Last Christmas

I was bored briefly yesterday between clients (it’s rarely more than five to ten minutes, and at the time I didn’t feel like answering emails or even looking at social media–after all, I am already taking medication for my blood pressure) so I thought, maybe you should look up the books you read and wrote about here to make a Best Reads of the Year list, but as I started going through the blog I remembered that I only write about the books I feel very strongly about, which would mean trying to narrow the ones I loved down to ten, and I don’t really want to do that. I may just do a list of the books I reviewed here…there were so many damned good ones that I read all year, and of course there were a lot of rereads over the year as well. I also watched a lot of television and film this past year, and almost everything was terrific–we stop watching if we aren’t enjoying it very much–so again, choosing favorites or a top ten list would be incredibly difficult and mentally taxing. But I have no problem saying that the television program I watched that I enjoyed the most was Heartstopper. It was just so charming and pure, precisely the sort of thing I would normally turn my nose up at and dismiss as old-fashioned or overly sentimental, but it took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t expecting the sweetness or the charm, and of course the incredibly charismatic, age-appropriate cast had a lot to do with that, too–although I then read the graphic novels and loved them just as much.

I actually feel good this morning, oddly enough. I slept deeply and well, waking only once, and I was able to go back to the Dreaming (Neil Gaiman/The Sandman reference). My arm is much better, though sometimes it still feels like I have a Charley horse in the biceps. It got colder overnight as well, so that probably helped me sleep somewhat. It feels chilly in the apartment this morning: a quick glance at the weather shows that it’s in the mid-fifties, which feels about right. I have a lot to do this weekend, and of course, forty-eight hours isn’t enough time. But the book is going very well, if not quickly enough, and a strong push this weekend should stand me in good stead. Cleaning up the mess that the first ten chapters is taking me a while, no lie, but it’s getting better and I am starting to have fun with it again. Which is always nice.

It’s been quite a week, and I have to say, December has been a bit of a trying month so far. Keeping all the plates spinning is much harder and I am barely making it to some right as they are about to fall off. I’ve been battling exhaustion a lot lately. I’m not sure if it’s the sleep issues I’ve been having for the last ten years, but it seems to be more of a problem these last few years, which could simply be age-related. I know my body has changed a lot in the last few years–blood sugar drops, for example, were never anything I ever had to worry about before, but it makes a significant difference now. Which tends to happen quite a bit, too–because if I don’t eat when I get hungry, the hunger will eventually go away and I’ll end up not eating at all–which results in a drop in my blood sugar. The fact that it’s noticeable is concerning–another thing to ask my doctor about next month, I need to make a list–so who knows? I hate our health care system. Health care should never be a for-profit enterprise, because that puts profit ahead of patients, and the fact that there is anyone who can’t see that “profit before patients” is immoral really concerns me about the future. But I also have faith in today’s young people. They’re bright, inclusive, and want a better world for everyone. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it?

But it’s been a good year, overall. I just wish I’d been able to enjoy it a bit more. And on that note, here I come for the spice mines. Have a great Friday, everyone.

All I Want for Christmas Is You

Well, yesterday was a bit dramatic.

As I believe I mentioned, we were in a severe weather alert for most of the day, with everyone in the meteorology game saying conditions would seriously deteriorate in the mid-to-late afternoon. We started getting emails from upper management and operations in the mid-morning letting us know they were monitoring the weather as the afternoon drew nearer. (I had not really been aware of the bad storms that had passed by the north of us the day before, either.) The decision was made around three to close the building and send everyone home for their safety. I texted Paul to make sure he left his office (fortunately, he was working at home) and hurried home myself. It started raining by the time I got home, and settled in. Maybe about an hour or so later the warning alert on my phone went off, so I quickly tuned into the local meteorology maven Margaret Orr on WDSU (I love her, it’s going to be such a loss when she finally retires) as the storm was drawing nearer and it looked like it was going to form a tornado on the West Bank, just like that horrible storm back in March that also produced one. The maps they use on television aren’t the greatest, especially when they are pulled back as far, so it looked like my neighborhood was in the direct path for awhile. That was a bit nerve-wracking, especially as they were also giving times of arrival–“this storm will be in the lower Garden District in five minutes”–so we just braced ourselves and waited. But fortunately for us (but not for others) this storm followed almost the exact same path as the one in March–following the river and jumping across at Arabi and the lower 9th ward. But we did have some major rain and wind rattling the house. Fortunately, I had Scooter sleeping in my lap, which is always calming, and then it was past and over.

The Entergy power map seems to indicate the office has power, so operations will resume today, one would assume.

It’a also colder today–right now it’s in the fifties–which could account for me not wanting to get up this morning; it’s always so comfortable and comforting when you’re under a pile of blankets when it’s chilly. I feel like I slept through the night for the most part. I think I woke up once? But I feel more rested this morning than I have all week, which is a good thing. This is my last day in the office this week, with tomorrow being a work-at-home day. I made it through another week, but man, time is flying. I spent most of the evening reading parts of When Women Ruled the World on my Kindle or randomly opening The Prime Time Closet to read bits and pieces. When Women Ruled the World is about the sixteenth century; a period I’ve mentioned before because more women held power that century than any century before or since, and I’ve always wanted to write about those women in a book called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, taking its title from John Knox’ horrifically misogynistic text; but whereas I would want to merely overview the women who have been written about extensively already (Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, etc.) while paying more attention to the ones not as famous (infamous?) in today’s popular culture, like Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary, Marie de Guise, Catherine de Medici, Queen Margot, etc. (It was also the same century that produced Elizabeth Bathory…) I should have read more of Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side, but after the adrenaline rush and emotional distress about being in the potential path of a tornado, my mind was too fried to focus on fiction. I did work on the book some, but my mind was just not in the right place for that sort of work. Hopefully, tonight and tomorrow progress will be made and I can get this under control.

