cleaning up electronic files, which is much more time-consuming than one might think–as much as I love being organized, that sadly doesn’t carry over to my computer files, the cloud or the back-up hard drive. Ever since I discovered I can do file-searches for when I need one, I allowed it to get completely out of control, which was an enormous mistake that I regret to this day. There’s a lot of treasure in my files somewhere–ideas, thoughts, inspirational images as well as images from history that may be of use at some point with some book or story. The problem is I keep finding more things every day that I think well this will come in handy when I write X and so it goes into the files. I hoard books, paper, and electronic files, apparently.

I also realized yesterday that the new short story collection–which now sits at over seventy-seven thousand words–was missing a published short story, which, when added to the document, will take it over eighty thousand, which to me is the bare minimum for such a collection; so I could actually go ahead and add it in and send the collection off to my publisher to see if they want it or not. I’d want it to be at least ninety thousand, though, so I’d need at least two more completed stories for it out of the files. Something to ponder.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again probably later.

Games People Play

My second fraternity novel went through two name changes before we found one the publisher liked enough to use–and it was their idea.

It was originally called beautiful, which is what I called it while writing the first draft. Kensington did not like that title, and wanted something that would tie it more to the first fraternity erotica novel I wrote for them. I tweaked the title of the first one and came up with What Every Frat Boy Wants, which isn’t really a bad title at all. But at some point Marketing came up with Games Frat Boys Play–which was not only a better title over all but also fit the story better–I didn’t fight the name change at all. (It rather bothers me that I’ve never been able to come up with a good title for a single one of the Todd Gregory novels, to be honest. I take pride in being good at titles…)

When I was very very young I saw a made for TV movie that I absolutely loved. It was a twisted and funny revenge tale called The Girl Most Likely To, and it was Stockard Channing’s first big break in film or television. She played an unattractive, overweight young woman who was also socially awkward and had no friends; she was lonely and made fun of and picked on her entire life. She spent all of her time studying and as such became extremely smart. But when she went off to college she thought she had friends and she thought she could be happy–only to wind up betrayed and humiliated by everyone publicly. She flees in tears and is in a horrible car wreck, which leaves her in a coma. When she comes out of the coma, it’s been months; they reconstructed her face and not knowing what she looked like, followed her bone structure and made her beautiful; and the liquid diet while in the coma had shed weight off her and now she’s gorgeous…

..and she decides to get even with everyone who fucked her over and humiliated her. Joan Rivers wrote the script, so it was twisted and dark yet funny at the same time; and Channing was amazing–I’ve been a fan ever since. I love me a good revenge story, so when Kensington wanted another fratboy book I decided to go for a revenge story–I love a good revenge story, like I said (the television series Revenge is one of my all time favorites) and I decided to do a The Gay Most Likely To, only making my main character remarkably sweet and innocent and charming; his father is a software millionaire and he spent most of his life at a boarding school in Switzerland where everyone was a snob and was shitty to him for not having a title or being old aristocratic money, and he’s decided he wants to have a normal life at a normal college before going off to Harvard–he’s also incredibly smart–and literally picked CSU-Polk out of the air as his choice. Also looking to explore his sexuality, he moves into a really nice apartment in a great (and expensive) complex, and across the breezeway from him lives Jeff and Blair from Every Frat Boy Wants It, who are the ones who get him to go to the Beta Kappa fraternity rush and…the story was off and running.

Kensington also came up with a fucking smoking hot cover for the book.

This, reflected Police Detective Joe Palladino, is an awfully nice apartment complex for a college student to be living in. How the hell does he afford it?

The Alhambra Apartments, he knew, started at a mere $1500 per month for a studio, and went up—way up—from there. When they’d opened a few years earlier, his then-boyfriend, Sean, had wanted to take a look at them.  Joe had failed to see the point—there was no way they could afford the rents there, even with their combined incomes—but Sean had insisted and it was easier to give in than have an argument. And yes, the place was gorgeous—you had to be let in by security, there were fountains and tennis courts and swimming pools conveniently placed throughout the complex. Each building had a laundry facility, and near the clubhouse was an on-site laundry dry cleaner. There was even a fully equipped workout facility with state of the art equipment that put Joe’s gym to shame. The apartments themselves were large, full of light and luxurious—but after the tour, Sean had pouted all night long because they couldn’t afford to live there, as though it were somehow Joe’s fault. But everything had always been Joe’s fault, which was why he’d dumped Sean shortly after that. There was, after all, only so much complaining that anyone can put up with. Sean wanted everything but didn’t want to work for it—and Joe eventually tired of being compared to Sean’s previous, much older boyfriend and being found wanting. Sean was young and handsome—and so thought everything should be handed to him. He didn’t like having to work, and he didn’t like that Joe’s income wasn’t enough for him to live a life of luxury and idleness while being supported.

