Save Me

Sunday morning and I guess there’s probably a Saints game today? I am a terrible fan this year–I can’t seem to remember ever to check on the schedule to see when the games are, so maybe it’s my fault they’re having a really terrible year? (Yes, Greg, because that’s exactly how professional sports work…)

The sun is bright this morning–it was gloomy, overcast and humid yesterday; I also got rained on while running my errands. I am having my morning cappuccino, which is marvelous, and feel like I again slept extremely well again last night. Ironically, despite the same feeling yesterday morning, I succumbed to fatigue much earlier than I thought I would yesterday, which didn’t bode well for getting things done the way I had hoped and/or wanted to. So, no, I wound up not getting nearly as much done yesterday as I had originally hoped I would; but I am also still at the point where I think any progress is better than no progress so I am taking the day as a win. I did have the football games on in the background while I tried to get things done around here, and they kind of turned out the way I figured they would: Mississippi taking down Texas A&M; Tennessee embarrassing Kentucky; and Georgia made a fool out of Florida. Missouri surprised South Carolina, and Arkansas embarrassed Auburn at home. The big surprise of the day was the way Kansas State embarrassed top ten ranked Oklahoma State–no one, I think, saw that coming. But this weekend did a good job of setting up next weekend: the winner of LSU-Alabama takes control of the West, while whoever wins Georgia-Tennessee will do the same in the East. I try not to get involved in the whole “conspiracy theory” aspect of fandom, in which some controlling elite wants certain outcomes to drive their ratings, but I can’t help but think everyone at ESPN and all the college football reporters are hoping for an Alabama win, to make the Alabama-Mississippi game matter in two weeks as a “winner takes all” battle for supremacy in the West. I don’t expect LSU to win, honestly; that’s almost too much to hope for (although I do hope it happens), and all I am really hoping for is another great game, not a blow out.

I think the weather had something to do with the doldrums I was suffering from yesterday. I don’t have that same feeling this morning, but at the same time I think maybe not waking up three mornings in a row to an alarm helps make me feel more rested for some reason. It doesn’t make sense (little does, really, when it comes to my mind and my theories about my life and so forth), but I am hoping that once I get this done and the kitchen repaired a bit (the sink has dishes, things need to be put away) I can dive into working on the writing and some other things I want to get done. I’m going to take a break momentarily after finishing this to read a short story by Paul Tremblay, after which I’ll get cleaned up and get a move on with everything.

Or so I hope, at any rate.

I watched an episode of American Horror Stories before I went to bed last night–the one called “The Lake”–and it was much better than the earlier episodes I’d seen. Alicia Silverstone, Teddy Sears, and pretty young Bobby Hogan were an appealing cast, and while the story was terribly derivative (the curse of towns flooded by dams is an old trope; there’s a great German show with a similar premise–but it’s also a trope I’ve always wanted to use as well), the acting was fine and the ending–while a little like The Fog, it worked within the construct of the story and was really the only way for it to actually come to an end. It reminded me, in some ways, of another idea I had for a story a long time ago–about college kids camping out in ghost town in the Sierra mountains in California that I’ve always wanted to write–but who knows if I will ever get around to that or not? It was entertaining, though, and now of course it’s Sunday–several of the shows we watch drop episodes on Sundays, but I can’t watch any of them until Paul gets home. Heavy sigh. Although I think tonight I’ll rewatch Halloween–the original. It is, after all, the seminal slasher movie and the one that kicked off the slasher craze of the late 1970’s/early 1980’s (along with Friday the 13th).

On the other hand, one can never go wrong with Scream, for that matter.

Well, I can figure out what I am going to watch later, right? It’s not like it is of the utmost importance to figure this out right now, either.

Or maybe I’ll watch a horror movie I’ve never seen before–there were so many in their heyday that I’ve not seen them all, like Terror Train or Prom Night–then again, on the other hand, there are so many it’s entirely possible I’ve seen some of them and forgotten that I have, as well. My memory is no longer trustworthy, after all–as I am finding out while writing this book–which makes me wish I’d written more things down over the years or been more faithful to keeping a journal; I’ve never been as faithful to a journal as I have been to this blog, for example. Yet another reason why I don’t write a memoir or many personal essays; I don’t trust my memory, and I know I have most likely revised my own personal history to make myself more of the hero of the story than I should be–it’s something we all do, really; it’s also how we perceive things, through our own lenses with all of our foibles and miscues and flaws helping to interpret and record things in that great back-up hard drive inside our skulls. We are all the heroes of our own story, even if we are the villain in someone else’s.

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

The Nightwatchers

I never really thought much about writing vampire fiction.

I’ve been a Stephen King fan since I read a battered paperback copy of Carrie when I was fourteen, and ‘salem’s Lot continues to be a top 5 King novel for me, if not my favorite (it’s always a toss-up between this and The Stand, frankly) and despite my attempts to turn myself into a King clone in the 1980’s, I’ve never been very good at writing horror. I love to read it–there are some truly terrific horror writers publishing now (if you’ve not read Paul Tremblay, you really need to start), and they are, if you’ll pardon the incredibly cheap pun, killing it. I can do creepy. I can do Gothic. I can do atmosphere and all those marvelous things I love in horror fiction. But I cannot, for the life of me, scare people. I don’t know why I can’t write anything that gets under your skin and into your nervous system; the kind of thing that makes you leave a light burning after you go to bed. I wish I could write like that. I’ve certainly tried a few times…I still have an idea for a horror novel sitting in the back of my brain that I am really going to have to try to get around to writing at some point, because I really should give it a real try sometime.

I have always enjoyed reading vampire stories. “salem’s Lot has always been one of my top five Stephen King novels; I loved Dracula (oh to write an epistolary novel!) and numerous other such tales. It took me awhile to come around on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles (a tale for another time), but I did eventually. Twilight never struck any chords with me. But the one thing I never thought I would do was write about vampires, despite loving them the way I do–going all the way back to my childhood and Dark Shadows. I don’t think I ever would have written about vampires, but my editor at Kensington thought I could; thought I would do a good job at it, and encouraged it, beginning with an offer to write an erotic vampire novella for a collection to be called Midnight Thirsts.