And of course, Christmas is next weekend. Next weekend? Yikes!

Something awful happened to me yesterday on social media that I am still processing, so I am not really quite ready to talk about it here. It ties into a blog entry I’ve been toying with for quite some time now; but it’s not really something I can write when I am waking up and swilling coffee; it’s too personal and too complex to trust to a tired brain that isn’t as awake as it should be to tackle such a subject. I mean, it’s bad enough when you see people you know being openly homophobic or transphobic on social media, it’s even worse when it’s directed specifically at you. By someone you’ve known for years, and maybe didn’t quite consider a friend, but was definitely an acquaintance with whom you were friendly. Well, that ship has sailed–and it’s really interesting to me to see how many people who claim to be allies draw the line when it comes to my transgender siblings. But make no mistake about it: you come for the T you’re coming for me as well. When the right wing comes for the trans community and/or drag queens (which are often not the same thing), make no mistake about it, they are coming for all of us. Just as they used to vilify gay men and lesbians until most decent human beings saw how repugnant it was, they think drag queens and transpeople are an easier way to get to legalize the discrimination against all of us that they want. The language they are using is the same as the ones Anita Bryant used in the 1970’s, and the bigots who have come along in her wake have picked up the banner and use the same coded language she did. “Protect the children!” has always been their battlecry, but who are they to decide how parents should raise their children? What children should be exposed to? Your complaints about “the children” stop at your own. You do not have the right to tell other parents how to raise their children or what they can or cannot be exposed to; and the entire concept of “exposing young children to drag queens is sexualizing them!” is complete fucking bullshit on its face–and you fucking straight people have nerve saying that to queer people while keeping your fucking mouths about toddler beauty pageants. Where are the fucking Proud Boys with their AK-47’s at those events, where they paints the faces of children and dress them provocatively to the point most of them look like incredibly cheap streetwalkers? And don’t you fucking dare ever tell me that Drag Queen Story Hours are inappropriate for children because basically you are fucking saying no queer people should be around children.

Go straight to fucking hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

And don’t you ever dare speak to me again.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

Supermodel (You Better Work, Bitch)

I think the thing I love the most about the cover of A Streetcar Named Murder is that the cat looking back over his shoulder with the bitch please look on his face was modeled on Scooter.

I’ve been putting my cat into books for a while now. Our Skittle was Paige’s cat, and I know I gave Taylor a cat in the Scotty books, but I don’t remember if it was Skittle or Scooter (and I need to find that out).

I never thought of myself as a cat person, to be honest. I think this was primarily because I never spent time with cats when I was a kid; I had a dog growing up and most people I knew also had dogs. If they had cats, well, the cats were aloof and uninterested for the most part, but every once in a while I’d be at a friend’s place who had a cat and their cat just fell in love with me for some reason–I’ve always attracted people’s pets, which is cool because by and large I do love animals–but it never occurred to me to get a cat. Paul also had dogs growing up, so he always kind of wanted us to get a dog. Much as I love dogs and much as they love me, though, I don’t have the time or the patience to have one, so I always nixed the idea of a pet. But that first winter we lived in the carriage house we had a mouse–and of course wanted to be rid of it. “It’s an old house in an old neighborhood,” our neighbors and landlady advised, “and the best way to get rid of a mouse is to get a cat.”

A cat?

But the mouse was freaking out Paul–I wasn’t thrilled to have one, but could manage a cold-war of tolerance with one if need be–and so we decided to go ahead and get a cat. It was Christmas Eve, I remember that, and we headed down to the SPCA in the Bywater. We looked at one, who seemed interesting–orange and big–but when the girl opened his cage he hissed at us all and clawed her hand. (I know now that he was probably terrified, hence the reaction, but what did I know about cats? All I saw was a mean one, and if it would claw the hand of a caretaker, I didn’t know how well he’d adapt to our house and our lives…) But there was a kitten in a nearby cage who kept sticking his paws out and chirping at Paul to get his attention, and once Paul started paying attention to him, he was purring and rubbing against the bars trying to get to us. The girl took him out of the cage and he started purring even louder. He was purring so loudly they couldn’t hear his heartbeat. We decided to take him, named him Nicky, paid the small fee and brought him home. I walked over to Walgreens to buy litter, food, a litter box, and a carrier, and thus we had our first cat. We never called him Nicky–the only person who ever did was our landlady–but he was amazing. Very loving, but at the same time a good hunter who could jump really high to take a bug out of the air, and of course he was beautiful, just beautiful. During the evacuation for Katrina Paul and the cat stayed at his mom’s–and his mom was the one who started calling him Skittle, because he “skittered around playing chasing things.) We had Skittle for almost seven years when he got the cancer, and it spread very quickly. The day we had to put him to rest was one of the hardest days of our lives–Paul was so depressed he barely got out of bed the entire weekend–and the apartment felt empty and lonely without our cat. The illness and the decision had been so hard on both of us to make that I kind of didn’t want to get another pet because I never wanted to go through that pain again, and Paul felt the same.

We lasted less than a week.

