How Much More

Audiobooks have completely changed the way I handle long trips in the car. I used to always listen to music, but man how that drive would always drag, because I’d just sing along or bop with the beat or play the drums on the steering wheel while always watching the mile markers and counting down the distances to the next city (“okay, an hour to Birmingham and then it’s another hour and a half to Gadsden and then…”) But listening to audiobooks? I was worried that listening might distract me from driving, or that my mind would wander while listening and I would get lost, but it’s really not been a problem at all. Listening to a good book makes the miles and time fly by and next thing I know I’m almost there.

On my recent drive back to New Orleans, I had the great good fortune to listen to Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You, and I must say, Ms. Goodman never disappoints.

I have notice in my professional capacity that when someone makes a point of saying that they’re not lying, that usually means they are.

When the realtor brags that she hasn’t lied about the view, though, I have to admit that her claim is demonstrably true: the view is spectacular. Standing at the elegant bay window it’s as if I am perched on a cliff overlooking the river. There’s nothing between me and the Palisades but water and light. A person who was afraid of heights would be terrified, but heights aren’t what I’m afraid of.

“Can you tell me what ‘state-of-the-art security’ means?”

The realtor takes a nanosecond–an eon in Manhattan real estate time–to recalibrate and then rattles off the specs again: twenty-four-hour doormen, fiber-optic alarm system, security cameras.

“As I mentioned earlier, a high-ranking government official lived here. I can’t tell you who…” Her voice trails off, suggesting she very well could if she chose to. All I’d have to do is raise my eyebrows, smile, lean in a little closer–all the body language that implies it will just be between us girls. I’ve done it a thousand times before with ex-wives and mistresses, corporate CFO’s and underpaid personal assistants. But I don’t. I don’t really care who the very important person was who lived here; I just want to be assured that he–or she–lived here safely and unbothered.

“Can you show me how the cameras work?”

The Stranger Behind You is a post “#metoo” movement book, and in the author’s note in the back, Goodman explained how the book was kind of inspired by the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford during the joke that was the Kavanaugh hearings, and how hearing Dr. Ford describe what happened to her, and how the trauma has haunted her ever since, reconnected her with memories of her own mother, who was sexually assaulted as a teenager and carried that with her the rest of her life, with the PTSD finally taking the form of a horrible anxiety disorder. In the wake of the national conversation about sexual assault and harassment, and the way victims are treated and how rarely they get justice (don’t forget to read and sign my friend Laurie’s change.org petition and read about what happened to her in Dallas in 2018), Goodman sat down to write a book about women’s trauma, and it’s fricking fantastic.

The book focuses on two women on opposite sides of a, for want of a better term, #metoo situation. Joan Lurie, whom we meet first in the above opening, is a young journalist working for Manahatta magazine in the Style section–but she is also working on an expose of a very powerful and influential conservative newspaper publisher, Caspar Osgood, who has a dark and nasty history of sexual harassment going back years. Joan was an intern at Osgood’s paper, and on her first day she spoke to Osgood’s secretary, whom she found sobbing in the bathroom about her ‘affair’ with her boss. The next day both women are fired; and Joan winds up going to Manahatta–whose editor Simon just happens to be an old friend from college of Osgood’s, but things went south for the two since then and they are most definitely not friends. The book opens with Joan looking at an apartment in north Manhattan and wondering about its security–and as the chapter progresses, we discover that Joan recently survived an attempt on her life that happened the night her expose went live…which also happened to be the same night as a Suicide Awareness non-profit’s fundraising gala, hosted by Caspar’s wife Melissa, a charity she became involved with after her son Whit’s suicide attempt three years earlier. The gala is obviously ruined as the news goes live…and then we are into the story.

As I said the other day, I’ve always been interested in the mindset of the women who are tied–whether by marriage or by blood–to men accused of these crimes, like the mom of the Stanford swimmer or Harvey Weinstein’s wife (we know how Bill Cosby’s wife thinks); what do they think, how do they feel, what goes through their heads? Goodman takes an enormous risk by giving us Melissa Osgood as a POV character–how will the readers respond to her? I did feel a great deal of sympathy for her–I always do, regardless, although my primary sympathies are always with the victims–at first, but Goodman does a magnificent job of showing how much easier it is to blame the journalists and the accusers rather than placing the blame where it belongs, and that this way of thinking is also a defensive, self-protective measure; how complicit is she? If everything is a lie and none of it is true, then her husband is innocent and this horrible person has destroyed Melissa’s life, and that’s much easier to deal with than accepting the truth and some of the blame. Melissa’s behavior isn’t great, and she actually becomes obsessed with proving the Joan’s article was a hit piece and all lies, to the point that she actually buys the apartment below Joan’s at the Refuge and begins spying on her.

Joan was also terribly injured when she was attacked the night of her launch party, and while her refusal to report the assault to the police or even seek treatment for an obvious brain injury made me want to throttle her at times, Goodman made it completely understandable. Joan is also not entirely a sympathetic character, either–Goodman makes sure to make both of her women POV characters flawed, imperfect and thoroughly human–and the two women are on a clear collision course.