“I don’t know what you ever saw in him in the first place,” his older sister Margie had sniffed in her patented condescending way after Sean had left him. “He has about as much depth as a dog dish.”

He’d opened his mouth to answer her but had closed it again. There wasn’t any point in arguing with her because she was right. Sean had always wanted more than Joe could offer him. The three bedroom house in the subdivision on the north side of town hadn’t been enough for him. He always wanted the most expensive things—a car he couldn’t possibly afford, the most expensive clothes and colognes and vacations. Joe had practically bankrupted himself trying to please Sean—but nothing was ever enough. And besides, Margie wouldn’t understand even if he tried to explain how his heart had always swelled up whenever he looked at Sean—or that just touching Sean’s skin had gotten him aroused. It had taken him a while to understand it all himself, but the truth was he’d really loved the way Sean looked, and hoped his love would change Sean somehow.

But, he reflected again, people only change if they want to. And you can’t build a relationship on sex when you have nothing else in common.

It was a hard lesson to learn. And while he’d never admit to anyone—least of all Margie—he still hoped Sean might come back home someday.

I think unrequited love is something that most can identify with; I feel it is fairly safe to say that almost all of us have, at one time or another over the course of our lives, loved or liked or desired someone who would never be interested in us for whatever reason; whether they are out of our league or we aren’t their type or they just don’t feel the same way. It’s awful, it hurts and it sucks, but you really don’t have any choice but to move on and forget about it. I’ve certainly been in that situation, and that sort of rejection really stings; it gets to you on a profoundly painful level. But what if the person you had feelings for knew you had those feelings, didn’t reciprocate, but thought it would be fun to string you along and make you think you had a chance, that it would all work out at some point, just not now–and mocked you behind your back, and so forth. And what if you were a extremely lonely and sheltered (although rich and incredibly smart) and socially backward person, naïvely trusting and expecting everyone to be kind because, well, why would anyone want to be unkind?

(I was recently laughing about my own naivete with my dad. “I always think people are telling me the truth,” I said, “because it never occurs to me that people will lie even when they have no reason to.” I like to think I’m more skeptical now than I was when I was younger, but every once in awhile I get a reminder that people will lie sometimes even when there’s not a reason to do so)

I found myself really liking my character as I wrote more about him, and really absolutely hating his nemesis; he finds out he’s being made a fool of about halfway through the book, and that’s when he launches his scheme for revenge, which results in an accident that may not have been an accident, hence our police detective in the opening. And yes, there’s a lot of sex in the book; it’s an erotic novel, after all, so there needs to be some sex in it. The book did really well and I am also rather proud of it, because I think I did a good job with it.

Highway to Hell

I realized the other night that, of all things, I take more pride in my short stories than I do in my novels. Isn’t that strange? Novels are, in theory, much more difficult to write than a short story–even at its barest minimum, a novel should be at least fifty thousand words while short stories generally cut off around a thousand. I think it’s because I still carry the scars from that asshole writing professor in college. I always struggle with short stories, and always have; I used to say that if I wrote a successful short story it was completely and entirely by accident. But writing erotica was an excellent tutorial in short story writing; in what other type of short story is “beginning, middle, end” so clearly delineated?

My first short story that got published outside of the realm of erotica was “Smalltown Boy,” which was published in 2003, I think. It’s still one of my favorite stories of my own; it’s an Alabama story and I am still very proud of it. I used to think I’d never get a short story published anywhere that wasn’t erotica, so when my stories started getting acceptances and published in non-erotica markets, it was very cool.