I went to the Cat Practice to pick up Skittle’s ashes on a Thursday after work. While I was waiting–I always have to wait whenever I am there–I always go around and look at the cats they have looking for forever homes (while I always hate having to leave without bringing them all home, it’s also kind of sad if there aren’t any there). In a cage behind the front desk was an orange boy, and according to the label on his cage his name was Texas and he was two years old. I walked over, and he was so friendly and loving–purring and rubbing against my hand–that I seriously thought I should bring you home with me, sweet boy,

That evening, we were watching something on television that wasn’t terribly involving–I was scrolling through the iPad and Paul dozed off on the couch. Suddenly Paul sat up with a gasp and said,”Oh my God!” and insisted he’d woken up and seen a mouse sitting on the lip of our garbage can. I saw nothing–and I’d looked over when Paul sat up, but not specifically at the can, so I could have missed it–but I also didn’t hear anything. (I will also confess to not hearing well–I’ve always been hard of hearing, and now that I am getting older it’s getting worse, so me not hearing anything isn’t as conclusive as it might be coming from someone else.) I just assumed he dreamed it, but he was insistent, and equally insistent we had to get another cat. I mentioned seeing Texas that afternoon, suggested Paul go see him in the morning on his way to work, and if he wanted him, to go ahead and get him, and I would swing by to pick him up after I got off work.

Needless to say, not only did I go pick him up after work, Paul went with me. We got him home, he immediately hid under the coffee table, so we decided to let him acclimate. It literally took about fifteen minutes before he came out from under the table, climbed up onto Paul’s chest and started purring. His coat was a little rough, but within two days he was soft as silk. Paul loves nothing more than to cuddle with the cat–Skittle tolerated it for a while before escaping–and we picked the absolute right cat: Scooter loves to cuddle and wants nothing more than a warm lap or body to curl up and sleep on. He will literally come and howl at me while I am working on my computer because he wants me to morph into a cat bed in my chair.

So, of course I gave Valerie a cat, named it Scooter, and made him a sweet orange boy, like ours. When they were designing the cover, I did tell them the cat was actually MY cat, and they asked me for a photo to give to the artist!

I am delighted that Scooter will live forever on the cover of my book.

He’s a sweet boy.

Santa Tell Me

It’s always amused me that Santa is an anagram for Satan.

They may even be the only anagrams possible for each word, too.

We’re in a severe weather alert, but mostly the fear is flooding and torrential rain–the massive area under tornado watch is north of here–and it’s dark outside this morning as I sip my coffee and write this. My sleep was spotty again last night–waking up occasionally before falling back asleep again–but I do feel rested, and that’s the most important thing. Progress was made on the book yesterday, which is terrific and ever-so-pleasing to me. I did my errands yesterday after work without issue, but of course once I was home and had worked on the book for awhile, was terribly tired. I cannot allow that to happen when I get home this evening, as there are dishes to be put away and another load to be put into the washer. I’d like to spend some more time with A Walk on the Wild Side this evening as well; I need to finish it if I want to read the new Donna Andrews on Christmas day.

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is next weekend already. It doesn’t seem like it, but what would be really lovely–if it’s not a downpour when I get home from work tonight–would be to take a walk around the neighborhood and through the Garden District documenting decorations. I should make a point of this every year during Christmas and Carnival, frankly. I’ve never seen a city before that loved to decorate as much as New Orleans does–or does it even remotely as well.

But the coffee is good this morning and it’s getting light outside–grayish, really–and hopefully I won’t get rained on while driving to work. (Note to self: if it isn’t raining, bring umbrella inside from the car in case it’s raining when I leave.) I think we’re going to buy our new refrigerator this weekend, which is good since the one we currently have is absolutely on its last legs. I wanted to gt one with the freezer on the bottom, but for some reason those are a lot more expensive–by an absurd amount. So, it looks like we’ll probably get the normal kind with the freezer on the top–or maybe we can spring for a bit more and get one with side by side doors, which would be almost as effective (it’s the bending down that’s starting to get to me), but we’ll see. I think we’re just going to go to Costco and see what they have.

Yesterday a friend posted a list of all the things she accomplished in 2022–which she compiled after feeling like she really hadn’t done much during the year, and was pleasantly surprised to see how much she had, in fact, managed to do. I was thinking about this myself the other night–not that I hadn’t done much throughout the year, but rather that I’d had a rather bad year, but once I sat down and started thinking about it, it’s actually been a good year for me; actually a very good year indeed when all is said and done. Oddly enough, when I sit and look back emotionally, without going into much more depth, it was a year in which my primary memories are tired and miserable. And yet…productivity wise it may not have been my strongest year, but it was still a good year. Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for two Anthony Awards at Bouchercon this year; it’s not the first time one person was nominated multiple times in the same year (hell, S. A. Cosby was nominated for three awards, and I think Tracy Clark was also up for two this year alone) but it’s a select group to be sure and one to which I am proud to belong. I have no way of verifying it either, but I am pretty certain it was the first time the same book was nominated in two different categories. Those were also my third and fourth Anthony nominations, which I think may also make me the most nominated queer author? It’s hard to say because they don’t have full lists of the finalists from every year anywhere, so you can’t really look it up and verify anything, so I hate to make claims that may not be true. But I think they’re true, and even if they aren’t, I am certainly one of the most nominated queer authors. The positive reception Bury Me in Shadows got on its release continued into the early part of this year as well, just as #shedeservedit came out. That one didn’t get near the attention as its predecessor, but it’s a book I am really proud of and am happy to have not only finished but published. I also finished writing A Streetcar Named Murder earlier this year, and I couldn’t be more pleased with its reception, either. I worked on other things throughout the year–short stories, some novellas, and two other novels (Chlorine and Muscles, to be precise)–and while I didn’t get a lot of stories out there and sold this year, I did sell a couple of which I am proud–one I can’t mention as it isn’t public yet, and the other being “Solace in a Dying Hour,” which I sold to an Austalian anthology and it’s a pretty damned good story. I also sold “The Rosary of Broken Promises” to an Anne Rice tribute anthology, and I still have one out on submission. “This Thing of Darkness” was in Cupid Shot Me, an anthology that was released on Valentine’s Day last year–so yeah, that’s at least four stories, and there’s another anthology that’s supposed to come out sometime this month which has my story “A Whisper from the Graveyard” in it.