Go home, old man, Rachel thought, tapping her black fingernails on the counter.

It was a quarter till nine, fifteen minutes before she could lock the doors. Everything was clean and the cash register was already counted down. All she had really left to do was dump the remains of the day’s coffee down the sink, lock the cash drawer in the safe, and turn everything o. She’d be gone by ten minutes after at the latest.

She glanced out the big windows fronting the coffee shop. The streetlight just outside cast a yellowish glow in the thick mist pressing against the glass. She shivered and looked back at the old man. He was sitting at one of the tables in the far corner, with the same cup of coffee he’d ordered when he came in around seven thirty. He hadn’t touched it. It was still as full as when she’d filled the cup, only no steam was coming off the black surface now. He didn’t seem to be watching for anyone, or waiting. He never glanced at this watch, which she’d spotted as a platinum Tag Heuer, nor did he ever look out the window. Every once in a while. he would look up from his newspaper and catch her staring. He’d smile and nod, then go back to his reading.

Apparently, he was determined to read every word.

She stood up, bending backward so her back cracked. The night had been really slow. The Jazz Café, even on weeknights, usually was good for at least thirty to forty dollars in tips. Tonight, when she counted out the tip jar, it yielded less than seven dollars. Just enough to get her a pack a cigarettes and a twenty-ounce Diet Coke at Quartermaster Deli on her way back to her apartment. It wasn’t, she thought, wiping down the counter yet again, even worth coming in for.

Usually, on this kind of night, cold and damp and wet, Rachel was kept busy with orders for triple lattés. The tables would be full of people who would coming in shivering, bundled against the cold wetness in the air, which seemed to penetrate even the thickest coat. They’d hold their steaming cups of coffee with both reddened hands, talking and laughing. SOme would be doing their homework on laptops.

She liked busy nights, when the orders kept coming and the tip jar filled. Then, the time seemed to fly by, her closing shift passing in the blink of an eye. She hated the slow nights, when every passing minute seemed to take an eternity. She glanced back at the clock on the wall, then back at the old man. If you would just leave, she thought, I could go ahead and close early.

He’s kind of good-looking, she thought as she sipped her tepid cup of green tea, for an older guy.

At that moment he look up, and their eyes met. His were blue, a deep blue with some green in it. Once again, he nodded his head to her and smiled, but this time he didn’t go back to his newspaper. He held her eyes.

Not to worry, my child, I’ll be gone soon enough.

She turned away, shaking her head, the hair on the back of her neck standing up…

As is frequently the case with my work, The Nightwatchers began as a short story. Within a year of moving here, Paul had struck up a friendship with the director of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival (which is where he now works), and as such he volunteered us both to help out with the 1997 Festival. I worked at the sign-in desk, where people picked up their badges and so forth, and it was in the lobby of Le Petite Theatre de Vieux Carre, a marvelous old theater on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter, right across the street from the Cabildo, and kitty-corner to Jackson Square. It was very old, and the main stage was named for Helen Hayes, who’d actually played there before. It was haunted, too–every building in New Orleans is–and I heard some of the stories. Being a volunteer, I had access to back stage, upstairs to the balcony, the prop attic; everywhere. (I eventually used some of this knowledge in Jackson Square Jazz.) At some point during the weekend I had an idea for a story–a horror story–about a theater company rehearsing in an old haunted theater in the French Quarter, where the person always cast in the lead female roles is also sleeping with the director. The young actress who deserved the part doesn’t listen to company gossip, but she does eventually find out that the rumors are true, and at some point made a deal with a devil who appeared to her in her dressing room, on and on and on. I called the story The Nightwatchers, because to me, that was what the devils/demons were called–they watch at night for souls to prey on. When I was asked to write this novella, I dug out the story and reread it, deciding it was perfect to adapt into something new.

I played with it a while, and couldn’t quite get it right in my head until I decided to abandon the theater idea; I’d tried turning the girl into a gay guy but it didn’t really work. I also couldn’t seem to get the atmosphere right, either, and I was convinced–still am, in fact–that the atmosphere had to be just right or the story wouldn’t work. Then one night I was walking through the lower Quarter in December–meeting Paul somewhere, I think–and it was one of those evenings when the fog is so insanely thick that you literally can’t see more than a foot or so in front of you at any time. As I walked along the sidewalk, with the old buildings pushing up against the sidewalk, when I heard the sound of hooves on the street–and realized, bemusedly, that in the fog and the only light from a gaslight–that I could have traveled back in time. Only in New Orleans can you feel like you’ve traveled back in time when it’s foggy, I thought, and wrote an entire scene around that feeling when I got back home. It was the perfect mood/atmosphere for the story, and it worked very well.

And as I wrote the novella, I got more and more into the characters and started imagining my own supernatural world, with vampires and witches and werewolves and everything else, including a ruling council over the paranormal world, the Council of Thirteen, and the old man Rachel sees in the coffee shop is a representative of the Council, in New Orleans to hunt a rogue vampire…a vampire who believes her young friend Philip Rutledge (now the center of the story) is the reincarnation of someone he loved hundreds of years earlier when he was human (shades of Dark Shadows!) and so wants to turn Philip into his eternal companion, and it’s up to Nigel and Rachel to rescue Philip.

It was a lot of fun to write, and I left the ending a bit open so I could write more about the characters if I ever chose to do so; I actually slotted a continuation novel into my writing schedule; it was supposed to be what I wrote next after finishing Mardi Gras Mambo…needless to say, life conspired to keep me from ever getting around to this book. I am still a bit disappointed I never carried on with the story; I used this same mythology when I returned to writing about vampires again several years later with Blood on the Moon.