I’m leaving a lot out here–I strongly believe readers should be able to find the twists and surprises and turns of the story every bit as shocking and marvelous as I did–but there’s yet a third parallel story, connected to the history of the apartment building, that could have just as easily been a stand alone novel of its own.

This book was, as has every Goodman novel I have read, superb. Seriously, y’all need to start reading her if you haven’t already.

Waiting on a Friend

I took the post I wrote about my parents private yesterday afternoon. After I got home from work and thought about it some more, I realized that even though it was a eulogy of sorts, I talked about private family things and the rest of the family might not appreciate the invasion of their privacy, especially not at this time. I did want to write it down, though, and wasn’t terribly sure how to let everyone know. I made an announcement last week that the end was near; did that mean I owed everyone a follow-up? How is the best way to let people know? This is all new to me, after all. So I wrote something in the raw moment shortly after I found out–and thought better of it later. My parents’ story isn’t mine to tell–even if it is part of my own story–but while Mom is gone, Dad is still with us, and I owe him the courtesy and respect to protect his privacy, particularly in a moment of horrifying loss and grief. It will not be my story to tell as long as he is still here.

I did leave work early yesterday–I just didn’t really want to be around people much–because I was in that immediacy moment where I couldn’t control the overwhelming sadness that kept going and coming. I was okay until I had to talk about it, you know? And then that would be a trigger for a moment of uncontrollable sadness, where my breath would catch in my throat and my eyes would fill so I would have to stop whatever I was doing until I could get it together. Grief is a funny thing–I know it’s not completely past, and maybe going into the office today may not be the smartest thing to do, but until I know when everything is going to be, I can’t just burn off my paid time off–which is kind of a fucked position to be in, really. But I also know that my job would work with me, too–my boss is actually very kind, and that was also kind of triggering yesterday while I was there still. I was also overwhelmed a bit by how kind so many people have been–from readers to acquaintances to friends–in the wake of it all.

I was glad that I was able to leave work early yesterday–that’s right, parades start again tonight so I have to leave early today and tomorrow as well–and I also realized last night I’ve kind of been walking around in a daze for quite some time. I wasn’t aware how much Mom’s declining health situation had been weighing on me. I was able to sleep again last night, for one thing–as opposed to the weirdness of the previous two evenings–and so this morning I feel better than I have any morning this week thus far.

And it’s Pay-the-Bills Day. I imagine the mundanity of the task of paying the bills will pull me back into reality more quickly than anything else would or could; the necessary reminder that the world continues to move on. Because it does; the world doesn’t stop because you’re going through something, no matter how painful it is, no matter how leveling it may feel at the time. I still have a lot of things to do–I made a to-do list before hearing from my sister yesterday morning about Mom–and I think keeping busy is a good way to handle my grief and mourning. When I decided to leave work early yesterday, I actually thought oh I can come home and as long as I keep busy–but the best laid plans and all that. I did get started on some things, like laundry and the dishes, but unfortunately I lost the thread of what I was doing and had to sit down for a moment, then Scooter jumped into my lap and that was the end of it. I’m not sorry I didn’t really do much of anything yesterday–I think I may have also been experiencing a little bit of shock, too–because I think I just needed to be by myself for a little while. There are no rules on how to deal with this kind of grief, or how you’re supposed to act or feel, so we all kind of just have to muddle through it and do the best we can. I think tonight when I get home from work–or rather, this afternoon–I will be better equipped to get things done. And I do have a to-do list now.

And losing myself in my work–cleaning, writing. editing–has always been the best way for me to deal with things.

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

Almost Hear You Sigh

I feel better this morning than I did yesterday. I didn’t sleep well last night but I rested, and I’ll frankly take that. I may be tired again later today, but it definitely beats yesterday. By the afternoon at work yesterday I was so tired I actually felt sick; I did run my errands after work (didn’t want to) and then came home to my easy chair and cat. I spent most of the evening sitting in my chair watching Youtube clips (and the Rihanna Super Bowl half-time show, which I think was fantastic) before finally tumbling into my bed around nine thirty. I did sleep some, but I was half-awake half-asleep most of the night, but…I feel rested and okay this morning, even getting out of bed before my alarm went off. I should have done laundry last night and emptied the dishwasher, but hey, it is what it is and i’d driven twelve hours the day before. I’ll have to do that tonight. Tonight is the final night of rest during parade season, and the madness all begins again tomorrow night, with Druids (the parade after is still trash and still being boycotted by New Orleans) rolling down the Avenue and me having to leave the office early so I can get home before they close the Avenue.

I was also so brain dead that I wasn’t able to make my to-do list, which is on my agenda for today. I did manage to muddle through the work day yesterday, but seriously, I was so tired I barely even remember being at work yesterday, let alone what all happened and what went on. I know I got all my work caught up–I was concerned, having left town so abruptly last week, about how behind I may have fallen but being competent really comes in handy sometimes. I need to write my review of The Stranger Behind You by Carol Goodman, which I loved, and need to get back to Abby Collette’s Body and Soul Food. I don’t even know where we are with our television shows that we were watching, but we’re also in crunch time for Paul at work so i don’t see him very often; he sometimes comes home after I’ve gone to bed and I of course leave before he gets up in the morning–long before he gets up in the morning–making me a Festival widow until it’s all over. He’s going to try to come home so we can have dinner together tonight for Valentine’s Day. but I’m not going to be holding my breath anytime soon.