I also edited the Bouchercon anthology, which took up a lot of my time between January and June. Land of 10000 Thrills is a great anthology, with some absolutely amazing contributors and great stories, and the contributors themselves were not only amazing talents but delights to work with. The anthology caused me a lot more stress than editing an anthology used to–primarily because there were so many demands on my time this past year, which I think is part of the reason I felt miserable for most of the year; my massive to-do list never seemed to get finished and always seemed to keep growing. It satisfies my OCD and need for completion to finish to-do lists, and it also subconsciously makes me think I’ve accomplished things. When tasks don’t get done because I simply don’t have the time or the energy to get to them, that makes me feel like I am failing. I also have to adjust my expectations downward, because I am older and don’t have the energy I used to have–and I really don’t want or need to start taking any kind of stimulant. I probably should cut back on the coffee, frankly.

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

It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas

The insomnia came back last night for some reason, but I don’t feel exhausted this morning or tired, just like I could have gladly stayed in bed for another week or so. But it is what it is. Yesterday was a pretty good day, all around. I managed to get some more work done on the book again, and was able to do some relaxing last evening. I was tired by the time I had done a load of dishes, so I simply repaired to my easy chair for the evening, doom scrolling on social media with my iPad or reading some history of queer rep on television in The Prime Time Closet, which I think I’ve already read before, years ago–but it’s interesting to look at how we’ve been portrayed on television over the years, especially when televisions stations or religious bigots protested our inclusion.

It really is amazing how much progress we’ve made during my lifetime, even if we are still under constant attack from bigots.

I doubt homophobia and its evil twin transphobia will go away before I die, alas.

I hate being so busy and single-minded during Christmas, which makes it kind of hard to enjoy the holidays. Paul and I have decided to get a new refrigerator as a gift to ourselves–ours is on its last legs. I kind of want one with the freezer on the bottom, since bending down is getting to be an issue for me, but they are ridiculously expensive; even the ones that have side-by-side freezer/refrigerator compartments. But it will be nice to have one that works properly and seals properly when you shut the door, so I am going to take that as a win. The most important thing is having one that works, not getting the specific kind that I want. (I’d love to have one like my mom’s, but Jesus, those are expensive.)

I’m not going to have the time to do cards this year, either, which is unfortunate. Well, maybe. I don’t know. We’re going to Costco this weekend, so maybe I can get some cards there and take care of them over the weekend (again, no college football; I need to do a lot of writing this weekend). Hopefully I can get a lot done this weekend. It’s amazing what a difference no college football on Saturdays can make to my time availability. Anyway, I hope that I’ll be able to find some time to take, at the very least, a walk around my neighborhood to take pictures of the decorations for everyone to enjoy; New Orleans really does Christmas right. One of the reasons I set Royal Street Reveillon during the holidays was precisely because I wanted to write about Christmas in New Orleans–it may not be white, but it’s definitely Christmas down here once Thanksgiving has passed. The weather has remained oddly all right–lows in the 60’s, which is why I think my sinuses have been so out of control lately; the damp and mist and fog wreak havoc on them. I am also not sure what we’re going to do for Christmas day itself. I may drive out to Metairie to get a pizza from That’s Amore (the best deep dish pizza in the New Orleans metropolitan area); I don’t know. I could also order a turkey dinner from either the Fresh Market or Rouses, too. Decisions, decisions.

Apparently, we’re in a severe weather alert with the possibility of flooding through tomorrow night. That should make running my errands after work today rather interesting, don’t you think? New Orleans weather is so much a part of the city that not writing about the weather would be absurd. (That Elmore Leonard advice about not writing the weather, or opening with the weather? I break it all the time. Sorry, Mr. Leonard, but you cannot write about New Orleans and not write about the weather because it impacts everything here.) Imagine writing about New Orleans and not mentioning the heat and humidity, or talking about the torrential, street flooding thunderstorms that make you think you live in a tropical rain forest? Ah, well, I can just pay attention to the weather and in a worst case scenario, can run the errands tomorrow. I just have to mail something as well as pick up the mail, so there’s really not much of a rush for either, frankly. I am not expecting anything in the mail and Paul hasn’t said anything about any packages coming for him, so if it’s nasty today, I can skip it. I also have to wonder how the weather will affect the no-show rate with my clients. AH, well, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of work to do if we do have a high no-show rate today.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Tuesday be happy and joyous and fabulous, Constant Reader.

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Monday morning and back to the office with me! It was a pretty good weekend, overall; I got some work done on the book, made groceries, did all kinds of chores, finished reading my Wanda Morris book and started reading another, and somehow managed to get some rest around all of that as well. I was very pleased with the work I did on the book, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even somehow manage to get it turned in by the extended deadline. #madness

And now it’s Monday morning, and I am up earlier than I need to be. I really need to focus, as a lot of things have been slipping lately as I focus on the book and getting it finished, and there’s been a kind of malaise–the feeling that usually comes along when I’ve actually finished a book, and has never before come while I was writing one. These last few years haven’t been easy for writing, to be honest, and yet–I’ve also produced some of my best work somehow during this time. I think Bury Me in Shadows is one of my best works, and while I don’t think it’s as good, #shedeservedit was also one I was terribly pleased with. And all I’ve seen anywhere for A Streetcar Named Murder has been highly positive. Land of 10000 Thrills was also one of the better anthologies I’ve done, and some of the short stories I’ve been doing during these last few years have also been really good. I also think that some of the stuff I have in progress–“Never Kiss a Stranger,” “Festival of the Redeemer,” Chlorine, Muscles, etc.–are also really good stuff. Some of the work I did this weekend is pretty damned good. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this confident in my writing before in my entire life, to be honest, but as long as I keep confidence from bleeding over into ego, I should be okay.