So, that’s how The Nightwatchers came to be a story. Writing this now I see the parallels between what I wrote and some things I read and enjoyed (or watched, a la Dark Shadows); and is my “Nightwatcher” group that different from Anne Rice’s Talamasca? Probably not.

I did read and enjoy the other novellas back in the day; I’ve been meaning to revisit Michael Thomas Ford’s because it was particularly memorable.

Welcome to the Room

Saturday!!!

Well, Paul left yesterday and suddenly I find myself living alone in this enormous apartment. It’s weird how that works. I guess Paul just is a very large personality or something like that? It’s just weird to me how the apartment can seem so different while he’s gone. I do sometimes, as I am morbid by nature, sometimes think when he goes away like this and I get bored and/or lonely and/or feel like I’m rattling around in this big huge empty space, well, if you outlive him this will be your future and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that? I know I don’t like thinking in those terms, but as the years pass and more things happen and we have different things happening to us health-wise and so forth, you do start getting a stronger sense of your own mortality, whether you like it or not. I always thought I would die relatively young, so I always feel like I am already living on bonus time I wasn’t meant to have–and yet, I keep going on somehow. It’s a complete mystery to me.

Sometimes I feel like Ishmael.

LSU has the weekend off like they always do the week before the Alabama game, so there’s no reason for me to have the television on for much today. Oh, sure, I won’t be able to resist having Georgia-Florida (“The World’s Biggest Cocktail Party”) game on, as I am expecting Georgia to humiliate the Gators (sorry, UF fans, I very rarely–if ever–want your team to win, but I am sure you return the favor and want LSU to lose every game they play as well), and I am not really all that sure who else is playing today, to be honest–I know Mississippi is at Texas A&M, which is a tough one for me to chose a favorite in; although I think I am going to have to lean towards Mississippi a bit–but again, my plan is to work this morning, run my errands (including making groceries–not much, but some), and then come home to clean and organize the apartment. I’m also going to take my laptop upstairs as well as a flash drive so I can use Paul’s computer if I need to write (and don’t want to use the laptop), and spend the rest of the day cleaning upstairs and trying to get things under control somewhat more up there. One can hope, at any rate.

I like my new espresso maker! I tried it out yesterday morning and it worked wonderfully. I think I may go back to having one in the mornings before I head into the office; that bold shot of caffeine certainly did its trick yesterday morning. I am currently having a homemade cappuccino as I type this, and it’s quite delicious, if I do say so myself. Having one yesterday didn’t affect last night’s sleep, as I feared would turn out to be the case. I slept great last night, despite being alone in the bed–Scooter helped a lot, as a cuddly purr-kitty–and I feel very rested and well this morning. Which is good, because I have a very big day planned here around the Lost Apartment–cleaning and writing and organizing–and I also have those errands to get to.

I must confess that after my work-at-home duties were completed yesterday I was terribly lazy. I didn’t write a word, which is shameful–I was mentally fatigued, plus off-balance because it was my first Paul-free evening–and so I rewatched Nicholas Roeg’s film of Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now on HBO MAX. I highly recommend the movie and the story; it’s really one of my all-time favorites, and the film does an excellent job with the story–far more so than Hitchcock did with her story The Birds (if you like Hitchcock’s film, you really need to read the original story, which is vastly superior in my opinion). I also finished my annual reread of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, which as always was completely captivating. I cannot get over marveling at what an incredibly lyrical writer Jackson was, or how her prose just sings from the page while magnificently creating a morbid, melancholy tone that is, in and of itself, haunting. (I was thinking about watching the Netflix adaptation of Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, another one of my favorites; Merricat Blackwood is one of the great fictional characters of the twentieth century in my opinion) I may dive into some Paul Tremblay short stories this weekend since I don’t have the time to finish reading another Halloween Horror novel, but tonight I may rewatch the original, classic film of Halloween again. I think I do owe it to myself to watch some horror films leading up to Halloween, don’t you think? Don’t Look Now, while not quite horror, certainly does fit the bill somewhat for my mini-film festival…I wonder if Robert Wise’s The Haunting is free to stream anywhere? That is probably my favorite horror film of all time–it scared me shitless when I was a small child, and still does to this day; skip the execrable remake, but the Netflix series adaptation is quite good, actually; the episode called “The Bent-neck Lady” is one of the best episodes of television ever filmed, in my opinion. I also want to spend some time today revisiting what I’ve written so far for Mississippi River Mischief to get an outline done and a character list, which I really need to get done, and I also plan to revisit another project I’m working on and am quite far behind on now.

I do have some laundry to do, some clean dishes to put away, and of course the floors always need to be done. I am going to spend the rest of this morning cleaning the kitchen and making a list for my mini-grocery making today; there are a couple of things I need to pick up–nothing much, really–and of course I have to drop off yet another box of books to the library sale. I also need to put air in one of my tires, and ugh, I have so much to do before my trip home for Thanksgiving. Heavy heaving sigh–sometimes it doesn’t help to look ahead, does it?

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. Happy Saturday, Constant Reader, and may your day be as lovely as you are.

When I See You Again

It’s a work at home Friday and Paul is getting ready to head out to the airport. Heavy heaving sigh. While alone time is something I can always appreciate, it doesn’t take more than a day or two before I start missing him. But I have a lot to keep me busy, so if I just focus and work my way down the to-do list, I should be able to keep busy enough to not miss him while at the same time getting a lot of things done–always a plus, especially given how behind I am on this book–but a Gregalicious at rest tends to stay at rest, so the big thing for me is going to be staying motivated.

Ugh, I hate when Paul goes away.