Yesterday, a friend went public with something horrific that happened to her at Bouchercon in Dallas in 2019 (I didn’t go; I got an inner ear infection that week and as such couldn’t fly); you can read about here. I urge you to sign the Change.org petition on the page I linked to; I cannot state how much I admire Laurie for her courage and determination to make sure that what happened to her–a complete dismissal of her, no follow-up, and absolutely incredibly incompetent police work–never happens to another woman, at least in Dallas. It’s also no easy task to come forward about being drugged and possibly assaulted; we have in our culture and society a tendency to not believe women, and to dismiss them as being “overly-sensitive” and “well, it’s a he said/she said situation”. Part of the reason I wrote #shedeservedit was because I get so angry about how we treat women who are victims of predatory men. That book was of course inspired by the Steubensville/Marysville gang rape cases, but how many times do we have to go through and witness this same song-and-dance? The Stanford swimmer, Laurie in Dallas, Steubenville, Marysville…the list just goes on and on and on. (Which was why reading The Stranger Behind You was so serendipitous; it’s about #metoo) I’ve actually been thinking about writing another book about this, but wanting to do it from the perspective of say a woman like the Stanford swimmer’s mother; which was why the Goodman novel resonated so strongly with me.

Boys will be boys indeed.

I also need to get writing again. That will put me and everything in my life back into balance, methinks. But at least this morning I am awake and functioning and feeling rested; how long that will last remains to be seen. But on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow.

Hang Fire

Well, I’m pretty tired this morning. I got home last night and St. Charles Avenue was still closed from the King Arthur parade, so I got back on Highway 90 and got off at Tchoupitoulas and circled back home the back way, up Annunciation to Melpomene to Coliseum and then home. I listened to Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You on the way home (it’s superb) but had to finish the last seventy pages or so in the hard copy once I was actually home. I am sipping coffee and thinking that it’s going to take me a hot minute to figure out where I was at with everything and what I was actually doing; the faulty memory is not particularly helpful in that regard. To make matters worse, I never did get around to making that to-do list before I got the text from my sister last week–so I don’t have anything to fall back on, either. I know I had started working on the edits for the manuscript andI know I have a short story to write, but other than that I am completely blanking on everything. I need to make a grocery list for sure today, and I also need to figure out what I am going to take for lunch today. I have to swing by the mail as well as the grocery store, too.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I didn’t sleep all that great last night, either. I would have thought that exhaustion, if nothing else, would have helped me go into an incredibly deep sleep, but alas it was not to be. I feel rested and my brain doesn’t feel tired, but I do feel worn out. I think I am functional–and functioning–but things are probably going to be weird for me for the rest of this week, at the very least. I should sleep incredibly well tonight, though–that’s certainly something for me to look forward to enjoying this evening. I think I got microwave Jimmy Dean sausage egg and cheese croissants at Costco before I left town, and I think there’ s something in the freezer I can have for lunch as well. I was going to make something this morning but am too worn out and too worn down to bother with that. Sleep shouldn’t be an issue for me tonight, but I will probably be groggy as fuck tomorrow morning. I sure need to clean out my email inbox, that’s for certain, and I never did finish the filing apparently, based on the condition of the kitchen/office. It’s also weird that it’s parade season as well; we have two nights off but Wednesday night it all kicks into gear again and I have to start planning my life around the parade schedule–which also means not using the car from Friday afternoon through Monday morning, and then again from Monday night to Wednesday morning. It can be challenging, and I’m already tired. Yay!

So I need to make a to-do list; I need to refresh my memory to know where I am at with everything; I need to empty the email inbox; and of course clean and run errands and get a handle on my life again. But I think the most important thing for me to do is get rested and recovered from the exhaustion of the trip, which means being motivated and getting everything under control again because I won’t rest most likely until I know everything I’ve agreed to do and everything that I have to do. I feel very disoriented this morning and adrift–not a pleasant feeling–and, now that I think about it, is undoubtedly because of the suddenness of the disruption; usually when I travel it’s planned in advance and at least I can prepare for it; this was obviously last minute so I wasn’t really able to get things planned the way I usually do. I don’t always have things under control when I travel, but I am always on top of having a to-do list when I do travel so I know where I am when I get back home. That was the one thing I should have taken care of before I left Thursday (it seems like a lifetime ago), and had I done so, I wouldn’t be at sea this morning as much as I am.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines, get cleaned up, and head into the office so I can get back into my routine. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Start Me Up