We watched all four episodes of Three Pines last night, and i think it’s very well done. Alfred Molina is perfect as Inspector Gamache, and while I must confess to only have read the first Louise Penny novel, Still Life, I was very impressed with it and liked it a lot (not sure why I’ve not gone back and read more of them; I do have the first three or four, but it probably has more to do with time and the massive TBR pile than anything else). I thought the show didn’t have the same feel as the books, in some ways, but it’s also a different medium and there are always changes. When I was reading the book (and again, only the first in the series so I am hardly an expert on Penny’s writing or her series) I like the town, and enjoyed my visit there. It was a nice, quirky, small town–but translating that to the screen is an entirely different ball of wax. I think the producers and writers decided that because the show is about murder, it needed to be a little darker, and Three Pines comes across as a small town full of eccentrics in the show, more like Twin Peaks, Picket Fences, and Northern Exposure than Penny’s creation….but I think it was a smart direction to go with the show. Penny’s strength is offsetting the charm of the town against the darkness of the crimes committed there, and I don’t know how well Penny’s vision could have translated to the screen any better. We both really liked it. We also watched a true crime documentary about Charlie Cullen, the killer nurse–which was creepy as fuck.

I’m hoping against hope that this good feeling will last all week. I’m going to have to stop and make groceries on the way home from the office–heavy sigh–but no need to swing around uptown for the mail until tomorrow. I have to remember to buy a shipping envelope to mail a copy of Streetcar to the winner of the drawing from Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen–I should add that to my to-do list…which I need to make a new copy of it. The problem is I don’t remember everything I am supposed to be doing, and I need to get back into the habit of making a new list every weekend so things don’t get lost.

I also spent some more time with Nelson Algren’s (I was spelling it wrong in the last blog) bleak A Walk on the Wild Side, which I am enjoying but isn’t precisely a quick read by any chance. It reminds vaguely of another novel set in the same time period, A Garden of Sand by Earl Thompson, which I’ve started any number of times but have never managed to get very far into because it is also not an easy read. I am going to try to devote an hour to reading every night–an hour a day is far better than what I’ve been doing, which hasn’t been helping to budge the TBR pile at all–and I think tonight we are going to finally start watching Wednesday. I’ve been reluctant to jump into it, despite the great reviews, because the Christina Ricci version from the 90’s films was, at least for me, definitive. But we keep hearing good things about the show as well as Jenna Ortega’s performance in the lead, so I think tonight will be the night we take the plunge.

It rained all day yesterday–it was even raining when I went to pick up the groceries–and it seems a bit gray outside this morning as well. I have a lot of emails to write and a lot of emails to answer and all kinds of stuff to do today–one of the reasons I got up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning–so I am trying to be proactive and not laze in bed the way I usually do on the mornings when I don’t have to get up at six. I am getting used to getting up early for the first time ever in my life, and quite frankly, I don’t like it. But I also don’t see the clinic hours being changed any time soon, either; I fear my afternoon/early evening shifts are a thing of the remote past now.

And on that note, I have quite a bit to do today, so it’s perhaps best that I make another cup of coffee, some toast, and dive right in. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Ah, yes, time for hot men in Christmas clothing. I usually wait and just do the twelve days of Christmas thematically here, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to figure that out. And why not do an extra couple of days of holiday cheer? We could always use more cheer and happiness and joy in this sometimes grim and grotesque world and life. Today is going to be dedicated to three things: more work on my book, picking up the groceries I ordered, and making potato-leek soup. I’m also going to spend some time this morning reading. I finished Wanda Morris’ marvelous Anywhere You Run yesterday, and started Nelson Ahlgren’s A Walk on the Wild Side. Someone on Facebook had posted they were going to watch the film (starring Barbara Stanwyck and Jane Fonda) and I, who have never seen it, vaguely remembered it was connected to New Orleans. I did some research and yes, sure enough, it was indeed a novel first; and since it’s about the demimonde here in the 1930’s, I figured it was a necessary read for my understanding of the past of the city and perhaps even a needed read for the canon of New Orleans fiction. No one ever talks about this book in connection with the city, maybe because Ahlgren wasn’t a native? One can never be completely sure, can one? So, I will probably read some of that for about an hour–I like the idea of dedicating one hour every day to reading; maybe that will help me get through the ever-growing TBR pile. I know I wanted to do some Christmas reading–I am saving Donna Andrews’ Dashing Through the Snowbirds for Christmas day as a gift to myself–and I have some Christmas crime short story collections on hand as well, so I could do a story a day–maybe that will be what I do for the Twelve Days? Not a bad idea.

I slept well last night, which was a lovely experience–Scooter cuddled and purred with my for most of the night, which helped me enormously; making us doze off is truly his super-power–and woke up at a decent hour this morning. I think I am going to be able to get a lot more work done on the book than I did yesterday. It’s finally taking shape and I know where I am going with it along the way now, so I have to revise and redo the first half of the book to get it in line with how the final act will play out. I got started on it yesterday, and the story makes a lot more sense now than it did (and that is not me being hard on myself, either; what I had already done wasn’t badly written, it was just disjointed and had a lot of info dumps that have to be put into the story in a more organic way). I pulled up Spotify yesterday and listened to music while I worked on the book–Paul wasn’t home–which was cool. I listened to the Liza Minnelli that was produced by the Pet Shop Boys (it is truly outstanding; give it a listen sometime) and then cycled through some Pet Shop Boys albums as that was clearly the musical theme of the day. Paul will be home today, so I’ll probably just put in my ear buds and listen that way–I’d forgotten what a difference having music on makes to my writing and productivity.