I like writing short stories because I can encapsulate an idea in that short form rather than writing an entire novel. I can also experiment with voice, style, theme, setting and story. I have any number of stories that don’t work but are completed; I have a lot more than were started and stalled because I didn’t know how to finish them. I think I have around a hundred short stories or so in progress; I actually counted a few years ago because someone asked and I didn’t know the answer.\

Several years ago, an Australian crime writer I’ve known for decades reached out and asked me if I would contribute a story to an anthology her publishing company was producing, The Only One in the World, which was a Sherlock Holmes collection–but the only rule was you couldn’t set the stories in London, period; I had never written anything close to a Holmes story and have never really been much of a Holmesian (I do love Laurie King’s Mary Russell series), but it was a challenge so I said yes–because for me, I love writing challenges because they push me out of my comfort zone and make me try things I might not ordinarily try. That story became “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy” (still one of my favorite titles of all time) and it was a lot of fun to write, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself writing it…to the point I’ve considered revisiting my Holmes and Watson in 1916 New Orleans, several times.

Last year, the Sherlock editor, Narrelle Harris, reached out to me to see if I’d write something for a new anthology, The Fresh Hell, and there was a list of horror tropes we were given to chose from. Being from Louisiana, how could I not pick “haunted bayou”?

And so I started writing a story that became “Solace in a Dying Hour.”

Madeleine Chaisson opened her eyes and knew that the next time she shut them would be the last.

She cocked her head to listen. Even amongst those few (some say blessed, others cursed) who could hear them, most would describe the strange sounds they made as they danced about the dark, still waters as whistling. But Madeleine was special, different, not like the others.

She heard them clearly. She knew they weren’t whistling. They were singing.

But the sound she heard now was just the gulls over Bayou St Ferdinand shrieking as they swooped and flapped their wings looking for morsels of food. 

Dirty scavengers, she thought with a scowl. She hated the gulls; had since she was a little girl growing up in this very house.

How much gull shit had she cleaned off the dock during her long lifetime? Papa would backhand her if he saw any of the dried white splotches with black pellets on the dock when he brought the boat back in from a day shrimping out in the Gulf.

‘It rots the wood, you lazy cochon,’ he’d say in his sing-song southeast Louisiana Cajun accent while she rubbed her stinging cheek. ‘And who will have to rebuild the damned thing when it collapses? Don’t I already work hard to keep you clothed and fed?’

Even with him years in his grave, after she began wondering if that was even true, she’d still take the bucket out and scrub the gull shit from the weathered old wood.

If I were a witch like they always said, I could have snapped my fingers and cleaned it, she thought with a snort.

The new anthology debuted today, and it is available on Amazon and other sellers here in the United States; here is the link to Bookshop.org : here. This link is to the trade paper; there’s also a much more expensive hardcover edition as well if you disdain paperbacks.

“Solace in a Dying Hour” is another one of my south Louisiana stories. It took me a long while to get to the point where I was comfortable writing about Louisiana outside of New Orleans (don’t ever ask me about the colossal error in geography I made in Bourbon Street Blues…I SAID DON’T ASK!); I think my first was “Rougarou.” I also wrote and published “A Whisper from the Graveyard” since that one, and this is my third. I’ve started building a fictional world of Louisiana outside of the city over the last seven or eight years or so; it could be longer since I no longer have any sense of time anymore. I have revisited rural Louisiana in books like Need, The Orion Mask, and A Streetcar Named Murder; I have more stories and books I am going to write about my fictional rural Louisiana; I’ve also fictionalized the north shore several times already.

“Solace” is an homage of sorts to two other stories I really loved, “Do the Dead Sing?” by Stephen King and “An Unremarkable Heart” by Karin Slaughter. Both involve someone lying in bed dying, and reliving some pretty horrible things that happened over the course of their lives. I had been studying Louisiana folklore and legends for quite some time, but it was around 2017 or 2018 that I started really doing a deep dive into Louisiana history and culture. A co-worker had moved to Houma, which is deep in the bayou country, and she was doing the same. She was who suggested I write about le feu follet, the swamp lights some see. There are numerous definitions and descriptions of who and what le feu follet actually are; I decided I wanted to use the lights and the whistling aspects of their legend, and I wanted the story to focus on a woman who’s lived a very hard life and been through some things…but who could not only see le feu follet for what they actually are and appear, but could tell that they weren’t whistling, but singing. I also kind of based her on my maternal grandmother, a very quiet woman who never showed emotion and never complained about anything; things were what they were and you just dealt with them, period. I wanted to get that sense of quiet strength that you can usually only find in rural Southern women, that practical pragmatism that has gotten them through hard lives and a lot of tragedy.

My maternal grandmother was pretty amazing, really.

I am very proud of the story and how it turned out; the anthology itself is amazing, and the cover is gorgeous. I hope you enjoy it should you choose to check it out.