I’m driving back to New Orleans today, planning to stop by the hospice on my way out of town. I have to work tomorrow, and while yes this is difficult and hard, the rest of the world didn’t stop turning and I can’t wallow in misery, as much as I would love to do just exactly that. Mom is still hanging on, but it could be any moment or it could be days; there’s no way of knowing. She’s no longer responsive, and I do absolutely feel like the worst person who ever lived leaving today; that guilt is probably going to hang around for a while. But we’ve gotten a lot of things worked out, I was here and was able to say goodbye, and I will probably cry a bit when I leave the hospice and get in my car to drive home because I won’t see my mother alive again. I’m extremely grateful that I was able to get up here (thank you, thoughtful employer and credit cards) to say goodbye. I am extremely grateful for the rest of my family, who live up here and have born the brunt of everything since the initial stroke several years ago (more guilt to live with for however long I have left), and for taking such great care of both of my parents. The hospice is wonderful and their staff–I can’t imagine doing this kind of work; it takes a special kind of person, and they are very good at it.

And I think my job can be hard sometimes. Get over yourself, bitch.

I also want to thank those of you who emailed, DMed, or responded to either the post here or wherever on social media you saw it. The kindness and generosity was appreciated, deeply. I know I am not always the most gracious person in the world (as I have taken to saying, “my life has been nothing more than an endless series of awkward social interactions”), and in many cases I don’t know how to react or respond to other peoples’ kindnesses to me and wind up muddling through somehow and giving offense. I don’t know when you’re supposed to say thank you or send cards, and am always certain that whatever I wind up doing is the wrong thing. I have no social graces or etiquette. I can’t make decent small talk which is why I always wind up drinking too. much at parties and conferences, and my inevitable knee-jerk response to any situation in which I feel tense or awkward or uncomfortable is to become a clown of sorts; and one thing I realized while up here this week is my sense of humor comes from my family. All of us–my parents and my sister–have this dark sense of humor, and we tease each other mercilessly; my nieces and nephews are much the same and their spouses have acclimated to our strange family dynamic. I recognize now that I developed my quickness (I am hesitant to label it as wit) with retorts and rejoinders as self-defense within my family.

And apparently people think I’m funny. I’ve been told that enough times that I have to actually start owning the label, even though I don’t think I’m particularly funny; I guess it’s because I’m not trying to be funny? It’s just how I am; and it isn’t something I actually trust. When I think about being funny, I inevitably wind up not being funny because I’m trying too hard. I also am worried because now people think I am entertaining and that’s another kind of pressure to put on someone who already suffers from anxiety that amplifies when I have to speak in front of an audience, whether as moderator, panelist, reader, or speaker. Oh, God, everyone thinks I’m going to be funny is the kind of thought that makes my palms, underarms, and feet get damp. Sometimes I think I should just relax and let go and not worry and fret so much, but then–that wouldn’t really be me, would it?

I’m tired this morning–drained physically and mentally–and am dreading the drive. It’s apparently Super Bowl Sunday, so I don’t imagine there will be a lot of traffic on southwest bound highways, and I should get to New Orleans well after today’s parades end so getting home won’t be an issue. I think once I depart I am going to have to get a latte from Starbucks or something to really help me wake up and be alert. I’ll be listening to Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You in the car on the way, and I am not really sure what the grocery situation is going to be once I get back home–but there’s a two day respite from the parades so I should be able to make groceries over the next two days. I guess I’m not really in the mood for Carnival this year, which I suppose is no big surprise; I was already kind of dreading this before Mom’s massive stroke last Wednesday (was it only five days ago? Really?), and now it is something I just have to endure for the next nine or ten days before Ash Wednesday. Yay. And I also have to figure out what I am supposed to be doing and where I am with everything in my life–I honestly don’t really remember anything. And of course I have to go into the office tomorrow morning, too. Heavy heaving sigh.

Ah, well, this too shall pass–and on that note, I am going to start packing. Have a great Super Bowl Sunday, Constant Reader.

Bad Boy

Masculinity is something I’ve always felt I viewed from the outside.

It’s very strange; for someone who doesn’t look back very often and has a rather healthy disdain for nostalgia, for some reason since the pandemic started, I’ve been revisiting my past a lot. I don’t know, perhaps it was triggered by having dinner with an old friend from high school a while back (which also inspired me to write a horribly dark short story); or perhaps it’s because of short stories or novel ideas I’ve been toying with, but lately, I’ve been thinking about my past much more so than I usually do, and what it was like for me growing up. I wrote a Sisters in Crime quarterly column several years ago about the first time I realized, once and for all, that I was indeed different from everyone else–it centered the first time I heard the word fairy used towards me as a pejorative, as well as the first time I was called a faggot. I’ve also been examining and turning over issues of masculinity inside my head for quite some time (most of my life). #shedeservedit was itself an examination of toxic masculinity and how it reverberates through a small community when it’s allowed to run rampant and unchecked: boys will be boys. Some short stories I’ve published have also examined the same subject.

What can I say? My not being the American masculine ideal has played a very major part in shaping my life and who I am; how could it not? I used to, when I was a kid, pray that I’d wake up the next morning and magically be turned into the kind of boy I was supposed to be, the kind that every other boy I knew–from classmates to cousins to everything I watched on television and at the movies.