We watched another true crime documentary last night, The Lost Boys of Bucks County, which–similar to the ones we were watching about the Murtaugh family–shows again the difference in how the law treats the wealthy and powerful as opposed to people that are considered unimportant and disposable. “They were just trash to be thrown away,” someone said towards the end of this sad story, in which four young men were pointlessly murdered over the course of three days. I’ve been thinking about–toying with, teasing it around inside my brain for quite some time–writing a suburban serial killer in the 1970’s book, based on the suburb where I lived for five years and the life people lived there, and then grafting a serial killer based on Houston’s Candyman onto the story. I’d been calling it Where the Boys Die for quite some time now, which I don’t think is the right title for this story; Where the Boys Die is a spring-break revenge spree killing story, and I think this one should be The Summer of Lost Boys or something along those lines. I know, I know, I talk about books I want to write all the time and never seem to get around to…but I think 2023 is going to be the year of finishing things that aren’t finished and getting them out of the way. Groan, that’s going to be a lot of work…but the kind of work I love doing, so there’s also that–and yes, I am well aware that I always have to force myself to do things I love. What can I say? I love being lazy and doing nothing the most out of everything.

When I was at home for Thanksgiving, my recently retired brother-in-law asked me what my plans for Retirement were. I know what he was really asking–my family is nothing if not predictable (are you going to move up here to be close to us once you no longer have a job? because it does not compute to any of them on any level that it’s not my job that anchors me in New Orleans. I live here because I choose to live in New Orleans, and I love it here. They can’t imagine making any such decision that would keep them out of the bosom of the family deliberately.)–but I chose to respond with “Well, I can’t wait for it to come. Counting the days” and he replied, “Oh, you’re in for a big surprise–you might want to hold your horses a bit on that.” He meant well, and I know what he meant; he’s been bored since he retired and the adjustment to not having to be somewhere for a set amount of time Monday through Friday hasn’t been easy. It wasn’t easy for my father, either–still isn’t. They, and other men of their generations, were conditioned to work and to identify their selves with their job and the work. That isn’t me. I love my job, don’t get me wrong–it’s the perfect fit for me on every level, and even now the only thing I don’t like about it is we no longer have non-traditional hours. I miss not having to be at the office until eleven most of the week and having my mornings free to get things done before going into the office, and not having to be in bed by ten most nights. The only thing I truly dislike about my job is the forty hours I have to spend working at it–because I would much rather be utilizing that time to write. Will I be bored when I retire? Probably not. I am never bored and can always find something to do. There’s the TBR pile, for example, and I am always writing something anyway. There’s a shit ton of classic films for me to work my way through, and other films and television shows I would love to rewatch and revisit.

And there’s always going to be books to read, errands to run, dishes to wash, clothes to launder, and so on. I’d also probably go to the gym with a higher degree of frequency as well.

So, no, I won’t be bored when I retire from my day job. I’ll probably wind up working even harder once I do retire.

And now I am going to read for an hour, and get back to work on the book. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

What a Shame

One of the great joys of being a voracious reader is discovering a new-to-me talent: a terrific writer capable of creating relatable characters; telling great stories using wonderfully constructed, lyrical prose; and illuminating experiences and lives that are vastly different from my own, using fiction as a method to not only entertain but educate.

Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of reading Wanda M. Morris’ impressible debut, All Her Little Secrets, which I raved about in a blog entry. Of course, that was her book from last year, so I was very excited to get my hands on a copy of this year’s Wanda M. Morris novel, Anywhere You Run, and it does not disappoint in any way other than coming to an end.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Wanda earlier this year at Left Coast Crime, and she is as lovely a person as she is as a writer.

All four men passed around a bottle of Jim Beam as they peeled up State Route 19, giddy with excitement about what they’d do once they hog-tied those coons and got them to a tree. The engine revved as they hit the crest of the road, doing 80 mph. Getting pulled over was the least of their concerns because Olen’s cousin, Sheriff Bickford, was riding shotgun. Bickford had gotten a tip and rounded up the other three to head from Jackson over to Meridian and then north to Neshoba County.

Olen, sitting there in the back seat, threw back a swig and passed the bottle on, assuring the others they were doing God’s work. “The last thing anybody needs is for them to start votin’. Bad enough the goddamn government wants us to let ’em eat in our restaurants and sit beside us on a bus. If the Lord has meant for whites to mix with coloreds, he woulda’ made the coloreds a hell of a lot smarter. Either we stay all white or we die amongst ’em.”

A couple of the other men nodded in silent agreement.

Anywhere You Run is, in some ways, a kind of prequel to All Her Little Secrets, in that it gives us the backstory on some of the characters in the first novel. Set in the turbulent 1960’s, during the Civil Rights struggle in the old Confederate states and the resistance to racial equality from the Southern bigots, this may be one of the first novels I’ve ever read to show that time from the perspective of a woman of color? (There was a woman of color point-of-view character in William Bradford Huie’s The Klansman, but I’d need to revisit that book to make a comparison, but I know the visceral sense of being othered, of knowing there is no justice for you in this world and society, wasn’t as strong in the Huie novel as it is in this one.) I’m not going to go out on a limb and claim that as fact, but it is likely–and being Southern, and seeing the South of the time through this lens (remember, I was alive then, too, but my perspective was greatly different), was sobering. Morris brings the time to life with a vivid, powerful brush that makes it very clear what it was like to be a second-class citizen in a system designed to keep you there.