I was tired again yesterday when I got off work and came home, so spent some time organizing and doing mindless chores once I got home until Paul got home from work. By the time he’d gotten home I’d already finished the chores and given in to Scooter’s demands for a lap to sleep in, and was watching the latest iteration of ESPN’s show Saturdays Down South, which of course is a history of the Southeastern Conference. This episode was for the decade 2010-2019, and while it naturally focused on the Alabama supremacy, it was fun revisiting some of that football history from that decade: Auburn’s runs in 2010 and 2013 (the “Kick Six” win against Alabama included); the runs for both Mississippi and Mississippi State in 2014 that ended disappointingly but had them both ranked in the Top Three at the same time (until they lost to LSU and Alabama, respectively, on the same day), and of course ending with the incredible LSU season in 2019. Much as I would love to climb on board this year’s LSU hype train, I’m reserving that excitement until a week from tomorrow. Alabama is the stumbling block as it always is (only one national champion since 2006 was able to claim the title without having to beat Alabama–hence The Alabama Supremacy), and even the game being in Tiger Stadium means nothing. LSU has beaten Nick Saban exactly four times (2007, 2010, 2011, 2019) with three of those games being in Tuscaloosa. LSU hasn’t beaten Alabama in Baton Rouge since 2010–twelve years.

So, yes, I am a huge LSU fan but I am also realistic. I’ll be cheering for the Tigers, you bet, and I want them to win…but I am not expecting them to win. I am hoping for it to be a great game.

After Paul got home we caught up on American Horror Story: NYC, which weren’t as interesting to me as the first two episodes. In other words, as we get deeper into the season the plot is beginning to derail a little as so often happened with seasons of the show. However, since the story is set so strongly in the gay community of the early 1980’s, I’ll keep watching. I somehow always manage to keep watching this show (Double Feature we bailed out of during the aliens second feature; we also gave up on Hotel but somehow managed to watch both Roanoke and Apocalypse all the way to the bitter end) despite how far off the rails some of these seasons inevitably wind up going–it’s the completist in me, I think–although I feel pretty confident we’ve also given up on A Friend of the Family as well. (Paul: “This could have been a two-hour movie; it didn’t need to be an ongoing series.”) I am now at a loss for what to watch with Paul gone–I can’t watch anything we’re watching together, or something we’d watch together–but I think I am going to revisit the latest Nancy Drew series; I watched the debut episode and kind of was intrigued by it, but Paul wasn’t interested so never went back to it. I checked yesterday and was stunned to see three seasons have aired, which is cool. I hope The Hardy Boys also gets another season, in all honesty; I enjoyed the show. Having grown up on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, I am always interested to see how the characters/stories get adapted for a modern audience (and belonging to several fan groups on social media for the books is equally interesting, particularly in how imprisoning and limiting so many people can make of nostalgia for something from their childhoods), just as I was interested in seeing Riverdale’s approach to the Archie characters.

I wound up going to be relatively early as I started falling asleep in my chair while watching AHS: NYC last night (I will probably have to rewatch the latest one because I kept dozing off; I also rewatched Andor last night for the same reason before Paul got home). I also got a new espresso maker yesterday which I am dying to try out this morning. I also want to finish my reread of The Haunting of Hill House before moving on to something by Paul Tremblay. I didn’t do well with my “October horror reading month”–I didn’t read very much this month at all, which is shameful, especially since I got Wanda Morris’ new book this week as well–can’t wait to dig into that.

Sigh. Am I being overly ambitious with my plans to get things caught up while Paul is out of town? It’s entirely possible, and I could possibly be setting myself up for a terrible disappointment, but there it is.

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

Family Man

Thursday morning and my last day in the office for the week–woo-hoo! (I really do make it sound like I hate my job, don’t I? I actually don’t; I like my job a lot…but I’d prefer to stay home, always.) Paul is leaving tomorrow and I am trying to prepare myself for the emptiness; Paul is not a big man and he’s not loud, either–but when he is gone the house just feels enormous and empty. Scooter also gets lonely and needier–he’s used to having Paul to sleep on/with most of the time–and so I’ll probably spend a lot more time with my laptop in the bed with Scooter than I usually do. I also want to clean the upstairs while he’s gone, which is probably what I will do most of the day on Saturday; clean the upstairs while football games play on the television. Sounds like a good plan to me! I also have to take some more books to the library sale, and I can swing by and get the mail and stop at Fresh Market on the way home.

I feel rested again this morning. I had a very good night’s sleep last night, which was marvelous, and I hope this means a productive day. Yesterday was a pretty good day, actually; I managed to get quite a bit done and stopped to get the mail and to make a little groceries (amazing how you cannot get out of a store without spending a minimum of fifty bucks anymore) before coming home and relaxing a bit. I finished writing Chapter Eight (huzzah!) and am now going to move on to Chapter Nine. I am still further behind than I would prefer to be, but a strong push this weekend (Sunday all I plan to do is write) should get me back on schedule. I had wanted to be finished with the first draft by the end of the month, but somehow the month slipped through my fingers; Monday is Halloween, and this weekend of course is Gay Halloween, aka Halloween New Orleans. That, in the olden days, would have been my plans for the entire weekend, and whatever my costume for the Ball on Saturday might be would always start with the adjective “slutty.” Those days are past, long past, alas; no one wants to see sixty-one year old Greg in anything that starts with slutty, but hey–I had a great time back when I could get away with the look. And I got away with it, he typed modestly, far longer than I ever would have thought I could.

Last night we watched the new episode of Andor, but I am probably going to have to watch it again after Paul leaves, because my mind kept wandering–not because the show isn’t good, but because my mind kicked into “book mode” while I was sitting there watching and I kept thinking about the work I need to do on the book and how to revise the opening to make it stronger and move faster. I hope to get a good portion of the next chapter done today and another tomorrow before taking Saturday to rest and then diving back in headfirst on Sunday. I really need to update my to-do list because there are things I need to do that I keep forgetting about and they aren’t written down on the list which makes remembering them that much harder. Heavy heaving sigh.