Society and culture have changed in many ways since I was a little boy who didn’t fit so easily into the conformist role for little boys; roles for male and female were very narrowly defined when I was a child, and children were forced into conforming to those roles almost from birth. Boys were supposed to be rough and tumble and play sports and get dirty and like bugs and frogs and so forth; girls were supposed to be feminine and play with dolls or play house, wear dresses and mother their baby dolls. Boys weren’t supposed to read or enjoy reading (but I was also supposed to get good grades and be smart), and that was all I wanted to do when I was a kid. I used to love Saturdays, when my mother would go to the grocery store and drop me off at the library on her way. I loved looking at the books on the shelves, looking at the cover art and reading the descriptions on the back. I loved getting the Scholastic Book Club catalog and picking out a few books; the excitement of the day when the books I’d ordered arrived and I could go out on the back porch when I got home and read them cover to cover. I was constantly, endlessly, pushed to do more “boyish” things; I played Pee-wee baseball (very much against my will), and later was pushed into playing football in high school–which I hated at first but eventually came to love…which just goes to show, don’t automatically hate something without trying it. But yeah, I never loved playing baseball. I was enormously happy when we moved to Kansas and I discovered, to my great joy, that my new high school didn’t have a team.

One less traditionally masculine thing for me to participate in was always a bonus.

The things that I really wanted to do weren’t considered masculine pursuits, and as a general rule I was denied them as much as possible. My parents forbade me from reading books about girls–Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, Trixie Belden–which, quite naturally, made me want them more (my entire life the best way to get me to do something is to tell me either not to do it or tell me I can’t do it…either always makes me want to do it). Oddly enough, when my reading tastes became more adult–when I moved from children’s books to reading fiction for adults–they didn’t seem to care that I was reading books by women about women quite so much as they did when I was younger; either that, or they gave up trying as they finally saw me as a lost cause–one or the other; I don’t know which was the actual case. Maybe my embrace of football in high school overrode everything else suspect about me. It’s possible. My family has always worshipped at the goalposts…and I kind of still do. GEAUX TIGERS!

I spent a lot of my early life trying to understand masculinity and how it worked; what it was and why it was something I should aspire to–and never could quite wrap my mind around it. The role models for men always pointed out to me–John Wayne, etc.–never resonated with me; I always thought they were kind of dicks, to be honest. The whole “boys don’t cry, men never show emotions, men make the money and the entire household revolves around their wants and needs” shtick never took with me, and of course, as I never had any real sexual interest in women…the whole “locker room talk” thing was always kind of revolting to me, because I always saw girls as people. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was more likely to be able to trust girls than boys; I had so many boys decide they couldn’t be friends with me anymore because at some point other kids calling me a fairy began having an negative impact on their own lives all through junior and senior high school (to this day, I’ve never understood this; why were we friends before, and what changed? It wasn’t me…I didn’t suddenly switch gears from butch boy to effeminate overnight) it’s little wonder I have difficulty ever trusting straight men…but in fairness, I have trouble trusting everyone. But I never quite understood the entire “boys are studs girls are sluts” thing, but I also never truly understood the dynamics of male/female attraction. Yes, I dated in high school; I dated women in college before I finally stopped entirely. And yes, I also have had sex with women, back then–but never really enjoyed it much.

In all honesty, I still don’t understand masculinity, at least not as it was defined in my earlier decades of life. I’ve never understood the cavemen-like mentality of responding with violence (no matter how angry I get, I never get violent); I’ve never understood the refusal to recognize that women are human beings rather than life support systems for vaginas and wombs and breasts; I’ve never understood the mentality that a man’s desires should trump (see what I did there?) bodily autonomy for women. No man has a right to a woman’s body, nor does any man have a right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. Maybe always being an outsider looking in and observing has something to do with my mindset, maybe my difference and always having mostly female friends most of my life is what shaped me into understanding these things.

I also mostly only read women’s books, to be honest. There are some straight male writers I read and admire (Ace Atkins, Bill Loefhelm, Michael Koryta, Harlan Coben, Chris Holm, Stephen King, Jeff Abbott and Paul Tremblay, just to name a few) but I really have no desire to read straight male fantasies that reduce women to caricatures and gay men, if they do appear, as stereotypes; but after I recently read I the Jury by Mickey Spillane, a comment someone left on my post gave me a whole new perspective on how to read such books from the 40’s 50’s, and 60’s; the perspective of reading these books as examples of post-war PTSD…and that opened my eyes to all kinds of questions and potential critical analyses; that the horrors of World War II and what the veterans saw and experienced shaped the development of the culture of toxic masculinity that arose after the war (not that toxic masculinity didn’t exist before the war, of course, but the war experience certainly didn’t help any and it most definitely reshaped what “being a man” meant). I was thinking about doing a lengthier critical piece, on I the Jury, along with the first Travis McGee novel, and possibly including Ross Macdonald, Richard Stark and possibly Alistair MacLean. There’s certainly a wealth of material there to take a look at, evaluate, and deconstruct–and that’s not even getting into Ian Fleming and James Bond.