The story focuses on two sisters from Jackson, Mississippi–Violet and Marigold. Their parents are dead, as is their older sister, Rose; the two sisters are very different and on different paths, but they love each other very deeply and have a strong sisterly bond. Marigold has been working at a Civil Rights office in Jackson while having an affair with a married lawyer, come south for the summer to work on voting rights, and finds herself pregnant. SHe’s been seeing a man she doesn’t love, Roger Bonny, and decides to marry him and move north with him to Cleveland, leaving the Jim Crow South far behind her. Violet also wants out of Jackson and the book opens with her running–but for different reasons and in an entirely different situation. Violet was raped by a white man, and knowing there was no justice possible for a woman of color under these circumstances, kills him. She’s also been dating a white man, Dewey Leonard, who claims to be in love with her–and wants to run away with her and marry her in Boston. Violet doesn’t love Dewey, but she sees him as her ticket out of town. As the two of them flee, they are stopped by a cop once they’ve crossed the Alabama state line, and the fact Dewey has to act like she’s in his employ to save them both only convinces her that her plan to run away from Dewey the first chance she gets is the right one. She avails herself of the first opportunity that presents itself–ironically, at the same Birmingham Greyhound station where the freedom riders were attacked by a mob and police dogs–and catches a bus to a nowhere little town in rural Georgia–Chillicothe, which is very important in All Her Little Secrets.

But Dewey isn’t ready to let go of Violet, and hires a white-trash no account to track her down for him. He loves her and wants her back–but probably would be willing to let her go except for the wallet, which contains something that puts both Violet and Marigold’s lives in grave danger.

This is an exceptionally good novel, tightly plotted and highly evocative of the period Morris is writing about. It couldn’t have been easy, researching this painful past that we as a nation should be incredibly ashamed of; no writer is powerful or talented enough to truly bring the totality of the horror that was life for people of color in this country, particularly in the South, to life. But Morris does it beautifully; by focusing on how individual lives were affected and impacted, the implications of how truly horrible this time was on a macro level can easily be extrapolated. There are also slurs, accurate to the time and the characters using them, which are jarring to come across in the present day in the printed word.

But I’ve also heard those words used…not in a very long time, but seeing them in print I can hear them again vividly in my head, dripping with venom and hatred and contempt.

This book is fantastic, absolutely fantastic, and I urge you, Constant Reader, to start reading Wanda M. Morris.

Time Is On My Side

It really isn’t, you know. Each and every day I become more and more aware of how precious time is, how quickly it can pass, and how finite it actually is. That makes the time I am forced to spend recharging my batteries or simply resting–something I need to do more and more of the more that goes by–into something I resent automatically and always have to remind myself that I am no longer not only forty but not even fifty and sixty is in the rearview mirror now, and don’t have the energy or stamina that I used to take for granted.

I’ve taken a lot for granted my entire life, in truth.

Yesterday was one of those work-at-home with tasks that are relatively mindless while doing chores that are also relatively mindless. This was a very tiring, up and down week (I always marvel at how whenever I should be having a good time and enjoying something, I inevitably end up having to deal with something unexpected and irritating. It does keep me grounded, I suppose, and my ego in check–those great reviews won’t pay for a new tire or change this one or heal your arm, will they? As though I actually need anything else to keep my ego in check. I am trying to actually develop more of an ego, and more of a selfish nature. Perhaps ego isn’t the right word? I don’t like it–for me the word has negative connotations–and I think confidence is a better fit and more accurate. I am working to increase my self-confidence, and my belief in my own value and the value of the work that I do.

I was talking to a friend recently about my future–what’s left of it, at any rate–and what I should be doing and focusing on. I’ve not made plans in years, or thought very far ahead much with my career; I think the lack of cogent plan with my writing career is fairly apparent from a quick glance at its history. I think after Katrina I made up my mind that making plans was a waste of energy and/or time, as one has no control over one’s future. Life is always going to be throwing spitballs and curveballs at you, no matter how good your stance or your grip on the bat and the technique of your swing, you’re going to miss more often than you hit one out of the park. It is very easy for me to get distracted and side-tracked–thank you, brain chemistry–anyway, and oft times I will be thinking quite enthusiastically about one idea when I get another and the first one is forgotten, lost in the mists and cobwebs of the farthest reaches of my imagination, only to be stumbled across years later with an oh yeah lightbulb going on over my head. But I am going to carve some time out this weekend to try to plan ahead a bit, or at least try to plan my writing year for 2023. I have so many things in progress already that need to be finished that it’s not even funny–which I should also make a list of; not the short stories (far too many of those unfinished to make a list–it was somewhere over eighty the last time I counted them) but the books and novellas and other things that I’ve made a start on that need finishing at some point.

I allowed myself to sleep in this morning until eight, and then over my coffee I finished reading Wanda M. Morris’ superlative Anywhere You Run, which was simply marvelous and superb and fantastic–it’s hard to believe she is only two books into her career; it will be interesting to see how she continues to grow and develop as a writer as she gets further into her career–and yes, there will be more about this book later. I feel marvelously rested this morning, and the coffee is doing a lovely job of waking me. I am going to do some futzing this morning–dishes, filing, cleaning a bit–before getting cleaned up and diving into my manuscript for the rest of the day. I really need to stop being so goddamned lazy and get on with it, you know? It simply isn’t going to write itself, and I am very hopeful that I can make some terrific progress on the book today. There’s not any college football today–the season is over except for bowl games and play-offs–and so there are no distractions to be had; no “Oh I’ll just turn on the television to check some scores” only to transition to “oh, it won’t hurt to watch the rest of this half” to “oh, well, tomorrow I can work on my writing.”