I then watched the conclusion of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion, which was interesting. I still might have to do an entire entry about this past season; I generally try not to get involved in conversations about reality television publicly–it’s ever so much more fun to do privately with friends–but I am often reminded of how vested viewers would get in soaps, both daytime and primetime; we used to have watch parties for Dynasty when I was in college, after all, and talked about the show incessantly, living for the bitchy cattiness and the surprise twists in the plot. Someone with whom I rarely ever agree–Camille Paglia–actually said something insightful when talking about these reality shows so many watch fervently: she said they were the modern-day versions of the 1980’s prime time soaps, and she wasn’t wrong. They aren’t the same kind of shows at all, but in some ways they are; the housewives shows have certainly taken the place of the old night time soaps, and just like them, the housewives began with a show with modest success and then branched out to replicate the formula, just as Dallas was the first and the rest sprang from its success. And I have to say, there were times last night once Kathy Hilton made her entrance that I was reminded, over and over again, of Dynasty: her entrance reminded me of Alexis entering the courtroom to appear on the show for the first time, and as Kathy sat there, shredding her foes with a razor-sharp tongue I kept seeing Alexis on the stand tearing down Blake, over and over again.

And yes, I can see my friends from college all sitting around today watching this show while getting really high and drinking lots of beer.

I also just realized that with Paul out of town I won’t be able to watch any of the shows we are watching together; I’m really glad House of the Dragon has already ended because I wouldn’t have been able to wait to watch! Hence I will be bored every night and therefore should use that time to either read or be productive.

We’ll see how it goes.

And on that note, tis the spice mines for me. Have a lovely day. Constant Reader.

You and I Part II

Pay the Bills Wednesday has rolled around again; and this is my first paycheck with my new raise, which is super cool. I guess we’ll soon see how much of a difference the raise will make, won’t we? And–a pretty nice one, to be honest. I paid all the bills already this morning and have a nice tidy sum left over. And I have more bills this time that I ordinarily would, so it’s going to be interesting. I also accidentally paid a bill that isn’t due until we get paid again–which puts me ahead for next time, too.

I slept decently last night, but something I suspected was going on with me turned out to be correct: I am not properly hydrated. I had to have blood drawn yesterday for my PrEP labs, and my blood was too thick. Thick blood which doesn’t want to come out into the tube means over-dehydration. I drank some glasses of water and we tried again hours later–to better success–but between the blood sugar ups and downs and now this it’s not any wonder I’ve been feeling tired and a definitive lack of energy lately. I suppose the morning coffee–caffeine is also dehydrating–doesn’t help much in that regard either. I need to stop and get Gatorade on the way home from the office tonight.

I wrote a chapter of the book last night–well, almost. It’s not quite finished, but I am pleased to admit that it is just as terrible as all the others I’ve done thus far. So hurray for consistency! But the story is starting to take shape, as I had hoped it would as I wrote, and as I move on (while still writing crap) I am revising and reconfiguring the opening of the book and so forth; editing in my head (which is worrisome since I no longer have any sort of memory to rely upon) as I go. I think I am going to do a big push this weekend and while Paul is gone to try to get as much of this finished as I can.

Sorry to be so brief today! But I don’t really have a whole lot to say today, which is an unusual occurrence for one Gregalicious, is it not? Somehow I am managing to get caught up on things, which is always a lovely and a good thing. Sometimes it feels like I am forever Sisyphus, pushing that heavy stone up the side of a mountain, only to have it come tumbling back down to the valley below once I manage to finally get up there. Some days I can look at those massive to-do lists and think to myself yes let’s do this and roll up my sleeves to dive in headfirst; other days I look at them and just want to curl up into a ball and hide from the rest of the world. But that doesn’t get things done, and doesn’t help with anything, either. On the way home tonight I am going to run a couple of errands, and then I am going to just curl up in my easy chair and read The Haunting of Hill House until it’s time for (what will inevitably be disappointing) third episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion, which I will need to digest fully before posting about.

So I am heading into the spice mines for now. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Isn’t It Midnight

Well, I jinxed myself by saying yesterday–either here or to someone at the office–that I hadn’t had insomnia for a long time. So, of course last night it returned with a vengeance. I stayed in bed, of course, drifting in and out of mild, light sleep most of the night, which wasn’t very much fun. I feel rested this morning, but I also felt rested yesterday and was really tired by the time the afternoon rolled around. I did get a lot of work done, too, which was super-great. I wrote a chapter of the book (a terrible one, but a chapter was written nonetheless) so progress was made–and the story is beginning to coalesce inside my head right now, which is also a very good thing. I am thinking I can get this draft finished by the end of the month and then spend November cleaning it the fuck up.

We continued watching A Friend of the Family last night, and yikes, what a situation this family found itself in. It’s very easy to judge them with the hindsight of the twenty-first century behind our reasoning, but the 1970’s were a vastly different time. In a small city like Pocatello and in a small community like the Mormon Church of the area–you’d never think you’d meet a sociopath in that environment, nor would you think about perverts or pedophilia or sociopathy in someone you’d met that way. And you never want to believe that your child was molested; so naturally in that time you would seize on any excuse to say that wasn’t the case. We only have one episode left, so I am curious to see how it all turns out. I don’t think they ever got any justice (which seems to be a rare thing indeed), and the fact that the man claimed he had the parents’ permission to take the girl to Mexico–where he married her, bigamously–even though the parents said it was a lie and the police basically took his side, is mind-boggling to me. (An adult can no longer take a minor out of the country without documentation, usually notarized, from the parents. A single parent taking a minor out of the country has to have documentation stating that the other parent is aware and grants permission; this was drilled into us at the airline…)

I also cannot imagine the guilt the parents lived with for the rest of their lives, either. Yet another reason I am glad to not be a parent, seriously. Never had any desire, and don’t miss it in the least.

It rained overnight, apparently, which could explain the insomnia; barometric pressure changes, particularly dramatic ones, can affect my sinuses and thus my sleep. My sinuses feel fine, but I also took a Claritin yesterday so that could be the answer. It’s feeling very muggy this morning, which is okay as our office is always super-cold in one area while temperate in another. I may wear a sweatshirt under my work T-shirt. (Is this stuff as fascinating to you as it is to me?)