I’ve also always found it rather interesting that Mickey Spillane was Ayn Rand’s favorite writer. Make of that what you will.And on that note, I am off to bed. The last two days have been long ones, and tomorrow and Sunday will also be long days. I’m planning on driving back to New Orleans on Sunday–timing it so I get back after the parades are over so I can actually get home–regardless of what happens here. It’s not been an easy time here, and I am very tired.

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Shattered

Thursday morning, and I am about to head over to the West Bank to have my car serviced before I head to Kentucky.

Kentucky? Why are you driving to Kentucky when parades start tomorrow, Gregalicious?

I curate my life here on social media/blogs etc. I don’t talk about friends or family on here or my day job very often. I try not to be offensive, and I try to protect the privacy of my friends, family, and co-workers. Most of them never signed up for this (my writer friends did, kind of, but nevertheless I don’t talk about their personal lives or our friendships on here) and as a general rule, I try to keep my entries non-personal; I don’t write about Paul (he has specifically asked to be left off my social media other than in passing) or what’s going on with him or us on here. But while I generally like to protect everyone’s privacy–and I usually don’t like bleeding in public–I feel like I kind of have to mention this, even if it’s a violation of my family’s privacy.

My mother has been in poor health since Christmas of 2019, when she had a stroke. We almost lost her that time, and since then, she’s had several procedures and been to lots of doctors and had all kinds of things done; it’s hard to keep track because there has been so much. At one point–it’s hard to keep track–she was having chemotherapy because they’d found cancer; she also was suffering because one of her vertebrae had shattered, and eventually had to have surgery to have bone chips removed. The cancer was along her spine, and I think the shattered vertebrae had something to do with the cancer, but it’s hard to remember and hard to keep track, as it has been relatively relentless ever since, one thing after another. I’ve been watching her decline for the past few years, which has been difficult. For the rest of the family it’s been so gradual as to not be noticeable; for me, not seeing her all the day, it was always a shock to see how much she had changed since the last time I’d seen her, and I also knew, each visit, that this might be the last time I saw her.

So, I am heading up there today, with plans to drive back to New Orleans on Sunday. The situation may change, of course; I may not get there in time. I had debated, after getting the text from my sister, about waiting still longer, but as more time passed yesterday I finally realized that if she goes while you’re on the road, that’s one thing–but I think not getting there in time would be easier to live with if I had tried. So, I talked with my supervisor and left the office early yesterday. I came home to straighten up the house and do laundry and other mindless chores while I decided what to take with me and what audiobooks to listen to in the car (I’m going to finish The Lying Game on the way up there, and will listen to Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You on the way back). Scooter, being an empath like all cats, knew something was wrong and kept insisting that I sit down so he could lay in my lap, sleeping and purring to make me feel better. It comes and goes; that’s the thing with grief–you never know when it’s going to sucker punch you again when you aren’t expecting it–and maybe the way I deal with it isn’t the most healthy. I prefer to grieve by myself, quietly; I don’t want sympathy and I don’t want pity and I don’t want everyone to comfort me because all that does is make me sadder and cry more. Talking about it is when I start choking up and getting teary-eyed; so I’d rather not talk about it. I like to process things alone, work it all out for myself. This is one of the reasons I despise funerals and avoid them as much as I can; putting your grief on display like that has always made me nervous and uncomfortable. I’ve never been good with attention–as I kept saying this past weekend in Alabama, “Praise makes me uncomfortable”–that also holds true for this kind of attention as well. We were always raised to be stoic in public–“never bleed in public”–which convinced me that grief is something private. Unfortunately, that has also translated into making me uncomfortable around other people’s grief; I am terrible when someone I care about loses someone they love. I never know what to say or do, and I always feel helpless because my natural instinct is to do whatever I can to make things easier for the people I love–but I can’t take away their grief and pain, so I feel like anything I do or say is futile and useless.

When my final grandparent died right after Hurricane Katrina, I remember heading up to Kentucky (it was Thanksgiving week) and once there, my dad saying to my mother, “Well, I guess we’re the old generation now.” It’s hard not to think about your own mortality when you are losing a parent; especially when you’re already in your sixties when you lose your first parent. (Ironically, I am almost the age my parents were when the last of my grandparents passed.)

And no matter how prepared you are for this (I’ve been steeling myself since December 2019, and it’s always been there in the back of my mind; every time I get a text message I tense up), it’s never an easy thing.

And I have twelve hours in the car to think about it, remember things from the mundane (oh, I’ll never have my mom’s dumplings again) to the painful (Dad is going to be a wreck) and of course, the ever popular what now?

But I know I’d rather tense up and worry when I get a text message than say goodbye.

Not sure when I’ll be back here, Constant Reader. Take care of yourself and give your loved ones a hug for me, okay?