And the hilarious part of it is that I will always, always, feel enormously satisfied, pleased, and happy when I stop writing for the day. Every single time.

Oh! I also taped Susan Larson’s The Reading Life, which you can click here to listen to if you are so inclined.

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

Tell Me

Friday and a work-at-home day, except for the morning department meeting I have to attend in person, which means I didn’t get to just roll out of bed, wash my face, brush my teeth, throw on some sweats, and get a cup of coffee just before nine…no, I have to be there at nine. I’ll run a couple of errands on my way home, which spares me from having to leave the house on Saturday; I may order groceries for pick-up on Sunday, but I don’t need to decide that right now.

This week wore me down and wore me out. I didn’t sleep terrific all week long to begin with, then of course it was one thing after another to have to deal with. But it’s Friday and I am relatively unscathed, methinks; I slept really well last night and think that could again be the case tonight. I was completely worn out when I got home from work last night, so I collapsed into my easy chair and watched a lengthy James Somerton video on Youtube called “What Ever Happened to Good Taste?”, which was about camp classic films, beginning with All About Eve before cycling through Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mommie Dearest, and the drag queen road movies of the early 90s, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. (I must confess to being enormously disappointed that Showgirls didn’t make the documentary; it is, after all, an all-time classic.) Paul got home shortly after I finished watching (it was two hours long) and we watched another episode of Welcome to Chippendales, which could have been just a movie and not a series I think; there’s a lot of padding out of the story to stretch it out into a mini-series. I have a lot to do this weekend; one of my tasks for today is of course a to-do list for the weekend. I need to get caught up on the book, I need to get caught up on a lot of things, and I want to finish reading Wanda Morris’ marvelous latest work. Perhaps after I get home from the meeting at the office this morning and get through my work-at-home chores today, I can spend some time with Wanda’s book and finish it. I am going to run some errands on my way home from work today, too–hoping that I won’t have to leave the house much this weekend so I can get things done.

My arm continues to get better every day, so I think it is something that didn’t necessarily require the emergency room costs or a forced-onto-the-schedule doctor’s appointment. It means I won’t be able to start back to the gym this weekend as I’d planned–I like to start going again before the new year when everyone’s resolutions crowd the place to within an inch of its life come January–but I cannot lift weights with this arm, which pretty much eliminates every upper body exercise. I could, I suppose, go a couple of times a week and simply focus on legs–but the weight plates would be a problem, too, you see. So, that’s going to have to go back on hold until my arm feels better.

I was very surprised and pleased yesterday to see that a couple of Instagram users did “reels” talking about A Streetcar Named Murder, and I have to confess this week–shitty as it was personally–has been a really terrific week for me professionally. It certainly was a good one for my writer’s ego, for sure. The outpouring of support and appreciation for my book from the cozy reading and writing community has been quite nice, rather unexpected, and I am enormously appreciative and grateful for it all. In some ways, it’s kind of validating; over the past few months I’ve really come to understand that I have an enormous chip on my shoulder when it comes to my own writing, and have tried unpacking that a bit. (I’ve spent quite a bit of time since turning sixty in the wake of a global pandemic unpacking my behaviors and the events that occurred that shaped those behaviors.) How different would my life have been had I gotten support and encouragement when I was younger? Had people taken my ambitions and desire to write seriously rather than dismissively? I honestly don’t know, can never know, will never know–the great pleasure of human life is you can never do anything more than speculate about how differently a shift in something, even a very small minor one, can alter the course of a life and a career.

The other night, before my Murder by the Book event with the marvelous John McDougall and my very dear Ellen Byron, John asked me “Now that I’ve read your book, Greg, I have to ask–why did it take you so long to write a cozy? Why haven’t you been doing this all along?” and my answer was “I really don’t know.” It absolutely gave me pause, and has lived rent-free in my brain ever since Tuesday. Why did it take me so long to write a cozy? I still don’t have an answer that makes any kind of sense. Let me see, I’ve always read them, always appreciated them, and have always done my best to fight the stigma attached to them by some elitists who need to feel better about themselves by looking down on a subset of other writers. I hate that, particularly because I know how it feels to not be taken seriously or be respected by your peers (there’s that enormous chip on my shoulder again).

But despite all the difficulties encountered during the time of its writing, I really enjoyed writing A Streetcar Named Murder. Sure, it was hard, and sure, I had to make myself do it (like always), but when I finally held the finished copies in my hands, I was incredibly proud of it. I have always said that I want to always be challenged by what I am writing, that I don’t ever want to fall into a familiar pattern of writing that feels like painting by the numbers (which is why I ended the Chanse series), which is incredibly easy to do. Writing a cozy presented me with a challenge, and yes, it was hard and yes, it was outside of my comfort zone. But I created likable, believable characters and an interesting story, with new situations and paradigm/life shifts that all played out throughout the course of the story. Now that it’s out in the world, it is an interesting question as to why I never tried to write one before, or even why I believed that I couldn’t write one in the first place.

And in some ways, it’s almost like starting my career over again. I am finding a new audience. I didn’t center queer characters and stories. I just wrote about New Orleans again but from an entirely different perspective, and it was enjoyable.

And I am proud of the book, and of myself. It feels weird to say that, but at the same time it also feels good to say it.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.