Probably, since I’m boring myself I can’t imagine that I am fascinating or interesting you, Constant Reader.

I have errands to run on my way home. I am getting antsy, because I am expecting the finished box o’books for A Streetcar Named Murder to arrive at any time (probably will not come until November because I want them to come now, right?) and I am also expecting to get a contributor copy for an anthology I sold a story to–still waiting to get paid as well–so I actually have a vested interest in going to get the mail. Again, probably none of this will come until next month, but I am getting antsy and I am always impatient; something that can inevitably always be counted on is my impatience. I haven’t had a hardcover release in eighteen years or so, so am really looking forward to seeing how beautiful the finished book looks. I love the cover, and the entire thing has been an absolute pleasure every step of the way once the book was finished, you know? I hope you’ve preordered. I am planning on turning this blog into a heavy promotion site soon for the book as well; I’m not really sure what I am doing so bear with me. I’m not exactly sure how to go about doing promotional entries here, either, but hey–it’s something new and different and why shouldn’t I talk about my book here, trying to get people interested enough to read it?

I also came to a hilarious realization yesterday on the current book as I was writing it, and thinking to myself, can you really bring this character back from Scotty’s past when you’ve already mentioned him earlier in the plot? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, contrived? And then I started laughing because I had completely forgotten what I was doing with this Scotty book–that no one will probably notice, as no one seems to ever notice what I am doing with my books, but that’s okay; I know and that’s all that matters, right? Anyway, I remembered what the entire point of writing the book was yesterday and now that I’ve actually remembered what I was doing–an homage to Nancy Drew/The Hardy Boys style of crime novels–of course this all will make sense. Besides, the point of the Scotty series is their utter preposterousness; it’s not reality and it doesn’t claim to be; they never have. I also kind of worried because of some similarities to Streetcar–namely, an old family feud no one remembers the root cause behind–but then I laughed at myself yet again. I’ve written over forty books and over fifty short stories at this point in my life; inevitably I am going to repeat plot points and themes.

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

Mystified

Monday morning and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment. I am heading back into the office this morning–I have a lot of trainings to get done today, as well as plenty of my own day job work that needs to get finished–and then I hope to come home and get some work on the book done, as well as some cleaning up around here. I made dinner last night and I made chili in the slow cooker, so the sink is full and the counters a bit on the sloppy side. I feel well rested this morning, which is something I’ve noticed happens on Monday mornings now that I have shifted my work-at-home days again; when it was Monday I always somehow woke up tired every Tuesday morning and starting the week off being tired was always unpleasant, as it continued building until the weekend. I think I needed this past weekend to get rest, to be honest; I’ve been feeling a lot of fatigue lately. I’m also worried a bit about burnout, too–I am not feeling 100% this morning, to be honest, but my COVID test was negative, small victories–and I am wondering if it might not be my blood sugar. I’ve noticed lately that my blood sugar sometimes spikes and then wanes, and again, I have to wonder if that has anything to do with my eating habits and so forth. I felt hungry a lot all weekend, yet nothing sounded either appetizing or appealing to eat. I didn’t make dinner on Saturday–I was going to make Salisbury steaks–and so while the chili cooked yesterday I made the steaks. They were good–Paul didn’t have any, he waited for the chili–and then this morning again I felt like my blood sugar was low enough for me to be concerned about it. (the last time I had lab work done it was high; which reminds me, I need to have it done again soon.)

I worked on the book this weekend around my fits of fatigue and television watching; yesterday we watched House of the Dragon (enjoyed), The Serpent Queen (not one of the better ones), and Interview with the Vampire (I was rather disappointed with this episode, which is a shame; I loved how they were doing Claudia when they first introduced her but missed the mark with this one, methinks). We also started watching A Friend of the Family, which led me to remark at some point, “You know, the 1970’s really were awful for the most part, weren’t they? The clothes, the cars, the furniture, the home decor, the hair…everything was a style crime.” Watching this, it’s very hard to imagine that such a thing could happen–there seems to be this sense of innocence in non-urban areas (sorry, but Pocatello, Idaho doesn’t really count to me as an urban area, apologies to Idahoans) that lasted from the 1950’s through the 1970’s so things like this could happen. And while fathers and mothers were always deeply concerned about their daughters’ sexuality and keeping it locked down until they were “safely” married; it would never enter the minds of good Christian people that someone who went to church with them and was a close family friend (although there was some incredibly questionable behavior, and the ‘family friend’–played with just the right dose of charm and smarm by Jake Lacy–really crossed many lines) would be a child molester or a pervert or a sexual deviant; people were sooooo convinced back then that you could actually spot such a person because they were so vile and depraved it had to show; the character I find the most interesting is the family friend’s wife, who was clearly emotionally (if not physically) beaten down by her husband and clearly had what we now call ‘Stockholm syndrom’–that, to me, is the interesting story. How could you write such a story from her perspective and gain the reader’s sympathies and understanding?

Paul is leaving for slightly over a week on Friday and there’s no LSU game this weekend–there are some interesting games on this weekend, but nothing I actually need to watch; I can always check scores and watch highlights if I need to; the big conference games this weekend are Georgia-Florida and Tennessee-Kentucky–no need to watch either, other than they are rivalry games and thus one can never be sure of how might actually win the game; Florida and Kentucky certainly needs the wins more. How wild would that be if both undefeated teams in the East went down to defeat in the same weekend? So, I think I’ll spend the weekend writing, reading and cleaning. I don’t really need to hit the grocery store for much since Paul will be gone, either. We’ll see how much I can get done, and we’ll see how productive my evenings are going to be. Scooter will be much more needy than usual, but rather than just hanging out in my chair and watching tv with him in my lap I can actually watch television in bed when I get home at night…an interesting thought.