Beast of Burden

Wednesday and only two–count ’em, two–days left before the parades start rolling down St. Charles, so tonight after work I am taking the highway and swinging by Costco on my way home. Yesterday was an okay day in that I never really felt tired or drained, which is always a plus. I did manage to start working on the first stage of the revisions of the manuscript–and I started working on something cool and exciting and new, but must remain a secret for now until I get it all figured out and worked out–and that’s terrific. I am sure going to Costco after work today is going to be a draining experience–but it’s never as bad as just going to a regular grocery store or Walmart, frankly. I also have to clean up around the kitchen this morning because I am doing a ZOOM thing for the MWA-Midwest chapter tomorrow night. I also have to go in Friday morning for a staff meeting (yay) but that’s fine; I can run to the grocery store for last minute things and pick up the mail afterwards so we’re good through Monday.

Because the grocery store won’t be a zoo the first Friday morning of parades, either.

I’m a bit groggy this morning. I slept pretty much through the entire night, other than when Scooter began howling for food early in the morning. He’s such a sweetheart, though. I went to bed last night before Paul got home and fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up when Paul got home and Scooter was curled up, nestled inside my right arm with his head right next to mine. You have to love a cat that’s just a big ole cuddlebug.

While I waited for Paul last night–I am still in the final stages of the malaise, alas; my creativity at a very low ebb at the moment–I started going through the manuscript, this time getting character names and seeing which characters actually had their names changed from one thing to another over the course of the manuscript (which happens when you don’t have a character key, which I know and don’t know why I didn’t keep up with mine as the manuscript progressed…especially when you have a fashion show with how many drag queens walking the runway? But the manuscript, even with the slight glances I was giving to it as I went through pulling out character names, didn’t seem nearly as messy and sloppy as I remember it being while I was writing it–which can be either my faulty memory or my usual self-loathing of any and every thing I write. The latter is always possible, but so is the former. At some point I should probably address my failing memory on here…but not today; I shall save that for some morning when I am not awake before sunrise and can focus properly on writing about my aging mind.

I was too tired to read as well last night; I am hoping to break that tonight when I get home. I am in the midst of two really fun and well written crime novels–Abby Collette’s Body and Soul Food and Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game–and so maybe every night when Paul’s not home I should take a book to bed with me? I don’t know how that might work, to be honest; usually I am so groggy by the time I climb the stairs I’m not sure how much reading I could do–let alone retain–late in the evening. I was pretty worn out by the time I finished watching Airplane! on HBO MAX (I got tired of scrolling through Youtube videos to watch so decided to rewatch one of my favorite comedies of all time–which has some eyebrow raising moments, but still holds up for the most part) and maybe that’s what I should start doing on the evenings when Paul works late–watch an old movie, maybe even a rewatch of a particular favorite, like Rogue One or something I’ve not seen in years, like Double Indemnity.

But today’s goal is to finish the character list and start the outline, so I can see what corrections needs to be made, what sections might need moving, and where I need to add more. I am feeling more awake now–coffee always helps, but my legs feel like they’re still not completely awake yet, which is a weird feeling that I am not describing properly to get across. It’s not like they’re asleep and tingling, or even exhausted or fatigued or anything like that–they just feel like they’re not awake, which isn’t getting the way it feels across, is it? Ah, well, it doesn’t matter because they don’t feel like they’re still sleeping in the bed, anyway.

And I still haven’t gotten an Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide 2023 yet, either.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

Miss You

Tuesday morning and back into the office with me. I am awake before the sun rises yet again, and will be back in the office again for the first time since Thursday. It feels like it’s been somewhat longer than that, somehow, but the vagaries of time and how it passes seems to be ever-changing the older I get. I slept pretty well–could have slept longer quite happily–but am hoping I’ll fully awaken my brain with a strong assist from my coffee this morning.

I was tired yesterday–not the exhaustive kind, but the drained kind; public performance always drains me and wears me out. It’s why I could never be a performer of any kind who would need to perform every night. I’m sure you get used to it, but even when I was younger public appearances always drained me and left me feeling very low energy. It probably also has to do with driving over ten hours over the course of forty-eight, too, but yesterday was a real low energy day where I just couldn’t seem to get started. I did manage to get some things done. I picked up the prescription and made groceries, picked up the mail and went by the bank. I came home, wrote some panel descriptions for Paul, and did some cleaning and organizing.–and felt grateful to get that much done by the time I went to bed last night. I also watched a rather bad documentary series called The Price of Glee–about the tragedies surrounding the show. (Glee was important in many ways, but whoa boy, it has not aged well.)

Today I must pay some bills and make an updated to-do list. I keep forgetting things that I should be doing, and trying to plan my week (parades start Friday, so finesse needs to begin to become more involved in the planning processes here. I also need to be checking my calendar to make sure I am not forgetting things I’ve agreed to do–which has become a problem. I need to make a Costco run sometime this week after work as well–probably tomorrow or Wednesday would be best–and I need to get the editing process on my two manuscripts started as well as work on a short story I’ve promised. (I am going to look at some other stories I have on hand that might work just as well, as I am struggling with the one I thought would be perfect initially.)