I am also enjoying my reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and my God, how much do I love the way Shirley Jackson writes? I think my holy trinity of women writers of dark fiction (I can’t really call Jackson a crime writer, although there’s some terrific overlap) are du Maurier, Jackson, and Mary Stewart. Stewart isn’t really a dark writer, though; I don’t know what to call them but those three women are probably, if I had to pick three, my holy trinity. The Haunting of Hill House is so melancholic and dreamlike; the word choices and the sentence structures and the paragraph construction things of absolute beauty. I also love the character of Nell (I wonder how much she influenced Stephen King in his creation of Carrie?) and how sad and lonely and despondent she is, particularly since she is so young (just past thirty). Then again, at the time it was written that was pretty much middle-age and she would have been considered a spinster.

The weather has turned into the beautiful fall we always enjoy in New Orleans; that we long for yet forget about during those long, hot, damp hideous days of summertime. I am also expecting some things in the mail; an anthology I contributed a story to a very long time ago is supposed to drop this month, and when I met with the Crooked Lane publicist at Bouchercon she told me I’d get my box of author copies in late Halloween; so I am resisting the urge to run to the post office every day just in case. It has been eighteen years since I had a hardcover release of any kind; it’s kind of lovely to have one again after all this time. I need to start posting about the new book a lot more once November 1 pops up on the calendar; as the countdown to the release date draws near I need to amp up the promotion. Does it work? I don’t know, to be honest, and that often makes it hard for me to want to make the effort at all.

And on that note, I need to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will speak to you again tomorrow morning in the darkness of the predawn.

Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)

I often refer to ‘salem’s Lot as “Peyton Place, but horror.” Because while Stephen King’s second novel (and still one of my favorites) absolutely does its job as a wrenching piece of horror fiction, it’s also a truly insightful and meaningful look at a small town (population 1300) and how everyone knows everyone, as well as the way their lives intersect and connect and cross intricately; we get to know a lot of the townspeople before they succumb to the horror that is overwhelming their little town. If you took the vampires out of the story, you’d have to replace them with something, as there’s no story without them, but at the same time, this novel along with Needful Things some twenty or so years later, are remain two of the best books about life in small towns that I’ve ever read.

I used to reread old Stephen King novels a lot for comfort, losing myself in the worlds he creates and enjoying the stories, the writing, and the characters. ‘salem’s Lot is definitely one of my favorites of his; definitely always in the Top 5, with perhaps only The Stand outranking it.

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

They crossed the country on a rambling southwest line in an old Citroen sedan, keeping mostly to secondary roads, traveling in fits and starts. They stopped in three places along the way before reaching their final destination: first in Rhode Island, where the tall man with the black hair worked in a textile mill; then in Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked for three months on a tractor assembly line; and finally in a small California town near the Mexican boarder, where he pumped gas and worked at repairing small foreign cars with an amount of success that was, to him, surprising and gratifying.

Wherever they stopped, he got a Maine newspaper called the Portland Press-Herald and watched it for items concerning a small southern Maine town named Jerusalem’s Lot and the surrounding area. There were such items from time to time.

He wrote an outline of a novel in motel rooms before they Central Falls, Rhode Island, and mailed it to his agent. He had been a mildly successful novelist a million years before, in a time when the darkness had not come over his life. The agent took the outline to his last publisher, who expressed polite interest but no inclination to part with any advance money. “Please” and “thank you,” he told the boy as he tore the agent’s letter up, were still free. He said it without too much bitterness and set about the book anyway.

The boy did not speak much. His face retained a perpetual pinched look, and his eyes were dark–as if they always scanned some bleak inner horizon. In the diners and gas stations where they stopped along the way, he was polite and nothing more. He didn’t seem to want the tall man out of his sight, and the boy seemed nervous when the man left him to use the bathroom. He refused to talk about the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, although the tall man tried to raise the topic from time to time, and he would not look at the Portland newspapers the man sometimes deliberately left around.

When the book was written, they were living in a beach cottage off the highway, and they both swam in the Pacific a freat deal. It was warmer than the Atlantic, and friendlier. It held no memories. The boy began to get very brown.

This is the cover of the version I originally read in high school–I bought it off the paperback rack at the Safeway in Emporia, Kansas. I kept that copy for years; eventually replacing it with a hardcover reprint in the 1990′, before finally getting an old copy with the original cover on eBay (which has since turned out to be a first edition; I love finding all the mistakes in it as I reread it).

I had read Carrie in paperback in one night when I’d borrowed it from a friend; it was only in the last decade that I finally acquired a copy of it to keep and reread periodically (I bought it to read the opening shower scene at Banned Books Night; ironically, the objections to the book have nothing to do with explicit talk about menstruation, or bullying, or violence…people object to the book because of its depiction of Christianity, particularly in the case of Carrie’s fanatic mother, Margaret (whom I always see in my head as Piper Laurie, who should have won an Oscar). I don’t think Carrie was the book that made me begin to question Christianity, to be honest; I think I already was questioning it before I read the book, but it was one of the first times I’d see a disparaging representation of someone committing horrifying abuses in the name of Jesus, or how the way the religion viewed sexuality could be taken to such horrific extremes. But I loved the book and became interested in Stephen King as an author. I was aware of ‘salem’s Lot before I found a copy while grocery shopping with my mom; I’d known he’d published a second book because I saw it in the book club ads (Doubleday, Book of the Month, etc.) in magazines. I had no idea what the book was about when I started reading it–I had no clue it was about vampires, and vampires never even crossed my mind when I started reading. It was a Saturday (Mom always drove into Emporia on Saturday to buy groceries), and I repaired to my room with the book (my homework was already done, and whatever college football game was on that Saturday was of no interest to me) and started reading. I finished reading it at around two in the morning, and was completely blown away by it. There was no way I was going to stop reading, and there was no way to stop reading once the big reveal about the vampires happened and the pace picked up.

The book was utterly terrifying, and it started raining later on that day as I read. I was living in a small town (population 973) and my bedroom window looked out at a corn field that was right across the street. I started seeing, as I read, a lot of similarities between Jerusalem’s Lot in the book and my little town–the characters, the interconnectedness of the community, and like Ben Mears, I was still kind of a stranger in the town. I just remember that when I got to the part where Danny Glick comes to Mark Petrie’s window, the storm outside brushed a tree branch against my window and I literally jumped, the book flying out of my hands and landing across the room in the middle of the floor.