I also was unable to resist writing the opening sentences of the 70s book I was talking about the other day, because they’ve been dancing around in my head tormenting me for quite some time now; plus it’s about time I create a file of some sort for the idea in the first place. So I guess I did do something writing-wise when it comes to productivity; even if it was nothing that should have been written or any time spent on at all. Ah, well, welcome to the wonderful world of creative ADHD. But I think the malaise combined with the hangover from the public appearances of extroversion and traveling over the weekend created a 1-2 punch that made truly doing anything other than recharging my batteries a major accomplishment, so I am going to simply go ahead and rest on my laurels, proud that something got done. (I straightened out the corner in the living room, so it doesn’t look quite as cluttered and hoarder-ish as it has for the last few years or so.) I’m going to also continue pruning the books with extreme prejudice. I need to finish the Ware and the Collette, which hopefully will not be difficult to do or to find time to do this week as I rush around madly trying to accomplish things before the parades begin. I think the weather might be nice this weekend, too–which would be lovely to take some time and go out to the corner, catch some beads while enjoying being outside, and taking lots of pictures. I should have taken a walk today, actually; it was a beautiful day in New Orleans yesterday. I had to switch the heater over to the air conditioner in the apartment this afternoon as it was in the low seventies and sunny–heaven. Today will be the same, getting into the high seventies before dipping into the lows at night. This seems to be what the weather holds for parade season as well; decent and sunny during the day, with it getting far chillier at night, which means hoodies on the parade route most likely.

The coffee is kicking in (huzzah!) as I sit here, but I also have to shave and do all kinds of things before I leave for the office later on. I need to get my daily pill regimen sorted into its daily dosages, I really should shave my face and my head, and of course, I need to take a shower and get dressed like every other morning. I’m still a little dazed, I think, from the weekend, but fortunately that will gradually fade away throughout the course of the day as I wake up further. I got a fresh king cake yesterday (cream cheese filling, of course, because it isn’t sweet enough already), and I also need to get my lunch packed. So, Constant Reader, I am going to head into the spice mines after finishing this. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

Somebody’s Knocking

I love Carol Goodman.

Ever since reading The Sea of Lost Girls several years ago–I think after we met at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg at the Harper Collins party?–I’ve considered her one of our best current novelists in the crime genre. The more of her canon that I read, the more convinced I become (The Lake of Dead Languages, The Night Villa, The Uninvited Guest), and so naturally I was very excited to listen to The Night Visitors on my drive this past weekend. I finished listening somewhere around Satsuma, Alabama (Alabama really has the most interesting town names), and loved every minute of it.

Oren falls asleep at last on the third bus. He’s been fighting it since Newburgh, eyelids heavy as wet laundry, pried up again and again by sheer stubbornness. Finally, I think when he nods off. If I have to answer one more of his questions I might lose it.

Where are we going? he asked on the first bus.

Someplace safe, I answered.

He stared at me, even in the darkened bus his eyes shining with too much smart for his age, and then looked away as if embarrassed for me. An hour later, he’d asked, as if there hadn’t been miles of highway in between, Where’s it safe?

There are places, I’d begun as if telling him a bedtime story, but then I’d had to rack my brain for what came next. All I could picture were candy houses and chicken-legged huts that hid witches. Those weren’t the stories he liked best anyway. He preferred the book of myths from the library (it’s still in his pack, racking up fines with every niles) about heroes who wrestle lions and behead snake-haired monsters.

The Night Visitors has two point of view characters; Alice, an abused mom on the run with her son, Oren, and Mattie, a social worker in a small town in upstate New York. This is an excellent example of differentiation between voice; while the authorial voice never falters and you never doubt you’re reading a Carol Goodman novel, the two voices are clearly that of two very different people. Alice and Oren arrive in the town, where they are greeted by do-gooder Mattie, and then begins the dance of the story. Both women take the other’s measure, and both women are hiding horrific secrets that their close relationship is going to bring out over the course of less than thirty-six hours. Mattie is a social worker who lives in an enormous if crumbling house; that first night–even though it’s against all the rules–Mattie decides to bring Alice and Oren home with her, rather than leaving them at the safe house, Sanctuary. And that’s when the strange things begin to happen.

Thirty four years ago, Mattie’s entire family–early onset Alzheimer’s mother; hanging judge father; change of life baby brother Caleb–all died from carbon monoxide poisoning from their faulty furnace. Mattie found their bodies, and her life–already severely off-course and altered–runs aground against the rocks. She has thrown herself into her work–even though she sometimes thinks her social work training is bunk (which I, as a counselor, sometimes think myself in weary frustration; it’s easy to see how social workers burn out from their jobs)–and has never completely gotten over the loss of her little brother. She sees a lot of her lost brother in young Oren–which alarms and worries both women. Alice is also being chased by her abuser, and everything–the past, the present, the futures–all come crashing together one night during a blizzard and power failure at the crumbling house, as all the secrets from the past slowly start coming out, with both women forced to face not only their own truths but the other woman’s as well, as they fight for their lives in a blizzard in the dark against a killer who wants them both gone.

The book is simply extraordinary. The suspense and tension once the power goes out is almost unbearable and are impossible to turn away from; it was incredibly difficult waiting two days to finish listening to it, and it was hard to get out of the car yesterday at the Civic Center in Wetumpka and stop listening. I highly recommend it, as I do anything by Carol Goodman.