It was also the first time I remember reading a book whose main character was a writer–something Stephen King returns to quite regularly, write what you know indeed–which also helped me connect with the book more; Ben Mears was a publisher novelist of minor success, but had published three books already and hadn’t graduated from college. He also seemed like a real person, living and breathing and absolutely real; it wasn’t until this reread that I realized how much physically he’s like King–tall and slender with thick black hair.

But it was also the first time I’d read anything about vampires that was so clearly set in the real world, in the real present, and with real characters I could relate to–which made it even more terrifying. I started thinking about how easy it would be for, say, a vampire to come to our small little town and how quickly people could be turned, primarily because no one would believe it was actually happening until it was too late–which King handled beautifully in the book.

It still holds up, and I am glad I revisited it.

Skies the Limit

I finished my reread of ‘salem’s Lot (entry to follow at some point) and really enjoyed it, as much as I have every time I’ve reread it. It’s a marvel that the book was King’s second published novel, and while yes, it was, like Carrie, horror–but it was a completely different kind of book, in style, tone, voice and structure. How can anyone have read King’s first two books and not seen the rise of a major new force in publishing? The pacing is stunning as well; the first act is kind of charming and meanders here and there, introducing us to the characters and the town as well as letting us know something bad is coming, and it just keeps picking up steam, faster and faster, until the last hundred pages or so just fly. The ending was left open to a sequel–I remember reading once that King had written the opening of a sequel, or had the idea or something–but it never happened.

Probably just as well.

I also started my reread of The Haunting of Hill House and as ever, am completely captivated by the power of that first chapter and Shirley Jackson’s writing style.

Yesterday’s LSU game was quite fun, if stressful. As always, they got off to a relatively slow start by playing a little loose and sloppy at first; early in the second quarter LSU fell behind 17-3 because of miscues and mistakes–it easily could have been 17-14–but then the team found it’s rhythm and went on a 42-3 tear against a 7-0 6th ranked Mississippi team (who, to be fair, really hadn’t played the meat of the schedule so far; their biggest win had been Auburn, who is floundering this season) to win the game handily 45-20, and to look pretty impressive while doing so. The last time Mississippi came to Baton Rouge 7-0 and in the top ten (#3, actually) was in 2014 when an underachieving LSU beat them 10-7 (apparently, LSU is 1-5 against Mississippi when they are ranked in the Top 10–is it any wonder they hate us so? Add in to that the fact that LSU’s most legendary and iconic play of all time–Billy Cannon’s Run–was against them, and you see where their antipathy comes from. I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t a fan of Brian Kelly’s or his fire, but he is 100% turning this program around from the depths of the last two seasons and it’s entirely possible LSU could go 9-3 this season–maybe even 10-2 (I daren’t to dream yet; a win over Alabama this year seems almost too much to hope for; but if it happens Brian Kelly will immediately be crowned King of Louisiana) but hearing people talking about SEC titles and play-off games this year seems to be a bit premature–but watch out for LSU next year. Jayden Daniels is really quite a player–I wasn’t completely sold on him, either, to be honest, but he’s really turned out to be quite the player; fun to watch, and getting better and more seasoned and acclimated as the season goes on. Seriously, next year LSU will be a contender for sure.

And yes, it’s petty, but I also kind of enjoyed that Texas A&M lost to South Carolina last night, and good for USC, really (I started to write “good for the Cocks” because I am ten years old; but in fairness they call themselves the Cocks). Petty because they wanted Jimbo Fisher at LSU, and now having seen what he can do with all the money and resources behind him at A&M? Yeah, glad you chose College Station instead of Baton Rouge, Jimbo. Have fun with the Aggie alumni, and let us know how that goes. I can’t believe they wanted him so bad that his buy-out had no restrictions…they are either going to be stuck with him for a very long or getting him out is going to be extremely costly. Again, oh, well, too bad so sad. You had some success at Florida State, but they were already circling the drain before you bailed on them, Jimbo…and this is yet another year A&M won’t be in the SEC title game. Oh, well.

Another rather interesting football season. Tulane also won, so they are 7-1 now, too. Good on you, Wave!

I feel very rested and relaxed this morning. I was stressed during that first quarter of the LSU game, so rather than sitting in my chair stewing in my worry and letting myself get worked up (I literally sometimes get so into games that I have to remind myself, Dude, it’s a sporting event, not the end of the world) so I decided to use that nervous energy to clean the house and work on the book while I watched the game. I planned some of the next act of the book, so I can get some chapters written in the meantime, and I also pruned the books; did some more laundry; did the dishes; and cleaned the floors. I also did some filing that needed doing. Paul had some errands to run in the afternoon–he didn’t check the game time when he made appointments–so he didn’t get home until the fourth quarter, and then we watched the short programs from Skate America, which I’d recorded. The young American “quadgod” Ilia Malinin is definitely a rising star, as is Isabeau Levito, the young American woman who looks like she’ll be our best and most successful since at least Sasha Cohen, if not Michelle Kwan (although achieving more than Kwan is unlikely for any other skater). Today there’s not a Saints game, and I am going to finish this and do some things before diving deep into my book to get it going again. Paul will be gone next weekend, and LSU is on a bye week, so I have literally no excuse next weekend for not being highly productive and getting caught up on things–I still have to empty the dishwasher and fold clothes; and I want to make white bean chicken chili today as well–it’s getting to be soup and chili season in New Orleans, and I do love this time of year and would even more if it didn’t get dark so early.

I’m glad I feel rested this morning, to be sure. Hopefully I will be able to motivate myself to work my way down and through my to-do list. But I am not getting there by doing this, so I am going to bid you farewell now, Constant Reader, and head back into the spice mines.